Some stories refuse to stay on the page. The Hollywood Reporter’s Beyond the Book column explores what happens when books make the leap to screen and beyond — unpacking what changed, how it was done and why it matters with the creatives who made it.
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[Warning: This story contains spoilers for Netflix‘s My Life With the Walter Boys.]
Showrunner Melanie Halsall knew she found a “unicorn” of a book when discovering My Life With the Walter Boys.
While working as head of development for iGeneration Studios, the production company behind the Kissing Booth trilogy of films, Halsall recalls actively looking for YA projects when she found the Wattpad story written by then 15-year-old author Ali Novak in 2010.
“I could see straight away that it could be a TV series,” Halsall told The Hollywood Reporter. “I could immediately see how you could expand that world exponentially and tell lots of different stories from lots of different characters’ perspectives.”
The story’s premise allowed for exploration, Halsall explains. Walter Boys centers on city teen Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez) relocating to a small town to live with her new guardians and family friends after losing her parents and sister in an accident. When Jackie arrives at the Walters’ “overwhelming” household — an Americana-style family of 11 boys and one girl, including her eventual love interests Cole (Noah LaLonde) and Alex (Ashby Gentry) — Halsall saw an opportunity to build out an entire community around them. “I wanted to create an ensemble of a town around them where you could tell cross generational stories,” Halsall explains.
That kind of ensemble has worked successfully before. “I read it and it reminded me of the Gilmore Girls world of Stars Hollow,,” the showrunner tells THR. “Those kinds of books are a little bit like unicorns; they’re quite hard to find. Often when you are going beyond the book, you can see where the cracks are. Whereas because we could create such great characters because the book had such great characters in it, we could take them places.”
And places the series has gone thus far. With season 3 premiering on August 6, and a fourth season already renewed and filming, Netflix’s My Life with the Walter Boys has gone a number of places — most notably to the top of Netflix watch lists. This massive sleeper hit reached No. 1 in the Global Top 10, hitting the top spot in 50 countries following its December 2023 premiere. Season 2 debuted at No. 1 in the Global Top 10 and reached the Top 10 in 85 countries. Combined, the two seasons spent 15 weeks at the top of Netflix’s global viewing charts, where it amassed over 130 million views between 2023 and the end of 2025, according to the streamer.
While a successful addition to the streamer’s expansive slate of young adult stories, translating the book to screen didn’t come without challenges. From making adjustments to the book’s YA-heavy voice to character tweaks, Halsall details the show’s book-to-screen journey, including discovering a fresh cast, the series’ core love story engine and crafting those cliffhanger endings withRodriguez, LaLonde and Gentry also weighing in on the show’s success.
Maturing the Book’s Characters Broadened Its Audience
When adapting My Life With the Walter Boys for television Halsall observed that the book “read a little bit younger,” appealing primarily to young girls. But to find success on screen, the series needed to retain that core audience while attracting a broader, multigenerational viewership.
When writing season one, the creative team diligently worked on maintaining some “key scenes and moments from the book, while also developing and expanding and growing the book for a TV audience,” says Halsall. She recalls one memorable book sequence in which Jackie is startled by the family’s pet snake and spills a bowl of spaghetti over everyone. “But as season one developed, it was quite clear that we couldn’t keep it the same as the book,” Halsall says of having to adjust their initial vision of a direct adaptation.
With the “chemistry between the actors” palpable, Halsall explains that “it didn’t make sense for them to be ragging on her quite so much as they continue to do in the book.” She adds, “They prank her quite relentlessly [and] ruthlessly, and I felt that made the characters seem unsympathetic.”
The characters Alex and Cole underwent their own evolutions as love interests. In the book, Alex is a computer nerd but the series gave him greater emotional depth and his relationship with Jackie unfolds slightly differently. Cole, meanwhile, was “a little bit more of a bad boy” on the page — something Halsall lessened in the show. ”We amalgamated characters. We changed characters. We added people to give us a broader range of things we could explore,” the showrunner says.
