"In the book, Rachel is projecting this idea that these people have a perfect life. Whereas on social media, I think people project their own version of that. The effect can be quite damaging [to] the person who’s watching, because it’s so easy to compare yourself and think that you don’t measure up. It’s obviously ridiculous, because we all know that what we see on social media isn’t real. People aren’t always happy or smiling. Their children aren’t always being delightful. It’s a fake thing. But knowing that doesn’t actually help, you still feel how you feel when you see those things. And it’s so easy to feel inadequate, sometimes even defenseless: Other people have chosen something else and it seems to be working so well for them. And you can see how those things create those divisions, particularly in situations where people are already feeling a bit vulnerable or a bit judged for their choices.""[Laughs] Well — of course, it doesn’t actually mean your life is perfect. And in a sense, it may even make you feel worse, since you know you’re projecting this image that isn’t real.""Well, I think it’s quite boring and unrealistic for everybody who appears on our screen or in books to be likable. There’s that thing about women having to be pleasing, which is irritating — women aren’t there just to be pleasing. They’re out there living their lives, that may at times be complicated or messy; they may be feeling difficult things — they secretly are because they’re people, and that’s how life goes. At one point or another, everyone struggles certainly, or behaves badly, or does something stupid.""It centers on the relationship to two sisters — there are lots of other characters, but that’s kind of the core relationship. And it’s a relationship that’s broken down over things that happened to them in their childhood; it’s sort of trying to figure out how they got to where they got, and what went wrong."But it’s so much about community, and family, and our relationships to each other, and about how we reinterpret events of our childhood — the stories we tell about ourselves. Everyone creates their own narrative, and after years and years of creating it you believe it; you believe it to be the truth, even though it may have started with exaggeration or manipulation or just a childhood misunderstanding of something. I’m interested in what happens when, later in life, you realize that maybe the story you’ve been telling yourself isn’t the real one, isn’t the true story. What does that mean for your person, for your identity, if the story you’ve been telling about yourself your whole life isn’t actually true?" The Girl On The Train debuts in theaters on October 7, 2016.