| Da Screenrant: Vanessa Benton Interview: The Sandman & Fate: The Winx Saga Writer
BY
RACHEL FOERTSCH
PUBLISHED 11 HOURS AGO
Screen Rant chats with Vanessa Benton about their work on The Sandman, and whether the Winx writers are considering a "Rivusa" romance in Season 2.
Released on August 6th, Netflix's The Sandman quickly took the internet by storm. However, it's not the only fantasy adaptation on the streaming service—or the only one boasting the talents of writer Vanessa Benton. After originally premiering in early 2021, Fate: The Winx Saga will be returning for its second season on September 16th. Derived from Rainbow and Nickelodeon's animated series The Winx Club, the live-action puts a dark twist on the children's show.
Unlike its predecessor, Fate: The Winx Saga targets an older audience, allowing its characters to dive deeper into the corruption present in the Otherworld. Thankfully, the writers have found a way to incorporate several fan-favorite characters and relationships into the adaptation. However, there are still plenty of aspects viewers are hoping will be present in Season 2.
Screen Rant chats with writer Vanessa Benton about their work on The Sandman and whether the Winx writers are considering a "Rivusa" romance.
Screen Rant: I wanted to talk to you first about your work on How to Get Away with Murder. Because I saw that you went from being the showrunner's assistant to being a writer's assistant, and then you actually wrote and produced an episode. What was that experience like, shifting around and then actually getting to write an episode of your own?
Vanessa Benton: Yeah. I'm really lucky because the showrunner was really big into, "Okay, we're gonna take this journey, and we're gonna shape you into a writer." I felt really supported even as the showrunner's assistant. At that point, you're just like learning all the background stuff. You're seeing what he's cutting, why he doesn't like stuff—like just the showrunner in general. What's making it? What is constituting good writing? And then as a writer's assistant, you're just in the room with the writers. And luckily, our writers were so cool that they encourage you to talk and pitch, which is like the scariest thing in the entire world, just like shoot out ideas into silence into the abyss and hope, you know, it makes sense.
And then from there, writing an episode was really scary. I was flashing back to it being really scary. Just because these writers were really smart. And it was like, you're at the board, there's a million characters, you feel like you're proving yourself. But all the writers were super supportive, like, they will give you gifts, like, "You're gonna need a cozy little sweater," or "You're gonna need some coffee to get through this." They would always jump in if you were struggling. And then on set, the entire set crew, they were so nice.
And they knew that you were kind of a newbie, so they weren't going to be super mean to you, but they would help you learn what's going on...ask you questions and treat you like a professional, but it wasn't like, you know, "Eff you for being new," like, "Get your stuff together." It wasn't like that. I feel really lucky in that everyone was really—I don't want to use the word babying—but they were just like, supportive. Supportive is the correct word.
I feel like I learned so much in that environment because I wasn't panicked or upset that people were mad at me. It was just like, okay, you know, I can ask questions. On my first day of set, one of the writers, Matthew Cruz, he came down with me and helped me figure out how to talk to actors, which was terrifying to me.
Screen Rant: Was How to Get Away with Murder the first time you ever wrote an episode on your own? Or did you do anything before that?
Vanessa Benton: When I was on In Contempt, I wrote scenes, but never a full episode that was about to shoot in two weeks. That was the first time.
Screen Rant: Wow, that's awesome. And then you did The Sandman right after that, correct? What was your experience like? I know that it's definitely all the rave right now on social media. People are really loving it.
Vanessa Benton: Man, it was crazy with that being my first show. Like, it was equal parts intimidating, just in my mind, and also really inspiring. First of all, you have a property that we knew had millions and millions of fans. And what I learned from our showrunner, Allan Heinberg, was just how to adapt and how to cater to longtime fans. And at the same time, make sure new fans had an in, which is an art form all in itself. It involves more than just picking cool parts, and that was really intense to learn about. Also, we were just doing the first season, so it was us all getting to know each other us and getting to know how to write Dream who was canonically very deadpan.
By the end, we were super close and tight-knit just because we knew this was going to be a thing when it came out now, and it felt like an honor to work on it together and just figure out how to make it so it worked. Granted, I was the youngest, or the most greenest writer, as a staff writer. So again, it kind of felt like another situation where all the writers were super supportive. And you know, it could have been a situation where writers were very intense because it's a very intense property, but they weren't like that.
Screen Rant: Did your work with Netflix actually lead you to joining The Winx Saga? Because I know that you are also a writer for Season 2.
Vanessa Benton: Yeah, the initial meeting wasn't even supposed to be for that. It was just a general with a random executive who had read one of my things. And then she mentioned, "Well, one of the things we're kind of doing is this Winx Club thing." And I got really excited because I had grew up reading those books and she was surprised. And so that's kind of how that led to, "Okay, well, maybe we should talk about this as a potential staffing job." So that's how that worked out.
