How John Green’s OCD Battle Inspired the Turtles to the End

John Green talks about how his own lifelong battle with OCD inspired his 2017 novel. Turtles at the bottom – and how he hopes Max’s new book-to-film adaptation will help others on their own mental health journeys.

“When I wrote the book, I was recovering from a really bad period in my mental health and was aware that I was recovering thanks to friendships and relationships in my life that made recovery possible,” Green, 46, said exclusively Us weekly while we talk about the upcoming film. “I also recovered because I changed medications and used new therapy techniques. All of this worked together to help me live a fulfilling life again. But I also knew and still know that things are fragile and when you live with chronic mental illness; Sometimes there are periods of well-being, and sometimes there are periods when things are not so good.”

Green said that when he created the young adult book, he wanted to write about the extreme highs and lows that come with battling mental illness, while also portraying them as “honestly” as possible.

“I wanted to write about it in a way that I had never written much about before,” he explained. “Not as something to stigmatize or romanticize, not as an illness that comes with certain superpowers, but as a really difficult form of psychological pain that should not define you.”

For Green, it was important to tell a “true” yet “hopeful” story about mental illness because “hope” remains the “right answer” to the struggle.

“Hope is the thing with feathers that sits in the soul and sings the melody without words and never stops,” he said, reciting Emily Dickinson poem “Hope is the thing with feathers,” before adding, “And I think that’s true. It’s just that sometimes you can’t hear it, but there’s still that bird singing and you just have to fight and work to be able to hear it again.”

Seven years later Turtles at the bottom hit shelves in 2017, a film adaptation of New York Times Bestseller with Isabela Merced, Felix Mallard And Cree Cicchino is scheduled to launch at Max on Thursday, May 2nd. The film will replicate the original story, which follows 16-year-old Aza (Merced), a high school student with OCD and anxiety. After reconnecting with her childhood crush Davis (Mallard), she finds herself faced with the possibility of finding love and happiness despite her mental state.

Elisabeth Berger And Isaac Aptaker (this is us) wrote the script and Hannah Marks (do not let me go) serves as the film’s director. Green serves as an executive producer on the project, as well as its adaptations Paper towns And Looking for Alaska Novels. With a decade of film adaptations under her belt – The fault of our stars was his first book, which hit the screen in 2014 – Green knows he has to hand the reins for much of the creative process to his collaborators. However, as Aza’s mental illness is portrayed in Turtles at the bottom The author insisted that he had a say in the film’s visual design.

“So that was one of the few things I had a say in contractually,” he said Us. “That was what I was most nervous about. That’s why I wanted to reserve some ability to at least have veto power on this matter.”

At the end of the day, Green had nothing to worry about. He praised Marks for her ability to accurately capture OCD in a “powerful” and thought-provoking way, he said Us She “really understood from the beginning how to create these visual expressive and audio sensations that can really mimic the experience of being in an intrusive thought spiral.”

While the film will inevitably undergo several changes from page to page, there is one aspect of the story that Green hopes will resonate with new and old fans alike: the friendship between Aza and her best friend Daisy (Cincchino). .

“Hannah really brought to life an observation that Daisy makes at the end of the book, which is that she thought she was in a romance novel, but it turns out she was in a damn buddy comedy the whole time,” quipped Green. “There are two love stories here, and one is the love story between Aza and Davis, and one is the love story between Aza and Daisy, and you kind of expect the love story between Aza and Davis, but the love story between Aza and Daisy is hopefully a little surprise .”

He continued. “You don’t necessarily see it that way, and I really wanted that to be the relationship that sustained AzA. And Daisy carries that through too.”

Turtles at the bottom Premiere on Max Thursday, May 2nd.