’13 Reasons Why’ Author Jay Asher on Working With Selena ...



'13 Reasons Why' Author Jay Asher on Working With Selena Gomez and the Netflix Adaptation

And how he came upon the story of Hannah and Clay.

De ElizabethMar 7, 2017 8:30AM EST

The way we treat one another matters. A lot. That's the lesson at the core of 13 Reasons Why, the best-selling novel by Jay Asher and soon-to-be Netflix series produced by Selena Gomez. (The book is also receiving a special TV-tie in printing from Penguin, which features exclusive interviews from the cast members and is available March 7.)

The novel tells the story of a teen named Clay Jensen who comes home from school one day to find a set of cassette tapes addressed to him. They are from his former classmate Hannah Baker, who recently died by suicide. Each tape contains a story about one individual classmate who she says hurt her in some way; there are 13 stories total.

Along with the package, Clay receives directions: He's supposed to listen to all of them, then pass them on to a classmate designated by the tapes. If he doesn't? A second set of tapes will be released to the whole school. Hannah's experiences range from rumors that were spread about her to cruel acts of bullying and even sexual assault. Although her stories are hard to read at times, her experiences are a reminder that actions have consequences. And while they range in their severity, none of those consequences are to be taken lightly.

Of course, there are many different ways to process suicide, and ultimately there is no "right" way to heal when someone dies by suicide. According to experts, reaching out to friends, taking part in a support group, and giving yourself all the time you need to grieve can often help the process. In the novel, Clay experiences a wide range of emotions; he finds himself enraged, frustrated, confused, and deeply saddened to the point of crying in public -- something that he might not have done before finding Hannah's tapes. But forcing himself to listen to Hannah's story arc -- as painful as it might be -- provides Clay with a source of comfort, even if some of the stories within the tapes aren't easy to hear.

Ahead of 13 Reasons Why's TV debut, Teen Vogue talked to Asher about how he created these compelling characters, what he hopes readers will learn, and how Selena Gomez became involved in the screen adaptation.

Teen Vogue: How are you feeling about seeing your book be transformed into the upcoming Netflix series?

Jay Asher: I'm feeling very confident and happy and lucky. It's been amazing, very different than everybody warned me it was going to be like when dealing with Hollywood. I've had a lot of friends who had books made into both TV shows and movies, and their experiences weren't as perfect as it was for me, and I think it's just because early on, I was bringing on people that completely understood the novel.

The first person to come to me was Selena Gomez, and this was almost eight years ago. At that time, she wanted to play Hannah, and I met with her and our conversation was amazing. It was obvious she just completely understood the story and swore that she wanted me involved. I remember my film agent at the time even saying, "That's what everyone in Hollywood says." But she was true to her word.

It's so good. It's an amazing adaptation. I think people who are fans of the books are absolutely going to love it. Like, the characters are all there, the reasons are all the same, and it's almost like an expanded version of the book.

We originally sold it years ago to become a feature film, and the script was written, and it was great. But if you're going to tell 13 short stories in two hours, there's just a lot of emotion that was hard to pack in there for each of the reasons. And then Netflix started doing original content and they asked if I would be interested in approaching them. It just seemed so obvious. An hour for each reason, to really get into it and really get into the characters. They did something beautiful with it.

TV: In the preface to the novel, you explain that it came to you while you were driving. Can you explain a bit more about how that came to you?

JA: Yeah, I had the idea for an audio tour type of book years before I came up with the idea for this. I was in Las Vegas and there was a exhibit of King Tut's tomb, and it was an audio tour. At the very end of that, I just thought it would be a really cool structure for a novel, but I just didn't have a story to go along with it. Just a few months later, I had a close relative who attempted suicide, who was the same age as Hannah: a junior in high school. So I had this structure and I had this issue now, which was very important to me, but it was years before those two ideas came together. That's when I was in the car driving and I immediately felt that was the best way to tell this particular story. This way you had her perspective, her words, but then you also had the perspective of somebody who knew her from a distance who was listening.

TV: So much of what Hannah goes through feels extremely realistic. Did you speak with any teenagers prior to creating these characters? Or were there things that you pulled from your own high school experiences?

JA: Both. Some of it came from my own experiences or things that I saw in high school. I also spoke to my wife, and a couple of my friends about their teen years, all of them women, knowing that my main character was going to be female. So I talked to women about their high school

years -- about some of the emotions, and more of the overriding concepts of things they experienced with rumors and how devastating those can be, and how they can spiral out of control and stay with you for years. That really changed where I went with the book. I wouldn't have gone there just based on my own history in high school.

TV: When you were writing the 13 different stories, was there one that stood out to you as the most significant? Or maybe even the most difficult to craft?

JA: It's funny, the most challenging ones were those that you would see as perhaps the most insignificant. The paper bag scene was one, and the poetry scene. If my publisher had told me we need to cut down to just 11, those would've been the two that I cut. But honestly, those two have stood out to the most number of readers that have reached out to me. Maybe because they were smaller, or they've had something similar happen, and it was like the first time somebody else understood why sometimes these small things can happen and are emotional to us.

The other hard parts were dealing with some of the sexual issues. I knew that if my book was going to be challenged, or if somebody was going to try to ban it, it was going to be based on those chapters. But I felt they were very important to telling Hannah's story, so when I was writing it, the hard part was making sure I wrote it honestly and didn't back away out of fear of potential conflicts. Thankfully, my publisher also felt it needed to be that way. There are things that aren't supposed to be comfortable to read, because those situations shouldn't be comfortable to discuss, but they still need to be discussed.

TV: Did you expect that people would connect with the book in the way that they did?

JA: Actually, no. It was funny because when I wrote the book, I felt it was a compelling idea, and I thought it was a good way to address this very sensitive issue. But truly, I thought there wasn't going to be that big of an audience for it. My dream was that somebody would say it's their favorite book. I never kept up with the numbers of how well it was selling, so when it first made it onto the New York Times best-seller list, I had no concept. To hear from people about how it's connected with them is beautiful, but it's also always been a very bittersweet success. I truly don't think the book would have sold as much as it has if these issues weren't so taboo to talk about.

TV: Do you feel like this book can serve as a cautionary tale, both for students and educators?

JA: That's how I've always described it. I see it as a cautionary tale, and like any cautionary tale, it's not saying, `This is what will happen,' but this stuff does happen, and that's why we have to talk about it. And it shows the dangers of sweeping it under the rug, or not treating it as seriously as we should. Mr. Porter's scene was something that was based on a true experience a friend of mine went through, where he went to a counselor and did not feel that the counselor understood. And I've talked to counselors over the years, and that's always their fear: that somebody's going to come in, looking for a certain type of help, but they're holding back because they're embarrassed, or ashamed, or whatever. And then it's never going to come out, exactly why the person's there.

TV: The phrase "Everything affects everything" seems to be a major takeaway of the book. Is that what you want people to carry with them?

JA: Yeah, it is. And it's so funny how many people picked up on that, because I still remember when I came up with those three words. It was not in relation to the scene I was writing. But for some reason, I just felt those words did summarize everything, so I wrote them down, thinking, One day I need to find a way to put this phrase into the book. And so I did.

I remember when the very first major review came out, that's exactly how they began the review: "Everything affects everything." And I thought, "Wow, people are really picking up on that." It's the snowball effect and how everything that happens, good and bad, does affect everything else.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

Editor's Note: This post was updated to clarify language about 13 Reasons Why.

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