Luckiest Girl Alive, a new film adaption starring Mila Kunis based on a book by the same name, explores themes of assault as 28-year-old Ani comes to term with the emotionally scarring events of her teen years.

Author Jessica Knoll recently sat down with uInterview founder Erik Meers to discuss the real story behind the book.

“At the time, I wrote what happened to me into a larger story of fiction because I wasn’t yet comfortable coming forward in a public way. That was because of the way I was treated in the aftermath of my assault when I was in high school,” Knoll said. “I was blamed and shamed and really silenced. I said a couple of times to a doctor, to one of the guys who assaulted me, ‘I was raped. You raped me.’ People were like, ‘No, it’s just too complicated. That’s not what happened. It was a party, it got out of hand.’

“I really shut down around it and I was afraid and it’s hard when you know something is true but everyone around you is telling you that you’re wrong and won’t validate your experience as you know it happened,” she added. “I was scarred by that, so I put it into fiction. I just thought, I’ll let the world decide and if they use the correct terminology around that scene and what happens to her, then I’ll know that I was right. I’ll have that validation and that is what happened in the year that followed. That’s what ultimately gave me the confidence to write an essay coming forward, saying that experience that Ani has in the book is inspired by my own real-life assault. I credit the women who came up to me the year after the book came out for giving me the courage to do that.”

The author also spoke on working with Mila Kunis, who portrayed Ani, and revealed if she gave the actress advice.

“Hell no. I did not give Mila Kunis any advice. I don’t know if I’d be sitting here if I did that,” the author laughed. “That’s the best thing about Mila. She’s super candid. She’s super bold. It’s really refreshing and amazing to me, as someone who is such a people pleaser and who wrote this character who can’t say what she really feels out loud … and Mila is someone who just tells it as it is and doesn’t hold back. She’s very communicative. If anything, Mila would just read it and be like, ‘Jess, this is so far from who I am and my experience in life, I’m just baffled!’ We would just laugh about how different we are.”

Luckiest Girl Alive is now streaming on Netflix.

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