Here's the backstory on 6 choices Zoe Kazan made in her 'East of Eden' adaptation

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Set us as preferred When Zoe Kazan learned she was going to adapt “East of Eden,” she knew it meant she’d be destroying a copy of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel with scribbled notes in different colors, highlights and earmarked edges.So she ordered a used one from Powell’s Books — it has somebody else’s last name written on it, she points out.“It’s a treasure to me,” she said during a recent video call from London.Steinbeck’s Cain and Abel-inspired novel follows two families across decades as a way to explore good and evil, legacy, free will and what makes a person.

Driving many of the biblical parallels are two sets of siblings — half-brothers, Charles and Adam Trask, and later, Adam’s fraternal twin sons Cal and Aron — each competing for their father’s attention and love.Disrupting their lives is an enigmatic woman named Cathy Ames, who Adam marries and who gives birth to Cal and Aron.The book-to-screen adaptation has been Kazan’s passion project.

And for a tale of familial legacy, she had her own to confront — in 1955, her grandfather Elia Kazan directed a film version that starred James Dean and covered the last third of the book, which focused on Cal and Aron.Zoe Kazan’s interest in the story took shape decades later when, as a teenager, she discovered the book.

Also starring Mike Faist and Christopher Abbott, Netflix’s miniseries adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel features standout performances by Hoon Lee, Ciarán Hinds and Martha Plimpton.She found herself drawn to Cathy, its famous antagonist.“I felt repelled by her, attracted by her, curious about her.

I felt empathy.I felt hared.

I felt love.I felt all these things,” Kazan said.

“I had never read anybody like her.I just remember, every few pages, wanting to stop and read aloud to someone the things that she was doing or [the things] that someone was saying about her.”She also felt the pull o...