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Michael Collina: Hi, listeners. This is Audible Editor Michael Collina. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with TV writer, producer, and content creator Ash Perez about his audio rom-com, Speak Now. Welcome, Ash.
Ash Perez: Hi, thank you so much for having me, Michael.
Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to dive in about your debut book. Speak Now is a queer second-chance rom-com that follows an acclaimed chef who is accidentally reunited with her high school best friend and crush after being hired to cater her wedding. This is a really fun setup, and it's such a perfect rom-com setup, in particular. So, I wanted to ask, what do rom-coms mean to you?
Oh, my gosh, that's such a great question to start off with because rom-coms kind of mean everything to me. They've been the guiding force throughout so much of my life in that they kind of got me through a lot of hard times. I felt like there was always a warm place to relax into in a rom-com. I recently also was diagnosed with autism, and I realized that my special interest was rom-coms. I know everything about every rom-com. I know all the dialogue. I hear music and I'll be like, "Oh, that's the scene in Runaway Bride when this is happening with Richard Gere." So, rom-coms really are just my happy place, and the fact that I've gotten to write one and add to that canon of rom-coms really feels like a dream come true.
I love that. I'm sure that really came in handy when you were writing this rom-com, because you have all of those references, you have all of those tropes ready to go, which actually leads me to another question I had. What are some of your personal favorite tropes?
Oh, gosh. I love them all for different reasons. I do love a good enemies-to-lovers. I will die on the hill that the original rom-com was obviously Pride and Prejudice, and the original enemies-to-lovers is Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. I love when they're trapped somewhere and there's only one bed that they have to split. I love fake-dating rom-coms, like To All the Boys I Loved Before is a great one. Basically, I mean, and this is encapsulated in all the tropes, but I just love yearning.
I'm so with you there. I feel like yearning is such a big part of every—not even just rom-com—but every romance. The tropes mean nothing if there's no yearning.
I think it's one of the most fundamental human emotions that we have, because you can yearn for romantic things, you can yearn for a different life. But I think what's so funny about rom-coms is that people tend, or for a long time, have thought of them pejoratively, or have thought of them as not as serious a form of literature, or maybe easy to write. But at the core of every story, whether you're watching Die Hard or James Bond, it's still romance, because that's the thing that motivates us as humans. So, what I actually like about rom-coms is that it kind of cuts all the other stuff out of the way and leaves the purity of the thing that is motivating people anyway.
I love that so much, and it's so true. And we're actually in a kind of unique position with this conversation, because it's not often that I get to speak with an author about their audiobook after it's come out, and so listeners have already had so many great things to say about Speak Now. There are a couple that have really stuck out to me that have been about how Alex and Genevieve's romance reminded them of their own experiences, or their own ones-who-got-away stories from high school or just earlier in their life. So, I wanted to ask, what do you hope that listeners take away from Speak Now?
I mean, that is exactly what I hope that listeners take away from Speak Now, that they remember that old, past version of themselves, and the one that got away. I used to watch rom-coms because I longed for the relationships that they had and this kind of a cookie-cutter version of what a relationship is or could be. A lot of rom-coms take you all the way up until the moment where they kiss or get together and then you don't get to see the rest of the relationship. But as I've gotten older, what I really like about rom-coms, and I think why I was drawn to this second-chance genre, is so much of aging is looking back at different parts of your life through a different lens. So, it was really fun for me to explore that, and I'm so happy that it's bringing that out for readers, too.
"But at the core of every story, whether you're watching Die Hard or James Bond, it's still romance, because that's the thing that motivates us as humans."
I think for readers, there's a few things. I want them to think of their own “one that got away.” I want them to just squeal with delight because that's why I love romance. There were a few moments when we were actually in the recording sessions—because I also co-directed this—where I would have to turn off my Zoom because I was so excited of what was happening, and I'd come back and be blushing after they had done something. That's when I watched something that I had written transform into something else. That's what I want listeners to have, that feeling. To be taken away like they're listening to a movie.
