Somerville-produced web series shows the crime genre can be representative

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As a working actress, Caitlin Graham was tired of the kinds of roles available to her. So, she decided to write and star in “The Naturals,” a show with a lead female character she wanted to play: a queer daughter of a Boston hit man who returns home to step into his shoes after his death.

“I love the crime genre and love mafia movies,” she said. “I remember going to see ‘The Departed’ and loving the movie. The actor in me was saying I’d love to play the Leonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon roles, but that’s really not out there for me. That’s where the character Fallon Esposito was born.”

Graham described “The Naturals” as a classic mafia genre series, but with an unexpected protagonist.

“She’s a queer female – it gives a female character a new kind of role in this very traditional genre,” she said. “We see how introducing a queer character into this patriarchal, hyper-masculine world disrupts it, and how worlds meld and get increasingly uncomfortable. It’s a new spin on an old genre that hasn’t changed in a long time.”

Graham is Brooklyn born and bred, but attended Wellesley College and studied film at Boston University. Though she recently moved back home, she lived in Somerville for five years around Davis Square, where she brainstormed and produced “The Naturals.”

The show, which premiered as a YouTube web series on Nov. 19 with five short episodes, was filmed in mainly in Somerville and Boston, with a few other Massachusetts locations.

“We filmed all over the place, and at many indoor locations in Somerville,” said Graham. “We were relying on favors from friends, and so shooting in those Somerville multifamily homes.”

Though Somerville’s own criminal history didn’t directly impact the show, Graham said she hopes future seasons can explore local history and get deeper into the family relationships in the show.

“Oddly, I got into ‘The Sopranos’ very late – for a New Yorker especially – I binged the whole thing a few years ago,” she said. “I love that it’s a crime show, but more about the psychology of the characters and dysfunction of the family. I wanted to bring that element into this show – it’s about family history and dysfunction, and the trauma of the kids growing up with a father like that.”

Queer and female representation – on and off screen

Graham’s wraparound goal was to create more opportunity. She was driven to write a complex, queer female character because she wasn’t seeing those roles anywhere else, but she also hired a majority female production team.

“In the queer community, there is endless appetite for queer content and genre stories,” she said. “Horror, crime, and sci-fi stories with queer characters, but where the story isn’t about their queerness. The characters are queer, but they happen to be queer and are just doing all the plot things that happen in those stories.”

The lead character in “The Naturals,” Fallon Esposito, is a lesbian. Graham herself identifies as bisexual and – though she emphasized the importance of more bisexual representation – she made a conscious choice to not have Esposito identify that way.

“There’s a tradition of bi characters being painted as psychotic – there are lots of bi murderer characters,” said Graham. “As much as I wanted that representation in the show, I consciously decided to not make Fallon bi, because she does end up murdering people.”

As far as hiring a representative team, Graham said it was easy to find talented film professionals who don’t identify as male.

“Crews and sets are very male dominated at every level – that’s changing, but slowly,” she said. “For the most part I had a good network of female crewmembers I could already pull from… It helps to have female [director of photography], which tends to bring in other crew members.”

Graham is excited for people to see the queer representation, but also the complex relationships explored in the series.

“I also like to think we’re doing something new with a sibling relationship that hasn’t been seen a whole lot,” she said. “I have one brother, and those relationships are really rich and not explored enough. In life, when you have a brother and a sister, there are certain expectations in terms of responsibility in the family, and we’ve flipped that in this show: Fallon is the one going off and doing her own thing, and he’s the one staying home and being more of the caretaker.”

So, what’s next? Graham hopes to secure some funding before producing season two. The plan was to start with the festival circuit, but COVID has changed things a bit, so the show is available to stream now on YouTube.

“People are really hungry for produced content and people want to watch stuff, so we’re doing both,” she said. “The goal is to keep finding our audience organically online, and hopefully people take to it! I already have so many ideas for season two.”

Find out more and watch the show at https://www.thenaturals.tv/episodes.