London — New female-led production company, Double Yay Productions, is fundraising for their comedy web series about eating disorders on Kickstarter called “Nutritiously Nicola!”.

Daring, fresh, and extremely funny, Nutritiously Nicola! is a bold new comedy web series about a young woman suffering with an eating disorder. The series is a non-glamorising and honest portrayal of a character with an eating disorder based on the creator’s own experience with the illness.

Natalie Bray, creator and lead actor of Nutritiously Nicola!, knows what it’s like to live with an eating disorder: “It would have been nigh on impossible not to give Nicola an eating disorder, when my own eating disorder was, essentially, my co-writer.”

Bray created the character of Nicola long before the recent Netflix’s release of To The Bone. Bray and her business partners set up Double Yay Productions to create fresh female-led comedy. The Kickstarter campaign ends on Tuesday 15 August at 8pm BST. As of 6 August the project has raised 85% of their £16K goal to produce the full web series.

The series will consist of 6 snack-sized episodes of roughly 7-10 minutes in length and features some recognisable faces, cast including Matthew Lewis from Harry Potter, Heida Reed from Poldark, Andrew Gower from Outlander, Christopher Ettridge from Goodnight Sweetheart and new comedy talents.

There’s more than one way to portray Eating Disorders on screen Nutritiously Nicola! is the story of Nicola Woodford – a not so healthy health food blogger slash spinning instructor living in East London. Her dream is for Nutritiously Nicola! to become a global brand… but there's a lot standing in her way.

The series follows Nicola as she tries to spiralise her way to success and keep her grip on reality, which is difficult when her reality consists of Instagram, dealing with her eating disorder and trying to keep up in her too-cool East London neighbourhood.

What’s different about Nutritiously Nicola!

Many on-screen portrayals of the eating disorders focus on the dramatic angle of a character being in the grip of an eating disorder; sad portrayals of thin, white, teenage girls with anorexia, wearing baggy clothes and staring tearfully into mirrors. An oddly beautiful and tragic universal image.

Nutritiously Nicola! tells a different story. Nicola has been discharged from eating disorder services and is struggling to create a healthy relationship with food. Her eating disorder is not tragic or beautiful. It’s ugly, messy, manipulative, secretive, rude and, sometimes, funny. It smashes the stereotypes and sheds an honest light on
an issue which all too often delicately handled.

“Eating disorders aren’t generally known for their high LOL-factor.” Bray admits, “But this idea that they should be dealt with in hushed tones, delicacy and secrecy is exactly the behaviour eating disorders feed on.”

Nutritiously Nicola! raises questions about the confusing and often contradictory search for health, happiness and normality in the age of Instagram, avocados and food porn.

About Double Yay Productions

Nutritiously Nicola! was first conceived as a London stage show in 2015 by writer/creator/producer/lead actress Natalie Bray. Bray developed the concept into a full-length pilot in 2016 and producers Caroline Amer and Rebecca Tanwen Morgan came on board to produce the taster trailers. They officially created Double Yay Productions in January 2017 to write, develop and produce female-led scripted comedy for online platforms and TV.

When pitching Nutritiously Nicola!, they had an option offer from a leading UK production company. Instead of signing on the dotted line and committing to rewrites that would dilute the edginess of the darkly humorous look at the grim reality of eating disorders, Double Yay boldly turned down the offer to produce it themselves as
a web series.