Selfie is an American romantic comedy series starring Karen Gillan and John Cho. The program, which was created and executive produced by Emily Kapnek for Warner Bros. Television, debuted on ABC during the 2014–15 television season. The series premiered on September 30, 2014. The pilot was made available early through video on demand and online streaming media on August 20, 2014. The show was canceled by ABC on November 7, 2014. On November 13, after broadcasting the seventh episode, ABC announced that they would pull the remaining episodes of Selfie and replace them with encore episodes of Shark Tank and Thanksgiving/Christmas specials. On November 25, 2014, the first of the remaining six episodes was released online on Hulu, WatchABC.com, and other video on demand platforms. The rest followed on a weekly basis, with the last episode airing on December 30, 2014.
Premise
The series follows the life of Eliza Dooley, a junior executive at KinderKare Pharmaceuticals. She is obsessed with the idea of achieving fame through the use of social media platforms, including Instagram, where she regularly posts selfies. She begins to worry that "friending" people online is not a substitute for real friendship, and she seeks help from co-worker Henry Higgs, a marketing image guru. The character names are a reference to Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, the main characters of the 1912 George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, further popularized by the 1956 musical My Fair Lady. In the play and musical, Henry is tasked with improving Eliza's social status, and ends up falling in love with his own creation. The Shaw play is in turn inspired by the story of Pygmalion in Greek mythology, who was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had created. The series featured modern day music and modern day social problems.
Allison Miller as Julia Howser, a pediatric urologist that Henry dated
Samm Levine as Terrance, a KinderKare office floater who marries Sam's daughter Maureen in the pilot episode, becoming the son-in-law of Sam and Yazmin Saperstein
Brian Huskey as Larry, fellow KinderKare Pharmaceuticals employee who works in the testing lab
Sapir Azulay as Thistle, Bryn's friend and member of the book club
Keith L. Williams as Kevin, Charmonique's son
Tim Peper as Ethan, Henry's friend at KinderKare. Ethan appeared in the pilot episode, and was in promotional images with the main cast, but left the show after that
The series premiered in Australia on streaming platformStan in 2015. The series began on TV2 in New Zealand on August 30, 2015. It will be available on Netflix in New Zealand from 29 March 2018.
Despite reasonable potential for the series, Selfie had problems attracting an audience. Ratings slipped after the first episode to an undesirable 0.9, and remained stagnant through the season. As a result of this, ABC announced that Selfie would be cancelled on November 7, 2014. On November 19, Kapnek tweeted that all remaining episodes of the series would be released online on Hulu, Hulu Plus, and ABC.com, with official confirmation coming a few days later.
