‘Under the Bridge’ Tells the Story of Reena Virk, The Notorious B.I.G.

Within the first episode of Hulu’s Beneath the Bridge, Reena Virk is attempting to slot in with a brand new group of buddies. Her method of bonding? Enjoying The Infamous B.I.G.’s 1997 opus Life After Demise.

That album — his second — was launched 16 days after the rap icon was gunned all the way down to demise. Virk, performed by Vritika Gupta, jumps on the mattress as she and different teenage women rap the lyrics to “Kick in the Door.” Within the second episode of the scripted sequence following the homicide of the 14-year-old Indian-Canadian teen, the lyrical mastermind exhibits up once more when Virk is invited to a vigil her classmates maintain in honor of the longer term Rock and Roll Corridor of Famer. The kids stay within the suburban municipality positioned on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

The eight episodes of Beneath the Bridge not solely inform the story of Virk, but in addition weave in The Infamous B.I.G. and hip-hop’s dominant affect on popular culture.

“You may’t speak about being a youngster within the ‘90s without it being synonymous with [hip-hop] music, and you see throughout the show that this is a symbol of what Reena was interested in,” showrunner and executive producer Samir Mehta tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We have that scene where she’s taking part in music and the dad and mom are asking [her] to show it off — it was a continuing supply of battle, not particularly the music, however what it represents: the truth that she wished to develop her sense of self and at instances that got here into battle with what her dad and mom wished for her.”

The late Rebecca Godfrey wrote about Virk’s love for Biggie Smalls in her ebook, which the sequence is predicated on, and producers say they wished to spotlight that reality within the present since little was identified about Virk, who was bullied and killed by a bunch of youngsters. 

“One of the things that we did know is that her uncle bought her this CD, Life After Death, the day that she was killed, and that she was a huge fan of Biggie and that her friends were as well, so we had talked about really leaning into that as a theme in the show,” says government producer Quinn Shepard, who tailored the sequence for tv. She additionally wrote and directed two episodes.

“When we decided to start the flashback timeline with Reena on her birthday, it felt so kismet that it happened to be that her birthday was one day after Biggie’s murder,” she provides. “We were like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to really bake this into the show.’”

All through Beneath the Bridge — which stars Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough — a number of hip-hop anthems are featured within the episodes, together with Lil Kim’s “Queen Bitch,” Warren G and Nate Dogg’s “Regulate,” Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones, Pt. II,” Cunning Brown’s “The Chase,” Cypress Hill’s “I Wanna Get High,” C-Funk’s “Whoop Whoop Yeah Yeah,” Ultramagnetic MCs’ “Watch Your Back,” PHD’s “Kick That Shit and Get High,” Da Brat’s “Make It Happen,” LSD’s “Rowdy at the Party,” Spice 1’s “187 He Wrote” and Younger Black Youngsters’ “Sweatin’ Me.”

The Infamous B.I.G’s “Kick in the Door” is featured 4 instances, and the sequence additionally consists of the rapper’s “Going Back to Cali.” Born Christopher Wallace, and often known as Biggie Smalls, the performer launched his multiplatinum debut, Able to Die, in 1994. His hits have grow to be rap classics, together with “Juicy,” “Big Poppa,” “Stay With Me,” “Hypnotize” and “Mo Money Mo Problems,” and he’s embedded as one of the essential figures in rap and pop music. And his legacy continues to stay on: Eventually yr’s Emmy Awards, a VR live performance bringing the rapper to life earned a nomination for excellent rising media program.

To actually spotlight his affect on the sequence, Beneath the Bridge producers shut the hole in one of many closing scenes: As Virk’s dad and mom sit on their daughter’s mattress, they take a look at her CD participant and hit play. They pay attention intently — her mom taking in Biggie’s lyrics and her father dancing to the beat. 

The imaginative and prescient of Virk was within the ebook, however Mehta — who wrote the ultimate episode — says they added the Biggie component “to complete the arc of the Virk parents.”

“That moment was really supposed to be crossing that generational gap where the parents sat down and for the first time, sadly after she passed, decided, ‘Let me try to consider what her interests were and let me be a little more open-minded toward the thing that I rejected a few months ago,’” he explains.

“We all were crying because it’s the saddest scene,” provides Shephard, who was on set with Mehta when the scene was filmed. “For me, that’s the scene that makes me the most emotional from the whole show.”

Mehta — whose different credit embrace Concern the Strolling Useless, The Sinner, Joe Pickett and Inform Me Lies — labored on the 2018 USA Community miniseries Unsolved, based mostly on the murders of The Infamous B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, who died six months earlier than his rap rival. Mehta says there’s “a bit of an echo in that story” and Virk’s. 

“A lot of people don’t even think about it this way, but Biggie and Tupac were in their early 20s when they were killed. They were just kids, and a lot of what led to their deaths was actually their friendship severing. It was actually a falling out between friends playing out on a national stage because they were famous, but in many ways, it was a somewhat adolescent story of two kids who were once friends who basically got in a fight, and it escalated to them both being killed.”

All episodes of Beneath the Bridge at the moment are on Hulu.