Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. books have featured on Sci-Fi Bulletin since their launch nearly a decade ago, so unsurprisingly the TV adaptation by Complete Fiction has been eagerly awaited (read our review here). Ruby Stokes, Cameron Chapman and Ali Hadji-Heshmati star as Lucy, Lockwood and George in Joe Cornish’s eight part Netflix series. The night after a mutual admiration society between Stroud and the production company was demonstrated on Twitter, he chatted with Paul Simpson about the creation of the series, the possibility of future books and much more…

 

Let’s start with that lovely little interplay on Twitter last night between you and Complete Fiction. It’s not the sort of thing you can imagine Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick sharing after The Shining, is it?

No, no!

I’m very lucky in a host of ways but one of the reasons I think why Lockwood the TV show has been so well received is that you can feel the amount of love that’s been poured into it by the people who’ve made it. They’ve worked remarkable amounts of hours over the last few years, through the whole pandemic, trying to make this work and they have a great passion for the books which they’ve sustained. They pour it in and the cast all share it – you can feel this level of passion and pleasure they have with the material, with the world, with the characters, with what they’re creating and it’s just a joy.

As somebody, obviously part of it but very much on the edge of the actual production, it’s been an absolute delight to see them working and creating this over the last few years. It’s a very very close bond which you can feel within the company, within the people who work so hard on it and I feel that bond as well.

Joe Cornish mentioned in his interview that the rights had gone elsewhere before they became available for Complete Fiction to pick up. Was that just one of those Hollywood development hell stories – it was going somewhere and then nothing happens?

I think in the greater scheme of things it was a valid and worthy attempt to make Lockwood into a movie; that was the original plan. We had screenplays – we got as far as that – but it never quite worked for one reason or another. So, after a year or two of attempts it kind of fell away, as so often happens. It was nothing particularly sinister. That was a disappointment at the time but actually, in a way it was great because what it meant was that by that point I had written pretty much the rest of the series. The world was much more complete. You could see the full picture, you could understand the shape of the narrative, and it meant that when Joe and Rachel and Complete Fiction were looking around for a project, it was there but it was better, it was more complete, and they could really see it.

They had a vision which they then sold to me, very quickly, and I knew it had a strong chance of being great because I know their work from the past. I know Joe’s work with Attack the Block, I know Complete Fiction, the guys there have done so many great things like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and Spaced. What they’re so great at is being able to meld different genres together – the humour, the sci-fi or fantasy or crime or horror – playing around with them, keeping an edge to it but also giving you the humour, which is so important. It kind of echoes what I’ve always tried to do in my books: the importance of humour with the seriousness with whatever it is we’re discussing, I think would be key for me. I danced with joy when I realised that they were serious about it.

The last few years have been this slow moving towards creating it. It was slow to start with because they were all doing different projects but when things began to hot up three or four years ago, it’s just been a fabulous thing for me to observe them creating it. Really very very special.

With this, obviously, they credit that it’s based on the Lockwood series and obviously there are reveals in the last three books and particularly, obviously, in the final book about the Problem, Lockwood’s place, etc. Were there things that would have been very different had it been just based on the first couple of books? In other words, are there things that you brought out in the later books that are present but not necessarily obvious in the first two?

Yes, yes there are. It’s a fascinating thing, with hindsight looking back at a project that you created over a number of years.

Thinking back, it probably took me six or seven years to write the Lockwood books. I took a couple of years with the first book because that’s the one where you’re trying to invent the world, figure out the rules, understand the characters, and then after that it was one book a year. That’s quite a long period of time, during which I figured out, finally the whole thing – but it took me a while.

I remember there was a period, maybe two or three years in when I was thinking about the third book, where I really began to see where I was going and how it was going to play out. Not all the details but I could see the shape of it, how book 5 was going to end. Even earlier than that, when I was doing books 1 and 2, I was able to seed in various little hints and mysteries which, at the time I was probably thinking, ‘Well, I’m not quite sure myself what the answer is but we’ve got a bit of time.’

