“I wanted to be able to show how mad she was at the beginning,” Ms.

Only when she finds a cheap vintage jacket and decides to style it and flip it on eBay - the spark of what becomes a dizzyingly successful online fashion business - is she challenged to grow up. She steals a sandwich from her boss and a rug from the side of the street. In the pilot, Sophia is a listless 23-year-old who is allergic to responsibility. Theron refused to water down the “Girlboss” concept - or to ditch the title - television networks passed.

Along the way, she signed a development deal with 20th Century Fox TV. Cannon made her mark as a writer and producer working for Tina Fey on “30 Rock,” where she was nominated for an Emmy, then on the Fox series “New Girl” and as the writer of the successful “Pitch Perfect” films. Cannon, one of Hollywood’s most in-demand writers of female comedic characters. She optioned the book and brought it to Ms. Amoruso’s “#GIRLBOSS” - partly a memoir of her rise to success, partly a manifesto for inspiring other women to rise, too - landed in the hands of Charlize Theron. Her real-life story has grown even thornier in the lead-up to the series premiere. Amoruso became the face of young female entrepreneurship, a position that attracted both outsize attention to and criticism of her business dealings. And in Sophia (played by the “Tomorrowland” star Britt Robertson), the show is riffing off a real-life, flawed, female boss. Cannon will try to slay the likability requirement, one that prevents writers from giving female characters the rough edges that make for the most interesting storytelling. With “Girlboss,” which debuts on Netflix on Friday, Ms.

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