Masterpiece Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton was close to retirement a few years back — but no more, she tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Eaton is making the rounds in the press in anticipation of her 320-page book, Making Masterpiece: 25 Years Behind the Scenes at Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! on PBS, out next month.
She was pondering retirement, she said, “before lightning in the form of Downton Abbey struck and before I wrote the book. In the writing of the book, in relishing the success of Downton and the success of Masterpiece, I thought: ‘Wait a minute. I love this stuff. Maybe these are the years to really relish it and concentrate on developing and thinking up the next really juicy one.’ So I’m back in the saddle.”
And in a column on the Word & Film website, Eaton says she has a “precious list” of books she’d like to see adapted before she does retire: The Known World by Edward P. Jones; A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby by Mary S. Lovell; The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder; and, “especially,” Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.
But “my most favorite of all” would be both of Alexandra Fuller’s memoirs, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness.
All would be “eye-poppingly expensive to do,” she notes.