Leila Raiske has been busy. Her play My master builder It debuted last year at Wyndham’s Theater in London’s West End. It starred Kate Fleetwood, Elizabeth Debicki, and Ewan McGregor in his first play in over a decade. Meanwhile, Riske adapted another play she had written (Paragraphs(to a TV series)Night float) starring Nina Dobrev, while also developing a new play (Fire season) for Broadway, which Billy Crudup and Amanda Seyfried were reading. But one morning, the author spoke to me from her home in New York about another project: her first novel, Diving.
“When you write a play or a screenplay, you have the ability to delve into the perspectives of other characters, and constantly flip those perspectives, which keeps the story alive in a certain way,” Riske said of why she chose to write. Diving As a novel. With this story, “I really wanted to dig deeper into this character and dig into her psychological and emotional layers.” Writing a novel requires staying with a unique perspective, Riske continued, “and even if she was an unreliable narrator, that was a challenge I wanted to give myself.”
It’s also a personal story. Raisk began writing Diving In 2021, just a few years after she called off her wedding to Amazon CEO Roy Price after sexual harassment allegations by a TV producer against him were revealed. Riske then moved to New York and began the path of rebuilding. “This book came from a dark period in my life when I was grappling with loss and really thinking about the process of starting over,” she explained. “I wanted to explore a character who almost has to go to a darker place to find herself again.”
The novel’s heroine, Liv, a Hollywood writer about Riske’s age, flees Los Angeles after her problematic fiancé is fired from his job and then dies in a car accident just weeks before their wedding. Back in Manhattan, Liv is drawn into a sordid love triangle against a backdrop of hedonism and glamor that stretches across Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Lake Como. Lev’s path to reinvention is messy, wild, and nonlinear in a way that “I think hasn’t been explored a lot,” says Riske, but one that has consumed her recent work. “To have an authentic, raw sound, you have to go to the thing that grabs you.”
For everyone who saw My master builderThe themes of desire, betrayal, and past mistakes may seem familiar. In the play — which Riske based on Ibsen’s play master builder — An old relationship between the famous architect (McGregor) and his student (Debicki) is sparked when the architect’s wife (Fleetwood) arranges a dinner party to which the former student was invited.
“I was interested in exploring a world from an outsider’s perspective — someone who’s drawn into a world they’re not familiar with, and how do they end up with these flammable items?” says Riske. “As a writer, it’s a really exciting time to explore the depth and messiness of female desire. I think it shows in my work whether I want it to or not.”
I wrote My master builder In a sudden burst of creativity after receiving the commission, within six months it was bound for the West End. “It was a wild dream,” Reiske recalls. “It’s a fickle process that I’ve been fortunate to have.” The play sold out for 13 weeks and was well reviewed.
“It’s very exciting to have that dialogue and conversation with the audience, sitting in the theater while they were gasping and crying and screaming on stage,” Raichek continued. She admits that the experience in the novel is almost entirely internal and quiet, “but I hope that the novel will touch and move people, and that the characters will reflect the reader’s own experiences with pain and loss and conflicting desires and all the things that the novel is about.”
So your risk will adapt Diving To the screen or stage? “I actually developed it for a movie with a very interesting star,” Raicek said, though she didn’t say who. “It will be announced in due course,” but in the meantime she is focusing on translating her work to the screen. In other words, Risk isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
