really very few [diverse characters].
And it’s amazing because all over the
world, particularly in the Philip-
pines, they loved Sweet Valley, and I
thought, “But there’s nobody like
you there. Why do you love it?” But
they did. I guess because of this com-
mon denominator [of teenage life]
that I was talking about—it didn’t
make any difference what color [the
readers were], everybody was really
essentially the same.
Right around the time Jessica Wake-
field was dating secret vampire
Jonathan Cain ( book No. 127, Dance
of Death)—a precursor to the YA vam-
pire boom—the twins were given new
life on the small screen. Sweet Valley
High the TV series, starring former
Doublemint twins Brittany and Cyn-
thia Daniel, ran from 1994 to 1997 in
syndication and briefly on UPN. Pas-
cal worked with her daughter, casting
director and producer Jamie Stewart,
to find the perfect set of identical
actresses through nationwide casting
calls. (Stewart died in 2008 after bat-
tling liver disease.)
PASCAL [Jamie] did the traveling to
find them, yeah. All kinds of twins
showed up to the auditions. And
[Jamie] found a set of twins, Brittany
and Cynthia, they were California
twins. They looked like they just
walked out of the books.
Hollywood has been trying to adapt
SVH into a movie for a full decade.
Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo
Cody (Juno) was the first to take a
crack at it, in 2009, for Universal, but
the script stalled. The project has since
moved to Paramount; Kirsten “Kiwi”
Smith and Harper Dill were hired to
write the screenplay in 2017 but were
replaced by Emmy-winning Rick and
Morty writer (and hardcore SVH fan)
Jessica Gao earlier this year. Pascal,
who does not have script approval but
is consulting on the film, is still hope-
ful a movie can happen—but the years
of delay have taken a slight toll on her
enthusiasm. “I hope I live long enough
for this [to happen],” she says frankly.
PASCAL I had such high hopes for
Universal because Diablo is a won-
derful writer and she loves Sweet
Valley, but I don’t think it was her
fault. I think it was the story; it
wasn’t good. Now they have a differ-
ent writer, and they will consult
with me on the story.
I think they want something new
[rather than basing it on an existing
book], and they have some good
ideas, it’s just a matter of getting it
right. I do want it to be done right. I
would like it to be done. It’s so many
years now that this has been going
on, and it’s really a shame. They
seem very serious, and the people in
charge [at Paramount] are Sweet
Valley fans, so I’m trusting them.If Wishe s
Were Horses
(1994)Though she was generally “drowning”
in SVH duties, Pascal did find time to
write two adult novels: a psychological
thriller called Save Johanna! in 1981,
and If Wishes Were Horses, a fiction-
alized memoir about her love affairwith her husband, John, who died
from cancer in 1981. Horses follows
Anna, who copes with her husband’s
death by relocating to France, where
she looks back on their turbulent
courtship and loving marriage while
struggling to acclimate to an often
unforgiving French culture.
PASCAL I was thinking about [writ-
ing] it all through the ’80s. I probably
would not have done it while he was
alive. First of all, it was a little close.
And I thought, “Am I going to
remember all those things that hap-
pened?” But when I sat down to write
it, I remembered—I could see it all.
And the fact was, my husband wasn’t
there to say, “Don’t do that!” It gave
me a lot of freedom.
[Writing] it was funny and sad. It
was going back to a lot of things that
I really hadn’t thought about and
probably would never have thought
about if I wasn’t using them [for the
book]. Also, I could look with
humor at a lot of these tragic things.
It was cathartic.Pascal says “the core of everything” in
Horses is based in truth, including
some of the most dramatic elements:
Like Anna, Pascal was romantically← From left Pascal
says Cici is “my
favorite book, with-
out question”;
Fearless, Pascal’s
second-most-
popular YA series,
has 3 million copies
in print in North
America; Kid was
made into an ABC
Afterschool Special
in 1983↓ Rachael Leigh
Cook and Ian
Somerhalder in the
never-aired WB
pilot for Fearless