Camila Morrone Drives Netflix’s ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’
camila morrone enters the Netflix conversation through Haley Z. Boston’s horror limited series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, a project that was already on the platform a little over two months before Boston and Isaac Sims discussed it in May. Boston, a Northwestern alumna, said the greenlight changed the pace of her work immediately and kept her moving for two years.
Boston and Sims in May
Boston graduated from Northwestern’s School of Communication in 2016, and Sims graduated in 2017. Sims works as a writer and script coordinator on the series, which follows betrothed couple Rachel and Nicky in the days leading up to their wedding and is executively produced by Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer.
“I was so excited and scared, and from the second that call came, my life just changed immediately,” Boston said of the show getting greenlit. “I don’t stop working for two years.” That timeline tells the real story here: the series moved from a permission slip to a long, sustained build, not a quick burst of development.
Writer’s room pressure
“The writer’s room was pretty incredible — I’ve been in a couple different writers’ rooms now, and there was such a unique blend of talent in that writer’s room,” Sims said. He also said the room used the line, “What would Damon Lindelof do?” That kind of shorthand suggests a room built around twist mechanics and structure, not just atmosphere.
Boston said the team wanted the ending to be surprising but inevitable. She framed the writing goal as a controlled bait-and-switch: “I’m always trying to do that — set expectations, and then make you think ‘X’ is going to happen, and then at the last minute, it’s actually ‘Y.’”
Northwestern on screen
Boston said she wanted to join the pattern of Northwestern references that show up in movies and television. “I love seeing when other people do it,” she said. That gives the cameos a purpose beyond school pride: they work as a signal to viewers who know the campus shorthand, and they help place the show inside a recognizable alumni network.
The series itself leans on toxic family dynamics, the question of soulmates, and grief, so the Northwestern references sit inside a story already built to twist expectations. For viewers, the useful takeaway is simple: this is a release that came out, stayed in motion for months, and now has two Northwestern graduates talking openly about how it was built, which is the kind of access horror television rarely gives after launch.
