Inside the Divergent Movie Set w/ Veronica Roth (SPOTIFY EXCLUSIVE)

When Veronica Roth first walked onto the set of the Divergent movie adaptation, she found herself apologizing to the crew. "You feel bad for certain choices that he made," she said, meaning the choices she, as the author, had written into the story years earlier. Watching stunt performers climb a real Ferris wheel or seeing a full-scale L train car built from scratch by burly construction workers who told her "my daughter likes your books" made the abstract idea she had written in college suddenly feel heavy with real-world consequence.

The adaptation was filmed across two cities. The first movie was shot in Chicago, where Roth lived at the time, so she visited often. The later two films moved to Atlanta, which meant she saw less of the production. But the Chicago shoots left the strongest impression because the crew transformed a city she knew intimately into something unrecognizable. They didn't rely entirely on CGI. They filled entire streets with gravel, covered every sign, and brought in actual trucks for the climactic scenes. The Ferris wheel that appears in the film is a real Chicago landmark, and the actors—or their stunt doubles—climbed parts of it. Roth noted that Shailene Woodley was notably fearless and willing to do much of the physical work herself.