[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," we're joined by writer, producer, and showrunner Liz Tigelaar for a conversation on her work crafting TV adaptations from "Little Fires Everywhere" to "Tiny Beautiful Things."

- I work in collaboration with the authors.

I like to adapt things 'cause I love them.

And so I don't want to just dismiss what the writer has done.

To me, faithfulness is being faithful to the pulsing heart that it is.

It's being faithful to what it's trying to say, what it's trying to explore.

It's almost like thematically faithful.

I don't think it's about beat-for-beat faithful.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [typewriter dings] - Your credits read like a list of all my favorite shows ever.

So you started as an assistant on "Dawson's," but you became a writer for "Dawson's," right?

- My first job when I moved to LA, I was an assistant there, and I was just like, I don't know if I was so much interested in writing or what the writers were doing.

I didn't technically become a writer, but I did write a very terrible freelance episode.

I always say there was this great episode of "Dawson's," if anyone watched it, where it was like this Rashomon episode where, like, Dawson finds out about Joey and Pacey, and you're like, "Oh my God, this is like the best episode of 'Dawson's' ever."

And everyone's like, "Did you write that one?"

And I'm like, "No, Gina Fattore wrote that one."

I wrote this weird boat race episode, like right after that one.

- True Love and Carpe Diem are neck and neck.

They're fighting for the finish here Carpe Diem is not giving any ground.

In fact, Carpe Diem is not acknowledging True Love's request for sea room at the mark.

If one of these boats doesn't veer off course here, in a minute, we're gonna have a major collision.

- They're heading for the same spot.

Are they crazy?

- Hey, we got the right of way!

- You're gonna have to back off.

- I'm not getting out of his way.

- Two lengths.

- I'm not getting out of his way.

- What was that like, seeing your first episode on TV?

- I mean, amazing.

It was, but I think I was so young at the time that, I mean, first of all, I thought I was gonna move to, like I was like, maybe you move to LA and it takes your whole career to do one episode of television.

Like, I had no idea.

So I was like, maybe that's your career.

You worked really hard and you got to that one episode.

So I didn't have a lot of context for it 'cause I was still an assistant, and I was given a freelance script, and I co-wrote it with a writing partner at the time, and I was just so young.

And so it was really exciting.

You know, it was like I had an episode party, and, like, I sent it to my parents, and, you know, it was like all the things that felt like, "Oh wow."

But I also, you know, I will say, like writing that episode did not lead to a staff job on that show.

It was amazing to get the opportunity, but I think I always felt a little hard on myself that I hadn't capitalized on it.

Like, oh, I'd been in the right place at the right time and given the opportunity, and when it really came down to it, I was like, "Oh, I didn't do that thing that, like, got me to that becoming a writer," you know?

- So how did you get to that thing?

- I used all the money I'd gotten from my freelance episode.

And then right when I was kind of at a point of, I was about to get a job at this store called Glow, a skincare line, a skincare store in LA, my friend Maggie Friedman, who'd been a writer on "Dawson's," was like, "You know, Winnie Holzman needs an assistant."

And I was like, "Oh, okay."

And so I'm like, "Who's Winnie Holzman?"

And I'm like, you know, I, oh I was on a plane, so I called my mom.

I was like, "Could you look up Winnie Holzman?"

And she's like, "She created 'My So-Called Life.'"

And I was like, "What?!"

So then I'm, like, on the plane flying back from New York, and I got a job as her assistant.

And it was amazing 'cause I got to see her sitting up here yesterday talking about "Wicked."

And when I was her assistant, it was when she was on "Once and Again," and she would always have me do things for her little side projects and I had no idea.

And... Yeah, it was absolutely amazing.

I mean, I worked for her for, I mean, it was less than a year, but it was so impactful.

And, I mean, I cried when that job was over 'cause I had known that I was, like, in the presence of someone great.

And while she was working on "Wicked," I would sit and I would read "My So-called Life" scripts, and I was like, "Oh, this is Winnie.

Like, this is Winnie's voice.

Like, Claire Danes, Angela's pontificating, that's Winnie."

And it kind of started to teach me, like, how to find my own voice.

And I remember asking her, like, "How do you," you know, like, "How do you find your voice?"

