Tell me a little bit about what inspired the character of Prue Van Teesen, AKA Vagablonde. How did her voice come to you?
Prue Van Teesen and Vagablonde are alter egos that I’ve had for a while, since college. I’m in my early thirties now. I used to rap under those alter egos. A lot of the stuff with Prue is honestly not that creative; it’s just taken from my own life. I know a lot of people find her a difficult character but unfortunately, yeah, the voice is mine. [Laughs]
Would you say that she best represents your past self or your current self?
I guess that the Prue that I came up with in college really wasn’t me at all: she was who I wanted to be. I was very timid, nerdy, and insecure, and Prue was bold, wild, unfiltered, and shameless. Really, the alter ego was nothing like me.
Have you stopped rapping?
Yes. [Laughs]
Why?
For the same reasons that Prue does. I came up with Prue when I was really feeling timid and insecure, and one thing I like about rap is it allows you to inhabit this person who’s really bossy and confident. And that’s what rap did for me: it allowed me to be a different person. I did a lot of rapping when I was in law school, weirdly, in part because I was so creatively stifled. It was just a fun and silly thing to do that got my mind off of torts or whatever. I don’t do it anymore because … I guess I’m not as much of a rap fan as I used to be. I don’t have the same need for it anymore.
When we’re first introduced to her, Prue isn’t treating the people and creatures in her life with much compassion. Yet she’s so charismatic it’s hard not to root for her. How did you balance Prue’s cruelty with her charm?
I’m always really drawn to monstrous female characters — that’s what I enjoy reading — and so I think when I was writing Vagablonde I just tried to lead with that. I mean, I think we all have an angry, misanthropic Prue voice in our head, at least a little bit. So I just really leaned into that. And I tried to make her sympathetic, mostly through backstory — when you meet her parents, you sort of see that she got her horrible values and her inability to connect with people on a real level from them. And I think she’s also a victim of a society that teaches people to prioritize the wrong things, so in a way I think that’s how I tried to make her sympathetic. You know, in the age of social media, we all have that Prue side that only cares about the likes, and the validation, and loses sight of the important things like meaningful connection and treating people with compassion and things like that.
