Isabela Merced On Turtles All The Way Down, The Last Of Us

3.

What is your favorite book-to-movie or book-to-TV adaptation?

Honestly, most recently, Poor Things. The book is incredible. And, like, reading that before you watch the movie is very, very helpful and insightful.

Emma Stone’s performance and just the visual design of that whole movie I still think about all the time.

I feel like the world was so camp and so just amazing. I really, really liked it. It just worked. I didn’t even need it to be 100% loyal to the book. But like, if it works in tandem with the book, I’m happy. 

I feel like Turtles All the Way Down does that, too. We added things. We added the professor — and I love a moment in a movie where a character says the title — we added the Chicago trip. We took away some stuff. But like, we were mostly loyal to the book.

I think that’s a great point because, as a book fan, as long as things are added to the adaptation that expand the world and make sense, I’m happy. Like, I’m a huge fan of Daisy Jones & the Six, and that TV show added so much that I did enjoy that wasn’t in the original novel.

Exactly! For Turtles, there are minuscule details that are changed, though. So, like, you’ll notice that on Aza’s Band-Aid finger, it’s not the middle of it. It’s actually, like, the pad of her finger. So it changed to that. Oh, also, Davis doesn’t have glasses. A lot of people were confused in the trailer because Davis didn’t have glasses. Which is so funny. Like, I’m kind of glad they didn’t do that, though, because I don’t like seeing, like, ultra-hot people in glasses in movies. I feel like, Okay, c’mon. Like, if you’re really that hot, you can probably afford contacts. 

[Laughing] Right. It’s always like, we get it. He’s sexy AND smart. We don’t need the glasses to tell us.

YES! [Laughing] I just feel like it would have been a little too on the nose. Like, Oh, he’s smart. He’s–

He’s shy.

[Laughing] And then it would’ve been like, he takes off the glasses, and he’s hotter. Like, that’s not how it works. 

Also, John said in an interview recently, and like to me as well, he was like, “I wanted to take so much of the book out of the movie.” He’d be like, “That’s not a good idea. Where’s that from?” And Hannah’s like, “We kind of have to keep it ’cause it’s from the book.” He’s like, “But do we have to?”

I kind of love that from his perspective. Like he almost gets to go back and redo things if he wants when his books get adapted.

Which is real, though. Like everybody is embarrassed of their work from years ago. The truth is you grow, and you have different perspectives, and even though it might have been everything to someone, that doesn’t mean that YOUR story doesn’t get to change. I get it. I do the same thing with my songs.