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Bafta-award-winning Nicôle Lecky likes to ‘go to the source’ whenever she’s working on a project, and Wild Cherry was no exception.
A coming-of-age drama set in an exclusive neighbourhood in the fictional town of Richford Lake – the series follows a group of young girls at a local private school on the precipice of womanhood.
As the show’s creator, Lecky explores the boundaries of the ever-complex mother-daughter relationship – how much freedom is too much? – and delves into the world of money, privilege and explicit content. Lecky told Metro: ‘That experience is very different to my own.’
It’s not a world she grew up knowing. The actor and writer was raised in Stratford, East London – her Dad was an electrician and her mother a mental health nurse.
So to do her research, she spoke with teenagers who went to private school, some of whom boarded, and Lecky said it was ‘eye-opening’.
The 35-year-old told us how those chats made it into the show: ‘There’s a scene where they drink morphine – that came from one of the teenagers I spoke to… there was an incident.’
Nicôle Lecky wrote, created, produced and stars in Wild Cherry (Picture: BBC/Firebird Pictures/Natalie Seery)
(Picture: BBC Studios/Lesley Edith)
Lecky told Metro that ‘lots of things happened at [her] school’ but she doesn’t remember anything quite like that.
‘I always like to go to the source when I’m writing something.
‘It’s really important to me to connect with the people that I’m writing about’, she said.
It wasn’t just Lecky’s socio-economic status that was different when she was a teenager. She reminisces: ‘I could play Snake on my phone, but that was pretty much about it.’
‘I’m sure if I was 16 and had access to social media, I would have found that tough,’ Lecky told us.
Even more worrying than the pressures of Instagram and TikTok, however, might be ghost apps. In Wild Cherry, Lecky shows how these apps, which can disguise themselves as regular recognisable apps we all have on our phones, could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
Lecky’s character narrates the show in her American accent (Picture: BBC/Firebird Pictures/Natalie Seery)
The girls in Wild Cherry get access, and things take a worrying turn as they share content that becomes increasingly explicit.
As their mothers are informed, we learn that they have some secrets of their own, too.
Lecky plays a wannabe MOD (mother-of-daughter) who is on the periphery of the group of mums as a late-comer to the party. She’s an American life coach who is the new partner of a widowed Dad in the neighbourhood.
The mums are in a group chat called MODs (mothers-of-daughters) (Picture: BBC/Firebird Pictures/Natalie Seery)
But with access to one of the children via her therapy sessions, she becomes armed with private information about the women and their personal lives.
Lecky has been acting for a long time. She was signed by an acting agent when she was 18; however, it would take more than 12 years for her first production to make it to our screens.
In 2022, Mood was released on the BBC. A drama about the world of influencing and paid-for content.
Mood was a Bafta-winning show (Picture: BBC/Bonafide)
Much of Lecky’s work explores the effect of the online world on young women (Picture: BBC/Bonafide)
Metro asked Lecky what she was up to in between getting signed and the release of Mood.
As well as going to drama school, she told us she worked a lot of jobs – but admits she couldn’t really hold them down: ‘I seemed to be quite good at getting a job. I was not good at keeping a job.’
She told us: ‘Pretty much every venue in London we film in, I’ve worked there, because I was an agency hostess. So I was always at all these events, for two days at a time.
‘Particularly on Mood, it was quite a running joke that every single location, I had worked.’
Now she’s found success and has starred in Sky’s dark comedy series, Sweetpea, and most recently featured in the film Jay Kelly, which starred George Clooney and Adam Sandler.
Lecky says her years of hosting gave her an insight into the private lives of different people (Picture: Jo Hale/Getty Images)
‘What’s next?’, Metro asks Lecky.
‘I love film, so maybe some more film acting and writing.
‘I just want to continue telling stories that I’m really passionate about, but also challenging myself.
‘I learned so much doing this show, and I just want to take it to the next one.’
Wild Cherry premieres on BBC One at 9pm on Saturday 15th November.
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