Profound, big-hearted, and raw, the adaptation of bestselling book Tiny Beautiful Things is powerful television. Its writer talks grief, sorrow and being friends for life with Reese Witherspoon
In 2011, a little-known fortysomething author called Cheryl Strayed was about to become huge. She had just sent a copy of her soon-to-be-published memoir, Wild, to Oscar-winning Hollywood star Reese Witherspoon. It tells Strayed’s story about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, while processing the turbulent events of her younger life that had taken her there – childhood abuse, her mother’s death from cancer, her heroin addiction and the breakdown of her marriage. Witherspoon read it within 48-hours and set up a call; she desperately wanted to bring the story to the big screen with her newly founded production company.
“It was exciting talking to Reese Witherspoon but I didn’t think: ‘Oh my God, whatever she wants – the answer is yes,’” says Strayed, now 54, from her LA office. “But we had this wonderful, deep conversation for about an hour on the phone. I could tell by the way that she spoke to me with such vulnerability and candour, that she was somebody I could trust. I wasn’t wrong about that.”
