Bookwild - Janelle Brown: I'll Be You

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

On this episode, I talk to Janelle Brown about her mesmerizing new psychological thriller I'll Be You.You can also watch the episode on YouTubeAuthor LinksInstagramGoodreadsCheck out the book hereI'll Be You Synopsis“You be me, and I’ll be you,” I whispered. As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years. Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew. I’ll Be You shows Janelle Brown at the top of her game: a story packed with surprising revelations and sharp insights about the choices that define our families and our lives—and could just as easily destroy them. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

Hi, my name is Kate and I love to read. Like, I was carrying books around with me before Kindles were a thing. So I decided to start a podcast where I interview the authors of some of my favorite books, ask them all of my questions so that I can read between the lines of the books. Welcome back to another episode of Between the Lines. I'm here today with Janelle Brown, who's the author of some of my favorite books and most recently the author of I'll Be You. So thank you for being on the podcast. My pleasure. Yeah. So before we get into the book, I did want to learn a little bit about you. So when did you know that you wanted to be an author or when did you have like the first moment that you were like, I have a story I need to write? I'm really young. I was in first grade, actually. And my, I loved to read. I was an obsessed reader. I would go.

to the library at our school and I would check out the maximum books that we were allowed to check out every week. Like seven books. I was like, that's not enough books. I can read more than that in a week. And I would also was writing little stories, mostly about my pet basset hound, Pogo, and loved to make these little books. And at one point, my teacher was like, wow, you should really consider being an author when you grow up. We really like to write stories and you're really good at it. I was like, you're right. What a great idea.

I'd get to write books all day long. That sounds amazing. And I really kind of stuck with that. So seven years old, I think, I've been very persistent, very stubborn. That is so cool, though. So what is your writing process like? So do you typically know what's going to happen at the end?

Do you just get started and see what comes out? Like, how do you approach it? I usually start with a loose idea, a rough idea of a story, a rough idea of characters. I write a loose outline, knowing roughly the beginning point and the end point that I want to land at. And then I just start writing. And for me, the most important thing is to really get into the minds of my characters and to get to know them. So I start writing in their voices and trying to. to figure out who they are, what makes them tick, what their big issues are, what their

insecurity are. Like a therapist, try to get into their minds, right? Understand what their core issues are. And then usually what happens is as I'm writing and I'm kind of writing these characters in this story, I've imagined, the story starts to evolve a lot. It starts to turn into something that maybe I didn't expect because the characters are now fully fledged people who make decisions that I maybe didn't anticipate when I was first loosely imagining this as a TV-D book.

now it's a 3D book with like actual characters. Yeah. So things change and evolve and I usually let the book evolve and stories change. And then I re-outline at some point when I'm like half or three-quarters of the way through in order to make sure it all's tracking now to the end. Yeah, that makes sense. And so when you're getting to know the characters and like figuring out their voice, how do you approach that?

Do you kind of like write in their voice even if it's not for the book? or how do you approach that process? A little of both. I mean, I will do some writing of the stuff that I've planned for the book in their voice. But then sometimes I'll just like free write. Like let you sit down. I'm going to write, you know, we'll sit down and I'll imagine, okay, here's this character, Sam, you know, what was like a pivotal moment in her childhood?

And let me just try and write that. And sometimes what ends up happening is I'll kind of free write these scenes that I'm doing just to get to know the characters, but then I'll end up using the material later. I'll end up finding a way to fit it in as like a flashback to her childhood or a memory or something like that. That definitely was apparent in I'll Be You as well because there were some flashbacks like that. How would you describe I'll be you in a couple sentences? All Be You is the story here. I've got the cover right here and I didn't actually intend to match, but I did.

