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...