Jenny Lee, ANNA K: A LOVE STORY
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[1:09]I'm here today with Jenny Lee, who's the author of YA novel and a K, a love story,
[1:13]a modern day adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
[1:17]She is a TV writer and producer who was worked on BET's Boomerang,
[1:21]IFC's Brooke Meyer, Freeform's Young and Hungry,
[1:24]and the Disney Channel's number one rated kids show Shake It Up.
[1:27]HBO Max acquired the rights for Anna K, which Jenny Lee will adapt for the screen and write.
[1:32]Jenny has written four humorous essay collections, including I Do, I Did, Now What,
[1:37]Life After the Wedding Dress from 2004, which I read before I got married the first time,
[1:41]and a middle grade novel series, Elvis and the Underdogs.
[1:45]Originally from Tennessee, Jenny lived in New York City in her 20s and currently lives in Los Angeles
[1:50]with her husband.
[1:51]Welcome, Jenny.
[1:51]Thanks for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read books.
[1:53]Thanks for having me.
[1:54]I'm excited to be here.
[1:56]Jenny is being very kind because she came a few minutes early and I had just gotten back from
[2:01]her run, which I do like what, once a month, once every two months.
[2:04]My face is like purple at this point and I'm still could not get cool enough to shower.
[2:10]So anyway, Jenny is being very, very kind.
[2:13]So let's just say that.
[2:15]Anyway, please tell listeners what Anna K, a love story is about.
[2:19]Anna K is a novel that is a reimagining of one of my favorite books, which is Tolstoy's Anna
[2:24]Karenina.
[2:25]So I took the same sort of plot structure, but I moved it to modern day
[2:30]using New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut instead of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
[2:35]It's awesome.
[2:36]It's like a white, a gossip girl meets something crazy.
[2:39]Congratulations.
[2:40]Yes, it is.
[2:41]Yeah.
[2:42]I love that.
[2:43]That's damn.
[2:44]So you have your whole line on.
[2:45]Right.
[2:46]I already said you didn't need me.
[2:47]You had this great letter at the end of the book, which explains when you thought of this idea,
[2:50]how it became, why you did it now, can you sort of summarize that?
[2:54]Sure.
[2:55]Well, I was in New York City for Christmas with my mom and the Joe Wright version adaptation
[3:02]of Anna Krenic came out with Keir Knightley as the star.
[3:05]And we went to see to the zig field of so sad it's closing.
[3:08]We went to see it and we had this like magical time and my mom had both had read the book in
[3:12]Korean and in English and I had read the book twice by then.
[3:15]And we were talking about we had this great discussion about it and like, you know, how tragic
[3:20]it was for the ending of Anna.
[3:22]And then I just kept thinking like what it would be like in modern day.
[3:26]And then later that night, I couldn't sleep and I snuck down to the lobby of the hotel.
[3:31]And I just was like, oh my God, Anna Krenina is a book about first time major time that
[3:36]you're in love.
[3:37]And I was like, oh, if you wanted to translate that to modern day, it needed to be teenagers
[3:41]now because obviously in the late 1800s and Russian society, they were all in their 20s
[3:46]and 30s.
[3:47]But now it's like the first time you usually fall in love is when you're a teenager.
[3:51]Did you fall in love for the first time a teenager?
[3:53]Probably.
[3:54]I mean, whether it's now as I'm definitely not a teenager, I've seen you're like, oh,
[3:59]that was like that young first crazy teenage love.
[4:02]But I definitely have had that experience a couple of times like in my now second husband.
[4:07]When we fell in love recently like five years ago, I was like, oh, this is like that teenage
[4:11]version of love where you're like super obsessed and you're smelling his shirts.
[4:15]And it reminded me of that.
[4:17]So it was really like that was definitely part of the inspiration of writing this book.
[4:20]And you had this line at the end that made me cry that was like, you can't write or true
[4:24]love story until you're really in love.
[4:26]So that's why you waited so long to write it.
[4:28]Yes.
[4:29]And that you thought of it a long time.
[4:30]Yeah.
[4:31]I channeled.
[4:32]I definitely was channeling that because I was like, oh, this is the right time to do
[4:36]this because it was like, so there's so much of my husband in our love story in this
[4:39]like tiny little details and shout outs of things that happened between us that I kind
[4:43]of like added us a little like a gift that I gave him is in there, et cetera.
