Episode 55: Adaptation with Cord Jefferson & Percival Everett

We have a special edition of The Big Table Podcast on today’s episode. Presenting Adaptation, the inaugural event of a new literary salon series and collaboration between USC’s Dornsife Experimental Humanities Lab and Soho House. Adaptation will feature conversations between writers and screenwriters discussing the art of adapting books into TV and film. Up first, the Oscar-winning writer-director Cord Jefferson and the USC distinguished professor and novelist Percival Everett. Jefferson adapted Everett’s novel Erasure into the Oscar-nominated film, American Fiction, which opened in December 2023. Jefferson went on to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay a few days after this conversation was recorded. On the episode, Jefferson and Everett discuss the process of taking an experimental and innovative text like Erasure and turning it into something that honors the new form while staying true to the spirit of the original work. This is an initiative of Danzy Senna in collaboration with curator Margot Ross. We thank them both for including us in this incredible new series and for the opportunity to preserve these valuable conversations for posterity. It was a magical night in an intimate room and so we are very glad to be able to share it with a wider audience. MUSIC “I Didn't Know About You” by Thelonious Monk Composed by Bob Russell & Duke Ellington Performed by Thelonious Monk, Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, Ben Riley