In an interview with Deadline, screenwriter and playwright Phyllis Nagy talks about the almost 20 years she spent waiting for Carol to get made.

Nagy wrote the original screenplay for the movie back in 1997.

The lesbian romance film – considered an Oscar contender – was adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt, first published in 1952.

“The novel came to me in 1997, which was a couple of years after Highsmith had died,” Nagy said. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into because it was the first script I was really hired to write. … After the first draft we had about 13 years of false starts and people coming and going. … It was a little bit like Can't Carol.”

“I thought Carol was dead and I was ready to move on by that time, and then [producer] Liz Karlsen called about a year later and said, 'Guess what? I have the rights to the novel. Let’s go make a movie.' I said, 'Great. No, thank you. I’ve had enough. Go find yourself another writer who will have a perfectly good take.' … So it took them a year to convince me to jump back in with the promise that they would indeed this time get the film made. And they did, and I shouldn't have worried so much,” she added.

Nagy was also asked whether LGBT films had gone mainstream.

“Once it's not a trend I'll be much less suspicious of the claims of this kind of material advancing into the mainstream,” she answered. “Maybe every 10 years, there's little blips of films, but I think it's as you say – because they're all in development for such a long time they all hit at a certain moment in the zeitgeist. If they don't go away or if a particular kind of of film that isn't solely gender-based happens to keep being made, then I'll be the happiest political activist on earth. Until that happens I'll reserve judgment about what it means that there are so many things out and about in the culture at the moment, because I'm not sure how many of them will be making an impact.”