The Time Traveler’s Wife, which is based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger, premieres today on HBO and HBO Max. The series follows the love story of Henry (Theo James) and Claire (Rose Leslie) and their subsequent marriage. However, they have the unique problem that Henry is an unwitting time traveler.

Dealing with time travel, the story bounces back and forth between Claire meeting Henry at different ages, out of order, as she grows up. Executive producer and writer of the series Steven Moffat has some experience telling stories out of time, having been the showrunner on Doctor Who. “I don't think out of sequence is as difficult as people think it is,” he explained to SciFi Vision during a recent roundtable. “I think our memories work like that anyway. I mean, the story of your life is stored in your head. You know the story of your own life. Is it in sequence? If you think about your life, do you think of day one, day two, day three? No, you face a whole jumble of events that are ordered by priority or interest that are linked together, because they're about the same thing or happened in the same place. The story of your own life is nonlinear. Your life is linear, but the story of it is a mess, and, frankly, it would take you days to try and work out in what order anything happened…So, in a way, stories are like memories. There's a chaos of events, and the links between those events are about the subject or emotional or their context.”

“Nonlinear is fine,” he continued. “It's fine. Now, there are challenges about not screwing up on the continuity, because this is the only show where you can make a continuity error in advance. So, that's going to be a thing…You know, thirty-six-year-old Henry has already been in several episodes of the second series, and I haven't written them yet. So, how the hell am I supposed to be consistent with that? It's tough, but it's doable.”

“Also, memories are such that there may be an event that happened ten years ago,” added executive producer and director David Nutter. “Do you remember every moment of an event that happened last week? Did you forget it even happened? So, I think that the weight of emotions and the weight of memories [determine] how important they play in your life.”

Moffat added that it’s very important with putting together the non-linear story to know where you make cuts and why. “It's like a stream of consciousness,” he told the press, “So, we're thinking about [something], then we go and see it. Stories in the wrong order don't have to be confusing, so long as you're clear on why you're seeing this now.”

During the roundtable, Moffat also talked about adapting the series and how television has a different structure than a book. However, he didn’t feel that there was anything important that had to be left out. “I certainly wouldn't like to think I ever wimped out of anything,” Moffat told SciFi Vision. “I wanted the apocalyptic nastiness of Henry's mother's death…I wanted the two Henry's having sex with each other. I wanted all the things that [the author] was brave enough to put in. I suppose there are elements that maybe I engaged with less…but it wasn't a conscious thing.”

The writer went on to explain how some scenes needed to be changed around to work. “I think there are many riches in the book; frequently, you have to do them very differently. The example I use, is it’s very moving to me in the book, when he decides to get a haircut before the wedding and to start becoming the man that she is in love with in the future. But if I wrote that in the script, it would just be a shot of a haircut…So, I wrote a whole different episode about why he elects to get a haircut, but I'm after the same effect.”

For more, be sure to read the full transcript below and check out The Time Traveler’s Wife, available starting today on HBO and HBO Max.


lightly edited for clarity

QUESTION:   Steven, my question is for you. What inspired you to adapt The Time Traveler’s Wife, and how many seasons do you think it'll take to adapt Audrey’s five-hundred-page novel?

STEVEN MOFFAT:   What inspired me was simple enough, as I absolutely loved the book, and I think it's got an extraordinary take on the most rarely discussed, at least in fiction, phenomenon of true love, uncomplicated true love. We don't talk about it enough. We just don't. It happens all the time; it happens to loads of people. People fall in love and stay in love until one of them dies, which is sad, but there you go.

…And how many [seasons] will it take to tell the story? I already know the answer to that, but I'm not telling you it. Sorry. That's for us to know, or it's for me to know. You’ve got to have some secrets.

But I was inspired by the source material. I love it. I riffed on it a few times in Doctor Who, as everybody knows, and it was a pleasure to get to deal with the real version in the television format, which I think really suits it.

QUESTION:   What specifically was it important to you to retain from the book, and where did you want to go your own way and reinvent the story?

STEVEN MOFFAT:   I wanted to retain the impact and the feeling of the book. I never had a feeling about where [I was] going to go my own way or change or fix it. It always sounds like when people talk about adapting things, it's like you're fixing it where the author went wrong. The author didn't go wrong. The book’s perfect. I absolutely love it. I absolutely love it; it's a classic. The fact is television is very, very different from a book. As I keep saying, a book has a beginning, middle and an end, and television has a beginning, middle and end once a week. So, you actually have to have that episodic structure. Relatively little of the book slots into that. Our Episode Three, the story of Jason Everleigh (Spencer House), that fits really quite easily into the television shape. Most of it doesn't. Some of my favorite sequences in the book wouldn't make it an hour of television. So, you've got to find a way of making it make an hour of television. I think the key to me is I don't want to overstate this, but it's almost like treating the book as a series format and saying, “Here are the further adventures or even more adventures of Henry and Claire.” So, most of what I've done is really add, but add in order to create the same effect as I think Audrey was going for.

