Soman Chainani continues telling stories of good and evil and happily ever afters in his new book Beasts and Beaty. The collection takes twelve classic fairytales and gives them a modern twist. Stories such as Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan are updated with relevant new themes and morales.
The author spoke to Screen Rant about the unlikely inspiration for his new book, how it felt to finish The School of Good and Evil series, and the upcoming Netflix adaptation.
Screen Rant: How did you decide which fairy tales you wanted to update?
Soman Chainani: You know, it's so funny because normally with a book you have some kind of master plan and you go in sort of knowing the overall structure, especially with a collection of stories. In this case, it was funny because my brain would not tell me what the next story would be until I got there. So that was sort of the fun of it. I'd be working on a story and I'm like, "I wonder what's going to be next" and I would get absolutely no preview of it until I finished and finalized the story before. And then the next day I'd wake up and I'd know immediately what I was writing and I would know what was coming. So it was almost like it was pre-formed in me somewhere and it was just a matter of following the cues as I went along.
Were there any stories that that didn't make the cut to the final version?
Soman Chainani: No, it's so strange that it is exactly the order I wrote them in. A hundred percent, there was no extra story. It was just one by one, putting them on.
The only one that was out of order was Snow White because I didn't know how to do Snow White. And I had sort of thought, maybe I just won't do it because who wants to read another Snow White? No one. And then the George Floyd protests happened. And it just came to me in a flash - of course, make her the only Black girl in the kingdom.
The original Snow White is about beauty, but it's about the idea of an older woman holding on to her own beauty when you can't; at some point, you have to let it go and the youth takes over. And so I felt there were parallels in terms of the racial trauma our country was going through. Beauty had always been defined in a certain kind of stereotypical way, and I wanted to reverse that and have the only Black girl in the kingdom be forced to find her own mirror without help from everybody else.
Once the stories came to you how did you decide how much you wanted to change? How did you decide what to keep from the original fairytales and what you wanted to do differently?
Soman Chainani: I needed to be surprised. I wanted to be surprised myself when I was writing them. So often I didn't know the twist until I got into the story. And so what I wanted was a story that was surprising, but also a story that would feel relevant to today's audience. So that if they were reading Snow White or Sleeping Beauty for now that [it] should have a lesson that actually made sense for us today. So it was very unconscious.
I would discover things as I went along and often I didn't know how the story was going to end until I got there. I think that was sort of the fun of it because I'm so used to, with The School For Good and Evil series, having everything sort of... not necessarily plotted out ahead of time, but the structure is so complicated because there's so many plot lines and characters and kingdoms and things.
And with this, I wanted the feeling of almost telling it around the campfire of like, "I don't know how this story is going, but I'm going to keep telling it until I find the ending". And that's what it felt like, it felt like I was spinning them in real-time.
How involved were you in the process of creating the art that is in Beasts and Beauty?
Soman Chainani: All my books so far have had a significant amount of art in them. And in this case, we were lucky to find this incredible artist named Julia Iredale. The main thing was just to give her the freedom to pick the moments she thought worked the best. And then she would come and show us her early sketches and then there would be a little bit of negotiation of, "We think this might be stronger" or "Let's highlight this detail" and so it really is a collaborative process, but it starts from the artist's instincts.
You want that collaborative experience of somebody else reading your stories and being like, "I want this moment" or "This moment stood out to me". So that this way you really do get the best of both worlds. You get an artistic interpretation at the same time that you are presenting your written interpretation.
How did it feel to finish The School of Good and Evil series?
Soman Chainani: It was crazy because I finished it on March 12th of 2020 and I was supposed to take the rest of the year off and basically do nothing. There was no plan. And then lockdown happened, I think 48 hours later. So it was strange. It was just strange because I was supposed to do a six-week book tour, I was supposed to go all over the world with it. It became a very private moment, which, in a way was rewarding in its own sense that after ten years, to bring it to a close I got to have that moment in a more intimate, personal way. But it was odd.
I think it was the same with creators everywhere whether it's movies or TV, or books, or art, or music. We just couldn't go out and bring it to the people. But luckily books are the one medium where people can still have that moment by themselves.
What did it feel like to be on set the first day for the filming of The School of Good and Evil movie?
Soman Chainani: That was the weirdest 24 hours I've had in my life because I had to do a quarantine before that. So I'd gone to Belfast and been in quarantine, I don't remember how many days it was, but you're alone and you're trapped in your hotel room and you're going slightly crazy and you have no company and no friends or anything. And then immediately the next day you're out of there and you're on a set with six hundred people in this world that I had in my imagination for ten years coming to life.
It was just an absolutely surreal first 24 hours. Just because also, Paul Feig is directing it, who is brilliant and amazing and just the coolest guy and he had made it very clear early on that he didn't want it to be a CGI fest. He didn't want it to be just computer pixels. And so they built everything. It almost felt like you were in the school. When they built a room, it was a 360-degree room. Everything was there; it was exactly as it would have been in the school. And so, it was very, very surreal.
I remember one time, I almost had a little glitch where I went up to the costume [department] because they wanted something and I saw a folder that said, "Sophie's necklace", and I thought, "Oh, that's funny. There's a Sophie in my book" - like my brain sort of just glitched. I couldn't quite process the whole experience, but I was there long enough, where day, after day, I could sort of settle in and actually be a useful member of the production.
Did you take anything from the set?
Soman Chainani: I took my little producer's chair which is now in my apartment. I'm staring at it right now. And then the other thing I can't say yet. I was going to say it, but I can't say it yet. I did take something else, yes.
I just saw that you recently launched a new website, which teased the unfolding of the multiverse. Can you tell us what that means or give a little tease?
Soman Chainani: I grew up idolizing Disney because what I loved about Disney is they had all these separate worlds, but then they create this larger universe where in the future they could possibly interact. That's what I aspire to; to create independent universes that maybe in the future could have some sort of bridge to each other.
So I decided to call it EverNever World because that represents my fascination with good and evil and the idea of ever afters and those who don't believe in such things. And School For Good and Evil was the big first piece of it and now Beasts and Beauties is its own completely independent universe. I'm hoping that as I keep building new things they'll all exist under this big grand umbrella of EverNever World. And time will tell how they all interact.
Beasts and Beauty releases on September 21 from HarperCollins.