PixelCircus Sunday Spy Club Takes Inspiration From Totally Spies, Charlies Angels, & D.E.B.S. For A Y2K Adventure

PixelCircus is taking fans back to Y2K with their all-new four-part series, Sunday Spy Club. Sunday Spy Club follows a group of friends who are part of the spy club at their college, but things take a turn when they are thrown into the dangerous world of actual espionage. With only their wits and friendship to keep them safe these four young women will do whatever it takes to protect their friends.

Based on beloved female espionage series Totally Spies! and Charlies Angels, Sunday Spy Club hits the nostalgia of the early 2000s with a hilarious cast of characters. Mayanna Berrin serves as the Spy Master with Saige Ryan playing Summer, Krystina Arielle as Tinsley, Mica Burton as Astoria, and Becca Scott as Malware. The chemistry leaps from the screen with the actual friendship these hilarious and clever players have shining through with their characters. Each character brings their own skills with the players and Spy Master bringing their own spin to this, perilous tale culminating in an action-packed, fun-filled adventure.

Screen Rant interviewed Krystina Arielle, Saige Ryan, and Mayanna Berrin about the new PixelCircus actual play series Sunday Spy Club. Ryan explained what beyond Totally Spies! and Charlies Angels inspired the central story and world of this actual play. Arielle discussed the importance of supporting independent studios and shared insight into the characters. Berrin broke down the dynamics at the table and the importance of portraying different elements of female friendship.

Ryan revealed what inspired the Totally Spies! style actual play adventure Sunday Spy Club. She shared how they wanted to lean into the nostalgia of the Y2K era of female friendship and why this was the dream cast for this story. Ryan also shared how she brought Berrin in as the GM.

Saige Ryan: I have a notes app list of game ideas in my phone and I tend to just add to it as we go and add little names of people that I think would be fun with it. I literally had written down Totally Spies! D&D essentially, and it was very much set in that. Based on definitely Charlie’s Angels, Totally Spies! When working through the overall concept for it, the inspo points were really strongly on Y2K girlhood.

One of the themes that we really love to explore is opportunities for different types of relationships between women. I think there is something incredibly special about media of the early 2000s that depicted female friendships in such a special way. Maybe that’s my nostalgia speaking and there’s probably so much media still doing that for kids and that’s just when I was a kid.

Mayanna Berrin: Like Owl House now I think. Yeah, there’s a new crop of it for sure.

Saige Ryan: Yeah, and I remember Mayanna and I had sat down a couple of times to talk about it and I had talked about wanting to have Mayanna come and GM something on the channel. I think she’s such a brilliant performer and talented creative and the incredibly special combo of being a writer and a performer that makes for really brilliant GMing. We did some test games together and then I was like, Hey, so I’ve got this concept and it’s very loose and it’s really heavily genre. Because we love to play in genre and then I wanted to just see what Mayanna would do with that.

Mayanna Berrin: It was very fun. I got to run away with it. It was great.

Ryan runs PixelCircus and is the one who came up with both the cast and concept for Sunday Spy Club. She broke down her process of brainstorming settings for different shows while allowing the GM room to make the world and story their own. This also gives Ryan a chance to not only play in the world she wants to explore, but still be surprised by the decisions made by the GM.

Saige Ryan: Concept wise, honestly for me as the person who, I run the channel itself, so it’s like this is a world I want to play in. This is a genre, this is a theme that I want to play in and something that I think would serve our audience well. As the person who has been so close and direct with our audience for so long, I feel very connected to them.

I literally run little censuses for them to submit their interests and things they’re enjoying watching. So it’s still very much a surprise for me of what we’re going to do in the story. I really just presented a setting to Myanna and was like, Hi, I would like you to make me a spy, please.

Mayanna Berrin: And then I went off and I created a story document essentially of just, Where are they? What do they want? Who’s a good foil for that and how can we put pressure on these friendships and see how they deal with turmoil and a new situation? They did great. They crushed it.

Sunday Spy Club begins with a peak into the future with audiences able to see the girls working as skilled spies. However, the story follows their journey to becoming these top-notch operatives. Ryan and Berrin explained not only what inspired this flash forward, but how they were able to utilize it and when they filmed this opening sequence.

