Steven Moffat (“Doctor Who,” “Sherlock”) adapted “The Time Traveler’s Wife” into an HBO series because he’s a fan of the book.
“It inspired the [‘Doctor Who’] episode ‘The Girl in the Fireplace,’” Moffat told The Post. “I had just read ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’, which I loved. And I said, ‘We should do an episode like that.’ And then, in [author Audrey Niffenegger’s] next book, she had a character watching ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ on television. So, I knew she was onto me. And thereafter, we got in touch.”
Premiering May 15 (at 9 p.m.), the six-episode series stars Theo James as Henry de Tamble, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel and unable to control when or where he lands – and he’s always traveling naked, which causes problems when he’s unceremoniously dropped into random public locations. Clare Abshire (Rose Leslie, “Game of Thrones,”) his wife, has grown up knowing Henry since he time-traveled to visit her throughout her youth. When they meet when they’re both in their 20s, she’s thrilled to see him, but he doesn’t know who she is — since their visits are still in his future (even though they’re in her past.)
“What led me to fall in love with the book was its handling of the love story of Henry and Clare,” said Moffat. “Because Audrey does something very unusual. She takes the story of an absolutely happy marriage. Most love stories end at the altar, and we join them again when there’s a divorce, or an affair, or one of them dies. We don’t do the middle, where two people are perfectly happy with each other for decades. It’s a sort of ongoing miracle around us, and we don’t know how to write about it, because it just sounds sentimental and undramatic. And I think by using time travel, Audrey does a thing that allows you to remember on every page that love is inextricably linked to loss.”
“The Time Traveler’s Wife” was also a 2009 movie starring Rachel McAdams as Clare and Eric Bana as Henry.
“At the time that film came out, I wouldn’t have had the profile to be the one that got to adapt it, frankly,” said Moffat. “And I didn’t expect it. I never gave it a thought, except when I was nabbing ideas for ‘Doctor Who.’ On the very last day that I worked on ‘Doctor Who,’ I went for a drink with my executive producer, and he said, ‘I’ve been looking into the rights for ‘The time Traveler’s Wife.’” So, it wasn’t a case of me hanging around for a decade wondering when my turn would come. But, when it came up, I was keen.”
In the story, Henry and Clare spend a lot of time together when she’s a child and he’s an adult, which might raise some eyebrows in the audience.
“There will be people – and there have always have been people – who distort the intent of the book in order to pretend they’re outraged by it,” said Moffat. “If I look at a photograph of my wife as a child, I know that adorable little girl, and I love her because I love that human being … But there’s no sexual feeling to it, because that’s not a sexual being. Love is a bigger thing than sex. We shouldn’t be looking at everything through the prism of desire and sex. So, I think it’s a fake controversy. It’s not real. It’s people wanting to be outraged.
“I challenge anyone to find anything in the book, film, or TV show that suggests that [Henry] behaves in anything other than an absolutely appropriate way.”