ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did the seed start for each of you in these stories?
Let’s use that party."
Technology can definitely be the enemy of storytelling, especially in a thriller.
Taylor Jenkins and Paula Hawkins.Credit: Deborah Fenigold; Phoebe Grigor
I don’t tend to really examine police procedure very much, in any case.
[Laughs]
JENKINS REID:It just makes things way too simple.
Even in love stories “Well, just call her.”
Ballantine Books
It’s like, “No!
I don’t want you to be able to call her!”
Do you feel like you both still have to grapple with that?
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You don’t have to like someone to find yourself wanting them to get what they want.
And maybe you don’t like her or maybe you do, but you feel for her.
I think that’s the thing that I’m always working on.
But do you feel for the character?
Do you care what happens next?"
I’m curious, Paula, if that became very thorny for you as well.
HAWKINS:The likeability thing, I think, is a side issue, you put it very well.
Margaret Atwood said something about how people seem to judge characters as though they were people running for office.
They’re not there to be shining examples of humanity!
Novels would be very, very boring if everyone was good.
JENKINS REID:And you have an expectation going in to certain types of art.
But to me, that’s what’s really, really fun about entering into somebody else’s mind.
If it’s something I would do, then that’s just… my life.
HAWKINS:[to Reid] Yeah, can you surf now?
JENKINS REID:[Laughs]Yeah, right!
I can’t surf.
It was a lot of sort of embarrassing research like, “What does gnarly actually mean?
What’s a 6-2 thruster?”
But apart from that, not really.
I’m not a great researcher, I have to say.
I do tend to just make things up.
So, Mick Riva is somebody that I’ve been really obsessed with for a while.
And this is his moment.
Since that time he showed up inEvelyn Hugo, I’ve never liked him.
But I find him really, really compelling.
Why men like that do what they do, and how they keep getting away with it.
you could see why she falls, and then yeah he turns out to be a complete shit.
But I think he’s exactly the sort of man you just keep taking back.
HAWKINS:Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Certainly there are people who do, and I didn’t study creative writing at university.
For me definitely, it was incredible to have lived a bit.
I wouldn’t have been able to do it without that.
You needed that train commuteevery day.
HAWKINS:Yeah, exactly.
But for me, I didn’t have much to say until I had been through certain things.
And so that was the process for me.
Obviously you’ve already hada very big movie, Paula.
HAWKINS:I was quite sort of casual about giving up the rights, actually.
They haven’t done anything to it!
I am very precious about my work, I totally am.
But I want it to have the same intention.
That matters to me.
Writing is such a solitary life.
Do you both usually enjoy the part where you go out into the world and have to sell it?
JENKINS REID:It’s hard to say.
But Paula, I think you have more time than I do, right, till August… HAWKINS:Yeah, I moaned a lot about touring, but I take it all back.
Now that it’s been taken away from me I’m like, “Yes, I love it!
So there is some benefit there.
There’s something really special about it, so it’s absolutely something lost.
But like Paula’s saying, 2022, let’s see, maybe paperback tours?
Paula and I will go on the road together!
HAWKINS:Oh, definitely.