[4:48]Trying to remember what to give to that would be.
[4:50]This is where Anna's brother keeps his drugs at like orange, like there was an orange
[4:55]and so on.
[4:56]You had to mark thing that I had had engraved for him for an anniversary.
[4:59]And so I put that in there.
[5:00]That's where also this one on business.
[5:02]Yeah.
[5:03]I do New York.
[5:04]Yeah.
[5:05]Anyway, so you have written for a long time your first book will start start talking
[5:10]about your whole writing career.
[5:13]My first book was in 2001 and it was a collection of essays, a humor essays basically
[5:20]called I Do I Did Now What?
[5:22]So I wrote three collections of humor essays in my early 30s and that none of those books
[5:29]they all sold so, but none of them kind of broke out and became like a big success.
[5:33]And I was really using my personal life whatever I was obsessed with at the time.
[5:38]And then I would tend to write a book about it, but I hadn't written fiction yet because
[5:42]like writing a novel, my first novel was like always like the big goal in my, you know,
[5:46]ever since I was like a kid, I was like, oh my god, I want to write a book, a novel,
[5:50]the great American novel, et cetera.
[5:51]And then I just was like kept waiting because I was like, I need more life experience.
[5:55]I need more time.
[5:57]And then my first novel actually was a kid's book called Elvis and the Underdogs that
[6:02]I wrote.
[6:03]Oh, maybe six years ago when I was working on Shake It Up, a Disney Channel show and that
[6:08]book started as a TV show that it was a pitch for a TV show about a talking dog because
[6:15]it was like right when they were developing dog with a blog that they were like, oh, we're
[6:19]looking for outside pitches and then I came up with the idea and I pitched it and they
[6:23]were like, oh, we don't really talk about these underdog kids.
[6:27]It's Disney Channel.
[6:28]We want good looking inspirational kids.
[6:30]And I was like, really?
[6:31]Because there are many more of these underdog kids because it's about a kid with a talking
[6:36]therapy dog who was always sickly.
[6:38]And I was like, I think there are more of these kids and they're like, yeah, not for
[6:40]us.
[6:41]So I was like, okay, but then I was like, oh, it's such a weird idea to have this idea
[6:45]and come up with all these characters that you love and put it in a drawer somewhere.
[6:50]So then I was like, I've never written a kid's book before.
[6:53]And I was like, I think I'm going to just try it.
[6:55]Why not?
[6:56]So I was getting up like at 5 30 in the morning and writing 10 pages a day before work to
[7:02]get that novel done.
[7:03]And then I finished it.
[7:04]Yeah, that was a really gratifying experience.
[7:06]Like the way kids love the books they read really like strikes a chord in me because
[7:11]I was like, that is a kid.
[7:13]So it was a really great experience and having, you know, going on tour to schools and
[7:17]like meeting a bunch of kids who read it was really fun for me.
[7:20]Go back to the writing 10 pages before work.
[7:22]Okay.
[7:23]So you were working on the shows on the show and then you would get up and just write
[7:27]a little bit and then shut down the computer and leave and that was it.
[7:31]And you would just get it out of your head and you could just start just like that.
[7:33]Like this is my time.
[7:34]I'm going to just whip it out.
[7:36]Yes.
[7:37]Well, I think what it is with me in terms of prose, like TV writings usually like in
[7:41]a room, especially calm.
[7:42]I've only written work on comedy shows right now and it's like a group of comedy writers
[7:46]and a lot of it's done in the room.
[7:47]So it's like a group experience.
[7:49]But writing a book, it's like your own chance, your own imagination and you have so much
[7:54]freedom.
[7:55]So I found it kind of like freeing basically.
[7:58]That was also this great year when I had just gotten out of a relationship and I was like,
[8:02]I'm going to take a year off of men and relationships and really focus on my career
[8:07]because it just wasn't exactly where I wanted it to be.
[8:10]So I was like, if I took that out of the equation and didn't have to like worry what I
[8:15]look like when I went to the grocery store, like if I wanted to meet someone or dating,
[8:19]I think I'd have so much extra free time.