QUESTION:   When adapting this and directing it, how did you guys decide when was the right time for the Henrys to interact with each other, and how was it directing one person to then eventually play multiple people at the same time?

STEVEN MOFFAT:   Well, David's going to answer most of that question, but just to answer the first part of it, it's irresistible to have to bring the Henrys face to face. It doesn't happen that much in the book, as you know, but it happens more on the TV show, because visually and temperamentally, it just helps to put them both on the screen and say, “Look, these guys are a bit different,” and they don't even get on that well. As to the logistics of how you perform that miracle, I hand you over to Mr. Nutter.

DAVID NUTTER:   Well, it's also a situation that starts back with casting, and the actor is going to do this, because you want to find someone who can actually play the different characters, because each of the characters have to have their own specific way about them and who they are, different vocals different motions, different feelings. Theo James had all that plus, in spades. He had it all basically; he understood that very well. So, it was a situation where Steven, the way he wrote it, made a lot of opportunities for these characters to ping pong things back and forth that I think made things very entertaining. Also, too, I wanted to make [it] seamless, where it wasn't like “Oh, a still shot and two people are in the same frame.” I wanted the camera to move and them to move and talk to each other and then disperse with each other and to make it seamless and not an effect at all. [That was the] most important, because making it feel real was the most important element. I think we succeeded at that.

QUESTION:   For David, Desmin [Borges] spoke about how easy and seamless you made it for the actors to change ages and to really step into their characters at different phases in their [lives]. What was it like for you from a directorial perspective to make that happen and to really slot the correct times in?

DAVID NUTTER:   Well, I think the most important thing for a director is you have to let the actor know that you're there for them. To me, that's what it's all about. A lot of times, you can get caught up in visual effects. You can get caught up on the small things that don't really matter, but I think the actor really [needs to know] that you're there for them, and you direct them. I think a lot of times, directors don't know how to direct actors, and sometimes they shy away from it, but I think every actor wants to be directed. You know, James Gandolfini wanted to be directed when I worked on Sopranos, and I've worked with some fine, fine actors who want to be told their doing well and also, too, when they're not. So, to me, it was always a situation where I wanted to get to know each of them very, very well, and get to basically utilize some of that information and kind of help to motivate them to do things differently, to try different things. Also, too, it was a lot of fun, again, to let these guys make mistakes, because my attitude is that you make a mistake, that's easy. Let’s do take two, or take three, take four, take five and fix things every time. I'm telling the actor that there's no failure involved here. It's all experimenting. It’s about finding the best of what we find, and we're able to do that.

QUESTION:   How hard has it been to…[use so many] flashbacks and [flash]forwards?

DAVID NUTTER:   First of all, you have to have a great script…that's a great roadmap that I would utilize, and for me, it was about honoring that. So, Steven had an impeccable way of organizing his stories and plotting it out. I think that he was really following that to a “T” and also making sure that this didn't feel like a visual effects time travel show. We wanted to make this an emotional journey and have the time travel be emotional, in a sense, where he's not a scientist or trying to like scientifically figure things out, but let's also treat the time travel as a metaphor of a disability. That was something that we played [as] very important, and it made it work very well.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   I think the critical thing about flashing forward and flashing backward is fine. It doesn't have to be confusing, provided you know why you've cut where you've cut. It's like a stream of consciousness. So, we're thinking about that, then we go and see it. Stories in the wrong order don't have to be confusing, so long as you're clear on why you're seeing this now.

DAVID NUTTER:   Right.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   Equally, the most linear narrative in the world can be incredibly confusing if you don't know why or what you're supposed to be following. I always kept in mind how Audrey wrote the book. Audrey is merciless in the book. She just says basically, “Keep up. Keep the hell up and concentrate,” and that's what we do in the show, but there is a logic to it. There is a logic to where we go next, and I don't think it's a difficult logic to follow.

SCIFI VISION:  This is actually continuing on that. You talk about how it's kind of linear and then you break it up, but how did you kind of, I guess, in your mind keep each one separate and know sort of where to use what and how to make sure that you used the right piece in the right place? I'm also curious, for Steven, did working on on River Song’s storyline help you from a writing perspective?...Did that kind of prepare you to have to go out of order all the time?