Screen Rant: Oh, that is amazing. You are talking to someone who was a huge Winx Club fan growing up. I'm saying back when it was solely owned by Rainbow—before Nickelodeon started the revival.
Vanessa Benton: Exactly!
Screen Rant: I was so excited to chat with you about that, as well.
Vanessa Benton: That makes me happy! Because I feel like I haven't really met any—I used to go to the library and get the little books.
Screen Rant: Yes, yes! Oh, my gosh, and I had the Alfea Castle.
Vanessa Benton: Oh, so you were fancy! I didn't get all that.
Screen Rant: Oh, Winx Club was like my childhood. It was what led me to love TV. When Netflix made a series, I watched it the first night it came out. As writers, what do you decide is most important to bring over from the original version to the live-action?
Vanessa Benton: For Winx specifically?
Screen Rant: It could be for anything.
Vanessa Benton: I think with Sandman, we want to be more faithful to the source material XYZ. Coming into Season 2, it was clear that this version of Fate has the characters, but we're rethinking the world.
I can't speak to what they were focusing on in Season 1. But at least in Season 2, things that we were really focusing on was just the girls themselves and who they were in the—I guess manga? Comics? Graphic novels? Whatever you would call it growing up. But who they were in their original cartoon form, and kind of bringing that out a bit more in Season 2.
I think Season 1, obviously, you're entering the world with Bloom, and it's kind of focusing on her. And in Season 2, we got excited to kind of expand on all these characters. Because growing up, everyone that I knew had their own character that's like, "I was so-and-so!" and "I'm, you know, so-and-so." And so it was kind of important for us to give people like that a chance to have their moments with their character. So just bringing in more of the original source material and background for each girl and trying to bring that out more in season two.
Screen Rant: The first season did touch on a lot of the core dynamics and the core relationships. There were a few that we haven't really explored yet. I know that some fans are curious about Musa and Riven. Is that something that Season 2 is going to explore?
Vanessa Benton: I'm only laughing because, in my inbox, when I first posted I was working on it, it was "Riv U-S-A." It was "Riv U-S-A" that people kept saying like Riv-Musa tied together? I was like, "Wait, what are you all saying?"
Screen Rant: Oh, "Rivusa?" It's "Rivusa," I think!
Vanessa Benton: Yeah, "Rivusa!" Well, I don't know what I can say and can't say. But I will say more of the dynamics between characters that were—things that people are excited about seeing are being considered for Season 2. So, I think, hopefully, people are satisfied by what they see.
Screen Rant: And then we also did see in a sneak peek that Flora is going to be joining the cast. She was not in Season 1, but she's going to be in Season 2. You probably can't say who, but do you have any plans to bring anybody else in from the original show that's not in it already?
Vanessa Benton: This was 2020. I feel like I'm skimping on stuff. I feel like that is the main thing. I think the things that we brought in, which they kind of mentioned in the trailer, were aspects of the villains that we hadn't really seen in Season 1. So, tying in the blood witches and some of the creepy things that we pulled out from like the wiki, I guess, of the lore of Fate. So a lot of the villainous stuff we pulled out of.
Screen Rant: I was very curious myself if Icy, Darcy, Stormy—if any of that was going to be incorporated this season. I know that you have an original concept coming out in September. What can you tell us about that?
Vanessa Benton: This was in partnership with this thing called the Starfish Accelerator, and they are an accelerator that, basically, they want to help marginalize writers, creators, whatever, have their own IP, because as we know, IP is the thing. Being able to say, "Oh, well, I have this podcast based on my original story...that will sell faster than a script. So they were really dedicated to giving us grants to bring to life one of our projects.
And so my project God Bless the Promised Land...basically is—it's like a little bit of a gamified narrative. It kind of ties in with my love of video games and storytelling. So you as the audience are going to be brought into this world as kind of the bad guys. You are spying on our main character. And the whole entire story is told through her tapped iPhone. So we're seeing it through her iPhone videos, photos, recordings, and her notes apps—her diary—because I personally sometimes diary on my notes app. So you're reading the story through kind of different forms of media. And long story short of it, this is just following a girl who's in the middle of, kind of like, the climate. I don't say apocalypse. More similar to what it is now.
Just things are going bad, but you can still survive. Figuring out if purpose is a real thing for her. What does purpose mean? Can we just like vibe and then die? Or do we have to do something when the world is ending? And that's kind of the story of it. I'm super excited about it. I had a really great team of mentors who helped me come up with this. And I'm working with a really awesome website developer building it from scratch, so yeah, September. And you can follow I guess the story page at Twitter on God Bless the Promised Land. Or me. Either one.
Fate: The Winx Saga Season 2 premieres on Netflix on September 16th, and The Sandman Season 1 is currently available to stream on the service. |
