OML’s ‘Dating ‘In’ Place’ Shows Love from a Distance

L.A.-based writer, actress, and content creator Shantell Yasmine Abeydeera has a new series called Dating ‘In’ Place that is now streaming on the new OML on Revry, a 24-seven, live TV channel exclusively catering to queer women.

Consisting of 10 episodes, Dating ‘In’ Place is told through the screens and mobile devices of two young women exploring long-distance dating as the COVID-19 pandemic causes a global shutdown. While many film and TV productions at this time were put on hold, Abeydeera wanted to incorporate the coronavirus into the show’s central storyline and put a comedic spin on the realities of dating in the “new normal.”

The cast and crew filmed and produced the entire series remotely, with meetings and rehearsals done over Zoom and filming done individually on HD smartphone cameras.

OUT FRONT had the opportunity to chat more with Abeydeera about Dating ‘In’ Place, why she wanted to create a show centered around COVID, and how she thinks Revry is a beneficial streaming platform for the LGBTQ community.Hi, Shantell! Thank you for taking some time to chat with me about your new show, Dating ‘In’ Place. Without giving too much away, can you tell us more about it?
Basically, it is a socially distant show, and it is about these two women that meet online and fall in love. They get set to go on a date, but then COVID hits. They cannot go on the date and everyone is kind of landlocked. They are in a relationship, and they have to figure out how to date when you cannot leave the home. They are also in different countries; one is in Australia while the other is in the U.S.

Why did you want to create a show that focuses on the new normal with the COVID pandemic?
Marina Rice Bader is a wonderful woman, and she came to me saying she had this idea about gay women dating online during COVID. I was like, let’s create something. At the time, I was just seeing a great need for distraction. This was around March, and everything on the internet was very intense. Everyone was spending an exorbitant amount of time on their devices, and a lot of it was very negative. A lot of that came out of fear, people not knowing what was going on.

I was pretty sure we were all going to be stuck in our homes for a decent amount of time. Within the technology that I had in my apartment, I was like, I can make a show. The guy who worked as a virtual director of photography, he is so awesome. He is also queer, and he is the best. I asked if he wanted to DP this show, and he was like, that’s not a thing. I was like, but what if it was? What if we just tried it out? If it did not work, it does not matter because we are all in our homes anyway. I really just wanted to create a distraction for people because there is a lot of fear and uncertainty, and people are clinging to any sort of distraction.

What were some of the challenges the cast and crew faced while putting this show together? Did everyone work remotely?
This was definitely the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. I literally have not left this apartment except to go for a walk and do some drop-offs of stuff with the cast since March. Basically, I created a kit. At the stage that we were talking about doing this, everything had gone into lockdown to such a degree that I could not even get regular lights delivered to my house from, like, Lowe’s or Home Depot. It took, like, four hours just to get LED light bulbs to work.

I sat down with a DP and figured out a kit worth of stuff that I could put together in a massive box and deliver to each person’s home. I created this sort of breakdown. The director would be on Zoom, the DP would be on Zoom, and then I created this rig where everyone’s iPhones, which is what we use for HD filming, was connected to the top of this rig. The actor could call in and do the scenes with the person they were reading with or whatever.

The actors also had to set up their own lights, and the process would sometimes take up to two hours. I have always had a great respect for people within the filmmaking crowd and what they do. I could study lighting for a year straight and still not understand it. This validated all my feelings about the people that do the jobs that they do on a film set and how every single one of them is just as important as the other. It was difficult.

Then, sometimes when the actors would call in on Zoom, and this is around the time Zoom just exploded. Everyone was finding out about it. So, because everyone would be on Zoom all the time, the internet was slow. Imagine doing a scene that is kind of intense, and the screen freezes. They can’t hear me, I can’t hear them, and I am still filming. It was difficult, but also fun.What do you hope audiences take away from Dating ‘In’ Place?
One of the most important things for me is telling queer stories and telling lots of them. With Dating ‘In’ Place, we moved away from coming out. This is not a coming-out story; it’s a falling-in-love story. COVID is the great obstacle, but the show is not about COVID. At the heart of it, Dating‘In’ Place is just a love story, so I hope that audiences watch this and kind of understand that there are a lot of people who are in the same boat.

