“It was something neither of us cared about,” she says.
“We needed the money.”
FRANCINE PASCAL:I was lying in bed, and it just hit me.
Pascal in her Manhattan home, filled with SVH memorabilia, in 1988.
I jumped up and I said to my husband, “This is it!”
I knew how to do it.
“They were not interested,” she recalls.
Pascal in her Manhattan home, filled with SVH memorabilia, in 1988.
“They said it was too girly.”
Then a casual comment from a friend plus a looming obligation to her publisher combined to spark magic.
I thought about it, and I actually had a book [proposal] due.
There are a lot of twins in my life.
[My agent] Amy [Berkower] is a twin.
My sister-in-law was a twin.
People are always fascinated by twins.
You’ll never be alone.
I sat down and I wrote a [character] bible and the first 12 [SVH] stories.
It went quickly because it was such a fertile idea.
Bantam Books loved it.
They ordered all 12.
When asked what her “do’s and don’ts” were for SVH’s ghostwriters, Pascal is blunt.
PASCAL:“Don’t do anything of yours only do what I say.”
Because I trusted myself, and [the publisher] trusted me, and we just kept doing it.
It was mostly very young, new writers.
The writers had to use those [guidelines] and follow them strictly.
PASCAL:I had total freedom to do anything I wanted.
If I wanted to make them fly, that was okay.
The very important thing was, I was a liberal Jewish woman, and a New Yorker.
I realized the power that I could have.
It’s mine, I’ll do what I kindly.
PASCAL:Don’t forget, it was the ’80s.
Things were very different then.
I never saw so many white people in my life as inSweet Valley, it’s true.
It finally had a Latino [character, in book No.
81,Rosa’s Lie].
[Laughs] There were really very few [diverse characters].
Why do you love it?"
Right around the time Jessica Wakefield was dating secret vampire Jonathan Cain (book No.
(Stewart died in 2008 after battling liver disease.)
PASCAL:[Jamie] did the traveling to find them, yeah.
All kinds of twins showed up to the auditions.
And [Jamie] found a set of twins, Brittany and Cynthia, they were California twins.
They looked like they just walked out of the books.
Hollywood has been trying to adapt SVH into a movie for a full decade.
“I hope I live long enough for this [to happen],” she says frankly.
I think it was the story; it wasn’t good.
Now they have a different writer, and they will consult with me on the story.
I do want it to be done right.
I would like it to be done.
It’s so many years now that this has been going on, and it’s really a shame.
PASCAL:I was thinking about [writing] it all through the ’80s.
I probably would not have done it while he was alive.
First of all, it was a little close.
And I thought, “Am I going to remember all those things that happened?”
But when I sat down to write it, I remembered I could see it all.
And the fact was, my husband wasn’t there to say, “Don’t do that!”
It gave me a lot of freedom.
[Writing] it was funny and sad.
Also, I could look with humor at a lot of these tragic things.
PASCAL:That’s absolutely true.
I can’t tell you how stunned I was.
PASCAL:I thought to myself, “What if a girl was born without the fear gene?
Wouldn’t that be fantastic?”
Courage is a very important thing to me; I never think I have enough of it.
And fear is something I have too much of.
I just fell in love with that idea, and that’s when I wrote Fearless.
Gaia even got her own TV show…almost.
For that, Pascal is grateful.
PASCAL:[The TV show] had it all wrong.
They had a Gaia who was almost silent.
I talked to them about it I sent endless emails, which they probably put in the garbage.
It was really just so wrong, and Gaia was so terrible.
I don’t know what they were thinking!
I wrote him a letter and said, “Thank you.”
Playwright Jon Marans and I have written a musical calledThe Fearless Girl.
We’re just a couple of weeks from recording the music.
It’s really exciting.
It’s about Gaia she’s outspoken and tough.
She’s outrageous, she’s incorrigible.
She’s not quite Superwoman, but she’s very close.
She can’t fly.
I sat down and started to writeMean Girls.
So I had to rename itThe Ruling Class.
[Being] first is crucial, and I wasn’t.
It’s like the army of the good.
The Legacy of Sweet Valley
At 81, Pascal remains busy.
(New York’s Encores!
theater series will stage the production in February.)
PASCAL:I never really had the respect forSweet Valleythat I had for my other YA books.
I felt it was a kind of soap opera, and that was kind of a lesser thing.
I was wrong, because it had [an] enormous effect on people.
Essentially it was very important and deserved [respect] now I see it.
