Kate Expectations
The castaway and Elf warrior turns author with kids’ book The Squickerwonkers
Evangeline Lilly gives us the lowdown on The Squickerwonkers.
ORIGIN STORY
“I originally wrote a poem called The Squickerwonkers when I was 14 years old. At the time my mom was like, ‘ You should publish that, it’s fantastic’, and I thought she was just being my mom. It wasn’t until years later when I was working on The Hobbit that I discovered Weta Workshop. [ Illustrator] Johnny Fraser Allen showed me a concept painting and it just encapsulated everything I thought The Squickerwonkers should be and then some.”
DRAWN TO DO I T
“Writing the book was absolutely a two- way process. Everything Johnny drew would inspire something new in me as a writer, and I would go back and rewrite the story according to the stuff that I loved in his pictures. And the stuff that I wasn’t so in love with in his drawings he was so quick and willing to say that he would change it. There was a constant back and forth. I rewrote it at least 15 times just because of his illustrative process.”
ELF HELP
“It was totally liberating that Tauriel was a new character [ for the Hobbit movies]. I was, of course, aware that I would be under deeper scrutiny because people would be wanting to hate her, but once the decision was made to do it, then it was nothing but a blessing. At that point it was all about, ‘ Let’s create the best character possible so that people have to fall in love with her,’ instead of, ‘ How do I live up to 50 years of people envisioning this character?’”
ANT AND CHECK
“I did a bunch of research before Ant- Man. It helped me decide whether or not to take the job, because I’d never heard of Ant- Man – I thought it was something ridiculous that Marvel was making up! But I’ve just found out that Elijah Wood never read The Lord Of The Rings. I couldn’t believe it, but I guess they are two different things. If you’ve read your script and understand your character, you really don’t need to have read the source material.”