It really does feel like you're listening to a movie. So, you are no stranger to writing. You're best known for your work with Buzzfeed and The Try Guys, and you have a variety of other writing experiences under your belt at this point. But Speak Now is an audio original rom-com, and it incorporates a full cast of narrators, this really immersive sound design, and it's a fantastic audio experience. So, what did your writing process look like while you were writing Speak Now?
It was so interesting because Speak Now was originally conceptualized as a film, because that's my background, in TV and film. And then during the writers’ strike, Simon & Schuster reached out to me and asked if I had any ideas that might work for this format, which I was so excited because I personally love a challenge of a format. That might come from my days of Buzzfeed where a Facebook video would come out, but it had no sound. So, we were always thinking about how to shape content for the medium versus just making something that doesn't really fit a certain place and then cutting it down into a million pieces. So, when I was working on this, I had to first take an idea that was meant for a visual medium and then make it auditory.
I kind of had to change my perspective as the viewer to be the listener, and I had to think through not only the plot but each scene and each setting of, “Well, what can we enrich with this format?” And so that's why we landed on Alex being a chef. I really felt like the sounds of the kitchen were something that we could capture and replicate and would add to the sense of drama in the story.
But the other thing that was so interesting was, there's a lot of conventions of a traditional rom-com, say, like voice-over, that are so important to a rom-com. Or longing looks that get completely stripped away when you're in an audio medium. So, figuring out how to translate those moments so they didn't get lost was really important, because I think what's different about this being an audio original is we didn't want it to just be like an audiobook where you are reading or hearing the narrator's thoughts without understanding why those are happening. So, that's how I actually landed on Alex using voice memos to be her VO essentially. And then there's auditory montages and all sorts of things in there. It was just a really fun challenge.
Yeah, I love the use of those voice memos and the audio montages that you just mentioned. The other thing I was really impressed by while listening was not just the background noise but even some of the background lines and transition scenes as people were coming and going, and we are getting a sense of that scene change. I know a lot of the supporting cast, they do have these really great, really funny lines as they're coming or going. I loved that piece of the script. So, how detailed was the script when you were writing? Was this all scripted or was there a sense of improvisation from the narrators?
It was pretty scripted. We, of course, got a new term that I learned for this, “walla,” which is like the background sounds. We basically had all these amazing actors do background chatter for the restaurant, all the sounds that you don't think of, like what conversations are people having in the restaurant, what's happening when people are walking down the street or through a bar.
But all of those lines that you're talking about were scripted, the transitional lines. I loved the process of writing this, and so I scripted every single sound effect, and even in the edits, I was involved with the sound of the voice memo, which wasn't quite the sound that I envisioned. I was like, "Can you guys send me a few different sounds?" Because it was that important to me that nothing take you out of the story. Since all you have is the audio, I do think that it is easier to get taken out of the story in a way that maybe you don't want, if something doesn't sound real or something sounds off in the audio mix or far away. I also listened to it. I listened to it in my headphones, I listened to it in my car, I listened to it on a computer, just so I could get all the different versions of how someone might be listening to this and make sure that it sounded good for them as well.
I love to hear that, because that always could be an issue when you're dealing with an audio-only story. There are so many different ways to listen, and we know listeners do—they listen while they're walking, while they're driving. There's just so many different ways to listen. I absolutely love to hear that you did take that into account, and you really experimented and checked each and every way. That's amazing.
Yeah, I wanted it to be just a treat for the audience. I think especially because we're denied one of the most important parts of romance, which is seeing the visuals, I think I tried to put even more care into all the little things that could make it feel real. Arienne [Mandi] and Jena [Malone] just did an incredible job of bringing these characters to life in a way that I could not even imagine. It took it to a whole other level just even for me.
How involved were you in the casting? They’re such a great cast of performers.
I'm very thankful to Simon & Schuster and my editor, Lara, and my co-director, Allison, because they really let me be as involved as I wanted to. I wrote character descriptions of who I thought these people were, and then Allison sent over a list of people. It's a different process when you're just casting for the voice. So, she sent over a list of actresses who were actually queer, for Genevieve, who had some experience singing.
