Steven Moffat and the Cast of ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’: Adapting the Series & How It Tied Into Moffat’s Era of ‘Doctor Who’

The Time Traveler’s Wife is coming to HBO, and with it comes an important bit of information about the story and its connection to Steven Moffat. The series stars Rose Leslie as Clare and Theo James as Henry, a time traveler who falls in love with Clare in a timey-wimey story that has already been adapted from the Audrey Niffenegger novel to the screen in the 2009 movie of the same name.

While the show doesn’t fix the book’s problematic elements (like Henry meeting Clare when she’s 6 and essentially grooming her), which I touched on in my review, it does have a funny take on the story as a whole. But what stuck out the most to me was that it is clear in watching this show just how much Niffenegger’s story influenced Moffat’s era of Doctor Who.

In talking with Steven Moffat and director David Nutter, I brought up that it was so clear how this story impacted Moffat’s time as showrunner of the nearly-60-year-old series—particularly with Amy Pond meeting the Doctor as a young child, obviously River Song’s love story of meeting the Doctor out of order through time, and as Moffat even pointed out, “The Girl in the Fireplace” episode.

So, I asked him what it was like to adapt something into a show that clearly meant a lot to him, and he said, “Well, I was extremely excited. From the moment I read it all those years ago in 2005, I had views on how that story should be told. But I didn’t have the profile then to be the kind of person who did it. I loved the story and as you know, I wrote it into Doctor Who as ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ and then a bit as River Song,” he said. “I had the Doctor keep his spare TARDIS key inside a copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife and all that.”

You can see more of our conversation here:

Everyone had praise for Moffat

With Sue Vertue and Brian Minchin, I had to defend my love of both Sherlock and Doctor Who, but the two also had a fun time talking about how much of the story was already planned out thanks to Moffat’s love of the book. “Generally, Steven’s such like ‘This is what I want to do with it’ and then he doesn’t do storylines,” Vertue shared. “He likes to keep things slightly secret.”

The show is also very much funny in the way that it tackles the pain that Henry has and how Clare counteracts it. For star Rose Leslie, she praised that comedy already being part of Moffat’s scripts. “I feel that we were incredibly kind of fortunate with the script that we were working off simply because the kind of genius that Steven Moffat is, he kind of peppers the comedy in the dialogue anyway,” Leslie said. “So certainly there were scenes where it was just one on one myself and Theo and kind of bouncing the lines of one another, that in itself, just knowing the words that you had to speak as the characters that, in itself lifted it and made it lighthearted and joyous, but there’s always this undercurrent of tragedy for these two lovers and Steven also kind of wove that into the dialogue. So for myself, I kind of leaned in heavily to the words, what I was saying and trying my utmost to do them justice, because I felt very fortunate in knowing that everything that I felt I should portray was right there in front of me.”

Theo James agreed with that feeling. “I second as that as well, I mean, one thing from the book, which we were all keen to emanate throughout the series was they’re both funny, they’re funny people, there’s a lot of humor in there,” James said, “and Steven obviously is a master of that. And the joyous thing about it is it’s deeply dramatic, but then some of it’s almost farcical in its comedy in a great way. And I remember saying to Brian, once after doing quite a few of these great comedic scenes with Rose and I back to back, I was like, ‘are we doing a drama or are we doing a comedy I’m kinda confused.’ And obviously he said both, but yeah, it’s so important to it because amongst the tragedy you need that levity, it makes it more powerful in a way. I hope we haven’t seen it, but we hope.”

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The Time Traveler’s Wife premieres on HBO on May 15.

(featured image: HBO)