Author May Cobb’s books are perhaps best known for their pitch-perfect summertime vibes: Propulsive fast-paced stories featuring morally gray characters a bit of spicy sexiness and what often feels like a constant stream of unexpected twists. They’re the sort of books that are made for pool season—and which are all too easy to “accidentally” finish in a single sitting. And her latest thriller, titled The Hollywood Assistant, is no different, exploring issues ranging from illicit sexual relationships to the toxicity that so often goes hand in hand with female friendship.
The Hollywood Assistant is something of a swerve for Cobb in terms of its setting, trading in the familiar sweeping vistas of East Texas that usually populate her novels for the high-pressure world of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. It follows the story of Cassidy Foster, who moves to California after a bad break-up. With her writing projects stalled, she takes a job as a personal assistant to an up-and-coming actress, and her successful director husband. The position seems almost too good to be true—she’ll barely have to do much beyond running household errands and will have plenty of time to try and find her
We had the chance to chat with Cobb herself about the inspiration behind her latest twisty thriller, the complicated nature of female friendship, whether The Hollywood Assistant has a happy ending, and more.
Paste Magazine: Tell us about where the idea for The Hollywood Assistant came from and what you were trying to do with this story. It’s such a juicy, pardon the pun, typically Hollywood story—or at least what many of us think life in Hollywood must be like.
May Cobb: Thank you so much! It was (very) loosely inspired by my own experience working as a Hollywood Assistant over twenty years ago. But the people I worked for, acclaimed writer/director Ron Shelton and his wife, the illustrious actor, Lolita Davidovich, were nothing at all like the couple in the novel. They treated me so well, like family, and it remains one of the dreamiest jobs I’ve ever had.
So I used that basic set-up as the jumping-off point for The Hollywood Assistant, which I was aiming to be my homage to 80s, 90s erotic thrillers ala Body Double and Fatal Attraction.
Paste: How was the experience of writing this book compared to some of your previous novels like A Likeable Woman or My Summer Darlings? In what ways was coming up with this story different or more challenging?
Cobb: Well, the first thing that’s different is the setting. My previous four thrillers are all set in my native East Texas, whereas this is set, obviously, in L.A. So that was different but in a refreshing way!
Paste: Cassidy is a deliciously flawed protagonist—how would you describe her journey in this book?
Cobb: I feel like Cassidy enters what she thinks is a fairy tale, but it quickly spirals into a nightmare. In the outset of the novel, she’s lonely, heartbroken, and almost…needy?
So part of her journey, I think, is coming into her own agency. Not only with trying to get herself out of the mess she’s in, but also in realizing where her own tendencies toward obsession can take her down a dark path.
Paste: There’s a certain duplicitousness to almost every character in this story in one way or another, from Cassidy and Marisol to Nate. Is there anyone in this book you feel good about quote-unquote rooting for, or is the fact that everyone’s vaguely unlikeable kind of the point?
Cobb: Gosh, this is a tough question! I feel like Cassidy is pretty root-worthy and relatable, albeit, admittedly duplicitous at times.
But at her core, she’s trying to navigate a very treacherous world (Hollywood!) while recovering from a recent heartbreak. But other than Cassidy, nah, nobody deserves our sympathy, lol!
Paste: Female friendship is always so messy and complicated in your books and The Hollywood Assistant is no different. Tell us a little bit about how you see Cassidy’s relationships with both Marisol and Lexie, particularly since all of them seem to spend so much time using and/or betraying each other.
Cobb: It’s true, female friendships in all their toxic glory is a subject that is endlessly fascinating to me, and I feel like Cassidy is constantly trying to navigate both of these relationships, with Marisol and Lexie, because she is not the alpha female in either of them.
Paste: This book has a dual timeline format, and some pretty big twists, particularly towards the end of the book, many of which sort of change or at least reframe events we’ve seen come before. As the person plotting all this, how did you keep everything straight in terms of who knows what when, and how the knowledge that readers don’t have yet is still framing the story they’re reading?
Cobb: For this one, I actually wrote it straight through, for the most part. The Prologue, which is part of the dual timeline format, came to me first, and I knew there’d be a series of forward jumps in time that hint at the crime and Cassidy’s involvement in it.
Some of those I wrote as I drafted the main narrative, but some I definitely had to add in/edit during the revision process.
Paste: Do you think The Hollywood Assistant has a happy ending? Is this as close to one as these characters could get?
Cobb: As far as my thrillers go, yeah, in a way, at least some of these characters wind up on top!
Paste: What particular element of this book excited you the most while you were writing it? Do you have a specific moment from this book that you were really looking forward to seeing readers react to?
Cobb: I really loved the feel of trying to dip into the more noir aspects of the setting of Los Angeles as well as building the suspense around sort of the more erotic thriller plot points of seduction, obsession, and murder! And yes, the final twist, I’ve been loving seeing readers’ reactions to that!
Paste: Are you working on anything new at the moment? What can you tell us about your next writing project?
The details are still under wraps for the moment, but I just finished my sixth novel, another salacious suspense that’s set back in my hometown in East Texas and I think it might be my most scandalous one yet!
Paste: And my favorite question, always, what are you reading at the moment?
Cobb: No Road Home, by the terrific John Fram, which Paul Tremblay aptly describes as the “Fall of the House of Usher and a twisty closed-room mystery…a unique Texas gothic epic.”
The Hollywood Assistant is available now, wherever books are sold.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB