Shelby Van Pelt talks ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ Netflix adaptation | Entertainment

Shelby Van Pelt started her writing career early.

When she was 10 years old, the Tacoma News Tribune paid her $10 to write an article on her favorite thing to eat: “I wrote about Gardenburger,” Van Pelt says in an interview. 

Van Pelt wrote for her high school newspaper and then blogged about running in the early 2000s, only to work in economics and finance into her 30s. 

“When I burned out on that, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. That’s when I remembered back to when I was 10 years old, writing for the Tacoma News Tribune, and how that came really easily to me.”

Off the back of that memory, Van Pelt wrote “Remarkably Bright Creatures” — a story about the friendship between Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus, and Tova, a widow who cleans the aquarium and tank where he lives. Released in May 2022, “Remarkably Bright Creatures” proved to be a huge success, selling more than 2 million copies, and appearing on The New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list numerous times.

It’s little surprise then that Netflix jumped at the opportunity to adapt Van Pelt’s book, with Sally Field taking the lead role of Tova and the dulcet tones of Alfred Molina voicing Marcellus. The film premieres Friday on the streaming service.

All of this is particularly impressive because Van Pelt spent years thinking she wasn’t really a “creative person or artist or someone who could write fiction.” When Van Pelt started work on her debut novel, she had to teach herself how to write fiction because it wasn’t something she’d been to school for or had any training in. To pass the time, she would regularly watch videos of octopuses trying to escape online and just generally being mischievous in captivity. 

This coincided with her search for weird and unusual voices to write in.

“It struck me that it would be really funny to give a voice to an octopus. Especially one that was grumpy, coming to the end of his life, who didn’t enjoy being in captivity, and thought he was smarter than the humans who were around him.”

Van Pelt still wasn’t sure what form the story would take. At one point, Marcellus’ musings were a collection of diary entries, then she considered whether to turn them into short stories. It was the appeal of setting a story inside an aquarium, and using Marcellus to explore the flaws of human characters and to consider the fundamentally weird things that humans do, that ultimately lead Van Pelt to make “Remarkably Bright Creatures” a novel.

Looking back on the tremendous popularity of “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” Van Pelt credits the character of Marcellus for its success. “People just really love Marcellus. I love him so much, too. He’s the backbone of it. I mean, he made it the octopus book, so no one was ever going to confuse it with any other book.” 

Van Pelt knows firsthand just how devoted readers can be to certain characters and books. Growing up as an only child, she says her library card was her best friend. After leaving Tacoma for various cities across the country, before eventually settling in Atlanta for a few years, it was in Georgia where Van Pelt started her transition to being a novelist. Once she’d come up with the idea for “Remarkably Bright Creatures” there was never any doubt in her mind that it would be set in Washington state, ultimately settling on Puget Sound.

“I wanted to transport people to the Pacific Northwest with the novel, especially people who had never been there,” says Van Pelt — who now resides in her husband’s hometown of Chicago. “I wanted to capture this place that will always be my home and share it with readers. I wanted to show what was special about it, how the water is everywhere, the tide pools, the way that the trees can make you feel claustrophobic. I wanted to romanticize it but also make it realistic.”

Van Pelt credits her writers groups in Atlanta and online for helping her finish the novel, insisting that her writing buddies constantly provided her with helpful feedback and motivation to complete it. But while Van Pelt was delighted when publisher Ecco Press agreed to release “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” even she was stunned when — shortly after it hit shelves — several production companies and studios registered their interest in buying the film rights.

“It was absolutely surreal when Sally Field came on board. Particularly because, the character of Tova is sort of based on my grandmother and the two look very similar. She was just the perfect person to play that character.” 

While the script was co-written by John Whittington and the film’s director Olivia Newman, Van Pelt was involved all the way through production, taking part in script read-throughs, giving notes, spending a week on set and even appearing as an extra. 

Her hope is that audiences across the world will connect with the work’s story of hope and its insistence that it’s never too late to change, embrace something new or make a new friend. At the very least, she wants viewers to fall in love with the Pacific Northwest and Washington, which, despite living elsewhere for years, continues to be her “happy place.”

“I can’t quite convince my husband to move back there. But I always think of my times running the trails around Point Defiance, hiking in old-growth forests, the mountains, the beaches. There’s something so magical about it. Washington truly is still one of my favorite places in the world.”