Isabel Kaplan on the Ways Her Studio Assistant Job Inspired the Explosive New Novel ‘NSFW’

Isabel Kaplan has a tortured relationship with Los Angeles. Enjoying the city wholeheartedly can require a suspension of disbelief that the author of this summer’s much-hyped #MeToo-inspired novel NSFW never really found. She grew up here but was more into politics than Hollywood — at the age of 6, she was already dressing as Hillary Clinton for Halloween — and spent her tween years querying book agents, eventually publishing a YA novel as a teenager. Ironically, she found herself newly graduated from college with a job as a temporary floating assistant at an (anonymous) television studio, a gig that wound up giving her the material for her second novel.

NSFW follows a young, unnamed protagonist who becomes the assistant to a young studio executive in the years leading up to the #MeToo movement. Not a tell-all in the specific sense of the word, the book nonetheless lays bare the many troubling elements of Hollywood’s corporate culture, from veiled sexism to blatant sexual harassment. Kaplan’s narrator believes herself to be an outsider who can hack away at the toxicity from the inside but quickly learns that buying into the system charges a price she might not be willing to pay.

The author, who now lives in New York and works as a book-to-film agent, talked to The Hollywood Reporter about the experiences that informed the writing of the buzzy new novel and what she hopes readers will glean from its unflinching pages.

What was your experience starting out in TV?

I started in a floating temp position at a network where the departments had just been reorganized. It had been development and then current, the standard split, but they had just split into comedy and drama. I was a glorified intern and my first few months there were very confusing because I had no idea what I was doing. It was a lot of covering different people’s desks, which is the least reassuring thing to do because you don’t know who anyone is, you don’t know who’s calling. It was also a crash course in all the really specific jargon and etiquette. I didn’t even know to ask what order people should get on a conference call. I didn’t know that the network always gets on last, even if everyone else is on. And that it’s a very big faux pas to put the network executive on before the studio executive and that the studio exec doesn’t want to go on until the producer is on, who doesn’t want to go on until the writer is on. It’s all an endless game. The way to impress people is by, like, memorizing everyone’s lunch orders.

Did you know at the time that you were going to write about the experience? Were you realizing that the things happening to you were rife for a novel?

I’ve always had a hard time knowing that I’m going to write about anything as I’m living it. I made mental note of the absurdities but without any plans whatsoever. If I had written about it while I was still an assistant, I wouldn’t have gotten the perspective right. Even if you think the value system that you’re adopting is messed up, or the things you’re doing at work are strange, you have to on some level buy into it just to keep doing it. Otherwise the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

When did the house of cards come tumbling down?

I mean, I’m really in a place of, “Let’s burn it all down.” I think there’s no such thing as an ethical Hollywood institution, or an ethical institution period. Definitionally, they’re not ethical. They protect themselves, that’s how they’re created. I bought into this idea that, “Here I am fighting for change from the inside, I’m going to advocate for voices that aren’t in the room.” That’s such extreme cognitive dissonance. Because it requires believing that even if you’re playing the game, you’re not actually playing it. It’s not special to Hollywood, it’s basically every corporation. It’s our government. Over the past seven years, I’ve become much more disillusioned to the idea that anything can change. You can fire a few people, but you’re left with a system of enablers. I kind of hate that we’re in this moment where people think things have changed — they haven’t, it’s just that a lot of men know the term “implicit bias” now.

NSFW is set right before the #MeToo movement. Were you still in the industry when Harvey Weinstein was outed?

I was in grad school, so I watched it all go down from there. But most of my friends were still working in Hollywood, so I used some of their experiences to inform the writing. I also think that space gave me some intellectual freedom to think about it differently and to talk with other people about their experiences. The truth is that my own experiences as an assistant weren’t that bad comparatively; I was constantly confronted with situations that were worse. The shocking part of the #MeToo movement is that none of the stories that came out were shocking. Everyone wanted to be outraged, but everyone knew. I remember when an assistant job opened for Harvey Weinstein and I was told, “Oh, don’t apply for that, you’d have to arrange creepy meetings in hotel rooms.”

This isn’t a Devil Wears Prada style exposé, but the book still lays out some of the dark sides of the business. Were you worried at all about anyone’s reactions to that?

It is a novel, the plot and the people are fiction, but I had a lot of real feelings that went into this book. But I think that what makes it a little easier is it’s not like I’m “taking down” one specific network or executive. What happens in the novel happened at all of the networks. Unfortunately, it’s structural and involves so many people. But I don’t think you can write things and also worry about what people will think. I also had to think about, “Is every part of the book doing a service, or is it just something that I wrote because I was going through something?”

What shocked you most about book publishing, versus the process of making a television show?

I think just the creative control you have, and the fact that it’s a one-on-one situation with your editor. Or for me, one-on-three, since I had two editors in the U.K. Also, once you sell a book, you know it will come out. Even if only five people read it, it will be published and available. Whereas with a TV show, you can sell it a million times and it still may never become a show. The most disheartening part of television was seeing how few things got on the air. There are so many opportunities for people to say no, and it’s so easy to say no. There were projects where I was passing, on behalf of the network, with exactly one month of experience.

Do you think you had a relatively smooth process of selling the book? It’s really hyped and getting a lot of attention, but that doesn’t always reflect what the author went through.

I was trying to sell it in the fall of 2020, when everything felt so apocalyptic. We had the pandemic, and here in L.A., because of the fires, the skies were red and the air quality was terrible, and the election was looming. I was like, “Who the fuck am I to be caring about my book selling, when democracy might collapse next week?” It was full-tilt panic in every sense. I’d find myself still caring about my book and then feeling terrible. Sure, I’d spent years of my life on it, but society is collapsing and I’m here saying: “Don’t you want to read about workplace sexual harassment?”

Do you feel pressure to sell adaptation rights to the book? It’s about Hollywood, and you’re quite literally a book-to-film agent.

I think everyone who writes anything wants it to live on in its best and biggest forms. Obviously I would love for it to be adapted, but I’m also trying to feel very pragmatic about it. It can be devastating if you put too much stock in any specific outcome. I don’t know if I’m succeeding, though — it’s hard not to ask my agent, “Who are you submitting to?” Or, “Did you hear this person is looking for something like this?” It’s hard to divorce those parts of myself. And, it’s weird to have written a book about Hollywood and now also want Hollywood people to read it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.