Jay Asher, who penned the 2007 YA novel upon which the hit Netflix show was based, told Entertainment Weekly that the showrunners wanted to film the scene in a way that showed the raw pain of the event without sensationalizing it. "They felt for a TV series, if you’re going to watch it, you want to show it as horrific as it actually is," Asher told EW. "So the way she does it, you can’t watch it and feel like it’s glamorized in any way. It looks and is painful, and then when she’s found by her parents, it absolutely destroys them."