David Nicholls: Why I haven’t written a word since lockdown began

You would be hard-pushed to find a milder man than David Nicholls. Voice as soft as cashmere, manners of a country vicar, and – readers of his novels, such as One Day, Us and Sweet Sorrow, know this all too well – a hopeful romantic if ever there was one. Just occasionally, though, Nicholls is prone to acts of unspeakable violence. And he takes no pleasure in them.

‘It’s not quite mutilation…’ he mutters, sounding pained at the very thought, ‘but I sometimes have to turn into this… butcher. And it can be quite hard to shake off.’ He is not referring to anything literal, thankfully, but rather literary: the act of adapting a novel for the screen. Nicholls is more practised at it than most. Two of his books, Starter for Ten and One Day, have been turned into films. He is currently reworking his latest, Sweet Sorrow, for the screen. And Us, published six years ago, is now a four-part BBC drama starting tomorrow.

When we speak, Nicholls, 53, is just back from a ‘rather pathetic’ solo cycling trip around the Norfolk coast, in order to ‘avoid feeling too claustrophobic’. He hasn’t written a word since lockdown began, finding neither the time (he has two teenage children with his partner, Hannah Weaver, a script editor) nor the creativity, but is keen to distract himself with talk of adaptation.

Before writing novels, Nicholls began his career as a screenwriter, via a brief and self-admittedly unsuccessful stint as an actor, and subsequently decided to adapt all his work himself.

This is for various reasons – not least convenience, ownership and damage limitation – but also because he is undeniably good at it. As well as his own work, Nicholls won a Bafta last year for Sky’s Patrick Melrose, based on the Edward St Aubyn novels, and he has wrestled with Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd and Blake Morrison’s memoir When Did You Last See Your Father? for the big screen.

But it is never easy. And Us – which stars Tom Hollander as an uptight middle-aged scientist, Douglas, who attempts to rescue his marriage to Connie on a family rail trip around Europe – was no exception.

‘In general,’ Nicholls says, ‘characters’ backstories are the first to go. In Us, for instance, there’s a lot in the book about Douglas’s relationship with his own father. Some of that stuff I’m really quite proud of. But I knew when I sat down to adapt it to film that we’d need to have a slightly younger [version of ] Tom Hollander, and a new actor who isn’t going to be in many scenes but would have to carry a lot of emotional heft. So it really wouldn’t have worked.’ Butchery is often easier than surgery. Whole sections of Us, which is set in various European cities, were scrapped in order to fit the story into four hours of television.

‘The process, really, has to involve a very quick acceptance of loss. That you have to lose bits you love from the novel, little observations, similes, descriptions. You don’t really describe anything in a screenplay, it’s about what people say and do. You have to move a lot faster.’

In recent years, there are just as many examples of book-to-screen adaptations that have been adored (Normal People, Little Women) as despised (The Goldfinch). Success is not guaranteed by throwing money or big-name actors at a project, as the producers of Cats know all too well, but it is certainly helped by appointing a writer who knows how to turn a 400-page novel into a snappy few hours of TV or film.

‘It always takes a long time. It’s not a case of, “Oh, well I’ve already written and reread the book, so this won’t take long,”’ Nicholls says. ‘I always do at least five or six significantly different drafts, going back and forth with editors or producers.’ And not everything can make the leap. Things that can pose a particular challenge for adaptors include children growing up (how many actors does that mean?), the weather (what, we have to wait until a rainy day in the filming schedule to get that kiss just so?), and capturing a narrator’s distinctive voice without being overly reliant on voiceover.

‘You have to remember you have actors, who you trust with conveying more than one thing at once. It’s why Tom is so good in Us, you can see Douglas wants to be able to express more than he is really saying.’

Nicholls seems to prefer writing for television than film. ‘The structure feels more like how we read – a chapter or two before switching out the light, then picking it up again on another day.’

He tends to get more time to play with on the small screen, which can benefit a slow-moving story. Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which gripped the nation for 12 short episodes in lockdown, is a good example of why things occasionally need to breathe.

‘If you told somebody the story of Normal People it would feel quite slight in terms of twists and turns and actual events. And yet people really loved being able to spend time with the characters and observe their nuances – that’s the beauty of novels on TV.’

He also has a greater involvement in creative decisions like casting on television. There are never specific actors in mind as he writes novels, but just as he writes in acts, scenes and imagines dialogue being performed, he does occasionally think, ‘This is a Katharine Hepburn moment, or this is a Jimmy Stewart – it’s not necessarily the actor I could get, but a manner, and it might change throughout.’

Naturally, he has nothing but lovely things to say about all actors he’s worked with, especially Anne Hathaway, who copped quite a bit of criticism for her Yorkshire accent in One Day. ‘We seem to absolutely love it when it’s the other way around – Brits playing Americans. It’s like we’ve won something, even if the performance isn’t that convincing. I love Anne and I love Anne’s performance. And she was a major reason that it was made, she championed the book before it was a big success.’

On the set of that particular project, Nicholls learnt a lot about why film crews don’t always like having writers hanging around. ‘There was a scene in the book where Anne’s character, Emma, puts on a record. I said, “Well we have the prop, we can just have her put it on, can’t we?” But that apparently meant a whole new camera set-up to show the record sleeve, and calling the label to clear the music rights, and all this extra work…’

It doesn’t get any easier when the source material isn’t your own. Nicholls’ own adaptations take multiple drafts, but his Patrick Melrose was ‘at least a dozen, it was phenomenally difficult… The final couple of episodes aren’t actually that close to the novel, it takes a lot of liberties, there are all kinds of things missing, but hopefully we captured some of the unpredictable stuff, the stuff between the lines,’ he says. ‘And readers I heard from were almost overwhelmingly satisfied with that version.’ Ah yes, the readers. Of course, the butchery he speaks of doesn’t only wound the writerly ego; there’s also the book’s original audience to offend. Nicholls never used to hear what people thought – until he joined social media.

‘Yes, I’m on Twitter now, so I will certainly find out what people think of Us,’ he says, laughing. ‘Reading a novel is often like playing a film in your head. So if you see the actual film or series and it’s not the same, you’re going to feel disgruntlement.’

Us is on BBC One tomorrow at 9pm