SPOILER ALERT: This story contains some spoilers for “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,” now streaming on iPlayer in the U.K.
“A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,” the adaptation of Holly Jackson’s hit YA thriller, is finally set to hit Netflix on Aug. 1 after debuting in the U.K. on the BBC last month.
Produced by Moonage Pictures (“The Gentlemen”) and starring “Wednesday” breakout Emma Myers as protagonist Pip, it follows a schoolgirl’s attempts to solve a closed murder case, putting not only Pip but also potentially her family in danger as old secrets refuse to stay buried.
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Jackson, who worked with showrunner Poppy Cogan (“Red Rose”) to bring the book to life, sat down with Variety between the U.K. and U.S. broadcasts to talk about how she came up with the idea for “AGGGTM,” the challenges of adapting it for screen and what she’s working on next.
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How are you feeling?
The week it came out on the BBC, I did an unofficial screening with family and friends, we watched a few episodes, rented out a cinema screen. And do you know what, it is pretty bloody cool! It just gives me fire in my belly to keep doing this. Because you know, I love writing books, I’m gonna do that forever, but I feel like working on TV and film is in my blood, as it were. I’d love to keep doing both. This is my first show. So I’m anxious but excited.
Where did the idea for the book come from?
My little sister had just done an EPQ [Extended Project Qualification] at school — I hadn’t actually done them, I think they came in the year after me — so there was that on one side of my brain. And then I had literally just listened to “Serial,” I was way behind the times, so I was obsessed with it and suddenly got into true crime. I think I was just idle at work one day, not paying attention, hiding in the supply closet, and I just put those two ideas together. And I was like, “Hold on a minute. what if a student did their EPQ project solving a closed murder case?” And it came to me really, really quickly. I think I wrote the whole book in about nine weeks.
How did you decide on who the killer would be?
I think what was most important to me, having consumed a lot of crime thriller TV shows and books, I didn’t really like stories where there was just a bad guy and he did the bad thing because he’s bad. I like stories that are much more nuanced than that. I’m really fascinated by the idea of like, shades of morality and “are certain bad things forgivable with good intentions?” and things like that. So I knew that with both of our killers as it were, I wanted to have some kind of morally grey situation which presented to the reader a question of, well, if you were in this situation, can’t you envision that you might act in a similar way?
Obviously there’s been a great response to the show from those who have seen it already, but the one complaint seems to be some of the changes in the adaptation, for example some of Ravi’s dialogue being cut.
I know. Here’s the thing. I was very heavily involved in the show. I was doing script notes throughout. I was basically the whole of last year working 24/7 on the show. The show is literally unrecognizable because of my input. If I hadn’t interfered — I say interfered, I should use a better word — if I hadn’t offered my sage advice and guidance and butted in, the show wouldn’t look the way it is today. I’m proud of the show that we’ve made but ultimately I wasn’t the one writing it. I made lots of suggestions and I said things that I thought would be really important to book fans, that they would feel betrayed if they weren’t there. And ultimately it wasn’t my decision. So I sympathize entirely with book fans who wanted to see their favorite moments. And you know, I have such a close interaction with the readership that I already knew.
I think we got the balance pretty right. I mean, sometimes I think it’s tough that with an adaptation, it’s almost like you can’t please a book fan entirely because a show can’t live up to the great expanse of their imagination. So I think I expected a little bit of “Oh the book’s much better,” which you know, is also great for me because the book is mine too. But I’m very aware of that and I was aware before the show came out. I kind of predicted which items people would be upset not to see. So I’m seeing it as a positive that if we are able to make more of the show I feel like now I know exactly what to do to keep book readers happy, whilst at the same time keeping new viewers in mind, which is a tricky balance sometimes.
As an author whose work is being adapted, it can be difficult finding the right partners who will bring your book to life. Did you and showrunner Poppy Cogan butt heads at all?
I think it was probably during one of the COVID lockdowns, I got sent a pilot out of the blue. And it wasn’t what I wanted it to be and we kind of went back and forth on the pilot. I think by that point, the production company I was working with realized that there was value in having me more heavily involved because my ideas were good.
We worked back and forth a lot. Sometimes there is the feeling of like, “Oh, I wish I could just write scripts myself.” But it’s not just myself and Poppy, there’s all the producers, there’s our broadcasters. It takes not just a village, it takes like an entire continent of people to make a TV show. But I think where we ended up is a good place. And I think I think everyone involved can be proud of the show that we’ve come up with in the end.
What was it about that first pilot episode that didn’t work for you?
It wasn’t an adaptation of the book, really. It was far too different. Like, characters made up, didn’t follow the book at all — I just made it very clear at that point that if they weren’t going to adapt the book as an adaptation, I could take it elsewhere. Because by this point, we were in a very different position. I sold the option to them before the book came out and then by this point, the book had been a bestseller in America and the U.K. and we were constantly fielding approaches from other production companies who wanted to make the show. So I think it put me in a position where I could say, we have to do this right and you have to do this right or we’ll do it with someone else who will do it right. After that we were able to clear the slate and say, Okay, we’ve got to go much closer to the book. Book fans don’t even know what could have been, what I saved them from!
Can you talk me through the scene in which Pip is nearly murdered and why that was changed for screen?
The thing is, with a book I can do whatever I want, there’s no budget. So in the book, that final scene, what happens is they’re at the Bells’ house and then they’re in the forest nearby, and it’s nighttime. It’s Nov. 5 [Bonfire Night in the U.K.] so there’s a big fireworks event in town with theme park rides and all that. And we didn’t have the money to do that. Night shoots are so expensive, fireworks would have been expensive. So it was kind of necessity in a way but it’s also that we found these caves that we shot the Calamity party in — which, again, useful on the technical side, because you can shoot during the day, it doesn’t have to be nighttime. And we knew that when we were doing our end set piece, we wanted to return to a location you’d seen in the show already so the caves were the obvious choice.
What are you working on next?
I have a horrible document staring me in the face that’s my line edits of a future unannounced book so I’m procrastinating a lot. That’s what I’m squirreling away on at the moment. I have so many secrets that I can’t possibly slip up on. So know that I’m working hard but I can’t tell you one thing!
And finally, any word on Season 2 of “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder?”
I don’t know yet and then I don’t know that when I know how long I’ll have to keep it secret for before it’s publicly announced. But I hope the gap between me finding out and everyone else being able to find out is not too big because I hate keeping secrets!
