I think all authors dream of having their work adapted.
I know that when I was writing Shadow and Bone
there was this little tiny voice in the back of my mind
that couldn't help but say, what if, what if, we someday got to...
to make this into a movie or a television show.
I'm Leigh Bardugo, author of Shadow and Bone
and the Six of Crows series.
Hi, everyone. I'm Jenny Han,
the author of the To All The Boys book series.
We are friends.
I'm not sure I know when we first met, do you?
I do know when we first met.
I like to host writing retreats,
and so I like to rent a nice house and then, like, invite
other writers to come join me.
There is always a hot tub, there are always cocktails.
Leigh came, 2014 maybe.
And I was actually there when Jenny was working on the trilogy.
And my name is in one of the books because I contributed,
so Jeff Bardugo is named after me.
That is right.
I don't read a lot of contemporary YA, but I had read Jenny's books
and really fallen in love with them because they're not just about romance.
There's all this wonderful world-building and this real beauty
and aesthetic, and this deep idea of family
that I connected with.
I mean, you've been so generous and wise through this process.
Sort of from moment one I have relied very heavily on your advice,
and I've been very grateful for it.
For me the gift of To All The Boys was thinking about
down the road and hopefully with it being successful
that it would be a little easier for others.
So, I don't think there is one way that a book becomes a show or a movie.
We went to our first meeting with Netflix,
and one of the executives there said, "We care about
the stories of young people, we take them seriously."
And that really struck me.
My experience was really different than Leigh's.
We had already made the whole movie and then sold it to Netflix.
So, Netflix didn't come onboard until after.
I think that's part of why it's such a difficult process.
The road is varied in length and difficulty
depending on the project.
Then we brought Eric Heisserer on, and really from the first time
he and I sat down...
he had such enthusiasm and respect for not just the material
but the fans of the material,
that I thought, "Okay, we're going to roll the dice.
I think we found the right partners."
The idea of collaboration, I think, is the filmmakers have their vision
of this story and then I have my vision, and then there's the book.
I want to support the best version of this
while still trying to protect what I think the fans care about.
Even though I'm the author, I'm just one voice in the room,
and it didn't always mean getting my way,
and sometimes that was frustrating, but sometimes something even better
came out of the process of challenge.
And I think that's what successful collaboration is.
People will always have the books to go back to,
but the show is something that I believe maintains the heart of the books,
but that offered something completely new to people
who love these stories and love these characters.
There is a confrontation between Kaz and the Darkling
that is very brief, it's sort of the Superman versus Batman
question of the fandom, and I'll be curious to see how readers react
to that particular moment.
Hello, my name is Sam, I have a YouTube channel
called Thoughts on Tomes, where I discuss books.
Anything that I'm most excited about regarding the Shadow and Bone
Netflix adaptation is honestly all of it.
This is my favorite series, and I never thought I was going to see it adapted.
So, Leigh, my big question for you is what scene from the books,
whether it's been adapted yet or not,
is the scene you most wanted to see adapted?
Hi, Sam. I knew it was you as soon as they mention the name,
but the scene where Alina first encounters the Stag physically,
and this moment where she understands
that the Stag has been calling to her all along,
and that this is a particular moment in her journey,
that she didn't know he was waiting for either,
it really hit me in the heart, and I just sobbed through that.
One thing I love for Always and Forever, Lara Jean was in the books
she talks about going to Korea for, I think it was spring break,
with her family, and it's off the page, we don't actually see it happen,
but in the movie they have to go and...
That was really special for me as a Korean-American
to go back to Korea and bring my family.
Hi. My name is Cindy from the YouTube channel withcindy,
where I post content related to books and movies and movies based on books.
I was wondering what are the ways that the relationships between your characters
have changed or evolved for these adaptations?
Hey, Cindy. I know you. You're hilarious.
There were a couple of things that I do think shifted.
One of the great gifts that the show gave me was,
instead of just being in Alina's head, we get to see a wider view
of the world, both in terms of the Darkling or General Kirigan.
And I think for me what was important was Mal's journey
and what it meant to be expendable,
and a grunt in this army that didn't seem to care if he lived or died.
And so, getting to see his journey with his friends
and what he was going through while we see what happens
with Alina at the Little Palace,
I think is a much more powerful way to experience that relationship.
But I think also for me, one thing I realized was that...
the actors themselves change the character.
Yes, I think that's so true.
I think that Noah brought his own, like, flavor to Peter from book to film.
Peter might be a little bit softer in the movie than he is in the book.
You see it. He has a very expressive face,
and you see it in his eyes that he gives a damn.
They bring their own experiences, their own kind of energy
and physicality to these characters,
and so they become human and alive in a very different way,
and I think do become, in some ways,
different characters than they ever were in the books.
I have to think that the success of To All The Boys
with an Asian woman in the lead
had to be one of the reasons why it was so easy for us
to make the casting choice with Alina.
