Interview (Written): Marti Noxon
Conversation with prolific TV writer and producer whose latest projects include ‘Dietland’ and the HBO mini-series ‘Sharp Objects’.
A Vulture interview with Marti Noxon whose TV writing and producing credits include Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Still Life, Prison Break, Point Present, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Mad Men, Glee, Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce, Dietland, and the HBO mini-series Sharp Objects. That is one impressive resume.
I’m curious to hear more about the pushback you got to season six of Buffy, where people were really upset about how dark the show got, and why you think there’s more of an appetite for stories about powerful and messed-up women now.
With season six, there was this announcement that I was running the show and Joss was going to take a back seat, but in reality, anybody who knows Joss knows that his idea of taking a back seat is not every single thing, you know?
But I did have way more input over that season and some real muscular influence on the direction of that season in part because I was really vocal about wanting Buffy to make some bad mistakes. My argument was that, when we become young women, especially if we’re troubled or haunted by something, that can lead us to make some bad choices, especially in the area of romance. And people really took me to task online. I finally just disengaged and didn’t participate in that conversation at all.
There’s so many theories about why we like to watch these stories about women being complex and making mistakes and, I can only say what the answer is for me, which is that there’s a real catharsis in seeing women be the people with agency in their stories, women who are committed to the full range of emotions. I keep joking that the hashtag headline of 2018 should just be “#WomenAreHumanBeings.” [Laughs.] We have all the same feelings as any other human being. We can be completely shitty — just like a man. And we don’t necessarily have to have a really sympathetic backstory.
Although it’s interesting, in Sharp Objects, the backstory of why Camille and her family are so messed up ultimately does originate, in some way, with a man who raped Camille’s “great great great grand victim,” as she puts it. There’s a suggestion that it’s that initial act of violence which has been passed down and perverted and twisted over the generations.
What’s interesting to me about all that is a more nuanced approach that goes beyond gender. Any society that has an oppressed population is going to have an uprising eventually, and that power is corrupting no matter who has it. I’ve come to see greed as almost like a mental illness because I see what it does to people around me. I always joke that it’s like they get on this spaceship to Planet Rich and you should just wave good-bye and see if they ever come back!
What was it like working with Jean-Marc Vallée on Sharp Objects?
It was difficult, I’m not going to lie. I find that many artists are incredibly … what’s the right word? Incredibly sensitive. And it wasn’t without its toe-to-toe screaming matches. [Laughs.]
What was the biggest fight?
Oh, it was always over language. It was over the nuance of language because Jean-Marc is from Montreal and he doesn’t share the love of the English language that I do and Gillian does in the same way. He’s much more interested in imagery and telling stories through pictures, and he’s brilliant at that. He has a comfort level with visualizing things to music, and he gets very attached to certain pieces of music. I totally understand that now as I’m learning more and more as a director, but I love language. I studied theater at Wesleyan before I became a writer, and the beauty of language, particularly in the Southern Gothic tradition, is so important to me. I kept talking to him about The Night of the Hunter, and he didn’t want to listen to me! [Laughs.]
That makes a lot of sense when I think about Big Little Lies, because it’s so visual and music-driven.
Yes, and Sharp Objects is the same. But myself and Jessica Rhoades, one of the key producers from Blumhouse [Productions], and Amy and Gillian and another producer who I insisted be brought to the whole production so that he could also go toe-to-toe with Jean-Marc over words … over the words! You’ll see over the course of Sharp Objects that it fulfills the promise of Big Little Lies, but I would argue it’s even better because he shot the text.