I was like, "I don't know what my voice is."

And she said, "Well, why don't you just write about someone who doesn't know what their voice is?"

I was like, "Okay."

And so that was the first thing I wrote.

[typewriter dings] [Fabienne] How did you get attached to "Little Fires Everywhere"?

- Well, I'd read "Top of the Morning," and I was obsessed with it.

And then I heard they were doing a show, and I'm like, "Oh my God, I have to get a meeting on the show."

And so I, like, begged my agent.

I get a meeting on the show.

I don't know if I had pink eye or, I had some condition when I went for the meeting that was like, "Oh no."

I was like, "This is a very gnarly," oh I think maybe it had like a gum, something had swelled up, and it wasn't good, and I had to do a lot of explaining going into the meeting.

But I was like, "This is not great, but I'm here and not contagious."

But I went to the meeting, and in order to meet on "Morning Show," I also had to meet with Hello Sunshine, which was Reese's company producing it.

And so I went in for a general with Hello Sunshine, and they were like, you know, it was kind of like, I don't know, it's kind of like a pro forma thing you have to do.

Everyone has to, like, give their stamp of approval that they too wanna sit in a room with you.

And when I went in, I met with Lauren Neustadter, and she was like, "What are the type of things you like?"

And I was like, "Oh, I have a very eclectic list of things I like."

I was like, "Number one, Tonya Harding."

And actually, Amy Talkington's here.

Amy and I, also a screenwriter from Texas.

We both grew up in Dallas and also are both obsessed with Tonya Harding and did a whole limited series on her and we're actually very big collaborators, and she worked on "Little Fires" with me.

I said, "I love Tonya Harding.

I love, like, mountain-climbing disaster stories or anything that's about, like, an adventure where they're, like, exploring a mother-daughter relationship, but someone might have to, like, gnaw off their arm or drink their own pee or, you know, something like that."

I was like, "I like things about drugs."

I'm like, "I don't do drugs, but I like drug stories."

And she was like, "Oh my God."

[Fabienne and attendees laughing] And then all of a sudden, like two weeks later, she was like, "Okay, I think based on that meeting, you'll like this."

She's like, "There's not drugs, but there is a lot of motherhood, daughter stuff.

No one's gnawing off an arm or anything like that."

- Big smiles.

Everybody, pretend you like each other.

Big smiles, Isabelle.

- You are making this take forever.

- You look like you're at an execution, honey.

- Yeah, that would be way easier.

- Wh- what?

What is the matter?

What's the attitude?

[Brother] Hey.

- I don't wanna go.

- Oh, honey, it's gonna be okay.

Your brothers and sisters, they, they thrive there.

- How do you know?

- Hi, Pearl.

Hi.

- Hi.

- What if I don't, Mom?

- You will, you will, I promise.

Just one picture.

Everybody.

Moody, put your arm around her.

Cheer her up a little bit.

Okay, here we go.

One, two, three.

- But she sent it to me, and she was like, they're like so wonderfully intense over there, but they're like, "You have 24 hours to read it."

And I'm like, "Oh my God."

So I'm like, read this book, and I'm like, "I'm in."

And it was just, you know, a gift.

Like it, I mean, for sure changed my career.

Obviously, it was a big deal because Reese and Kerry Washington were already attached, and so that was like, 'Oh my God, these are big stars."

And for me, even if no one had been attached, like the story, I'm an adopted kid, like the story was so moving to me.

I'd revisited it a little for this conversation, and I was like, it still, like, just chokes me up.

Like, it was a story that just hit me in my heart.

And I was like, I am so lucky that this somehow came to me from my weird, you know, blown-up-face meeting.

- Were there things that you were like, "I don't know how that part is gonna work?"

- The great thing about that book was it was so adaptable.

Like you could read that book and you could see, I think now, sometimes, like, writers write to be adapted.

Like, you can read books and you're like, "Oh this is, like, writing for that act break or whatever."

This wasn't writing to be adapted.

It was its own entity, but it was so adaptable.

Like, I could really see how it laid out.

I love laying out things.

I like to, like, "Beautiful Mind" it and put a million cards on the board.

And I was just like, "Oh this lays out so well.

Like, I barely have to do anything to make it a strong adaptation."

