The Big Picture

Harlan Coben is a highly accomplished writer, with over 35 novels and 80 million books sold. He is known for his mastery of suspense and his strong characterization. Coben’s new Amazon Prime Video series, “Harlan Coben’s Shelter,” is aimed at a teen audience and revolves around the high school protagonist Mickey Bolitar. The show combines dark themes with moments of fun and explores the characters’ struggles and relationships. The young cast of “Harlan Coben’s Shelter” was carefully chosen for their talent and chemistry. Coben wanted to ensure that viewers would be invested in the characters and their stories. The show also features strong LGBTQ+ representation, reflecting the modern and diverse nature of the story.

Harlan Coben is one of the most prolific writers in the world. No, seriously — he’s written over 35 novels, sold over 80 million books, and is the first author to ever receive the prestigious trio of an Edgar Award, a Shamus Award, and an Anthony Award. He mainly works within the mystery and thriller genres, and while he’s a master of suspense, the thing that sets him apart and keeps people coming back for more is his characterization and heart.

This is especially true of his new Amazon Prime Video series, Harlan Coben’s Shelter. Coben is no stranger to adapting his novels into popular TV shows — seven series, like The Stranger and Stay Close, are currently on Netflix, with more on the way — but Shelter is a bit different in that it’s aimed at a teen audience, revolving around high school protagonist Mickey Bolitar (Jaden Michael). After his father (Kristoffer Polaha) suddenly dies — under mysterious circumstances, no less — Mickey is sent to live with his aunt Shira (Constance Zimmer). There, he must avoid bullies Troy (Brian Altemus) and Buck (Antonio Cipriano) and navigate new friendships with quirky Spoon (Adrian Greensmith), gothy Ema (Abby Corrigan), and popular cheerleader Rachel (Sage Linder) while trying to figure out what happened to his dad.

I got the chance to speak with Coben about how they found their excellent young cast, the strong LGBTQ+ representation in the series, the one thing he insisted happen in Season 1, what’s in store for Season 2, and more.

COLLIDER: I feel like this is a series that the whole family can watch and enjoy, but it is really aimed at young adults. You’ve written for adults and young adults alike, but what do you find particularly special about writing for a younger audience?

HARLAN COBEN: I think mostly the reaction of the people who watched it. They’re so enthusiastic, the young people. My daughters were showing me all the TikTok videos, and they’re so creative — the fandom is so creative. It was such fun to see that. For me, the big challenge is making sure that I just get the language right. People are people. In many ways, when I wrote Shelter, the first thing I wanted to do was to make sure I didn’t simplify it or dumb it down or do anything like that. The only real difference between my adult thrillers and my young adult thrillers is the character’s 16 or 17 instead of being 30 or 40 or however old they are.

In fact, I think Mickey’s story is one of the darkest ones that I tell. I hope people have fun, but it’s also really dark, and combining those tones we thought was really going to be interesting for us. And the later episodes, for example — one moment, I was watching eight again, which, it’s fun to watch them as they kind of came out again — I’m thinking to myself, “These kids have just been through hell, and Spoon just saw the worst thing he could see, and Ema and Rachel just went through all this, and now they’re going to cheerleading.” Life still goes on. And to try to mix those two so that it would be an entertaining thing without being too jarring was one of our big challenges.

Image via Prime Video

I want to delve more deeply into that, too, because it does — it has such a nice mixture of heart and very serious issues, but it is still so much fun, and there are cliffhangers, and it’s very fast-paced. How do you find that balance between having the cliffhangers and having the suspense without sacrificing the heart and the character that really grounds everything?

You know, it’s a good question. In all the thrillers that I write — be it adult or whatever — I don’t think a thriller works without heart. I could write you a super exciting story about a kid who can’t find his father with all kinds of puzzles and twists and turns, but if you don’t care…

I remember one of the first days we were filming, we filmed the cafeteria scene — the first time that Mickey, Spoon, and Ema meet up in the cafeteria. I was sitting with my daughter Charlotte, who did most of the writing on this, actually, and while I was watching the three of them, I said, “Here’s the thing — if people want to sit at that table and hang with them, we’re in good shape. If they don’t, we’re in trouble.” And people did. She wasn’t as worried, of course, as I was, but that’s the key. If you don’t have that heart, the story never works. You’ve interviewed a lot of people; you’ve watched a lot of TV. You know that if you don’t care about that character, if you don’t care if Mickey finds his dad, if you don’t care about how Spoon feels when he faces disaster, if you don’t care about how Ema gets her heart broken, it’s just not gonna work. So it’s all about the heart.

