Jessica Knoll doesn’t mind if readers find her characters unlikable, but sometimes she is a little surprised when they do. Knoll made a big splash with her first novel, the 2015 mystery Luckiest Girl Alive. It made the New York Times Best Seller list, and was adapted into a 2022 film starring Mila Kunis. Knoll wrote the screenplay herself.
And while the author can understand why people might not love Ani, the main character from her debut, she’s not really seeking out to write divisive women.
“It’s not even a question of ‘Do I like it?'” Knoll responds when asked if she likes writing unlikable women on the new episode of Marie Claire‘s “Nice Talk” podcast. “These are just the women I like. And then when people bring it back to me and they’re like, ‘I didn’t like her,’ I’m like, ‘Really? I kind of like her. She’s kind of funny.'”
Writing the character of Ani came from a personal place for Knoll, because “so much of my own personal anger and rage was channeled into her.”
“I was so fucking angry at the time I wrote that book,” she goes on. “I can understand people being like, ‘She is just, like, a little snot.’ I’m like, ‘I’ll give you that.'”
After Luckiest Girl Alive, Knoll published 2018’s The Favorite Sister and 2023’s Bright Young Women. Her latest novel, Helpless, just hit shelves on July 7.
“With this new book, I think [main character] Faye is a little Ani-like.” But, she adds, “I think there’s much more maturity and awareness around her. And so hearing even from some early readers, they’re like, ‘This character might not be for everyone,’ and I’m like, ‘Why not?’ Like, she seems great!”
When it came to adapting Luckiest Girl Alive, Knoll says that she wasn’t nervous about Ani having to be changed too much or made more palatable.
“Anyone that was like, I like this enough to attach myself to it as a producer, director, studio, they were already like, Oh, I’m vibing with this,” Knoll says. “There weren’t as many instances of where they were like, ‘You need to make her more likable.’ If anything, what people liked about it was she was unlikable.”
For more from Knoll—including what she sometimes finds “terrifying” about her own ambition—check out this week’s installment of “Nice Talk.” The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.