[typewriter dings] - When I read "Tiny Beautiful Things," which, for those of you who haven't read it, is basically columns, like a Deer Sugar response, I was like, "I can't imagine reading this and thinking, 'This will be a good adaptation.'"

- Me neither.

I mean, because I love, you know, so that's Cheryl Strayed, who obviously hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, mother-daughter story, I was like, "Oh, there's jeopardy.

She's losing a shoe."

Like she- - Almost an arm.

- Yeah, I was like, "It's not Everest, but, like, it's a big deal."

I was like, "This is my sweet spot."

And so actually, I had just pitched out "Little Fires" to Hulu, and I was in the parking garage waiting for my car, and Lauren, same person, was like, "I have your next show."

Like, "What is it?"

And she's like, "Do you like Cheryl Strayed?"

I'm like, "My kid is named Wilder.

Like, yeah, I like Cheryl Strayed."

And she said, "'Tiny Beautiful Things.'

Have you read it?"

And I'm like, "Yes, of course, I've read it."

I'm like, "Okay."

And I said yes, but I was like, "How is that a show?

It's advice columns."

And really, up until we sold it, and especially after selling it, I was still asking myself a question like "How is this a show and how do you adapt something from it?"

But, you know, the message of "Little Fires" was, like, find a way.

And I was like, "I'm gonna find a way for this one."

And we did.

- What was the first kind of thread you pulled out with "Tiny Beautiful Things" that made it come together?

- I always go from a place of, like, "Why am I into this?"

Like, "What do I love about this?"

and "What is the pulsing heart of this for me?"

And for me, it wasn't about the people writing in.

It was that really, if you look at "Tiny Beautiful Things," it's really just a non-linear memoir.

It's a different way to write a memoir to me.

It's these little, you know, it's these responses, but really they're beautifully written short stories with a message that tell the story of Cheryl's life.

And I was like, "Wouldn't it be cool to tell a non-linear memoir?"

And what if, I think the thing that really cracked it open for me was like, okay, what if Claire, who's Cheryl's, the character based on Cheryl, what if she has a totally different present life?

Because Cheryl's big thing was that, like, hiking the PCT healed something within her.

It was a journey she needed to go on, and it was ultimately a really hard journey of exploration and healing.

It's like, okay, but what if she was our age now and had never been healed?

What if she never had hiked to the PCT?

What would her life look like?

And what if, whatever this show is, is her version of the PCT.

It's she's not gonna go on a hike, but becoming Sugar answering these columns is the thing that heals her.

Another thing that cracked it open for me was, like, it was interesting.

We had to decide what the pilot was, and I was like, "Oh it's definitely 'Baby Bird,'" which is, like, a very dark story that Cheryl tells about being sexually abused and about this baby bird dying.

And it was funny 'cause we had just finished "Little Fires," where there was also a baby bird, and I was like, "I'm really, like, hanging on to this bird thing."

But I was thinking about it, and I was like, "How am I gonna tell this story?

I don't wanna depict a story of a, you know, six-year-old girl being sexually abused."

And I thought, "Well, what if, what if, she's constantly, almost like an exploration of versions of yourself?

Like, "What if it was her adult self re-experiencing that abuse but in her adult body being able to do something different and stop it?"

[gentle music] [insects chirping] ♪ ♪ [baby crying] - [censored] [baby crying] - It's okay.

It's okay.

Don't let it stop you.

Keep going.

She's okay.

Babies cry.

Don't, don't let it stop you.

♪ ♪ - You know, and so I started thinking of, like, creative ways to do it really out of just not wanting to film that and see that.

And what it led to was this idea that what if the show shows all the versions of, like, I'm 49, right?

Oh no, sorry.

God, I'm 50.

Sorry, I'm 50.

[all laughing] Jesus, I forgot.

I just turned 50.

Oh my God.

I haven't said that yet.

I'm 50.

And I am, thank you.

I was like, "Oh, I thought when you were 50, you would feel 50."

But really, what I feel is every single age I've ever been and 50.

And I was like, "What if in a show you could show that?"

Like, I could be having a disagreement with my 10-year-old son, or a really fun time and suddenly I could feel 10 again.

