Diksha Sundriyal
Apple TV+’s ‘Physical’ stars Rose Byrne as Sheila Rubin, a housewife who is disenchanted and frustrated with her life and wants to do something different. She also has an eating disorder and a malicious voice in her head that always makes her feel worse than the situation really is. In between this, Sheila finds aerobics, and it changes her life. Not only does exercise make her feel good about herself, but she also builds a business out of it.
By the third season, Sheila has found considerable success, but she also has to face competition from other more well-known people. The most challenging competition comes from Kelly Kilmartin, a former TV actress who appeared on a show called ‘Trish Out of Water.’ SPOILERS AHEAD
Trish Out of Water is an Imaginary Show
‘Physical’ is a fictional TV show created by Annie Weisman. All characters in the show are born of Weisman’s imagination, including Sheila and Kelly. The TV show, ‘Trish Out of Water,’ is also imaginary and was created to fit the narrative of Shiela’s story. The importance of the show is that it creates a lens for Sheila through which she sees Kelly Kilmartin in her head.
Kelly is an actress, and while she and Sheila are in the same line of work now, they have never really crossed paths, which means Sheila doesn’t really know what Kelly sounds like or how she actually is. Sheila only knows her from ‘Trish Out of Water,’ so when she thinks about Kelly, the actress appears as Trish, the character she played on TV. Sheila’s inner voice takes Kelly’s form, who Sheila believes is better than her in every aspect.
Kelly is younger, blonder, more famous, and successful and has already beat Sheila in her game. So, the voice that makes Sheila feel worse about herself takes Kelly’s form, but it’s more Trish than Kelly’s because that’s the only version Sheila is familiar with. Explaining the importance of the difference between Kelly and Trish and how it plays into the narrative, actress Zooey Deschanel said: “She’s in Sheila’s head, and the ‘imaginary Kelly’ is a character the real Kelly plays on ‘Trish Out of Water. [Kelly] is a Southern Belle who is forced to be a lifeguard on ‘Trish Out of Water,’ so that’s the character that’s haunting Sheila … to make her uncomfortable, to feel badly and sometimes to feel good,” she said.
Deschanel further elaborated on the difference between Trish and Kelly and how she brought subtle changes to her performance to showcase that difference. “The ‘real’ Kelly is kind of the embodiment of 1980s femininity. She’s very calculated, and there’s a lot of artifice that goes into making her. She does all of this [the sitcom] because she thinks she has to do this to survive,” the ‘New Girl‘ star added. The TV show is just a perception of Kelly to her audience, and it was to underline this difference that ‘Trish Out of Water’ was added into the story.
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