‘Behind Her Eyes’ Author Sarah Pinborough Is Worried About Adam Too, But There Won’t Be A Sequel Sarah Pinborough Breaks Down Her Book Turned Hit Netflix Series

I watch a lot of television shows and films, but there are only a handful of the things that I consume that stick with me long after viewing them. One evening when I was in the midst of redoing my braids I decided to watch something new instead of my same ole ‘put me in a good mood’ shows. Behind Her Eyes had been on my Netflix watch list and I figured now was the time to get into it.

A quick binge with six episodes under an hour; I could knock that out easy. What I didn’t expect was how glued I would be by the end of episode one and how ferociously I would watch the series anxious to get to the end and find out the big twist. WHAT A TWIST it was!

Behind Her Eyes is based on the 2017 novel by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pinborough. Back when the book was released, buzz surrounded the work of fiction but it wasn’t until the book was turned into a Netflix show and dropped late February that it became a true social media phenomenon. The premise of the series was simple enough. A single mom named Louise (Simona Brown) begins an affair with her psychiatrist boss David (Tom Bateman) and stumbles into a friendship with his wife Adele (Eve Hewson), but the story goes left in a way I didn’t see coming combining mystery, suspense, and a supernatural element that will keep you hooked until the very end.

I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Sarah Pinborough, the book author the series is based on, about the inception of the book, partnering with Netflix, the possibility of a sequel to Behind Her Eyes and more. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

“I decided I wanted to write about an affair because that’s just full of secrets and lies anyway. So you’re at a great starting place. And I remember thinking there’ll be a murder and we won’t know who to trust,” Sarah said about coming up with the concept of ‘Behind Her Eyes.’ Since “Gone Girl” had been out at that point Sarah didn’t want her work to be too similar to that concept so she added a special element. “I thought, how can I do this a bit different? And I dream a lot. My writing background prior to this book was mainly Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror. So I’d written a lot of weird stuff. I thought, well maybe I’ll sort of feed in some stuff about lucid dreaming and give it a bit of a dreamlike quality. I still couldn’t really get an idea. So I went to a bar, I got a glass of wine, and I sat down and I was like, ah, I’ve ruined it. I haven’t even started yet. So, I was jotting things down and the ending suddenly came and I was like, what if he isn’t dead? When I sent in the pitch, they were all like, okay, yeah, we’re going to make this a big book, so I was quite happy.”

Outside of an affair, secrets, and betrayal, a big theme the series covers is lucid dreaming and astral projection. The Adele character can astral project into other beings and does so with her friend Rob. Later Rob uses that skill against her and swaps bodies with Adele for good. I was so into the concept I started doing my own research on the themes and Sarah did as well prior to writing the book. “I did more research into lucid dreaming than I did into astral projection because I do believe in lucid dreaming whereas I don’t believe in astral projection. It’s like God. There’s a lot of people that do I don’t. I can’t make myself, so I wish astral projection was real in the same way I wish God is real, but I’m not a hundred percent convinced.” Partnering with Netflix to get the book to screen was something else that needed a little convincing on Sarah’s part.

“Before the book came out, when we were selling it to American publishers, there was a lot of American publishers interested. So it got a lot of buzz, so that automatically kicks in all the film agents. I did a lot of meetings with a lot of companies about the film rights and I’d been in LA on holiday, so I did some meetings and in my head I really wanted to sell it to film because Netflix was out, but it wasn’t as big as it is now. Then when I got back to England, there’s a company called Left Bank who made The Crown and they wanted a meeting. So I went to the meeting out of politeness and I always think it’s good to take the meeting cause you never know. So I had the meeting and I was like, Oh, they want it. They want it for TV. The whole company was in the room and they really understood the project and they didn’t want to change a thing in it,” she said.

Andy Harries, the CEO of Left Bank, promised if Sarah sold the rights to the company that the show would absolutely get made. The show was shopped around some UK TV companies who all wanted to change the ending of the book in the series which didn’t sit right with Sarah. Luckily, someone at Netflix in LA was reading the book and when they found out Left Bank had the right it was a natural next step for Behind Her Eyes to find a home on the streaming platform since they also make The Crown with the production house. “So from there it was smooth sailing. By that point I was really happy about Netflix.”