[8:22]Basically, and I will say besides this last past year, that was the most productive
[8:28]year of my career because I really just freed up so much space in my life to like not,
[8:33]if you're like not thinking about like relationships or this and that and I just put it all into
[8:38]my work, it really, I did that.
[8:40]I wrote a pilot, I wrote a lot of stuff while working on a show.
[8:44]But the show, I will say Disney Channel show that shake it up.
[8:48]We had perfect hours.
[8:49]It was like 10 to six.
[8:50]So it wasn't like these crazy TV hours that I've had on other jobs.
[8:55]I was so sure you were going to say that then I met my husband when I swore off
[8:59]men.
[9:00]No.
[9:01]I didn't.
[9:02]I met my husband though right when I was like, it had been a year and everyone's like
[9:06]you need to start dating and I was like oh, but dating, I'd never dated a been single
[9:11]in LA really.
[9:12]So it's very different from when I was in my 20s and dating in New York City because
[9:16]you would go to bars and you would hang out at restaurants within like your crowd people
[9:21]but here in LA it's so spread out.
[9:23]They're really bars seem like more like 20 something and everyone hung out in their
[9:26]houses.
[9:27]So I was like, I don't know how you meet people.
[9:29]Everyone's like you have to online date and I was like, oh, I don't want to, I don't
[9:33]want to.
[9:34]And finally, I started online dating.
[9:36]I think I did 11 dates in a month.
[9:41]And then I met my husband on a book tour, yeah.
[9:44]But not online dating, not online dating, yeah.
[9:46]Because you said you went.
[9:47]Yeah.
[9:48]Wow.
[9:49]So it's like meant to be meant to be for sure.
[9:50]The right time.
[9:51]Yeah.
[9:52]You mentioned in also in this letter, which by the way, I think should be at the front
[9:55]of the book.
[9:56]Why is it in the back?
[9:57]It's like that.
[9:58]I thought it was so interesting.
[9:59]It like informed my whole reading.
[10:00]It was like after the fact, you said when you had left
[10:02]your original, your first husband,
[10:04]your mom was not so happy about that.
[10:07]Let's talk about that.
[10:08]Okay, I'll tell you anything.
[10:09]Have you been raised in a very traditional Korean household
[10:12]here in the United States?
[10:14]My parents were extremely strict.
[10:16]I hear that like almost parents, like Korean parents
[10:19]who like immigrated to the United States
[10:21]were almost even more strict than like Korean parents
[10:23]were at the time in Korea basically
[10:26]because they were just so bent on like,
[10:29]you know, you have to be a certain way
[10:30]and like, you know, all the studying and the education,
[10:33]et cetera.
[10:34]So, my mom really was a traditional like at home,
[10:39]you know, mother and like housewife.
[10:42]And she really, I do honestly think believes
[10:45]that like women are kind of ticator to men.
[10:48]Like that's just how I was raised always.
[10:50]And so I was always told like, you left too loud,
[10:52]you talk too much like, no man's gonna want you
[10:55]or you have champagne taste like in my 20s,
[10:57]my mom was like, no one's ever gonna marry you.
[10:59]It was just like this like continual like struggle between us.
[11:02]So when I finally did marry, who was, he wasn't Korean
[11:05]but he was a doctor and she like loved him
[11:07]and thought he was like, I think she was surprised
[11:09]that I managed to land him.
[11:11]So when after five years of marriage,
[11:13]I wasn't happy anymore and I was really thinking
[11:15]about considering divorce and leaving him,
[11:18]she, we had one of our biggest fights ever.
[11:20]She was just like, and I was like, would you rather
[11:23]I'm unhappy and married miserable?
[11:27]Or would you rather I was happy in divorce?
[11:29]And she's like, I would rather you stay married.
[11:31]And I was like, all right, well,
[11:33]I don't think we have anything more to talk about.
[11:35]It's hard to go against that.
[11:36]Yeah, it was very hard to go against it.
[11:39]Luckily, you know, I had a cell phone.
[11:40]I didn't tell her I laughed and moved back to New York.
[11:42]I didn't tell her for six months.
[11:43]I just, no, she didn't know you have a cell phone.
[11:46]She can call, I mean, if she calls me
[11:48]and I just was like, oh, he's busy or he's at work,
[11:50]I just didn't tell her.
