NYT Bestselling Author Jessica Knoll, HELPLESS
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
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[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
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[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling and the not-yet-discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:26]Jessica Knoll is the author of Helpless, a novel.
[0:29]Jessica and I recorded this live at Totally Book Live
[0:32]at the Whitby Hotel a while ago.
[0:35]And we have had to hold this until the book finally
[0:38]is coming out now, and I am so excited
[0:41]because I had to message Jessica as soon as I finish,
[0:45]which I don't do that often, but I had to
[0:47]and asked her a few questions about it
[0:49]and what she thought, and oh my gosh,
[0:52]the second half of the book in particular.
[0:54]I was flipping pages so quickly.
[0:56]I couldn't wait to get to the end.
[0:57]I couldn't wait to figure out what happened
[0:59]and there was, well, I'm giving away too much,
[1:01]but oh my gosh, like really good.
[1:04]Okay, Jessica Knoll is the New York Times best-selling author
[1:06]of Bright Young Women, the favorite sister
[1:08]and luckiest girl alive, now a major motion picture
[1:11]from Netflix starring Mila Kunis.
[1:13]She has been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan
[1:16]and the articles editor itself.
[1:17]She lives in New York City with her family.
[1:19]And actually I just ran into her at a party
[1:21]for John Sterling's new book all about working at Cosmopolitan
[1:24]back in the day with Helen Gurley Brown.
[1:26]So, Harken's back to her early days.
[1:29]You are gonna love this book.
[1:31]Welcome to Totally Booked Live.
[1:33]I'm here with Jessica Knoll, so exciting.
[1:36]Thank you so much for being here.
[1:38]Her new book, Helpless, is coming out July 7th.
[1:41]So we all get a sneak peek.
[1:43]Congrats for having me.
[1:45]Thank you.
[1:46]Thank you for having me.
[1:47]One day you guys are gonna get the hang of this.
[1:52]Hopefully today, anyway.
[1:54]You guys, this book was so good that when I finished
[1:57]I had to DM and be like, oh my gosh, wait, explain.
[2:01]Tell me this, tell me, anyway.
[2:03]But I loved that the question you asked me
[2:06]is the question you asked me because it's the question
[2:08]I'm hoping everyone is asking when they finished the book.
[2:11]So, wow.
[2:11]It really, it wore my cold dark heart.
[2:14]Oh, good, so good, so glad.
[2:16]Okay, tell everyone what Helpless is about.
[2:18]So, Helpless follows a woman named Faye Heron,
[2:24]who returns to her college campus after 10 years
[2:26]for the funeral of her beloved film, Professor.
[2:29]And while she's there, she has a run-in
[2:32]with her college ex-boyfriend with whom she had a very
[2:36]tumultuous and some would say toxic relationship.
[2:40]But it's 10 years have passed, they're both married,
[2:44]he has kids, they've grown up, everything seems like
[2:47]they can put the past behind them
[2:49]and admit that they both acted poorly.
[2:51]So, Henry, her ex invites her to have a drink
[2:55]to bury the hatchet, at which point he drugs and kidnaps her.
[3:00]And so, the majority of the novel takes place
[3:03]at his remote family cabin in the Adirondacks
[3:06]and you're uncovering what it is she's really doing there.
[3:11]At first, you think it's about revenge,
[3:12]but it turns out to be a much bigger mystery than that.
[3:15]It's something that completely rewrites the past
[3:18]and the actual answer.
[3:20]I hope we'll lead all of you to be sending you
[3:23]a message on Instagram asking me the question that's
[3:27]be asked me.
[3:28]Yeah, it's so funny because on the back of the book,
[3:31]it says, like on the description on the top,
[3:34]it says, from the New York Times bestselling author
[3:36]of luckiest color of life and bright young women
[3:38]comes a smoldering psychological thriller
[3:40]with a singular mind-bending last page.
[3:43]So meanwhile, my kids, I was carrying this around
[3:45]for a while while I was reading it and one of them
[3:47]picked it up and was like a smoldering last page
[3:49]and they're like, we're gonna see what's on the last page.
[3:52]I'm like, no, no, no, don't tell me.
[3:53]And so they read out loud part of the last page
[3:56]before I had to finish because that's how sweet they are.
[4:00]But I have to say, it doesn't give it away
[4:03]until you've read the book.
[4:04]So it's not like that.
[4:05]It's not like there's some thing that,
[4:07]but if you know, you know, it's just I, Y,
[4:12]and whatever, but it is the last.
[4:15]The ending is incredibly intriguing.
