Stephenie Meyer on Oprah Part 1

Stephenie Meyer on Oprah Part 2

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer appeared on Oprah Live on Friday and she did a great job. It was the 35 year-old author’s only televised interview in advance of the New Moon release, which is out in the US this Friday. Meyer was very relaxed and chatty and she seemed in her element on Oprah. I expected her to be much more reserved as I’d never seen her interviewed before. (She was on Ellen last year, I just missed it.)

The show opened with an explanation of how Meyer came up with the concept for Twilight. She claimed to have never read horror or vampire books before starting the first, although she’s a voracious reader and has a degree in literature. Meyer had also never written a book or even a short story before she penned Twilight.

On Twilight coming to her in a dream and becoming an ‘obsession’
One night five years ago, Meyer had a dream about a sparkling boy and a normal-looking girl in a bright sunlit meadow. The boy was telling the girl he was a vampire and potentially deadly. That dream became chapter 13 in Twilight, and Meyer wrote the book from chapter 13 to the end, going back to finish the beginning. Her boys were aged 1, 3, and 5 at the time and she said that writing served as an outlet after caring for her children all day. “I’ve been bottling up what I was for so long that it became an obsession,” she explained. “When your kids are little, their lives depend on you,” adding that “you have to put your imagination on hold.”

Meyer never intended to make Twilight into a book, and explained that “It seems kind of presumptuous to me that anyone would want to read the things that are in my head. It was just me spending time with this fantasy world.” Her sister ultimately convinced her to try publish the book. She initially approached literaty agents looking for representation. Meyer told Oprah that she had “9 rejections, 5 no answers, and one ‘I’d like to read more'” from the agents.

On Robert Pattinson being the perfect Edward
“When we were first doing the casting for this, I knew the problem was going to be Edward,” Meyer said. She said that Pattinson has “something about him, he doesn’t look like everybody else, there’s something unusual.”

The transformation from Rob to Edward impressed her. “I got on set, and he’s in makeup and in costume… all of a sudden he’s Edward. There are moments when he looks exactly like he did in my head.”

Oprah asked “Is he nice. Does he smell good?”

“He smells great. Rob is hilarious… he’s really fun to hang out with. He’s not at all like the Edward character… He’s so different as Rob.”

“What was it about him?”

“The eyes, the facial structure. He just doesn’t look like everybody else. In a very good way.” She said that she first met him for lunchy and that people on the street did a double take because “he’s very striking looking.”

The New Moon secret she hasn’t revealed
Meyer said New Moon initially had a different ending. “It was a much quieter book. It was very much all in Bella’s head.” Her mom recommended more action at the end, so she decided to add the Volturi and the action sequences.

At the end of the show they interviewed a group of teachers and students from Missouri via Skype. They enthused that the students had convinced the teachers to read the books. “We have a common language now, and we talk in quotes and [Twilight has] just been a total phenomenon.” They said they have a 1,000 people on the waiting list for the Twilight books at their library, and then Meyer and Oprah announced that they would send them 600 copies of the four book box set to take care of that.

Whether there will be a fifth Twilight book
One thing they never addressed is whether there will be another Twilight book. There was a teaser at the bottom of the screen promising they would talk about it, but it never came up. (There is a fifth Twilight book written from Edward’s perspective called Midnight Sun. A rough draft was leaked online and Meyer put it up on her website after explaining how the leak affected her ability to finish the story.”With writing, the way you feel changes everything.”)

A spokesperson for Oprah told EW that there wasn’t enough time to ask Meyer about the fifth book. They asked her the question backstage and she said she wasn’t sure about it, explaining “I think I need a little break” and “I am a little burned out on vampires right now.” She said she knows “absolutely” what happens to Bella and Edward, though. (You can watch the video of her answer here.)