"Well, the character of Willowdean is very internal. In a movie, she has to externalize those feelings. The other biggest challenge was — I think there are seven different love stories: the mother-daughter story, the friendship story, the drag queens, the fairy godmother kind of story, the love story of Dolly Parton. There were these multitude of threads that really needed to be woven together in a very organic way. And then I think the third challenge was deciding how to utilize the pageant world in the best way possible, while still honoring the journey of this character who joins the pageant world not to win. Willowdean is first in it as a protest, and then decides to stay in it really just for herself, to prove to herself that she can do it. To finish, not to win. How to build the pageant piece in the movie was interesting, because it's used very differently in the book."