[11:51]We weren't talking as often anymore
[11:53]because I was mad at her as well.
[11:54]That was like the biggest.
[11:55]That was a very big moment between me and my mom of like,
[11:58]this is my life.
[11:59]This is like, I have to like service like my own happiness.
[12:03]I'm not living for you or what you want from me.
[12:05]I'm sorry, I didn't.
[12:07]You got the nice, you know, fancy Vera Wang wedding,
[12:09]you know, that you got to throw me.
[12:11]And so that was for you.
[12:12]But now it's my time.
[12:13]You need to write about that.
[12:14]Yeah.
[12:15]Let's, let's say that's like fun.
[12:16]That's right, exactly.
[12:17]Like I wouldn't read about that.
[12:18]That's perfect.
[12:19]I do, I did now what, by the way,
[12:21]and I know I mentioned this too offline,
[12:23]but came for me at like the perfect type of my life
[12:26]when I was getting married.
[12:27]And so it was just like so perfect,
[12:29]like full circle that now we're here
[12:30]and we're talking about our second marriages
[12:31]and like it's just so funny.
[12:33]I know when I believed that the questions
[12:35]that I saw that you had read my first book,
[12:37]I was like, oh my gosh, this is like,
[12:38]cause men, it's meant to be.
[12:39]Yeah, so crazy that.
[12:41]I mean, it's like I remember reading that book.
[12:42]But anyway, so cool.
[12:44]So part of Anna Kay's whole thing is this posh lifestyle.
[12:49]And you include so many references to brands and items.
[12:54]And you just set that scene so well.
[12:56]Like everything is in the moment this whole,
[13:00]you just so nailed it basically.
[13:02]So talk to me about that decision to make it
[13:05]to use so many brands and time we references
[13:08]and like just root it so specifically in that time and place.
[13:11]I think I mean, in the original
[13:13]that it was very much a piece about like society
[13:15]and like your place in society.
[13:17]So to me, I always wanted it to be like a soapy fun read.
[13:22]So I wanted it to have this aspirational,
[13:24]I love Gossip Girl, the show as well.
[13:26]And I just wanted to have that sort of quality of like,
[13:29]ooh, the lives of these people
[13:31]and like the pressures that you face.
[13:33]In terms of the brands and the designers,
[13:34]I've been thinking about that like why I was so specific.
[13:37]And I was thinking, I was like,
[13:38]oh, I wonder if some of it came from like,
[13:41]I was a huge fan of J. McInner name,
[13:42]Brities and Ellis, like their first books
[13:44]and like he made label drop a lot.
[13:47]But what was interesting in the very beginning
[13:49]of the book, I made a conscious effort
[13:51]to probably do it even more so.
[13:53]Cause I feel like when you see these wealthy kids,
[13:56]you really look at, you know,
[13:57]when you first meet anyone,
[13:58]you look at that outside in their superficial materialistic
[14:01]appearance.
[14:02]Like the shoes they're wearing in this and that,
[14:04]but I slowly as you go through the books
[14:06]started to drop out the designer labels and stuff
[14:08]as you got to know the characters.
[14:09]Cause I wanted it to be like,
[14:11]oh, when you first meet them,
[14:12]you think they're rich and perfect
[14:15]and have these wonderful lives because they're rich,
[14:17]but it's really not the truth.
[14:19]Like until you get to know a person,
[14:21]then you can kind of draw down and realize
[14:23]that they have the same sort of teenage issues
[14:26]that every teenager faces.
[14:27]I mean, you know, under a different magnifying glass
[14:29]and with different pressures.
[14:31]So I really, it was important to me.
[14:33]I mean, I went to one year,
[14:35]a boarding school at St. George's in Newport, Rhode Island.
[14:37]So I was got to see a lot of the, you know,
[14:41]teenagers that were probably in that wealth class
[14:43]of the characters of Anakin.
[14:45]I myself was not actually in that class,
[14:47]but it was interesting.
[14:48]And I, what I took away from that was like,
[14:50]oh, we're still talking about boys.
[14:52]We're still talking about the zits that we have.
[14:54]We're still talking about like,
[14:55]we have the same issues.
