The Uglies trailer dropped yesterday, and it’s FULL of Easter eggs for fans of the book. Here is my frame-by-frame, along with some production notes.

But first, in case you missed it:

Yowza! Here are my notes!

Page numbers are for the new edition, with the cover by the amazing Aykut Aydogdu, but should be close for all editions.)

0:07
Joey King as Tally Youngblood! Joey read the books when she was little, and always wanted to live in that world. So she got famous and made it happen.

0:12
Tally’s city! In the foreground we have Uglyville, made of gray concrete. But across the river are the soaring buildings of New Pretty Town! You don’t get to live in the castle until you are pretty.

0:18
A lovely image of Tally in a field of the white weed, the genetically modified tiger orchid that has disrupted biomes across the continent.
(p162 “The Side You Despise”)

0:28
Dorm uniforms! Note that the uniforms are gray, to remind the uglies that they don’t deserve nice things.
(p94 “Operation”)

0:33
Laverne Cox as Dr. Cable! I really enjoyed meeting Laverne and talking about conceptions of beauty, femininity, and personal transformation. (We also discussed our fave East Village hangouts in the ’90s.)

0:37
Safety fireworks, “beautiful useless things,” are a symbol throughout the series. They look like normal fireworks, but have been rendered harmless, kinda like pretties. The New Pretty Town scenes are drenched in them!
(p4 “New Pretty Town”)

0:45
Love this glimpse of Tally’s morpho—a digital model of her post-surgery appearance. In a weird way, the uglies sitting around tuning their faces on screens is the most prophetic part of the book. I mean, Uglies came out in 2005. We had Photoshop back then, but instant filters weren’t a thing.
(pp 38-9 “Facing the Future”)

0:57
Chase Stokes as Peris! Peris’s nickname is Nose, so we gave Chase a big nose. Also, he was kinda too pretty to be an ugly. I mean, pretty much ALL actors are?

Except . . . even pretty people in this world are called uglies, unless they’ve had the operation.

0:58
Based upon a novel, which is by me! Available at all fine retailers.

1:00
Brianne Tju as Shay! What you can kinda see here is that Shay and Tally are chilling on their hoverboards, thirty feet in the air. This scene was actually shot with them suspended from cranes. Joey and Brianne became instant friends on set, which shines through in their performances.
(p31-7 “Wipe Out”)

1:04
Surgery tank. Peris is about to get a nose job.

1:07
Tally in a pig mask! From the party scene in New Pretty Town. Love it when random (though deeeeeply symbolic) things in a book make it into a movie.
(p10 “New Pretty Town”)

1:08
Pretty Peris. (Less nose, more abs!)

1:22
The wild! We had a gray, concrete Uglyville and a hyper-lurid New Pretty Town, so we had to also capture the beauty of the wild. “Nature, at least, didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.”
(p219 “Suspicion”)

1:27
Keith Powers as David! Keith did a great job making David charismatic enough to lead a revolution, while also giving him an outsider feel. After all, he’s the only non-city kid left in the entire world. (That’s why he has the only old-fashioned name.)

1:32
Glimpses of the Smoke in the background. All the buildings in the Smoke were real, inside and out, with sod roofs planted with actual grass for camouflage, and Smokey gear inside. A simply amazing set. Love the production design in this movie. Can’t wait till you see more.

But who’s that schmuck with the wheelbarrow? It’s full of books, and we’re in the Smoke, so it must be the Boss–the crotchety old librarian guy. (p188, “The Model”)

He is played by me.

I even had a line, which I wrote myself—secretly, so the cast’s reaction was a genuine WTF on the first take. But the line was cut in editing, because the Boss’s snark didn’t go with the positive emotion of Tally’s arrival in the Smoke.

Hollywood is cruel. I will take no further questions.

1:42
Hoverboarding on the ancient roller coaster—perhaps THE iconic Uglies scene. (pp 61-3 “The Rust Ruins”)

The hoverboards are a combination of CGI and practical rigs that allowed the actors to actually fly on wires! (More on hoverboards after Sep 13, on my TikTok and Insta.)

1:49
Jan Luis Castellano as Croy! He is a very lovable Croy.

1:58
In the book, we briefly meet the Rangers, environmental warriors who use vintage Rusty helicopters to burn out the white weed.
(p170 “Bug Eyes”)

In the movie, however, the Smokies have their own helicopter. Because Jan Luis wanted a flamethrower. Because flamethrowers.

2:12
THE SMOKE LIVES! (“Over the Edge” p352)

Yes, it does.

For more analysis, check out my TikTok about the trailer.

See you September 13, only on Netflix.