What “After the Hunt” Gets Right
Annie Julia Wyman, writer of The Chair, reflects on Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt. In 2017, she left academia for the entertainment industry due to the challenging humanities Ph.D. job market, only to co-create The Chair, a Netflix series about the academic world she had left behind.
During the writing process, Wyman and her co-creator discussed the complex nature of professors, describing them as sometimes uptight, self-aggrandizing, depressive, controlling, petty, kind, idealistic, noble, and wise—all traits that can coexist. They also explored a shared material desperation relatable even to non-academics.
The fictional Pembroke campus in The Chair is depicted as corporatizing, with humanities enrollment declining. Professors become anxious and defensive, particularly the older white men who complicate the life of Sandra Oh’s character, the first woman of color to chair the English Department and the one striving to protect their jobs.
This setup created a compelling dramatic situation, especially as the protagonist falls for a colleague—a troubled white man who persistently challenges campus cancel culture. Upon its 2021 release, Wyman feared the show might offend her academic friends and mentors as undignified and overly truthful about the field’s flaws. However, those concerns proved unfounded.
"We also discussed a kind of material desperation I knew well and to which we thought viewers who weren’t academics might relate."
"Pembroke, the fictional campus where our show takes place, is corporatizing. Humanities enrollments are dropping; our professors start freaking out, clawing at each other, retrenching."
"When The Chair was released in 2021, I worried that it would strike my friends and former mentors in academia as wildly unflattering: undignified, too truthful about how silly our field can be. But those worries turned out to be unwarranted."
Summary: Wyman’s experience informed The Chair, portraying academia’s challenges and personalities with honesty and complexity, resonating beyond academic circles.
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