Samantha Herbst at News24 talks to me about what I think of the recent adaptation of my book. A great interview where Herbst and I discuss seeing the brain baby The Shining Girls on screen for the first time and how it felt leaving my work in the hands of the very talented Silka Luisa while she juggled keeping the intricate plot and story intact while marrying her vision of the series. We also talk some changes in the series and what I think about those.
From the interview:
SH: Kirby comes across more mentally ill in the TV adaptation than in the book. There’s also a lot of recognisable victim-blaming, giving force to the story’s commentary on gender-based violence, and how a victim of that kind of trauma would feel.
LB: I think that what Silka was trying to do was really explore what trauma does to you, and to use what Kirby’s going through as a metaphor. Things are constantly changing for Kirby – her cat is suddenly a dog, her desk moves across the room, she’s married, she’s not married, her hair keeps changing – and I think that’s a great metaphor for what a lot of trauma victims go through, where you can’t trust anything and the ground is constantly shifting under you. You don’t know how to react and you’re constantly on high alert, which is something I think a lot of South Africans can relate to. You just have this fright-or-flight response constantly activated.
Portrait by Peter Kindersley
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