[14:56]So teenagers who were born into wealth to me,
[14:59]that's just, they were born.
[15:00]It's not like, that's everything who they are.
[15:03]They were born that way, basically.
[15:05]And so I just found it like, you know,
[15:08]sometimes you wonder if the people give them a hard time,
[15:11]just because, you know, there is,
[15:12]one of your questions was this idea of like,
[15:15]wealth today, it's not that popular to be like rich.
[15:17]But I was like, yeah, but for teenagers,
[15:19]they get a free pass.
[15:20]I feel like all teens get a free pass.
[15:22]They were born into their circumstances.
[15:24]So who they become and the choices they make as a teenager,
[15:27]wealthy or not wealthy, is going to define them for their lives.
[15:31]So I definitely wanted it, you know,
[15:32]was commenting on that, but not really about like,
[15:35]the class system.
[15:37]So when does the free pass expire?
[15:39]What, what do you not get the pass anymore?
[15:44]I always tell like, you know,
[15:45]my husband has a little sister who's like 29.
[15:47]And I'm like, really, I feel like you're 20s
[15:49]when they're so, you know, so smart and driven and serious.
[15:53]And I was like, you know what, you're kind of, to me,
[15:55]you're 20s, you're a chance to like,
[15:56]screw up and do whatever you want to do.
[15:58]I made so many mistakes when I thought
[15:59]I was so worldly and knew everything in my 20s.
[16:02]And every decade, you're like, oh, wow,
[16:04]I didn't know anything back then.
[16:07]So, you know, I feel like you had a free pass for a long time.
[16:10]Okay, I love, especially with love.
[16:12]I think you definitely, it's tricky.
[16:15]Love and relationships.
[16:16]I feel though that, I mean, not to say
[16:19]you're not giving them a free pass,
[16:20]but I feel like there's a poking fun
[16:22]at this whole lifestyle in the book.
[16:24]You know, like, not, you're not mean about it,
[16:27]but it's definitely like, and not exploitation,
[16:30]like an expose of like a certain class of kids.
[16:32]Yeah, I wanted to comment a little bit about it.
[16:34]And I mean, I really wanted like,
[16:36]there's a Dustin character who's loving from the original.
[16:39]And he's really an outsider status
[16:41]where he is black, adopted,
[16:42]but raised by Jewish white parents.
[16:44]And he's probably the one who's the smartest
[16:47]in the moral center where he,
[16:49]I gave him the freedom to comment on it,
[16:51]because I feel like you need to be able to have a voice
[16:54]in the book to say, you know, it's crazy the way you live.
[16:58]But I feel like if you're a teen and you were raised that way,
[17:01]do you know, it's crazy.
[17:02]I mean, because that's kind of the world
[17:04]that they can be very a sheltered existence,
[17:06]like where they're at country clubs with other people
[17:09]who are of their same, you know, wealth level.
[17:11]Do they know what's that?
[17:13]It's all about perspective.
[17:14]I feel like when you're a teenager
[17:15]and tell you meet people from different backgrounds,
[17:18]you don't necessarily know that your upbringing
[17:20]was that different, do you?
[17:23]No.
[17:23]Right, right.
[17:24]You know what I mean?
[17:25]I mean, yes, you know, but I mean,
[17:27]I went to one of these tools.
[17:28]I mean, I went to two of that.
[17:30]Right.
[17:31]I mean, this is not so far.
[17:32]I mean, these were not,
[17:34]you know, I'm not going to get it to this.
[17:36]Oh, no, but I'm going to leave myself out of this.
[17:40]I think parts of it seem realistic,
[17:41]but these were not my people.
[17:43]Right, right, right.
[17:44]I wasn't in like a,
[17:45]I didn't run like with a fast crowd.
[17:48]I was somewhere, you know, but anyway, moving on.
[17:53]There was this part about Dustin though
[17:55]that he's just like, wow, look at how things work
[17:59]in the world.
[18:00]I didn't even know, right?
[18:01]Like when he's, and he was resistant
[18:02]about even going into this class of people,
[18:05]this whole situation, he was recruited to be a tutor
[18:08]for his friend as when he was younger.
[18:11]And then he gets to see like goes to a party
[18:13]in the beginning and it's like looking all around like,
[18:16]wow, maybe I should enjoy it
[18:17]because maybe I'm not going to get back here again.