[4:17]We will all be talking about the ending,
[4:19]but not today, today we'll talk about the story.
[4:23]Faye is such an interesting character.
[4:25]So she comes from the acting slash
[4:28]producing directing LA world where she has risen
[4:32]to the top echelon of that society.
[4:36]You have an opening scene where Melanie Griffin says like,
[4:39]oh, I'm such a fan of yours.
[4:41]And I'm like, that is so great.
[4:43]That just like shows us where she is.
[4:46]And she'll say things throughout the book,
[4:47]like she'll run into someone and say, well,
[4:50]I know he knows who I am.
[4:51]I know what my appearance does.
[4:53]I know my good side.
[4:54]I know how to work every room.
[4:56]Like she is so in command of who she is
[5:00]and how she is projecting to other people.
[5:03]Where did Faye come from?
[5:04]Yeah, I love Faye so much.
[5:06]She is a little bit she came from my time
[5:11]that I spent living in Los Angeles
[5:12]and getting to know that Hollywood world a little bit
[5:17]through kind of the adaptation of my first novel,
[5:20]which I was a producer on and I wrote the script.
[5:24]And I just found, first of all, I found
[5:28]the biggest misconception I had about Los Angeles
[5:31]before I moved there was that it was a kind of a place
[5:35]for bimbo's in airheads.
[5:37]And I actually found that Los Angeles is a very much
[5:40]a working town and people there are very ambitious
[5:44]and they're very calculated,
[5:45]especially people in the entertainment industry.
[5:47]And I say that as a compliment.
[5:49]People who are calculating in their careers
[5:51]absolutely fascinating me.
[5:53]And you have to be very calculating
[5:55]and have sharp elbows to rise to the upper echelon
[6:00]of Hollywood.
[6:01]And so I loved the idea of creating a female character
[6:05]who had achieved this and who had kind of amassed
[6:12]some kind of currency and power in her life.
[6:15]And then coming back to a place where she wasn't someone
[6:20]who had power, she wasn't someone who had social currency.
[6:24]She was the scholarship kid in college
[6:27]and she was surrounded and her ex-boyfriend in particular,
[6:30]they all came from family money
[6:31]and they had very different experiences in life.
[6:33]And I thought it would just be so fascinating
[6:36]to plop her back in an environment
[6:38]where she is now a completely different person
[6:41]than she was when she first found herself
[6:43]around these people and in this world.
[6:47]Total shift of power dynamics.
[6:49]Exactly.
[6:50]And this book is very much about power dynamics
[6:53]and romantically as well.
[6:55]Yes.
[6:56]A lot of very steamy scenes.
[6:57]Yeah, just say heads up.
[6:59]If you're listening to the audiobook eventually,
[7:01]maybe not the one to listen to with other people in the car.
[7:05]What the kids do not listen to with the kids.
[7:07]Yeah.
[7:07]Or choose your companions carefully.
[7:09]Yeah, just say that.
[7:10]And there's a lot of violence too.
[7:12]I was going to say the sexual scenes
[7:13]are working on violence.
[7:14]But there's, I mean, there's dark, yes, things.
[7:18]Dark, they have moments.
[7:21]People often say that to me about my books.
[7:23]And I always have to laugh because to me,
[7:26]it's not that they aren't dark.
[7:27]It's that they don't make me feel dark.
[7:31]Like, I come a little bit from a dark place
[7:34]and I've experienced dark things in my life.
[7:37]But I don't think that I present that way.
[7:39]I think part of that is that when I'm writing in darkness
[7:42]and when I'm writing about pain and trauma, even,
[7:45]I almost feel like my most at home, I'm like,
[7:48]oh yeah, I get this world.
[7:49]And I can have fun in this world
[7:51]and I can even have dark humor in this world
[7:53]because this is my turf and I get how things operate.
[7:56]So I just, I love like, I don't know,
[7:59]rolling around in the mud like that.
[8:00]Like it's just fun to me.
[8:02]Well, I have to say a reread your Lenny letter
[8:05]after reading this book and the New York Times piece
[8:07]about it afterwards.
[8:09]And I know you've come out publicly
[8:12]and talked about the experience you had at age 15
[8:16]where you essentially were gang raped by kids at a party
[8:20]and you decided not to talk about it
[8:22]until the paperback release of yours.
[8:24]So it's not like you'd use this for book publicity
[8:27]or something like that, not that you would,
[8:29]but I'm just saying like,
[8:30]this is something you took your time
[8:31]and thought about before sharing.
[8:34]And put stories like this into context
[8:37]because we see what's happened.