I think you pulled it off. I definitely wanted to sit at the lunch table with all of them, and I think a lot of that speaks to the writing, and a lot of that speaks to the young cast because they’re just incredible. And for some of them, this is one of their first roles. I’m curious how you went about finding them and made sure that they would have that chemistry. I feel like without that, the show doesn’t work unless they feel like they really are this group.

The casting people were fantastic. I would venture to say I saw at least 50 — maybe 100, maybe even more — audition tapes that were paired down by then, so they probably had 300 or 400. There was something about these kids. Whatever else I did wrong on this show, I’m super proud of how we cast it. When we saw each, we were always asking ourselves, “Could this person be a star on their own? Could this person have their own show? Could I make the show just about that person?” And for these particular actors — Jayden, Adrian, Abby, Sage, Brian, and Antonio — that’s what it really came down to.

In fact, it’s kind of funny. We were casting Troy, and our two finalists were Brian, who got the role, and Antonio, who plays Buck. And we loved them both so much. It was one of those King Solomon splitting the baby situations — we couldn’t decide which one to pick. Buck, in the book, is sort of a big meathead guy, and I said, “You know what? He’s so good, Antonio — let’s make Antonio Buck and make Brian Troy and keep both of them.” So it was a lot of that sort of thing where you just know; you felt these characters were just working. For all of them, it was just sort of meant to be. They all got along beautifully.

The characters who played Rachel, Spoon, and Ema — that’s Sage, Adrian, and Abby — all lived together during filming. Unfortunately, because of the strike, they haven’t been able to show it, but they all lived together for however long — four or five months — we were on set and were all besties and spent all day working on acting lessons. They would be doing acting exercises in their trailer between the parts they would be doing. They were constantly at work and constantly loving what they were doing, and I think that that ended up being reflected — their hard work ended up being reflected.

They’re just such talents, and we started to play with those talents. The idea of doing a musical was because both Antonio and Abby had really great musical experience. Antonio starred in the Jagged Little Pill play on Broadway, and Abby starred in Fun Home, the musical. So we were starting to have fun, and we saw how great a dancer Sage was and were like, “Okay, let’s do the cheerleading bit for her there.” And so we started to play to their strengths.

It’s a real family. A lot of them were here last night — all the ones that were in New York were here last night, Brian and Antonio, Didi Conn from Grease, another musical person that we ended up having, the actresses who played Whitney and Ashley were here. It was a lot of fun. They were a really good group.

Image via Prime Video

RELATED: ‘Harlan Coben’s Shelter’ Ending Explained: Who Survives?

I think it’s great because obviously, all the teen characters have such great chemistry, but you also do so much with the adult characters, which I feel like it really sort of rare in a teen show. I feel like they’re often neglected or stereotypes, but I really love that you delved into Shira and Hannah. I’m a huge fan of Constance Zimmer, so it was great to see her back on the screen. I loved the representation, too, because we have two sapphic couples: them and then Whitney and Ema. Can you talk a little bit about why it felt important to develop all of those?

Sure. A couple of things — so, I wrote this book 12 years ago, and I try to tell the adults who were like, “Why isn’t it exactly the same as the book is?,” imagine if I wrote a book that took place in 1959 and now I’m making a TV series in 1971 and all the differences that would be in the school. And that’s the same thing when I wrote the book. We wanted to be current, we wanted to be modern, we wanted to make it hip. I never do anything quote-unquote “just to be diverse,” but it makes the story better. It was so much more interesting.

In the book, as you may or may not know, Mickey lives with his uncle, Myron Bolitar. Myron Bolitar I’ve written 11 books on — he’s probably my biggest character. His rights are with another streamer who’s developing a TV series, so we couldn’t have him, in a way. This, to me, was really freeing because that meant I could create my own character. I made it Myron’s sister, and my first choice — my very first choice before I even discussed it — was Constance Zimmer. She would be perfect for this role. She captures exactly what I want. I love the idea of her in this world. I’ve seen her — we’ve all seen her — do many things, but in this world, with all these young people where she’s sort of the adult voice, I just thought it would be great.

