Coming to Crave on December 22, Nesting is a new short-form comedy series exploring fertility, friendship, and the housing crisis. Created by and starring Rosa Labordé and Anna Hardwick, the series is an excellent cozy watch for the holiday season.

Nesting follows two best friends eager to start a family. With no partners, no house, and no children, they decide to become co-parents, and embark on a chaotic adventure to find the perfect baby daddy. With Toronto’s housing crisis looming over them, Anna and Rosa struggle to find a home to build their nest in, and must lean on each other as their friendship evolves.

Nesting is inspired by Anna and Rosa’s experiences and their IRL friendship—the idea for the series was first born at a mutual friend’s engagement party. “We were so happy for her, but also so sad for us because we had yet to find our person and get started on our ultimate dream of having a family,” Anna says. 

“We jokingly flirted with the idea that if we were still single in a few years, we’d do it together… instantly it was like: yeah, that’s a really fun TV show,” adds Rosa.

We wanted to hear more from Anna and Rosa about the story behind Nesting, their creative synergy and making a show true to the realities of Toronto living. 

What were your visions for the characters of Anna and Rosa? How does their dynamic compare to yours?

Rosa: We very naturally slipped into the characters bearing our own names. It instantly brought comedy and vulnerability into our creative process because we started making fun of ourselves, we became less precious, open to our foibles and from that, open to transformation. “Meta” Rosa and Anna are the heightened, silliest, most neurotic versions of ourselves.

Anna: I like to think I had to go on those 500 terrible online dates to gather the material for this comedy series. Like in the show, Rosa often has to reign in my unbridled enthusiasm, and sometimes I have to wake Rosa up to things like the technological advances of this century.

We love that the series is exemplifying some of the different ways that a family can look like. Why was this important for you to explore?

Rosa: Nesting is a kind of “coming-of-age” story, it’s about letting go of the “picket-fence” ideal and finding what we really need, not a fantasy but a grounded connection based on mutual respect, love, acceptance and belonging. We both learned the hard way that life doesn’t necessarily turn out how we were programmed to expect it to.

Anna: For me, it wasn’t until I started seriously exploring becoming a single mother by choice that I actually met my partner. My first priority has always been my friendships, and a partner is a bonus. It takes a village to make a full life. We have lots of examples of alternative families in our lives, families built with the help of donors, queer families. We want people to feel seen, and to offer an alternative to what I call the hetero-normative marriage industrial complex.

Rosa: Especially now with the advent of “Mommunes” – single moms who come together in one household to parent together – it’s a really inspiring time to shed light on the myriad ways we can live, love, and raise families.

Many viewers will relate to how the cost of living factors into the lives and decisions of the characters, especially in Toronto. What did you set out to explore about cost of living and the housing crisis?

Anna: As artists in this city, we came up at a time when rents were semi-affordable, and from our waitress salaries, we could make independent theatre, and even take acting classes. I don’t know how young people are doing it now and I worry for the ecosystem of the arts in big cities. When I could finally afford a condo, I had to buy one that didn’t even have a cutlery drawer, it’s so small – so very Toronto. Immigrants, refugees and artists are leaving, it’s so hard here now. All the things that make Toronto such a fantastic city – theatre, art, people from all over the world. That’s all at risk. We wanted to address that, as it’s a factor when trying to build a family. How do you do it in this economy?

Rosa: It’s a constant question in our household… we rent because we can’t buy, we can’t buy because we spend so much in rent… we love the city and this is where my work is but… what to do? I’m seriously asking: what do we do? Anyone?

Conversations about fertility are something we don’t see a lot of on screen—as a comedy series, how did you go about addressing this?

Anna: What else can you do but laugh about one of the hardest things you can go through? I’ve lived through the very specific anguish of losing three pregnancies, and despite all the support and love I received, I still felt strangely alone and ashamed. It shouldn’t be that way. One in six people experience infertility and somehow it lands as a shameful secret for women to bear. I don’t want anyone to feel that way, so we want to air out the reality that most of us in our generation are facing. We’re postponing childbirth till later, because our careers are so demanding, the economy is so precarious, and dating is such a minefield. Let’s talk about this, find the humanity and humour in it, and feel less alone.

What was it like working together on this series?

Anna: Making a TV show with someone is a marriage! We’ve had some tough moments but the more vulnerable we are with each other, the better our relationship and our work. We met in our twenties, fresh out of theatre school in England, longing for community in Toronto. We built that through a theatre company together and now have a tight-knit group of friends we often work with.

Rosa: The core of our story is love, and we’re closer now after making a show together, so that says a lot.

Anna: We bring different skills. Rosa has a career as an in-demand TV writer, so it was an honour that she would want to write a show with me. The biggest honour was when she would send my scripts back, saying they weren’t good enough. She believed in me to be better, and I’m so proud of what we ended up with. I have experience in producing, small business and marketing, and I tend to roll with things when they get hairy.

Rosa: Anna’s optimism is bizarre, hilarious, but also unstoppable. Enthusiasm is her superpower.

It’s also compelling to see a loving female friendship at the centre of the story. In your lives, what does friendship mean to you?

Anna: Nesting is a true love story between two best friends. Friendship is everything to me. It’s literally at the top of my hierarchy of needs! When it takes you a long time to find your partner, you develop friends that are family. Rosa has been there for me in my worst moments. I couldn’t do life without her and our group of friends.

Rosa: Life is unpredictable, sometimes beautiful, sometimes devastating, we are all on this wild journey of being humans together in a complicated world. Friendship is an anchor in the storm, it’s the family we choose to witness and accompany us in the messiness of our existence. Studies have been done that confirm strong friendships are the key ingredient for life satisfaction. Anna and I are so lucky to be part of a network of incredibly nourishing friendships. Making a show celebrating friendship feels like a natural extension of that.

In a few words or a sentence, how would you describe what viewers can expect from Nesting?

Anna: Nesting is like a great date. It’s going really well, you’re laughing hysterically, there’s major attraction, and it ends with a warm hug, that may or may not turn into the hottest makeout session of your life?