1428 Elm had the opportunity to chat with NOS4A2 showrunner Jami O’Brien ahead of San Diego Comic-Con @ Home’s Scary Good TV panel.
Shudder will be presenting the Scary Good TV panel for SDCC 2020 on Saturday, July 25 at 6:00 pm PDT. The SDCC 2020 panel will include horror notables Nick Antosca (Channel Zero), Don Mancini (the Chucky franchise), Greg Nicotero (The Walking Dead and Creepshow) and Meredith Averill (Locke & Key).
Jami O’Brien, the showrunner for NOS4A2 will also be participating. She took a few minutes to talk to 1428 Elm about what it takes to adapt a beloved horror novel for the small screen.
1428 Elm: Hi, Jami, thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. A lot of our readers watch NOS4A2 faithfully (including me), can you explain for us exactly what a showrunner does on a series like this?
Jami O’Brien: Oh, sure. We do a lot, actually (laughs)! It varies from show to show, oftentimes they are the creator of the show, and the head writer of the show. They’re always the head writer, sometimes they’re the creator, which is the case for me. I created the show for television, I was the person who first adapted the book, I’m the head writer and then I’m also kind of like the head producer.
So, I am involved with hiring everybody, involved in casting everyone, I’m involved in a lot of conversations with the various department heads, I like to think of myself as the head collaborator. I’m responsible for talking to a lot of different artists and producers, and helping wrangle the cast so that we’re all making the same TV show, if that makes sense.
1428 Elm: It does, and you’ve done a great job on all of that. You’ve worked on both Fear the Walking Dead and NOS4A2, are you a fan of the horror genre yourself?
Jami O’Brien: I have become one in working on these shows. You know, I’m not a person who had a deep knowledge of horror before working on Fear the Walking Dead, honestly. When I was a kid, I was too afraid to watch Friday the 13th. I avoided horror for a long time, actually, because it scared me.
But, when I started working on Fear, which I was drawn to because I loved the story, and I loved the characters, I learned the joys of working on horror and watching horror, and I love it on NOS4A2 as well. I think it’s actually a lot of fun, and a great way to bring tension, and delight even.
It’s funny, people ask me sometimes why I think people like horror, and I think there are academic reasons that are really smart, and for me, I think it’s like, listen, it’s fun to see the transformation of Charlie Manx. It’s fun to see the demon kids, there’s a delight in it that I think is not to be discounted, in addition to all the smart reasons having to do with anxiety and social justice and all that stuff too.
1428 Elm: Well, my theory has always been that those of us who love horror can be prepared for anything that may happen in real life.
Jami O’Brien: I think that’s true, and it’s funny, I think that’s the thought behind Lou Carmody as a character on NOS4A2. When he first meets Vic and they kind of have a moment after battling Charlie Manx, when they actually talk to each other, he says to her, “Listen, I read comic books and I know crazy stuff is out there.” He’s a genre nut, and it has prepared him to fight Charlie Manx.
1428 Elm: Had you read Joe Hill’s novel when you decided to work on NOS4A2, or did you read it after?
Jami O’Brien: I had been working at AMC on a show called Hell on Wheels for many years, actually worked on it for the whole run of the show, it ran for five seasons. And at the end of it, one of our executives, a young woman named Emma Miller, who’s a very smart AMC exec, asked me if I had read NOS4A2, and the truth is I had not, but I had read Locke & Key and was a big fan of that, so I knew Joe’s writing a little bit.
I was excited to check it out. She said “We’ve got the rights to this, read it and see what you think.” So, I read it and loved it. So, I read it before adapting it for sure, but I hadn’t read it when it came out. And I’m delighted that I have now.
1428 Elm: He’s a great writer. I think somebody needs to adapt his novel Heart Shaped Box into a series or movie.
Jami O’Brien: I see a lot of agitating for that on social media!
1428 Elm: As a fan of the NOS4A2 novel, I think you’ve done a great job of staying true to the spirit of the book, while also giving us some good deviations to the storyline. How do you keep that fine balance?
Jami O’Brien: Well, I love the novel, so first and foremost, the entire approach to the adaptation has been one of love. And it’s been important to me to keep the spirit of the characters and the spirit of the novel, to stay true to those things. That said, though the novel has really cinematic passages in it, it also has a lot of really beautiful internal passages, with Charlie, with Vic; and those things don’t translate into a television show easily.
So, where we’ve had to make changes have been in trying to dramatize Vic’s state of mind for instance, and other things just to make the medium work. In the novel, the main characters don’t meet each other for over a hundred pages, and in a television show, just to have it function, you have to have characters who have scenes together.
One of the first changes we made was to make Vic and Bing move closer together. Vic and Maggie meet in episode two, which is earlier than they meet in the novel. So, some of it is just bringing folks together so we can have dramatic scenes, and then some of it is, again, trying to figure out how to dramatize the kind of internal head space of the various characters, mostly Vic.
1428 Elm: What kind of response have you received from fans of the novel?
Jami O’Brien: Mixed. the novel rightfully has a lot of folks who love it and I think sometimes readers feel really protective, and I get that. And sometimes readers feel like you do, like: “We love the book and we see that you love the book, so we’ll take this ride and we appreciate the changes as well.” It’s like getting to see it again.
I’ve seen some folks who have been like, “I didn’t imagine that Vic would look like that!”, but also folks who love it. Of course, I always love it when they love it! But I understand. I mean, I’ve been guilty of that as well, you know, “This isn’t like the book!” So I get it, but it can’t be exactly like the book, because it’s not a book.
1428 Elm: One of the things that I really love about all of Joe Hill’s novels is that the characters are so real, they’re flawed, they’re not perfect people, but you still love them and you want them to make it through everything alive, so I think you have accomplished that. I thank you for doing a positive tribute to the novel.
Jami O’Brien: Well, thank you so much, that’s what I love most of all about the novel, the nuance. The characters are really rich, as you said, they’re flawed, but their hearts…some of their hearts are in the right places, and some of them are not.
But none of them are simple, and none of them are a kind of binary good or evil, there’s a lot of gray and nuance, I think it’s a testament to his writing and it’s why we wanted to do it.
1428: Well, again, I thank you so much for your time, I appreciate you talking to me today. I’m looking forward to seeing you on the panel at SDCC 2020.
Jami O’Brien: Thank you!
NOS4A2 can be watched Sunday nights at 10:00 pm ET, and you can also watch full episodes on AMC.com. SDCC 2020 runs from July 23 through July 26, and you can check it out for free on the website.
Will you be checking out San Diego Comic-Con @ home this week? Tell us what you think about it in the comments section.