Kat Harlton
Author Photograph: Phillipa Croft
With special thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada.
Lucky, the New York Times’ best selling novel by Canadian author Marissa Stapley, notably the only Canadian author to have a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, has been adapted into an Apple TV+ series of the same name, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, and premieres Monday, July 15.
Lucky Armstrong is a tough, talented grifter who has just pulled off a million-dollar heist with her boyfriend, Cary. She’s ready to start a brand-new life, with a new identity—when things go sideways. Lucky finds herself alone for the first time, navigating the world without the help of either her father or her boyfriend, the two figures from whom she’s learned the art of the scam.
When she discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, her elation is tempered by one big problem: cashing in the winning ticket means she’ll be arrested for her crimes. She’ll go to prison, with no chance to redeem her fortune.
As Lucky tries to avoid capture and make a future for herself, she must confront her past by reconciling with her father; finding her mother, who abandoned her when she was just a baby; and coming to terms with the man she thought she loved—whose dark past is catching up with her, too.
This is a novel about truth, personal redemption, and the complexity of being good. It introduces a singularly gifted, multilayered character who must learn what it means to be independent and honest…before her luck runs out.
I had the opportunity to chat with Marissa about adapting her best-selling novel into an Apple TV+ series, personal reinvention and more.
Kat: Your novel Lucky already had a cinematic quality on the page, what was your reaction when you found out it was going to be translated into an Apple TV+ series?
Marissa: There was always talk of an adaptation with Lucky. It was optioned before it had even been published, so I wouldn’t say I was surprised by the news. But what did surprise me was the complexity of the process, and the many times it felt like it wasn’t going to happen. I always felt very confident about Lucky getting made, and slowly came to realize that I shouldn’t necessarily have felt that way—it’s extremely difficult to get anything made. And yet, with Lucky, there was just this faith that it would happen that I haven’t felt with any of my other projects. It always felt inevitable, so every step forward, every milestone achieved, was a relief—like, ah, this is what’s supposed to be happening. We’re on the right track.
Kat: You’re the only Canadian author to have a Reese’s Book Club pick. How did that recognition change the trajectory of your career and your relationship with readers?
Marissa: I have always done well in Canada and been a bestseller here, but breaking through across North America has been a real challenge. The Reese’s Pick changed all that. I remember when my agent and editor sat me down to tell me the news, they said to prepare myself for absolutely everything to change—and that has been so true. This career is a rollercoaster, but the upward trajectory has been notable and sometimes dizzying, and I’m so grateful for all of it. Becoming a New York Times bestselling author was a wonderful milestone, and then came the adaptation and all the excitement surrounding it. I have loved sharing that excitement with my readers most of all.
Kat: Anya Taylor-Joy is leading the adaptation of Lucky. What about her as an actor do you think made her the right fit for this character?
Marissa: I’ll never forget coming out of my writing cave after finishing Lucky and seeing Anya in The Queen’s Gambit. It was one of the first things I watched when I finally had the time and headspace for TV again, and the moment I saw her, I just knew. Lucky needed to be played by someone with a unique and memorable presence, which Anya has in spades. But it wasn’t just that. She’s an actress of such determination and depth. She pushes herself to her absolute limits, and I instinctively knew she’d be the right person to play a character with nothing left to lose, using every resource she has just to survive. I think when she read the book, she felt the same pull toward it. It was kismet. There’s something truly rare about knowing, as a character’s creator, exactly who should play her—and then watching a creative team share that vision completely. I handed her over and witnessed the pieces fall into place almost as if by magic. It’s rare alchemy, and everyone involved with the show knows it. It’s very special.
Kat: Lucky explores reinvention, survival, and identity. Why do you think those themes are resonating so strongly with audiences right now?
Marissa: It’s tough out there in so many ways. The world is full of wonder and beauty, but it has also become a place where the meaning of truth seems to be shifting—where con artists and grifters are holding far higher positions than they ever should. I think there’s something genuinely refreshing about a character who might be morally grey but is ultimately on the right side of things. Someone with a real heart and soul that you want to root for.
And I think we live in a world right now where reinvention is more possible than ever before. Identity is more fluid, more self-determined, and less constrained by where you came from or what you’ve done. Lucky embodies that possibility. She keeps choosing herself, keeps finding a way to survive and transform, and I think readers and viewers connect to that because so many of us are determinedly doing the same thing in our own lives, even if the stakes aren’t quite as dramatic.
Kat: As someone deeply involved in storytelling, what’s the biggest difference between writing a novel and watching your characters come alive on screen?