Gradually I was able to figure it out, which is part of the pleasure of this sort of creative process. Speaking personally, the threads are left hanging in your own mind to a certain degree so that helps the excitement. It makes you a little bit nervous as well but there’s a certain adrenaline that comes with it being live and the possibilities all being open for as long as possible. I don’t like to close it off too early in the process.

Anyway, the answer to your question is that, yes, the early books did contain various hints and clues but it really helps the guys doing the TV series to have the whole thing to look at, so they are able, very cunningly and generally quite subtly, to put in little things which don’t really mean much in the moment with the first series but if, touching wood, if and when we get to series 2 then you’ll be able to pick up on that and refer back. And that’s very satisfying to see.

When you were doing book 5, were there things that the editors had to go ‘You still haven’t mentioned that one, Jonathan’ or were you pretty much there in your own mind, before it got to that point?

I may be sugar coating it but my memory of Lockwood was that by the time I got to book 5, I pretty much was in control of the threads. I think because I’d had this moment of clarity, probably when I was working on the third book, right in the middle of it, I then knew what I was trying to do although the path remained unclear. It’s like The Pilgrim’s Progress where they climb to the top of the hill and they can see the promised land in the distance but they’ve got to go down off the hill and through all the Slough of Despond… You’ve got to go through all the difficult stuff but you know the general direction and you can see where you’re going.

It’s very similar when you’re writing a series like this. If you have that vision you get a certain sense of clarity and confidence and you can slowly pick it off as you go. So I think by the end, I kind of knew what I was doing.

The three central characters, we really do feel like they’ve walked off the page.

Yes, amazing aren’t they?

George’s background is slightly tweaked but you can’t mistake who it is. How much were you involved advising on the scripts. Did you have input on what Joe was creating?

We tried, I think, to be really open with communications throughout and that was the key point even though there might be periods where they were getting on with it and I wasn’t really involved, partly because of the pandemic. I think without a pandemic I would probably have gone and irritatingly darkened their doors rather more, just come down and watch what was going on. But obviously that wasn’t possible, so a lot of the time, I was at a distance but it was great because we’d already established a lovely open communication back and forth.

The way that worked was that early on, before they were getting going, I went in and met with Joe and all the writers. We sat around talking about the whole thing and they were throwing all kinds of questions and talking about how if they were doing more than one series, where would you break it? It was anything – big things, small things, things about characters, things about the world. We just talked and I was there to answer as many questions as I could, then after that, that carried on often in phone conversations and also by email. Generally where a question would come up that they weren’t sure about, they’d throw it at me and I’d give them my opinion then I’d let them get on with it.

It’s a trust thing, isn’t it? Ultimately I haven’t got a clue how to make a TV show so all I can do is throw my hat into the ring in terms of the world as it is in the books. I can offer that information and they can run with it, which they did. They would show me the scripts as they were being done and as they were being revised and in general terms, I didn’t get involved too much with them actual scripts because again, it’s not my specialty, to put it mildly. I have to trust how they do it is going to be correct, which it was.

So I was able to see the scripts and that was really reassuring and fun and interesting, to see how they were doing it, what they were changing and what they weren’t changing. A couple of times I’d come down to set to watch it, meet the cast.

The whole process from my point of view was remarkably relaxed. I wasn’t worried because I knew, I could see how the attention to detail that they were going into, they knew the books better than me. Through that period, they would throw questions at me and I’d be going ‘Hell, better go and open the book, research it myself’ because I’d forgotten and that was wonderfully reassuring.

The cast are absolutely superb. One of the most special moments was when they cast the three leads and they sent me a little test screening video showing the three of them talking, just reading out a couple of lines in a room together. I was very nervous when I pressed the button to watch it, to see who are these guys? Straightaway I thought, ‘Yes, I couldn’t ask for anybody better.’ You could instantly see the chemistry and they just seemed absolutely perfect. They are all brilliant.

