FAMOUS ASSHOLES

“Famous Assholes” follows a beleaguered celebrity assistant Tara Greene who has spent the majority of her adult life working in the tireless, fruitless, thankless service of Courtney Cox.

Split across two time lines, the ten-episode limited series follows Tara as Courtney’s miserable, harried assistant in the late nineties (PAST: 1999-2000), and then jumps forward two decades to check in on Tara as the miserable, harried COO of Courtney’s production company in the late twenty-tens (PRESENT: 2019-2020). The PAST time line chronicles the many lavish abuses and indignities that Tara is forced to endure as Courtney Cox’s assistant as she struggles in vain to realise her true dream of becoming a star herself. Courtney, though at this point, immensely famous and rich, alternates between feeling utterly invincible and deeply insecure over her seeming inability to break through to the ultra-elite, tippy-toppest tier of stardom. 

The PRESENT time line explores why and how Tara ended up staying in this toxic dynamic with Courtney: a job that has robbed her of her innocence, her youth, and most of all, her sense of hope. Courtney, now nearly two decades removed from the height of her fame has become obsessed with not only recapturing her past glory, but eclipsing it with a spectacular third act as an entrepreneur, investor, and Hollywood power broker — and Tara, now the “COO” of her “production company” (an assistant by any other name), is the person charged with making that happen. But just when it seems that Tara will be forever consigned to live a glancing, hollow life toiling fruitlessly in the shadow of her famous employer, a shocking indiscretion from her past comes to light, and against all odds, offers her a path toward the life that she has always wanted: a life that is fully and undeniably her own.

The series will be evenly split between its two time lines. But rather than grounding the action in the PRESENT time line and interspersing flashbacks to the PAST time line throughout, each episode will begin with the PAST time line, then at a certain point break cleanly to the PRESENT time line for the remainder of the episode. 

Crucially, with each successive episode, the amount of time spent in the PAST time line will steadily diminish, while the amount of time spent in the PRESENT time line will steadily increase, until finally, by the last episode of the season, the entire episode will take place exclusively in the PRESENT. (See the very helpful diagram below). 

As the series progresses, and the PAST time line recedes, Tara begins to release herself from past traumas that have held her back for over two decades. By the time we arrive at the end of the season, she hasn’t necessarily fully healed or reckoned with everything that has happened to her, but she has started to find ways to release her anger, resentment, and trauma, and with that, she can see (for the first time) that a different sort of life is possible for her.