Saige Ryan: We talked about this together and one of the things was the first episode is so important. We’re a small independent channel and we’re always trying, especially in short series, to welcome new people into our community and we wanted to deliver on spies, but also allow them to have a journey to becoming spies. So we felt like with a preview of it, that’s something that movies get to do and we had the opportunity to be like, this is what we’re promising you. Now you get to see the journey leading up to it without it being like, but the first episode of Sunday Spy Club is not spies. We wanted to deliver early on spies, but show you the whole journey as well.

Mayanna Berrin: Yeah, I think one of the things that we take for granted, especially in the fact that it was filmed, is that we can play with chronological order a little bit. You can take those conventions and use them to better support the story as you’d like to, versus when you play something on stream, you can’t necessarily flashback and flash forward and do all those things. You can mess around with the RP of it, but actually getting to show something, we shot that last.

That was the last thing we shot, but you’re seeing that first is very fun because one, all the characters are super locked in and they have gone on this arc together. So for them as players, they have experienced the full length of the story and they’re in their very cool suits and we get to answer the promise of that, of this is who they will become. And then you just get to see the fun journey on how to get there. So super chill and fun.

Sunday Spy Club Was “Very Healing And Restorative In Its Own Way Because There Were These Type Of Heightened Versions Of Ourselves”

Arielle shared insight into her character Tinsley as well as Burton and Scott’s characters. She explained what role each of these characters fill in the group and revealed how each of the players infused elements of themselves into the characters. She also touched on the teen magazine that Ryan created to introduce the Sunday Spy Club to fans.

Krystina Arielle: So I play Tinsley and Tinsley is an athlete. She’s an overachiever. She takes herself a little too seriously sometimes, but she’s an insecure little donut hole and I love her. Amongst the group, everyone kind of brings their own little dynamic to it. Saige’s Summer, she is resourceful, she’s the leader. You just kind of know that is her role, that’s what she does. She keeps the family together and it’s her.

All of these characters kind of felt like a little bit of an extension of us, even with Mica and Astoria, Mica is having a brat summer her whole life, but she is an amazing kind-hearted person and she’s so layered much like you see with Astoria. That’s the thing with all of these characters, and I mean Becca’s a genius. Becca Scott is an absolute genius. She’s a full on delight. There is a reason so many people got Malware. Saige put together a teen magazine in the vein of the two thousands Jade magazines and all those teen magazines, Teen Beat, and Tiger Beat.

Mayanna Berrin: I was a 17 girly.

Krystina Arielle: Oh listen, 17, Cosmo Girl. It was truly a golden era. So she created this magazine and it has the test and people were like, I got Malware. There were so many Malwares because she is a relatable dork and it’s great. There’s just so much, we play off each other well because in the same sense that we’re telling this story together, it was such a great bonding experience for all of us.

Kind of very healing and restorative in its own way because there were these type of heightened versions of ourselves. You have this group of women encouraging you to be the best version of yourself in game and out of game as well. So it feels very, very special to me, and I hope people truly enjoy it.

Mayanna Berrin: I think one of the themes that I started to see develop amongst the four of you was how close-knit female friendships can sometimes keep you from growing. And then when you acknowledge that, help you to support that next evolution of who you can become. It’s like letting go, but not too much. It was very, very fun to see you guys all boost each other in those different ways.

Ryan shared the importance of their session zero in creating the dynamics for Sunday Spy Club. Especially because it wasn’t treated as a traditional session zero, but instead a sleepover with the cast spending time together to reconnect as friends, while also developing their characters, backstories, and the friendship that they have.

Saige Ryan: My favorite thing to tell people about is our session zero. I will stop people on the street at this point to be like, this was the most wonderful night of TTRPG of my life. We organized a session zero where we took the set and we cleaned everything out and we rolled a TV in and we put out big pillows and blankets and we had the equivalent of a little slumber party where we built our characters together and we built the relationships.

I would say 80% of our session zero was just us all talking and bonding and reconnecting. When you’re all coworkers or certain levels of, we see each other all the time, but there was such an immediate and personal connection between everybody that when we got to the character building, it was so easy just based on the conversations we’ve been having. We’d been watching Totally Spies and watching some inspo pieces and talking about DEBS and talking about all the different reference pieces that we had.

It came together so naturally, and this was the group of people that have been sitting on a little pitch deck that I had for myself for almost a year of my dreamcast. These were all friends and people that I love in the industry, and I was just like, if we can make this happen, if we can line up everybody’s schedules, I just knew that this group of women would tell exactly the story that we were dreaming of. I’m so, so grateful. I was sitting there watching it and I’m watching everybody and I’m like, It’s just like it was in my head. It’s real. Oh my God.