Physically they are just absolutely right but as you said regarding Ali and George, it’s not just about how you look, it’s the way they act and the essence within them. That is absolutely perfectly in tune with the essence of the characters in the books. It’s a very profound thing but it’s a lovely thing because it allows them to change stuff. There are differences, there are little alterations – they obviously can’t put everything in, it’s a different medium. It’s going to be different but the actual essence of the characters and the essence of the story, the essence of the world, it’s 100% right.

Case in point: when I went down to Ealing Studios and came onto the set, they showed me Portland Row. They built Lockwood’s house in the studio and it was in sections but each section, you walk into it and it was like being in the house of my imagination. It’s remarkably close to what I saw in my mind’s eye and that was a profound moment. In the same way that watching Ruby and Cameron and Ali on this little video, that was a profound moment where you thought, ‘Ah yes, OK. My three characters now inhabit this world, they’ve become three dimensional, they exist in a new way. I’m very lucky.’

Because the book series is complete, would you go back to doing another story within the world?

I have a file with a few ideas in it. For years I’ve been thinking ‘Well, you absolutely could go back and do…’ For example, you could do a book of short stories in a Casebook of Sherlock Holmes type of way where you can just go in, they have lots of adventures, lots of different ghosts. You could have some short stories…

Well, certainly between books 3 and 4 where the characters are separated, how do they cope without each other?

Yes, that’s right there are all kinds of different ways. That’s the interesting question: if you were going to do that, what part of the story would you be inserting these? Some people would say ‘Why don’t you do something after the end of book 5?’ But that raises other issues, other questions.

This is the perennial question: when you have a world which is well realised and satisfactory and everyone likes it, there is always that feeling of ‘Maybe we go back into the world.’ I did it once with Bartimaeus where I did the original trilogy and then a few years later I went back in and did a prequel, which I very much enjoyed doing. But it’s not something you want to do casually: you don’t want to undercut your own work.

With these three now on screen – and as you say they are the embodiment of the essence – would you feel there was a certain amount of what Colin Dexter said with Morse, where he ended up writing John Thaw’s version?

That’s really interesting, I haven’t really thought about that. That’s the first time I’ve had that as a conscious thought in my head.

I can see it working out on social media. The Lockwood fandom is lovely, it’s full of very very passionate warm and very informed people who’ve been supporting it for years. There’s been lots of fantastic Lockwood and Co art that’s been done over the years, brilliant pictures, and it’s been interesting to see in the last couple of weeks that suddenly people are starting to do pieces of art where the characters are now looking like the guys on screen. You’re suddenly getting pictures of George looking like Ali and that’s great.

I suppose what you end up with is potentially two different parallel linked versions of the same story which is after all what happens with stories. Since time out of mind, you’re going to have different versions and they all have their own integrity.

So, in terms of me, that’s a great question and I think I’m helped by the fact that Ruby, Cameron and Ali are so brilliant at actually incorporating and embodying the essence of my characters. I can imagine sitting down and writing about them and I would probably kind of have those guys in my head but I’d also have my original conception and the two probably wouldn’t disrupt each other. I think that’s a real testament to how great they are actually.

What I would probably do, if I was going to write another Lockwood short story or something – and I think I did this with Bartimaeus – I would sit down and basically read the books again because you spend six years in the universe struggling away, trying to create it and once you’ve finished it, and I’m sure this is the case with everyone, you then move onto the next thing.

If I was going to revisit it I would have to re-read the books and that, I think, would probably then get the voices back in my mind. That’s probably the most important thing actually: to make sure the voice that I had was correct and in keeping with the voice in the books. And even there, they’ve done well on the screen that actually, there are bits where I know it’s kind of my dialogue and other bits that are definitely not my dialogue and the two kind of merge pretty well. I don’t feel a dissonance when I’m watching it at all.

That’s possibly the best tribute that Joe, Joy, Ed and Kara can get, is that it is that combination. I must admit when Joe said to me that they used the audition scene from the first book to audition potential Lucys, I thought that was… and I use the word advisedly, a reverence, for the novel that I wasn’t necessarily expecting to hear, or at least expecting to hear openly on the record, acknowledged. 

