09/15/2021
A great conversation about writing TV vs writing a novel.
"Dare Me has been in development for a long time; it’s gone through many permutations, including starting as a feature, but it’s also finally crystallizing to what [I] really want this thing to be about. You have to keep articulating it, and you have to take in new people’s ideas and decide which ones make it better and which ones don’t. You have to keep defending your choices. I always consider myself a very non-confrontational person, but having to pitch and present, making the case for these stories, is a thing I’ve had no experience in before this. You don’t do that in publishing. Your agent does it for you. [Laughs]
On The Deuce, the writers’ room gets like group therapy. Inevitably, we all have reasons for caring about certain things, while others are being drawn to certain characters and certain things. It’s so the opposite of the quietness of the novelist’s life. It makes you sort of decide what you value, but it also makes you conscious of things that, in some ways, authors would rather not be conscious of. Do you ever think about that? The stuff you do intuitively as a novelist, and it just happens — you don’t think about it. But you have to think about in this world in TV, justify it, sort of make the case. It’s like peering into your own brain."
The novelists are making their TV mark - Perrotta as creator of 'The Leftovers,' and Abbott as a writer on 'The Deuce.' Here, they share their insights.
