‘If I sent anything to anyone, they would want to read more. ‘The people around me were really supportive,’ she remembers. ‘For romance! We were young and crazy.’ After deciding that casting wasn’t her grand passion, she began ‘writing small things for fun in the evenings.
‘Everyone assumed I was pregnant, because why would you do that?’ she says. In what sounds like a plot from one of her novels, the couple eloped four months later. By 24, she had met Alex – now her husband – in a bar through mutual friends.
She eventually worked as an assistant to two casting directors. I just knew I wanted to work in Hollywood.’Īfter graduating from college in Boston, Reid moved to Los Angeles where her first job was an internship on the TV show CSI: NY. Growing up in Massachusetts on the US east coast in the early 90s, on a pop-culture diet of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and reruns of 50s sitcom I Love Lucy, she recalls: ‘When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d say, “I’m going to LA.” I couldn’t articulate why. Reid says she’s been fascinated by celebrities and fame for as long as she can remember. Daisy Jones is due to arrive on Amazon Prime Video soon with Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough in the title role. Meanwhile, four of her books are in the process of being adapted for film or TV, with Reid taking production roles on all projects. Think of her as the Jackie Collins for Gen Z. And on TikTok she’s inescapable: videos with the hashtag #thesevenhusbandsofevelynhugo – referring to her 2017 book – have had more than 200 million views. Her eight novels have been published in 36 languages with millions of copies sold. Reid’s novels – addictive explorations of fame and excess – have dominated The New York Times bestseller lists. ‘She was calling from her vacation to tell me that she loved the book.’ So taken was Witherspoon with this story of a dysfunctional 70s rock band – inspired by the Fleetwood Mac videos Reid remembers watching as a teenager – that Reid ‘had her listening to Rumours and singing the songs’.
‘I was at breakfast with her executive and Reese rang her so she could talk to me,’ recalls 38-year-old Reid.
But the actress whose production company Hello Sunshine has been behind book-to-big screen successes Gone Girl and Where the Crawdads Sing – was so entranced by Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel Daisy Jones & the Six that she needed to get her on the phone. There can’t be many people who Reese Witherspoon would interrupt her holiday for. Not bad for someone whose first book nearly made her quit writing. With millions of her novels sold worldwide and four of them set to be TV and film blockbusters, author Taylor Jenkins Reid is queen of the screen adaptation.
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