STEVEN MOFFAT:   I don't think out of sequence is as difficult as people think it is. I think our memories work like that anyway. I mean, the story of your life is stored in your head. You know the story of your own life. Is it in sequence? If you think about your life, do you think of day one, day two, day three? No, you face a whole jumble of events that are ordered by priority or interest that are linked together, because they're about the same thing or happened in the same place. The story of your own life is nonlinear. Your life is linear, but the story of it is a mess, and, frankly, it would take you days to try and work out in what order anything happened. Just imagine one strand of your life, your relationship with your best friend. If you think about it, now, you've got a jumble of events. You don't think about how you first met, the second day, the day you fell out; you just think of that and that and that and that, and you wouldn't know what order all that happened. So, in a way, stories are like memories. There's a chaos of events, and the links between those events are about the subject or emotional or their context. So, nonlinear is fine. It's fine. Now, there are challenges about not screwing up on the continuity, because this is the only show where you can make a continuity error in advance. So, that's going to be a thing. I'm sure we will. What can I tell you? I'm sure we'll make a mistake. I think I found one in the book. You know, thirty-six-year-old Henry has already been in several episodes of the second series, and I haven't written them yet. So, how the hell am I supposed to be consistent with that? It's tough, but it's doable.

DAVID NUTTER:   Also, memories are such that there may be an event that happened ten years ago. Do you remember every moment of an event that happened last week? Did you forget it even happened? So, I think that the weight of emotions and the weight of memories [determine] how important they play in your life.

QUESTION:   The actors were phenomenal. I'm wondering how you found such good young actors that portrayed [the characters], as they looked and sounded almost like Theo and Rose.

DAVID NUTTER:   David Rubin, the casting director, was phenomenal. He basically found us these young actors, and it was all about emotionally how they kind of paired up with each of them, and it was just…fantastic.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   The resemblances are extraordinary. In fact, David, you were saying that one of the photographs of young Henry is actually young Theo.

DAVID NUTTER:   Yes. In the library sequence, you'll see, you get to pick out which one to which

STEVEN MOFFAT:   Yeah. So, in other words, we're using a photograph of our young Henry alongside a photograph of what Theo really looked like, and you won’t know which one is which. But that's a lot down to the brilliance of David Rubin as a casting director and the sheer hard work of doing that.

QUESTION:   How challenging was it to elegantly explore the relationship between the adult Henry and the child Claire? Because I thought you did a really good job of that.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   I mean, you sort of have to sort of think what you'd think if you were suddenly sent back in time. Remember, Henry is already in love with and married to the adult version of this child, and then he’s face to face with the child. I think the word is “awks (awkward)!” You know, I mean, that's a tough one. So, he does what you would do. He’s paternal.

DAVID NUTTER:   Yeah.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   He's a father figure to her. I always get quite cross when people talk about, quite inappropriately, about grooming or whatever, or the sort of power dynamic or whatever. What nonsense. He behaves as he should, as a father to a child, just as if he were lucky enough - and some of you have read the book - to have a daughter who would remind him off his wife, because, you know, daughters look like moms. He would be paternal. He is a normally configured man, and that's exactly how he reacts and behaves. Love becomes sexual when it's to another adult in your appropriate area of interest and becomes paternal when it's to a child. That's how we're wired.

DAVID NUTTER:   Yeah, and it's also a situation in which there's a wonderful line that Steven wrote that you'll have to remember for me. It's when [Claire] is now sixteen, and he says something about, you’re not supposed to - you’re at the wrong situation when - what is it, Steven?

STEVEN MOFFAT:   You meet the love of your life, and you're six years old?

DAVID NUTTER:   No, it's the one where he says you're not supposed to enjoy it.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   Yes, you're not allowed to see people naked from the exact moment you start enjoying it. That's the rule. [laughs] She’s suddenly very different the moment she sort of [shows some] interest.

DAVID NUTTER:   Also, Theo was very concerned about how those things would be handled. I think that the way they were written and the way we dealt with them is such that it plays as a father figure in a very proper way. I think that we were definitely respectful of that.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   Yeah.

DAVID NUTTER:   That was important.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   Old men are dads at their best. That’s what we are.

QUESTION:   Once [Claire] meets him when she's twenty, they know that they're going to end up in love and marry, but they don't seem to really like each other at that point in time. How did you decide to go on that approach of that they're in love, but they don't really like each other yet, and how was it to direct a love story that isn't really in the “like” phase yet?

