Basic HTML Version
HEMISPHERES:
At last, Stephanie Plum is
hitting the big screen.
EVANOVICH:
Yeah. How great is that?
HEMISPHERES:
What took so long?
EVANOVICH:
You aren’t allowed to ask
me any hard questions, because I don’t
have my notes in front of me and I just
worked out—I was smarter before I did
that. All the blood is in my feet now,
instead of my brain. I don’t
know
why
the film took so long. So many people
had tried. I never thought it was going
to happen.
HEMISPHERES:
When you see Katherine
Heigl play Stephanie—her Jersey accent
is brutally wonderful—the casting totally
makes sense.
EVANOVICH:
I think my fans initially
couldn’t see her; they couldn’t get past
the whole blond thing, which is sort of
ironic since probably 80 percent of my
fans alter their hair color. What I saw
was that Katherine brought the right
kind of energy to her roles. She has great
comic timing, she can do comedy and
she’s very physical,
YOUWOULDTHINKTHAT,
a er completing
the 18th book in one of the most successful
mystery franchises going, Janet Evanovich
would take a breather, maybe fly down to
Turks and Caicos or spend a month in the
south of France. Instead, the 68-year-old got up the next morning
before dawn, worked out and then sat down in front of a blank
screen to write the second installment in her Wicked series, which
is aimed at younger readers. “I get back to work because I want to
seewhat’s going to happen next,” she explains. Evanovich, who lives
in Naples, Fla., says that between walks on the beach and a steady
flow of Cheetos, she finds all she needs to keep going.
Even though Evanovich has branched out, she and her millions
of readers never seem to tire of Stephanie Plum, the lingerie sales-
woman turned bounty hunter who powers
One for the Money,
Explosive Eighteen
and all the sequentially numbered books in
between. Tough, pre y and Jersey to the core, Plumhas always felt
cinematic in conception, with a tendency to get into jams that are
both hair-raising and funny. Evanovich sold the movie rights to
One for the Money
back in 1993, but no film ever got off the ground.
Then, a few years ago, she watched
27 Dresses
and saw Katherine
Heigl, a throwback to the screwball comediennes of old; she thought
absently that Heigl could do justice to Plum.
Amazingly, when producers finally got serious about making
One
for the Money
, they told Evanovich they planned to build it around
Heigl. The author tried hard not to get her hopes up, but when she
saw themovie, 18 years a er it had been optioned, she loved it. “I can
never write Stephanie again without seeing Katherine,” she says.
JERSEY GIRLS
From left, Janet Evanovich
with her latest novel;
Katherine Heigl as bounty
hunter Stephanie Plum in
One for the Money
CONTINUED ON PAGE 126
»
60
FEBRUARY 2012
•
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
p058-060_126_HEM0212_Q&A.indd 60
05/0