[18:19]Right.
[18:20]So there is also that part of it.
[18:22]And I feel like there's something to this book
[18:24]where you're like, well, I have to keep, right?
[18:27]Like I might not get back in this again.
[18:29]Like let me see what happens in this.
[18:30]I think there's just like when I,
[18:33]so I went to New York City at 18 for college at NYU
[18:37]and I, when I, and I had grown up in Tennessee,
[18:40]like a small town, Tennessee.
[18:41]So New York City was like the biggest change possible.
[18:44]So there when you see like how grand everything is
[18:47]and then you realize like how much money there is
[18:50]in New York City, you can't help,
[18:52]especially like, you know, teenager through your 20s,
[18:54]fantasizing me like, oh, I wonder what,
[18:57]you know there's a whole other part of the city
[18:58]that's going on around you
[19:00]that's wealth and connections and fancy things.
[19:04]And you just always kind of fantasize that about it
[19:06]because I mean, I was broke through most of my 20s
[19:09]working and book publishing.
[19:10]And so you just kind of are so interested.
[19:13]So to me it was like I just really wanted to show this
[19:15]like so be hidden world of like, you know,
[19:18]where to them like, you know,
[19:20]getting your first designer thing.
[19:21]It's just like, that's just their lives.
[19:23]They won't, you know, their closet is filled
[19:24]with designer bags where for me,
[19:26]I was like begging my mom through my entire 20s
[19:29]to like get my first product purse.
[19:31]I was like, please, my mom would be like,
[19:33]it's more than your rent.
[19:35]And I'm like, I know, but if you want me
[19:37]to find a husband, that's why I did knock her up
[19:41]with my closet full of designer purses just saying
[19:44]that was not my experience in the slightest.
[19:46]But anyway, that's so funny.
[19:49]So what, so you're turning this into now a series
[19:53]with HBO Max, tell me about how that's going.
[19:55]We're still in the waiting process.
[19:56]TV development's so much a different, it's a longer.
[20:00]or timeline, basically.
[20:01]I mean, it's funny because I feel like I just reded line
[20:04]and you see like show after show after show
[20:06]when there's so many, but like behind the scenes,
[20:08]like the development process
[20:10]because there's so many stages of it.
[20:12]It's taking a while.
[20:14]So I just don't have that much information about it yet.
[20:16]When I sold the book, I was lucky enough to have like a,
[20:19]my first Hollywood like bidding war
[20:22]on the studio side and then on the network side,
[20:24]we pitched it and there was like a lot of interest
[20:26]and it was really fun.
[20:27]So I, but what was great is having been working in TV
[20:31]for like the last 10 years,
[20:33]I sort of like understood like the game at that point in time.
[20:36]So none of it went to my head,
[20:37]but I got sent bottle of vintage crystal
[20:40]and sprinkles cookies and I was like,
[20:41]and I was like, this is crazy.
[20:43]Like what's happening now?
[20:44]Like I'm living this like sort of Hollywood fantasy,
[20:46]but at the same time since I've been here,
[20:48]I didn't take it too seriously
[20:49]and I just had fun with it.
[20:50]So you're saying during which stage
[20:53]were you getting the Christot?
[20:54]This is once you had when there was like a lot
[20:57]of different producers,
[20:58]I met with 14 different producers
[21:00]and like I think there were 25 that wanted to meet.
[21:02]As soon as like the book got announced,
[21:04]it just was like a feeding frenzy.
[21:06]And so I spent three weeks meeting different production companies
[21:10]and talking to them about like, you know,
[21:13]what their ideas were and I could always tell like,
[21:15]A, that in Hollywood, a lot of the assistants read the books.
[21:18]Basically, for their bosses,
[21:20]because a lot of the assistants were always like,
[21:22]when they greeted me, they're like,
[21:22]oh my God, I love the book and this and that.
[21:24]And then they probably wrote coverage,
[21:25]but I could tell in the meeting
[21:27]which producers had read the books themselves
[21:29]based on the conversation.
[21:31]So it was a really, and I really took my time
[21:33]and was very careful with this process
[21:35]because it's obviously, you know,
[21:36]this is the dream TV show for me to do
[21:39]because I get to, I'm an executive producer,
[21:41]I'm writing it, you know, I'm the creator of the show.
