Sandie Cheng – Imposters

We had the opportunity to interview Sandie Cheng, the writer and producer of the comedy series Imposters. Imposters will be screening Thursday January 5th at the Towne Hub in American Fork Utah during the Utah Film Festival. 

Imposters is a heartfelt indie comedy about students of color as they navigate friendships, relationships, parties, and campus scandals, all while staying ahead of the curve. The pilot episode launches a fictional Ivy League university into a nationwide scandal, when a group of fraternity brothers accidentally kidnap the wrong student for the initiation pledge party — the student they kidnapped just so happens to be the President’s son. 

What was the inspiration to make Imposters?

After the college admissions scandal of 2019 (the “Varsity Blues” scandal) and the ongoing debate surrounding Affirmative Action, Sandie was inspired to create a comedy that satirizes higher education and insidious ways microaggressions, nepotism, and bureaucracy seep into “good-intentioned” and “well-meaning” progressive institutions that she was all too familiar with. After leading a DEI committee at a global advertising agency in 2020, she found even more absurd humor in her colleagues’ and people on social media’s feeble attempts toward understanding systemic oppression and racism.  From there, she was even more determined to bring IMPOSTERS to life, tackling these important topics but through the lens of comedy.

From idea to completion, how did Imposters change?  

Believe it or not, this was a mockumentary at first! And we definitely added more characters as the pilot took shape.

What was the biggest challenge in getting Imposters made? 

The biggest challenge (besides the obvious of taking a hiatus in 2020 due to pandemic restrictions) was actually securing location and funding. Since Ward University is a character in itself, we wanted to capture the authentic feeling of an Ivy League institution (or an academic institution of a high caliber). However, when we approached many schools with this idea, many either had very high location fees or were not too keen on the subject matter of the film (apparently, Mindy Kaling’s The Sex Lives of College Girls ran into similar issues when location scouting).

What do you think is the most important takeaway from your show?

We actually have several “hot takes” when it comes to IMPOSTERS: from cancel culture to nepotism to microaggressions, so it’s difficult to pinpoint what is the most important as we tackle several important issues. However, we hope the audience approaches each of these characters, and the situation they have found themselves in, with a great deal of empathy to begin the dialogue on these necessary real-world issues.

If you could have a do over with Imposters is there anything that you would have done differently? If so, what would you change?

More batteries for cars and hire a catering company…even if we are in the middle of nowhere 🙂

What do you have in the works?

More episodes of IMPOSTERS, we hope!