For YouTuber and content creator Charlotte Dobre, sometimes the best way to deal with the frustrations of modern dating is to turn them into comedy. After years of navigating dating apps, experiencing less-than-ideal encounters, and struggling to find acting roles that reflected the kinds of characters she wanted to play, Dobre decided to take matters into her own hands. Rather than waiting for the right opportunity to come along, she created one herself.
That idea eventually became Textuationship, Dobre’s first comedy show pilot, inspired by her own dating experiences and the increasingly complicated world of modern relationships. What began as a writing exercise grew into a much larger undertaking, with Dobre taking on multiple behind-the-scenes roles, including writer and producer, to bring her vision to life. The Movie Couple spoke with Dobre to discuss the seven-year journey behind Textuationship, the challenges of independently producing a project, and why she hopes the series encourages audiences to rethink the pressures surrounding dating and relationships.
Wendy: Talk a little bit about your journey into creating this project.
Charlotte Dobre: I think anyone who’s in the film industry, especially actors, can relate that it’s just tough out there, you know? It’s tough. I think there was a time where I wasn’t even getting auditions for anything decent, and I just saw this big gap in the marketplace for roles for somebody like me.
I saw I was getting auditions for really young women or moms, like young moms, but there wasn’t really a whole lot of acting roles for parts that actually spoke to me that I related to. At least I wasn’t getting them. Maybe I need a new agent.
So, I had just been broken up with again, and I was just feeling very disheartened because the dating scene was just so terrible and I had had such bad luck. All my friends met their husbands and boyfriends on dating apps, and I just wasn’t lucky in that way. I had these horrible experiences, and I was also just not really getting even auditions for roles that I wanted.
I remember telling my mother about this idea, and it was just something that I was beating around the bush, just throwing it out there. “Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote something about this because I can’t even believe that it’s real. I can’t even believe that I’ve dealt with stuff like this.”
And she said, actually, “I think that’s a great idea. I think you should write down all of these horrible dates and you should write a scene.” And so that’s what I did. I wrote a scene.
Then I snuck into a TIFF party and ended up meeting the director. He offered to read it and give me feedback. I remember getting a response, and he’s like, “You know, this is actually, I think you have something here.” And I just remember feeling very like, “What, really?”
He helped me in a mentor kind of capacity because I had never written anything like this before. I’ve done a lot of acting but not a whole lot of script writing. So he gave me some books that he recommended. We had these little writing sessions on WriterDuet where I would send him my script, and he’d look at all my drafts.
It just kind of snowballed into this thing where everybody that read it was really excited about it because everybody’s had a horrible experience on a dating app and people thought it was really funny. I guess I just ended up producing it myself because I just didn’t really see the point of finding someone to fund it when I could fund it.
The Movie Couple: For audiences who may not know anything about Textuationship, can you give them a little tease about what the series is about?
Charlotte Dobre: It is a comment on the modern dating scene. It is a comment on social media, on how unrecognizable dating has become, and maybe just a little nudge to get people back to basics.
The Movie Couple: One of the things that stood out to me in the pilot was the societal pressure surrounding being single. There’s this idea that being alone is somehow a bad thing. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Charlotte Dobre: I think that people choose to be in relationships that are bad for them as opposed to being alone. I think that people choose being uncomfortable in a shitty relationship instead of being alone.
I can’t speak for men, but I can speak for myself in that I just sort of feel like a lot of our worth as women is tied to whether or not we’re in a relationship or whatever we can get a sucker to be interested in us and want to date us and want to marry us.
Even when I posted the announcement for the pilot, everyone thought I was announcing that I was pregnant. I kind of clickbaited a little bit, and I knew that people were waiting for an announcement like that from me.
But it’s interesting how so much of our worth as women is tied to who you’re dating, who you’re marrying, when you’re going to have babies, when’s the second baby, you know?
I do think that there’s just, in general, a lot of pressure on both sides for both men and women to be in relationships and be in the right relationships with this project.
Wendy: You mentioned earlier that this project has been in the works for quite some time. How long ago did you initially write the script?
Charlotte Dobre: I started writing it seven years ago. So it was a long, long process. A lot of back and forth, a lot of roadblocks.
I already tried to pitch it once, and then as I was about to pitch it, COVID happened. Nothing was being filmed. And so I started posting on YouTube, and it was just sort of something that I knew I wanted to do at some point. It just so happened that I got the platform and essentially was able to financially back it myself.
It was a long journey. There were a lot of rewrites. There was a lot of back and forth with other creatives in the industry, and then pre-production took a long time. Post-production took a long time.
I have the utmost respect for anyone who is a producer, a director, anyone that’s behind the scenes seeing a project like this through because I only did one 27-minute episode, and it was like, “Oh my God, the amount of hoops you have to jump through and problems you have to solve and people you have to deal with.” It’s a lot of work.
Wendy: Within that seven-year journey, with all the rewrites and changes, do you feel like the themes are still relevant today, especially when it comes to dating apps?