I was very excited because, you know, they decided they wanted to make Alina
mixed race, and Mal, as well.
They wanted the two orphans to have grown up,
you know, with more adversity.
I love the way they took the source material and made it into,
you know, something a little bit more diverse,
I mean, it's diverse, anyway,
but having, you know,
to me, I would've loved to have a mixed race of characters to look up to
when I was growing up.
I'm not sure that everybody would have been as welcoming
and on board if you hadn't already proved
that this was a valuable way to show a love story and an adventure.
I've been hearing that from a lot of people, like,
just not even just authors,
but people who went into, like, pitch a movie, and they were pitching it
with an Asian lead, and they were able to point To All the Boys.
The meat and potatoes of YA is our fan base is young women,
like that is who we write for.
That's who shows up today, they want to see themselves,
and they want great stories where they're the hero.
So, you had your Jennifer Lawrence, your Kristen Stewart,
Emma Watson, and so for Lana, I said, like,
"I want you to be Lara Jean,
and I want you to be able to keep getting parts.
I don't want this to just be the one thing
that you got to do and be the star of.
People's imagination about what an All-American Girl
can look like has been very limited until recently.
I remember very clearly seeing Amita's tape.
And when she came on the screen, she was so beautiful
and looked like, she truly looked like
she'd stepped out of Kevin Wada's art of Inej.
With casting Alina, I have to say, too, I think Jesse is so extraordinary.
I love that you described it as a lack of imagination.
That imagination has clearly broadened as people embraced her.
I remember arriving the first day on set,
and I don't think I understood the scale of what was happening.
It was like a small city, you know, all of these sound stages,
they had built sand skiffs, there was an entire Grisha encampment,
there were streets you could wander down in Ketterdam like...
I-- and I actually found it frightening.
I felt, like, stunned, it was almost like the sausage factory moment
where you're like, "This is how it gets made, huh?"
Leigh, did you get to decide what your cameo is going to be?
No, not at all.
I told Eric I wanted to die horribly,
like, I just wanted-- I wanted to be like stabbed or murdered by a Volcra.
And really it happened to be sort of whatever
they were shooting when I was on set.
When I was writing the book, it was a very dark time in my life.
I didn't know what my path was going to be,
I didn't know what the future held,
but I remember writing that scene and thinking about the choreography of it,
and how the Grisha would enter the room and the colors they would be wearing,
and to then be in that moment was pretty powerful.
Your cameo, you look so elegant and sort of...
Whereas I look like such a goof because I'm a terrible actress.
I just have this huge grin on my face.
I have way more, like, admiration for actors
after doing my little, like, cameos because on the third film
they had me doing some dialogue, and then it got cut.
But I was nervous.
I was, like, "Please, I don't need to be doing dialogue."
And then I was, like, looking at this playback and I was like,
"We don't need..."
"We don't need to see all that.
Let's just be in and out, in and out. There I am, goodbye."
You know, when you have a movie on Netflix, the reach is, like, huge.
It's really, like, incomprehensible to think
about how many people are seeing that.
I think as an author you can feel very, like, vulnerable and kind of naked
because the book-reading audience is minuscule
compared to how many millions of people will see it on Netflix.
When you open it up, suddenly it's like a lot of people
who don't know you, who don't know the books,
kind of weighing in on it, and I think, Leigh, we've talked about this before,
I think you have to be really protective over yourself and your creativity.
I always say scared artists make bad art,
and I think the idea of a writer trying to please everyone
or trying to please the most people is not...
That's not the way I want to live or create or write.
That's not what I'm in it for.
I want fandom to be a positive place for people
and a place that they can comment and feel kinship
if their world at home or at school is not treating them well.
So, it would break my heart to see
people be unkind to each other within the Grishaverse.
Yeah, you gain things and you also lose things.
And that just how it goes, and there's so much to be gained
from having, you know, such a bigger audience,
and for people to hear your stories,
because you write stories so people that can hear your stories,
and that's the greatest privilege.
A lot of the discourse around YA is very much, well, you know,
"Why do people like it? Why do people want it?"
And there's a desire to dismiss it and to demean it.
But the fact is the market decides. People are hungry for something.
Then the market rises up to meet it, and people were hungry
for a particular kind of romance.
They were hungry for a particular kind of story and adventure, and...
that's what YA is, it's answering that call for people
who want to see themselves as heroes, who want magic.
Why should magic and adventure and romance
only go to one kind of person?
Yeah, I'm very grateful to you, Jenny, and I'm very grateful...
And I'm grateful for the fact that we have this opportunity to make content that...
and movies and tell stories that maybe reach people
in a totally different way.
I think there's something different about getting to watch it in your home
and to share it with your friends particularly after this year
of being disconnected and not feeling community in connection.
That's something that stories can do for us,
even in a dark time like this.