Page 558 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

LJ I’m always staggered by actors who don’t read scenes, or episodes of a show that
they’re doing but that they’re not in. They might say something about you or your
character that is useful, as an understanding of how other people perceive this
character, d’you know what I mean?

PE There might be a little nugget of what someone else does that helps you understand
them a bit more.

Obviously, you write as well. I watched Save Me and Save Me Too [James’s Sky drama
series about a father accused of abducting his daughter], and I was so glued to them. It
was just hyper, hyper-real. Do you think that because you’ve got an interest in writing,
directing, producing, creating, it affects your process as an actor? Or do you think your
process as an actor affects the way you write?

LJ I try really hard not to be on set as an actor with a writer’s head, and vice versa. I had
to protect the space around playing Nelly [his Save Me character], so that when I was
there, any questions that other cast members might have about script or character – the
rule was, you had to take it to the director.

PE I think it’s quite interesting that loads of hit shows at the moment feature these
creator/writer star vehicles. You’ve got your show, Michaela’s show, Phoebe Waller-
Bridge’s show, Schitt’s Creek, Aisling Bea’s show… it really feels like it’s a formula that
commissioners or programmers are going down. Why is that method so successful of
late, rather than the more traditional thing of there being a writers’ room that’s very
separate from the actors, the directors, etc?

LJ When I was writing Save Me, I wanted to write characters I knew actors would want
to play. I really wanted to create characters that, regardless of how much we saw them
in the show, we felt like they were coming from somewhere, and they were going
somewhere after the moment we saw them. They had a beginning, a middle and an end.
So I was aware of that, and I think that the people you name-check there pretty much
did it all.

What was it like when you were working with Michaela, because you knew her from
drama school?

PE Trust is a big word when you’re doing this kind of work, because it’s very exposing
and vulnerable. Whenever you tell someone, “I’m writing something” and they say “Can
I look at it?”– it’s hard to share it, it’s very personal stuff. In I May Destroy You
particularly so, because of some of the themes it was exploring [around sexual assault].
You had to make sure that you were always in safe hands and nothing was ever going to
be trivialised or done in a half-arsed way. But I think Michaela’s probably a little bit
different from you in the way she works, because she very much is down to chat as
Michaela, then go into Arabella. She’s very much up for saying, “Oh, my idea was this