October Review Challenge, #19 - Side character who turned out to be special

October Review Challenge, #19 - "What’s a side character who turned out special?"

This is, without a doubt, Justin Hawking from the Mrs. Hawking series. He’s one of my favorite characters I’ve ever written. He is the charming, globetrotting elder brother of lead character Nathaniel Hawking, and designed to act as a foil to him. Where Nathaniel craves approval, Justin has turned not caring what people think of him into a lifestyle. Nathaniel is conventional, Justin is radical. Nathaniel is a mild-mannered monogamous father, while Justin is a bisexual libertine who’ll try anything once. It turned out I loved writing their interactions; I found giving them a push-pull between being there for one another and trying to get each other’s goat made for a very compelling relationship.

He’s just so charismatic and fun. He first appeared to needle everybody in part III: Base Instruments. I liked how he was sexy and fearless about it; again it made a nice contrast to the rest of the prudish and goody-goody cast. And I liked how he challenged them on their preconceptions, given his boldness in the face of social convention and his understanding of the artificiality and falseness of it. Still, we gave him a bit of extra dimension by revealing he’s sensitive to the fact that he’s the black sheep of his family, and Bernie suggested giving him a romantic history with Nathaniel’s wife Clara, to add an extra layer of complication.

I missed him since retiring Base Instruments from rep. He was played by Eric Cheung and Christian Krenek, each in their own way but both with a lot of charm. So, when Bernie and I wanted to go lighter and funny for our Hawking show this year, we decided it was finally time to bring him back— specifically in his own spinoff, the Wodehousian romantic comedy Gentlemen Never Tell. It allowed us to not only enjoy his fun and humorous qualities, it let us explore him a little bit more deeply. In this story, in addition to being funny, we let him confront his privilege as a wealthy libertine, and confront the fact that a lot of people see him as a user, as well as get to demonstrate his bisexuality in a meaningful way.

We’ll be putting that show up for the first time this fall. Christian plays Nathaniel these days, so Eric will be returning to bring him again to life. I’m really excited to be returning to him. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.


Photo by John Benfield