Actress Rosario Dawson has moved from treating superheroes to an audio treatment of "Artemis" (Crown, 2017), the new book by "The Martian" (Crown, 2014) author Andy Weir.
Dawson is known for playing nurse Claire Temple in the TV series "Daredevil" and spinoff Marvel/Netflix shows, and now she narrates "Artemis," which comes out in novel and audiobook form Nov. 14. In a new YouTube video for Audible, Dawson talks about what drew her to the book.
"Artemis is about a city community on the moon, and I play this woman, Jasmine Bashara; she's a Saudi Arabian woman who is living there," Dawson said in the video. (Dawson narrated the entire book, but the video focuses on Bashara.)
"She was born on Earth, but she's been living on the moon since she was 6 years old. She's incredibly smart and capable. She could do anything; she'd be so mad at me saying that about her, because that's what everyone says about her," Dawson continued.
"Stuff that would pass by so many other people does not pass her attention. She makes sure that she goes through it all in her head first, before she just goes and asks for advice. She's figuring out her hustle like a lot of other people who are out there on the moon."
Dawson said she enjoys voice-over work, due to the challenge of exploring a story by voice. She added that she sometimes will say a sentence out loud and realize that it needs to be said differently for somebody listening to the story for the first time. Still, she called the experience "very freeing" and said that audiences will enjoy listening to "Artemis," because "people will really be transported into an idea of ourselves as human beings that I think we should be exploring."
The video also shows Dawson recording a portion of "Artemis" that talks about Bashara's chosen profession, which is that of a porter (on the legal side) and a smuggler (on the shady side of the law).
"Everyone seems to forget this, but I'm a smuggler. Not a saboteur, not an action hero, not a city planner. A smuggler," Dawson reads from Weir's novel.
"I worked hard to set up my operation, and it runs smoothly. In the beginning, I had competition, but not anymore. I drove them out of business by having lower prices, better service and a reputation for keeping my word."
At New York Comic Con on Oct. 5, Weir explained how he came up with the idea for the new novel, his first after the bestselling "The Martian" that spun off a critically acclaimed Hollywood film in 2015.
"I've always loved crime capers — I've always liked caper stories, heist stories," he said at the time. "And, of course, I'm a sci-fi author, so I figured, well, '¿Porqué no los dos?' [Why not both?]. I want a crime caper that takes place on the moon."
The audiobook for "Artemis" is currently available for preorder on Amazon.com.
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