The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
BURNING ‘LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE’ (INCLUDING WITHIN SHAKER HEIGHTS)
Celeste Ng talks about setting bestselling novel that’s now a Hulu series in Northeast Ohio city
It begins with a house engulfed in flames. ¶ It is the large, lovely Shaker Heights home of Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon,) who stares at the blaze and seems to … smirk? ¶ Moments later in the premiere episode of Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere” — the high-profile adaptation of author Celeste Ng’s bestselling 2017 novel, which is set in the late 1990s — we’ve jumped to when the fire has been extinguished. Authorities on the scene tell Elena the fire was purposefully set — that’s clear because inside there were “little fires everywhere.”
Hulu launched “Little Fires Everywhere” in mid-March by releasing the first three of eight episodes, new episodes debuting on Wednesdays via the Disneyowned streaming platform.
Ng’s tale is far more complex than those initial moments may suggest. Elena initially befriends, and then becomes adversarial toward, a transient artist named Mia (Kerry Washington) whom she rents property to and initially hires to work in her home, and the two women’s children become intertwined socially. Always a bit uneasy, the dynamic between Elena and Mia changes drastically when Mia attempts to help a Chinese-American woman reclaim the baby girl she’d previously abandoned, an infant since adopted by friends of the Richardsons desperate for a child.
By the end of next week’s fifth episode, there are figurative fires everywhere, of varying sizes.
Born in Pittsburgh from parents who came to the United States from Hong Kong, Ng moved to Shaker Heights at age 10 when her physicist father took a job at what is now NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland. She graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1998.
“When my parents were deciding which part of Cleveland to move to,” she says, “they chose Shaker specifically because it was known for having really good schools — and that was really, really important to them — and second because it was known for being pretty racially diverse, at least in terms of black and white, and they thought that was really important, as well.”
During a recent phone interview from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ng — after asking how Ohio was holding up amid the growing threat of the novel coronavirus — spoke about growing up in Shaker Heights, her writing career and being involved in an adaptation of her work for the first time and the show itself, set mainly in Northeast Ohio but filmed in Los Angeles.
Q I’m sure some of these answers can be found in “Little Fires,” be it the book or the show, but what do you think about Shaker Heights when you reflect on those years — and about Northeast Ohio in general?
A I realize more and more how I was shaped by being in Shaker and, generally speaking, in really positive ways. It was a place that told me education was important. I feel like I’m so lucky to have gotten an education at Shaker schools. I got to take creative writing and theater (classes) that ... now those are very scarce.
There’s the fact that we did talk about race. I was part of a student group on race relations, and I didn’t realize that it wasn’t common for high schools to have race-relations groups and to talk about those things openly.
And it was just a wonderful place to grow up. It was a place where, I feel like, I was raised to think, “You can make the world better, so look for ways to try to do that and go out and try to be your best self and try to make the world better. And I think that’s what a lot of people who went to Shaker Heights felt. I realized how deeply that affected me.
I also realize now that I was living in a fairly idyllic bubble (and) that many other places were not, at all, talking about race or thinking about any of these things. And I also realized that Shaker still had all the problems that anywhere else in the world had. We’re talking about race, but we still have to deal with racism and classism and discrimination. We’re trying to be better, but we’re not perfect — nobody is.
Q Your first novel, “Everything I Never Told You,” is set in a fictional Ohio town. Why did you set “Little Fires Everywhere” in Shaker?
A The first novel, I felt like I needed to make up an isolated town for that family; I needed them to feel like they were really alone. And I didn’t know a place specifically like that, so I made one up — and that was easy. For this second novel, I knew that I wanted to write about Shaker Heights specifically because I was at an age — I’d been away from home for about 10 years — where I was really thinking back on my experience there and trying to process it and going like, “Well, that was weird in some ways but also really great in some ways and how do I make sense of it?”
The impulse for writing the novel came, really, from thinking back on growing up in Shaker Heights and what that had meant. And the more I started to write the book, I didn’t feel like I could make a fictionalized Shaker because it would just seem too coy. It seemed like I might as well set it in the real place and try to be as accurate to my own experience as (possible).
And it’s such an interesting place. The more I learned about its history and the history of the Shakers, who were there before the city was founded, the more I was like, “This is too good — I couldn’t make this up. I have to just put it in the book.”
Q What kind of response have you gotten from people in Shaker, be they people you knew or people who have reached out?
A Generally, really positive. I’ve been hearing it, because I went on a book tour when the book first came out. Shaker Heights was supposed to be one of the first events, and there was a scheduling change and Shaker Heights ended up being rescheduled to being one of the last events. And at every other event people would say, “So what do people in Shaker Heights think?” And I (became) really nervous because they kept asking that every night, and I was like, “Oh, no — are people going to not like the book?” Because it’s weird to have a book written about your hometown, right? It’s weird to have a book written that feels close to home.
But one nice thing was that — and I think it was at every single book event, even when I went over to Europe and I did book events — there was always at least one person from Shaker Heights or who had a really close connection. Their grandparents lived there, their parents grew up there, whatever — they always self-identify — and then they would always say, “You kinda got it right,” which I took to be a really big compliment, actually. I felt it was a compliment because it meant they saw the town in the way I had seen it and they felt like I had accurately captured something about the town.