Or I could be fighting with my wife, and suddenly I'm like 14 and I'm, like, stomping around.

So that's kind of what became, for me, like the heartbeat of the show.

That she could both feel like her younger self, but she could also go back as her older self into these stories of her younger self and look at them in a different context, or almost heal them by re-exploring them, by giving advice to someone else.

[gentle music] - I [censored] love you.

- I [censored] love you too.

[Clare] So, sweet pea, here's what I say.

Be brave.

Be authentic.

Forgive yourself.

And practice saying the word love to the people you love.

So when it matters the most, you will say it.

[typewriter dings] - What did faithfulness to the source material mean to you?

- Faithfulness is being faithful to the pulsing heart that it is.

Like, it's being faithful to what it's trying to say, what it's trying to explore.

It's almost like thematically faithful.

I don't think it's about beat for beat faithful.

At the same time, I want to adapt because I like to adapt things 'cause I love them.

And so I don't want to just dismiss, you know, what the writer has done.

And I work in, you know, collaboration with the authors, and I have a good relationship with the authors.

And so I, you know, I want them to be happy just 'cause I want them to be.

You know, it wouldn't feel good otherwise.

So yeah, I don't think you have to be beat by beat faithful.

Certainly in "Little Fires," there were ways that we made things more interwoven, you know, that might have been disparate in the book.

There was a photograph that in the book, you know, kind of does one thing.

There, you know, "Oh, maybe Josh Jackson should be the lawyer who represent."

It's like, how do you bring it all in and make point A lead to point B lead to point C?

We did a lot of that.

There was a lot of building of Elena's backstory because, I mean, mostly because we were doing Mia's backstory, and we were like, "Well, we're not gonna do a whole episode about Mia and not do one about Elena."

- I'm pregnant again.

I just got back and, and, and now I'm gonna be derailed again.

- You have money and resources, and there is no reason that you can't have another baby.

- Is not wanting another one a reason?

- Not for people like us.

- So, you know what I mean?

And that wasn't really in the book, but we were like, "Oh there needs to be parity to these two stories and that they each get, you know, we explore their past equally to shed light on them as characters."

So there are tons of liberties I took with "Little Fires," but even, I mean I remember having the, like, original meeting with Celeste, and I was like, "Did you ever think of Izzy being gay or, like, struggling, not knowing if she was?"

And Celeste was like, "Yes, that seems so..." She was like, "I thought about it.

It just felt like another thing that the book was trying to tackle that I didn't have space for.

And, you know, that wasn't her story."

And I was like, "Well, it's mine."

[laughs] I was like, "I can tackle it.

I got eight episodes."

And I think, you know, there was so much that came out of the room that wasn't in the book.

One of our writers, Attica Locke, also a Texan who's a novelist and a screenwriter, I just remember in the room, I mean Amy remembers it too, she said the line, "You didn't make good choices.

You had good choices."

And, like, Attica just said it.

That was not in the book.

And that line became, like this is what the show is.

It's about someone who had, you know, who had good choices handed to them, who had, you know, who started her life so far above sea level, and then somebody else who didn't have those choices.

- I am a good mother.

- Oh really?

Because in my book, a good mother puts her daughter's needs before her own.

A good mother makes good choices.

And she doesn't drag a child from town to town, school to school.

She doesn't smoke marijuana and just leave her daughter to fend for herself.

And she really doesn't leave a baby alone in the cold in front of a fire station.

- You didn't make good choices.

You had good choices.

Options that being rich and white and entitled gave you.

- Again, that's the difference between you and me.

I would never make this about race.

- Elena, you made this about race when you stood out there in the street and begged me to be your maid.

- This is not working out.

I think this is gonna be your last day.

- [scoffs] You think?

[keys thuds] - You can't be so proud of where you've gotten when you were given such a leg up.

And so that was a really powerful thing to come out of the writer's room.

- And one thing you do in "Little Fires" that I love is you take in, like in the book, internal conflict that a writer can write about in third person.

You somehow translate it on the screen, sometimes in a conversation, sometimes in a plot point that moves the story forward.

- I mean that's, like, to me, always the challenge of adaptations 'cause you're like, "Oh, someone can go off on this whole thing in a book," and you're like, "How do I articulate that?"