[21:44]So I really wanted to like make very sound smart decisions.
[21:48]So how did you pick your final producer?
[21:49]You know, it's interesting.
[21:50]I, you know, I met with like when it was narrowed down
[21:53]to like the last group of four
[21:55]and they were connected with different studios,
[21:57]you know, that they were all sort of buying for it.
[22:00]I really was like looking for people.
[22:02]I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to work with them.
[22:04]A TV show could last for how, you know,
[22:05]knock on wood, like four or five years.
[22:07]You're like, I'm gonna have to be with these people
[22:09]all the time.
[22:10]I need to like make sure I like them.
[22:11]I have a very strict no asshole policy that I don't work with,
[22:16]you know, people that I know are gonna be jerks
[22:19]about something.
[22:20]So I was very careful about that.
[22:22]I tend to like strong females, you know,
[22:24]working with them as well.
[22:26]And one thing, one of my executive producers
[22:28]is James Shin at the Scooter Braun Production Company
[22:31]and James is Korean.
[22:32]And I wasn't necessarily making that as a connoisse,
[22:35]but it did really, I found that very helpful
[22:37]in our discussion because obviously Jenny Han
[22:40]and to all the boys I've loved,
[22:42]I read this article about her when she was deciding
[22:45]who was going to get the movie, the producers,
[22:48]she picked the one producers who said
[22:50]that they would make sure that the girl stayed Korean
[22:52]or half Korean.
[22:53]And I was like, oh, I really respected that
[22:55]because she was already in New York Times bestseller.
[22:57]So she had her choice basically.
[22:59]And for once I had my choice,
[23:01]I've never, I've honestly never been in this position
[23:04]before in Hollywood where I had.
[23:05]I was the one who had like the power and ability to choose.
[23:09]So it was important for me to make sure like I had
[23:12]the right people.
[23:12]And I did like the James, you know,
[23:14]he talked to me a lot about like his own childhood
[23:16]and violin lessons and his own Korean upbringing.
[23:20]So I felt like that was like a good, you know,
[23:22]fit for me and the book.
[23:24]So cool.
[23:24]Yeah.
[23:25]So in the meantime, while you have all this going on,
[23:27]what are you doing now?
[23:28]Are you working on a new show?
[23:30]Are you writing a new book?
[23:32]Are you thinking about an textbook?
[23:33]Right.
[23:34]Thinking about saving your creative power for the adaptation?
[23:37]It's so funny.
[23:38]I'm always like everyone always has that side hustle going.
[23:40]So for a long time as when I came out here
[23:43]and I had been writing books but wasn't making
[23:44]enough of a living doing that.
[23:46]And then I was like, I need to concentrate on one thing.
[23:49]Cause I'm like, I want to write a play.
[23:50]I want to write short stories.
[23:51]I'm like, I'm so like, it's not flighty,
[23:53]but I'm so like creative and curious.
[23:56]I want to try so many different things.
[23:58]I was like, I need to focus on TV will be my day job
[24:01]and then books will be on the side.
[24:03]But now, now it's kind of flip flopping again.
[24:07]I have a couple TV projects that are, you know,
[24:09]I'm really working to try to create
[24:11]and have my own show get greenlit
[24:13]so that I can run it.
[24:14]So I have like a kid show and Netflix that's in contention.
[24:17]I have the Anna K project,
[24:18]which is obviously the dream project.
[24:20]I have a Korean soap opera with Margaret Cho.
[24:22]Oh, that adapting Korean soap.
[24:24]So that's super fun.
[24:25]That's a comedy.
[24:26]I am writing another book and I am writing a sequel.
[24:30]No way.
[24:31]Yes.
[24:31]That's awesome.
[24:32]Yeah.
[24:33]That is so cool.
[24:34]And when I was reading this book,
[24:35]I was like, wow, this could be like multiple books.
[24:37]Right.
[24:38]Like it's so, there's so much going on in here.
[24:40]It's like, and so many characters.
[24:41]This is like, this is amazing.
[24:42]I know I really wanted, first I mean,
[24:44]this really was supposed to be a one off.