"Since the second that I got to Hollywood, I've been telling people I just want to be the queer Nora Ephron."
Then you also have to think about the tonality of the actresses, especially in a same-sex story where it's two women. If you have two women who have high-pitched voices, it's confusing to the listener. So, we are also pairing their voices. Arienne has a little bit of a lower, more gravelly sound, and Jena's in that higher pitch. But that was really important, too, to make sure that you're never confused as to who's speaking, because it is pure dialogue. You don't have the narrator saying, "Genevieve said," or “Alex responded.”
Yeah, I think you did nail that. It was beautifully cast. I thought everyone did an amazing job. It was just so easy to get lost in their performances.
Yes, we have not only incredible TV and film actresses, but we had our pick of audiobook royalty, which, now I'm a big audio reader and it's so funny because you do start to recognize your favorite authors and narrators, and if you know that they're narrating, you're like, "Okay, this is going to be a great one." So, we also had awesome people who were doing that for us.
In addition to writing and co-directing, you also lent your own voice to certain aspects of Speak Now. What was that process like for you?
It was really fun. With audio narration, one thing I learned is that these narrators are so talented that they often do multiple parts. So, even though it was a full-cast recording, for the minor parts or the one-liners of people in the kitchen, we would have different narrators do different characters. And there was this one character, Art, who we had gotten a few versions of him and it just didn't feel quite right. I was in the studio with Jena and I was talking to Allison, our producer, and I was like, "I want to get in there and try it and see if I can do it." He has just a few lines. The fun thing is that none of my friends had known that was me. So, I did my job voice acting because it didn't immediately read as me, but it was essentially my nod to a director's cameo, how like Stan Lee would appear in a shot or in a frame. That was my director's cameo.
I love that so much. You also, as I previously mentioned, co-directed Speak Now. And you've had experience directing previously, but this was your first audio-first, audio-only direction. What was that like for you? Did it differ from your other producing and directing experience up to this point?
That's a great question. It surprised me how similar this process was to directing TV and film. It was pretty one-to-one, except for the fact that I'm not watching a monitor to make sure that we have gotten the shot, per se. Most of the time, I'm closing my eyes and listening to “Have we captured what we needed to hear? Is the emotion there?” The actors and actresses were honestly so amazing that most of them took one, two takes, and that's it.
The thing that is different about an audio-only format versus traditional TV or film producing and editing is that you kind of get what you have on the day when you're shooting something, and then of course you can change things in post and in edit, but this was much more piecemeal. I think it'll surprise a lot of listeners to know that almost all of these performances were performed in isolation. So, even Arienne and Jena, who play Alex and Genevieve, weren't in studio together. Jena recorded first. I was reading Alex's part with Jena, and then Arienne got a little bit more lucky and she got to listen to Jena Malone's version of Genevieve and respond to that, which was great. I physically watched her on screen tense up and act different because she's hearing her. So, it still kind of had that same effect.
But I think the biggest difference is that you don't really know what you have until the very end, because we had to add all of those audio elements. So, it all starts coming together as you layer it and different pieces come together, but it's really not a final, finished product until you have audio mixing, sound effects, all of that kind of stuff.
Were you really involved in the audio mix, sound effect aspect of it, too?
Yes.
I love that.
I sent like a 10-page document of what ideas I had for the cover and fonts and color schemes, and involved in the marketing, and all of it. Not because I don't trust the amazing team at Simon & Schuster, but because I am so passionate about rom-coms. I think that all of it is what makes a great and memorable story, because a romance generally ends happily, but I think it really is about that journey of how you get there. And it's been fun to have readers tell me which scenes stood out to them or what jokes they liked. The best compliment has just been people saying that they actually laughed out loud while listening, because as a comedy writer, that's like the best thing to hear.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. There were moments I was tearing up. There were also moments I was laughing out loud. And that's because you do such a fantastic job writing scenes that are infused with so much emotion and so much feeling. You nailed the chemistry, you nailed the tension in other scenes, and of course you nailed the humor in so many other aspects. So, what was some of your inspiration in bringing all of those elements together and writing Speak Now?
