Netflix’s Nasty Cherry Series Is Actually a Documentary About Bullying

Chloe deserved better.

You can tell a lot about a band’s dynamic from their music videos. At least, I thought you could.

In their debut clip for the thrumming new wave anthem "Win", the four members of Nasty Cherry emerged with distinct personalities. There was Gabi, the ice cold frontwoman; Chloe, the pint-sized dynamo on guitar; Debbie, who seemed comfortable and confident only behind the drums; and Georgia, the bass player, who, like most bass players, had almost no distinguishing personality at all. (Kidding!)

Now, with their new Netflix reality series I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry, we see appearances are just that, and band dynamics are as complicated and externally unknowable as most relationships. Though the giddily addictive show starts off documenting the raucous highs of four young women chasing global stardom, the six-episode series evolves into something sadder and more meaningful: a demonstration of how bullying begins, and how bullies shift blame onto their victims. And we see that the personas in "Win" are totally unlike the people behind them.

Nasty Cherry was announced to the world in January of 2019 by Charli XCX, who declared them her new favourite band, despite them not having released or written any music at all. (Charli, a songwriting genius who sequelised the very concept of music by releasing a groundbreaking mixtape titled "Pop 2", knows her s***, so her claim was worth taking seriously at the time.)

 

 

 

 

 

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ITS 2019 ANGELS SO FOLLOW MY NEW FAVOURITE BAND @NASTYCHERRYBAND IF U LIKE CRAZY BITCHES, GOOD MUSIC AND LOLZ CONTENT. SPAM ME WITH CHERRYS IF UR READY TO GET POPPED MOTHERFUCKER 🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒

A post shared by Charli (@charli_xcx) on Jan 1, 2019 at 12:29pm PST

Now we know Nasty Cherry is basically an invention of Charli’s. She manufactured a girl band in LA for the sake of this series; an experiment to see if they could fast-track success via social media and a carefully curated image. It’s not a cynical play: Charli is a zero-BS, business-savvy "momager" to Nasty Cherry, pricking another bubble in the concept of how pop music should work by arguing that her hand-picked stars could be as viable as any other organic four-piece. However, she may be even savvier than we realise. As we begin to wonder as the series unfolds: Did she pick these four women because she felt they’d be the best for a band, or because she knew their differing personalities would make for the most explosive reality television?

Only two of the members are professional musos: Debbie Knox-Hewson, one of Charli’s touring drummers, and Chloe Chaidez, a polymath singer for the blistering band Kitten (who are the unofficial co-stars here). Georgia Somary, on the other hand, is a complete newcomer to bass guitar, having moved from London after quitting her previous job to learn the instrument as a favour to friend Charli. Gabbriette Bechtel, the youngest at age 21, has mild musical theatre experience, but was seemingly selected on account of her fully-formed stage persona, which sits somewhere between Joan Jett and Sky Ferreira. She laments that her resting face is a frown; the girls joke that she looks as if she’s in a perpetual sultry pout. But as we see, despite her dominant and domineering expression, Gabi is largely a bystander to the drama inside Casa de Nasty Cherry. (Because this is still a reality TV show, the four strangers are forced to move in together, amplifying the petty annoyances that may have otherwise been avoided if they just went to their individual homes each night.)

Within a month of occupying the same living space, Chloe—effectively a veteran of the music industry—is shunned, dismissed and subjected to behind-her-back sniping. It’s largely orchestrated by Georgia, who becomes the unlikely force behind the quartet, despite a lack of experience and skill (much of the songwriting they attempt is hemmed in by her insistence that the basslines not be too difficult). While Chloe tries to balance her two bands, Georgia takes her to a Mexican restaurant to passive-aggressively tell her she’d feel much better if she just quit Kitten, before returning to her burrito.

Elements are cool or whatever but this documentary. 👌🏽

Georgia: you gotta choose between kitten or nasty cherry
Chloe: wha
Georgia: pic.twitter.com/yDP4CnZR5K

— oliver fenelon chee (@oliverfenelonch) November 16, 2019

From the footage we see—certainly edited to sympathise with Chloe—Georgia excludes and alienates the guitarist, crippling her self-confidence. As a fan of Kitten, this was hard to watch, and harder to have ever anticipated. Chaidez—looking like '80s Carrie Fisher and demonstrating the boundless enthusiasm and gymnastic skill of Tigger from the Hundred Acre Wood—has a deep vocal timbre that exudes wisdom beyond her 24 years. But after a month in Nasty Cherry, we see her fragility, as she becomes quick to apologise for her innocent actions. It comes to a head in the third episode, when the girls drive to a recording session with producer Sachi (arranged by Charli). Chloe, finally vibing with the team, expresses how much she’s enjoying working with the girls, and wonders aloud about cancelling the session. They urge her to tell Emmie Lichtenberg, their manager, which inspires Charli to call back and give Chloe a dressing down. It’s… rough stuff. Georgia, Gabi and Debbie (who’d previously been on-board) let Chloe take the fall, and she’s crushed.

Spoiler alert for the rest of the season.

In the next episode, a tear-strewn Chloe reads a letter to the band explaining that she’s leaving them. In the aftermath of that emotional moment, we really see the insidiousness of the bullying take shape.

The remaining girls are angry at Chloe for her exit, insisting that the way she left the band was "unprofessional", especially because she didn’t let them know how she’d felt prior. You can maybe accept that Gabi and Debbie had the rug pulled out from under them, though not Georgia, who immediately falls to the floor in dumbfounded tears after Chloe says she’s out. Georgia later suggests she was just being forthright in her criticism, as if you can’t be wrong if you’re just being honest. This is classic bully justification: equating the damage they’d wrought with the victim not saying how hurt they were. It puts the victim in a position where they have to set the boundary of human decency, when the obligation should really be on others to understand how their actions might be hurtful. The band eventually reconciles, and Georgia does apologise to Chloe in the final scene of the series. Still, Chloe shouldn’t have been made to feel bad for wanting to escape a toxic environment. That’s why I sat through I’m With the Band’s final episodes in horror, praying Chloe would stay away.

Of course, Georgia doesn’t deserve to go down as a reality TV show villain. She’s the most isolated of the four bandmates, having left her life in England behind, and is regularly disappointed by the lack of support from her few friends in Los Angeles. She’s also the one least certain of her place and contribution to the band, and it could be argued that her attempts to take charge reflect that. As the members of Nasty Cherry also acknowledge, history is littered with dude-bands who don’t get along. This internal disagreement isn’t so unusual, really. It’s also worth noting that reality TV is a heightened, heavily massaged representation of real-life, so there’s no true understanding of the personalities being depicted on it. A lengthy piece like this may just be evidence of us falling into Charli’s trap; getting sucked into the fantastically entertaining drama while she pierces the cliché of who gets to be in a band.

And yet, the series ultimately feels more heartbreaking than empowering. That’s because Chloe Chaidez is a supernova, to whom the members of Nasty Cherry should be grateful to have hitched their wagon. Nasty Cherry's songs "Win" and "What Do You Like About Me" admittedly slap, and as a collective they show promise, but Kitten is responsible for two of the best songs of the last two years—"Strange Embrace" and "Memphis"—and that deserves acknowledging and appreciating over a burrito too.

To see Chaidez made to feel so small is to see a generational talent diminished by garden variety bullying. Thankfully, it seemed to at least inspire Kitten’s latest and best EP, "Goodbye Honeymoon Phase". On it she sings, "You hit me where it hurts, somehow it only gets worse." Sounds like a tease for Season 2.

I'm With the Band: Nasty Cherry is now available to stream on Netflix.

Header image: Netflix