To celebrate paperback release of the final book in the Traitor Spy trilogy, THE TRAITOR QUEEN (UK | US | AUS ), we asked fans of the Trudi Canavan Facebook page what questions they’d ask Trudi about her writing if given the chance. There was a fantastic selection, which were then voted down to a final four for Trudi Canavan to answer. Find out about who Trudi would cast in the Black Magician trilogy films, and more about her new series, the Millennium’s Rule trilogy.

Q. If the Black Magician trilogy were made into a film, who would you like to portray the main characters?

A. My original casting wish list betrays my age! I wanted Natalie Portman as Sonea and Daniel Day Lewis as Akkarin, and Matthew Broderick as Cery. But those choices were just the first building blocks and my visual picture of the characters changed as I wrote the Black Magician Trilogy. You see, in developing the world my approach was to try to make the ecology and cultures seem less like this world’s past transplanted onto another, but a truly new world. My rule was ‘inspired by not based on’. I applied that rule to the people as well, who aren’t based on any particular race or culture of this world but have small similarities to some. I realised later that the small similarities were inspired mainly by the wonderful mix of people in Australia, created by our proximity to Asia and Polynesia, and the waves of immigration over the last century.

I’ve put together a Pinterest page called Casting Wishlist, but since film and TV isn’t based in multicultural Australia, I found it hard to find actors to play all of the characters – and even Bollywood hasn’t made finding someone to play Faren easy.

Q. I simply loved your books. ALL of them. Especially the ones in the Black Magician universe. Will we ever see any adventures set in these lands again?

A. Maybe. When I finished the Black Magician trilogy I didn’t think I’d write a sequel as I didn’t have enough ideas. But as I wrote the Age of the Five the few ideas I had began to develop and attract others, so by the time that trilogy was done I was ready to write not just a sequel, but a prequel as well. Once again, I don’t have enough ideas for more books, but I’m hoping the ones I have will mature into something worth writing while I’m writing the Millennium’s Rule trilogy. All I can say is, I like the idea of jumping another twenty years forward and putting Lorkin in the position of the worried parent, introducing new technology and forcing more class-leveling challenges on the Guild.

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