Coming-of-age stories have had a longstanding relationship with Hollywood. From The Perks of Being A Wallflower to The Breakfast Club to Lady Bird, they strike a chord with audiences for many reasons. The conflicts are often about high school, parents, friendships, or romantic relationships — not an unseen notion in cinema. However, coming-of-age stories show these conflicts as a way for characters to grapple with larger, heavier concepts (identity, loss and grief, mental health, the passage of time, etc.), concepts that relate to the entire audience.
Amazon’s High School details the real-life experiences of two twin girls in the 1990s. In the midst of the flannel, baggy clothes, grunge music, and ’90s cultural shift, the two girls progress through high school and become a famous musical group, “Tegan And Sara.”
Tegan And Sara, a Canadian pop duo, has had a nearly thirty-year musical career. The sister duo embarked on both national and international tours, earned Grammy nominations, created nine studio albums (so far), won GLAAD, Juno, and Studio8 awards, and advocated for the LGBTQ+ community throughout the breadth of their career. In addition to their musical careers and advocacy, the sisters wrote an award-winning memoir–one that inspired an upcoming limited streaming series.
High School is based on the sisters’ 2019 memoir. Their memoir tells the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, detailing their struggles as twins, as queer teenagers in Calgary, Alberta, and as children coming of age in the 1990s. The book details their individual experiences by alternating which sister narrates each chapter. While this clear-cut, alternating perspectives model wasn’t adopted for the upcoming show, High School still captures the 1990s nostalgia, the many identity crises, and the authenticity of Tegan and Sara’s real-world experiences.
Here’s what to expect from High School.
High School: The Plot
Based on Amazon Studios’ official summary, the plot of High School is markedly similar to the 2019 memoir.
“…High School is a story about finding your own identity—a journey made even more complicated when you have a twin whose own struggle and self-discovery so closely mimic your own. Told through a backdrop of ‘90s grunge and rave culture, the series weaves between parallel and discordant memories of twin sisters growing up down the hall from one another.”
The eight-episode series focuses on two twin sisters growing up in the 1990s, both struggling to forge individual, independent identities from each other. As Tegan and Sara both start the school year at a new school, they part ways socially. One twin becomes friends with a group of alternative, “grunge” era teenagers while the other enters into a romantic relationship. The twins lead separate lives, struggling to rectify their relationship with each other and their independence from each other. Throughout the series, both sisters find a shared love for creating music and use that to bond (much like the real-life Tegan And Sara).
The trailer conveys the animosity and complicated relationship between the two sisters. While they are uniquely connected, the sisters’ feelings about being a twin at this stage in their life seem to teeter back-and-forth between grateful and resentful.
High School: The Cast
High School stars Railey and Seazynn Gilliland, two TikTok creators. Alongside the leads, the cast includes Esther McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Olivia Rouyre (American Horror Stories), Amanda Fix (Broken Diamonds), Brianne Tju (I Know What You Did Last Summer), Geena Meszaros (Under The Banner of Heaven), CJ Valleroy (NCIS: Los Angeles), and Nate Corddry (For All Mankind). The series will also feature special appearances from Cobie Smulders (The Avengers, How I Met Your Mother) and Kyle Bornheimer (Marriage Story, Brooklyn Nine-Nine).
It is executive produced by Clea DuVall, Tegan and Sara Quinn, Laura Kittrell, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, and Carina Sposato. Duvall and Kittrell are also the main showrunners and co-writers.
The series is produced by Amazon Studios and Emmy and Academy Award-winning Plan B Entertainment.
Release Date
High School will make its global debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. The first four episodes will premiere on October 14th, 2022, with new episodes available every Friday on Amazon Freevee.
High School: Everything Else
The mission to find the perfect Tegan and Sara was arduous. In an interview with Collider, producer Laura Kittrell explained how the showrunners discovered Railey and Seazynn Gilliland.
“We saw a lot of people, we saw a lot of good people, but then Tegan, on the TikTok algorithm, discovered these two, sent the video to us, we were like, ‘They’re very cute, but absolutely not. They’ve never acted before. This seems impossible.’ And then we actually had them audition and they were incredible and it was undeniable. And then they worked their butts off with an acting coach and music teachers and just went to real musician and actor boot camp. I think the first day of filming there was this energy of like, ‘Okay, this entire thing can fall apart if they can’t do it.’ And then from the first second it was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s gonna work. It’s gonna work.’ And then throughout the whole season, they just got better and better and I’m very proud of them.”