Everyone was just so committed and so open. It was so beautiful and so healing as women in this space, I think, to just be genuinely surrounded by wonderful, supportive women and playing characters that I don’t think I have ever played with a group of people, a group of characters that decided that they love each other so freaking much. I think that’s so foundational to this show is these girls truly and genuinely love each other and all different types of love.

Berrin further explained how exploring female friendships is at the center of Sunday Spy Club. While they can be supportive, the actual play also shows how it can be constricting to have the same friends for so many years in one’s life. This can develop into an even stronger bond with room for growth and change or devolve into a desire to hold onto the past without allowing for change.

Mayanna Berrin: In episode two, and I won’t say the plot things for spoilers, whatever, but one of the things you start to discover is a little bit more of the backstory, which I believe they came up with on the fly. How they’ve all known each other and what secrets they were keeping from each other and things that they felt comfortable sharing with the group versus things that they wanted to keep to themselves.

How once those revelations happened, how they can best support each other and not even realizing maybe, because I think when you get locked into a dynamic, especially with friends you’ve known for a long time, you start to take for granted that they’re never going to change in any meaningful way. So when you start to see that you can have two reactions to that, which is you want to keep them the way that you know them to be because change is scary or you allow them the space to change into the person that maybe they were always meant to become. And you get to be the person there to witness that and to continue to support that in a new way. Maybe the friendship changes, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Saige Ryan: Krystina actually established a lot of how long we had known each other, and that’s kind of the trust we had at the table is there was a moment where it was like, How did you all meet? And we had decided we have known each other our whole lives, and that was definitely something we knew, but Krystina, in a really fantastic moment of improv put together, I feel like something where we were all like, Yes, that’s exactly it.

Krystina Arielle: What I think is also very interesting about it is when you have a group of friends, I know I have my friend group Quad goals, there’s four of us, and sometimes at different points in the friendship, you have your person who’s this person. Kind of like how you clinging to each other within a group of women. You may have someone you tell a secret to more and I think the couches kind give it away a little bit and how the dynamics end up. I thought that was really special to go into female relationships in that way and to just see how we support each other, who we go to when we have an emergency moment or we have something, who’s the first person you turn to? Who’s the person you cling to? I think that’s very honest in what came from our story.

There’s so much love in this story, the love that we have for one another outside and inside I think shines and you see so much of that comradery from the photo shoots. I’m having so much fun watching all of the behind the scenes stuff roll out and seeing how much people are excited about it and how it’s touching something in people that reminds them of a time where your biggest issue is whether you were going to wear Birkenstocks or Timberlands. If you had two Abercrombie shirts you could pop a collar on. We have butterfly clips. That’s very important

Saige Ryan: Lots of butterfly clips. I think it touches those kind of things that I’m very nostalgic for, like Buffy The Vampire Slayer where it’s like, Yeah, sure there’s monsters attacking, but those problems aren’t bigger than your human problems. There was always that kind of balance of it where their personal relationship is never less important than saving the world. They balance ’em really well.

Sunday Spy Club “Is Richer Because Of The Different Experiences And Lifestyles Reflected At The Table”

Arielle explained not only why she enjoys playing at an all-femme table, but why she knew this was the perfect table to play at. She broke down the importance of diversity in storytelling and storytellers to make Sunday Spy Club feel true to her own friendships.

Krystina Arielle: I love a good all female table. It’s also very important to me, I know that people try to use diversity as a dirty word, but it’s not. I think that our story is richer because of the different experiences and lifestyles reflected at the table even to have three women of color in this space. But we’re all very different people. We all come from very different spaces. I mean, Mica’s a Hollywood girl, I’m from the South.

Mayanna Berrin: I’m from New York.

Krystina Arielle: We got all these different places and personality types represented. I think that we get to see the layers of all of our different feminine personalities and how those come across. I think it’s important to just have a table that looks like my friend group in real life. That looks like the people that I love that are the people that I love.

There was something about this table that just I was in. I usually hesitate a little bit, but sometimes my gut is like, Krystina, this is the thing that you should do. This was one of those things where immediately I was so drawn to it. Then I heard who was playing and I was like, I want to hang out with all these people and we are always so busy. So you’re telling me that you’re going to put me in a studio and I’m going to get to hang out with my friends, play a game, tell a story and go just have this beautiful adventure.

