Ep. 64 Three Adaptations That Almost Made The Cut

Some adaptations don’t fail because they’re bad, but because they’re trying to do a different job than the source. I’m testing that idea with three 2019 picks that almost became full matchups on Books versus Movies, and along the way I got picky about what I actually want from “based on a true story” storytelling.

First up, The Dropout: I watched the TV series, then listened to the ABC News true crime podcast, and the balance tipped fast. The show has strong acting and watchable momentum, but the podcast carries the weight of journalistic integrity, cleaner reporting, and fewer invented flourishes. With Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, the facts are already wild, and I talk through why extra dramatization can dilute the impact and even muddy the cultural consequences that followed.

Then I pivot to a messy expectation trap: Airhead by Emily Maitlis versus A Very Royal Scandal. The miniseries nails the tension of the Prince Andrew Newsnight interview and the Epstein shadow around it, but the book is a broader journalism memoir, not a direct blueprint for the show. I also dig into why a tight three-episode structure can sometimes serve a scandal better than a longer run.

I close with Notes from the Field by Anna Deavere Smith, a powerhouse of documentary theater about the school-to-prison pipeline, and why the filmed stage performance on HBO can be the best way to experience a play that’s meant to be seen. If you like smart adaptation talk, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review. Which adaptation do you trust more: the most entertaining one or the most faithful one?

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Transcript

Why This Format Is Different

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Welcome to Books versus Movies, the podcast where I set out to answer the age-old question: Is the book really always better than the movie? I'm Juvia, an actress and book lover based out of New York City, and today I'm going to be talking about three different things. So these are books that I read andor TV series that I watched or podcast that I listened to that I had every intention of bringing to the podcast. And for one reason or another, discovered that I just didn't have enough material to make a full episode out of it. So I had resigned myself to not bringing these to the podcast at all. And then I thought, well, it seems a shame to not talk about them. So let's combine them all into one episode. So this episode is going to be formatted a little bit differently, as you can guess. And I'm not gonna go into as much detail about the differences because some of them have no differences to compare, and I will get into what I mean by that. Or I just felt like they were so different, or yeah, there's just a variety of things that led me to just being like, this we just I just don't have enough to talk about. And the funny thing is I didn't realize this, but the original source material for all of these came out in 2019. I totally did not mean for that to happen, but it kind of just did. So yeah, that was just funny. This is something I realized when I was preparing for this episode.

