[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Geek Girl Season 1.]
Geek Girl, based on Holly Smale’s novel of the same name, finds Harriet Manners (Emily Carey) balancing two vastly different worlds. One day, she’s just a teenager in a small town, and the next she’s thrust into the world of high fashion modeling after being discovered on a school trip. Throughout the first season of the Netflix series, Harriet tries to navigate her new life while not forgetting her old one.
Toby (Zac Looker) has been a friend of Harriet’s for as long as they can remember. He’s always been a constant in her life. When Harriet is feeling lost and unsure of her future, she turns to her longtime neighbor. In a monumental scene from Episode 9, Harriet asks Toby if he’s ever felt “out of place,” like a “polar bear in a rainforest.” Harriet admits she feels “alone” in the world, but Toby stresses to her that she’s not. Taking her mention polar bears and creating the perfect metaphor, Toby explains to Harriet that it’s okay to be her true self, no matter what anyone else says.
“It’s quite similar to the scene in the book, and we went through a couple of iterations of it,” Looker told TV Insider about that heartfelt scene between Toby and Harriet. “The version that we did was pretty much what me and Emily just kind of changed around and wrote on the day that just felt right in the moment. We tried to stay close to the essence of the scene in the book, and I feel like that scene is really where Harriet sees Toby properly for the first time.”
Looker acknowledged that Toby’s always been “in the background” of Harriet’s life until now. “He’s lived just across the street from her forever, so he’s just kind of blended in some into something that’s always there,” Looker said. “I think that’s the moment where she probably sees him and all of the slight strangeness and all of the eccentricities, that’s where they all kind of coalesce into a person, a person who cares about her a lot. In seeing him through that lens, she sees herself in a way.”
For Toby, Looker explained that his character has “almost taken for granted” that Harriet would be a “certain touchstone” for him as they get older. When she’s introduced to a world outside of their small English town, Harriet begins to evolve into a new version of herself. “I think another reaction that he has to this whole whirlwind is the fact that she isn’t always just going to be there, and she’s going to grow and she’s going to change and she’s going to become this kind of other separate person away from this kind of street that they share,” the actor said. “He wants her to stay herself, but I think he is also coming to realize what her being herself means to him and what the ramifications of that might be.”
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Early on in the season, Harriet meets the dashing Nick (Liam Woodrum) at London Fashion Week. Their instant connection leads to a sweet romance. So how does Toby feel about Harriet’s fledgling love story with a supermodel? “I certainly don’t think he bears Nick any ill will, whatsoever. But what the relationship between the two of them means for him I think is still to be determined,” Looker told TV Insider.
Could a love triangle be brewing in a potential Season 2? When asked whether or not Toby has feelings for Harriet beyond platonic, Looker cryptically said, “We shall see.”
Geek Girl, Season 1 Streaming Now, Netflix
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