Latest news with #JudyBlumeForever
USA Today
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Forever' gives modern refresh to Judy Blume novel: Biggest changes in Netflix series
'Forever' gives modern refresh to Judy Blume novel: Biggest changes in Netflix series Show Caption Hide Caption Exclusive clip from 'Judy Blume Forever' Author Mary H.K. Choi reflects on the complex theme of Judy Blume's "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" in the documentary "Judy Blume Forever." USA TODAY Handout Spoiler alert! We're discussing major plot details from the new series adaptation of 'Forever' (all episodes on Netflix now). 'Forever...' was controversial when Judy Blume published it in 1975. The young adult novel follows a high school girl navigating her first love and first time. 'Forever' talks candidly about sex, consent, mental health and depression. When it came out 50 years ago, the book was deemed too sexually explicit and faced criticism and bans. Now, as a series streaming on Netflix, the latest 'Forever' adaptation meets a culture that's more prepared to openly talk about sex in modern media. Mara Brock Akil's adaptation reimagines Blume's classic with a contemporary Black cast, dealing with identity, expectations, race and class as much as it does with losing one's virginity. 'Forever' adapts Judy Blume novel with all-Black cast Brock Akil's 'Forever' is loosely adapted from the Blume book, so many of its key plot points have been changed or given a modern refresh. The characters' names are no longer Katherine and Michael but Keisha (Lovie Simone) and Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.). The story takes place in Los Angeles, not in New Jersey. Both characters are Black and their place in predominantly white schools – especially Justin – is a major theme. 'Other shows have tried to showcase this nuanced experience of growing up Black in a white environment, but none have succeeded as pitch-perfectly as Forever does,' Nadira Goffe, a culture writer from Slate who is Black, wrote in a review. With eight episodes, 'Forever' has time to sink into much more than Blume's book could at less than 230 pages. The series is also told from both Justin and Keisha's perspectives (the book is just Katherine), and we get a more full view of their family life, friends and communities. Class plays a bigger role in this adaptation than it did in the book – Justin's family is well-off and summers on Martha's Vineyard while Keisha's single mom struggles to make ends meet. Some aspects are the same, including awkward sexual experiences, the thrill of first love and a brief mention of the couple's friends seeing each other. In the book, Katherine and Michael's friends Erica and Artie try their hand at dating but Artie's struggles with his sexuality and eventual suicide attempt prevent it from going further. The series skips that, but still has candid conversations about mental health. Keisha tells Justin about her depression before she switched schools. Later, she and her mom have a breakthrough after therapy. 'Forever' gets a modern refresh with technology, social media pitfalls Gone are the letter-writing chapters from Blume's 1975 novel, replaced with the agony of waiting for a text reply and the will-they-won't-they blocking and unblocking of modern young love. Justin even gets his friends to post #UnblockJustin to campaign for Keisha's attention after they have a falling out. When they rekindle it's in the form of Daft Punk and Tyler, The Creator lyrics. And in a world all too familiar with revenge porn and sextortion, the new adaptation shows Keisha in crisis after her ex-boyfriend shares a sex tape they made. Keisha is humiliated and forced to leave her current school, transferring to another, more expensive one. Her reputation among former peers, Justin's missteps to understand what she's going through and her reappearing ex add major strife to the relationship. Ralph is still, well, Ralph If you've read the Blume book, you might remember that Michael affectionately referred to his genitals as 'Ralph.' It's only mentioned once in the adaptation (unlike the book, where the moniker appears frequently), but Brock Akil told The New York Times she kept Ralph to thank Blume 'for her blessing to translate the book.' Jokes aside, the new Netflix adaptation is faithful to Blume's book in that it portrays the complications of coming into sexuality without condemning it as bad, unnatural or dangerous. Keisha and Justin work through hovering parents and technical difficulties before they get to their first time. It's awkward at times, but it's human. Blume originally wrote the book for her daughter, she writes on her website, to present a story where two teenagers fall in love and have sex without anyone's life being ruined. In the book, Katherine goes to Planned Parenthood to get birth control. In the series, Justin has an important conversation (and cucumber demonstration) with his father about contraception. 'Forever' ending stays broadly faithful to Blume book Blume's novel ends, despite their planning and wishing, with Katherine and Michael breaking up. After a summer apart (in the book, Katherine kisses another guy at camp in the wake of her grief after losing her grandfather), the two decide maybe they weren't each others' forevers after all. The same happens in Brock Akil's adaptation. While his mom expects him to go to a prestigious college to play basketball and study a profitable major, Keisha helps Justin realize that what he really wants to do is pursue music. The pair part on amicable, albeit heartbreaking, terms. By the last scene, they understand that there are bigger things in store for each of them as Keisha goes to Howard University and Justin saves up on his gap year. Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, check out her recent articles or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@