I receive a lot of outreach from people in the queer community, and I love to hear their stories because it influences what I want to create. The people who are coming to our platform, I want to tell their stories. When they come in and watch the show, they are like, wow, yes, thank you! My character’s name is Debika, and my girlfriend in the show is Jo, and we have chemistry. You can feel it. I hope people see that love comes in a million different ways.

Have you always had a passion for storytelling and creating content?
Yes. I think I came out of the womb talking. My mom, she does not remember my first word, which is kind of upsetting, but she says I was always telling and creating stories when I was a kid. Then I moved into songwriting, and that was the vehicle I used for telling stories for a while, then it kind of came full circle back to this now. It’s kind of obsessive. I will be in bed and have to lean over and pick up my phone, stories are constantly going on in my head.

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How exciting is it that Dating ‘In’ Place is streaming exclusively on the new OML on Revry?
It is very exciting. I am stoked about this new platform. I really hope that we can pick up a wider and broader audience from all around the world. My hope is that Dating ‘In’ Place will be a small part of that. Niche streaming platforms like this are super important for our community. I do not want to go to Netflix and see, like, a token queer character. Thank you, Netflix, for putting queer characters in your shows, but I spent all my life watching show after show after show of people that did not reflect me.

I want to go to a platform where lots of people reflect me and I and I am not thinking about it. Someone I identify with straightaway. I am hoping that slowly but surely, we can get the word out internationally and people find the platform, come to the platform, and feel the same way about it that I do.

How did you initially get involved with OML on Revry?
I had a web series called Girls Like Magic that went viral on YouTube, and after that, I saw this wonderful platform that I did not really see much happening with. I learned the reason behind that was because YouTube was demonetizing queer content and was not making any money. It was very discouraging because I saw the OML platform have this insane loyal viewership. So, I approached the founder, and I was like, what are you doing with this platform? She was like, why? Do you want to be a part of it and see what you can do with it? Yes!

Then we partnered with Revry, and it all just went from there. The people over at Revry are so wonderful, and I met them a few years ago when I had a music video that I created streaming on the platform. We all have the same goal. We all want to bring queer content to people. The success for me is making queer content, telling stories, and people are watching it.Do you think Revry could be a steppingstone to get more queer content and representation onto larger streaming services like Netflix and Hulu?
I can definitely see partnerships futuristically, but I am saying that there is a great need for the community to find us and start consuming the content that we are creating and curating.

Over the next year, I know that Revry and OML on Revry have a few big originals slated, so there is a much more reason for the community to keep coming back to Revry, but I can definitely see platforms like this futuristically finding a home on bigger platforms that is curated in a way that feels like it has been done by the community rather than just taking an inclusivity box. That is definitely not to put down the streamers that are being inclusive, because I am all for it.

What more do you hope to accomplish with your platform?
I just want to tell many different kinds of stories. I am not wanting to tell the same story. One of the loudest cries I hear from the queer community is like, oh, another story about this. Like, we have heard this story. There is a reason for that, and it is because for a long time, there was not any representation. We all have a similar path to coming into our queerness, in a sense. That story is very important to all of us, so then when we get the opportunity to tell our first story, a lot of the time, it’s that story.

We have seen 20,000 coming out stories. Now, I think the queer community at large is really crying out to just see stories where maybe our identity is secondary to what is going on. If I can watch something where no one, and that was something we specifically did with Dating ‘In’ Place, we did not talk about the identity of any of the women. They were just dating. I think that is where the community is at, so I hope to create content on the channel, propel queer stories forward, and not necessarily focus on queer identities.

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects you would like to mention or plug?
Like I said, we have a few originals coming out, so I would recommend following OML and Revry so you can stay up-to-date with all that stuff. With Girls Like Magic, we ran an incredible fundraising campaign through all our followers and viewers, and it has actually been developed from a web series into a half hour series. So, the next season of Girls Like Magic, we are calling it the first season. It will be great, so hopefully people will keep their eyes out on that and come back to watch the full comedy series.

Follow Abeydeera on Facebook and Instagram to stay up-to-date. Dating ‘In’ Place is now streaming on OML on Revry, and follow Revry on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or visit the network’s official website for the latest news and projects.  

Photos Courtesy of Revry TV