🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
Tia Williams was at the lowest point in her life when she wrote her 2016 novel The Perfect Find. She’d been working as a successful beauty editor for such glossy magazines as Essence, Glamour and Elle when, suddenly, the industry took a hard left turn. “Everything went digital, and me and a lot of my class of print editors found ourselves put out to pasture,” she tells Tudum. On top of that, Williams’ personal life was in shambles. “I’d just gotten a divorce. I’m suddenly a single mom of a toddler. I had to sell my apartment. Generally, I was just feeling like a loser,” she says. In other words, it was time for a pivot. And what better way to manifest a new life than to put pen to paper? “I invented Jenna Jones as a doppelgänger who got her s**t together, and I was hoping that through her I would get mine together.”
Needless to say, it worked. And then some. After all, Williams’ heroine is now being played by Gabrielle Union in Numa Perrier’s film adaptation of the same name now streaming on Netflix. Much like Williams, Jenna Jones experiences a fall from grace when her long-term relationship ends abruptly, sending her into an emotional downward spiral that causes her to lose her fashion editor job at New York City’s most prestigious magazine. A year later, she’s back in the city to start over at her former rival Darcy’s (played by Gina Torres) digital start-up. And as if that wasn’t enough of challenge, there’s also the small matter of Eric (Keith Powers), the much younger man she’s starting to fall for — and who just happens to be the boss’s son.
Below, Williams unpacks how the movie expands the world she invented on the page and what it was like to watch her characters come to life on-screen for the first time.
You based Jenna’s career reinvention in The Perfect Find on your own experiences. Where did her romance with Eric come from?
The romance aspect was also inspired by something that had happened in my life. I dated a guy who was much younger. Not so much of an age gap as it is in the book — my age gap was 12, 13 years — but there was a lot there to be mined for fiction. You’re in love, but you’re at a totally different place in your life, and what do you do with that? Why were you given this if you can’t be together? I wanted to work it out in fiction.
What was the book’s journey to the screen like?
It’s crazy because The Perfect Find was rejected by every major publisher in New York. And the feedback was so bad. It was like, “Oh, we love this story, but we can’t imagine a Black woman being a fashion editor. Can we change the industry?” Which was particularly insulting because that’s me. Or, “Can you write more about Jenna’s struggles as a Black woman in an overwhelmingly white industry?” And I’m like, “No, because it’s not about that.” I refused to change any part of it.
It’s worth noting too that this is pre-2016. This is pre-Trump, pre-#MeToo, [before] publishers were forced to reckon with how monochromatic and how white and straight and male their content was. There was just no room for this book at all. So I went with an extremely indie publisher that was almost, like, self-publishing it. And [then] someone sent me a Snapchat of Gabrielle Union on vacation reading it, which was just insane. It wasn’t in bookstores. You could only order it on Amazon. From there, she reached out to me and was like, “I love this. This is a movie.” And the rest is history.
So, what’s it like to be played by Gabrielle Union?
Oh my God, it’s so surreal. This is my first time doing any Hollywood stuff, and it’s very intimidating. I was like, “Take my manuscript, take my baby and treat her well.” [Watching] the screener was the first time I’d seen any of it.
What was it like to watch this movie based on your words?
I’m sitting on my couch with my jaw on the ground. These are my characters, my characters’ names, their situations. It was such a dream. [Director Numa Perrier] was very sweet. She invited me on set to do a cameo. I was on set for a day. Seeing myself in this movie adapted from a book that I wrote… it’s wild.
What scene are you in?
I actually have two. I’m in a fashion montage scene [with] Jenna and Eric, and then I’m also at the very end, the last scene, in a sequin dress and a big wig. It’s fabulous.
How do you think Numa Perrier expanded the world that you put on the page?
That day I was on set, they let me just wander around and take a look at things. It was just wild to see something that was 2D become 3D. Obviously, you have to picture these situations almost cinematically as you’re writing it, but still, there’s no actual outfit I’m looking at. There’s no actual scenery as I’m writing it. To be in Jenna Jones’ office… it was stepping into a world that was previously only in my mind. I think she did an incredible job.
The story is different, which it usually is taking the journey from the page to the screen. It’s a different medium. But the themes are all still there, and the love story is there. I think fans of the book will be excited to see the story told in this way. Keith Powers is so swoony. He’s just so swoony!
What do you want fans of the book to know going into this movie?
People should expect to see the same love that they read on the pages but rendered in a bigger, more cinematic way. The movie, which is heavily inspired by the book, lives on its own as a beautiful love story. I feel like both exist together in a beautiful partnership. Get ready for steam. Get ready for chemistry. Get ready for beautiful fashions and amazing performances by the leads.
