Exclusive Photos and Secrets From the Set of ‘Looking for Alaska’
[Warning: Spoilers for Hulu’s Looking for Alaska ahead.]
It’s Christmas in May in Hammond, Louisiana, and it’s frankly too hot to function. I’m sweating on the set of Hulu’s limited series adaptation of John Green's 2005 novel, Looking for Alaska, with one goal: to, well, find her. Many viewers will surely be massive fans of the original book—which follows a young Miles “Pudge” Halter (Charlie Plummer) as he enters the world of a somewhat quirky Alabama boarding school where the rules are simple: Choose your friends wisely, prank with vigor, and, above all else: Never. Ever. Rat on your fellow students. However, I have to admit that I read my paperback for the first time on the plane on my way to New Orleans.
In the novel, Pudge is quickly sucked into the mysterious world of Alaska Young (played in the series by The Society’s Kristine Froseth), a manic-pixie-dream-girl type with unpredictable mood swings, a mysterious past, and blue eyes you can lose yourself in. Admittedly, while I very quickly became engrossed in the story of rich vs. poor prank wars—not to mention, weepy while reading about Alaska’s tragic death—I was slightly frustrated. From the eyes of this young, na?ve white boy, Alaska didn’t feel like a whole person, more of a projection of what Miles wanted her to be or a puzzle to be solved.
On-Set
But stepping inside the Eagle’s (Timothy Simmons) cabin for a scene in episode 5, ‘I’ll Show You That It Won’t Shoot,” directed by Veep’s Clea DuVall—half of the show’s directors are women, btw—I was immediately shown how far the Hulu series goes to remedy this problem. I’m watching a scene where the Colonel (Denny Love), Takumi (Jay Lee), and Alaska visit their principal to get permission to leave campus (in reality, they are securing their alibi for a major campus prank), and Miles is nowhere to be found.
“At school, she’s kind of this Pied Piper, who leads these boys around and seems wise beyond her years,” creator and executive producer Josh Schwartz (Gossip Girl, The O.C.) tells me on the library set. Working very closely with Green, the LFA team begins to unravel Alaska’s truth in episode 3, with one of many new Alaska scenes written for the screen. “We see her in a moment of emotional distress go with her boyfriend, Jake, to one of his college parties,” he continues, “and suddenly she’s reframed as this girl who doesn’t know as much as Miles thinks she knows...who’s really lost."
Frankly, it’s a blessing in disguise that the movie version attempted back in 2015 never came to pass. For one, Schwartz wasn’t involved, and there will never be a more perfect Alaska-and-Miles combo than Kristine and Charlie. But more importantly, it’s the eight-episode structure that has allowed for these updates.
“The way we were going to best take advantage of this longer format was now we can see Alaska outside Miles’s point of view,” Schwartz explains. He’s right. While in the first episode, you follow Miles, the outsider, into this brand-new world, the story quickly becomes about so much more than one boy. “The audience is able to follow these characters in hopefully more fulfilling ways and understand Alaska’s journey, why she is the way she is and seeing her in private, not only as Miles sees her,” Schwartz tells me. “I think the audience will understand Alaska more than Miles does.”
Meeting Alaska
I decide to ask if Kristine will speak to me in Alaska’s single dorm room, which she graciously agrees to do even though there is literally zero air-conditioning and some kind of vicious-looking horsefly is buzzing around. The door is affixed with the word “rat” in black: Alaska broke the school’s most sacred oath of “snitches get stitches.”
This is where Alaska—and Kristine—truly come alive. There are books strewn everywhere, a cornerstone of Alaska’s chaotic energy. “She just wants to know it all, understand it all,” she tells me as she gets comfortable on Alaska’s bed.
The 23-year-old has always felt extremely connected to Alaska, especially when she was auditioning for the role back when it was going to be a movie. “I was 17 at the time. The idea of firsts—your first love and your first friendship—and I guess just not really knowing who you are,” she explains. “I guess everyone kind of feels lost and alone, and I think I relate a bit with how she deals with grief, a little bit of the depression side of things. I mean, she has her smoking habits, everyone has their vice, but I really connected to those bits.”
Alaska is known for her mic-drop comments. “Y’all smoke to enjoy it, I smoke to die” is one of the first. But Kristine found the truth of Alaska in her quieter moments.
“I have a lot of moments in this bedroom when I’m drawing or reading or by myself or I have this like little section for my mom here that I put flowers in that that I think say a lot about how she’s feeling,” she says. “They’re not there right now. But there’s a bunch of daisies, and I have a few moments with them.” It’s telling that she’s speaking as if she is, in fact, Alaska, who blames herself for her mother's death when she was a child.
Before Alaska’s own death, she also feels responsible for the Colonel getting expelled for pulling a serious prank on behalf of Alaska. I ask Kristine if she believes Alaska’s car accident could have been premeditated, something that’s been kept ambiguous in the book and this series.
“She would have never been able to really forgive herself. But maybe she’d come to a point where she’d have more acceptance or self-love for herself, but she never really had the opportunity to get there. When she loses her best friend, and she’s just constantly messing up, there’s so much self-hatred there. I don’t think it was on purpose. I think she was just really struggling and conflicted and just in so much pain. She couldn’t think clearly."
After pointing out some more things about the room, including books the actress would like to read and portraits of Alaska’s idols on the walls, I think I’ve held Kristine hostage in the heat long enough. We decide to walk around Culver Creek’s famous lake, and I ask her what she wants audiences to learn from her version of Alaska. “I hope that people will just realize that they’re not alone. Whatever you’re dealing with, there are ways to get help and to just really keep on fighting and not give up in that sense. I think that’s really important.”
Thankfully, after almost 15 years, it seems Alaska has finally been found.
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