Tiny Beautiful Things Showrunner Discusses Hulu Series Adaptation

Liz Tigelaar has come a long way in Hollywood since her time as a writer on Dawson’s Creek, working her way up creatively from shows like Once and Again. Life Unexpected, Brothers & Sisters, Once Upon a Time, Melrose Place, Nashville, and The Morning Show. Currently, she’s the showrunner for Amazon Prime Video’s Little Fires Everywhere and two upcoming Hulu projects, Under the Bridge and Tiny Beautiful Things. Tigelaar spoke with Bleeding Cool about reuniting with her frequent collaborator, executive producer Reese Witherspoon to adapt the Cheryl Strayed novel to television, star Kathryn Hahn, and casting the series. Based on the author’s life and self-help book, Tiny Beautiful Things follows Clare (Hahn) is tasked to take over as an advice columnist for Dear Sugar as she’s trying to make sense of her own crumbling life.

Adapting Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things to Screen

Bleeding Cool: What intrigued you about Tiny Beautiful Things?

Tigelaar: I’m a huge fan of Cheryl’s. So. Lauren Neustadter at Hello Sunshine brought it up to me [asking], “Have you read the book? Have you heard of Cheryl Strayed?” I was like, “Yes, I’ve read everything she’s written, and she’s my favorite author! Tell me everything.” She asked if I might be interested in doing it, and I jumped at the chance. I didn’t yet know how I would do it. I knew I wanted to work with Cheryl, and I wanted to adapt something of hers.

What would be the most difficult aspect of adapting it on screen? Was it always intended as a limited series?

Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, and Cheryl had talked about it since their days on ‘Wild’ [2014]. Cheryl thought ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ could make for a compelling TV show. I was lucky enough to come on board. There was some work to do in creating what the series would look like and focus on. Would it be about letter writing? Would it be about her? Which version of her? What story hadn’t been told before, and what had been told? There was a lot to untangle, unpack and think about. That was what excited me about the project too. I love structure, story, dual narratives, and timelines. I liked the idea of weaving time together in memory and the cells that live inside of us, so I got excited about it.

What made Kathryn and Sarah [Pidgeon] ideal for Clare? Was there any form of coordination between the two and Cheryl?

We cast Kathryn first, and we knew we were looking for somebody with a physical resemblance. Equal to that was looking for someone who, like Kathryn, had a level of fearlessness, vulnerability, fierceness, and rawness. Someone who wasn’t afraid to let herself be raw. All of those qualities describe Sarah so well. There wasn’t coordination in terms of mimicking. It was more workshops. It came from a much more feeling place. There ended up being gestures that Merritt [Wever] did as Frankie that her daughter picked up on and did as Clare. We would mirror those, but they would come organically. Whether it would be like how Clare plays with her hair or how she kind of rubs her heart in moments, those would be the connective through lines.

What went into the selection process for the Sugar columns? Working with Cheryl on this and making sure you get to tell what you wanted to in the season?

Those were, in some ways, probably the most intricate puzzle pieces to weave together. Like what narrative? What question and answer? How do the past and present reflect each other? You couldn’t pick one. You had to be able to weave it all as you did it, but there were columns that we knew had to be ‘Tiny Beautiful Things.’ It’s the name of the show. You go because you want to because wanting to leave is enough. We took these key phrases, the ones people have written in their journals. put on coffee mugs or Post-Its to remind themselves of their bathroom mirror. We didn’t always want to use columns. We didn’t want her to have to necessarily answer a letter every episode. Sometimes we would use other versions of writing. We didn’t want it to be too formulaic, but we wanted it to have a structure and that she did have a job, which was to give an answer to these letters and give this advice.

Was there any aspect of the book you felt that wouldn’t have translated to the series, or did you make a concentrated effort to incorporate as much as possible?

The book translated well because [Cheryl] tells such a narrative when she answers these letters. It was about how to structure the show in a way that honored the structure of the book. When she’s asked a question and starts the answer, sometimes you see clearly how her answer weaves into the question. Sometimes runs parallel, it goes in and out, and sometimes it’s almost a circle. You don’t know why she’s going to start telling the story or how it is ever going to tie back to the question until the end. I like the nonformulaic nature of the answers. That guided the structure of the show.

Can you speak about the rest of the cast, their cohesion, and how they drove the narrative of the series?

I’m so in love with the rest of the cast. Merritt Wever is on every writer’s dream list to work with her and write for her. There were also these amazing discoveries of actors that are fewer household names but will be: Quentin Plair and Tenzin Crawford, who do not have an inauthentic bone in their body. She’s joyous and brings so much truth to everything she does. Owen Painter and Michaela Watkins… are people I worked with before and love. Anything they do, they elevate. We had an incredible cast.

Tiny Beautiful Things, which also stars Elizabeth Hinkler, streams on April 7th on Hulu.