The OA Star and Creator Brit Marling Shares Emotional Statement About Show’s Cancellation

The OA star and co-creator Brit Marling says the series’ cancellation after two seasons by Netflix Monday left her and co-creator Zal Batmanglij “deeply sad.”

“Zal and I are deeply sad not to finish this story. The first time I heard the news I had a good cry,” Marling wrote in a lengthy letter published to Instagram.

“So did one of our executives at Netflix who has been with us since the early days when we were sketching out Hap’s basement on the floor of our production office in Queens. It’s been an intense journey for everyone who worked on and cared about this story.”

Marling then detailed the attraction to the science fiction and fantasy genre, writing, “It’s hard to be inspired to write stories about the ‘real’ world when you have never felt free in it.”

“As a woman writing characters for myself and other women, it has often felt to me as if the paved roads for travel in narrative are limited,” she continued.

“Perhaps one day I will be evolved enough as a writer to pave my own roads in ‘reality’ (Elana Ferrante!), but to date I have often felt stymied. I can write about the few women ‘on top,’ but then I am perpetuating the same hierarchies that oppress us (and just asking to shift the oppression to someone else). I can write about the vast majority of women on the economic bottom, but the power of moving images and charismatic actors often glamorizes or perpetuates the very stereotypes the film hopes to critique.”

Marling goes on to add science fiction “wiped this ‘real’ world clean like an Etch-A-Sketch. Science fiction said imagine anything in its place. And so we did.”

“We imagined that the collective is stronger than the individual. We imagined that there is no hero. We imagined that the trees of San Francisco and a giant pacific octopus had voices we could understand and ought to listen to. We imagined humans as one species among many and not necessarily the wisest or most evolved. We imagined movements that got unlikely people in rooms together, got them moving, got them willing to risk vulnerability for the chance to step into another world,” Marling wrote.

“That is what The OA has been for Zal and I and every other artist who joined us. The chance to step into another world and feel free in it.”

Marling then expressed “profound gratitude” to Netflix for “making it possible to make Part I and Part II. We feel proud of those 16 uncompromised hours.”

“While we cannot finish this story, I can promise you we will tell others,” Marling concluded.

“I haven’t figured out any other effective coping mechanism for being alive in the anthropocene. And maybe, in some ways, it’s okay not to conclude these characters. Steve Winchell will be suspended in time in our imaginations, infinitely evolving, forever running after and finally reaching the ambulance and OA.”