You did. And your background matches too, actually. It does. We got all of it going on. It's the story of two of twin sisters who were child actresses, much like the Olson twins, where they were brought to Hollywood to share a role, so they played the same role as children. And then after becoming successful, Be list child actors,

they gave up Hollywood and went their separate ways, One became kind of a typical child actor mess, alcoholic drugs, clear tanking, and has, you know, in her early 30s now, found herself kind of having hit the bottom and is trying to climb back up out of the hole she dug herself in. Whereas her sister, Sam, her sister Ellie, decided she wanted a very normal life, moved to Santa Barbara, became a wife and a homemaker and a florist. and what happens is that Ellie checks herself into a spa and doesn't return and leaves her adopted daughter with her parents and Sam the alcoholic sister is called to come help take care of

her niece the sisters have been estranged and for a while and Sam realizes very quickly that something is not quite right about where her sister has gone to this this mysterious women's help group self-help group that she's joined in the spa she's gone to are not quite what they seem on the surface. And so she has to kind of dig into what her sister got involved in, all while taking care of her two-year-old niece that she's never met before. Yeah. That is a really good summary. What prompted you to write it? Like, where did you get your inspiration for it? I've been interested in a lot of things for a while. so the self-help

the line between self-help groups and cults has been really interesting to me for a long time I've been obsessed with everything from like goop on one end of the spectrum to nexium on the other end of the spectrum these groups that bring people in with promises of you know enlightenment and improving your lives

and getting rid of toxic influences and sometimes, you know, they can go one way and really help people, and sometimes they can go the other way and become these really, like, horrible cults, you know, that people. And so that's something I've been tracking for a long time. Also, I live in Los Angeles, and my daughter's into theater, and so we've come across the world of child actors quite a bit here and have encountered twins who got recruited into Hollywood.

because of the demand for twin actors. So it's kind of all came together that way. That's really cool. So we are going to get into spoilers and talk about the book a little bit more. So what I always tell people is if they haven't read it, to pause and go read it and then come back. But if you're listening because you've already read it, then you can just keep listening. So you have already kind of mentioned that this story does center around two twins. So how did you kind of get into the mindset of a twin? So did you do any research to really like nail the dynamic between Sam and Ellie?

Yeah, I did. I read quite a bit, you know, a lot of books and research articles. Psychology today was a big, a great resource and just studies about twins and twin psychology. I also know some friends who have twins and I just spoke to them, people who are twins and themselves. Yeah, and then really just, you know, at a certain point, as much as there's the twin psychology, they also are individual human beings. And so it was, there was a part where the writing about them as twins ended and writing about them as just sisters who loved each other and had had this kind of codependency that goes deeper than normal sisters. But yet at the same time, you know, it's still family dynamics, it's still sister dynamics, is still individuals budding up against each other.

The difference really is that with the twins, with identical twins, they have this strange period in childhood where there is this true codependency and a period of time when they're really being mistaken for each other. And people see them as a set, matched pair rather than individuals. So for me, it was kind of tracking that and trying to think about how does that mess with the head of a child, you know, and it's, yeah. Yeah, especially when, like, they can kind of interchange and pretend to be each other, too.

Exactly. It gives them a power. Yeah. Yeah. So a large part of Sam's story is her dealing with her addiction. So did you do any research on addiction as well? It felt like it was a pretty realistic experience of someone who had addiction. Yeah.

I mean, I've known my fair note. of people who've struggled with addiction over the years. That one didn't require as much research just because it's been more of something that's been around me. You know, I've dated, dated people who are in, I'm married now, but my former relationships with people who had addiction issues. And I've known people, you know, I know people who are sober now have been done in AA or NA or have gone through really rough times.

And so I thought it pretty easy to get into the mindset of someone who's struggling with that. Yeah. So there's also kind of this examination of desperation in multiple of the characters, but in specifically Sam and Ellie, with Sam as a child, she's really desperate for attention and excelling at acting. And then as she becomes an adult, that kind of morphs into a desperation for drugs and alcohol and kind of filling the void that way. And Ellie as a child is really desperate for Sam's attention and really is desperate to

understand what a normal person's life would be outside of acting. And so then into her adulthood, she's really, like, really desperate to seem normal and tries to have as many normal experiences she can have, including really wanting a child in adulthood. So when you started writing the story, did you know that you were going to center it kind of around like the havoc that desperation can wreak on our lives if we don't kind of get it checked? Yeah, I mean, this book was a lot about darkness and hope where, you know, how we descend into these moments of great darkness when we, when desperation drives us to do wild, reckless, self-harming thing. whether it's returning to drugs or alcohol or joining a self-help group that is that is toxic and is bad for you or, you know, since we're in a spoiler section,