It’s always about that for me. It’s always about being with people that I want to be with, being with people who touch my heart. Where I know I’m going to leave this table, I’m going to leave this story, I’m going to leave this experience feeling restored, feeling as if it wasn’t work. It was an adventure and this was truly an adventure for me.

The cast also shared what surprised them in this game. While Berrin discussed the importance of allowing players to take the lead in storytelling as a GM in order to be collaborative, Ryan revealed how the cast organically crafted the relationships between each of the characters. Some of this was due to their existing friendships, but other aspects came from moments of improvisation that perfectly fell into place for the story.

Mayanna Berrin: I think one of the things, you hear this all the time, I think with people who want to get into GMing of write a book. It’s like if you want a story to go the exact way that you drew it up, don’t make it a TTRPG, don’t do it. Don’t open yourself up to that. Collaborative storytelling is different. You’re weaving a tapestry with four other people who are contributing to this thing. So I think I was constantly surprised and constantly blown away by the creativity and the ingenuity that everybody brought. Krystina had so many incredible lines. Mica did as well, Becca as well, Saige as well. It was funny.

I think there’s how do you prep for an actual play? How do you prep for a D&D game? I think there’s different answers depending on if it’s on camera or not. I think that over prepare, but then leave yourself open to the space because the players are going to bring things that are going to be infinitely better than what you assumed was the best possible idea you could have. So yeah, I would think I was surprised every moment. I was just like, Wow, these people are brilliant. I don’t know. This is crazy.

Saige Ryan: I think that I was most surprised by how the relationships came together. We as a channel are really passionate about telling feminine relationships and a lot of the kind of basis of the stories that we want to tell are based on what is a new type of dynamic that maybe feels like we don’t get a chance to see spaces where women get to spend time together, alone. Spaces where the different types of love get to be shown.

I think I was surprised by the beautiful silliness between us all. I think that we regressed truly and honestly in such a healing way where there were immediate things of inside jokes between these characters and it felt like we had known each other since we were toddlers, like the story. There is such a silliness between these girls that is my favorite part finale of watching it back.

Mayanna Berrin: There’s a moment in the finale where it got to a level where I was like, This is high school. Literally, I’ve been transported.

Saige Ryan: I think that Krystina summed it up so well, honestly. And I have a clip of you saying this. There’s that TikTok trend going around that’s like when you get kidnapped with your best friends and it’s just the two people laughing in a basement and they can’t stop laughing about it. I think that the characters that we built are so unserious.

Mayanna Berrin: It was very funny,

Saige Ryan: In such a fun, high stakes world, and we didn’t plan for that. It just happened.

Krystina Arielle: When you get a moment to just talk to another character and there’s no competition, there’s no anything, there’s just, we’re hanging out with our friends and you know how somebody says something or trips over a word and then you can’t stop thinking about it, and every time you make eye contact. That’s it. Every time we made eye contact, we had to stop because-

Saige Ryan: We did actually take a pause at one point. We held filming because we couldn’t stop laughing.

Krystina Arielle: I think we broke Mayanna.

Mayanna Berrin: Yeah, by the end of the shoot it was like, Wow, I don’t know how we got here. There’s a part in, I think it’s two again, where Mica just goes off on a monologue that she riffed on the fly that is so funny. That I had to be like, You know what? I think this scene’s over now we have to do something else because I’m not even going to have you roll for that. You just get to do that because that was very funny.

Krystina Arielle: You just realize how funny your friends are, man. There’s no scripts, there’s no nothing. There’s just chaos.

Mayanna Berrin: It devolved, but in a way that I was like, This is how it was always meant to be. This is how it’s supposed to go.

Krystina Arielle: It’s amazing. I love it so much. I haven’t even seen it yet and I don’t remember half the stuff I said, but I know that watching it back, it’s going to bring back this feeling of just absolute joy that I still feel just thinking about it.

Mayanna Berrin: Oh yeah, Krystina has a Twilight reference that she makes off the cuff. That was so delightful and tickled me so much.

Krystina Arielle: Listen, Twihard for life.

Mayanna Berrin: Twihard for life. Exactly. We brought so much of ourselves to these characters

Krystina Arielle: So much.

Krystina Arielle On The Importance Of Independent Studios “We Have To Make Sure That Those Are The Things that Succeed.”

Ryan also broke down the production aspects including what inspired the brightly colored set, the different layout with couches instead of a table, and what inspired them to change costumes for every episode. Arielle discussed the importance of supporting independent studios like PixelCircus in creating exciting, passion-driven stories.