The Dropout Podcast Beats TV

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But that being said, the first thing that I'm gonna talk about is the dropout. And I was excited to bring this just because it's a podcast versus TV adaptation, and I've never done this before, and I was like, why not? Why not bring this? I've done musicals versus movies. Yeah, why not bring this to the podcast? But then, well, I saw the TV series first, and then I listened to the podcast, and then I just decided I cannot bring this because to me the clear winner is the podcast. And I'm gonna get into why. But first, the dropout podcast is came out in 2019, and it is an American true crime podcast hosted by Rebecca Jarvis that follows the story of Elizabeth Holmes, her defunct medical company Theranos, and the related federal criminal fraud trial United States V, Elizabeth A. Holmes and all. And the 2022 TV series adaptation, The Drobout, is a series that chronicles Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes attempt to revolutionize the healthcare industry after dropping out of college and starting a technology company. So this sounds like it was pretty similar, but then I heard I liked the TV series. I rated it four stars, and I rated the podcast also four stars. But then I after I heard the podcast, I was like, the clear winner is the podcast. Like, I don't even really have any way to the only thing I can say as to why the podcast is the winner, is that it is true crime. It's produced by ABC News. You can also consider it a journalistic podcast. So there is journalist integrity in the podcast that the TV series did not have to adhere to. So the TV series, like a lot of true story adaptations we've brought to the podcast, embellishes a lot of things, dramatizes a lot of things. And it just really bugged me after I heard the podcast because it's one of those things that again, the story of Elizabeth Holmes is just it's so much stranger than fiction in a lot of ways. And her story is fascinating. You don't need to over-dramatize it in order to make it interesting. It already is interesting in and of itself. So we don't need to add all the extra TV flourishes to make it interesting or anything like that. So that really just, after I listened to the podcast, that just really, really bugged me. So I recommend the podcast if you are interested in learning more about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos and everything that came out of that. The TV series is good in terms of the acting. Like Amanda Seifer did a really, really great job bringing Elizabeth to life. She really captured the voice and her mannerisms very well. So it is good to see because of that. But even just watching the series, I did feel like it got a little too long at points. And I was like, I feel like we could have shortened it. It's an eight-episode mini-series, so it's already relatively short. But considering something else I'm gonna bring to the podcast or and to this same episode, which is the next thing I'm gonna talk about, mini-series don't have to be eight episodes. I feel like that's the standard, but it doesn't need to be eight episodes. You can make it longer, you can make it shorter. And I feel like this one ran a little bit too long. I did enjoy the series, but I did feel like it went on a little too long. And it and towards the end, I was kind of losing interest in it. And yeah, there's nothing wrong with losing interest in something that you start, but just like I said, Elizabeth Holmes's story is just so much, it's interesting. You don't need a lot to make it interesting. And so to expand the story more, and because like the some of the things they added was just for TV. So it's like it's not like you're even adding things that were left out of the podcast, or at least I didn't feel that way. I did enjoy the series, like I said, the acting overall, but just a little bit once I listened to the podcast, it was just a little bit too embellished for my taste. And even before I listened to the podcast, it was starting to get a little long. I think I started to lose interest maybe around episode four or five, so about the halfway point. And I was just like, we can, I don't know. I just feel like a lot of the stuff that was added was unnecessary, and it's like you can make this compelling story without needing to add all this stuff. If you're interested in learning more about Elizabeth Holmes, I recommend the dropout podcast. I also recommend the HBO documentary, The Inventor Outflower Blood in Silicon Valley, which also came out in 2019. Wow, which is how I first heard about Elizabeth Holmes. I had never heard about her. At this point, I'd never heard about their nose, but I did watch the documentary, and that's kind of when I first heard

When Dramatization Dilutes The Truth

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about her. So I just think that there's more stuff out there that you can learn about her and her story, and kind of just be infuriated with what she did, how she pulled it off, and just her attitude towards everything she to this day believes in her company, which there's nothing wrong with that, except that you were clearly found out to be lying and you were guilty of fraud. So, and just the major, major setbacks done to women in business, the TV series does have a little blurb at the end that says that basically, thanks to Elizabeth Holmes, women that are looking to start their own business in Silicon Valley are less likely to get funded than male businesses, and that's just really unfortunate. Obviously, there can be scammers and fraudsters, male scammers and fraudsters, and they're given the same opportunities, but because one woman screwed up royally, this is affecting women, and that's just this story of our lives. But yeah. So I do recommend the podcast over the TV series personally, but yeah, just wanted to I wanted to talk

