Summary
Sometimes the tiniest real-world questions prompt the most immense existential answers.
What if you were the only person who could hear a noise?
It’s not inside your head; you simply can’t locate its source.
Image via BBC
How would you unravel?
How would your relationships and fundamental beliefs change or evolve?
I don’t quite know where everything ends, but what a captivating story.
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JORDAN TANNAHILL: Thank you so much.
Jordan, I’ll give you these duties as the author of the book.
Would you mind giving a brief synopsis of your story?
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It implicates her in a pretty wild world of conspiracy, faith, and mania.
Many questions about adapting your book to the series format.
Youre obviously a very, very experienced writer, but this marks your first time writing a limited series.
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Is there any particular writing learning curve you experienced writing forthatformat?
I think you have to not be precious with anything.
It’s a lot of iterative drafts.
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We tried a bunch of them and found the best one, I think.
First, I’ll follow up on the idea of not being precious about it.
TANNAHILL: Interesting question.
For me, the non-negotiable thing is Claire’s interior world and journey and primacy in the piece.
Actually, at first, I thought, What are we gonna lose in that process?
But I think we actually found a lot, and I think it’s a different story.
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Once there was Rebecca, she’s so connected to the DNA of the piece.
REBECCA HALL: It was an anticlimactic reunion.
It felt sort of strange.
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HALL: It made me a tad self-conscious.
Are you seeing how tired I am right now?
BRAVO: [Laughs] No, it’s just that I know you so intimately.
Image via Netflix.
I don’t know that that’s really answered your question.
That’s not me blowing smoke up these guys behinds.
One of my agents said to me, There is a project out there.
An English teacher, begins to hear a low humming sound that no one else around her can hear.
I was like, That sentence.
I’ll take it.
I want that job.
It’s clearly outside.
I recently painted my house, and suddenly I’m like, The house looks completely different.
It’s just that.
Then I read the scripts, and all my hopes for it were fulfilled.
And so I was just really excited to do it.
I think there’s a criteria for me for things that feel appealing.
It’s not about being challenged.
In a crisis, youhaveto go up there, and you have to do it.
You have to follow through because it’s a crisis, so you don’t have any choice.
I think that’s a really brilliant way of articulating the thing that I’m always looking for.
Does this scare me in some way?
Is there a possibility that I’m going to be embarrassed on set doing this?
Is there a possibility that I’m going to feel incredibly vulnerable?
That’s the truth of what this was for me.
HALL: Scary is the wrong word again.
They’re all like mini-crises, aren’t they?
I don’t know that I can pit them against each other in that way.
I will say thatthis has been one of the more fulfilling jobs of my life, without question.
Something about the alchemy of these two people sitting here, all of us on this couch.
It had a special flavor to it.
I havesomuch respect for Janicza Bravo, like so much.
She’s a mad visionary.
BRAVO: I make her say my whole name, just so you know.
HALL: I always say her name.
It’s Janicza Bravo.
I have so much respect for him, also.
I’d be really happy working with these two for the rest of my life, honestly.
[Laughs]
That’s kind of my question!
You veered towards the TV format instead.
I really struggle with showing up if it’s not turning me on, and I’ve tried that.
It’s just a very bad recipe.
I start shutting down in a way that I didn’t even know was possible, actually.
There were things that came my way that felt like variations on the same theme.
Actually, my manager had put this in front of me.
I read it, and I really fell for it.
I think what turned me on the most was that it scared me and made me a little uncomfortable.
I wasn’t sure if Icouldland it.
I was like, I should go there if it’s making me a little worried.
Wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out?
Why did this particular story benefit from having one voice as a director?
So, this was an opportunity to immerse myself in the entire arc of the experience.
HALL: I didn’t do a lot of that sort of work.
I felt that something that was very important about Claire is that she could be any of us.
She’s going to be a version of myself.
BRAVO: Oh, shes English!
There wasn’t that much else to think about.
I found that shockingly effective here!
BRAVO: Oh, thank you.
I think I wanted us all to question our own sense of what is and isn’t there.
It is also at the foundation of the world that Jordan built.
It’s like very much like the house stands on that.
It’s too effective.
BRAVO: You start to realize that you hear stuff, right?
And so that was, perhaps, the thing that I feel most.
I lovePassing, and many people out there lovePassing.
While prepping, how do you expect your process to change when wearingtwohats on that production?
HALL: I don’t know.
Ask me in a couple of years.
I want the answer now and then compare after the fact!
[Laughs]
HALL: It feels like the next frontier.
There might be something else before that.
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