Aidy Bryant and Lindy West Take Us Inside ‘Shrill’s Body Positive Pool Party

One of the most beautiful scenes in Hulu’s Shrill happens in Episode 4, “Pool.” Annie (Aidy Bryant) and Fran (Lolly Adefope) attend a body-positive pool party where women flaunt their overweight bodies and have fun. At first, Annie is unsure of herself, arriving in jeans and a button up. However, as she lets loose, she not only discovers a bolt of self-love, but eventually arrives at a key moment of self-understanding.

The scene is beautiful not in a “Dove commercial” way, but an aesthetic way. The camera lingers on the wobbling flesh, heavy bosoms, and round stomachs of these women in a way that highlights their profound beauty. These women are gorgeous, and they’re attractive because they are fat. As Fran tells one woman, “You are the sun.”

Part of the reason why the scene works is because everyone on set is projecting an intoxicating sense of glee. Their confidence helps frame their bodies in a new way we don’t get to see on screen very often.

Executive producer Lindy West told Decider at Winter TCA, “It was so fun. To me, that’s the showpiece of the whole series, that scene.To shoot a giant, magical, colorful fat pool party, you have to have one. It really was hundreds of plus-sized women and people. People came down from Seattle — it wasn’t just Portland. I walked into the, ‘extras holding,’ which was this massive tent, where they clearly have a thousand-person weddings and it was just fat women in bikinis doing each others makeup and eating pancakes and it was just so rad. I instantly started crying.”

Star Aidy Bryant also told Decider that the two-day pool party shoot was “really emotional.”

“A lot of the ladies who were on set to be in the background, you could just tell what it meant to them,” Bryant said. “I think there [is] an emotional, ‘Yeees!'”

“We had to rein back how much fun we were having,” Lolly Adefope said.

“It was one of those things where we were trying to make the fun pool party and by the end it just became that naturally,” Bryant said. “Like at one point a lady fell in the pool and everyone was like, ‘Wooo!‘”

More than fun, the scene carried so much extra meaning because of its emotional resonance. Lindy West said, “Everyone I talk to, we all, we’re really struck by how much that would’ve meant to us as a teenager, to see that. I’m just so grateful to Hulu and Warner Brothers and Brownstone for letting us do that. It’s just so special.”

Where to stream Shrill