Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or you haven’t been to an airport bookstore in the past three years, you’ve probably heard of literary wunderkind T.J. Newman. A former flight attendant, Newman started scribbling down ideas for thriller novels on cocktail napkins, dreaming of becoming a real writer of books. After forty-one rejections from literary agents, she eventually sold her first novel, Falling, which debuted at number two on the New York Times Best Sellers list in 2021. Multimillion-dollar movie deals soon came along, and now, just a few years later, that cocktail napkin’s worth of ideas has taken her far. Falling was quickly optioned for a film deal, with Newman herself writing the screenplay. Her next book, Drowning, swiftly followed in 2023. Although it wasn’t a true sequel, it dealt with an even more complex airplane disaster than her first book did.
On August 13, Newman will drop her third novel, which is easily her most ambitious yet. Whereas Falling and Drowning both involve plane crashes, the aptly titled Worst Case Scenario takes things to the next level. This time, a commercial airliner smashes into a nuclear power plant in a rural town in Minnesota. Unlike in Newman’s previous books, the stakes here aren’t just the survival of passengers on a plane but possibly the survival of the human race, too. The meltdown of the nuclear power plant is no joke, allowing Newman to employ her unique skill of balancing major stakes with human relationships like she’s never done before.
But just who is this person who crafts these incredible, over-the-top stories? Although the world knows Newman as a flight attendant turned novelist, she’s so much more than that. In fact, the truth of her talent might lie in the fact that, much like her readers, she is simply a massive fan of the action-adventure genre. She certainly has the credibility to write about airplanes because of her time working in the industry, but ultimately, she loves big stories that have a big heart.
Ahead of the publication of Worst Case Scenario, Esquire sat down with Newman to unpack her inspirations beyond her flight-attendant days, discover her artistic “north stars,” and figure out why she’s watched Top Gun: Maverick more than almost any other movie.
ESQUIRE: Your origin story as a flight attendant turned thriller writer is well known. But what about your origin story as a reader? What books did you read when you were younger that made you want to write big-idea books?
T.J. NEWMAN: There are lots of films and books that instilled in me the desire to try my hand at creating stories. But straight off the bat, I’ll say Jurassic Park. I’ll never forget seeing Jurassic Park for the first time and then reading the book, too. That was the first time that I’d seen a story that big, which blew my mind open. I thought, Oh, we can bring dinosaurs and humans together. Anything is possible. That opened a gateway for me to the kinds of epic stories that could be told and that I wanted to tell. I think seeing that movie and reading that book gave my imagination permission to be as big as it could be, and as an artist, that fundamentally changed me.
A lot of Michael Crichton’s work is still great.
All of it holds up. He’s kind of my north star. These are massive, epic, no-limit stories. He did Jurassic Park. He did Twister. I mean, Westworld [the 1973 film] and ER could not be more different, but there are still common threads, common themes, and common feelings. All of his work was a huge inspiration to me.
Worst Case Scenario is different from Falling and Drowning in the sense that it’s more of an ensemble piece. You’ve got a lot of different characters in a lot of different places. I wonder if this is a step toward doing different types of books in the future. Perhaps books that don’t have plane disasters?
I don’t know. I mean, I’ve got a million stories in my mind that I’d like to tell, and a lot of them involve planes. This feels like a really nice unofficial trilogy, like an “Airline Trilogy.” They’re each stand-alone novels, and the only throughline is Coastal Airlines, the fictional airline where these incidents take place. Why anybody is buying tickets on this airline anymore, I don’t know, but that’s the only theme in the T.J. Newman cinematic universe.
But with each of those books, the lens and the focus are widened. With Falling, you’ve got one man in a bad situation. With Drowning, you’ve got a family and twelve other passengers trapped inside this plane at the bottom of the ocean. In Worst Case Scenario, the focus is an entire town, and how that plays into a relationship with the entire country and the entire world.
So, based on this incremental process, we’re what, four books away from action on multiple planets?
Oh God! [Laughs.] I’m just thinking about how much work it takes to create one rural community. Wow. I mean, that’s a good point, though. When I look at fantasy, I’m just in awe. I think I’m intimidated by work like that. I’m in awe of how you do world-building to that extreme.
But great epics are contained in small movements, right?
Absolutely. And with Worst Case Scenario, I had parallel storylines. The crash means that this could be an extinction-level event that changes humanity forever. But at the same time, we’ve got a handful of firefighters who are undermanned, under-resourced, out of ideas, and out of time trying to save one individual person. I bounced back and forth between those two storylines. Both for the reader and for myself, I think there has to be a reminder of what we’re fighting for and what we’re sacrificing. It’s about saving the fate of humanity. But what is that, if not the life of one individual?
Let’s talk about James Bond and Batman. Two of your favorite movies are Casino Royale and The Dark Knight. Why?
Well, growing up, I didn’t fully understand the Bond character. When I saw Casino Royale, which is his origin story, it’s like it clicked. I was like, “Now I understand his world, and now I understand how he operates in it and why he is like he is.” Once I had that background and that understanding, it just opened up all of it for me. With Christopher Nolan, what he did in his Batman trilogy, there are parallels to Casino Royale. Christopher Nolan is another aspirational, north-star artist for me. He elevated the comic-book genre, and in The Dark Knight, he made a movie that’s about ethics and philosophy, and it’s also a great action movie. It’s also broken down in a way the average person can identify with and understand. I’ve seen The Dark Knight more than I’ve seen Top Gun: Maverick, and that’s saying something.
Wait, how many times have you seen Top Gun: Maverick?
In the theater? I’ve seen Top Gun: Maverick eight times. Top Gun: Maverick viewing at home? The limit does not exist.
Why is that?
It’s the exact kind of story that I love: a huge, epic ensemble story of trying to do something together that is ultimately about relationships. It’s about Maverick and it’s about Rooster. It’s about him dealing with his past. It’s about his evolution as a person. It’s everything I love in storytelling.
Why have I watched it so many times? On the one hand, it’s because I love it. But on the other hand, I’m studying it. I’m trying to figure out: How did they do this? I think what was so fascinating to me about Top Gun: Maverick is that people loved it—and I mean everybody loved it—in a time when we are as polarized and divided as we can get in this country. And yet everyone loved that movie. I was so interested to know how that was done. I’ve watched it so much because I’m fascinated with how that magic trick is done.
It’s a fairly apolitical movie. There’s nothing wrong with books that are political and about contemporary events, but you write about a kind of idealized American society, right? Is this a fantasy of the country we wish we lived in?
If I have an agenda with my books, it is to entertain. Full stop. The only goal I ever have with my books is to just take people on a fun, good, enjoyable ride. It’s an avenue of escapism. I also write about themes like sacrifice, duty, honor, love, family, and community, and those themes, to me, know no political alliance. But I’m also a woman who’s writing stories with explosions and fatalities and violence. I’m a woman writing in a man’s world. And in the same way that I don’t think any of these traits have a political alliance, I also don’t think they have a gender alliance. It’s been great to put my female perspective on a world that’s so typically male-dominated, and it’s been wonderful to be read by men and loved by women. I get that response all the time: “I gave your book to my father-in-law and he loved it.” The father-in-law stamp of approval is such a wonderful compliment, and then the next thing I’ll get is from a woman who says, “I sobbed hysterically for the last three chapters.” Having both of those responses is so gratifying, because the types of stories I tell are aspirationally like Top Gun: Maverick. We can all set aside our differences to feel hope and togetherness. It’s escapism, because that’s not what’s around us right now in the world.
You’re a former bookseller, too. So you know all about some of the myths regarding which gender supposedly reads which genre. What’s the deal with sexism around women writing action or thrillers?
When my agent took Falling out and the deal hit, he had so many people come to him and say, “Is this a man? Is this a man who’s writing this?” I mean, I publish under the name T.J., which could be anything. [Newman’s given name is Torri.] I get it all the time. It’s something I’ve faced since day one of writing these books. I don’t fit into the exact box that you can cleanly check. I’m a woman writing massive, epic action thrillers, and that’s not typically what women write, but I’m going to do it anyway and I’m confident that readers will find it.
Because I know I’m not alone. I know I’m not the only woman out there who’s loving all this stuff. It’s just getting that message across: You can like anything you want. You can read anything you want. I’m constantly trying to challenge that, and it has been a challenge. But I’m constantly moving forward, because I want to tell the stories I want to tell, and I think anyone should be able to tell the stories that are their stories to tell. I’m a woman whose favorite movies are The Dark Knight and Top Gun: Maverick and Casino Royale. This is my wheelhouse. This is what I love. These are the stories I want to tell.
