Interview by Rafy Mediavilla – “Troppo” (Amazon Freevee) S1 – Candice Fox talks about adapting her novel in a TV series. Out Now On Amazon Freevee. #Troppo #Freevee
Troppo is the story of Ted Conkaffey, played by Thomas Jane (The Expanse, The Vanished), an ex-cop falsely accused of committing a disturbing crime, who has escaped to hide away in the tropics of Far North Queensland. As he tries to avoid discovery, he’s drawn into investigating a wild murder and a missing person, alongside a complicated woman named Amanda Pharrell (played by Nicole Chamoun), with dark secrets of her own. Adapted for television by creator Yolanda Ramke, Troppo is based on the book Crimson Lake, the first novel of a gripping contemporary crime series set in Queensland, Australia, and written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Candice Fox.
Criticólogos:
I asked Thomas about producing, obviously adapting the novel to the series, which is really important. How much did you work with him? How important was it for you for him to maintain the essence as faithful as possible?
Candice Fox:
Thomas is a very, very serious actor. And we spent a lot of time on Zoom working out where this character came from in my brain, because I think that he wanted to know, you know, the essence of that character. How did I build that character? You know, block upon, block upon block. So he yeah, he was very serious about it. And that all the way along, people coming onto this project and me talking to them and knowing that they understood the themes and they understood the essence of this story.
It was really comforting to me because I thought that the nightmare is that this story gets away from you, it gets away from the book, and it becomes something that’s not even related to your book in any way. But I knew speaking to him that he got this character.
Criticólogos:
Are these characters based on some life experience? Because everything seemed to me so personal thatI know a lot of people are going to connect with them.
Candice Fox:
Amanda Definitely. I had a very strange childhood. My mother fostered 155 kids as I was growing up and yeah, and there were six of us anyway. So sometimes there were six more at a time. And I think that I spent a lot of my childhood with her saying to me, I just need you to be cheerful and you don’t have any problems and you’re fine. And so Amanda is kind of like that.
She’s relentlessly cheerful and she has this mask on all the time, a very intense kind of bubbling mask. And underneath there is really dark stuff is being pushed down and down and down. I wanted to go with kind of a Lisbeth Salander vibe, but it’s that cheerful which pushes people away rather than the grumpiness that you see with Lisbeth Salander.
And Ted is an embodiment of, you know, just how badly things can go for you if you’re accused of something. I’m very interested in how people’s lives are destroyed by accusations and hearsay and rumor and that kind of thing. That’s the criminal part of it added to his personal.
Criticólogos:
I asked the actors because I’m creeped out from snakes and alligators and even small lizards. But I asked them if they were survive a day in that environment and something that’s a nightmare of an environment. Would you survive that environment with you that you wrote because you wrote that environment? Would you survive the environment?
Candice Fox:
For me, I love animals and I. I rescue animals a lot. And I am happy to grab a possum with my bare hands, you know, and this kind of thing. So big animals I’m fine with and birds in particular. I’ll just grab a bed with my bare hands. But it’s theinsects for me. I sent Thomas this picture of a bird eating spider from up there in Queensland, and it’s this giant spider that’s got a bird tied up in its web and it’s going to eat. And I was like, just watch out for these guys because they’re out there, you know? And yeah. So I don’t think that I could deal very well with the insects in that area of the world. No, I had lived up there briefly and that yeah, there’s, there’s stuff out there that it’s almost magical. Everything just gets blown up larger, you know.
Criticólogos:
You being the writer of the novel, what can people expect from this first season?
Candice Fox:
It’s a TV show and a book that you are encouraged to participate in. I want you to take sides. I want you to decide who is a bad character and who is a good character in this, because that is the most fun. You know, you watch something like Succession and you’re like, I’m with her. I’m with him. She’s lying. He’s lying. You know, I want you to do that with both the novel and the TV show. I want you to turn to your partner and say, Why are you watching it? I would do that. Or I’m with him or and have the arguments, because I think that that’s just the most fun
See the interview below:
