‘Grease’ returns — with a different sensibility than the ’70s hit

That’s where “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” comes in. Showing Rydell High four years earlier, the new Paramount+ series digs into the backgrounds of earlier Pink Ladies.

Executive Producer Annabel Oakes looked at the inspiration for the iconic film and discovered the actual Pink Ladies were “these tough girls who had to stick together because they weren’t like all the other girls.”

To expand the idea, she talked to her mother and her mother’s friends about the era. “I started to get these amazing, beautiful, interesting, unexpected stories from people of all different walks of life,” Oakes says. “I talked to popular girls. I talked to a woman who later became a radical lesbian feminist. And, when I got a writers’ room, we all started talking to everybody’s grandmas and aunties…and got excited about returning to the world of ‘Grease.’”

Characters, as a result, have the ability to confront a number of social issues in the new iteration.

“Grease,” the original musical and movie, tried to undermine the nostalgia of the 1950s, Oakes says. Those versions painted the era as squeaky clean “and everybody was having a great time. There were people dropping out of high school. There were people having sex in the backs of cars. There was real life going on. We just get to expand the lens.”

Marisa Davila, who plays Jane, says the characters go through situations that aren’t unfamiliar to girls in the 2020s. “Women, for the longest time, have been forced to not take up space and not speak their mind,” she says. “When they do, it always kind of falls back on them in the worst ways. All of our characters go through the classic hype and rumors. It’s not different because it’s the ‘50s. It’s the exact same environment, unfortunately.”

Misogyny and racism, says Tricia Fukuhara, were prevalent in the 1950s but they were dealt with differently. Her character, Nancy, is just out of an internment camp and has to figure out how to navigate high school. “Do you assimilate like everyone else or do you take the Nancy route and do the opposite to try to stand out?”

Adds Oakes: “Queer people were here. Asian people were here in the ‘50s. So let’s show what they went through. Let’s show their joy.”

To connect to “Grease,” the series has plenty of music and production numbers.

To pull it off, the actors rehearsed songs, learned dance moves and shot scenes throughout the course of a day, often out of sequence. “It was a big challenge to learn things so quickly and do things on the fly,” says Ari Notartomaso, who plays Cynthia. “It took a really huge amount of collaboration to get all those things done in the way that we did.”

One of the cameramen even danced with the actors, Davila says. “So you’re choreographing with the camera. It was a team effort.”

Veteran songwriter Justin Tranter penned songs that fit the narrative, “so it’s still based in truth.” To make a musical connection, he used the title tune from the film, then gave it a spin. “It’s 2023 looking back at the ‘70s and the ‘50s,” he says.

Because it’s set four years before “Grease,” there’s also the possibility Danny and Sandy could turn up as characters in subsequent seasons. A promise? “You just have to tune in to find out,” Oakes teases.

“Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” airs on Paramount+.