Helpless or Helpful with Jessica Knoll
Barely Famous
PodcastOne
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2026
⏱️ 71 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kail sits down with New York Times bestselling author Jessica Knoll for a powerful conversation about her new novel Helpless, the rise of dark romance, and why women are drawn to stories that explore fear, control, survival, and power. Jessica opens up about the real-life experience behind Luckiest Girl Alive, the healing that came from telling her story, and how the Netflix adaptation helped spark important conversations around consent.
They also discuss reality TV, complicated female friendships, book-to-screen adaptations, the pressure of writing after success, criticism, AI in publishing, audiobooks, Kindle vs. physical books, and why Jessica is still chasing dark, unforgettable stories.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, guys, we're back. |
| 0:01.7 | You asked for it and we're delivering. |
| 0:03.9 | Killer is going on tour. |
| 0:05.2 | We're super excited for the fatherless behavior tour, 23 cities, three countries, all in one summer. |
| 0:11.2 | And you guys can check out tour dates and see if we're coming to a city near you on kale-lauroy.com. |
| 0:16.2 | And if you want early access to information and announcements, head over to Patreon because you might get it before everyone else. |
| 0:26.0 | Welcome to the shit show. |
| 0:29.2 | Things are going to get weird. |
| 0:30.8 | It's your fave villain, Kail Lowley. |
| 0:32.7 | And you're listening to Barely Famous. |
| 0:36.3 | Welcome back to another episode of Barely Famous podcast. Today I'm sitting with an author, Jessica Knoll. You're a New York Times bestselling author. Congratulations. Thank you. And you have a new novel coming out called Helpless. Yes. July 7th. July 7th. I'm so excited. I got an early copy of it. And I'm also going to be giving one away for book club. So stay tuned for that. But welcome to Barely Famous. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm so excited. I watched my son and I actually watched luckiest girl alive last night and lots of heavy stuff there. So I cannot wait to talk about that. But before we do that, I would love to talk about helpless if you're okay with it. I'd love to. So this is your latest novel. What inspired Helpless? |
| 1:17.8 | Well, I'll start with what Helpless is about. Sure. So it's two exes who are reunited at the funeral |
| 1:25.7 | of their college professor who meant a lot to them. |
| 1:29.0 | And one thing leads to another, they end up having a drink to kind of like very old history |
| 1:34.1 | and the ex-boyfriend ends up drugging our main character, kidnapping her, |
| 1:39.6 | and she wakes up in his remote cabin in the Adirondex in upstate New York. |
| 1:44.7 | And the whole novel presents this question of, why did he kidnap her and what is she |
| 1:50.2 | doing here? |
| 1:50.7 | And she's trying to, one, get free and figure out why she's there. |
| 1:55.0 | But at the same time, I'm asking the reader, like, the bigger meta question of, like, |
| 2:00.7 | what are we doing here in this |
| 2:02.1 | moment of time where I'm, you know, I'm a reader, I'm a writer, I have my eye on the trends, |
... |
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