Lila Raicek’s debut novel The Plunge, Love, Loss and Reinvention

Lila Raicek has been busy. her play my master builder It debuted at the Wyndham Theater in London’s West End last year. The first play in 10 years stars Kate Fleetwood, Elizabeth Debicki and Ewan McGregor. Meanwhile, Raicek is adapting another of her plays.vertebrae) into a TV series (night float) at the same time a new play starring Nina Dobrev (fire season) Broadway production being read by Billy Crudup and Amanda Seyfried. But on a recent morning, the author spoke to me from his home in New York about another project. The Plunge.

“When you write a play or a script, you have the ability to put yourself into another character’s perspective and constantly flip that perspective, which keeps the story alive in a certain way,” Raicek said of why he chose to write. The Plunge As a novel. With this story, “I wanted to get into the skin of this character and get into her psychological and emotional layers.” Writing a novel requires maintaining a single point of view, Raicek continued. “Even if she was an unreliable narrator, it made me want to challenge myself.”

It’s also a personal story. Raicek began writing. The Plunge in 2021, just a few years after calling off her marriage to Amazon executive Roy Price. After revelations of sexual harassment claims TV producer against him. Raicek decamped to New York and began the road to reconstruction. “This book came out of a dark period in my life when I was grappling with loss and seriously thinking about the process of starting over,” she explained. “I wanted to explore a character who almost went to a darker place to find himself again.”

The novel’s protagonist, Liv, a Hollywood writer around Reichek’s age, leaves LA after her problematic fiancé is fired from his job and dies in a car accident just weeks before his wedding. Back in Manhattan, Liv finds herself drawn into a sordid love triangle set against a backdrop of hedonism and glamor spanning Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Lake Como. Liv’s path to reinvention has been messy, chaotic and non-linear in a way that “I don’t think is often explored,” but Raicek continues to consume her recent work. “To have an authentic, vibrant voice, you have to focus on what captivates you.”

To anyone who has seen it my master builderThemes of desire, betrayal, and past mistakes may seem familiar. In the play — Raicek based it on Ibsen’s work. master builder The long-standing relationship between a famous architect (McGregor) and his student (Debicki) is rekindled when the architect’s wife (Fleetwood) hosts a dinner party to which former students are invited.

“I was interested in exploring the world through the perspective of an outsider: someone who is lured into a world unfamiliar to them, and how those very combustible elements come into play.” Raicek says: “It’s a really exciting time as a female writer to delve into the depth and promiscuity of female desire. I think that shows up in my work whether I want it to or not.”

she wrote my master builder After receiving the commission, there was a sudden burst of creativity, and within six months it was scheduled to be released in the West End. “It was like a dream,” Raicek recalled. “It’s been a roller coaster of a process that I’ve been fortunate to have.” The play sold out for 13 weeks and received positive reviews.

“It’s really exciting to talk to the audience and talk to them and sit in the theater while they’re gasping and crying and yelling,” Raicek said. The experience of the novel, she admits, is almost entirely internal and quiet. “But I hope it will touch and move people and that the characters will reflect the reader’s experience of pain and loss and discordant desire and everything the novel is about,” she admits.

So will Raicek adapt? The Plunge To the screen or stage? “I’m already developing it for a movie with a very interesting star,” Raicek said, though he remained tight-lipped about who it was. “It will be announced when the time is right,” but in the meantime, she is focusing on translating her work to film. That said, Raicek isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.