Actors take on any number of challenges when stepping into a new role. The same can be said forEmma Myers(Wednesday) when she took on the role of Pip in theNetflixseriesA Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. The actress, originally from Orlando, Florida, toldVarietythat she actually learned Pip’s British accent in two weeks, thanks to a dialogue coach. “Also I had an all-English crew and cast. So I told everybody like, ‘It’s not gonna hurt my feelings if I say something wrong and you want to correct me,please correct me!'”
Taking on the character in the young adult murder mystery, while much closer to Myers herself than herWednesdaycharacter Enid, for example, Myers says “[m]ost people assume that it’s easy to play a character that’s like you, but it’s actually way harder and I wanted that challenge.” In addition to those challenges, she says of learning the accent, “I had people looking out for me in that way as well, which was good. I needed that. But yeah, it was a bit daunting, but it was fun.” The combined accomplishment resulted in Myers’ performance as Pip, who is investigating the murder of Andie Bell (India Lillie Davies), from a murder-suicide five years ago. Much like the bookof the same name, Pip begins to look more and more into the murder. It unravels the possibility that the killer may not have been as guilty as the community has assumed.
Emma Myers Knows How “Hard” It Can Be Taking a Book From Paper to Screen
The author of the book,Holly Jackson, had a great deal of input on the adaptation, but as she recently toldVariety, Jackson provided notes but wasn’t ultimately the one writing the script. Myers shares sympathy with the fans for disappointment in the omissions from the show’s first season, for example, the character of Stanley. Myers says, “Stanley is more important in Book 2 and doesn’t really have much of a presence in Book 1, so I understand why he was taken out.” Myers says the omissions were not wasted, and the time was instead used “for more important details with the plot.”
Overall, Myers says she thinks they’ve done the best they could. She says, “it’s always hard adapting something from book to screenplay.” Myers cites the book’s format as part of those challenges. “I mean, sometimes it’s just not going to flow, especially because the book’s written a lot of the time in police reports and Pip’s diary and notes and all that.”
So it is definitely a hard thing to adapt. But I think it was done in the best way it could.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murderis available to stream on Netflix in the US.
Read Collider’s full reviewhere.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder follows Pip Fitz-Amobi, a determined teenager investigating a five-year-old murder case that everyone in her town believes is solved. Schoolgirl Andie Bell was allegedly killed by her boyfriend Sal Singh, who later died by suicide. Pip, convinced of Sal’s innocence, reopens the case for her final year project, uncovering dark secrets and endangering herself in the process.
