Stephanie Sanditz, a St. Louis native, Angeleno, actor, and writer, is preparing to release one of her most personal projects yet: a series she wrote and created called The High Life, with a premise that’s anything but cliché.
Sanditz plays 30-something Evie Gold, who rejoins her family on a funeral hike to honor her late Aunt Linda, a former high-powered businesswoman who secretly converted to Buddhism before dying of ovarian cancer. It’s later revealed that Aunt Linda, played by Amy Landecker (Transparent, Dan in Real Life), has demanded they complete the hike naked. This actually happened to Sanditz in real life, and the pilot episode is a narrative retelling of the experience.
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The pilot, partially filmed in St. Louis, manages to wrest humor out of the situation without demeaning its tragedy—a delicate line. And while the nude hike brings the rag-tag group of family members together, their interactions are really the crux of the story. There’s Evie’s clueless-but-well-meaning father, her overachieving brother, the grandmother whose decades on earth have left her without f–s to give. Then there’s her mother, a once-controlling helicopter mom who has now all but completely given up hope that her daughter may ever fully land.
Evie is a trainwreck in nearly every consequential area of life: money, work, relationships. But what makes her journey almost painful to watch is also one of the story’s most compelling assets: that her downward spiral resulted more from her attempts at success rather than any kind of malintent. Somewhere along the way, she just got…lost. And in returning home, she has found what could be a respite from her own worst impulses, a total disaster, or maybe a little of both.
“I loved the idea of telling a story about a second, or even third, coming-of-age,” Sanditz says. “We are all trying to find purpose, love, and a higher calling. None of us really knows what we’re doing, and we’re all a little scared of life. Certainly death. I’m interested in all the things people try to do to find meaning. And I want an unhinged, substance-abusing woman to be the one asking those questions.”
Sanditz hopes to sell The High Life to a network within the next year for a wider audience release. If not, she’ll self-release online. However, she has a special opportunity for St. Louis Magazine readers: Want to watch the pilot? Reach out to @stephaniesanditz on Instagram, and you’ll receive a special link where you may view the pilot for free.
Watch the trailer for The High Life below:
