While the season 1 plot of The Last Thing He Told Me largely mirrored Laura Dave’s novel of the same name, season 2 will deviate slightly from the sequel.
“It’s so interesting because we were filming the show at the same time that the book was being written. So we only just read the book as it came out,” Angourie Rice exclusively told Us Weekly during a joint interview with Judy Greer earlier this month, who noted, “Yeah, I read it last weekend.”
“So it’s such a different way to make a show based on a book,” Rice, 25, continued. “They were in conversation with each other while we were making it.”
From Greer’s perspective, there wasn’t as much of a conversation as she envisioned.
“I remember [asking showrunner Josh Singer], ‘What happens now?’ And he’d be like, ‘I don’t know, she hasn’t told me,’ or like, ‘We’re doing it this way, and she’s doing another [way].’ It was so funny to me that we were kind of on two little islands,” Greer, 50, explained with a laugh, adding that “loads of surprises” are in store for book lovers.
For Rice, the book and show “complement each other so well.” Rice explained that the two mediums “bring out certain different notes and elements.”
“That’s what is so kind of interesting and unique about this situation is that I think if you’ve seen one or read one, it’s not like, ‘Oh, I’ve got the whole story.’ Or like, ‘I don’t need to see the other or read the other,’” she said, while Greer added, “Yeah, they’re different enough … Some characters are more prominent, some characters are less prominent.”
Rice replied, “Yeah, but the core is the same.”
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Dave’s sequel, The First Time I Saw Him, was published in January. The highly-anticipated second book begins with a time-jump five years later, with Hannah (Jennifer Garner) crossing paths with Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) after he goes on the run. For season 2 of the mystery-thriller, Hannah and stepdaughter Bailey (Rice) have to navigate the fallout from Owen’s reemergence as faces from the past — like Quinn (Greer) — return.
While recalling the process to Us in January, Dave explained that she had “written a draft of the book” which was what gave the season 2 showrunners a plan of where to go with the show.
“I walked them through the book. They had the world and the themes and everything, but I only had 100 pages I was willing to share at that point,” Dave shared. “While I was doing some of that editing, they were off creating the second world for the show. I think they speak to each other really beautifully.”
Through it all, Dave noted that Garner, 53, is the “heart and soul” of her adaptation.
“Everyone says to me, ‘What’s it like having your book adapted?’” Dave gushed. “I say, ‘If you’re lucky enough to have Jennifer Garner play your protagonist, you just say, thank goodness in the end.’”
The Last Thing He Told Me season 2 airs Fridays on Apple TV.
