Time Traveling Expert Steven Moffat Answers Our Questions About The Time Traveler’s Wife
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The post Time Traveling Expert Steven Moffat Answers Our Questions About The Time Traveler’s Wife appeared first on Consequence.
Steven Moffat’s had plenty of experience writing time travel stories, as the former head writer behind the iconic BBC sci-fi drama Doctor Who. But he’s very clear on the differences between that show and The Time Traveler’s Wife, his new adaptation of the best-selling Audrey Niffenegger novel about a man who gets constantly unstuck from time, and the woman who’s loved him her entire life, despite the complications of his condition.
“Henry and Clare’s life is not an adventure story. That’s the big difference. It’s a story of people trying to have a marriage, trying to be in love, trying to get home at night, trying to grasp every day of happiness they can have while facing the irritant of time travel,” he tells Consequence. “The Doctor loves his time travel. He or she wants to run back to her TARDIS as often as possible. But Henry, he’d just rather just go home to his wife. That’s what he wants to do.”
That said, the two series have more than one or two connections, as Moffat was so inspired by Niffengger’s original novel that he wrote an award-winning episode of Doctor Who, 2006’s “The Girl in the Fireplace.” Niffenegger went on to include a reference to “The Girl in the Fireplace” in her second novel, which Moffat calls “a deliberate piss-take on me, from Audrey. Because she’d seen ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ and thought, oh yeah, he’s read The Time Travelers’ Wife. That’s that’s how we got in touch.”
The six episodes of the first season tease out a great deal of information about the lives of Henry (Theo James) and Clare (Rose Leslie), thanks to the magic of time travel, but also leave some secrets hidden. In the interview below, transcribed and edited for clarity, Moffat explains how he approached adapting the novel and why he chooses to reveal as much as he does.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Time Traveler’s Wife, Season 1, Episode 1.]
This is a book you’ve known well for some time — but what was the process like when you were first sitting down and really tackling the question of, “How do I adapt this?”
Well, I really wanted it to be a TV show. What I mean by that is I didn’t just want to serialize a book — you want to take the book and say, let’s tell that same story, but treat it in a way as if it were a TV format, with regular characters and individual episodes and so on. So I didn’t just want to serialize the book — I never quite loved that. I wanted it to feel like something that was belonged in television. Because I thought the idea and the characters were strong enough to do that.
But it makes it tricky at times, because a novel has one beginning, one middle and one end. A TV show has to have a beginning, middle and end once a week. So it’s a very different structure. But I wanted it to be simultaneously feel really faithful to the book, but also at times be able to wander in and out of it. So, at moments you’d feel this is, oh, that’s just that bit of the book. And sometimes you think this is a bit like the new adventures of Henry and Clare, you know.I wanted that because a little bit of unpredictability is quite nice, you know?
So when it comes to trying to really make it into a TV show, what went into the decision process behind making specific changes — you know, very deliberately taking something that was in the book and making it something different in the show?
Well, looking at extremes, something like the story of Jason, which we do in Episode 3, adapts pretty straightforwardly. There’s a whole three-act structure to that. So that’s pretty much those that those bits of the book, you know, with some extra stuff.
But there’s other things, bits that I absolutely adore in the book, which you can’t do. For instance, there’s one bit of writing, which I remember being quite haunted by, which is when Henry goes for his haircut just before he gets married. He’s wondered for some time in the book why his future hair is short and why his hair is long now. And he goes to a hairdresser and gets his hair cut.
I remember really enjoying that moment, thinking Henry’s haircut’s really important, but I can’t put that in television. That’s a man going to the hairdressers. What am I going to do, do it in slow motion? It’ll look like a shampoo commercial. What are we going to do with that? [Laughs] So you have to find a way to make that important in a television way, if you see what I mean.
So you’re taking the cue from that. It matters that the length of Henry’s hair is a plot point and it’s an emotional beat, but we can’t do it the way it is there. On other occasions, and this doesn’t happen in Season 1, but I love a thing in the book where there’s a staircase around a cage structure, and he’s always worried about ending up inside the cage. And it’s a rather lovely sequence when he does and the people in the library learn about his time traveling, but you know what you’ve got there, 15 minutes? If you really spin it out? You have to create a story around that.
That’s the challenge of it. I want to tell the same story — I mean, the spoilers have been available for over 20 years. I’m not making the big changes at all. But sometimes I’m going into a detail and saying, well, let’s pull out or push in on that, or let’s make that thing work in terms of television, hopefully.
Some people may throw things at the television and say, “You should not have changed those details,” and others may say, “Well, that makes sense.” As someone who’s capable of enjoying a James Bond book and a James Bond film, even though they don’t resemble each other — I still think they’re the same thing. It’s faithful to the creative impulse and the ideas, rather than the imaginary history contained within the story.
When you were plotting out the season in big picture terms, were you plotting out episodes around themes? What defined an episode of the show on an episode-by-episode basis?