I mean, you know, going and taking a child or trying to seduce your sister's husband in order to give you a baby. I mean, all these crazy things that people do. And I'm fascinated with why people make bad choices. I feel like all my books really censored around that, like the question of how does someone get to the point where they make such a radically bad decision? And then how do they pull themselves back up after having suffered the consequences of that decision? And so, yes, in this book, you know, desperation, that was the desperation part of it. And then also, for me, I was really fascinated in those moments of desperation, you know, hopelessness.

we turn to things that we think are going to help us to give us hope, to give us something to believe in, whether it's an ideology, a religion, a person, a guru, a group, you know, and certainly writing this book during the pandemic, I felt like this was a theme that I saw all around me. And we're in the middle of this dark, dark times. People are locked at home. People are dying. like there's this feeling of hopelessness and you know what were people turning to and I saw all kinds of stuff men on one end of the spectrum you saw this huge spike in people believing in Q and on

you know turning to gurus who were telling them how to change their lives and on the other side flip side you also people turning to you know to religion to Christianity praying you know and everything in between you know spiritual movements doing a lot of yoga whatever whatever it's going to. So this book was like exploring like that that idea and how how do you know when the thing that you've turned to in this hopeless, desperate moment is going to be something that helps you or something that ultimately hurts you. Yeah. That's really prevalent in their mother as well. So she's kind of always always seeking out spiritual fixes that are pretty much outside of herself while kind of using her blind optimism to not always accept the full brunt of what's happening at present.

So did you set up their mother to be this example to them of kind of where their desperation came from? Yeah. I mean, she's certainly, she's, she's, she's, she's, she serves as a couple purposes. One is kind of a foil of, you know, this is, this is where your life goes if you keep seeking outside answers instead of looking for internal answers. She served as kind of like another example of, obviously, of the ways that the things that people turn to, in her case, it's like everything from, you know, transcendental meditation

to crystal, you know, believing in crystals. And then on, you know, and then also to look at the pathology that those sisters kind of picked up. You learn behavior from, from your parents, from your mother. and your fathers. And so, you know, you can see this seeking behavior where they learned it, you know, this kind of external, looking for external answers rather than internal answers. It came from their mom. That's where they learned the behavior. Yeah. You mentioned that you kind of wanted to examine that like fine line between self-help

and cults. And at one point when Sam is considering how cult-like, certain groups of all kinds are cult-like. She thinks you could use the word to describe anyone from red hat wearing maga types to rabid Kanye West fans to the people you'd find in a high yoga class. The world fetishizes intense devotion and charismatic celebrity. It's almost impossible to live in the 21st century and entirely avoid doing anything cult like I told myself. Culty, it could mean anything or it could mean nothing at all.

And so it really felt like there, especially you were pointing out how hard it is to find the line of when like fandom or self-help crosses over into cult them. So where do you kind of fall on where you think that line is now? Yeah, you know, there's a great podcast called Sounds Like a Cult. I don't know if you ever listened to it. Amanda Montel who actually just had a book that came out a couple months ago called Cultish, which I read. And I was like, oh my God, I wish I'd read this book. before I wrote mine because it was so related. Yeah.

And she really goes into like the podcast kind of explores this, this strange kind of obsessive behavior that we, that we, that we as a culture tend to gravitate towards when it comes to the things that we love, whether it's, you know, Trader Joe's or Soul Cycle or, you know, long-distance marathon running and the, you know, the CrossFit. Like, you know, and I do feel like having written this book and spent a lot of time thinking

about it, I feel like it's really easier, easy to veer into into cult-ish experiences. The line between cultish and cult is also nebulous, you know, what is culty and what is a cult? You know, and I think the lines are more. easy to draw when you're looking at something like Jen femme in my book, which is clearly like ruining someone's life and, and, you know, sucking, sucking their money and their emotions dry. Something, something like Soul Cycle where you're like, you see how people become so obsessed with it and you're spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on going to these classes,

it's culty for sure. Is it bad for them? Probably not. I mean, they're spending way too much money than they should on spin classes. But, you know, at least they're coming out the other side with some, you know, fit body and some emotional clarity. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it really, I think, depends.