[8:39]Can you just share a little bit about that?
[8:41]Yeah, so I wrote my first novel.
[8:43]The character is a survivor of sexual assault
[8:46]and her experience very closely mimics mine,
[8:49]but it is fiction and I didn't share with anyone
[8:54]at the time that the book was coming out
[8:56]that anything about her experience
[8:57]was based on my own experience.
[8:58]But this was a story that I'd carried with me
[9:01]since I was 15 years old.
[9:02]That book published when I was 32.
[9:04]So it was, you know, 17 years, something like that.
[9:07]And it was something I thought about every waking second
[9:11]of every single day.
[9:12]And when I finally figured out a way
[9:14]to write this into a story and get it off my chest,
[9:19]it was just the most freeing and cathartic experience.
[9:23]I almost feel like I entered a fugue state
[9:25]in writing that novel, luckiest girl alive.
[9:27]And then it came out and a lot of readers
[9:30]had would come up to me at events and say,
[9:34]wow, you know, she's her auntie's experience
[9:38]and how she reacts to it and how she handles it
[9:41]and how it impacts every single choice she makes
[9:44]in her life, it's rendered.
[9:46]So realistically, you know, and they would,
[9:49]no one would say like did that happen to you,
[9:51]but it was always, I always felt I could feel like a connection.
[9:55]Like they were saying, this seems realistic to me
[9:58]because this happened to me, did this happen.
[10:00]And that was always the unspoken part.
[10:03]And so about a year later, I did write an essay saying,
[10:08]yes, this had happened to me.
[10:10]And so, yeah, it informs a lot of what I write about.
[10:13]And it's been many years, and I've had a lot of therapy,
[10:18]and I've moved my way through it.
[10:20]And I've healed a lot of things.
[10:23]But there's still always stuff there that I'm grappling with
[10:27]and that I'm curious about.
[10:29]And writing helps me just kind of untangle things
[10:34]that I don't know that I would get there as fast
[10:38]without having the gift of writing and story and character.
[10:43]Well, I know you've helped so many people.
[10:45]Not that that was necessarily the goal.
[10:47]And I know you've helped yourself process,
[10:49]and that's amazing.
[10:50]But the gift of sharing that is so remarkable.
[10:55]And readers have helped me, too, because I think the piece
[10:59]of it that was always so painful was after I was assaulted,
[11:02]the narrative in high school was that it was just a party,
[11:06]things got out of hand, and I was a willing participant.
[11:09]And so to have written it as it happened and have people come
[11:13]to me and call it what it was for the first time,
[11:16]it was like, I remember thinking like, all right,
[11:18]what happened, and I will let readers decide
[11:22]if I'm allowed to call it rape, even though I knew
[11:25]in my heart that it was.
[11:26]But then to hear so many people come and say she was assaulted
[11:30]and to name it, that gave me courage.
[11:35]And that gave me validation in a way
[11:39]that I'd never had before in my life.
[11:41]I wonder if that doctor who you saw who said you
[11:44]had asked her if it was rape.
[11:46]And she said, I'm not qualified to make that determination.
[11:48]Yes.
[11:49]What if she had answered differently?
[11:51]I think it would have changed everything.
[11:53]I really do.
[11:54]I just needed one person to say what it was.
[11:58]Yeah.
[11:59]So you did mention in this book, or somewhere,
[12:02]that I read, that now that you have done that,
[12:06]you couldn't imagine that now it wasn't the thing
[12:08]that you thought about every single day,
[12:10]that you put it in its place, and that it is part of you,
[12:13]but it doesn't control your narrative.
[12:14]Exactly.
[12:15]Yeah, it's amazing when I think
[12:18]about how often I just, it was just a part of my daily life.
[12:23]And now it's not something I think about that often,
[12:26]like really putting it down on the page.
[12:29]It like released me.
[12:30]It lifted a burden that I'd carried for almost two decades.
[12:35]Well, in a way, it's the same thing for Fay.
[12:37]Right?
[12:38]You go back to your high school days and share.
[12:41]She goes back to her high school days,
[12:43]and she wants to just take that whole conversation back.
[12:46]And so she does.
[12:47]Yeah, mm-hmm.
[12:49]She does, yeah.
[12:50]Talk a little bit about how you accomplish
[12:54]all these things in fiction, right?
[12:55]You have Fay, you have, do we believe this?
[12:58]Do we not believe this?
[12:59]You have, like, who is the good guy?
[13:01]Who is the bad guy?
[13:02]Like, you have us in a tailspin, right?