DAVID NUTTER:   Henry doesn't know he's gonna fall in love with [Claire] at that age until [some time] later. Go ahead, Steven.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   No, it's just the one who has the real problem is really Claire. She's got a very clear idea of what this man is like, and she hasn't been through the thing that most young women have, of the man they like isn't quite the man they'd like them to be. That's a very normal situation that happens to everyone. She's got a very extreme version, because the first version of Henry she ever meets is the man she later creates, right? He just flows around her until he becomes the man she wants. Then, she turns up and says, “Hey, I didn't get the love of my life; I got some raw material that's going to take some effort.” Now, being honest, that's kind of the way it goes for everybody, isn't it? Especially, you know, young men are awful. Young men have to be trained, and that's fine, and that's fun, but it is not normally such a surprise. I think Henry's pretty struck with Claire from the start. You know, a gorgeous redhead announces, “I'm the love of your life.” It's alarming, but there's clearly some good times ahead in the short term, and men rarely think much further than that. So, he's just quite enthused.

DAVID NUTTER:   Indeed.

STEVEN MOFFAT:   He gets it, but also, I mean, for Claire, it's the slight disappointment of “he's not what I thought he'd be,” but by episodes two and three, she's starting to realize underneath it all he is. But for Henry, there're two things. One, there's this gorgeous woman saying, “I'm your future,” and a huge radical thought, “I've got a real future. I've got something special coming. I've got something great. Normally what I get told is something bloody awful, and suddenly I get the winning lottery ticket.” So, it's a very different experience for the two.

DAVID NUTTER:   Perfect, exactly.

QUESTION:   Steven, kind of expanding on the point of their interactions as a child versus adult, from Claire's perspective, it's very different than from Henry's, because, like you said, this is the man of her dreams, even when she's young and doesn't really understand what that would entail. She would like to envision herself marrying him. So, what is it like to write her character and engage with this concept of forming yourself around the one you love with it both being romantic and at times very frustrating for her?

STEVEN MOFFAT:   What's it like? I think we all go through it. I think this is just an extreme sort of fantastical version of it. I think to some degree, that's exactly what happens in every relationship. On that extraordinary day that you meet the one, and you know very, very soon that it is, and you see yourself reflected in the eyes of someone, and [who’s] wise enough to love you, you have a vision of yourself granted to you by somebody else that you suddenly want to live up to. You think, “Okay, I can raise my game and be the person she or he thinks I am.” And I think that's what couples do to each other. They project onto each other a sort of idealized version and then try to become that. I mean, I think that's what love does to people. That's why it's so, so good for us. [You’ve] got someone who has an image of you that you suddenly try and live up to. Up until that point, you've just been trying to get through the day and eat enough, but suddenly you think, ”I could be the person she is imagining. Wouldn't I be great?” Now, when you see couples get together, friends of yours, they disappear for two to three months, because they're busy, and then they turn up again, probably a few pounds heavier and slightly different, nicer people. That's what happens, and it's an entirely positive thing. It's a great thing. It's a great thing that love does to people. Obviously, The Time Traveler's Wife does that in a slightly mad way, because it's a time travel story, but it's the story of us all. That's why I think people respond to the story, because although it’s extreme and fantastical, it reflects the process of falling in love.

SCIFI VISION:  So, Stephen, when you're writing the script, you mentioned I think at the beginning how, you know, some things are easier to adapt than others, but was there anything maybe that you had to leave out, just because it did not work for television?

STEVEN MOFFAT:   Not leave out, no. Not leave out, I wouldn't say. I mean, I certainly wouldn't like to think I ever wimped out of anything. I wanted the apocalyptic nastiness of Henry's mother's death, amazingly filmed by Mr. Nutter up there. I wanted the two Henry's having sex with each other. I wanted all the things that she was brave enough to put in. I suppose there are elements that maybe I engaged with less. There's a lot in the book [of] Henry's interest in sort of punk and so on and music, and I think I maybe just slightly skated past that, but it wasn't a conscious thing. I just didn't engage with that bit as much, and maybe we will in future. I think there are many riches in the book; frequently, you have to do them very differently. The example I use, is it’s very moving to me in the book, when he decides to get a haircut before the wedding and to start becoming the man that she is in love with in the future. But if I wrote that in the script, it would just be a shot of a haircut, however beautifully David would shoot it, and he would shoot it beautifully, it would look like a commercial for hair conditioner. I mean, there's just nothing you can do about it. So, I wrote a whole different episode about why he elects to get a haircut, but I'm after the same effect, if you see what I mean.