LISEY’S STORY
WHY LISEY’S STORY IS STEPHEN KING’S ULTIMATE PASSION PROJECT…
Stephen King on adapting his fave Stephen King book.
Even if you’ve never read a Stephen King novel, chances are you’ve seen a few of the myriad films and TV shows based on his work. The latest one is Lisey’s Story, an Apple Original adapted from what is, by King’s own account, his favourite book (first published in 2006). So there’s a good deal of buzz surrounding this limited series starring Julianne Moore as Lisey Landon, a widow wrestling with memories of her recently deceased novelist husband Scott (Clive Owen)…
Stephen, why is Lisey’s Story “the one I love best”?
STEPHEN KING: It’s a story about love and marriage and the creative impulse. And it’s also got a kick-ass villain in it, which I like a lot.
What was the inspiration?
SK: I had double pneumonia and came very close to stepping out. During the convalescence, I was in the hospital for about three weeks. When it was clear I was going to get better, my wife decided she was going to totally clean out my office and change it around and make everything new again for me. And when I came back home, Tabby [King] said to me, “Don’t go in your office, you won’t like it.” And that’s because it wasn’t done yet. The first thing I did was to go into my office and it was totally empty. I was still feeling very rocky and I was on a lot of different medications, and I thought, “This is what this room would look like after I die.” And Lisey’s Story came from that.
Does your wife get upset when you draw inspiration from your life?
SK: She kind of says, “OK, I understand what you’re doing here and I know that you have to follow your creative muse, but leave me out of it as much as you can. Fictionalise these people as much as you can and let’s step back from anything that’s too personal.”
I try to do that. I try to satisfy both sides of it: the reality side and the fictional side. It’s worked out pretty well. And certainly, Julianne and Clive are ‘Scott’ and ‘Lisey.’ They’re not Steve and Tabby, so it worked out.
Julianne, grief is a big theme in this story – is that hard to wrestle with?
JULIANNE MOORE: As an actor, one of the great things about what we do is that we’re always trying to communicate the universality of human experience. Whenever you’re working on something that’s about relationships – as this one is – not just romantic relationships but a partnership, but also family relationships, that gives everybody a way in, everybody in the world. And that’s what’s so wonderful about it is to find what’s universal in every story so that you know that you’re communicating that.
Stephen, you scripted each episode. What makes you decide to actively participate in an adaptation?
SK: My idea is to be either all the way in as much as possible, or be all the way out. There have been a lot of projects and my feeling is, “You go ahead; I’ll step back and write books and maybe something will come along that I really love, a passion project.” And Lisey’s Story was that: a passion project. And it was also particularly challenging. It goes through so many different levels of remembrance, but [director] Pablo [Larraín] was able to keep that in pretty much of a straight line.
Clive, given the autobiographical elements, did you add any Kingness to your portrayal of Scott?
CLIVE OWEN: I never really approached it that way; I didn’t base it on Stephen. Obviously, I could see the story was deeply personal and drawn from him and his relationship. But the
‘IT GOES THROUGH MANY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF REMEMBRANCE’ STEPHEN KING
thing I was blown away by was the amount of levels the piece works on. There’s this incredibly intimate relationship. It’s very personal; it’s a complete love story. But there’s also this really scary thriller element. And then there’s this complete other world, which almost feels like an explosion of inner worlds, in a way. It’s about feelings and emotions, and launching into this incredible other place. It’s something very, very intimate and something really epic at the same time.
Pablo, do you think there’s such a thing as an ‘unadaptable’ book?
PABLO LARRAÍN: I think everything, or almost everything, is filmable. But maybe the question is, why would you film that? What is the core of the motivation? [With this] I can connect with the themes, which are mostly about legacy and memory. The story’s also about someone, in this case Lisey, who has to rebuild herself after a great loss throughout her own memory; and in that way, she is protecting Scott’s legacy. At the same time, [the two characters] are able to be together in this combination of sensibilities coming from Stephen’s world, which is like a romantic, suspense thriller with, of course, a fantasy element. It’s very beautiful. In the process, we found the “why”, which is to understand that every relationship, every couple has their own, very particular world and we wanted to portray that. Tara Bennett
LISEY’S STORY STARTS ON APPLE TV+ ON 4 JUNE.