Joshilyn Jackson's "The Opposite of Everyone"

New York Times bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson's books include the novels: Someone Else’s Love Story, gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Backseat Saints, and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty.

Here Jackson has some hints for the casting director of an adaptation of her latest novel, The Opposite of Everyone:

The Opposite of Everyone is the story of a hard-edged divorce lawyer originally named after Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction and renewal. Casting her provides an interesting challenge---she is at the very least tri-racial. Paula Vauss never knew her father (and her young, hippie mother was truth-impaired), but it’s likely he was half black and half Asian. Her mother was mostly Irish but may well have a good bit of Cherokee in her genetic make-up.

Right now---and rightfully, and more than a little late---Hollywood is getting pushback on racebending---casting white actors in plum roles as characters of color. Gods of Egypt, anyone? But Paula is of such “murky racial origin,” as she says, that I’m not sure how to cast her. What I really need is for Olivia Munn and Halle Berry to have a tall, fierce, litigious baby, but so far I can’t even get the two of them to have coffee.

As for Zach Birdwine, Paula’s hard-drinking private investigator and sometime lover, that’s easy. In fact, an independent bookseller (Luan, from Laurel Book Store out in California) sent me a note after she read the book, saying that Jeffrey Dean Morgan had to play Birdwine, cut, print, the end. She nailed it.

Learn more about the book and author at Joshilyn Jackson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Opposite of Everyone.

--Marshal Zeringue

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