And then we were developing her story, and we had this idea of her having dated Chief Taylor, who’s in the book, and then we said, “Well, you know what’d be a really interesting twist on that?” And that’s when we came up with the idea. And also, a lot of it was Missy Pyle playing Hannah. She’s such a talented actress, and she has such a comic genius. I originally had wanted her to be more….I don’t use the word “cliche” but more of like the at-home housewife who just does what Chief Taylor would say, and this is her chance to blossom. But as soon as you meet Missy, you go, “No, she’s just too big a personality for that.” And it made that relationship sort of fun and interesting and something very different, and two adult women who were not afraid to say what they wanted — we thought that would be really interesting. There’s a part where Hannah just says, “You know, listen — I love you. I’ve always loved you, and this is what I want.” They’re not hiding, not playing games, not being manipulative. It was quite an open, honest relationship.

I’m not sure it’s representative as much as it’s what school is like right now — what we are seeing. The actors really contributed to that, and Charlotte, my daughter, especially contributed to that. It’s not a world I’m as familiar with, but we just felt that would make the story interesting and pop, and I think, for the actors, they did feel very good about the representation, and I hope that people will embrace it in every which way.

I think it was really powerful. I’ve seen good reception on social media, so I think it definitely landed.

It is funny how many people are sending me emails. First, they wanted Whitney and Ema to happen, now they want Rachel and Ema to happen, and they want Spoon and Mickey to happen. It’s very funny. [Laughs]

The shippers are out!

I love how much they care. It means the world to me that these characters sort of came to life for them. And now that the show’s over, we get emails saying, “I miss them. I just spent an hour a week with them every week, and we kind of miss them.” And I miss them, too.

Image via Prime Video

Obviously, you talked about how you aren’t afraid to make changes, and I think it’s all the better for it. But was there anything that you absolutely did not want to change? Anything you held firm on when adapting this from the book?

They pretty much give me say-so. It’s not like they said to me, Oh, you have to do this.” And I’m like, “No, I’m gonna do it this way.” It’s a very cooperative group and a cooperative effort. I really did feel very strongly, though, that I wanted to give people answers. In the book, we don’t find out where Mickey’s father is until book three, and so they were, at first, like, “Okay, let’s do book one, book two, book three.” I’m like, “We can’t go three seasons without telling them what happened — if Mickey’s father is dead or alive. That’s just not what I do.”

I have a lot of series on Netflix that are mini-series that are contained. I don’t think it’s fair to set up the question in the first episode of if his father is alive or dead and not answer it. That was one thing I really wanted to stick to my guns on. When we started this series, there were three mysteries: is Mickey’s father alive or dead, where is Ashley, and what happened to Young Dylan Shakes after that Little League game in the 1990s? And we answer all three. We give you full answers. How many shows would you get full answers on all three?

Now, are you still in suspense? I hope so. Are there more mysteries now to solve that were raised? Boy, I hope so. But I wanted us to play fair. I wanted to make sure that the viewer, by the end of episode eight, got the answer to those three questions. If we did our job right — which I hope we did — you now want to know more. You want to know about some of the other characters, and you want to know about where they go from here.

That’s a good lead-in to the next question, which is, can you tease anything about what we might be able to see when we manifest Season 2?

There were a couple of little Easter eggs that I’m sure people noticed, especially as the house was burning down at the end of episode seven. I certainly got a number of messages about that, and we’ll see where that’s going to lead. I think that there will probably be repercussions for what happened — without giving anything away — at that ending and how that ending took place, who is responsible, where it is. I think there’s still more to obviously do there.

I hope to dig even deeper into Abeona and what that organization does. There’s a lot of different places to go. We’re gonna be doing some stuff with all the characters that’s going to surprise people, and we want to go even a little darker. I think it would be really kind of cool to put them through the wringer. I didn’t let the actors really see too far ahead, and I remember telling, at one point, Adrian, “No, no — you don’t stay just comic relief, my young friend. You don’t get it quite that easy.” And I think that it’s really going be — if we’re able to do it — very, very emotional.

We have a lot of good mysteries that we’ve already set the hooks on, and now we have to sort of continue. What’s going to happen now in terms of where Mickey’s life is going to go after the very, very end? What are we going to learn about? What else is in Bat Lady’s house when that fire takes place? Those sorts of questions. And we have answers for them all, and we just hope to keep being able to tell the story. Abeona is a really rich place to keep exploring a lot of different issues while telling entertaining stories.

All episodes of Harlan Coben’s Shelter Season 1 are now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.