Zoë Rocha: "I’ve found more misogyny in the industry, particularly with my role. It can be quite brutal”

I mightn’t look like a man who’s watched all twenty-four seasons of America’s Next Top Model – the TV exec who cancelled Tyra Co. better not walk down any dark Dublin alleys – but I’ve always had an interest in the world of high fashion, which was piqued a few years back when I interviewed Caitríona Balfe.

Zooming in from Hollywood, the Monaghan star told me how, whilst studying at the Dublin Institute of Technology, she’d been spotted on the street by a visiting Ford Model scout who whisked her off to Paris where Chanel, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton assignments awaited.

A similar thing happens to neurodivergent teenager Harriet Manners in Geek Girl, the Holly Smale-penned series of YA novels which have sold a whopping 3.4 million copies since the first one hit the shelves in 2013.

The good news for current and ex-teenagers is that thanks to RubyRock Pictures, the London production company helmed by exiled Dub Zoë Rocha, the TV adaptation of Geek Girl now awaits your Netflix bingeing pleasure.

Smart, funny and thought-provoking – bullying, body positivity, sexuality and the destructive clusterfuck that is social media all feature in the first few episodes – it’s shaping up to be an even bigger streaming hit for Rocha Co. than their brilliant Borderline mockumentary.

Looking every inch the proud producer parent, Ms. Rocha is joined for our chinwag today by Emmanuel Imani who plays Harriet’s best friend and confidante Wilbur Evans in the ten-parter.

It’s Emmanuel’s first encounter with Hot Press, but not Zoë’s…

“When I was around fifteen I did work experience in Hot Press,” she recalls with a smile. “I was cataloguing cassette tapes and delivering stuff to festivals. You had bands coming in which I thought was very cool, so that’s when I first met you, Stuart.”

I’m glad we didn’t put her off the creative industries for good! Having grown up surrounded by it – and knowing that her Dad John Rocha and designer sister Simone would be watching it – Zoë was determined that all of Geek Girl’s fashion scenes should ring true.

“Luckily, we had a superb Fashion Consultant in Karl Plewka who was my Dad’s stylist on and off for twenty years and was Vivienne Westwood’s assistant when Naomi Campbell had her tumble on the runaway – there’s nothing you can teach this man!” she says. “For the fashion shows we brought in 250 extras who we broke down – ‘Okay, you have print journalists, you have bloggers, you have photographers’ – and dressed accordingly. It took a lot of planning to look effortless!

“To also make it authentic, I cast real models including Jade Parfitt who’s now walked in catwalk shows for me, my Dad and Simone; Emily Vivienne who’s Tom Ford’s muse; Herieth Paul who’s walked for Diane von Furstenberg and Calvin Klein; and the iconic ‘70s supermodel Marie Helvin who was amazing.”

Zoë mentioned Vivienne Westwood earlier. Did their paths ever cross? “I wore a Vivienne Westwood dress for my wedding in October, which we’d started talking about prior to Vivienne’s passing,” she reveals. “And I met her a couple of times just kind of being out on the scene.”

Forensically recreating a London catwalk show wasn’t the only haute couture challenge Zoë and Karl rose to. “Probably the most exciting thing for me was helping to build the brand for our fictitious designer, Yuji Lee,” she enthuses. “I needed it to be high-end and luxurious but still have a contemporary edge that would resonate for an audience today. It was a real privilege when my Dad allowed Karl and I to select pieces from his archive. We’ve used around forty across the series – and I can genuinely say that they look like they could have been shown in London, Paris or Milan this year!”

With Princess Diana’s favourite milliner Stephen Jones, actor and designer Sadie Frost, drag queen extraordinaire Bimini Bon-Boulash and another of the UK’s most celebrated supermodels, Leomie Anderson, also on board, the series really is a feast for fashionistas.

Did Emmanuel – who also answers to the name of Manny – get the script and think, “Oh yeah, I want to be in that!”

“Before I’d even read it, I had two of my friends saying, ‘There’s this show – it’s you, it’s you, they’ve written about you!’” the South London actor enthuses. “You’re right, though, I was very excited when I got to look at the script myself. I then read the books and realised that the series has captured their essence – and amplified it.”

How would he describe Wilbur who turns out to be a perennial Geek Girl scene-stealer?

“Well, Wilbur describes himself as Harriet’s fairy godmother, which is a beautiful way of putting it,” Manny reflects. “He appears in her life amidst the whirlwind magic of London Fashion Week and propels her onto this journey, whilst encouraging her to be her truest self – which is a recurring theme in the show.

“Harriet has some mishaps along the way, but always seems to end up where she’s supposed to be by not trying to be someone or something else. What I love about Wilbur is that he also taught me to be my truest self. I’ve never read a character like him in any other script I’ve got from the UK.”