And the response from the town itself has been, actually, really warm. The people at the high school were amazing — they had let me come in to do some research and just walk around the school. The city seems really proud, and I’m really grateful that they see it as what I meant, which is a loving portrait. It’s like writing a description of a relative: You want people to see all the things about them that you love and that you think are wonderful, and you maybe also want to acknowledge the weird things they do, but overall you want them to feel like they are loved and I think most people in Shaker have taken the book in that way.
Q Can you talk about how the TV rights to “Little Fires Everywhere” ended up with Reese Witherspoon’s company, Hello Sunshine, and later Hulu? I’ve seen the phrase “bidding war” bandied about.
A (Laughs). I know! And we don’t even really know what that means.
When (Witherspoon) liked it, (Hello Sunshine said), “Hey, would you be willing to let us adapt this?” And the way they talked about the book ... it was so in line with what I would want from an adaptation that I felt like those were the right hands for it to be in.
We started working with them, and they brought Kerry Washington in to star opposite Reese. They brought Liz Tigelaar in, who is the showrunner, and once they had those pieces in place they went to all the big networks — Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, HBO, I don’t know who else — and they said, “Read the book and then come in, and we’ll tell you what we’re planning and you tell us if that’s something you want to do.” And I really appreciated that it started from the book. … They wanted the network also to have that kind of buy-in. And I think that’s exactly what we got.
Q You’re listed as a producer on the limited series. What was it like to be involved with the adaptation and to see it take shape?
A It was really a tremendous learning experience for me, and I mean that in a positive way, not the euphemistic way sometimes people say it. I didn’t know anything about film, and I’m really glad that everybody who worked on this allowed me to be involved at all of the stages.
I came into the project wanting to be one of the voices at the table, you know, to be involved and to get to know what was going on and have a say. But I wanted very much to not be the one driving the project and to let the project have enough space to become its own thing, because to me that’s really part of a successful adaptation.
I talked to Liz Tigelaar, the showrunner, before she wrote the pilot. I got to visit the writers’ room once and sat in on one of the episodes and I got to read the scripts. I got to visit the set. I’ve been saying I was like the tuning fork; when they wanted to check what they were doing, they would come and check with me and see if it matched, if it harmonized. But I very much wanted to give it space, and I feel like that was the perfect combination for how it worked out.
Q Am I correct that you wanted to write the character of Mia Warren as an African-American in the novel but maybe backed away and left her race rather vague? Am I in the ballpark?
A You are in the ballpark. I originally thought of her of being a person of color, not specifically a black woman. At a certain point in the story I realized I was dealing with issues of class and privilege and power just generally speaking, and I started to wonder if Mia would be a woman of color .... because those issues are so closely tied up with race in our country. It’s very difficult to talk about one without talking about the other.
But I didn’t want to make Mia an Asian-American woman, which was my first thought, because I knew there was this adoption case about a Chinese-American baby and it seemed like it was going to be a little too tidy; here’s this one Asian mother, and here’s another Asian mother — we expect that they will be allies to each other. But at the same time I did not actually ever consider making her a black woman or a Latino woman because I don’t want to pretend like I could imagine fully what that experience is like.
I wrote her in my mind, as a white, working-class woman, but then when Reese and (producing partner Lauren Neustadter) came to me and said, “We’re thinking of casting Kerry,” that was actually a huge “aha” moment for me where I went, “I trust you. You’re thinking about this the way that I want you to.” Because it meant that the show was going to be able to explore the issue of race along with all those other things, in a way the book didn’t.
That was the moment for me where I was like, “They get it.”
Q Circling back to your writing career, is there a type of comment you often get from readers that most warms your heart?
A One of the things it’s always wonderful to hear: Anytime a reader comes to me and they say, “I felt seen by this moment in your book.” It’s almost a cliche now when we talk about being “seen,” but as someone who grew up as a Chinese-American girl, I didn’t see myself a lot in literature. So when someone comes up to me and they tell me that they saw themself because they are mixed-race and they didn’t get to see a lot of books (with characters) like them ... that’s really the nicest thing I could hear.
Q There’s an adaptation of “Everything I Never Told You” that’s in the works, correct? And what about a third novel from you?
A The adaptation is in the works. It was originally scheduled to be a feature film, and at one point Julia Roberts was attached. That’s changed now. One of the things I’m learning about Hollywood is it has to be, like, kismet. There are about 50 people who all have to say yes at the same time, and, for whatever reason, a lot of times that doesn’t happen. But hopefully I will have news to share about the “Everything I Never Told You” adaptation very, very, very soon. I’m excited about that and the direction I think it’s going to take.
The second thing, I’m hopefully working on a third novel. I will admit that progress is very slow right now as I am suddenly homeschooling my child — as everyone else in this country is — but I’ve got two ideas that I’m ping-ponging between and I’m hoping that one of them will come to fruition. They’re ... quite different, but they deal with similar issues of race and what you pass on to your children and what you can hold on to from the past and what you have to let go or and all the same issues of family and culture that I seem to keep coming back to.