Pheonix and Rachel agreed on several tenets for this brand up front. Lots of vegans choose this diet and lifestyle when they're in one or more of several modes: Love of animals - i.e. compassion Mission to save the planet - i.e. virtue Desire to lose weight or be healthy - i.e. self-improvement Avoidance of problem foods - i.e. self-preservation When you start asking people to tell you why they've chosen vegan, you open a doorway to judgement. "Oh, you don't eat meat because you like animals? You're kind."  We'll skip this approach, tempting though it may be. When someone opts out of meat, eggs and dairy because, for instance, their stomach simply can't digest these foods, adjacent folks might draw the conclusion that said vegan is not kind, or devoted, or disciplined for a greater good. Full stop. The Vegan Next Door is about loving food and (trying to love) ourselves. If you eat a vegan meal once - for whatever reason, we want to explore with you t...

Labels matter. We had an idea: A show about a busy, working, mommy vegan who is Tall order. The [insert adjective here] Vegan. We liked "naughty," "accidental," "practical." We polled our friends and family members and they liked "flirty," "genuine," "easy." (We could have done this forever.) In the end, we wanted to position Pheonix as a person you might actually know - rather than some mythical, impossible fabrication. After all, Rachel does actually  know Pheonix. They have tea. The Vegan Next Door - like "the girl next door" - implies someone unpretentious. It invokes nostalgia, attainability and comfort. We learned by polling that many people assume the opposite - pretention and discomfort - when they hear the word VEE-gun. We decided to put the emphasis on "next door." Pheonix lives on your block...and, yeah, she also doesn't eat meat, eggs and dairy.

Our husbands work together. That's how it started.  "Oh, you're a vegan?" Rachel confirmed and Pheonix nodded. "I tried that once for a year," Rachel said at the time. "But then I found out there's whey in Reece's Pieces. There's whey in everything. So, I went back to being a vegetarian." Pheonix has been steadfastly vegan; though it isn't perfectly easy. If it were perfectly easy, there would be no need for a show about "being vegan." If "being vegan" were perfectly straightforward and easy to understand, there would be no need for this discourse. And so, on this day in 2021, an out-of-work content producer visits her actor friend Pheonix in northern New Jersey for the first of many production meetings to finally build a brand around all good things vegan - and to try and demystify the word "vegan" and the "why vegan?" and the sisterhood behind mothering vegan and the desire to be a making-t...