Any big readers watching Deco have probably heard of the 2018 best-selling book “Where the Crawdads Sing.” It spent more than 150 weeks on The New York Times’ list.
Now a new movie is bringing the romance/murder mystery to the big screen. Deco’s Alex Miranda talked with the cast, presumably while eating crawfish.
If you’re a big fan of the book, you’re in good company. Taylor Swift and Reese Witherspoon were so obsessed, they had to be a part of the movie themselves. Because they’re celebrities, and they can just do stuff like that.
Where the crawdads sing…
Sterling Macer Jr. (as Jumpin’): “Hello, Miss Kya.”
Jojo Regina (as Little Kya): “I hear y’all buy mussels.”
…is probably not where this cast eat.
Daisy Edgar-Jones: “I’m very hungry and very impatient, and I would say the peeling process of the crawfish, for the tiny morsel of food you actually get, is a bit stressful for me.”
Michael Hyatt: “I’m not a fan of crawfish, but I love the spicy corn and the potatoes and all the stuff that they accessorize the crawfish with.”
“Where the Crawdads Sing,” the novel, has already sold more than 12 million copies, but in a new movie, Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kya, an abandoned girl from the North Carolina swamps, who’s drawn to two young men from town.
But when one turns up dead, she becomes the main suspect.
Alex Miranda: “When this thing finished, I’m telling you, I was like, ‘I’m not crying; you’re crying.’ I was a total wreck.”
Daisy Edgar-Jones: “You first meet her while she’s on trial, and you don’t really know who she is, and as the film develops, you come to really love her and get to know her, and you really root for her.”
The dead guy is Chase. We don’t like him.
But then there’s Tate, played by Taylor John Smith.
Alex Miranda: “Tate is wrestling with something that I think a lot of us have wrestled with, which is this: the person you love and what you always thought you wanted for yourself.”
Taylor John Smith: “This idea of being this biologist and working out in the marsh, but also having a life outside of Kya’s shack with her, and he’s worried Kya would never be able to live in another world.”
The community shuns “Marsh Girl” — that’s really what they call her — but not Jumpin’ or Mabel.
Michael Hyatt: “We take care of each other. It takes a tribe to raise a child, and the child doesn’t have to be your own.”
Sterling Macer Jr.: “The color becomes a secondary consideration of like, ‘OK, but do we want to reach out? Do we really want to do this? Because it could get treacherous.'”
Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift loved the book so much, Reese produces, and Taylor even wrote a song for it, called “Carolina.”
Taylor John Smith: “It plays at the end of the film. and you’re just kind of blown away, stuck in your seat.”
An ending, by the way, that’ll make you go…
Woman in viral video: “And I … oop!”
Alex Miranda: “Favorite Taylor Swift song?”
Taylor John Smith: “Right now, 10-minute version of ‘All Too Well,’ but you have to watch the music video form of it, OK? It’s cinematic.”
“Where the Crawdads Sing” crawls into theaters this Friday.
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