The actual tale behind the new Netflix blockbuster series Boy Swallows Universe is even weirder than fiction.
The Australian coming-of-age series, which premiered last week, follows Eli Bell (Felix Cameron), a working-class kid who joins Brisbane’s underbelly to save his mother from peril.
The cast also includes Travis Fimmel, Simon Baker, Phoebe Tonkin, and Bryan Brown.
While audiences have lauded the programme as ‘outstanding’,’remarkable’, and ’10/10′, the actual tale it is based on is as compelling.
Released in 2018, the best-selling novel of the same name became the fastest-selling debut novel in Australian history, selling over a million copies globally.
Trent Dalton, a journalist, wrote the narrative, with portions based on his own experience growing up with an imprisoned mother, a heroin dealer stepfather, and a legendary felon as babysitter.
Trent, the youngest of four kids, grew up with his mother and stepfather, both of whom trafficked heroin.
Trent’s mother was sentenced to two years in jail for cocaine smuggling when he was seven years old.
After a year living with their grandparents, the brothers were sent to live with their father in a Housing Commission (council housing) house on the outskirts of the Australian metropolis.
Trent told the Townsville Bulletin in 2018 that writing his book was a means of ‘processing pain’.
‘Across a period of about 15 years, I kind of saw a mess of drug abuse, domestic violence, alcohol abuse and anxiety,’ he said.
‘A lot of the book is me just processing things in my head about what the hell happened to that guy,’ he added when speaking about how after his stepfather was taken away by police, he ‘disappeared’ from his life.
‘The things that happened to the kid, Eli, were very familiar to me and my brothers and I.’
Trent, like the characters in the novel and series, was perplexed for years by a boyhood discovery in his stepfather’s house: a secret chamber with a rotary dial red telephone.
‘I never understood as a boy why that phone was in that room or who could possibly be on the other end of that line,’ he said.
Writing his book enabled him to imagine all possibilities, settling on that it ‘existed for magic’.
Soon after starting to tune into the series, many viewers shared their thoughts on social media.
‘I think I have spent the majority of Boy Swallows Universe crying or with tears in my eyes because these characters are all stabbing me in the heart,’ Adriana posted on X.
‘Boy Swallows Universe perfectly captures the experience of growing up with an addict parent. So, so good,’ Paige shared.
User FanPan wrote: ‘Boy Swallows Universe might be one of the most harrowing but wonderful and funny shows I’ve ever seen.’
Meanwhile Diana Prince said she’d loved it as much as the book.
‘Trent Dalton’s masterful story telling is beautifully brought to life,’ she added.
In the series, Eli’s mum Frances (Phoebe) is sent to jail, with Trent also spending two years apart from his beloved mum after she was locked up.
Eli’s heroin-dealer stepfather, Lyle, is also moulded from the man his mother loved.
‘The difficult part of falling in love with that guy was that he had a pretty shady past and he had some pretty dark activities that he got up to in his down time,’ he once said.
Despite his stepfather’s shady dealings, Trent recalls him being someone whom he loved dearly and who ‘taught me how to kick a footy’.
While Trent saw his babysitter, Slim Halliday (Bryan), as the ‘funniest, sweetest old man’, he was also a convicted killer.
following being sentenced to five years in prison for ‘housebreaking’ in 1939, Halliday received additional time following a series of daring escapes.
Then, in 1952, he was convicted of murdering a cab driver by beating him with a revolver.
Trent previously said he ‘wanted to pay tribute to my memory of that man who was, at once, a good and bad man’.
‘That was at the heart of the story that I was writing. It’s about a boy trying to find the goodness in the people around him,’ he told the ABC.
Dalton’s father, Noel, who died some years ago, was likewise a heavy drinker and passionate reader who lived among towering bookshelves.
Speaking about how his childhood inspired his own book, Trent said he ‘wrote about all the very real things I saw as a kid’.
‘Growing up in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, in the 1980s: drug addiction, drug dealing, ex-cons and ex-killers, imprisonment, poverty, violence and love. So much love. And so much hope,’ he said.
Giving the finished copy of the novel to his mum before sending it onto his publishers, Trent told her that if she didn’t like it, it would ‘go straight in the bin’.
After reading it, she informed her son that it was ‘wonderful’ and granted her permission to print it.
Trent stated that, despite the book’s “50-50 mix of fact and fantasy,” it was cathartic to reflect on his unorthodox background.
‘I tried to change something pretty dark and terrible into something beautiful.’
Boy Swallows Universe is streaming on Netflix.
Source My Celebrity Life.