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Tiny Beautiful Things author Cheryl Strayed on ‘meta’ bonding moment she had with Kathryn Hahn on Disney Plus series-Sabrina Barr-Entertainment – Metro
‘It felt kind of funny, a little bit too on brand,’ the author, who also wrote the memoir Wild, shared.
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One can only imagine how surreal it must have been for Tiny Beautiful Things author Cheryl Strayed to watch Kathryn Hahn bring her book to life, with some scenes in the TV adaptation mirroring her real life.
In addition to feeling ‘ecstatic’ over the casting of the WandaVision star in the lead role, the writer also shared a bonding moment with Kathryn that was incredibly ‘meta’, she told Metro.co.uk.
The Disney Plus series of Tiny Beautiful Things follows a writer called Clare (Kathryn) who ends up being sought for her brilliant advice on the Dear Sugar column, despite her own life becoming a fragmented mess behind the scenes.
The original book was made up of a collection of essays from the real column that Cheryl, 54, wrote under the pseudonym Sugar for an online literary magazine called The Rumpus.
During our interview, Cheryl admitted that when Kathryn, 49, was first being considered for the part of Clare, she was ‘crossing all her fingers and toes hoping that she would say yes’.
‘We needed somebody who could capture all of the range in this show. It’s funny, and it’s dramatic, and it’s deeply sad and emotional. It’s also comic and messy,’ said the writer, who also penned the best-selling memoir Wild, which was made into an Oscar-nominated movie with Reese Witherspoon.
While Tiny Beautiful Things does include moments from Cheryl’s real life, Kathryn’s character Clare is fictional (Picture: Hulu/Disney Plus)
‘We needed somebody who could come across as a woman like all the women I know – complicated and interesting.’
Cheryl remarked that every time she tells anyone that Kathryn is in the TV show: ‘They all say the exact same thing’ – “I love Kathryn Hahn.”‘
‘So to have somebody who is so loved by so many people, just such an honour. It’s such an honour and a thrill,’ she added.
After first meeting on Zoom, Cheryl and Kathryn finally met in person for the first time for lunch in LA, where they exchanged stories about ‘how important’ it was to ‘convey the full range of one’s humanity’.
The author expressed how ‘moved’ she was to make the TV adaptation of her book (Picture: Scott Kirkland/PictureGroup for Hulu/Shutterstock)
‘There’s this false binary, I think, that we’re either falling apart or we’re perfect, that we’re good or we’re bad. Kathryn and I talked a lot about how it’s all there in all of us,’ she said.
‘It’s not so much that she was playing me – she is very much a fictional character – but she’s playing in some ways so many of us at that age and that moment in life.’
One particularly ‘great bonding moment’ that they shared was when Cheryl was on set one day, and Kathryn was filming a scene where she was hiking in the snow while carrying a backpack.
Considering the epic 1,100 hike that Cheryl went on in 1995 on the Pacific Crest Trail, as detailed in the Wild book and movie, she couldn’t help but point out that Kathryn’s bag needed some adjusting.
‘I was sitting there watching it on the monitor and I could see in the first take that the backpack was not buckled on right. I was like, I don’t want to be interfering here, but Kathryn’s pack needs to be adjusted,’ she recollected.
Reese played Cheryl in the 2014 film adaptation of the writer’s memoir Wild (Picture: Jeff Vespa/WireImage)
‘It felt kind of funny, a little bit too on brand. The Wild woman would be the one adjusting Kathryn’s backpack on set. So we laughed over that. It was so meta.’
In addition to Kathryn, the other cast members joining her in Tiny Beautiful Things include Sarah Pidgeon as the younger Clare, Quentin Plair as Danny, Tanzyn Crawford as Rae and Merritt Wever as Frankie.
Cheryl stressed how ‘fascinating’ it was for her to help create the series in the writers’ room, forging a balance between real stories from her life and fiction, while Liz Tigelaar took the lead as the show’s creator and showrunner.
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‘It was one thing to put those stories on the page, but when we were on set, it was just very moving, very surreal to watch these actors act out sometimes those moments from my life,’ Cheryl shared.
‘So many people brought their own stories into it, too – it’s not just mine. But to see that core story that is mine at the heart of it is very moving.’
Tiny Beautiful Things will be available to watch from Friday April 7 on Disney Plus.
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