Kathleen Robertson says ‘Swimming with Sharks’ has plenty of precedent

The toxic behavior that’s chronicled in “Swimming with Sharks,” a new Roku series, isn’t as far-fetched as viewers might think.

In the industry since she was 10, writer/director Kathleen Robertson says there were plenty of occasions when studio heads and other authority figures overstepped their bounds. “My exposure to this side of the business was always seeing it play out in real time,” she says. “Actors are totally protected and treated like glass Royal Doulton figurines. But my husband (Chris Cowles), who’s also the producer of this, was an executive for many, many years. When we met, he was working for Scott Rudin.”

Rudin, who was accused of abusive behavior by numerous employees in a Hollywood Reporter story, later apologized and announced he was stepping back from film, streaming and theater productions, including the current Broadway revival of “The Music Man.”

In the series, Diane Kruger plays the abusive head of Fountain Pictures, a woman who has no remorse when dealing with underlings. “Mad Men’s” Kiernan Shipka plays an intern, eager to learn by watching. Based on a 1994 film starring Kevin Spacey, the new adaptation does more than flip genders. It attempts to show how Kruger’s character was treated and how she became just as bad as the men who were once in charge of her fate.

“Proximity to greatness can be intoxicating,” a character says early on. “And that says it all,” Robertson explains. “There are thousands of kids who arrive in Hollywood every day that are just dying for proximity – whether it’s as an actor or writer, an assistant, an intern. Hollywood is the place where everybody still goes to reinvent themselves. You hear about people who start out, dirt bottom, entry level and rise to become a superstar.” Outsiders believe it can happen to them, too.

Robertson, who was a regular on “Beverly Hills 90210,” says she was someone who believed the Hollywood dream could come true. Born in Canada, she moved to the United States after starring in the sitcom “Maniac Mansion,” and started getting work in film and television. In the 2010s, she started to write scripts and went through a Writers Guild training program to help her guide films and series.

In 2016, she started adapting “Swimming with Sharks.”

“I’ve been in the industry since I was 10 and this has always been my world,” Robertson says. “It really felt natural for me to explore it and blow it open a little bit. A lot of these stories are really personal for me.”

Just as it was ready to begin filming, “we had a global pandemic” and Quibi, the show’s original home, folded. “I just really believed in the story and the two women at its core,” Robertson says. “So, never say die.”

Today, she says, the business has changed – “especially for women.”

“The stuff I saw when I first moved to Los Angeles, I don’t think could happen anymore. People know that. Donald Sutherland’s character in the piece really sort of represents the old guard and, hopefully, the dissolution of that part of the industry. It just doesn’t feel like you can really get away with that stuff anymore.”

A season two? “I definitely would love to do multiple seasons of this,” Robertson says.

“Swimming with Sharks” airs on the Roku Channel beginning April 15.