Which was both a positive and a negative for Manny who admits to some sleepless nights during the first few weeks of filming.

“When I started playing Wilbur, I was afraid of him because he’s a lot more effeminate and comfortable in his queerness than I am at this particular point in my queerness journey,” he admits. “It’s scary seeing somebody who’s so unapologetic in that way, but them living their truth sort of gives you permission to live yours. I hope that’s something people take away from Geek Girl.”

The 30-year-old is also delighted with the show’s zero punches pulled approach to the perils of social media.

“It can be a frightening place if you allow it to overwhelm you,” he acknowledges. “Everybody says you have to have social media to be in this industry. For a long time I was resistant. I’m Nigerian, I’m rebellious and like, ‘Don’t tell me what to do, honey!’ I only eventually jumped on it because of this project. I felt that, with my own therapy and my own journey, I was in a space where I could talk about who I am, what I do and how my work – which I love – is going to change the world.”

I’m guessing from the striking ensemble he’s wearing today that Manny is as au fait with designer labels as Wilbur is.

“Listen, Ms. Rocha introduced me to the world of fashion, honey!” he shoots back. “Until you come from a fashion dynasty, y’all know nothing! Zoë blew my mind when we got to have our amazing fittings. I’d never worn a Commes de Garcons jacket before. My jaw was on the floor for weeks.”

In addition to Geek Girl, Manny is the writer, director and star of Demons, a short that will soon be hitting the film festival circuit. “It’s about homophobic attacks that take place in Africa. I really wanted to spotlight that because the LGBTQI+ community is quite voiceless over there. There are some laws left over from colonialism and people haven’t let them go.”

Meanwhile, Zoë says she felt a duty of care to Geek Girl viewers who might be struggling with the unachievable perfectionism peddled to them by Instagram.

“It’s important to say, ‘You don’t have to be the six foot blonde, you can be all different sizes and shapes. Beauty comes in all of those packages.’ We also worked very hard to have diversity of race and age as well.”

“As a queer man of colour, I want to say how important it is to have people like Zoë behind the camera,” Manny adds. “We need to have them in these rooms fighting for representation.”

And it is a fight with misogyny and other forms of discrimination still rife within the industry.

“Starting out I was really protected working with the casting director, Ros Hubbard, who’s an incrdibly strong woman,” Zoë recalls. “Then I worked with Stephen Fry who’s also very protecting. These last couple of years, though, I’ve found more misogyny in the industry, particularly with my role. It can be quite brutal.

“We’ve had #MeToo, which is amazing, but it’s still sort of hidden.” Geek Girl is set to make an even bigger star out of Emily Carey who was cast as Harriet after impressing in the likes of Casualty, House Of The Dragon and Platform 7.

“She’s hilarious,” Manny resumes. “It’s incredible to watch her transformation as Harriet. Another person who’s funny, honey, in the show is Sandra Yi Sencindiver. People are going to adore her as Yuji Lee.”

“What’s so lovely is that we had this juxtaposition between really talented actors that are established and newbies like Liam Woodrum and Rochelle Harrington whose first proper job it is,” Zoë takes over. “It’s testament to Manny and Emily that they were made to feel so comfortbable.”

When as a kid did Zoë twig that her father is not your typical Dublin Da – and what childhood memories does she have of being at his shows?

“Come on, Stuart, with his very long hair and the way he looked, I never thought he was typical!” she laughs. “My standout memory – and there are lots of little homages in Geek Girl to my experiences growing up – is when Gavin Friday sang ‘Angel’ on the catwalk at a show of Dad’s in London. It was before the song had made it on to the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack and I remember that moment of being there and how amazing it was. So when we started doing Geek Girl it was always a no-brainer that when we got to the last big catwalk show, I wanted to have ‘Angel’ in it.”

Talking of music, COVID struck just as Zoë, Carl Barât and his sister Lucie were developing a rock ‘n’ roll-inclined project called The Heartless, which had to be put on ‘hold’ because of lockdown. Is there a possibility that it’ll be revisited?

“Yeah, it was inspired by The Libertines’ arrival into Camden and that experience,” she says. “We were going to make it with Channel 4 and then the pandemic happened. I actually met with Lucie two weeks ago to chat about dusting it off again and seeing what it looks like today. There’s a love for London and that time period, so it’s definitely not dead.”

In addition to looking afresh at The Heartless, Zoë and the RubyRock team are developing Her Horror with AMC – “It’s a kind of anthology looking at horror through the female experience,” she explains – and have this week secured the rights to Stephen Lloyd Jones’ supernatural thriller, The String Diaries.

“I’m doing the project with Sony and Steve Lightfoot who created the Punisher so it’s really exciting!” Zoë concludes.

• Geek Girl is available now on Netflix.

Read this interview and more in the latest issue of Hot Press: