I read Meg Wolitzer’s “The Wife” about a decade ago, and it is one of those books that sticks with you. I was convinced it’d make a great movie — so much so that I emailed Wolitzer to ask if it had been optioned. She said it had and that Jane Anderson (“Olive Kitteridge”) was writing it. I knew it was in good hands. But then years passed and I heard nothing. Eventually, I read that Glenn Close had been cast — that’s when I was sure the film would see the light of day.

The film follows Joan and Joe Castleman (Close and Jonathan Pryce), a long-married couple. The plot kicks off when Joe receives the phone call that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. “The Wife” is the story of a long marriage, and of a woman who has spent decades prioritizing her husband’s writing career over everything else. The Castlemans’ trip to Stockholm sets in motion the release of many festering resentments and family secrets.

I spoke with Wolitzer and Anderson about the changing attitudes towards female-led stories, the process of adapting the novel for the screen, and why the film’s release is perfectly timed for our cultural moment.

“The Wife” opens in New York and Los Angeles August 17. Check out the film’s website for more screening information.

This interview has been edited. It was transcribed by Keno Katsuda.

W&H: I wanted to start a conversation with you, Meg, because if you recall, I sent you an email a few years ago saying how much I loved “The Wife” and I asked you if anyone had optioned it. You said Jane Anderson had written a fantastic script and that was all you knew at the moment.

MW: Yes, that’s right! It took a really long time to get this movie made, and Jane has been involved in the whole process.

W&H: I want to get into this for a minute because I think it’s a great case study for the evolving tides in Hollywood as they relate to women. My first question is for Jane: How did you get to the book? Did you option it or did someone option it for you to write?

JA: It was in 2004 — 14 years ago! I heard a review of “The Wife” on NPR and I knew immediately that I wanted to not only read the book but adapt it. I brought it to a studio, they bought the rights, paid me to write it, and then decided at the time they didn’t want to make a film that was centered around a woman protagonist, so they dropped it.

W&H: Jane, did it revert back to you, or did they hold it at the moment?

JA: They held it, and in the next 11 years I spent time with various producers trying to find the financing. Finally, my manager Rosalie Swedlin said, “Jane, I don’t think we’ll ever get American financing. Let’s go to Scandinavia because this film takes place in Sweden.” She ended up actually getting English and Swiss financing by wrangling the troops — we actually never ended up with Swedish money.

Over this 14-year period, Meg and I thought this project was dead in the water many times, but I just kept going.

W&H: Meg, did Jane send you the script 14 years ago? What was your involvement after the book was optioned?

MW: Yeah, she did send me the script, and she sent me different scripts over the years. She was really all-hands-on-deck with something hard to get made. I, of course, was really happy to read it and see what was in it and sometimes something would occur to me … I would say “oh, I had taken out a scene,” or “did you think about that?”

I have written a number of books since then, but people ask me about this one a lot. The movie was always a hum in the background that Jane Anderson was working on. I kind of expected for that to go on forever.

JA: It was a beautiful hum, and Meg and I formed a really close friendship over the years.

MW: It’s been great because writing is so lonely. When another person knows your characters as well as you do, there’s something very beautiful about that.

W&H: Meg, why did you set the book in 1993?

MW: Because of the era, the math had to work out: I was trying to depict Smith College in the 1950s. I really needed to start with that, and take the characters as long as I needed to in terms of their age.

W&H: I didn’t know if there was anything Clinton-related to that.

MW: Oh no, I don’t like to key things into the culture and history per se. I think that the things the book is dealing with are fairly timeless in some important ways because it’s really about marriage and its collaborations and compromises, as well as the larger climate and what it is like for women in this world. But no, it’s not because of Clinton.

W&H: What do you think the movie says about female writers? Maybe it says something different from the time it was written, as something is happening now with women writers having almost a call to arms.

JA: I think what’s really important for everyone to understand about this film is that it’s not about female victimhood. It’s about a very specific woman in a very specific marriage. The film is really about what we do in a marriage to make it work, as well as the various compromises we make and the contracts that exist in a relationship. I think the main reason Joan blows up in the end is not just because of her ego and lack of recognition. It’s really that she sees her marriage has done damage to her son and has psychically damaged herself.

What’s beautiful about Meg’s writing is that it’s political without being political. What Meg did with her novel and what I did with my screenplay was to make sure this was a movie about relationships and not about a cause.

MW: I have often written about feminism, which is something that’s really important to me. My 2012 essay, “The Second Shelf” for The New York Times, was about the different treatment of male and female fiction writers. Those are themes that I was thinking about, because when I was a young reader, the authority that the culture gives mid-century male novelists certainly resonated with me in a big way.

