“I fell in love with Kya.
I fell in love with this world.
“To me, it tapped into the ultimate childhood story.”
Michele K Short/Columbia Pictures; G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Indeed, Owens drew on her own childhood to craft the novel.
“She wanted me to experience seeing wildlife.
And she would say to me, ‘Go way out yonder where the crawdads sing.’
I’ve known that expression all my life.
And that was the inspiration.”
“I saw that marsh and that swampland,” Alibar says.
“I saw that so clearly when she wrote it.
And I always wondered if we were kind of in our minds going to the same places.
Like Delia, I grew up very close to nature.
Like Delia, I drew from that.”
I like to think of them as cousins in a way.
There’s similarities and familiarities but they’re also two separate things.
So, there was a level of going, ‘Right.
I need to now just take my own interpretation and fall what into what this world is.'”
That’s what’s so magical about moviemaking."
It was like this oh-my-God moment."
Listen to the latest episode ofScreen After Readingfor more from the team behindWhere the Crawdads Sing.