Los Angeles Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
How Judy Blume's books became a hot commodity in Hollywood, 50 years later
When Mara Brock Akil was a little girl, she voraciously read Judy Blume. Looking back, she sees her obsession as the start of her becoming a writer. So when Akil heard that Blume was allowing her work to be translated to the screen, she was ready: 'My little girl hand just shot up, 'I want to do that!'' says Akil. She adds that while this generation's youth can search the internet for information — and, sometimes, misinformation — Blume was her own trusted source. 'The Information Age linked us and let us see things that we weren't able to see or know, and Judy was that for us,' says Akil. 'Judy was writing from a place that was really grounded and gave full humanity to young people and their lives. She took their lives seriously.' Akil has channeled her affection for Blume's work into a new adaptation of the author's 1975 novel 'Forever...,' which premiered Thursday on Netflix. Focused on two teens falling in love, the book contains sex scenes that placed it on banned lists from its inception — and Blume, whose work offers frank discussion of subjects like masturbation and menstruation, remains no stranger to banned book lists, despite selling more than 90 million books worldwide. But as censorship ramps up again, Blume has become something of a hot commodity in Hollywood. In addition to the documentary 'Judy Blume Forever,' a feature film based on her novel 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' was released in 2023, an adaptation of 'Summer Sisters' is in development at Hulu and an animated film based on 'Superfudge' is in the works at Disney+. Akil's 'Forever,' set in 2018 Los Angeles, stars Michael Cooper Jr. and Lovie Simone as the teenage leads — though the roles are gender-swapped from the novel. In 2020, while Akil was developing the adaptation, she tried to think of who the most vulnerable person is in society. 'I posit that the Black boy is the most vulnerable,' she says. 'My muse is my oldest son, and through the portal of him I got to go into the generation and just really start to look at what was going on.' While working on the project, she realized there are few depictions of boys and young men whose story is anchored in love, rather than relegating love to a side plot. 'Mentally, emotionally, physically — they too deserve to fall in love and be desired and have someone fall in love with them,' she says. 'And for Keisha — his honesty was attractive to her. How often do we ever really see that level of vulnerability be the leading guy?' In true Blume style, Akil also incorporated a central issue affecting people today — technology. 'The phone is a big character in the show, because there's a lot of duality to the phone,' she says. Throughout the series, the characters use phones to connect and disconnect via blocked messages, lost voicemails and unfinished texts. In the premiere, the drama revolves around the dreaded disappearing ellipsis — that feeling when you can see someone typing and then it stops. Akil laughs when I bring it up: 'At any age, that ellipsis will kick your butt.' And when you add sex into the mix, everything becomes more charged. 'The phone in the modern times is an extension of pleasure in sexuality, when used in a trusting way, and then it can be weaponized,' says Akil. 'It can be so damaging to this generation's future at a time in which mistakes are inherent in their development.' It's this keen awareness that the mistakes haven't changed but the consequences have that grounds Akil's version of 'Forever.' 'There's a lot of real fear out there and real tough choices that parents are going through,' says Akil. 'And in this era of mistakes, kids can make a mistake and die by exploring drugs or —' She stops herself. 'I get very emotional about the state of young people and their inability to make a mistake,' she says, 'because I think most young people are actually making good choices.' Akil says Blume and her family have seen the episodes more than once and told the showrunner she really enjoyed them. Akil remembers first meeting Blume. 'I was nervous. I wanted to be seen by her,' she says. 'I fangirled out and she allowed it and then was, like, sit your soul down. We had a conversation, and it felt destined and magical. I was grateful that she listened, and it allowed me to come to the table saying, 'I know how to translate this.'' I ask Akil why she thinks Blume's work continues to resonate, lasting for decades in its original form and spawning new projects to attract the next generation of viewers and, hopefully, readers. 'She's relevant because she dared to tell us the truth,' says Akil. 'And the truth is forever.'
