Bonnie Garmus on ‘Lessons in Chemistry’: ‘Chemistry and cooking are inextricably attached to each other’
The Hindu
When you add heat to something you are starting a chemical interaction, says Bonnie Garmus, the author of the bestselling ‘Lessons in Chemistry’, soon to be a limited series on Apple TV, starring Captain Marvel, Brie Larson
Elizabeth Zott, the quirky protagonist of Bonnie Garmus’ bestselling debut novel, Lessons in Chemistry (Penguin Random House), will be seen in an eight-episode limited series on Apple TV later this year. Brie Larson, (Captain Marvel) will play Elizabeth in the show set in the 60s, about a brilliant chemist who is fired from her lab and finds success on television with a subversive cookery show.
Though Bonnie wanted to work on the screenplay, considering how quickly the rights were bought, her agent told her she would be much too busy with the book to have time for the screenplay. “It is hard to give your book over to someone else. I feel a lot better, however, just knowing Susannah Grant, who wrote Erin Brockovich, is the main screenwriter,” says Bonnie over a video call from London.
Elizabeth began life as a minor character in a book Bonnie was writing. After a terrible day at work, when she sat at her desk, the author felt like Elizabeth Zott was back. “She was sitting there saying, ‘you think you have had a bad day, well, not compared to mine.’ That is when I started her story. I wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry right then.”
Elizabeth’s dog, Six-Thirty, is as unconventional as her. “That is the only character in the book based on a real being, my dog, Friday,” Bonnie says with a laugh. Friday, who was adopted from a shelter on the insistence of her children, turned out to be an incredibly clever dog. “What was unusual was how many words she picked up from us.” Despite not teaching Friday an extensive vocabulary, Friday, Bonnie says, knew a fair number of English words and some German too when the family was in Switzerland.
“I read an article about a dog called Chaser in The New York Times who knew over 1000 words,” she says, which compares well with Six-Thirty’s knowledge of 627 words.
“He’d be in a scene and I’d write his point of view, and I realised that I wanted to have an animal commenting on the human race, how many bad decisions we make, and stupid things we do.”
She also wanted the commentary to be from a character who loves us unconditionally. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “There are more Six-Thirty fans than anything,” Bonnie says with a laugh.