Feel the BYRNE

‘Physical’ exec-producer on what went into creating ’80s fitness guru Sheila Rubin

ROSE Byrne’s inner monologue in “Physical” (Apple TV+) elevates this black comedy from a standard antihero saga into a devastatingly personal reflection on inner toxicity and disordered eating.

Set in San Diego in the 1980s, “Physical” follows lost housewife Sheila (Byrne). Most of her life is defined by smiling through her husband’s latest mood swings or obsessively planning out every calorie in her micromanaged life. That changes once she discovers aerobics. Through this new exercise craze Sheila doesn’t merely find a healthier way to view her body, she gains control over her entire life.

“Physical” executive producer Annie Weisman answered some questions about the new series, including how she funneled much of Sheila’s story through her brutal inner voice and what the series wants to say about eating disorders.

How early in the process did you decide to incorporate Sheila’s inner monologue into the narrative?

Right away. It just came to me in the writing as a device to dramatize this sense of dividedness that she feels. As somebody who suffered very privately with eating disorders for so much of my life, I felt it.

The illness is really good at making you very skilled at presenting a self to the world and then staying put by telling you that, if you reveal it, you will destroy and define yourself.

How much did Rose influence how Sheila’s dialogue would come across?

She was hugely involved. We would shoot the scene and we would kind of lay in for timing where those moments were. But then we had another process of recording it. That was when we got to play with the tone . . . We grew to [construct] these different characters in the voice.

When Sheila is at her most toxic and bullying, that’s reflected in how she interacts with the people around her. Was that intentional?

Yeah. One of the most uncomfortable things about this is how she’s not just beating herself up, but she’s turned it on other women as well, and that’s part of the illness. It’s part of how it keeps you isolated and you kind of see it as if this is your only friend [and] nobody else. Friends and intimacy are threatening to the illness. We get to see her start to heal by connecting with other people.

A couple of characters sort of allude to Sheila maybe replacing one vice with another. Is there truth to that or do you think aerobics is a healing path for her?

I think it’s both. I think it is a healing path, but I also think it has the potential to become another kind of addiction. So I hope to embrace the complexity of that. One thing about getting to continue the story is that we can play around with which direction that goes at different times in her life.

There’s something really empowering about seeing a

woman take control of her body and use that source of power to literally make money.

I think that’s a great way of putting it. This path becomes available to her because she’s living at a time when this was more the case — although it’s still the case now — where really there were so few avenues for power. And it’s true that you are defined by your body, like it or not, by your sex appeal, by your ability to make a baby, all these things. So here’s this other way to turn that around and make it work for you and turn it into a business and inspiration for others... it’s kind of playing with all the complexities of that.