When author Soman Chainani learned that the Disney films of his childhood were based on fairy tales with far darker details than their animated kiddie counterparts, his mind was blown. He was left wanting to know more. So, several decades later, after an unsatisfying series of professional false starts, he sat down to explore the more complicated side of those classic tales in a way that also tapped into facets of his childhood experience that he still hadn’t seen written or shown.
The result is The School for Good and Evil, a story of best friends Agatha (Sofia Wylie) and Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) who find themselves in school alongside the progeny of the world’s most famous heroes and villains. (Think King Arthur and Captain Hook.) There, they try to figure out which side of the good-and-evil spectrum they belong on while under the tutelage of Professor Dovey (Kerry Washington) and Lady Lesso (Charlize Theron).
Published by HarperCollins in 2013, Chainani’s novel has been published in 30 languages, sold more than 3 million copies and spawned five sequels. Its exploration of our lighter and darker sides and the enduring power of friendship also resonated deeply with Freaks and Geeks creator and Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, who chose Chainani’s tale to be the first YA project he’s tackled on screen.
Here the author details what it’s been like to see his early scribblings snowball into an enormous movie starring Theron and Washington — among other things he still can’t believe have happened over the past decade.
Where was your head when you began writing these books in 2010?
I was at a strange period of my life where I felt like every door was closing on me professionally. Projects were dying. Personally, I felt like romantically everything was at a dead end. I felt like creatively I had no ideas, and there just came a moment when I realized that I was on the wrong path. And so I just changed tack and thought: I just need to be more me and write something that I don’t care if it gets published or not. And so School for Good and Evil was kind of my primal scream unleashed onto the page. I wrote every inside joke, everything I thought was funny, everything I thought was important in the world and all the messages I wanted to see. It was almost like my diary.
When you sat down to first write, what were the major themes that emerged?
I wanted to reconcile the two halves of myself. There was the part of me, when I was growing up, who felt so different, the part that Agatha felt like an outcast and didn’t belong in the world where everyone was beautiful, and I was just sort of this scrawny runt. And then there was the Sophie side of me who I knew, if I ever had that power that the beautiful people I was envious of had, that I would be an absolute monster.
What was the hardest part of The School for Good and Evil to write?
I think it was that, ultimately, I had a prince character that had to be hot and likable and a romantic interest, but you couldn’t want him to end up with the girls more than the two girls having a deep friendship with each other. Basically the prince couldn’t come between these two girls and wreck their friendship, and that’s a very delicate dance because it’s a delicate dance in real life. You see two friends who are together all the time in, like, sixth or seventh grade and inevitably the snake in the garden comes in, and it’s hard to get that friendship back to what it was. So that was always tricky. That triangle was always tricky.
What do you think makes The School for Good and Evil’s tone unique?
I think the point of writing these books was to make everything a bit dangerous. When these books came out, this was pre-TikTok, pre-pushing a lot of boundaries, and I think what’s made them successful is that readers were kind of shocked by them. Because anyone who’s a young reader, and especially teenagers, they know more than adults ever give them credit for. My goal in writing these books was to respect their intelligence and their sophistication.
Were there certain things you wanted to make sure made it into the film?
I wanted the big action scenes at the end to really stay pretty much the same so we could see good and evil blurring. 🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐 And it was very important to me that the kiss at the end between the two girls was as impactful and deep as it was in the book, because friendship being the deepest bond of love was the theme of their whole story. I wanted to preserve this idea of “Who needs princes in our fairy tale when two friends have each other?”
What was it like working with Paul Feig?
Paul was incredibly collaborative and open and inviting to me throughout the process. We had some phone calls and Zooms, and I was giving notes pretty early on. I went to set for a few weeks to make sure that creatively we were in sync, but he had such a clear idea of what he wanted that matched mine already. I sat back and let one of the great filmmakers run it his way. I just wanted to see a Paul Feig movie, you know?
Did you ever picture huge stars like Kerry Washington and Charlize Theron inhabiting the roles you created?
I mean that’s just ludicrous. Every time Paul kept adding these incredible stars to it, I almost felt like I was tracking a movie that had nothing to do with me. I just wanted to see this movie! I had to kind of divorce myself from the fact that this was my story because, otherwise, it just felt too surreal and weird. When I was first on set, it was to film a cameo role, so I met all these big stars in character. I’m sitting at a table with them, and I’d never met them as humans. At first, I was totally panicked and totally starstruck and nervous and everything and then I realized: I know this world, I’ve written this scene so many times and I know all these characters, and I suddenly felt super calm. It was a very bizarre experience stepping into the world of a book that I created for eight hours before I even got to know Kerry and Charlize. The whole experience has just been wild.
