The series, created by My Old Ass’s Megan Park, is somehow a disordered cross between Outer Banks, Yellowjackets, and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Un
The series, created by My Old Ass’s Megan Park, is somehow a disordered cross between Outer Banks, Yellowjackets, and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. It wastes no time introducing mysterious islands, secret inheritances, long-lost siblings, and family conspiracies. And that’s just the first episode.
“That’s kind of the magic of Megan’s work,” says Ella Rubin, the Anora actress who plays Annie Jacobson, the show’s main character. “How do I put this? In real life, things are as funny as they are terrible. And I think Megan is able to transmute that onto the screen in a real, fun, poignant way.”
“She’s my neurosis reflected back at me”
Sterling Point’s pilot opens on tightly wound, type-A Annie, who’s spending the months before senior year anxiously waiting to see if she’s getting into Wharton Business School’s summer program (not a summer camp, she insists). Everything she does is meticulously planned and calculated, from her voice-activated white noise machine to her 10-step skin care routine. Her twin brother, Connor (Keen Ruffalo), by contrast, spends his morning teasing Annie and drinking chocolate milk straight from the carton.
Her summer dreams are dashed when she’s rejected from Wharton’s course. Moments later, another bombshell drops: Annie and Connor learn that their enigmatic, estranged grandfather has died, and he’s left them both a cryptic letter and an entire island in Canada. So Annie does what any high-strung teenager would: She sneaks away to investigate the mystery herself.
“I have never felt so free and so connected to a character,” says Rubin, who appeared previously in Fear Street: Prom Queen, The Idea of You, and the Oscar-winning Anora. “She and I are so different, but she’s actually sort of identical to a piece of myself. At a certain time in my life, I could have really used watching her to see my neurosis reflected back at me in a loving way.”
Rubin has an effortless, humble air, the perfect recipe for a budding Gen Z star. Born in Manhattan to a talent manager mother—and with a prominent casting director as an aunt—Rubin began performing at a teenage age. She studied theater at the Upper West Side’s Professional Children’s School and made her film debut at just 13 in the 2014 Hugh Grant rom-com The Rewrite. Since then, she’s appeared in Broadway shows, Hollywood blockbusters, and television series—but Sterling Point will be her first time as a leading lady of a series.