Saige Ryan: Once again, I’ll never stop referencing that so much of this show comes from a Pinterest board. I had three Pinterest boards for this show and I cannot draw for the life of me. I have no artistic ability in that sense. So I was there, copy and pasting images and couches and trying to explain to Clara, our set designer, Hey, like this. Can it look like this? But good. She really did take the picture I made and make it good.

Everything was custom. We shoot in our own studio, we have our own studio in LA, the channel, and this is a completely different setup. We tore apart our studio and fully kind of rebuilt our stage for it. It was incredibly challenging and beautiful and we played with so many different ideas of just what represents that. The set is based on what is the cool teen dream hideout of, it’s almost like your dream teen bedroom. It’s like your first apartment. It is the cool spy hideout. Very Totally Spies!

Mayanna Berrin: Your freshman dorm.

Saige Ryan: Yeah, what you wish your freshman dorm looked like if you had cool secret government money, spy. We spent so long literally playing with color palettes and how the suits would pop off of everything and how the girls are in essentially primary colors while there is a different color palette to the background to make sure that they would stand out off of it. It was a very, very thoughtful process. Spy suits were just a must. We had to.

We actually changed outfits every episode that was also very important to us. This is very cartoon based and so many RPGs, especially when you block shoot, you’re wearing the same outfit for the whole thing. We ordered, literally, I was just getting packages of Y2K outfits in color blocking for two straight weeks at my house, and then we basically just made a big pile of clothes of each color and let the girls pick out kind of what cute Y2K outfit they wanted to wear that day. For that episode.

Mayanna Berrin: I was obsessed with Krystina’s one she wore for the photo shoot. That green with the white is so cute and the khaki skirt.

Krystina Arielle: I want that top so bad. I love that shirt. Do not undersell it. Saige put this thing on and I want to give a very loud, loud shout out to PixelCircus and the work that she does there. It is an independent studio, but she runs a tight ship. Everything is made to make sure you feel encouraged, make sure you feel supported, make sure you have the things that you need. We’re not running around like, I don’t have the budget to go buy a new outfit or do this. All of those things were taken care of.

She put so much thoughtfulness into the design of the set. I still think about that set. I look at pictures from my camera from that time and I’m just like, This is one of the coolest sets I’ve ever been on. Because it feels like somewhere I’d want to be.She just created this environment and this team and pulled us all together. Mayana is a fabulous storyteller, one of the best GMs I have ever played with. It’s really exciting to see what they were able to put together to just be a part of this.

We have to support independent studios. We have to make sure that those are the things that succeed and independent projects like this, where people are saying, this is what I want to see. This is what I want to see. If you want to see it, support it. These are people who deserve to be supported because they put their whole hearts into this. I’m exceptionally proud to be on the ride with them.

Saige Ryan: The set itself is, it’s fun and a dream to build. We’ve built so many taverns and dungeons. It is an incredible escape to build bright and colorful things. It’s a look that I don’t feel like we see a lot of and embracing femininity in D&D. It’s fun to be in. It brought a certain energy in the room.

Mayanna Berrin: It was super happy and warm. Y’all spoiled me with that blue tri circle thing and I didn’t even get to see it. It was behind me. But now I’m seeing it and I’m like, that thing looks so sick.

Krystina Arielle: The spinning dice stack.

Mayanna Berrin: Oh, the spinning dice stack. Love the spinning thing.

Krystina Arielle: You have to look close. Mayanna’s setup is so dope and it’s just to see so much unabashed [femininity]. I used to sell cars at one point in my life and one of my big things that was important to me was having a pink office, having a very girly office because it doesn’t take away anything. Our femininity doesn’t take away our ability, what we’re capable of. It enriches it. Our experiences as women, those things that we’ve been through, they make our stories richer. They make our lives richer. It’s nice. It is a true reflection of such unabashed girl joy and person joy. It’s just joyful. I hope that when people leave it, they feel happy.

Saige Ryan: For context on it, Clara Goldstein and I were literally hand cutting and painting pieces of foam all in our little studio. The entire set is handmade.

Mayanna Berrin: To the day that we shot. They were working tirelessly.

Saige Ryan: We’re a very, very, very small team, but everything is just like, well, we could probably figure it out. You can make almost anything out of foam.

About PixelCircus: Sunday Spy Club

Totally Spies meets Charlie’s Angels for an epic tale of subterfuge and mystery. As the members of the college spy club are thrust into the perilous realm of real espionage, they must rely on their trust for each other to see it through.