Well Joe has been very generous through the whole process in referring back to the books, which is obviously lovely for me, but again, I think it comes back to your original question about the mutual regard or affection that we have for each other. In a way there’s a kind of continuity. I’ve told the stories and they are now telling the stories in a different way but it’s a continuous thing – there’s no real chasm between them.

It’s been a delight for me to see, for example, how they’ve thrown in all sorts of stuff which I never thought of, like the brilliant visual aesthetic that they put in, the way they make it kind of 1980s, give it that incredibly cool, slightly downbeat but also incredibly glossy, London urban experience. It’s a joy to see that and that’s something they’ve definitely added to the stew. The beautiful music, the sound elements they’ve put in – there’s so many layers that they have added to the original stuff but they all flow in. Everything flows together so nicely and I I’m very privileged to see how they keep coming back to the books as being a touchstone for them. I know full well that’s not something authors often get to be honest.

One of the key examples of how well it fuses together is that in the first episode, which does have a lot of material from the books, like the interview scene and the whole Annie Ward ghost encounter, but then Joe adds to the flashback with this fantastic and very moving relationship between Lucy and her friend Norrie and the fact that Norrie doesn’t get killed in the mill but has ghost touch. That was absolutely genius because it just adds a whole extra level of insight into what is driving Lucy. The pain and the loss that she has, it’s not just the fact she’s running away from her horrible old mother, she’s actually experienced loss in a very tangible way so when she comes to Portland Row, Portland Row now operates on a whole host of levels. It’s a place of refuge, a place you can get food, a place where you can get friendship – and it’s also a place where she can start to grieve for the friend that she’s left behind. I think that it’s one of the most powerful moments in the whole series.

With a good book, you feel like you’re joining the characters in a world for a time and at the end of the book, they carry on, and we just aren’t with them. Were there any other elements of the world you went ‘Oh yes, that’s just brilliant.’

Again, it’s the fusion of looking back to the books and then going forwards into something that is very much theirs.

I can imagine you could get a situation where somebody who’s really into the books and were so obsessed with trying to keep to the vision of the author that what they then produce is a bit dead on arrival – it’s airless, the whole thing becomes dry and desiccated.

Portland Row is a classic example where they’ve looked at the book and read it really carefully. They recreated Portland Row in forensic detail and looking at it, the author in me nods approvingly because I can see that they know how it’s set up. They’ve got the vibe, they’ve got the masks on the wall but then there’s a whole other level where they add their own things. So as well as all the rapiers and crystal skull on the shelf in the hall, you go in and they have unopened bills that have been sent to Lockwood by one of his many creditors. He hasn’t paid them and they’re on the mantelpiece. You’re never going to see it watching the show but when I was walking round it, I opened the letter, and somebody had typed out a genuine bill to Mr Lockwood, ‘You owe us £350.06’ and it’s folded and on the shelf. In every corner there were things like that – on the walls there were certificates, everything has been properly typed out and if, by chance, you looked at it, you would see that it is absolutely 100%.

When I was the old café owner down by the Thames, there were magazines on the table and newspapers and if you picked up the newspaper it has articles about ghosts and people getting ghosts, those kinds of things. You’re never going to see this but as a viewer you can sense that that level of detail is there and that’s about creating a world which you believe actually exists. That’s a very profound commitment to my world but it’s an extension into ‘It’s our world, we’re gonna make this world as brilliantly and as detailed as we can.’ It was very special.

Thinking about the fact that they can choose places like the Barbican for the Fittes Agency, which I’d originally set in the Strand: they’ve taken the decision to embrace some of these quite brutalist, modern buildings which creates a lovely edge which isn’t necessarily in the books. You’ve got the nice cosy Lockwood house, great, but then you have these really funky interesting urban interiors and exteriors which just adds another level of cool to the whole proceedings and it takes you away from being a little bit too cosy. There’s always that balance: you want it to have the cosiness, you want to have Portland Row, but you also want to have a sense of a world out there that’s exciting and dangerous and modern, in a weird sort of way.

 

All episodes of season 1 of Lockwood & Co. are now streaming on Netflix

Thanks to Georgia Lawe for help in arranging this interview.