But I didn’t want to write a polemic — I wanted to write a novel. I wanted to say, “Look at the way we’ve given authority to men.” I wanted to use Joan as a vessel for rage and humor about it as well. Through her marriage, we explore ideas about men, women, compromise, and identity. I had to start it at that early time because things have changed in various ways since then. I saw my own mother become a novelist in the 1970s. She published her first novel when she was 44 because she had been a housewife before then. She’s joked about this, but a review of her first novel called her a “housewife-turned-novelist” as if she’d gone into a phone booth and changed. So we’ve seen shifts over time.

I’d like to quietly track the way things change over time, but I’m primarily interested in how people live, why things persist, and why we repeat patterns again and again in a marriage as well as in our culture. Looking at Joan’s rage and wit was something that I really wanted to do, but it’s very much about this couple and this marriage within the context of what I’m describing.

W&H: I understand. Let’s read a little more into this rage factor. It feels so timely. I understand you talk about the marriage, but I feel that the marriage transcends into the rage that women have right now in our culture.

MW: But you know, these aren’t new things. I wrote this book a long time ago, and the script was written before the #MeToo movement. The moment that we’re living in right now is a sharpening of these things that all of the women and many of the men I know have been talking and thinking about. There is a timelessness to these conversations. So it’s not news that women protagonists are relevant in our culture, as they should have been 10 or 15 years ago. But now this movie can have a different reception in our culture.

JA: I’m thrilled it’s coming out at this moment. Seeing Glenn Close’s performance with an audience is a very gratifying thing because this audience is living in this moment right now. I think we’re on the same page about that.

In a strange way I’m really grateful it took 14 years for this film to be made because if it was made and released back in the early 2000s, the movie would have disappeared because the culture and the studio system wouldn’t have been ready to really embrace the film. And what’s kind of marvelous is that the grand, frustrating delay in pushing the boulder for 14 years is that the movie is now being released when it is now speaking to a zeitgeist that’s happening. I find that utterly thrilling and I’m just sitting here grinning.

W&H: I saw it at Toronto last September and I watched it again recently. I liked it both times, but this time it felt of the moment.

MW: I absolutely agree with everything you’re saying. I wouldn’t want to write something just to capitalize on something like that. That could be a polemic — these have to come out of the characters, and they have to come out of the marriage. But my interest in what’s going on is strong and constant, and it’s thrilling and exciting to see the complicated feelings and anger in Glenn Close’s face which are handled differently from the book.

As you know, the book is in first person and she’s just saying everything, but here it’s this slow burn from within her and it’s very powerful seeing it done in that quiet build.

W&H: What do you both feel about Glenn Close’s performance?

MW: Oh my god! I think it’s mind-blowing. I’ve seen the movie many times and I still get chills watching her. She’s utterly magnificent.

As a novelist, I never think about movies when I write a novel. But when she came in and did this for the first time it was overstimulating to me because she’s taking my character and running with it in this new way that’s really powerful. She’s such a strong and striking figure in this film. I think her performance is brilliant.

JA: And subtle.

MW: Subtle and brilliant.

W&H: When she agreed to take the part, was that when you got the green light?

JA: No, it took a good three years later to get all of the financing. It’s been a hard, long road.

W&H: I was just going to read back some of the stuff I read in the press recently. Jane, you said, “When I first wrote the screen adaptation back 15 years ago, no male star wanted to be in a film called ‘The Wife’ instead of ‘The Husband.’ The culture in Hollywood has changed since then. Our industry is now willing to face films that are driven by a female protagonist.” You’ve been writing female protagonists all your life. Talk a little bit about the change that you’re seeing in the industry.

JA: I think I said it all in that statement. I had just quietly gone along and written what I wanted to write, just like Meg writes her novels. I write from my gut. I write what I need to write, and I suppose us writers just wait for the world to catch up to us. There are some writers who are so ahead of their time that they never see the world catch up to them. I’m deeply grateful that I’m living in a time where what I’m seeing now is being celebrated and that’s a blessing.

People say to writers, “Write what you know.” I’ve often said it’s actually “write what obsesses you,” and I’ve been thinking about so many of the themes and ideas in this book for a very long time.

W&H: Yeah, you have. But I was kind of disheartened because Christian Slater was quoted saying how it was very brave of Jonathan Pryce to take on his role in the film because “there aren’t a lot of men who would be willing to be in a movie called ‘The Wife.’”

JA: It’s great Christian said that! It’s absolutely true. Here’s the deal: Jonathan is a British theater actor who just loves the work. He loves interesting work and interesting characters. I think there a lot of American male stars who are used to having many films that they can do where they are the leads. So for many male stars who have been the lead in a film, it would feel to them a compromise to have the second lead. That’s what I was facing back in 2004. There are really special actors like Jonathan who are just interested in the material and the role.

W&H: I’m looking forward to the day when that’s no longer an issue.

JA: Yeah, we’re getting there. I’m delighted. Aren’t you, Meg?

MW: Oh, I’m delighted by this film and having people see this, because I think they’re really responding to it.