Produced by Bad Robot, this what-if narrative is explored through the life of Lisey Landon, played by Julianne Moore who, after losing her acclaimed-novelist husband Scott, begins to face certain realities about their marriage that she had repressed and forgotten. With the author we talked about his passion for Spanish writers and how he always recommends to find new cultures through books

Q: First of all I would like to ask about your passion for Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

Stephen King: He is one of the masters and I think A hundred years of solitude is a brilliant landmark novel that I recommended in my book On Writing. Is one of my favorite Spanish authors.

Q: I think you also like Bolano?

SK: Yes, I find him fascinating. I do like 2666 that is a surreal novel impossible to describe; it has to be experience in all it’s crazed glory

Q: Do you like the Spanish Culture?

SK: Love finding and learning about others in books. My Spanish is not the best but I do have a special place in my heart for my Spanish translators. I most definitely would like to be able to read in Spanish, but I’m afraid is too much for my basic knowledge of that language

Q: Do you sort of wish you could go back and bring that personal touch to some past projects? 

SK:  Well, actually, Lisey’s Story means a lot to me because it’s the one that I love best.  It’s a story about love and marriage and the creative impulse.  And it’s also got a kick-ass villain in it, which I liked a lot.  So my idea is to be all the way in as much as possible, or be all the way out.  And there've been a lot of projects and my idea is, go ahead, step back, and write books and maybe something will come along that I really love, a passion project, and this was that.  This was a passion project.

Q: Do you think of your legacy?

SK:  Well, as far as legacy goes, I'm mostly concerned with the story at the time.  And this is something that Pablo and Julianne and Clive all worked on together, so let them answer that.  I'm going to let them handle that.

Q: So at this point, do you still have any books or stories that you would consider potentially unfilmable?

SK:  Unfilmable, man, I don't think anything is unfilmable now.  I talked with J.J. Abrams a lot about a possible anthology series called Tiny Horrors where we got really kind of down and dirty about it and we talked about things that were really, really scary where you could probably just do those.  And, J.J., do you have anything you want to add about that?  I don't want to step on something I'm not supposed to talk about.

Q: Was it a challenge to adapt Lisey’s Story?

SK:  Well, Lisey’s Story was particularly challenging.  And the thing is, it goes through so many different levels of remembrance and Pablo was able to keep that in pretty much of a straight line.  Pablo, I didn't understand what you were doing at first.  You kept saying, “I wanna shoot Julie, I wanna shoot Clive.”  And they were like these X things on the clapper board that I couldn’t understand

Q: We've seen a lot of your book adaptations hit the small screen in the recent years, either on streaming or on cable, and we see a lot of your characters that appear in variations of your works, being various TV shows, and I didn't know if you had a favorite example of someone's portrayal of one of your characters.

SK:  I loved Julianne Moore and Clive Owen in Lisey's Story.  I think that they were fantastic.  And there’s also a guy named Dane DeHaan who plays in the series.  I don't want to say too much about him, but I loved his performance.  Those are some of my favorite people.  Of course, I liked Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith.  There are a lot of different people that I really loved in some of the different things.  James Franco in 11.22.63 was fantastic.  

Q: Is your wife comfortable with this story?

SK: she kind of says, “Okay, I understand what you're doing here and I know that you have to follow your creative muse.  But kind of like leave me out of it as much as you can.  Fictionalize these people as much as you can and let's step back from anything that's too personal.”  So, I try to do that.  I try to satisfy both sides of it, the reality side and the fictional side.  And it worked out pretty well.  And certainly, Julianne and Clive are Scott and Lisey,’they're not Steve and Tabby, so it worked out.

Q: Would you write a piece about the Covid-19?

SK:  I think coronavirus in itself presents real challenges for the writer and for the filmmaker.  God knows all the people that are on this panel know what we went through with coronavirus because we were shut down for a long time.  And there's a question about going forward.  But as far as the political climate, the racial climate, all those things inform my work, but the thing that I concentrate on most is the story. You know what really gave me a chill was, there's a scene where we see Lisey come into a hospital room and she's wearing the mask, and I just thought to myself, my God, this is what we're all doing now.

Q: How did this story come to you?

SK:  Well, as far as where it came from, I had double pneumonia and I came very close to stepping out.  And during the convalescence, I was in the hospital for about three weeks, and when it was clear I was going to get better, my wife decided that she was going to totally clean out my office and change it around and make everything new again for me.  And when I came back home Tabby said to me, "Don't go in your office, you won't like it."  And that's because it wasn't done yet.  And I said, "Well, okay, I'm not going to go to my office."  And then the first thing I did was to go into my office.  And it was totally empty.  And I was still feeling very rocky and I was on a lot of different medications, and I thought, this is what this room would look like after I die.  And "Lisey's Story" came from that. 

Q: What was the most challenging scene?

SK:  I don't know, man.  I think maybe you should ask Pablo what the most challenging scene was to bring to the screen because I can write anything.

Q: your stories have been so frequently adapted, but you have worked with Bad Robot a lot.  So, I'm curious, both for you and the Bad Robot team, what makes that partnership work both for this story and how do you choose which stories you work on together?

SK:  Well, number one, the checks don't bounce, which is a good start.  No.  Actually, I've got a creative relationship with J.J. Abrams that goes back to Lost when Entertainment Weekly put us together.  And we had a talk about that show and a bunch of us went out and saw a scary movie.  And I've stayed in touch with J.J. since then.  I met Ben Stephenson in the course of writing Lisey’s Story and he was terribly encouraging.  And they've done some other things that were based on my work or related to my work like Castle Rock and 11/22/63.  They've got a great organization.  They give great Christmas presents at the end of the year.  And I just love working with them.  It's been a great relationship.

By María Estévez

Correspondent writer