The Series’ Cast Helped Deliver Its Mega Success
“We’re so lucky with our cast, we just hit the jackpot,” Halsall says.
Casting for the series was held over Zoom in 2020, and for many of the actors, the show marked only their first or second professional gig.
“They weren’t super experienced, and they all just kind of fell into this brilliant ensemble of their own where they became great friends,” Halsall says. “All of our cast have great chemistry. They love being here. They love being together. They support each other so well. They all kind of glow on screen.”
The series’ cast is led by Rodriguez, who previously appeared in Netflix’s 2018 series On My Block. LaLonde, who has starred in a handful of independent films, counts a guest appearance on Criminal Minds: Evolution among his major TV credits. And before Walter Boys, Gentry’s notable television appearance was on the teen horror series Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Despite that relative inexperience, the young ensemble quickly became a close-knit group, Halsall says.
“They all fell into this brilliant ensemble on their own [and] became great friends,” the showrunner says. “All of our cast have great chemistry. They love being here. They love being together. They support each other so well. They all glow on screen.”
For Rodriguez, portraying Jackie has given her the opportunity to grow alongside her character.
“This is the longest that I’ve played a character, which is so cool to evolve as a person alongside your character. It’s just a blessing, and I feel really grateful,” Rodriguez tells THR.
LaLonde says the experience was equally transformative.
“When we were doing season one, I had no experience on a set of this magnitude, it was really my first real role. And the entire time, I often thought it was too good to be true, because it was that wonderful of an experience. The crew was amazing, Calgary is such a beautiful place to live and to film. … I wouldn’t have changed a thing about the whole process,” he reflects.
Gentry admits he too never envisioned being on a show of this magnitude, telling THR, “I never thought I would be getting stopped in the street by people as an actor ever. I assumed I would be a working actor who hopefully could pay his bills.”
Halsall credits Sarah Rafferty (Suits) and Marc Blucas (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who portray the Walter parents, for being “a guiding hand” and giving a “sense of security” for the newer cast. “They absolutely embrace these younger actors as if they were family,” she adds.
Tackling the YA Genre: “It’s Parameters More Than Restrictions”
“Whenever anyone comes to work on the show, whether they be a director, a crew member, a writer, whatever, the thing I always say to them is, ‘This is a high-end drama with young people in it,’” Halsell says.
The Wattpad story that was published in print and digital formats by Sourcebooks Fire in 2014, four years after making its debut on the online site, was categorized as a contemporary romance for teens. But adapting a story centered on teenagers meant finding ways to honor the book’s YA roots while creating a broader, more expansive series.
“We are telling it through the lens of mainly teenagers” which “has its own restrictions,” Halsall notes. “They might have part time jobs. They go to school. They don’t drive, or they’re learning to drive. There’s certain things that you just tell the story within but the stories themselves, you could tell with 40-year-olds, should you wish to.”
It’s “parameters more than restrictions,” Halsall says.
“Yes, it’s incredibly popular with a young audience, but it’s also incredibly popular with a Gen X audience,” she says. “One of the things I always wanted from this show was that you could watch it intergenerationally, without it feeling like you were watching a family show or you’re watching a show that was for children”
Achieving broad appeal remains central to the series’ ambitions. While My Life With the Walter Boys may not appeal to every viewer, or get comparisons to other shows, Halsall says she hopes it can become a show that families enjoy together — even those who might not typically seek out YA romance.
“Everybody should be able to sit down and enjoy it. If you love cop shows, you’re probably not going to switch this on. But your child does, your daughter does, and [if] you sit and watch it, [we’re] hoping that you will enjoy some of it,” she says.
Though the familiar tropes of YA storytelling exist throughout, the series engages with the genre’s conventions earnestly and with sincerity, says Halsall.
