Why Alexis Rose is your favorite character from Schitt's Creek
Q: My Butter Sponsor for my FMC is Alexis Rose from Schitt's Creek. Spoiled rotten, but likable. I want my character to start off similarly spoiled rotten, but not be unlikable. Help!
Q: My Butter Sponsor for my FMC is Alexis Rose from Schitt's Creek. Spoiled rotten, but likable. I want my character to start off similarly spoiled rotten, but not be unlikable. Help!
I loved this question from my Universal Fantasy Course as Alexis Rose became my favorite character from Schitt’s Creek, and I now happily follow Annie Murphy, the brilliant actress who portrayed her, anywhere from Season 2 of Russian Doll to “Joan is Awful,” the episode I liked most in Black Mirror’s sixth season.
Q: My Butter Sponsor* for my FMC is Alexis Rose from Schitt's Creek. Spoiled rotten, but likable. But I am worried that I am creating an unlikable character. How would you list Alexis Rose's ACRS* points? What is her butter? I want my character to start off similarly spoiled rotten, but not be unlikable.
Alexis Rose is a great example of a FIXER-UPPER character.
This character point is often forgotten, but it is important to remember that in our Patron Saint Fixer-Upper Tale, Beauty and the Beast, The Beast is The Beast because he was a spoiled-rotten prince and got himself cursed because of it.
So when you write a spoiled-rotten princess—especially one in a season of comeuppance—you're basically gender-swapping.
It doesn’t matter if your fixer-upper princess is wealthy and gorgeous. You're saying this character is "ugly and contemptible" now, but she can be fixed up under the right circumstances. Keep turning pages for the big after-photo REVEAL!
In the case of Alexis Rose, we're not watching this character because she's likable. We're watching her with the sense that she has the potential to become a much better person than she is now. We’re anticipating her huge internal makeover.
If you, like me, started out liking every character in the show way more than the spoiled-rotten Alexis Rose but ended the show liking her character best of all—or, at least, a super-strong third behind David and the incomparable Moira—that's because she had the strongest and clearest Fixer-Upper before and after.
More than anyone else on Schitt's Creek, she ends the show a way better person than she was before. Her character is basically the winner of Schitt's Creek (Interior-Self) Design Star.
You can read even more about Fixer-Uppers in the UNIVERSAL FANTASY™ LIST: Romance.
But if you’re concerned about anchoring your story around a Spoiled Princess Fixer-Upper, here are a few ideas for giving this kind of MC at least one ACRS point from the start….