Why does Lewis have two stepsons in the TV version of Shadowlands and only one in the movie?
As a matter of biographical fact, Joy Gresham had two sons; Douglas and David, as shown in the TV version of ‘Shadowlands’. However, two children forced the writing of two sets of reactions to events portrayed, and thus two subplots. This was found to detract from the story, rather than complement it. Thus in the second version of the piece, the stage play, one child was dropped. This also meant that producers could hire two child actors rather than four. This was found to work well and thus was continued into the third version which was the screenplay.
