How to adapt an unadaptable novel? For Hulu's 'Normal People,' you hire the novelist
The writers of Hulu’s ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ break down the dramatic difference between the book’s ending and the series finale.“I think if you get the essence of the relationship right, people will almost overlay their imagined versions with the versions that they see,” Abrahamson notes. “If you get it right, there’s a fusion of reading the novel and the experience of watching the show.”
The actors’ ability to inhabit the characters helped solve the issue of the story’s timeline. The novel often skips entire weeks and months, only looking backward at key events when relevant to a particular scene. Initially, Rooney and Abrahamson considered keeping that structure, but after seeing how well Mescal and Edgar-Jones worked together, Abrahamson allowed the episodes to become more linear.
“What it does [with time] in the novel is intensifies the experience of reading it because she’s saying, ‘Now let me take you back and show you something that’s important,’” Abrahamson says. “It focuses the mind in a very particular way. And we do some of that on-screen. But in the end, when we were watching Daisy and Paul, it was just so strong that on many occasions we thought, ‘No, it’s better just to follow along and let it develop on-screen in a straightforward form.
The interiority of the novel became less of a concern once shooting began. Both Abrahamson and Macdonald took advantage of the visual medium to convey feelings that would normally require a written description — something Abrahamson learned to do in previous book-to-screen adaptations like “Room” and “The Little Stranger.” Here an emotion is revealed by a glance or a tuck of the hair or even a moment of silence.
“What I’ve learned is that you give credit to the audience for their own intelligence,” Mescal adds. “That you don’t show them all the things you have the luxury of showing them in a book. We can’t turn to camera and say we’re feeling something in a particular moment. You just give them credit to look at how these characters are communicating — or miscommunicating — and hopefully they’ll find that interesting and engaging.
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