Mika Watkins grew up on the coast of south Wales and always dreamed of becoming a screenwriter, but without any industry connections, she faced an uphill struggle. Now, six years after she became an intern with the producers of the hit series The Crown, she has written her own science-fiction series with a multimillion-pound budget and is considered one of the youngest showrunners in the world.
Watkins, 29, was talent-spotted by Andy Harries, producer of the Netflix series about the life of Queen Elizabeth II, and was commissioned to write her own script by his production company, Left Bank Pictures. Although he liked the script, Harries assumed it wouldn’t go anywhere “because the writer is unknown”. But YouTube didn’t care, and the 10-part series, which is funded entirely by the Google-owned platform, premieres next month.
“I couldn’t believe they’d built something that had come out of my brain on that scale. It was really mind-blowing – and humbling. I thought, there are hundreds of people who’ve done this from just me writing something in my bedroom. That’s very astonishing,” Watkins, from the Gower in south Wales, told the Observer. She had recently returned from South Africa where her series, Origin, was being filmed across sprawling sets, including a vast spaceship, for a story about passengers stranded in space with an “alien presence”.
“She is one of the youngest showrunners in the world. There’s no question about that. It’s a pretty extraordinary achievement to be a showrunner on a 10-part series before she’s 30. She’s carried it off with incredible confidence and class,” Harries said of Watkins.
Watkins, who is half Japanese, came to Left Bank Pictures as a 23-year-old intern on a scheme aimed at encouraging diversity. She was soon working as a trainee script editor, and when Harries discovered that she was writing in her spare time, he encouraged her to work on a science-fiction series, having heard that one of the broadcasters was seeking one.
He said: “We gave her a blind script commission. We paid her. We worked on it. Within a few months, we had this great series. But I couldn’t set it up in the UK. There was no interest. Everyone turned it down.”
About a year later, Harries’s US agent called, asking whether he had a science-fiction or crime series, as YouTube was commissioning productions with multimillion-pound budgets. He told her he had just the thing in his bottom drawer. “We sent it over. It sounds ludicrous, but literally a month later they picked it up. They just loved it – and the idea of working with a young writer… Usually American companies are asking for named writers with a reputation. Mika obviously had none of that.”
YouTube, which has almost two billion monthly users, launches Origin on 14 November. Luke Hyams, its head of original productions for Europe, said that it is now tapping into a demand for “primetime” new dramas. it is “the first of a long line” of scripted projects, many of which are being developed in Britain.
Of Watkins’s lack of experience, he said: “The decision to put Mika in charge of the show was not one that was taken lightly, but we really believed in her. What impressed us about the project was it had the ability to create such a rich international picture of the future.”
The series, set in the near future, is multilingual, including Japanese and French characters who are planning to colonise a new planet. Watkins said: “I wanted to tell authentic stories about those cultures rather than, as you often see, a collection of white American people leading a mission.”
Origin is directed by Paul WS Anderson, whose sci-fi films include Resident Evil, and stars Harry Potter actors Tom Felton and Natalia Tena, who was also in Game of Thrones.
