Indie creator Arkya Randall was living in Houston when the Covid pandemic shut down her livelihood and ended her grandmother’s life. She traveled to San Diego to help her grandad, thinking she’d return to Texas when she was done. But the lockdown made that difficult, and eventually, she decided to remain where she was and launch her own company, Aryka P Productions. Now she’s got three successful projects under her belt, and another on the way.
“I had been living in New Orleans for a while, making queer content for the Fab Femme blog I had, but I wanted to challenge myself to do something else,” said Randall. “I ended up writing a series of short stories about my breakup with my rs girlfriend, and that became Girl Play TV, which I decided to turn into a web series.”
The show was a hit, and a few years later, Randall followed it with the book She’s Just Not That Into You. The series followed three Houston friends who were battling a quarter-life crisis after having turned 30 years old. In 2018, it was adapted into the Amazon Prime web series 30, which had a successful run on the film festival circuit.
30 explores the relationship dynamics among a trio of lesbian, bi, queer, and curious girlfriends. The Amazon series tells a tale of love, friendship, and spiritual growth. Randall serves as the show’s creator, executive producer, and one of its main characters.
After the success of that web series, Randall was approached to write a book that piggybacked off her existing work, which specializes in female-driven dramadies. She realized that her work was very animated with each chapter heavily pushing some type of narrative—work that was ideal for a web series.
Randall had followed the partner she met in Houston to California, when she moved to Los Angeles for work. While Randall kept her dog Panda, she admitted the same didn’t hold true for the girlfriend.
“Like many other things that were lost in the pandemic, I got rid of her, because she was not the best partner,” she admits. “My sweet spot now is being single. I’ve never been able to focus on my career this much before, and it’s paying off.”
Locked down in the Golden State, Randall noticed how many influencers there were, to the point that it seemed like “there was nothing for anyone else in California to be doing.” She began to make fun of how ridiculous it was, and what started as satire grew into a story idea: The tale of a young lady (like her) who had traveled from a smaller state to L.A. to become an influencer. She came out as queer and found assorted friends along the way.
The result was The L.A. Influencer Handbook, a six-episode web series that chronicles the life of that character, Erin Campbell, a transplant from Oklahoma who moves to L.A. to become an influencer. With the help of other Hollywood hopefuls, Campbell does her best to conquer L.A. and pay homage to her late mother.
“It was very much like myself, in that it was rooted in my mother having passed, an her wanting to use her time wisely by expanding her career path to see what she liked,” said Randall. “For me, I thought I would have to choose between acting versus being an influencer, but my first intentional love was comedic writing.”
Randall said that when she began screenwriting, she didn’t let her naivete hold her back. She wrote her scripts in Word rather than Final Draft like the pros do, and used whoever was around as actors, even if it was herself or other film students. She advised aspiring screenwriters to not spend more time worrying about the execution than actually doing it.
“You learn more every time, so just get out there with your iPhone and some lenses and build up your personal portfolio,” she advised. “Just make that starting point because many people never even start. Even the people in film school often just work on other people’s films. If you really want to tell your story, just grab that camera and start shooting.”
She began shooting The L.A. Influencer Handbook and completed it all within the allotted time and budget—thanks to the pandemic. She admits, “everything was closed, and the actors in L.A. were hungry to do anything, so I got great actors. And locations where they would normally want permits for, I just shot on the fly.”
The L.A. Influencer Handbook debuted in October 2020 on YouTube. Randall kept the ball rolling with The Golden Teacher, a “psychedelic ego death trip thing” that played at a few film festivals. She’s currently working on the short film Staycation, a horror comedy about a group of women at an AirBNB who get kidnapped. She said she has a cast and is waiting on a grant to shoot. She’s also working on a You’ve Got Mail–style series about two queer friends who fall in love while messaging, but don’t realize they are mailing each other, and don’t want to ruin their friendship.
“It is very, very wardrobe-heavy and I was concerned with the character development, but it will feel very different and unique in terms of how the characters are dressed in what looks like a glitter explosion,” said Randall.
Randall is flourishing as a screenwriter, is looking for a manager for her still photography (seen on Hulu’s Hair Tales) and enjoys painting and arts & crafts: “really anything I can do with my hands.” She’s learned about unions and has become a financially stable adult with a 401K. But she’s still doing things her way.
“I set clear boundaries for myself creatively regarding what I’m willing to give to a network and what I keep for myself,” said Randall. “I have to make films for myself, or I’ll wither away. I may be still winging it, but I like keeping creative control.”
Randall encouraged others to take the chance she did, saying, “I want people to know there’s a lot of space for queer stories, and we’re all usually very supportive of each other. There are enough queer people going up against the networks with our own streaming, to the point that there’s starting to be more than just the LGBQ hashtag on Netflix; there’s space for bigger production companies and they are looking for queer films.”
For more information, visit https://www.arykapproductions.com or find her on
Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/arykapprod/
The Golden Teacher Teaser- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3t23MBR5g
LA Influencer Handbook Teaser- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIxVMr9Zj6o
30 Series Teaser- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN10woDuogA
Winnie McCroy 