The Woman in Cabin 10 director reveals the scene that almost didn’t make it into the script
Simon Stone spoke exclusively to RadioTimes.com about his new Keira Knightley-led Netflix thriller.
It’s inevitable in a book-to-screen adaptation that changes are made to offer a new perspective on the story, and that’s the challenge director Simon Stone had with Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10.
The psychological thriller follows Laura (Keira Knightley), a journalist who is covering the maiden voyage of a luxury yacht and believes that she has seen a passenger being thrown overboard. Despite her integrity as a journalist, none of the other guests or crew believe her, as everyone is accounted for.
The film makes a few changes from the source novel, but Stone explained in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com that there was one moment he was desperate to keep, even though it was almost left out.
“The moment that I always knew I was going to have, and it disappeared from the script and it came back, was the 'stop' written on the mirror,” he explained.
Knightley added that Stone was "wed to" that detail, before he continued: “Yeah, like I know that's going to be an awesome moment, because the scary thing is someone was just in the room with her.
"But it's also the moment where she goes, 'They've shown themselves. This person, whoever it is – I don't know who it is – has shown that they exist. I am therefore not crazy'. So there's a triumph in it as well."
Stone also made a number of alterations to the screenplay, which he set out to make his “own thing” as opposed to a replication of the book.
“If it's the shadow of a previous thing, you can't gain anything from that," he said. "I think that the only thing that you can do is to treat it as if you're making your own piece of work."
He added that a lot of decisions and directions had to be made to shape the story into something tangible as opposed to an open subjective experience that people may have had when reading the book.
"You have to choose an actor in a film, you can't go, well, just imagine yourself in that role, which is what novels do," Stone continues, "You can go 'I'm projecting all of my connections onto this character' that's what's great about reading books. They can feel so deeply personal.
"But we have to choose someone – Keira – we have to choose a boat, we decide what it looks like. There's no openness to the individual's imagination. It's a subjective and a collective experience for an audience only in as much as they're watching the subjectivity of another person as opposed to themselves."
Stone emphasised that films are about "empathising with someone else’s situation" as opposed to "imaging yourself in that situation," which is what he set out to do with Laura’s story.
The Woman in Cabin 10 is now streaming on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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Authors
Jess Bacon is a freelance film, culture and TV critic and interviewer who is obsessed with everything from Marvel to Star Wars to the representation of women on-screen. Her work has been featured in publications such as Rolling Stone, GQ, Stylist, Total Film, Elle, The Guardian, Digital Spy, Dazed, Cosmopolitan and the i. She’s also interviewed the likes of Zendaya, Brie Larson, Amy Adams, Dan Levy, Aaron Pierre and Brian Cox. In between overanalysing her favourite new comfort watch or internet trends, she’s working on her debut non-fiction book.