[13:04]We are on such a ride.
[13:06]And with all psychological suspense,
[13:08]you're like, wait, is this a red herring?
[13:11]Or where is this the twist?
[13:13]Is this like, explain?
[13:14]I think with this one, because it is,
[13:18]it's essentially what it is,
[13:19]is it's a forced proximity story.
[13:21]So it's two people alone in a remote cabin
[13:26]on an island in the Adirondacks.
[13:28]It's only accessible by boat.
[13:30]She doesn't know how to drive a boat.
[13:32]It's too far to swim.
[13:33]There's no electricity.
[13:35]There's no phones.
[13:36]There's no internet.
[13:37]So there's only so much you can do
[13:41]with two people alone in a locked room.
[13:44]So I'm always thinking about, okay,
[13:47]I've introduced these characters initially
[13:50]in the early pages of the book,
[13:52]how can I bring them back in?
[13:53]And so it's always a question of how,
[13:56]it's a little bit like,
[13:57]how there's a movement in food right now
[13:59]to like, use everything.
[14:00]Like we're gonna use like the greens
[14:02]at the top of the carrots
[14:03]and like we don't wanna waste anything, right?
[14:05]That's how I feel.
[14:06]What are we doing with the greens on top of it here?
[14:07]Oh, you chop them up.
[14:09]And you can like add them as an herb into your salad.
[14:12]Oh, okay.
[14:13]I'm sure you're all doing this.
[14:16]So yes, there's something that this is my,
[14:18]it's my slimmest novel yet.
[14:20]It's my tightest and I didn't want to waste anything.
[14:23]I didn't want to waste a single character.
[14:25]I didn't want to waste a single moment.
[14:27]And so once, you know,
[14:29]I kind of got Henry and Fay to where I wanted them.
[14:33]I kind of looked back at what, you know,
[14:36]my bounty from the beginning, right?
[14:38]Like who are my characters?
[14:39]Who are my people?
[14:40]Who is the story from the beginning?
[14:41]And then I went and I tried to insert them back to the story
[14:44]and use them and use everything up
[14:46]until there was nothing left.
[14:48]So I thought about it.
[14:50]And a lot of sort of lust and, oh.
[14:53]So this book I was reading,
[14:57]I was reading in the cut by Susanna Moore,
[14:59]which to me is like the quintessential erotic thriller
[15:04]from the, I don't know if it was published in the 90s.
[15:06]I think it might have been published in the 90s
[15:07]and then the film adaptation,
[15:09]which was done by Jane Campion,
[15:11]who's now an Academy Award winning director.
[15:14]I think I believe that came out in like 2001.
[15:16]I am obsessed with this book.
[15:18]I am obsessed with this adaptation.
[15:20]It does not have a good score on Rotten Tomatoes,
[15:22]which just fills me with rage.
[15:24]I'm like, this is a, I think it's a stunning movie.
[15:27]And I really, really wanted something
[15:30]that kind of captured what I believe Susanna Moore.
[15:33]So expertly captures in the cut,
[15:36]which is like, there is such a fine line, I think,
[15:40]between, or I wanted, I wanted Fay and Henry
[15:43]to walk that line between desire and violence
[15:48]that I think that the media has always played on.
[15:52]And that I think that women in particular
[15:55]received very confused and mixed messages about like,
[16:00]if you think about a lot of the content
[16:03]that we grew up watching,
[16:05]before we were kind of tackling some of these issues
[16:08]with like thought and care,
[16:09]there would be scenes of violence with very lusty
[16:13]and sexy music over overlapped or scenes of love and desire
[16:20]that were also interspersed with violence.
[16:22]So like, that is something,
[16:24]that is like a messaging that I felt was fed.
[16:27]To me, as I was growing up,
[16:28]and it was something I really wanted to explore
[16:31]between two characters who also would have received
[16:33]that messaging and how did that manifest
[16:36]in their real romantic lives.
[16:39]So interesting.
[16:40]So have you cast this movie in your head?
[16:45]The, so, Henry, yes, but he doesn't really exist.
[16:51]He's the answer because essentially
[16:53]he's Alexander Skarsgardt
[16:54]if Alexander Skarsgardt was still 32 years old.
[16:57]So I'm like, I don't know who that is,
[17:00]but I'm open.
[17:03]I'm open to finding him.
[17:04]I don't want to bad say.
[17:05]Faye, I'm a much more, she feels more like,
[17:10]I don't want to say, she's more of a campus to me,
[17:13]like an open canvas.