[24:46]It was no intention to like can do a series
[24:48]but then once the TV show sold,
[24:50]I was like, oh, the TV show,
[24:52]the first season would be the first book.
[24:55]So I was like, oh, if I could write the books per season.
[24:58]Perfect.
[24:59]And you would see it.
[25:00]So the second book takes place over the summer.
[25:02]So I was like, oh, because to me,
[25:03]I feel like as a teenager,
[25:05]your lives is your school year versus your summer.
[25:08]And I'm like, who doesn't want to see a bunch of rich kids
[25:09]and how they party in the summer?
[25:11]So this is the Hamptons,
[25:12]Anna K. Hamptons, originally.
[25:14]Like there's going to be some of the characters.
[25:15]I'm going to have a character.
[25:16]Beatrice is going to come to LA.
[25:18]She's doing internships.
[25:20]So some will be in New York,
[25:21]but some are traveling abroad.
[25:22]So I really wanted to make it, you know,
[25:25]so cool.
[25:25]Very expensive.
[25:27]Yeah.
[25:28]I'm working on it right now.
[25:29]Literally, I have as soon as after I'm going to go home
[25:31]and write, continue writing when I get home.
[25:33]That's so cool.
[25:34]I love it.
[25:35]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[25:38]Let's see.
[25:39]I have always wanted to write and I just really think
[25:41]that you have to,
[25:43]my best success had come from things
[25:45]that are like personal to me, you know,
[25:48]because sometimes I'm like,
[25:48]oh, is the fiction writer?
[25:49]You're like, I have an imagination.
[25:51]Why can't I just create things
[25:52]that are totally fictionalized
[25:54]and just like make it up from my head?
[25:56]Like I, you know, that's how I used to think.
[25:58]And then I was like,
[25:59]oh, but to have an emotional impact and wait,
[26:02]I was like,
[26:03]it really my best success have always been things
[26:05]that I wrote about personally.
[26:07]Like my first book was about my first year of marriage
[26:09]and me kind of struggling with that
[26:11]and trying to figure it out.
[26:12]My second book was about how to tell
[26:14]if you're obsessed with your dog
[26:15]because I was currently obsessed with my dog.
[26:17]So I think that's where I get the most creative inspiration
[26:20]from and it's just like that's so, you know,
[26:23]when you're thinking about like what you want to write,
[26:25]I think you try every genre and, you know,
[26:28]stage versus TV versus a book
[26:31]and just see where it takes you really.
[26:33]And then also you have to sometimes
[26:35]put your bat in the chair and just write
[26:37]because that's what I did with that kids book
[26:39]I showed about where I was getting up early before work.
[26:41]I was like, I want to try
[26:43]and I set these small goals.
[26:44]I'm like 10 pages.
[26:45]I didn't always hit 10 pages every morning
[26:47]but that was my goal.
[26:48]I had a friend that I would email the 10 pages to to keep me
[26:52]on track even though she, I wasn't asking her to read it.
[26:55]It was just so I had it so that I could kind of,
[26:57]you know, keep myself accountable
[27:00]because it's hard, it's busy.
[27:01]Like this busy.
[27:03]I'm so interested in seeing what you write today
[27:06]after this.
[27:08]I want you to send me like a paragraph.
[27:09]All right, well, I'm like totally fast.
[27:11]Yes, like I went more of all of these people.
[27:13]Right, tell me more.
[27:15]Anyway, all right, well thank you so much
[27:16]for coming on the show and sorry again for my years today
[27:19]and thank you.
[27:20]I cannot wait to see what happens.
[27:22]Thank you so much for having me.
[27:23]It's been a great since it's been a fun talk.
[27:25]Yeah.
[27:26]You've been listening to moms don't have time to read books
[27:28]with Zibi Owens.
[27:30]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[27:32]at zibiowens.com to get more updates about episodes like these
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[27:37]Thanks to Lauren Passsell and her innovative PR company,
[27:40]Tink, for sponsoring today's episode,
[27:43]please check them out at tinkmedia.com.
[27:45]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
[27:48]to read books.
[27:49]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[27:52]for the Sound Editing.
[27:53]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:55]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[27:57]Thanks for listening.
[27:58]You could always email me at zibiatzibiowens.com.