The female superstars of the ’00s are back and on their own terms. Over the past few years, some of that decade’s biggest icons, from Britney Spears to Jessica Simpson to Paris Hilton, have returned to the spotlight to reclaim the harmful narratives that previously dominated their stardom and reveal some dark truths about what was really going on back then (Britney opening up about the conservatorship, Paris revealing everything from her actual voice to the abuse she suffered at boarding school). And with these bombshells comes a not always flattering reminder of how we, as consumers, treated these women back in the day.
“So many of the starlets of that time have really struggled in the years since, and as a society, we’re starting to recognize that, where we’re like, ‘Oh, wow, can you believe what was really going on behind the scenes? How awful the media was to all these other people,’” says author Laura Hankin, speaking to Shondaland over Zoom from her home in Washington, D.C.
“But the media wouldn’t have so relentlessly written these stories if there wasn’t an audience for them,” she continues. “So, I was interested in writing a book about: If we acknowledge that we were wrong, and there was more going on behind the scenes, how do these women forgive us? How do we forgive ourselves? How do we all move forward?”
That book turned into her third novel, The Daydreams, out now, an introspective, nostalgia-heavy, and engrossing read that takes on the ups and downs of 2000s fame. Following the four teen stars of a hugely popular musical television show, something like The O.C. meets High School Musical, the book dives into both their rising superstardom at the time and their lives 13 years later when they reunite for a hotly anticipated TV special. Full of pop culture drama and tabloid scandals, The Daydreams is seriously entertaining, but beneath the glitz and glam of Hollywood success, there’s a deeply affecting tale about the pressure put on famous young women and its often-damaging consequences.
That contrast, Hankin says, was no accident. “I really wanted to lure people in with the fun, campy early-2000s shine of it all but have a book that sort of can be read two ways,” she explains. “You can read it quickly on the beach, and devour it like it’s popcorn, but also it can really, hopefully, stick with you and make you think about these deeper issues that we’re still dealing with today.”
In The Daydreams, the perils of young fame have had vastly different impacts on each of the show’s leads. Kat, our narrator, has left Hollywood completely, determined to start fresh even as she’s wracked with guilt over a teenage decision. Liana, the reliable “best friend” of the series, has reluctantly let her sizable talents take a back seat to influencer life. Noah, the group’s heartthrob, is now a bona-fide star on the verge of even bigger success. And then there’s Summer, the former golden girl whose various missteps, including a major scandal that rocked the show’s live season-two finale, have derailed a once-promising career and left her with few allies.
While Kat is our lead, it’s Summer whose heartbreaking story arc, one that we’re all familiar with — of a beloved “It” girl turned tabloid-favorite pariah — forms the emotional crux of the novel. To Hankin, the character represents all the real young women of the era whose careers experienced similar downfalls, often through no real fault of their own — and who were forced to contend with unfairly sky-high expectations about who, and what, they were supposed to be.
“We had this very bizarre obsession with wanting young women to be both sexy and virgins,” says Hankin. “That was the gauntlet they had to go through, and some of them survived it, but some of them were not able to make that transition.”
And when these women failed to live up to our images of them, as Summer did to her Daydreams fans and the press, we slammed them for letting us down. “It was like, ‘You signed up for this,’” Hankin says. “But they were teenagers! I am so glad that none of the stupid decisions I made as a teenager led to me becoming worldwide famous and then getting judged for the rest of my life.”
The author, 34, experimented with fame herself for a time, moving to New York after college in an attempt to “be a little Broadway star,” she recalls with a laugh. A “huge theater nerd” throughout her life, she had goals of making it big on the stage and spent much of her 20s balancing musical comedy performances and auditions (from which she drew inspiration for The Daydreams) with various day jobs. It wasn’t until well into the grind that Hankin thought about pursuing writing instead, but as soon as the idea came into her mind, she knew it was right.
“I loved stories and telling stories in a theatrical way, but I thought, ‘What about [doing it] in a different way, which I could actually have some more control over?’” she recalls. Before long, she’d published two books, Happy & You Know It (2020) and A Special Place for Women (2021). Met with significant acclaim, they’re juicy and addictive takes on the lives of elite New York City women. With her first two books, Hankin says, she concerned herself largely with featuring antiheroines with often-questionable morals and actions — “women behaving badly,” as she calls it — in the name of bucking female stereotypes. But with The Daydreams, she went a different route, writing full, complicated women who are as kind and thoughtful as they are flawed and misguided. “I think with every book that I write, I’m subsequently a little kinder to my characters and less focused on bad women, because that’s feminism,” Hankin says.
Take the friendships between Kat, Liana, and Summer. They were once an inseparable trio who bonded over the craziness of sudden fame, but the media’s differing perceptions of each of them (Kat as the mean girl, Liana as the sidekick, and Summer as the innocent starlet) combined with their own insecurities lead them to form rivalries and grow apart. When they reunite, tensions are higher than ever, and past secrets threaten to come to the forefront.
“I’ve always been fascinated by female friendships as much as romantic relationships because I think that they often can be just as complex, and those breakups can devastate you,” says Hankin. “And a lot of the time when we see female friendships portrayed, they’re either really toxic and dangerous or just super-supportive: ‘I’m there for you no matter what.’ I wanted to explore something that had elements of both.”
She adds, “And having the entire country focusing on you really amps up all that tension. I don’t know what I would’ve done if my best friend and I had gotten famous, and everyone was like, ‘Oh, that best friend is so much hotter than Laura.’ Like, ‘Maybe if you put a bag over Laura’s head, you can pretend that you’re having sex with the other one.’ Of course it’s gonna make your friendship really difficult to maintain.”
While none of The Daydreams’ characters is based specifically on real people, readers can make their own comparisons — and Hankin already has “lists and lists” of actors she’d love to see take on the roles in a potential TV adaptation of the book, which she reveals is currently being discussed. “It’s been very fun to think about how this would be different for TV, as it’d provide a little more space to delve into all the characters’ struggles as well as the music,” she says.
If a Daydreams series does happen, it’ll join A Special Place for Women, which has been in development for a Paramount series (produced by Samantha Bee) since 2021. While she keeps her fingers crossed for updates, Hankin is hard at work on her next novel, a romance that’s “loosely inspired by the time I had to walk down the aisle at my friend’s wedding with a guy who had given my book one star on Goodreads,” she reveals with a laugh.
And of course, she’s also busy keeping tabs on all those early-’00s stars and their ongoing comebacks. “Every day, I’m like, which person is gonna publish their tell-all next? Who are we gonna have to go back and be like, ‘Wait a minute. I had no idea?’” So, as we all wait with bated breath, wondering who’s next, Hankin’s novel is a reminder that maligning anyone (especially young starlets) will never age well.
Rachel Simon is a writer with work in The New York Times, Glamour, NBC News, Marie Claire, and many other outlets. Follow her on Twitter @rachel_simon.
Get Shondaland directly in your inbox: SUBSCRIBE TODAY