“What the cast brought more than anything is just their incredible chemistry and their incredible commitment to this world and this storyline. We take this seriously. We take what some people might think of teenage trials and tribulations of romance and love, we treat those with the respect they deserve because when you are a teenager those things are life and death, and the cast understand that,” she says.
The cast share the same sentiments.
“We set out to make a show that made you feel good and feel all of the things about growing up and evolving as young people and as a family, and I think that comes across on the screen. We all are very close friends. I think that also reads,” Rodriguez tells THR.
“We make a point to not trivialize this because of its genre,” Gentry says. “It’s really easy to decide that you know how something is supposed to be done and to assume tone, genre and audience. The goal is always to elevate this to more than what everyone thinks it can be. And I think in moments we’re successful, and in some moments we are not. But the intention is always there to treat this just as seriously as we treat anything else we do.”
He adds, “The odds of something like this happening again are not high, and it occurred to me recently this could end up being my quote-unquote life’s work at some point. From an outside perspective, and if that’s true, I don’t want to trivialize it. I really take it seriously, and everybody on the show does. I think if there’s something that sets it apart, it’s this undertone of sincerity and honesty and intention. And I think that resonates with people.”
LaLonde says, “I think maybe when you have a group of people who love what they’re doing and love each other, maybe some of that translates through to the audience, and you can feel like you’re in on the story, and you’re a part of this family … and maybe that keeps people around and motivates them to see what happens next. Because they care? Because we care so much? There’re so many great shows out there, so I’m just grateful that ours has been one that people have resonated with enough to allow us to keep doing it.”
Cliffhanger Season Endings Keep the Audience Intrigued
The Netflix series has not shied away from ending on a cliffhanger. At the end of season one, the audience saw a much anticipated kiss between Rodriguez’s Jackie and LaLonde’s Cole, despite her being in a relationship with his brother Alex (Gentry). The moment results in Jackie leaving the Walter home and returning to New York to live with her uncle. Season two ends with George being rushed to the hospital and a love confession between Jackie and Cole, only for Alex to overhear. The third season ends with a car crash and an unexpected kiss.
With each season closing with an unresolved ending, Halsall says finales are crafted to keep the audience wanting more.
“Obviously, what you want to do at the end of a season is give the audience something to hope for. You want to leave the audience wanting more. You want to leave the audience desperate to see the next episode, the next season,” she says.
However, Halsall also notes, “We never end the season knowing we’re going to have another one.”
The show has however achieved early multi-season pickups prior to seasons premiering. “We started season four before season three dropped. We started season three before season two dropped, which is incredibly kind and a great testament to Netflix for the trust they put in us,” the showrunner says. “But it isn’t necessarily something we write with that in mind.”
Prior to the show’s third season premiering on Aug. 6, Netflix already announced it would come back for a fourth season.
Season 3 Marks a Sophisticated Change for the Show
With now three seasons, the showrunner notes the notable difference in the show’s third cycle.
“Season three showed a level of sophistication and feels a little bit like a different show in every kind of way,” she says. “We’ll continue that in season four.”
She adds, “I think our audiences love the romance of it, but they also love the coming-of-age stuff that we talk about, the friendships and those moments in life that do set you on a more grown-up, mature path. And in season four, we definitely start to explore more of that. We delve more deeply into our storytelling and into our characters. I think the storytelling is growing with our characters and becoming more sophisticated as our audience does and our characters and our cast does. So that’s kind of very exciting.”
There Is a Planned Ending
While each season has ended leaving the audience guessing what’s to come next, Halsall assures there is a complete story in mind though stays mum on adding further.
“I definitely have a story in mind,” she says. “Obviously things adapt and change while you’re writing. But the overall sense of where we’ll end up remains more or less the same.”
“We’ve been incredibly lucky. I hope we remain lucky. I hope audiences continue to love the show. I love the show. I love working on it. I love making it. I love our cast. I hope our audience does too. We hope for the best and we prepare for everything else.”
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My Life With the Walter Boys is available to stream on Netflix.
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