Brand new Harper Lee interview to premiere in anticipation of long-awaited second novel

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July 9, 2015

Exclusive photo: Harper Lee talks w #HarperLeePBS filmmaker Mary Murphy about #GoSetAWatchman. http://t.co/XPa55poenp pic.twitter.com/uv9R6wMetm

— American Masters (@PBSAmerMasters) July 8, 2015

MONROEVILLE, Ala. — The beloved, and famously reclusive, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and the upcoming Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee sat down for an interview with PBS on June 30th.

The interview, included as an update to a 2012 documentary titled “Harper Lee: Hey, Boo,” will be broadcast on Friday, July 10th, from 9-10:30 p.m. on PBS as “Harper Lee: American Masters.”

PBS announced the news via social media Wednesday, sharing an exclusive picture of the rarely-photographed author with the documentary’s filmmaker and author Mary McDonagh Murphy and Lee’s “good friend and benefactor,” Joy Brown.

Brown and her husband provided Ms. Lee with the funds to be able to quit her job and write Mockingbird full time after moving to New York in 1949.

The new novel is set in the fictional Maycomb, Alabama, 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird takes place.

“Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus,” Harper Publisher’s statement says. “She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.”

There was controversy after Watchman was announced, as some believed the 88-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner—who had always intimated she would never publish another novel during her lifetime—was not of sound enough mind to authorize publication of the new book.

In a statement released through her lawyer, however, Ms. Lee put those concerns to rest by saying she’s “alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to Watchman.”

Go Set a Watchman will be released by Harper Publishing July 14th in both print and ebook with a first run of 2 million copies.