East Los High inspired teens to write their own life story. The hit Hulu show and its digital ecosystem, East Los High social media and resource-rich website, doubled StayTeen.org’s website traffic on the day East Los High launched. An astonishing 22 percent of Planned Parenthood’s total “the check” widget visits during the first season were accessed through the East Los High website.
Building global sustainability for today and for tomorrow all begins with the rights of women and girls. The right to education, economic independence, and reproductive autonomy are the building blocks and must-haves for gender equality and a climate-conscious world.
PMC produced East Los High in association with Wise Entertainment as a Hulu original series for hulu.com. The 24-episode first season aired on June 3, 2013; the second season aired on July 9, 2014; season three aired on July 15, 2015; and season four aired on July 15, 2016. The finale aired on December 1, 2017.
East Los High rose to be one of the top five shows on hulu.com during its first season and has received six Emmy nominations. Because PMC hires producers, writers, and actors from the community we’re trying to reach, East Los High was Hollywood’s first and only series with an all Latino cast. It has drawn more than one million unique visitors to Hulu’s Latino page each month and has been written about in publications like the American Journal of Public Health for its impact on issues like adolescent sexual and reproductive health. StayTeen.org’s website traffic doubled on the day East Los High launched and 22 percent of Planned Parenthood’s total “the check” widget visits during the first season were accessed through the East Los High website.
PMC built East Los High based on PMC’s approach to entertainment-education hoping to help address teen pregnancy and other health and social issues. Bill Ryerson, PMC’s President, Katie Elmore Mota, PMC’s former Vice President of Communications and Programs, and Virginia Carter, former PMC board member with an Emmy and two Peabody awards to her credit, trained the East Los High writers in PMC’s methodology. The introduction of transmedia storytelling was inspired by formative research demonstrating robust media usage by the target audience and Mota’s recent Master’s degree.
PMC produced the first season of East Los High and subsequent seasons have been licensed to Wise Entertainment for production. Wise Entertainment is a Hollywood-based production company established by Mota after East Los High’s first season.
East Los High has been covered for its notable firsts (such as the all Latino cast), its exciting drama, and its educational content in news outlets such as NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Indiewire.
Season One of East Los High follows the lives of two Latina cousins, Maya and Jessie, as they face the hardest decisions of adolescence, including sex and relationships. As seniors at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, the two girls’ choices reflect their characters and visibly shape their futures with every step. Maya, a lone wolf with nothing to lose after running away from her tragic home, struggles with her dark past both physically and emotionally. Jessie, a pretty, popular girl on the straight and narrow, lives a seemingly perfect life – until it all falls apart.
From an entanglement of love triangles, pregnancy, obsession, infidelity, peer pressure, self-denial, and true love, the girls emerge profoundly changed. Audiences found themselves deeply engrossed in the dramatic lives of these teens while simultaneously learning through the characters’ experiences about reproductive health care and options, self-honesty, independence, self-confidence, healthy lifestyle choices, and the consequences of their actions. East Los High depicted the hard realities that face many teens and young adults, and through the trials and tribulations of the characters, the audience witnessed the importance of informed decision-making.
Interested in watching East Los High? The full series is available on the streaming platform Hulu.
