Picture Credit: Isiah Donté Lee / Netflix
Cinematographer Isiah Donté Lee only had a couple of hours to get his head around the scripts of Quinn Shephard’s The Body before meeting with the team to sign on — but once he got his hands on them, he immediately got lost in the story.
Netflix’s The Body doesn’t hide its inspirations: writer, showrunner and director Quinn Shephard took inspiration from a range of media including Mean Girls, Carrie, and Jennifer’s Body. The series embraces these inspirations both tonally and story-wise, but goes in its own unique direction. We follow a group of Catholic school girls who experience prophetic visions after a dance-team initiation goes wrong — and eventually, those visions birth mass hysteria across their town.
A series like The Body doesn’t rely on action sequences and big set pieces; instead, it favours a dark, gloomy, and ominous atmosphere, creating a horror that slowly gets under your skin and makes you uncomfortable. One of those responsible for
When you first read the scripts for The Body, what drew you to this project, especially as a cinematographer? What creative opportunities did you see in getting involved?
For me, it was interesting because we received the script and I only had a couple of hours to read it before meeting. In a lot of ways, it was great because I had fresh thoughts about what I had just read and I could speak with them about it immediately. I just got lost in the script when I was reading it.
As people will see, the characters are so interesting, the writing is so tight and clever. There were all of these different elements that I thought would be exciting to communicate visually. On top of that, Quinn had put together a little reel of, tonally, how she felt about the show and what she was looking for.It’s interesting looking back on that proof of concept reel that she put together: it’s literally, tonally, exactly what the show ended up becoming, which is amazing. It was exciting for me to chat with Quinn and see that she already had such a strong idea about what she was trying to create. It was so uniquely her and her perspective on the world.
To be honest, 2004 [when the show is set] is interesting because every time we think about a period piece, we think 70s, 60s, 50s. 2004 is a long time ago now, it’s over 20 years. It was interesting to think back on that time, for me, starting high school and remembering that’s a period piece at this point.It was exciting to go back into that world and have a lot of pop culture references that I was familiar with just because I lived through it. All of that was exciting.
From a visual standpoint, atmospherically, I was able to work in a way that had the elements of horror, which is something that I haven’t really been able to jump into thus far in my career. I felt like my natural sensibility sort of lent itself to what they were hoping to create atmospherically. I love to play with shadow and light.
The Body – Season 1. (L to R) Kyra Pierce as Bailey, Bella Neuspiel as Katie, Sara Boustany as Elise, Sarah Abbot as Olivia, Geena Meszaros as Lisbeth, Shirley Chen as Maddie, Emily Roman as Claire, Phallon Pierce as Brit in episode 101 of The Body. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
Reading interviews with Quinn Shephard, it’s clear that this show takes a lot of inspiration from classics: Mean Girls, Carrie, Jennifer’s Body. How did you embrace these references in your work?
The goal was to use those elements and references as a jumping-off point. To hopefully create something that felt a little bit more gritty. It’s grounded.
I was hoping to create something with a little bit more bite to it visually. For me, I think that with a lot of those films, visually the goal is to keep the viewers comfortable while they are watching characters interact. For me, I wanted to create cinematography that’s a little uncomfortable. To create images that you feel a little uncomfortable with. I think that with a little bit of inspiration, we mixed it up and remixed it a little bit — it just brought a little bit more grit to that idea.
How do you strike that balance between teen drama, supernatural, and even humour without straying too far into one or too far into the other?
That’s a great question. I think that for me, the answer is not focusing on any of those things. For us, the goal was always to think about the scene and what we were hoping to communicate; what we wanted the audience to feel. We were going to approach it with those things in mind and less about: this is supposed to be a horror moment; this is a comedic moment. Things of that nature.
We let the emotion of the moment dictate. Use the light and the camera. I think for us, it was kind of a mixed bag of tools. We had essentially every tool at our disposal. We used almost every technique that’s known to some to express different things. It was great. It was liberating to know that we could essentially do anything.
That’s one of my favourite things about working with Quinn. She has this really good internal guidance. It allows her to know when something that we’re doing feels right or feels wrong. We were able to use that as a check and balance for all of the different approaches and techniques that we were using in the show.
The Body – Season 1. (L to R) Kristina Bogic as Anya, Sara Boustany as Elise in episode 106 of The Body. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
From the top of your head, would you say there are any particular scenes or moments in the series that were particularly challenging to shoot?
I think when you look at the pilot, the entire Devil’s House sequence, or just all of those scenes and all of those moments, we shot that literally at the beginning of production. Our first week was basically Devil’s House week. It was overnights, cold.
Meeting all of these characters and having these very important pivotal moments and scenes be the first thing that we put on film. Usually you hope to get going and get into a little groove. But for us, we use that as our launching off point. It was just extremely difficult to start with and to shoot that stuff in a time crunch as well because we didn’t have a tonne of time.
This was my first time working with Quinn. As a director and DP, obviously we know how important that relationship is. A lot of times at the beginning of production, it was a way to start learning each other and figuring out what she likes, what I like, and how to blend those two things together to execute what we’re trying to execute. To do that in such a difficult setting with such important scenes, it was tough.
You worked as the Director of Photography for the most episodes in this show. How do you collaborate with your peers to sort of align your visions?
I was a cinematographer for episodes 1, 2, 6, and 8. I did those episodes with Quinn as the director. For the other episodes, we had two other directors and two other cinematographers.
Honestly, the key to that, which is something I’m still trying to figure out as much as possible, is really just to bring the other DPs into the fold of what we’re doing as early as possible. Just so they’re able to not only absorb what we’re thinking and what we’re creating, but have their own input.
Just like every other position on a film set, allowing people to be as collaborative as possible. Allow their input to be heard. It’s still tough because at the end of the day, this is what makes us artists. We all have our own unique way that we see things and the way that we would go about executing things. Especially in moments where it gets tough on set, I think a lot of people’s natural instincts start to come out. That’s the thing that, at times, can get tricky.
I think the biggest thing is bringing them into the picture as early as possible. Just being collaborative from the beginning.
I think what helped in this show is Quinn had such a strong idea of what the show was. Such a strong vision for things that everybody that was coming on board, not just cinematographers, all artists, as we came on board, we had such a great template to build off of or a guidebook for what the overall goal of the show was. We were able to work from that, which is great.
The Body – Season 1. Jackson Kelly as Leo in episode 103 of The Body. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
What was your experience like working with Quinn Shephard? She created and wrote this show, and directed several episodes.
I think one of the special things about Quinn, aside from just being incredibly smart and intelligent and creative, is this ability she had. I don’t know if this comes from her having some acting experience in the past, but I think that what she does that I love so much, as a director she’s truly emotionally present in what we are doing in every moment.
She’s able to allow that to guide us. And sometimes it’s frustrating because it’s like, oh man, this isn’t working. Why is it not working? And I think that that is the most true and honest way for us to get to what we’re ultimately trying to get to, what we’re attempting to discover, is by letting that sort of emotional guidance system guide everybody into where we’re trying to go.
It’s a way of just being incredibly present and empathetic about what is being put on the screen.
The Body – Season 1. (L to R) Emily Roman as Claire, Bella Neuspiel as Katie, Kristina Bogic as Anya, Kyra Pierce as Bailey, Phallon Pierce as Brit, Sara Boustany as Elise in episode 108 of The Body. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
We thank Isiah Donte Lee for his time. The Body is now streaming on Netflix.
