Netflix’s ‘Uglies’: What The Film And Its Characters Represent, According To Keith Powers, Laverne Cox And More

A long-awaited film adaptation of a beloved YA dystopian novel is finally arrived, and it’s now on Netflix .

Thanks to Scott Westerfeld, one doesn’t have to imagine a world where everyone is perfect; it simply exists. The dystopian world created when Westerfeld’s Uglies book was written nearly 20 years ago still reads as if it’s taking place today, and in some ways, it is. Moreover, living in a world where everyone is striving for perfection is what attracted actor Laverne Cox to her role in the Netflix adaptation of the story.

Why do the characters in Uglies have surgery?

“It was the whole world that was created,” Cox told Blavity’s Shadow and Act when asked what drew her to the project. “I’ve wanted to do a sort of sci-fi, futuristic something for a really long time; I’ve been manifesting it. And so when this came along, I was really excited. The whole idea of this world in the future where everyone has this surgery at 16 to become pretty, and the uglies are people who just look normal.”

She continued, “I just thought that there was something very prescient about the moment that we live in right now with filters, with Instagram, and how much we, so many of us, are more excited about seeing our filtered version — the filtered version of ourselves … than we are the real version. And it just felt really timely, even though Scott Westerfeld wrote these books 19 years ago, and I’ve always wanted to play a character like Dr. Cable. She is, I mean, some people might call her the villain, and there is something villainous about her, but I think she’s way more complicated than that. And so this character is a dream. The world is a dream.”

Keith Powers’ character is an archenemy of Dr. Cable

On the contrary, Dr. Cable’s archenemies, David (Keith Powers), is fighting against the world of the pretties by encouraging people to tap into The Smoke. In this land, certain characters flee to avoid receiving the pretty surgery. He is the definition of resistance.

“What The Smoke simply represents is, you know, stripping all that away and just getting back to the basics of just being a human, honestly, in the most simple way to put it. I think that David is a representation of that … of what The Smoke means in that world, in that dystopian world, our dystopian world of the Uglies film, but I think it’s still so relevant today,” Powers told us.

“I know we shot this in a modern time, but this book, Scott Westerfeld’s book, came out back in ’05, and for it to be still so relevant now — and especially now, I think this is like prime time with social media,” he continued. “It’s just amazing to see. … That’s one thing about this film that I really love, is that the message is so timeless. And I think David, what he represents, is timeless.”

What the Uglies author says about the adaptation

For Westerfeld, who wrote the book and served as an executive producer for the Netflix film adaption, choosing 16 as the age the characters undergo surgery was to showcase how vital one’s appearance is to them during the coming-of-age years.

“When you’re a little kid, everyone just thinks you’re cute, and you’re fine, and you know, you don’t really think about the way you look very much. And when you’re an adult, you sort of get over yourself eventually, and there’s not much at stake in being beautiful. But there is that key moment when you’re in your teen years when a bad haircut is just the worst possible thing that could happen,” he said. “Like, even a bad hair day is the worst thing that could happen. And I think there’s also something about teenagers in rebellion that’s interesting. When you’re a little kid, you know, you can cause havoc and you don’t really scare anybody. And when you’re an adult, you know how to act and know how to not get in trouble. But when you’re a teenager, people get really nervous about you. … I think people are just inherently scared of teenagers, so that push between teenagers needing to be controlled and teenagers worrying about their looks was kind of what I was winding together when I wrote Uglies .”

Chase Stokes’ character’s name is a reference to pre-surgery

Chase Stokes, who plays Peris (also known as “Nose,” a reference to his pre-surgery looks), said he hopes a film like Uglies encourages humanity to shift its perception away from the high standards of appearance that are placed on people, especially teens, as a result of social media.

“We have just become obsessed with this idea of physical beauty, and that’s just not it,” Stokes told said to us. “It’s got to be internal. And I think, hopefully Peris’ journey is a little bit of the insight of no matter how far you push the narrative with the physical elements of beauty — and granted, I’m the first person to be for if you don’t feel comfortable with yourself, do whatever you want to do and love yourself externally — but, you know, it all has to come from internal.”

He continued, “It all has to be from your heart, from your soul. And so hopefully it sort of implores the youth to go out, and to get to know themselves better, and not think that, you know, by scrolling through and double-tapping a bunch of photos, that that’s gonna change their perspective or outlook on life.”

Uglies , also starring Joey King Brianne Tju, is now streaming on Netflix.