Marissa: I’ve had many conversations at this point with producers, directors, and television creators about what makes a good adaptation, and the shared consensus is that a book has to be a jumping-off point, not a Bible. I imagine it like tumbling rocks—or, throwing a story into boiling water and rendering out its essence. Which is exactly what happened with Lucky! A truly great adaptation is like a sibling or companion to the source material. Novels have so much more interiority than a screenplay, and it would be a mistake to try to put every beat and moment from the page onto the screen. But what you do need to do — and Team Lucky nailed this — is take all of that interiority and identify what’s most important about each character, so you can put them through their visual paces in an authentic way. There are plot differences in this show that I wholeheartedly approved, because I knew that at its core, it contained the truest essence of every character I created. I love that viewers who are new to the story can watch the show and then go to the novel for even deeper insight into characters they’ve fallen in love with, while fans of the book can come to the show for a heightened, thrilling new experience with characters they already know.
Kat: Canadian authors are having a major global moment. What do you think makes Canadian storytelling uniquely compelling to international audiences?
Marissa: Lucky isn’t set in Canada, although some of my other novels are. I think what I can speak to here is a Canadian sensibility in storytelling, which feels very real to me. There’s a certain quality to how many of us who grew up here approach character: with empathy first. With an emotional honesty that is deeply earned. Canada is a country that has always wrestled thoughtfully with complicated questions of identity and belonging, and I think that finds its way into our fiction. Lucky is a woman without a country, in a sense—always on the outside, always reinventing—and maybe that’s a very Canadian story after all, even if it’s set elsewhere.
Kat: You’ll be in Los Angeles for the premiere and launch events, how surreal has this Hollywood experience felt compared to your early days as a writer?
Marissa: I always hoped and dreamed Lucky would become a show. In fact, I envisioned it as a show before it became a book. What I didn’t fully understand back then was just how long and complex the journey would be, and how much luck is genuinely involved. But I never lost that vision, and even on the days where it looked like it might all fall through, Lucky as a show felt inevitable to me. So, in some ways I’ve been able to be surprisingly relaxed about all of this, because I always carried a quiet certainty that this moment would come. And yet there are still moments where it feels completely unreal. It has been such a joyful experience, and lately I find myself wishing I could slow time down and fully inhabit every single second of it.
Kat: Fans are excited about your upcoming sequel, “No Such Thing as Lucky.” What can you tease about where the story and the character goes next?
Marissa: Lucky has always been a survivor, but in No Such Thing as Lucky, survival isn’t enough anymore: she has to fight back. The novel picks up a year later, and things have gone very wrong: the lottery money is gone, someone she loved is dead, and Lucky has been framed for murder. Her only way out involves working with the last person on earth she’d ever trust. It’s a globe-trotting thriller that takes Lucky from the California coast to Antwerp’s diamond district to the jungles of Belize. It has all the heart of the first book with even higher stakes and darker turns. I’d describe it as Lucky unleashed. She’s done playing by anyone else’s rules!
Kat: Many readers connect to Lucky because of its flawed yet determined protagonist. How do you approach writing characters who are messy, complicated, and still deeply relatable?
Marissa: I think the truth is that we’re all somewhat messy and complicated, at least at certain points in our lives. So I hope readers can find themselves in imperfection, because that’s really what I’m writing toward. With Lucky specifically, I wanted to create a woman who had done genuinely questionable things and yet never lost her essential humanity. That feels so important to me as a writing, to be hunting for redemption for my characters. People can be so hard on themselves, myself included. But we don’t have to let our worst moments define us. This is something I’m always trying to teach my kids and hold onto myself. That means when it comes to characters, I’m often interested in the kind of person who has been shaped by real damage, who has made choices she isn’t proud of, but who is still – stubbornly, defiantly — trying to find her way toward something good.
Kat: Between the Apple TV+ adaptation, your growing U.S. audience, and a sequel on the way, this feels like a breakout moment. What does success look like to you at this stage of your career?
Marissa: The moment I felt like a true success happened on the set of Lucky. It was of course incredibly gratifying to the ego to see my characters and world coming to life, but I was floored by the way it felt to see so many people working on something they were clearly so engaged in and passionate about. As I said earlier, it’s tough out there. The film and television industry has certainly had its struggles, and it’s harder today to get something made than it has ever been. To know I created a character who resonated with such brilliant minds, that they were able to work together to turn it into a show, and that the result of that was people getting to work, and thrive, felt like the most profound success I could ask for. One of the stunt guys even came up to me and thanked me because he had been able to pay his rent – and if that’s not success, what is?
Connect with Marissa Stapley: https://www.instagram.com/marissastapley/