Tribeca TV Festival: Looking for Alaska

One of the most anticipated YA novel adaptations coming this fall is John Green’s Looking for Alaska. The story follows Miles (Charlie Plummer) as he begins a new school year at his dad’s alma mater boarding school. There he meets his new roommate, The Colonel (Denny Love) and the magnetic yet mysterious Alaska Young (Kristine Froseth).

Luckily for us, as a limited series on Hulu, the TV show will dive even deeper into these beloved characters we know. But whether or not you’ve read the book, you’re in for a real treat.

We heard about the series from some of the creators and cast at the Tribeca TV Festival. Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, John Green, Charlie Plummer, Kristine Froseth, Denny Love, and Jay Lee (Takumi) were all there. Check out some of the highlights below.

On getting Looking for Alaska from the book to the screen (which, by the way, was a fourteen-year process that began as a film adaptation!)
Josh Schwartz (executive producer, writer): [TV series] are the ideal way to adapt the book because you get to have a very immersive experience with these characters. You have eight hours with them and take things that were alluded to in the book and put them on screen.

Stephanie Savage (executive producer, writer): In addition to the switch from the movie to the limited series, a lot of things have happened in TV in the last decade.

John Green (author): Yes, in 2005 when this all started, the world looked very different….There was a lot of heartbreak in these 14 years [and] when this opportunity came up, there was a bit of trepidation for all of us because of that heartbreak….[Josh and Stephanie] cared about the book in a way that nobody else did, and they understood the book in a way that nobody else did so I was really excited. I mostly feel very, very grateful to the cast and everyone at Paramount who made this happen, but mostly [to] Josh and Steph for 14 years of believing in this.

On being familiar (or not) with the book before being cast on the series
Denny Love (The Colonel): I had no idea about this book. When I first got the audition I just read the first episode, and I was like “This just seems really, really special to me.” I was super excited and telling everybody about it like “Yo, I think I just found my next big thing. It’s gonna be my moment!” and they were like “Oh, what is it called?” I was like, “Oh it’s like Finding Alaska Somewhere…” [laughter] They’re like, “Oh wait! Looking for Alaska? I love that book!” Then, I immediately went to Barnes & Noble, grabbed the book, and read it in a day and a half–and I’m a slow reader so that was big for me!

Once i read the book I just really understood the gravity of how important and how beautiful this project was, and I could not wait to audition. Once I auditioned for it, I would have kidnapped somebody to get this role; I wanted it so bad! [laughter] I never wanted a project this bad in my life.

John Green (author): The crazy thing about that is that Denny auditioned using the audition script and then he said, “If it’s alright with you I’d like to audition a monologue from the book.” Like, from The Colonel that’s in the book. And, usually when that happens–I’m not a casting director–but that’s usually a bad sign, I think. [laughter] They sent me a tape with him doing that and I was just crying. I was just so moved by it and so grateful to him caring so much about the book. I could feel how much you became The Colonel in that moment.

Denny Love (The Colonel): Yeah. I would say to the actors out there, I would not recommend doing that cuz that coulda went terribly! But when I read the book (it’s the barn scene where we talk about the best and the worst days) I remember reading that, and it made me cry cuz in that moment you really started to understand all these characters in a different kind of way. I remember reading that and I was like, “Man. If I never get to play The Colonel ever in my life, I just want to be able to have brought those words to life.” Luckily, it turned out well for me.

Kristine Froseth (Alaska): I had read the book in high school and fell in love with it then. And then the movie came around and, yeah, it was my first ever audition. I read it a couple more times, and I kept checking [every year] with my manager to see when it was going to come back around. Then Josh and Stephanie were there, and I got to meet with them and tape for them. And, yeah, here we are.

Jay Lee (Takumi): [Reading] it brought me back to my own high school experience…[the book] was an incredibly special, moving, all of the things.

Charlie Plummer (Miles): I first read the book when I 15–so about the same age as Miles–and as soon as I read the book I felt like the internal monologue he would have just so deeply. I remember calling my agents and manager being like, “I have to do this.” At the time, they were trying to make it into a movie. I auditioned, and I even wrote a letter to John which I never sent. I wanted it so bad. At the end of the day they were like “You’re just too young for it; we’re so sorry.” I was so heartbroken over it.

It was always something that year after year I would ask my team about and say, “Hey. Is there anything going on with that?” I ended up eventually meeting Josh and Steph and getting to talk to them. Getting the opportunity was incredible. After I got the job–finally, after all that time–I [went] back through my journal that I made when I was 15, and I had written down “10 Stories That I Want to Tell Before I Die” and the first one on that list was Looking for Alaska. So, it was really special how it came together.

On why Looking for Alaska on Hulu is still set in 2005
Josh Schwartz (executive producer, writer): Well it’s when the book was published so for that first generation of readers it would take them back to that time. Everyone who reads this book just has such a personal connection to it, as you can tell from the cast, so we thought that would be a very honest way of adapting the book and [be] true to the people who read it the first time around.

There’s also an innocence to the characters…it’s sort of the last year before the smartphone came into play. It’s hard to imagine Alaska’s monologues being texted to Miles, y’know? There was some timelessness to not having it set to today; the book is timeless.

John Green (author): I just imagined out a few of the technological advances because I found them inconvenient. That’s one of the pleasures about writing fiction is that you can cheerfully ignore whatever you want to; if you’re cheerful enough about it, people won’t notice!…There are certain elements of my own experience in the 1990s being at boarding school [included]. I loved it being set in 2005 because it did feel like the most faithful thing to the book.

Stephanie Savage (executive producer, writer): When John took us to his school on a tour one of the things that he talked about was how the school was surrounded by really tall trees that literally block out the world….He talked about how the kids were so into each other [and] the drama of being at school that no one was watching the news or no one really cared what videos were on MTV. It was this very insular world.

On bringing the characters to life and adding the actors into the story
Denny Love (The Colonel): That’s what’s exciting about it being a miniseries: you get to see these characters and a life outside of what you already know. And that’s dope.

Josh Schwartz (executive producer, writer): The book is very much written from Miles’ point of view, but we also really wanted to make sure Alaska’s was equally represented–and felt that you were seeing her outside of Miles’s purview as well.

Stephanie Savage (executive producer, writer): We were able to tell more stories for the other characters that are alluded to in the book but really bring them to life and flush them out. Some of them are really poignant in not just creating tone, but moving the story forward.

Denny Love (The Colonel): Josh and Steph were all so gracious in being able to allow us the space to live through these characters because it can be super intimidating when you’re approaching material like this: playing Alaska and Pudge and the Colonel and Takumi. [It] can seem so intimidating because we all love these characters; we all know these characters. So, it was so nice to feel like, “Yes, there is a bunch that we all know, but there is also a space for us to create.”…which is so exciting for me because I had hella things to say! [laughter]…The deeper I was able to dive in to the story, I started to understand [The Colonel] on a deeper level.

John Green (author): Honestly, for me, what makes the show so sad is that everybody gets that [deeper dive] except for Alaska. Like they’re able to see each other more a lot more complexly than they do in the beginning, but too late. Which happens. That’s what was so wrenching for me watching it that I never really felt before.

Excited? So are we! Mark your calendars for Friday, October 18
for the Hulu premiere of Looking for Alaska!