Sarah Vaughan, author of Reputation
Sarah Vaughan studied English at Oxford and went on to become a journalist. She spent eleven years at The Guardian as a news reporter and political correspondent before leaving to freelance and write fiction. Her first thriller, Anatomy of a Scandal, was an instant international bestseller, translated into twenty-four languages, and is available to stream on Netflix as a worldwide number one series starring Sienna Miller, Michelle Dockery, and Rupert Friend. Her bestselling novel, Little Disasters, has also been optioned for television, as has Reputation, her fifth novel.
Kobo: Tell us about Reputation! In the way that Anatomy of a Scandal was inspired by the political climate at the time, what inspired the writing of Reputation?
Sarah Vaughan: The germ for Reputation was an interview with Jess Phillips, a female Labour MP, back in May 2019. In it, she revealed she had nine locks on her front door and a panic alarm by the side of her bed because she’d experienced such extreme online abuse. At the same time, a couple of other women MPs—including my own—started to speak of their own rape and death threats, and I started to think about how I would react if I was living under that level of abuse. Having just written Little Disasters, in which Jess’s disordered thinking creates jeopardy for herself, I knew a character assailed by threats from numerous different angles might not always think or behave rationally. I wanted to create a woman who’d dared to put her head above the parapet, throw danger at her from all angles, and then explore what would happen next.
Kobo: As some readers likely know, your last book, Anatomy of a Scandal, was adapted by Netflix for the screen. Do you have any actors or actresses in mind to play the characters in Reputation?
SV: I’m very lucky in that the dream team that produced Anatomy of a Scandal, Made Up Stories and 3dot Productions, has optioned Reputation and are excited about it, so I have everything crossed that it might make it to the screen. But I always draw a blank about preferred actors. The Netflix adaptation also taught me that it doesn’t matter if a character differs from your initial physical description. In the book, Sophie’s hair is dark—I imagined her hair like Kate Middleton’s—and Kate’s hair is dyed blonde. But now I can’t think of my story without seeing Sienna Miller as Sophie and Michelle Dockery as Kate. I do think Emma doesn’t need to be a conventional beauty, but she needs to convey an inner strength.
Kobo: What book is currently at the top of your TBR pile?
SV: I have a couple of proofs I’m keen to read over the festive period by author friends: Louise Candlish’s The Only Suspect, which Lisa Jewell says is her best yet and which has a dog called Olive (my dog’s name) in its opening pages, and Windmill Hill by Lucy Atkins, who wrote the evocative Magpie Lane. Also, Liz Nugent’s Strange Sally Diamond—no one writing psychological thrillers writes characters quite like hers.
Kobo: What’s next for you? Any future books in the works?
SV: Yes. I’ve just made the decision to put the book I was writing on hold and instead pursue a new one. I’ve never done this before, but I’m excited about really delving into this new project in the new year. And I’m hoping I might get increasingly involved in potential TV projects. While I can’t imagine not writing books, I feel very lucky that my stories might find fresh audiences through a different medium.
Reputation
The bestselling author of Anatomy of a Scandal—now a hit Netflix series—returns with a psychological thriller about a politician whose less-than-perfect personal life is thrust into the spotlight when a body is discovered in her home.
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