I think what the book does is take the most ordinary bits of a loving couple’s life and put them through the time travel manual, and see what happens. So that’s what I was thinking. I’d say, you know, well, this is the “meet the friends” episode, right? This is the “meet the parents” episode. This is the “getting married” episode. So it would be like that.
I feel as though what’s strong here is you are taking the ordinary details of that most ordinary miracle, the happy marriage, and using the time travel aspect of the storytelling for you to see it through a different prison. So just going to dinner at Clare’s parents can become a bigger deal if you happen to be a time traveler.
The Time Traveler’s Wife (HBO)
So in terms of the casting, what was the process of casting your Clare and your Henry? Because I imagine that was not necessarily the easiest thing.
Well, a huge amount of credit for that, in fact 99.9% credit for that, has to go to David Rubin, our casting director, and Jennifer Euston who came in to help him as well. They did a brilliant job. The first thing, maybe I shouldn’t quote me saying this, but what David said is, “I’ve read the scripts. You’re going to end up a couple of Brits with this kind of comedy. They’re going to be Brits doing accents.” And I said, “No, let’s not do that. Let’s not do that. I mean, there are enough British people on this show as it stands, let’s get some genuine Americans.” he said, “Okay,” and we ended up casting a couple of Brits doing accents.
In fairness, I didn’t even know Theo was British. I thought he was American because I saw him in a film playing American. So that was the first thing. The harder character to find in almost every respect is Clare, because Clare is sort of Audrey [Niffenegger], and when novelists write about themselves, they’re quite elusive on the page.
There’s a version of Clare that’s very easy to play and indeed very easy to write, where she’s entirely passive, where she’s the person to whom the exotic time travel man happens, and she just becomes a sort of cipher. So you need someone with tremendous vitality who understands that Clare, while she’s happy about meeting the love of her life, is also a vital, angry ambitious young woman who wants to do stuff. And so much as she might like the road she’s been set on, she’s certainly angry that she’s been set on her road at all. It can really piss her off, you know, it’s, “All right, thanks. I know how it ends now.”
Rose was the person who got that, who got the vitality, the… Anger’s the wrong word. Vigor, probably — rattling against it while kind of liking it. That kind of thing. I think it’s a good metaphor for marriage anyway. It’s great when you meet the love of your life. I loved it when I met Sue [Vertue]. You’re so happy, you’re so happy. It’s a wonderful moment in your life. The best moment of your life, even.
At the same time, there’s another bit of your brain going, oh, so it’s you, you’re the one I meet. So that bit’s over then. That was the last hot date. There’s a part of me thinking, “Oh, we’re here now. I had no idea. I had no idea who it was going to be, no idea,” as Clare says, “that I was going to meet you today.” I remember thinking that when I met Sue, just thinking, “Oh, so I met her now. There we go. We’re on our way.” A lot of people would affirm that that’s true. You know so quickly. Love at first sight is very common and sort of simultaneously dramatic and quite prosaic. You just sort of think, “Ah, right. So we’re in that part of my life now, am I?” It’s great, but it’s also that. So Rose was the person who could do that.
And Theo’s technical ability is extraordinary. He’s got to play mainly two versions of Henry: One who’s the man she meets in the library, who’s a bit of a mess. And then the more presidential, grander, wryer, wittier, 30-something Henry, who is quite a different person, and the two of them don’t even get on with each other.
I think he’s an extraordinarily technically gifted actor. There can be a tendency when someone is just that insanely good-looking to assume that’s what their career is based on. And it’s not, he is an exceptional performer. He really is. It’s not easy to do two different versions of the same character, the differences and nuances; it’s a different smile, a different way of walking, a different way of moving. I think it’s quite remarkable. So it wasn’t easy, but it was very exciting and we were very, very pleased with our choices. Couple of bloody Brits. What can I tell you?
The Time Traveler’s Wife (HBO)
At what point did Theo realize just how naked he was going to have to be for this role?
Well, it’s pretty hard to read the scripts and not get it. I actually said it in the script, I said, “Look, this guy’s going to be naked loads. We can’t be coy about it. We can’t always be standing behind a vase, you know, I mean, we’ve just got to get on with it. We’ve got to get to the point where you stop noticing.” So yeah, I’ve literally never asked him about it.
I think he’s quite gung-ho about it. When I first met him, it was still pandemic times I suppose it still is, but it was really deep into lockdown. And both Rose and Theo came around to my house and we sat outside. They were going to fly off to New York and I was staying here because the quarantine was just too difficult. And he left early saying, “Just off to the gym, gotta get those buns of steel.” So I think he spent his time spent time in the gym.
So, in a perfect world, how many seasons does this show run?
I’m not telling you.
Is it more than three?
I’m not telling you. I’m sorry, I’m a pain in the neck, I know. But I’m not telling you how much road there is left — that’s not right. So I’m not doing that. Sorry. I do know, but in my imagination. Unless nobody likes it, in which case, one! [Laughs]
New episodes of The Time Traveler’s Wife air Sundays on HBO.
Time Traveling Expert Steven Moffat Answers Our Questions About The Time Traveler’s Wife
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