Airhead Memoir Versus Royal Miniseries

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about that. The next thing that I want to talk about is Airhead, The Imperfect Art of Making News by Emily Maitless, which was published in 2019, and the 2024 miniseries, A Very Royal Scandal. So I watched A Very Royal Scandal first, and this is the one that I was talking about. It's a mini-series, it's only three episodes long, and it gets to the point. So that's what I'm saying. I feel like the dropout, I don't think it could have done it in three episodes, but it could have done it in less. So much less. But I don't even remember I think I said the dropout was eight episodes, but honestly, it could have been ten. I don't know. The point is, it did start to lose me. A very royal scandal, I think, is a great example of how you can accomplish something. This is part of it's its own thing, but it's also part of a larger series as a whole, because there's a very British scandal, a very English scandal, and then a very royal scandal. And so, like I said, I watched a very royal scandal first. I was doing some research on it, I saw that it was based on a book, so I read the book, and then come to find out that the book is not about, is not related to this at all. So Air Hit, The Imperfect Art of Making News by Emily Maitless, as I said, was published in 2019, and it is Emily Maitless's memoir. She talks about her time working at BBC Newsnight andor just being a broadcast journalist in general, and she talks about different interviews that she had. So each chapter is dedicated to one person that she interviewed, and she talks about interviews with Pierce Morgan, Russell Brand, the Dalai Lama, and other political figures, other news stories, like known news stories that she's covered. So it's about that. So I was expecting a chapter that would cover what a very royal scandal covers, and it is not included at all, which makes sense because I believe that the interview that A Very Royal Scandal is based on came out in 2019. So the same year that she published the book. So she would have needed to really quickly add it in, or the book came out before this interview. So come to find out that the interview has nothing. The interview that A Very Royal Scandal is based on is not included in the book. So I was just like, I can't really bring this to the podcast because the TV show and the book are not related to each other, other than it follows Emily Maitless, and that's it. I don't think you could really say the TV series was based on her book because it really wasn't. But yeah, so as I said, Airhead is a memoir by Emily Maitless, and a very royal scandal came out in 2024. It is a mini-series, a British miniseries, that explores Emily Maitless's journey as a newsnight journalist and Prince Andrew's disastrous interview with her. So I am very aware that Prince Andrew is no longer a prince. He's been stripped of his royal title because of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. But for simplicity's sake, I'm going to keep referring to him as Prince Andrew for the remainder of my time talking about this. So the interview between Amelie Maitless and Prince Andrew was a pretty infamous interview. So he went on Newsnight and talked to Emily about at this time the Epstein files had just surfaced or were starting to surface. And so pictures came out. Virginia Dufrey, who is no longer with us, but she was alive at the time, very publicly said, I am one of Epstein's victims, and I'm also, and through Epstein, I became one of Prince Andrew's victims. And so Virginia Dufrey went public with her accusations against Prince Andrew and his ties to Epstein. And Prince Andrew, in an effort to clear his name, went on newsnight and talked to Emily Maitless. And this did not go to according to his plan. In fact, it was one of those interviews that pretty much solidified his guilt in the public's

The Prince Andrew Interview Recreated

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mind. So I highly recommend this series. It's actually really, really fascinating. I don't know how much of it was embellished, but it's really fascinating to see. And after I finished the miniseries, I watched the actual interview. And it's really, really cool how spot on the actors got. So it stars Ruth Wilson as Emily Maitless and Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew. And yeah, the I don't know, I like just watching it back to back was just like it was really incredible how well the actors embodied the characters and it's how well they studied this interview so they could get it like almost shot for shot the way it happened. Ruth Wilson and Michael Sheen were both great as Emily Maitless and Prince Andrew, respectively. I will say the only thing that caught me off guard was Ruth Wilson's voice. I felt like she deepened it. And I did listen to Airhead on audiobook. And like I said, I also watched the interview right after. So I was expecting Emily to have like a really deep voice, and she really doesn't. And I feel like Ruth Wilson has a naturally lower tone to her voice, but I felt like she deepened it even more to play Emily. And I don't feel like Emily Maitless's voice was as deep as Ruth Wilson made it, but that's just a very nitpicky thing overall. Ruth Wilson did a really fantastic job as Emily Maitless. But yeah, so I couldn't really bring this to the podcast because there is nothing to compare a very royal scandal to. This is not included in the book at all. I did still enjoy the book. I enjoyed hearing about her different experiences trying to get different news stories and her opinions on the people that she interviewed. And I do recommend a very royal scandal because it is fascinating. And it's just really interesting to see how, or at least watch the actual news night interview between Emily and Prince Andrew. Because it's just one of those things that, like I said, was kind of like the beginning of the end for Prince Andrew in terms in the court of public opinion. Like it was one of those things that a lot of people saw this interview, and it was like there he's guilty, allegedly. Just the way he handled the questions, and it was a lot of non-answers given. And yeah, so I do recommend watching all of these. I recommend reading the book, but yes, not really something I could fully bring to the podcast, unfortunately.

