‘I’m going out on a high’
THE AUTHOR TALKS HIS LATEST NOVEL AND TURNING THE ROSIE PROJECT INTO A FILM
In 2013, Graeme Simsion’s first novel The Rosie Project introduced the world to the socially awkward professor Don Tillman. It became a huge hit – as did the second novel in the series, The Rosie Effect – selling a combined five million copies worldwide. The last in the series, The Rosie Result, focuses on Don’s often ill-advised attempts to help his 11-year-old son Hudson fit in better at school.
What’s the new book all about?
Even before The Rosie Effect came out, people were saying, we’d love to know what Don was like as a child [and] what was life like for him? The problem with that is it’d be set in the 1980s when we knew so much less about autism and it wouldn’t have made any commentary on what’s happening today. As I wrote The Rosie Effect and gave [Rosie and Don] a son I thought, you know what, he could stand as Don, he could be like Don, experiencing the same problems but in the present day so I could talk about what’s going on right now.
How similar are Don and Hudson?
Hudson’s grown up in a world that’s much more accepting of difference and Don doesn’t quite get that. Don is closeted. He’s decided that to call himself autistic or having Asperger’s would be a really bad mistake. Hudson’s living in a world that’s going to allow him to be out and proud as it were, and he’s aware of that world. Hudson is in a way cooler, more tuned in to what’s going on around him. He’s going to make less sort of comedic mistakes than Don makes.
Were you like Hudson as a child?
The secret for me is I remember the year when I turned 12 very, very clearly and I drew on that. Today, I don’t identify as autistic and the experts say that autism is a lifelong condition so if you put those things together, I wasn’t then. I was a geeky science kid, therefore I lived in the same world that Hudson lives in.
Why do you think Don is so beloved by readers?
I think part of it’s that he’s a hero, in that a hero is someone who sets out on a mission, under-equipped. And Don is pretty under-equipped to go out and find a partner but he takes it on anyway and he gives it his best shot and he’s absolutely honest and decent and sincere and yet we think he’s going to fail. How can he possibly win the way he is? So we all root for a hero. And also, who hasn’t been out on a date and done something stupid? Who hasn’t made a social faux pas? Don is doing this all the time and yet he gets through and I think that’s encouraging for everyone.
Why did you decide this would be the last in the Rosie series?
I didn’t want to be writing Don Tillman, the prostate years! I’d rather go out on a high.
What’s happening with The Rosie Project film?
It’s a roller-coaster. We’ve had Jennifer Lawrence attached, we’ve had Richard Linklater attached. We’ve had a whole bunch of people. It comes and goes. The script for [Graeme’s 2016 novel] The Best of Adam Sharp is with Toni Collette’s production company and is probably making more progress at the moment than The Rosie Project. Ellen Degeneres and Fox Searchlight are out looking for screenwriters for [Graeme’s 2018 novel co-written with his wife Anne Buist] Two Steps Forward. There are all sort of irons in the fire, but you don’t lie awake thinking about them.
Would you like to be involved in the production process?
I will get involved as much as they’ll let me. I love all that stuff and it would be fabulous to watch your own movie being made. I’ve got a verbal agreement that I’ll get a cameo in a cocktail scene [in The Rosie Project] but it’s Hollywood: you don’t expect those things to be delivered. Something I guess I never expected at this later stage in life was to have any big success. You aim for it, but you don’t expect it so you learn to really enjoy all the milestones.
Is it safe to say you don’t miss your old day job as an IT consultant?
It was a good time in my life and it was productive and I’m very pleased for some of the work I did back then. But as soon as I said “I’m out of there,” there wasn’t a moment when I wanted to go back! My colleagues were probably a bit gobsmacked when I quit the job to be a writer. They probably thought it was an indulgence and nothing would come of it.