I almost feel like, Amy, this might have actually been your pitch.

I almost feel like we, or maybe we did it from, maybe we took from our Tonya Harding template.

But we did these kind of privileged teasers that were seemingly outside of the story.

So these kind of non-linear flashes, almost like "Breaking Bad" did, where, you know, when, and they all added up to something.

I'm not comparing us to "Breaking Bad."

I'm just saying we kind of copied "Breaking Bad" a little.

But just that idea that you're kind of seeing these disparate things, but they're giving you kind of insight into the story that you're going to see or either in that episode specifically or in the overarching narrative.

So that was, like, a great way to get into, be able to kind of get into a character's head.

- And in "Tiny Beautiful Things," you have really three stories.

You got the letters, her younger story, and then Clare's present-day story.

How did you map that out?

How did you thread that together?

- That was challenging.

Like, I felt like you had to do both the past story and the present story almost simultaneously.

You kind of couldn't do one and then back, kind of backdoor the other or back into the other.

So it was challenging, but there would be moments, you know, sometimes we would get stuck.

I can think of a couple episodes on that show where we got, like, really stuck.

But when we would get stuck, we would just say, "Cheryl, will you tell us the story of how this really happened?"

And I remember in our second episode, she was like, "Well, we had my mom's funeral," and I don't think she'd written about this, and she said, "They wouldn't let the casket be open because we'd brought clothes for her to wear, but we'd forgotten underwear."

And she was like, "Why does it matter if she has underwear?

She's dead, like she's died.

She doesn't need underwear.

You can show her from the waist up."

Like, and they were like, "Nope, it's protocol.

It's a rule."

So, like, the episode is about them having to go get their dead mother underwear, which is so sad.

[gentle music] - [Joel] Oh.

- Oh.

- Sorry for your loss.

- Yeah, thank, thank you Joel.

- Sorry for you too, Lucas.

- Yeah, thanks.

- Uh, where are your parents?

- Uh, I'm liaising.

Mom's prepping your mom.

Uh, and dad's doing the A/V check.

- Okay, um, this is her dress, [sniffles] and her belt and her shoes.

And we want these [sniffles] in the casket with her.

Just tuck 'em right under her shirt next to her, her [sighs] heart.

Joel, are you listening?

- Uh, there's no underwear in here.

- What?

- We, we can't dress your mother without any underwear.

[Lucas scoffs softly] - Uh, what's the-- Who cares?

Stop being a perv.

- I'm not being a perv.

- Wait, why, why would she need underwear?

She's gonna be in a dress.

And she has, she has a belt.

And she's, um, she's in a coffin.

- And so once she told us that story, we were like, "Okay, like how in the present story could potentially, like, underwear thread in, even though it's a totally different story?"

And so we started talking about how some people say, like, not to wear underwear at night because, like, everything needs to breathe.

And so we had this whole, like, nursing-home story where this woman kept throwing off her underwear in the night, and, you know, Kathryn Hahn's character is trying to help her.

[gentle piano music] - Ah!

Got a real gas- burning fireplace.

[Shan] Clare?

- Uh... - Bev's daughter is here to see you.

- Okay, one sec.

Um, if you notice, those are rocks- - If you hear the fire alarm, that's her combusting.

- Yeah, one second, please.

[sighs] Okay.

I'll get you some juice in a moment.

What is this about?

- Um, she mentioned her mom doesn't have underwear on in the mornings, but she does have scratches.

She thinks you have something to do with this.

- Well that is pathological, on her part, so... - Apparently, she has footage.

- Footage?

- Always, whenever we were stuck, we would just be like, "Cheryl, tell us a story."

And then she would and be like, "Well, we're not gonna think of anything better than that," and we'd go from there.

- And you used voiceover.

[Clare] Right before my junior year of college, I married a good man whom I both loved and should not have married.

Because the day I married him, there was a small clear voice inside me that said, "Go."

[breathing deeply] That said, "Go, even though you love him.

Go."

- It was amazing because it was our way to incorporate Cheryl's writing.

You know, not just her stories, but her words, like the power of her words.

[typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching "On Book to TV Adaptations: A Conversation With Liz Tigelaar" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project, that also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]