Translating a book to screen can be quick difficult. When I went back and read the book there were very little differences from the series. In the book version Adele-Rob (played by Robert Aramayo in the show) is much more violent and by the end Louise-Rob was very much planning on killing Louise’s son Adam (played by Tyler Howitt in the show), but Sarah was happy with the changes that were made. “I think they were quite clever with it because in the book and you can tell me whether I got this right or not, but I think you get a sense of the black comedy of Adele-Rob a little more. She’s very odd, the things she says, so when she kills the cat it’s horrible. But you’re not seeing her kill a cat. Someone’s telling you she killed a cat. And I think when she had the abortion in the book, that would have been a step too far in the show, like to find out that Rob aborted Adele’s baby, so I think it was good to leave those things out. I was so proud of what they did with it. I was really lucky cause you see some adaptations and they’re so different.”

Photo: Netflix

Photo: Netflix

Photo: Netflix

Fan reaction was also different this time around. Binge watching culture and Netflix and chill skyrocketed Behind Her Eyes to a top 10 series on the streaming platform and spawned countless memes on social media. The reception of the series “was quite different” Sarah said. “You can have a really successful book and you still only sold 10,000 in a week or something and then it takes a little while before people put a review on Amazon maybe, or tweet you or whatever. But when it’s Netflix, it was like, there was a few days when I couldn’t keep up with the hashtag and it was brilliant.”

Sarah mentioned a lot of press specifically in England found the book to be ridiculous and were “quite snooty about it.” It put a damper on Sarah for a bit, but Twitter raved about the series so much she couldn’t stay down for long. “I went on Twitter and I texted the producer and I was like, Jess, Jess, you’ve got to look at the hashtag. She went, I don’t have Twitter. I said, it doesn’t matter you can still see it and I think it was just the GIFS were making me laugh. There were so many GIFS and I learned so many new phrases like drink water, mind your business. I never heard that before. There was another phrase that I learned that I forgot, but there were things I was just like, Oh my God. And it’s so true. Louise was not doing herself proud,” she laughed.

The way the series ended left fans wanting more. Poor little Adam was stuck with Louise-Rob and viewers were very concerned to say the least, but Sarah has no intention of continuing the Behind Her Eyes story line. Well, sort of. “The book I’ve just finished that I’ve handed in is called “Insomnia” and it’s not a continuation, but at the end of it, the characters that are left at the end of Behind Her Eyes meet the character at the end of “Insomnia,” so then you learn a little bit of what’s happened. You learn a little bit of the situation that David and Adam are in now. My thing has always been I hate a weak sequel and if I was going to do a sequel, it would have to be an equally kind of blindside thing, but in a completely different way. So the body swapping, everybody knows. So you can’t do that again. I can’t see that Rob could hop a body again.”

After the success of ‘Behind Her Eyes’ Sarah felt the pressure of trying to come up with another thriller that would rival her previous work. While out a bar with a few writer friends they joked about her coming for M. Night Shyamalan’s career but the triumph of one book doing really great well into her career put things into perspective for the author. “I think I was quite lucky, lucky in some ways, but I had written a lot of books before ‘Behind Her Eyes.’ Had this been my first book, I would have thought, Oh, that’s what happens with all books. Whereas I know that that’s quite rare and it doesn’t matter how much money a publisher puts. It doesn’t happen for every book.”

For all the writers out there wanting to turn their books into something more Sarah focused on that message. “I would say number one, just keep working because when you send something off, there’s no point in just waiting to find out if someone’s going to reject or accept it. If you’re halfway through something else by the time either one of those comes in, you feel you’re moved on to another project. With the screen stuff it’s quite difficult. Hopefully if they’ve got a good agent, the agent should get out and about in front of people. If you think about it I’ve written 26 books now and that’s the only one that’s made it to screen. So I always think it’s like a lottery ticket. I’ve got nearly all my books optioned, but the chance of them getting actually on the screen is a different process. So I would say if you’re writing books, concentrate on the book and if someone decides they want to make it for a film, great. But don’t fixate on whether someone will because it’s sort of lucky dip.”

Behind Her Eyes is streaming now only on Netflix and be sure to keep up with all the projects on Sarah’s roster by following her on Twitter @SarahPinborough.

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Photo: Sarah Pinborough