Interview with Nick Hornby (Writer)

How did the fictionalisation of Love, Nina come about?
Nina Stibbe and I share an editor, Mary, and she sent me a proof copy of the book. I’m bound to think this, but she has good taste, so when she said it was brilliant I took a look and couldn’t quite believe how good it was.

What attracted you to the book?
The first thing that attracted me was that it was funny, and there are so few books that are properly funny from beginning to end. You can name endless television programmes, endless films, but I think this book is destined to be a much-loved comic book classic. That was the first thing I wanted to dig into, but it’s about a charming and an eccentric world as well. It’s not just funny because it’s funny, they’re very real people and it’s a situation you don’t come across every day.

Did you work alongside Nina Stibbe throughout the process?
Nina didn’t read the scripts until I had completed the whole set. We weren’t really in touch during the writing process although sometimes I would ask her something and she would provide the answer - factual stuff. She was a dream and she trusted us to get on with it.

What was the most challenging part of the adaptation?
I didn’t feel that there were any challenges, just opportunities. Nina glosses over comic material very quickly because she is writing letters to her sister and she talks about incidents in two or three lines. Of course you’ve got to open it out, but the characters are in there and the situations are there. Nina’s letters quite often included snatches of dialogue and so it was my privilege and pleasure to be able to get to run those on.

What SJ’s done with it is incredible. It looks like a quirky indie movie. It’s visually very rich and it certainly doesn’t look like a sitcom. I can’t recall anything quite like it.