The changes to the ending of the first season of Bad Monkey were explained by series creator Bill Lawrence.

Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for Episode 10 of Bad Monkey Season 1!Bad Monkey Series creator Bill Lawrence explained that the season one finale made some changes to the book, printing changes from Carl Hiaasen’s novel.

Talking to IndieWireLawrence revealed how the core changes to the Dragon Queen or Gracie (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Bad Monkey made its plot more important than in the novel. The creator explained that in the book, her character is an older woman with clear antagonistic intentions, while the series tried to make her more complex by making her younger and adding Ya-Ya’s grandmother (L. Scott Caldwell). . This made it difficult to kill her in the finale, although the decision made sense and allowed her to redeem herself after death. See what Lawrence had to say below:

The Dragon Queen was a completely different character in the book. She was an old woman and quite angry; had no redeeming qualities. And from the very beginning we wanted to make this character more nuanced. We made her younger, we gave her such a consciousness of a grandmother, in Ya-Ya. I love the character and I love what Jodie Turner-Smith did with this material.

[Her] the arch was a big and important story for us, and her coming to terms with her power and the power of nature, all of this is such an important theme in [Carl] Hiaasen’s work. We love Jodie so much that when it finally came time to kill her off, it was a difficult decision because she’s such a great character; [do we want to] will she continue to be on the show if the show continues? So it was difficult. But we felt we should honor it: [The character] made this mistake. She abandoned her beliefs. And from a storytelling perspective, it was fitting that she died and then had a moment of redemption after her death where she was able to make peace with the people she hurt.

More to come…

Source: IndieWire