CATFISH
She catfished every man who lied to her. Now someone is catfishing her.
A lonely ER nurse, living under a stolen identity to escape a traumatic past, finds her carefully constructed life unraveling when her escalating online deceptions, and a virtual romance with a man closer than she thinks, threaten to expose her buried secrets.
The Undoing meets Fleabag, with the coastal suspense of Big Little Lies.
THE NOVEL. THE SERIES. THE VERTICAL.
Catfish began as a novel. It has since been adapted into an award-winning limited series pilot and a vertical drama built for the phone screen.
THE NOVEL
Where it all began. Published in paperback, hardcover, Kindle and audiobook.
Buy on AmazonTHE LIMITED SERIES
A one-hour psychological thriller in six episodes. The pilot, “Sliding Doors,” has won seven screenplay awards.
- Format · 6 × 60 min
- Genre · Psychological thriller
- Available · Pilot script & series bible
THE VERTICAL DRAMA
Catfish rebuilt for the phone screen: short, cliffhanger-driven episodes, mapped from the first match to the last lie.
- Format · 87 episodes, 60–120 seconds
- Status · Episodes 1–20 scripted
- Available · Scripts & pitch packet
In a world where you can be anyone, how do you find the courage to be yourself?
In an era of digital curation, we are all catfishing to some degree, editing our lives to appear more successful, more loved and more whole.
Catfish peels back the glossy veneer of modern dating to explore the raw, uncomfortable reality of female loneliness, and the lengths one woman will go to for a sense of agency. It’s a razor-sharp, provocative journey into the masks we wear online and the people we become behind them.
THE PLAYERS
JEWEL / MELISSA SNOW
An empathetic ER nurse by day and a master manipulator by night. Living under a stolen identity to outrun a traumatic past, she builds elaborate online personas (Chelsea, Raquel, Estelle, Amanda) to feel a sense of control. Bitingly witty and deeply fractured, she uses a laptop screen as both a weapon and a shield.
SAM DREYFUSS
Jewel’s kind, observant neighbor, and the genuine connection she craves but fears. Sam is lonely too, and he has secrets of his own.
CATE
Chic, high-society and seemingly in possession of it all, Cate struggles with kleptomania and a hunger for validation. She is Jewel’s enabler and confidante, but her own compulsions threaten to bring their shared house of cards tumbling down.
JAKE
Jewel’s narcissistic ex-boyfriend. His callous ghosting, and the discovery of his deceptive online life, set off Jewel’s descent into catfishing. He is the original hook she cannot stop trying to reel in.
TONE & VOICE
Prestige suspense laced with dark, cynical humor. Sharp, character-driven dialogue and a biting, confessional voice-over from Jewel give the audience intimate access to her unreliable point of view. The look moves between the sterile chaos of the hospital, the warm, performative glow of Malibu bars and the cool blue light of late-night scrolling.
THE PILOT & THE SEASON
“SLIDING DOORS”
We open at Mastro’s in Malibu, where Jewel is running a real-time con on a handsome stranger named Kyle. She isn’t there as herself. She’s there to intercept a date he was supposed to have with one of her personas, “Estelle.”
Flashbacks reveal how it started: a devastating breakup with Jake. When Jewel finds him back on the dating app weConnect just days later, she creates Chelsea, a sexy, confident brunette, to bait him into telling the truth. What she learns is sobering. The thrill of the manipulation is intoxicating.
In the present, the con on Kyle backfires spectacularly. Publicly humiliated, Jewel retreats to her apartment and a shoebox of memories surrounding her mother’s death. Then she builds a new persona, Raquel, and matches with Jake again, and what he tells Raquel rewrites everything Jewel thought she knew about the two of them.
THE SERIES ARC
- The virtual romance. As “Amanda,” Jewel falls into a deep emotional connection with a man named Max, who is far closer to home than she realizes.
- The shared lie. Jewel helps Cate catfish her own cheating boyfriend, blurring the line between sisterhood and psychological warfare.
- The past resurfaces. The hunt for Jake’s secrets leads Jewel to his pregnant wife, Tracey, and a campaign of digital sabotage that threatens to breach her own firewall.
- A stranger from the past. Aunt Carol arrives in L.A. searching for a niece she lost years ago, and the identity Jewel has lived inside for twenty years begins to crack.
How it ends is in the pilot and the series bible.
SEVEN SCREENPLAY AWARDS
- WinnerBest TV Series Script · Script Awards Los Angeles
- WinnerBest Television Script · Los Angeles Film Awards
- Semi-FinalistLos Angeles International Screenplay Awards
- Quarter-FinalistSouthern California Screenplay Competition
- Quarter-FinalistPage Turner Screenplays · The 100
Also recognized by the Outstanding Screenplays TV Pilot Competition and the Finish Line Script Competition.
READ THE PILOT
The pilot script, series bible and vertical drama pitch packet are available on request.