Charlotte Dobre: I do think it’s relevant. I feel like it’s more relevant now than ever. There was a part of me that wondered what the future of dating would look like with AI and stuff.
I was just really, in general, wondering if it would be relevant in like three years because our technology landscape is changing so much, and people are already confiding in AI. Maybe they’ll start dating and marrying AI.
I do think it’s relevant. I do think it’s valid. I still have friends that are out there that are single, that are meeting guys on dating apps and having way better luck than me. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me.
Wendy: You also touched on how dating apps can sometimes make us focus on superficial qualities. We create these filters and criteria for what we think our ideal person should look like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be the right match.
Charlotte Dobre: I think that just shows how shallow it’s gotten, right? How everyone has just become, you know, there’s always something better. There’s always the next best thing, and you’re missing out on these really great people because you’re worried about superficial things like height.
I would say that being a good person is probably more important to me than height. Being someone that I can see myself growing old and ugly and fat with. I think that will keep things interesting and fun. I think that’s a little more important than height.
Wendy: You hadn’t written a script before, even though you’ve read plenty as an actor. What was it like taking on so many different responsibilities, and what were some of the biggest challenges you learned from the experience?
Charlotte Dobre: It was a lot to have to wear several hats. I do enjoy just being the talent, I have to say, because when you’re the boss, everybody just kind of doesn’t know how to talk around you. They just get freaked out.
That was interesting, having to deal with that dynamic and then also being acting in it and being the boss on set and everything getting quiet in the room as soon as I walked in because everybody’s horsing around. It was totally fine with me, by the way. But you just never know who’s going to be the producer, the financier, if they’re going to let people slack and stuff.
Wearing the multiple hats was a lot, but I just sort of found that I didn’t want to have to deal with anybody else’s timelines in terms of getting the project across the finish line.
Everybody I worked with was so incredibly talented, but they all had their other things going on, and my project was not a priority.
I’m not saying that I did this all myself, but I was the post supervisor. So I was in the editing room. I was coloring it. I was in the room when we were doing sound design.
I just found that it was easier to get it done yourself because you don’t have to deal with anybody else’s schedules. You don’t have to deal with any other creative input, people pushing back, people not liking this line or this scene or this color, whatever. It was really nice to just feel like I had full creative control, and that is important because it is going to be your face and name attached to this forever. It was too important.
Wendy: I also loved the look of the pilot. The lighting and cinematography really stood out. What was the visual inspiration behind the show?
Charlotte Dobre: We had an amazing cinematographer as well. I loved Euphoria, and I really wanted that. I loved the lighting in Euphoria.
I’m a photographer. I was a photographer for a long time. That’s just my favorite, low light with the purples and the bokeh and all these juicy, juicy shots.
I really told him what my vision was, and he was like, “Yeah, I’ve never actually made something like that before.”
Wendy: Between YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and all the other platforms, social media has grown into something enormous. As an actor, content creator, writer, and producer, how are you balancing everything nowadays?
Charlotte Dobre: It comes in waves, I would say. My day-to-day is YouTube and content creation, long form. I film like three, four days a week.
I always usually have one big creative project that I’m working on at once. Before, it was the launch video that I made where I played a bunch of characters and stuff. I don’t know what’s going to be next. It seems like people want a second episode, so that’s interesting.
I used to post every day, then I posted every other day, and now I post once every four days. I purposefully scaled back like that because I want to have room to do those fun creative things, to go and do auditions, to do the panels, to write in my free time, to post sketches and stuff.
Obviously, money is great, but feeling creatively fulfilled, I think, is important too, and making time for that is important.
Wendy: Finally, what would you like audiences to take away from Textuationship?
Charlotte Dobre: I think I made the show because I wanted to bridge the gap between what women were experiencing in the dating scene and what men were experiencing. I wanted to show that we’re actually not that different, that we’re all dealing with similar problems. And I think at the end of the day, we all just want to be loved.
It was really important for me to show that and have a strong male voice, like the really good guy. Because there was a small part of me that did feel like there wasn’t one out there for me.
So I kind of created this character that was my ideal man and did have those good morals, and I ended up finding one. Mike was that man. I ended up casting him as my ideal man, and I ended up marrying the guy. So that worked out that way.
Just warm and fuzzies, and create a line of communication. I think that proves that we all just kind of want to be loved.
Wendy: The reception seems to be off to a great start. How does it feel to finally have this project out in the world after keeping it under wraps for so long?
Charlotte Dobre: It feels good to have it out there. Honestly, it’s weird. It was just this big kind of secret for a really long time, and now it’s out there.
It’s been really good. I’ve been quite blown away. I’m quite sad that I don’t have a second episode out. I have a second episode written, but it took a year to finish that one episode because it was just me. Maybe if I had a team, it would be different.
I’m pleasantly surprised. I thought I was going to have so much more criticism, but we’ll see. It’s not officially out. The general public hasn’t seen it. So we’ll see once it’s free what the reception is like, but so far so good. I’m really happy with it.
