Exclusive: Shelby Van Pelt On All Things 'Remarkably Bright Creatures'

“[Humans] for the most part, you are dull and blundering,” observes Marcellus, the giant Pacific octopus at the heart of Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures. It’s a line that sets the tone for a narrator who observes more than he intervenes—sharp, sceptical, and unexpectedly attentive. That voice is now set to find a new form in the upcoming Netflix adaptation, voiced by Alfred Molina. The parallel isn’t lost on Shelby Van Pelt: Molina, best known to many as Doctor Octopus, now lends his voice to another tentacled creature — an irony she admits she’s particularly thrilled by. For her, though, the project was never about spectacle. It was about the quiet emotional work of attention. 

Set in a small, coastal town, the novel follows Tova Sullivan, a widowed night cleaner at Sowell Bay Aquarium. Years after the loss of her son, her grief has settled into something less visible but no less present — carried in habits, silences, and the things she chooses not to say. Her world intersects with Marcellus, whose perspective is limited to his tank and overheard conversations. Within those glass walls, he notices what humans overlook: the rhythms of loneliness and the ways people carry what they cannot articulate.

For Van Pelt, this way of seeing preceded the book itself. When she first began writing, she wasn’t thinking of publishing deals or readers. “I was writing a book to see if I could do it,” she says over a Zoom call. That creative privacy allowed her to follow an idea that might otherwise have felt precarious: an octopus narrator in contemporary adult fiction. Whatever risks lay in that choice only became visible in hindsight; at the time, it was simply a curiosity she wanted to pursue. 

As we talk about the evolution of the manuscript, the "heartwarming" label the book often wears feels like a hard-won destination rather than a starting point. Van Pelt admits there were a number false starts and abandoned plotlines — including an early iteration that leaned toward a murder mystery. “There were bodies in the closet,” she recalls with a laugh, before realizing the genre's conventions didn't align with what she wanted to write. Even moments of heightened drama — fires, car crashes — were eventually stripped back. “I found the urge to put something like that in when it felt like we needed more drama,” she says. “But what I needed to do was go back and make the emotional stakes higher rather than adding a car crash.”

This instinct — to resist spectacle in favour of emotional precision — shapes the novel’s treatment of grief. Tova’s loss is not fresh, and the book avoids the immediate aftermath of tragedy. Instead, it focuses on the longer, quieter work of living with absence. “I wanted to write about what it’s like to live with grief,” Van Pelt says, “not what it’s like when it’s fresh.” The distinction is subtle but crucial, shifting the narrative away from overt emotionality toward something far more enduring.

Marcellus, in this context, becomes less of a device and more of a counterpoint. Initially a mere narrative device to structure the story, Van Pelt realized he needed his own arc. Like Tova, he begins with a set of rigid assumptions — most notably, his low opinion of humans — and gradually moves towards something more complex. “He thinks they have nothing to offer him,” she says. “But as he forms a connection with Tova, he starts to see that maybe they’re not so bad.”

Van Pelt was careful to maintain the boundaries of his perspective. Unlike omniscient narrators, Marcellus knows only what he has seen, read, or overheard. “I was constantly checking whether he would have context to know the things he knows,” she explains. The constraint shapes his voice — what he notices, what he misinterprets, what he assigns importance to. He is not all-seeing; he is attentive. 

Readers have responded to that attentiveness. Van Pelt describes him as “equal parts cranky old man and curious toddler,” a balance that keeps the character from tipping into whimsy. The curiosity grounds him, even as his observations remain sharp. 

That grounding extends to the novel’s research. While Marcellus’s internal monologue allows for imaginative freedom, his physical behaviour is rooted in reality. Van Pelt spent months understanding what an octopus could plausibly do — how it moves, what it can manipulate, how long it can remain out of water. At one point, she considered having him operate a photocopier. “That was too far — He wouldn’t be able to clear a paper jam,” she says, laughing. The line between possibility and invention had to be carefully maintained.

When I bring up the choice of an octopus, she admits it came less from design than from fascination. Much of it began with watching videos online — being drawn to a creature that seemed, in her words, almost alien. Unlike animals whose behaviours feel legible to us, octopuses resist easy interpretation. They don’t have a single central brain, and much of what they are capable of still feels unknowable. That uncertainty created space — allowing her to imagine a consciousness that could observe humans without mirroring them too closely. 

If the book’s emotional core lies in its restraint, its reception has revealed something more expansive. Readers have responded not just to the novelty of its premise, but to its ability to articulate experiences that often remain unspoken. “I’ve had people tell me that the book helped them talk about things they hadn’t been able to talk about before,” Van Pelt says. Encounters like that, she admits, have been both unexpected and deeply meaningful.

As the story moves to Netflix, that voice is entering a different medium. Voiced by Alfred Molina, Marcellus moves more fluidly through the story — less contained, more present. “He feels a little more ever-present,” Van Pelt notes, admitting she shed many tears on seeing the final cut. 

Conceived without the pressure of an audience, the novel allowed her to commit to something strange and fragile. Even now, as the story moves beyond the page, Marcellus remains what he was from the beginning: an observer, paying attention.