The Three-Body Problem: how the series differs (much) from the book

The version proposed by Netflix takes big liberties, especially with the characters.

“On set, I tended to get lost sometimes. I said to myself: but why don't we do this scene? Oh but no, it’s a scene from the book, not from the series!” Jess Hong confided to us a few days ago, at Séries Mania, that she had been somewhat disoriented when filming began. Three-Body Problemshe who had just finished the book of Liu Cixin. And for good reason, the Netflix series takes big liberties with the Chinese novel (published in France in 2016). So much so that John Bradleyfor his part, admitted to us that he had stopped reading when he saw that it was not going to bring him much to play Jack Rooney, a tech millionaire who went to Oxford – one of the first characters in the series to try to solve The Three-Body Problem – which doesn't exist in books!

Because if the essence of the philosophical-cosmic intrigue, which makes novels of Liu Cixin such a particular work, is perfectly respected, the version of Weiss and Benioff reworks most of the characters, choosing to westernize the action.

Everything takes place in China in the book, while the plot of Three-Body Problem quickly moves to the UK in the series. Apart from the young astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, who is indeed one of the heroines of the novel, the entire group of physics geniuses from Oxford was invented for the needs of the show, taking characters from the book to transpose them in a more or less loyal to London. No Wang Miao, a physicist specializing in nanomaterials, instead, Eiza Gonzalez (One Night in Hell) plays Auggie Salazar…

“There are many differences, and many similarities“, summarizes for us Jess Hong.

“The two, the series and the book, end up mixing in fact. David Benioff, Dan Weiss and Alexander Wu have frankly achieved a feat in adapting a story that is so vast, made up of so many plots and characters that don't intersect not directly in the book, to concentrate it in a group of five geniuses in London and create interactions.”