The One Text That Upended Michele Giannusa’s Life—and Set Off a Chain Reaction
Netflix’s Ripple is already hitting viewers hard—and its beating heart comes straight from creator Michele Giannusa’s life. In a new chat with What’s on Netflix, she reveals how one misfired text upended everything and set the series in motion.
Netflix has a new gut-punch drama on its hands. Ripple landed and immediately started wrecking people in the best way. What most viewers don’t know: the show is basically creator Michele Giannusa turning a very specific, very personal life detour into eight episodes of emotional whiplash.
The spark: a wrong text and a freeway spiral
Back in 2014, Giannusa moved to Los Angeles after a divorce to take a real swing at TV writing. Cut to her stuck in traffic after a meeting, fried and frustrated, when her brain does that weird thing stress can do: she spots a palm tree, blanks for a second, and forgets she’s not in New York anymore. That brief disorientation set off a domino of what-ifs about the tiny choices that reroute our lives.
By the time she got home, she’d sketched four people in her head and started writing. The other big catalyst? An accidental text that wasn’t meant for her. That misfire ended up changing her trajectory — her words for it were basically the butterfly-effect moment that nudged her toward the show. Not exactly a meet-cute, but a meet-text.
What Ripple is actually about
Ripple, produced by Lionsgate Television, premiered on Netflix on December 3 after making its way back to the service in 2025. The series tracks four strangers — Walter, Kris, Nate, and Aria — whose lives collide thanks to small, random moments. It’s intimate, it’s tender, and it leans hard into the messy ways we affect each other without even realizing it.
Giannusa calls the show her love letter to New York. Yes, a lot of development happened in LA, but the soul of it never left NYC. She grew up there in the 1980s, and she was in Manhattan on September 11 — experiences that baked in her ideas about community and resilience. That’s why the city is more than a backdrop here; it’s the bloodstream.
"There is no way the show was not going to be set there. It had to be."
How it got to Netflix (again)
The road to your queue was not straightforward. Ripple first went into development at Netflix in 2018, then shifted over to Hallmark+, and eventually circled back to Netflix in 2025. That’s a lot of platform ping-pong for a show this character-focused, but here we are — streaming where it started.
Future seasons: she’s already mapped the ending
Giannusa is not winging it. When development began, she built out five seasons and has stuck to that plan. She even knows the final shot of the series. The writers are game to keep going, and the audience clearly wants more, but as of now Netflix hasn’t announced a renewal. Classic hurry-up-and-wait.
- Creator: Michele Giannusa
- Produced by: Lionsgate Television
- Where to watch: Netflix
- Premiere: December 3 (returned to Netflix in 2025)
- Episodes: 8
- Main characters: Walter, Kris, Nate, Aria
- Concept: small moments with big consequences — the ripple effect
- Setting: New York City, by design and on purpose
- Development path: originated at Netflix in 2018, moved to Hallmark+, came back to Netflix in 2025
- Status: no season 2 order yet; creator has a five-season plan and the last shot in mind
Ripple is streaming now. If you’ve ever wondered how one stray decision — or one stray text — can reroute a life, this one hits like a brick.