![]() I was keen to partner with a co-production team I trusted, so I hunted down Phil Clarke from Various Artists Limited. The BBC and HBO became the happy homes for this project. I rejected their deal, registered my own production company and hoped one day I would meet another broadcaster or streaming service who would allow me to retain a portion of my rights. So I thought, let me plea for two percent, and when that was rejected I grew uncomfortable with the prospect of dedicating two and a half years of my life to a show exploring exploitation and loss of power whilst also losing all of my rights. This streaming service wanted me to do this whilst withholding 100 percent of the rights as their property. What drew you to producing your own material?Ī streaming service, that I came very close to producing this show with, wanted me to create the show - to write every single word of it, be the sole director and the lead actress. The series is also produced under your production company. because everybody else was very good at their jobs. I don’t know, it’s insane that we accomplished this at all, I think somehow this worked. You star in the series as the main protagonist whilst writing, directing and producing the series at the same time. Of course, attempting to do all of these wonderful jobs at the same time came with challenges. What was the most challenging aspect of this job?Īll in all, the hardest thing was not getting distracted in wonderment at the confounding reality of having turned a rather bleak reality into a TV Show that created real jobs for hundreds of people. I’ve come to accept she’ll be in everything I do. I didn’t add humour, humour is always there at every party, funeral and war, although often uninvited, she’s always there, and I, for some reason, I always seem to find myself in a corner with her, even when in a police station giving a witness statement about being raped by a stranger. How do you add humour into a series that focuses on such serious subject matters? ![]() I am particularly grateful to Piers Wenger from the BBC ( Controller of BBC Drama Commissioning), who really did read my drafts with mindful attention, even in their very early, barely coherent, phases. That was the process for about a one and a half years, and I always worked on all 12 episodes at one time. I would then go away again and write revisions. I went away and wrote the first drafts for all 12 episodes and returned to London where my team of co-exec producers and script editor would question my writing and intentions. In September 2017 I was given a commission without having written a treatment or a pilot. They were very gracious and had a lot of belief in me. I was working on another show with the BBC when I went in to meet with them about this show. Without this setting being at both the core of my writing and my life, this story does not exist as it is.Ĭan you talk about the writing process that went into the series? A melting pot, with different cultures, ideas, huge economic disparity, all squished together in a city starving of trees. London does not inform how I tell the story, London is both the teller of the story, and the essence of the story itself. The story is set mainly in London and there are a couple of episodes in Italy. Where is the story set and how does that inform how you tell this story? Across the 12 episodes she learns that allowing herself to disassociate from what she struggles to accept can have unsavoury consequences. Without giving too much away can you give an insight into Arabella’s journey across the 12 episodes?Īrabella must understand that everything is connected, that she is connected even to the thing she despises the most: her trauma. Beyond her work she lives in a two-bed flat-share in Hackney and has a cool group of friends, also trying to find themselves within this little concrete jungle. She’s now got an agent, and there’s a sudden professional demand for her writing. After a spontaneous piece of writing of hers goes viral on the internet she receives a commission to write a book. ![]() Could you introduce us to her?Īrabella is Londoner, a lover of life and a lover of Twitter. I May Destroy You is about how the personal identity we create in order to understand ourselves as beings in this world, how traumatic events may warp, contort and throw that sense of self into questioning. ![]()
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