hollywood Signs

A quick convo with Chris Bohjalian.

BY JOhN BUSBEE

When asked about his book, The Flight Attendant, being adapted into a hit TV series of the same name, Bohjalian was effusive.

“Kaley Cuoco as Cassandra Bowden was fantastic,” said the New York Times bestselling author. “There was a reason that she had multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.”

He continued, describing how this story came into being.

“My books are filled with autobiographical minutia. In The Flight Attendant, I’ve never been a flight attendant, but I had an aunt who was a flight attendant.”

“My books are filled with autobiographical minutia. In The Flight Attendant, I’ve never been a flight attendant, but I had an aunt who was a flight attendant… back in the day when we all assumed she was a spy because she flew for Pan Am. She was off the radar because this was before cell phones and she would be gone for three or four days at a time—Berlin or Dubai or Moscow or wherever Pan Am might have been flying.”

The conversation quickly switched as Bohjalian launched into the genesis of his latest novel, The Lioness.

“Obviously, I’m not a movie star,” he added with a chuckle, “and, in fact, don’t play one on TV. The first time I knew I wanted to write this book was in a movie theater in August of 2019. I was in New York City because we were workshopping my stage adaptation of Midwives, which they were bringing off-Broadway in 2020. It was an Equity day off, Monday, and I was emerging from the movie theater, from the air-conditioned dark, into the scorching August heat and the cerulean sky, and I thought to myself, ‘My God, I love movies. Why have I never written a Hollywood novel?’ And, I decided I would.

“I’ve never set a novel in my childhood, the 1960s or the 1970s. That was one of Hollywood’s golden ages, so let’s go there. I am of an age when the first movie people saw was Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and animated dancing penguins. Not me. The first movie I saw, because my parents had no judgment or filter, thank goodness, was Bonnie and Clyde. This is the collection of my autobiographical minutia.”