[17:15]Like I, even as she's written in the novel
[17:18]with like her hair color and her stature,
[17:20]I'm like, I don't feel so married to it in whomever
[17:26]I would be lucky enough to have play her.
[17:30]Interesting.
[17:31]We were talking earlier to Kelly Yang,
[17:33]who wrote a book called The Take,
[17:34]who I'm sorry that you aren't overlapping,
[17:36]because I feel like you two should be in conversation today.
[17:39]In fact, I should have just had you on a panel,
[17:41]but anyway, okay, next time.
[17:43]But her character, Ingrid, would very much like,
[17:47]I feel like the two Ingrid and Faye
[17:48]need to like go off and have a little adventure.
[17:50]And to meet this Ingrid.
[17:53]Yeah, I mean, both women as they're aging
[17:56]in the world of Hollywood wrestling
[17:59]with the idea of power.
[18:00]How do you view that yourself?
[18:03]You've just left LA, like where are you leaving
[18:06]the film TV streaming world?
[18:07]Where are you in your head?
[18:08]Well, we're still actually.
[18:10]I'm not an actress.
[18:11]I think it's a much different thing
[18:12]if your appearance is involved.
[18:14]And I truthfully don't know how anyone survives that.
[18:19]And I don't know that people really do,
[18:21]because you see everywhere like people are doing things
[18:24]to their faces, younger and younger and younger.
[18:27]And it's, you see clips of some of these actors
[18:30]from 10 years ago or 15 years ago.
[18:33]And they do not have the same face anymore.
[18:35]And the face that they had was already so stunning
[18:39]and beautiful and unique.
[18:40]And so I think it really is,
[18:43]I don't know if I can curse on this,
[18:44]but I think it's a mind fuck.
[18:45]I think it's a mind fuck to be someone, an actor,
[18:50]and particularly a woman in Hollywood as you're aging.
[18:54]So, I guess I just have to say I'm glad it's not me.
[18:58]But I think where we're at with content streaming,
[19:03]movies, film, personally, I find it to be a little scary.
[19:08]I think that these are art forms that I love and cherish
[19:12]not just because they're the things that I like to do
[19:16]and that are my livelihood,
[19:17]but because I enjoy them myself
[19:19]and I don't want them to go away.
[19:20]And I'm afraid we're entering an era
[19:23]where things are going away,
[19:25]where people aren't going to movie theaters,
[19:27]where people are, you know,
[19:29]thankfully people are still reading,
[19:31]but it scares me a little bit.
[19:33]And with the proliferation of AI,
[19:36]I just don't know what it does to people's attention spans.
[19:40]And I don't know, I don't have any answers.
[19:43]I just keep trying to support the things
[19:46]that I love to watch and read
[19:49]and hope that people turn out to do the same.
[19:52]We're all gonna turn out just for this.
[19:54]Yeah, so there's that.
[19:55]Thank you.
[19:56]By the way, this is the first time and so fast,
[19:59]that I...
[20:00]I've read about the fires in fiction.
[20:03]Oh, oh, interesting.
[20:05]Yeah.
[20:06]How did you decide to do that?
[20:07]Because we only, it's only a little snippet at the end.
[20:12]And I think at that point that I was towards the end of the book
[20:15]was around the time it had happened.
[20:18]And I think it lends itself so well to this story
[20:21]because even when she's saved, right?
[20:25]And she's, we're out of the Adirondacks
[20:27]and she's back home in LA, now this other tragedy strikes.
[20:32]And not just the tragedy, but like the hours that that
[20:36]was happening, it truly felt like the world was ending.
[20:40]It felt like there was nowhere that was safe.
[20:42]Like when a fire broke out in West Hollywood,
[20:44]in the urban grid, I was like forget it.
[20:47]Like we're trapped in LA.
[20:48]We're never getting out of here alive.
[20:49]That was really what it felt like for about 24 hours.
[20:52]And that panic lent itself so well to this story
[20:57]and to what fate was going through at that point in the story.
[21:01]As if we needed more drama.
[21:03]Yeah, no, let's put that in.
[21:05]Never enough, never enough.
[21:06]Oh my gosh, Jess, this is so good.
[21:09]I can't wait for y'all to read it.
[21:10]I can't wait to discuss it even more.
[21:12]Thank you.
[21:12]Okay, great job.
[21:13]Great job.
[21:14]Thank you.
[21:16]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi.
[21:19]Formerly, mom's don't have time to read books.
[21:22]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[21:25]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[21:27]and spread the word.
[21:29]Thanks so much.
[21:30]Oh, and buy the books.