Baby-Sitters Club Showrunner Breaks Silence on Netflix Cancellation

Last week, it was confirmed that another Netflix title would be getting the axe, with the streaming service’s live-action adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club being cancelled after two seasons. The series, which is based on Ann M. Martin’s iconic book series of the same name, was a critical darling and beloved by viewers, which only made the news of its early end all the more heartbreaking. In a recent interview with Vulture, The Baby-Sitters Club series creator Rachel Shukert revealed how she found out about the cancellation, and chalked part of the decision up to Netflix’s metrics. 

“It was the very beginning of February,” Shukert explained. “It took them a long time to make the call, which is unusual. Netflix can be very quick about pulling the plug on things they’re not going to continue. I want to be very careful because it’s a lot of conjecture, but I feel like Netflix’s internal metrics can change month to month. Something that was fine three months ago is suddenly not what they need.”

“I think it’s the numbers, like what territories they feel they need to see things performing in,” Shukert said elsewhere in the interview. “As far as I can tell, everything Netflix does is based on how it’s driving subscriber growth. The truth is that when your show does very well in North America, as ours does, as far as Netflix is concerned, pretty much everybody who’s going to have Netflix [in North America] has it. They’re looking to drive subscriber growth in other parts of the world where this IP doesn’t have much recognition.”

“It was odd. You have a call and they give you numbers seven days in and then 28 days in,” Shukert continued. “Our numbers seemed fine. It was what they expected. It was pretty close to what we did last season, so I wasn’t too worried. Then, as the decision to renew the show kept dragging on, I started to get concerned. At the same time, the show has been so critically well received. We’ve been nominated for and won so many awards. People love it. For this show that has a fine viewership but is not a monster hit, but it’s beloved by fans … does that matter? I don’t know. I think we had the bad luck to come out at about the same time as Squid Game, which showed them how crazy numbers could get. Numbers that were totally respectable and successful last year were suddenly seen in a different way. I don’t have access to a lot of this data, and in general creators don’t have access to this data at Netflix, so it’s what you put together on your own.”

Based on Ann M. Martin’s iconic book series of the same name, The Baby-Sitters Club followed the everyday adventures of Kristy Thomas (Sophie Grace), Claudia Kishi (Momona Tamada), Stacey McGill (Shay Rudolph), Dawn Schafer (Kydra Sanchez, taking over the role from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness star Xochitl Gomez), Mary Anne Spier (Malia Baker), and Karen Brewer (Sophia Reid-Gantzert), a group of tween girls who form their own babysitting business in their town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

“People are extremely uncomfortable with this period in girls’ lives,” Shukert said elsewhere in the interview. “It seems to be the time of life that girls lose faith in themselves, and I think it’s because they don’t see representation of where they’re actually at. Girls are expected to go straight from Doc McStuffins to Euphoria. They’re not ready for TV about having sex, but they don’t want to be little girls. So who are they? It’s a really easy time for girls to define themselves solely by how they’re seen by other people and then you don’t get your sense of self back until you’re 35. What if you weren’t missing those 20 years? What if you always got to be yourself and see yourself represented in a real way? And not have to be all about who thinks you’re pretty or who thinks you have the right clothes? Or how old they think you are or how old they think you look? The Baby-Sitters Club speaks to so many girls because it meets them where they are. It’s not about adults telling them who they are. It’s not really about boys, although they have crushes, which is a realistic part of life at that age. There’s something about stories geared to this age that always felt like hindsight from adults, as opposed to what it actually feels like to be that age. What we could do with The Baby-Sitters Club was make the girls as smart and interesting and mature as girls are without making it all about how other people see them. It’s about how they see themselves.”

What do you think of Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club ending after two seasons? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Both seasons of The Baby-Sitters Club is now available to stream exclusively on Netflix.

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