It truly depends on the group that you fall into. But I think that we all need to be wary, I think, is the one I would use of groups that start feeling like they're occupying. a lot of our brain space. Yeah, I feel like some of it, the line has to be somewhere near, like if you feel like you're being manipulated, which you're probably not going to catch it yourself if you've gotten to that point. But it's kind of like once manipulation is happening, or like especially in the case of this book,

like when they're trying to get something on you so they can kind of force compliance, like then you've really gotten into something that is probably harming a lot of areas of your life. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So there's also kind of an examination throughout the book of identity and loss of identity. So there's the literal representation where they switch identities kind of like when they're kids. So that's something that kind of like sets the stage for them that they could interchange their identities.

And then later when her acting career is ending, Sam is thinking about it. And she's like, now that I wasn't Jenny Max anymore, or even Sam Logan, the actress, did that mean I was going to have to figure out how to be someone else? So did you want to use twins for the plot specifically as a way to kind of examine loss of identity, or was that just something you kind of noticed once you started writing it? I think that's something that kind of evolved from the writing itself. I will say that identity as a theme has been really prevalent in all of my books. A lot of the, I'm really always interested in that moment of self-interrogation when you realize that

who you think you are and who you think and who you've been striving to be is maybe not who the, not the person you've actually become. Right. When, when, you know, image, the projected image diverges so greatly from from the truth of who we really are. And that's, um, this, or who you thought you were going to be when you grew. up versus who you realize you've become. So that's something I've always written about. And I knew it was going to be a theme in this book just because it's hard for me to avoid it. And especially when you're writing about actresses because so much of acting. I mean, just like in my last book, pretty things,

it was a lot about Instagram and being an influencer and image. Acting is also about image. It's about slipping into somebody else's identity. And, you know, God knows I've known enough actresses and who are an actress who are actressy and that means that they hardly ever take off the persona and they're always kind of performing um but certainly when I started writing about twins I realized that it was giving this whole extra layer to the book that um I hadn't anticipated but was really fun to explore the whole yeah the level of like shared idea of a shared identity um and what what that does to you when your identity isn't just you but it's you and someone else and you guys have a secret kind of shared identity.

They're playing the same role. Like when you're nine, 10 years old, pretend you and your sister are both pretending to be the same person and slipping into the same skin. Like what does that do to your mind? What does that do to your sense of your sense of individuality? Yeah. And it was like observed differently in each of them is what I kind of thought was cool, where like you weren't even just implying that it can only go bad in the sense of like alcohol, drug addiction,

the things we think of with child stars. But with Ellie, it was even just kind of like an obsession with seeming normal. So she didn't necessarily have the visible markers or the more obvious markers that had messed with her until she took someone's kid, which was pretty big deal too. Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. So where can people follow you so they can keep up with just everything else that you're putting out as well? Just kind of plug whatever.

I tend to be, I mean, I'm on most social media platforms. I'm on Facebook and Twitter, but I'm very sporadic there. I don't have that much of a presence. The real place to find me is really Instagram. I love Instagram. My handle is Janelle Brownie, Janelle Brown with an IE on the end. as it's like a delicious treat. And that's where I love to engage with readers.

I find the Bookstagram community to be really wonderful. And it's a great place to meet other readers and authors and to engage with, for me, as an author, to engage with readers and hear what they like. Yeah. Yeah. I've loved it so much. Like I've just been doing this since December,

but it's been cool meeting readers and authors. Like both sides of it has been really cool. So I will put those links in the show notes so people can find that. And then otherwise, thank you for being on the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you for invitation. And I'm so glad you read the book.