First of all, thank you. I love this interview. It's so nice to hear all that stuff. It's also crazy. I've been working on this for the past three years, essentially, and so for it to finally be out and to be hearing what the actual listener is responding to is honestly the biggest gift of this whole process.
My forever inspiration is anything Nora Ephron. Since the second that I got to Hollywood, per se, I've been telling people I just want to be the queer Nora Ephron. There's something about the way that Nora Ephron writes and has her characters deliver these soliloquies that is always more than just the romance. You always get a little bit of a perspective of what Nora Ephron is thinking, which I love. How she feels about the fall in New York, or how she feels about the train, or how she feels about Starbucks. There was definitely a few moments in Speak Now where I felt like I was living my Nora Ephron dreams, particularly in Alex's VO. One of my good friends actually said, "Oh, it reminded me of Nora Ephron." I was like, "That's exactly what I was going for."
"I think that is the biggest secret of writers, and particularly comedy writers, is that you just have to steal from your own life."
One thing that I really like about rom-coms as a writer is also the trope of a wedding because a wedding provides this great scaffolding for a story structure and it provides this sense of forward motion to the story where we know as we get closer and closer to the wedding, things are going to get more tenuous. Wedding Planner is one of the movies that I've watched the most in my life. Whenever I'm sick, I watch The Wedding Planner, and also My Best Friend's Wedding, which I love, but—this is my most controversial opinion—I personally don't think it's a rom-com because it doesn't end happily in the way that I would want it to.
So, a lot of that was inspirational in wanting to create something that felt like that. But at the same time, as a queer person, I just haven't gotten to experience the pureness of a rom-com and a queer love story, and that's really what I was trying to write for myself and for the listener, because so much of queer love stories are centered around the trauma of being queer. And the trauma is just being in love, not the fact that it's with a same-sex partner.
Absolutely. And thank you for doing that because I'm in the same boat. I'm like, yes, we need queer rom-coms. We need to move just beyond the trauma of identities. There's so, so much to being queer. There's so much to queer identities. Let's explore those other facets and queer experiences.
Yeah, there's so many. You could be a queer hockey player. I think I'm really excited to be part, especially, of the group of authors who are writing queer love stories. I think I'm excited by what's happening with things like Heated Rivalry or the upcoming Cleat Cute, because I think a lot of these stories maybe wouldn't have gotten told through traditional television. But the fact that there is an audience for this who is reading and listening, I can't overstate how important and how much it means to the authors that the listeners are out there listening and telling their friends about it, because really it's signaling to Hollywood and the larger ecosystem, too, that these are the stories that we want to hear.
Absolutely. I mean, you're a comedy writer. I know a lot of comedy writers take a lot of elements of their own experiences and their own lives when they're crafting bits. Were there any moments from Speak Now, comedic or otherwise, that you really just took a moment or an experience from your own life and you're like, “This needs to make it into the final product”?
I think that is the biggest secret of writers, and particularly comedy writers, is that you just have to steal from your own life. A lot of it are those moments that are so small and I would never think to write them. Like, there's a moment where Genevieve is talking to Alex and apologizes and asks her about her sexuality and whispers “sexuality.” That actually happened to me with a friend, and it was just so funny, and she was such a well-meaning friend, but to me that perfectly encapsulated everything that you need to know about that character, that she's not comfortable even saying sexuality out loud. That tells so much more history and background, and it is also really humorous. So, that was a moment in there that was drawn from my real life.
In general, if this book had a dedication, it would be to all the girls I've loved before, because Genevieve is an amalgamation of six different women throughout my life and different things they represented. Even the quirks. One of Genevieve's quirks is that she only eats beige foods. That was a girl I liked in high school, like really only ate beige foods. I found it endearing. It was fun to put those moments in there. I mean, there's also no question that Alex is very much based on me. Now, as a trans man, it's interesting to be writing a story that is two women, one bisexual, one lesbian. I think in many ways, I wrote Speak Now as a love letter to my younger lesbian self.