Notes From The Field On HBO

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And the final thing I am going to talk about is Notes from the Field by Anna DeVere Smith, which was published in 2019. Now, Notes from the Field was originally performed as a one-person play. Anna DeVere Smith is kind of known for her what she calls documentary theater. So she'll interview people and like a wide range of people. I think for Notes from a Field, there was she interviewed over 200 people, and then from those 200 people, she narrowed it down to the few that are featured in the play, but she interviews them and she says their words verbatim to tell the story, whether she has one about the LA riots. This one is about focuses on the school-to-prison pipeline. And so she interviews and brings to life Sherilyn Iffill, who was the president of the NAACP at the time, Reverend Jamal Harrison Bryant, who spoke at the funeral of Freddie Gray, Naya Kenny, the a high school student who was arrested for defending a classmate. And we've you have seen the viral footage, more than likely, of that Naya took. And it's the high school student who's getting slammed to the floor by a school resource officer or fancy way of saying school gob essentially. Brie Newsom, the activist who made headlines when she removed the Confederate flag from the State House grounds of South Carolina, and there's many other people. So notes from the field, the film came out in 2018. And you may be saying, well, how did the play come out after the film? So plays, getting plays published works differently than books. So in order for a play to be published, it needs to have at least you can self-publish the play and have a physical copy of it, which is what I think some of my friends have done. And then you can also have it on the internet. But in order for it to receive an official publication from one of the big house play houses, like Concord Theatricals, Dramatist Play Service, in order to qualify for that, plays need to have at least, if I'm remembering correctly from what Orlando told me, they need to have at least three regional productions and then they qualify to get published one of the big houses, or it needs to have an off-Broadway or Broadway premiere, and then it'll qualify to be published at that point. So that is why the play was published later, even though the film came out in 2018, and at the time the film was came out in 2018, Anna DeVere Smith had been performing it for a while. So just wanted to clarify why the publication of the play is actually comes after. So the film is still an adaptation of the play, but not really, because I forgot the term, but it's the film, you can find it on HBO, is not an adaptation of the play itself. It's more of, I'm forgetting the technical term of this, and it's gonna drive me crazy, but kind of like how Hamilton on Disney Plus, it's considered a film, but it's not an adaptation of Hamilton. It's literally Hamilton that they recorded and then released as a film. So it's the same thing. So this was like Anna DeVere Smith performed this in front of an audience. It's an actual video of her performance, and obviously they so she does describe certain things like there's slides introducing the characters, there's video footage being projected onto a screen on stage, and obviously, instead of getting the projection, instead of getting the slides introducing the characters, it'll be in the film, it's you see Anna DeVere Smith performing the character, and then in like subtitles, it'll say who she's performing as. And then instead of having the video footage projected onto the screen, we see the actual video footage is edited into the play. So that's the only difference between like the Hamilton version, which is literally every aspect of the play is in the film. This is was edited a little bit more to and I imagine it was just done because it's just easier to show the actual video footage of what Anna DeVere's about Smith is about to talk about, as opposed to seeing a grainy version of it protected on a screen, which works in the theater, but not so much when you're watching film. So that all makes sense. So yeah, so Anna DeVere Smith brings to life a total of 18 real life people, and I mentioned a few of them. Others are current and former inmates, she brings to life protesters, educators, politicians. Anyway, I do recommend watching the film and reading the play. I do recommend both, but I do recommend watching the film more just because plays are meant to be seen. I read a lot of plays, I know how to read plays, I know how to enjoy plays, but overall, plays are meant to be visual. And so I recommend watching it, and it's worth it for Anna DeVere Smith's performance. She, the way she's able to bring the people she interviewed to life, and it's just it's incredible how she does it. It's really, really fascinating. So I do recommend both, but if you can watch it as opposed to reading it, I will recommend plays. I have no problem recommending plays, and I think it's worth reading plays, especially if you watch a very bad adaptation, a very bad iteration. I don't want to say adaptation, a very bad iteration of it. Sometimes really good plays can come off as really terrible plays with the wrong direction, the wrong actors. So just want to point that out. But in this case, since it is Anna Devere Smith, she wrote it, she's the creator of it. She knows how to, you know, she's passionate about bringing this to life and bringing it to life accurately. So it's totally worth it for her performance. So if you can, watch it. If you do not have HBO and you only have the option to read it, then definitely read it. It's worth being checked out

Wrap Up And Next Pick

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no matter what. So that is it for this episode of Books versus Movies. I hope you enjoyed it. I know it was a little bit different, but I hope you still enjoyed it. Next time I will be talking about The Girlfriend by Michelle Francis and it's 2025 mini series adaptation, The Girlfriend, starring Robin Wright, Olivia Cook, and Lori Davidson. See you next time. Bye.