"Dear Sugar, how do I respectfully take ownership of a source of material that was created by another writer and has a community of admirers who feel a really strong sense of connection to the work?" It was the question Liz Tigelaar, a writer and producer whose credits include "Little Fires Everywhere" and "Casual," wishes she could have posed as she set out to adapt a book of essays based on Cheryl Strayed's beloved online advice column.
Strayed began writing the column under the pseudonym "Dear Sugar" more than a decade ago when she was a struggling writer. She developed a loyal following by dispensing insightful and compassionate guidance on life's hard, messy and heartbreaking conundrums by mining her own experiences. They were the basis for the 2012 collection of essays "Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar." (She later revived the column as a podcast and, more recently, as a newsletter.)
In the new Hulu series, titled "Tiny Beautiful Things," Tigelaar avoided the temptation of having the letter writers be a character in each episode in orbit of its protagonist, Clare Pierce, played by Kathryn Hahn in the present and Sarah Pidgeon in the past, choosing instead to build out the memoir element of the essays.