One of the things that was so special to me about this project is, in previous projects, I have acted, directed, written for myself, and I am the actor that gets to portray these stories. But since I had transitioned and my voice had changed, I physically couldn't be Alex, even though so much of me was Alex. So, it was even more special to me to get to do this as an audio original where Arienne was literally lending her voice to a version of myself, and not just as a character but giving me my voice back. And it really tied into what the whole idea behind Speak Now is, that we all have something that we're not saying or that we can't say.
"I can't overstate how important and how much it means to the authors that the listeners are out there listening and telling their friends about it, because really it's signaling to Hollywood and the larger ecosystem, too, that these are the stories that we want to hear."
So, there was so much about this process being audio-only that allowed such a special connection for me that I wouldn't have been able to experience any other way. I'm just now feeling, because I've finally written this story, that I'm ready to explore what rom-com would look like with a trans character, and bring more of my identity into these stories. But as writers, we often need to process through one version of yourself before we can continue writing.
I love that so much for you. Thank you for telling this story. I cannot wait to hear your next one.
We'll see what audio comes next. I've already been dreaming up what other scenarios work well with audio and feel native to it. There's probably something just in the radio of it all, to go back to Nora Ephron in Sleepless in Seattle, like what does it mean to fall in love with someone you can't see, both as the listener and as the actual character?
Since we are chatting about listening so much and you mentioned audio is such an important part of this entire experience, what podcasts and audiobooks are you currently listening to and loving?
What I am listening to right now, which is very much outside of the genre of rom-com, but I feel like as a writer that's actually where I get so much of my inspiration, is listening outside of my own genre, is the Murderbot Diary series by Martha Wells, which are actually narrated by Kevin R. Free, who plays Luke in our book. It's so fun to hear him and to know Kevin and then have him be telling this other story to me with the Murderbot Diaries that I've just been really enjoying, especially the sardonic tone. It's so fun to listen to.
In terms of podcasts, what have I been listening to? I mean, it's an endless string of true crime podcasts and anything NPR. I love How I Built This. I love Pop Culture Happy Hour. And NPR was actually a big part of the inspiration of how Speak Now was made. I was thinking about NPR and how their stories are so engrossing to me in terms of how can we make a listener feel like they're there, because I've listened to all sorts of NPR stories and I feel like I'm in the Congo with a reporter, and it's like, “How does that happen and what are the elements of story that they use to tell their stories?” So, that was a big inspiration.
I love it. And again, you nailed that.
Thank you.
There was so much love and thought and care that went into all of it. And now that Speak Now is out in the world and listeners are already loving it, what are you working on next? I know you said there's some ideas for your next story, but what else are you working on that you can tell us about?
The most exciting thing that I'm working on right now is retranslating Speak Now into a feature film version. It's so funny to have started out with a film, translated it to audio, and now be taking it back to what does it mean and what does it look like as a film? I'm having to kind of reverse my brain into writing shorter dialogue again and showing versus telling. But it's been really exciting, too, to have the readers and the listeners tell me that they can't wait for a movie. Some of them have even said like, "It already feels like I watched the movie even though I didn't." So, it'll be so interesting to see a real movie version.
Then, honestly, I hope this is just the beginning of a career in rom-coms. I think this has made me realize and want to return to my love of rom-coms in the same way that I feel like Nora Ephron had a steady stream of movies that came out every couple years that she wrote and directed and just put her heart and soul into. I hope that Speak Now is the beginning of a long career for me in writing rom-coms.
I'm sure it will be, because this is such a stellar first go. This is an incredible debut.
Thank you, Michael. Thank you.
Well, Ash, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. It has been an absolute delight.
Yes, thank you. I'm so honored that you guys wanted to talk.
Of course. This is an incredible, incredible audio experience. And listeners, Speak Now by Ash Perez is available on Audible now.
