Headline Newds Season 2 Takes on Big Oil’s Climate Disinformation Machine

EMMREPORT

LOS ANGELES — Following what the release describes as the hottest summer on record in the United States, devastating glacier floods in Nepal and a United Nations warning that the world will soon breach 1.5°C, Headline Newds is returning for a second season built to make climate science difficult to ignore.

The social-media series takes a deliberately unconventional route into climate communication: adult content creators unpack complicated issues in 90-second comedy sketches that satirize familiar porn clichés. The Instagram versions remain just safe enough for the platform, while additional cuts are available through OnlyFans.

Produced by filmmaker Bree Essrig, Skins star Megan Prescott and climate narrative strategist Jessica Riches, the project is made with Yellow Dot Studios, the nonprofit media studio founded by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Adam McKay.

Season 1 reached millions while drawing viewers who might not normally engage with climate content. Creators including Essrig, Prescott, Rebecca Crow and Eva Oh addressed solar energy, climate censorship, extreme heat, flooding and fossil-fuel financing. The release reports that 71.4% of the show’s Instagram audience was male, with men ages 35–44 forming its largest individual viewing demographic.

Season 2 expands to 11 episodes featuring adult creators from the United Kingdom and United States, including Lily Phillips, Little Puck, Aaliyah Yasmin and Girthmasterr.

The premiere, “Body Count,” stars Phillips and flips the language surrounding her headline-making body count toward a more urgent question: how many people have died because of fossil-fuel-driven air pollution, extreme heat and climate disasters, and how many more remain at risk while governments protect the industry?

Elsewhere, Girthmasterr tackles “Godzilla El Niño,” turning an extreme climate phenomenon into a comic and accessible climate-science lesson. Other episodes explore carbon footprints, microplastics, wet-bulb temperatures, data centers and fossil-fuel power while presenting what the series calls “sexy solutions” to the climate crisis.

The creative team argues that sex workers and digital creators are unusually equipped for this work because they already communicate from within heavily censored and stigmatized spaces. Their audiences are built through directness, intimacy and a willingness to address subjects mainstream culture often avoids.

“Everybody and their mother knows what microplastics are at this point, but what they don’t know is how much money big oil spends covering up the fact that they’re killing us. If I have to throw my ass in circles to get that information out there, then I’ll just stay bent over until that’s what kills me instead.” said Bree Essrig, co-creator of Headline Newds

“Hotness is awesome and fun when it’s ladies and dudes on OnlyFans. But when the hotness pertains to oil companies cooking the entire planet just to get their stock price higher it, to use a scientific term, sucks.” said Adam McKay, Producer of Headline Newds

“We’re always experimenting with fresh ways to talk about climate. And when we’re fighting against the disinformation of Big Oil and the destruction they’re leaving behind, we forced to bring out the big buns.” said Staci Roberts-Steele, Producer of Headline Newds

“Sex workers have been censored and discriminated against for generations, yet they’ve often been at the forefront of important social movements. Big Oil has spent decades censoring the truth about climate change, suppressing, distracting and muddying the conversation. So why wouldn’t sex workers be powerful people to help bring that information into the mainstream? The question shouldn’t be ‘Why is Lily Phillips talking about climate change?’ It should be ‘Why isn’t every politician talking about it?’ If people are more outraged by who is delivering the message than by the fact that fossil-fuel companies have been profiting while damaging the planet, that says a lot about what we still choose to care about as a society.” said Megan Prescott, co-creator of Headline Newds

“As someone who’s worked in climate comms for the past decade, I’m tired of impact reports and progressive infighting. The best time to act was when we learned Big Oil was covering up its impact. The second best time is now. Headline Newds is my rallying cry to the industry: fight fire with something hotter. Parasocial creators, who’ve built audiences through intimacy and connection, are the perfect fighters in the information war between Big Oil and the planet.” said Jessica Riches, co-creator of Headline Newds

Essrig is an actor, writer and presenter known for Discovery Digital’s SourceFed and work with The Young Turks. She later moved into independently produced filmmaking funded through OnlyFans, including the award-winning short Palm Swings and the feature Sugar Baby, released across Prime, Apple and Starz in 2024.

Prescott is an actor, writer and director best known for playing Katie “f**king” Fitch, one of the “Twins from Skins.” Her debut solo show Really Good Exposure premiered at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, won Best Fringe Debut, earned a BBC Popcorn Writer’s Award nomination, transferred to Soho Theatre and received an OFFIE award. She also chairs National Ugly Mugs, a charity working to reduce violence against sex workers.

Riches is a filmmaker and narrative strategist whose work examines how storytelling shapes public understanding of climate change, artificial intelligence and other existential risks. Her projects include the UN’s Verified for Climate program, a fellowship with UCL’s Climate Action Unit and a sitcom with Climate Spring. Her work has been presented at the UN General Assembly and the Vatican, while her feature script won the Climate Film Festival audience award and was shortlisted for Ari Aster’s Square Peg talent lab.

Yellow Dot Studios produces media focused on Big Oil disinformation, the consequences of media and government inaction, and ways people can prepare and act. Its work includes the documentaries You Need This and Just Look Up, the Apple Podcasts-recognized SABOTAGE, comedy shorts featuring performers including Rainn Wilson, D’Arcy Carden, Tim Robinson and Nikki Glaser, The Extreme Weather Report, and the live show Let’s Not Die!. Producers working alongside McKay include Staci Roberts-Steele, Anna Wenger, Elijah Zarlin and Brittney Badduke.

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