I’m in a huge, fake cavern in a huge, empty warehouse in the huge, boiling New Mexico desert. I’m part of a film crew shooting the climactic scene of the first US film I’ve written, Corporate Animals. It’s a comedy about a group of co-workers who go caving on a team-building trip and end up trapped underground with no food or water.
The crew has downed tools as the actors, producers and director perch uncomfortably on polystyrene rocks. We’ve stopped to have an impassioned debate over racial politics – specifically over how much racism is too much to put in one character’s mouth. The debate revolves around where the line is, between something that is provocative and shocking enough to make the drama work, and something that is so provocative and shocking that it’s just… horrible.
When the conversation ends, all eyes turn to me. I walk away, laptop in hand, knowing that somehow I’ve got to rewrite the scene to address all the issues we’ve discussed, in the full knowledge that every minute the crew sits and waits costs the production thousands of dollars. And, by the way, it would be nice if the scene was funny. It’s a comedy, after all.
I grab a doughnut. On second thoughts, this might be a two-doughnut problem.
***
Ever since I was a teenage film buff reading up on Hitchcock, I’ve dreamed of writing Hollywood movies. Making TV with my compadre Jesse Armstrong – in particular, nine series of Peep Show, about the inner life of a pair of losers – kept me rooted in the UK for years. But the week we finished filming the final series of Peep Show, I flew to Los Angeles to pitch Corporate Animals.
Even bigger than the challenge of starting afresh in another country was the question of whether, after 20 years collaborating with Jesse, I would be able to cut it on my own, or instead be exposed as Andrew Ridgeley to his George Michael. Without realising it, I had a big advantage – the internet. Thanks to streaming, almost every Hollywood producer I met was familiar with Peep Show. I managed to find a home for Corporate Animals. Emboldened, my wife, Wendy, and I took the plunge and moved to LA. Writing original comedy films is impossible to do full-time in the UK; the economics of the British film industry just don’t support enough of those movies being made.
And thankfully, despite us being a continent apart, my partnership with Jesse is still going strong: we co-own a production company, and a new comedy feature we’ve co-written is in pre-production in the US. It turned out Wham! didn’t have to split up after all.
Once I had handed in my first draft of Corporate Animals, the issue of diversity in casting came up. There is an increasingly urgent debate in Hollywood (and the UK) about diversity and gender equality. It seems that everyone is aware how much needs to change, behind and in front of the camera.
As a white man, there are two ways of engaging with these issues – as an anxiety-inducing obligation or as an exciting challenge, and I’ve tried to pick the latter. In the casting meeting, I pitched the approach Jesse and I had taken on our student comedy Fresh Meat – considering a diverse range of actors for every role. A white actor came close to playing Vod, Zawe Ashton’s part, and a black actor came close to playing Oregon, Charlotte Ritchie’s part. But my US producers said they weren’t convinced by this approach. First, because it’s no guarantee of ending up with an inclusive cast; but also because they felt it was important to write specifically for black or Asian characters, rather than having characters who are “ethnically neutral”.
I could see the logic. There is no denying that “colour-blind casting” on Fresh Meat led to a grand total of one of the six leads being played by a BAME actor. Also, these people were paying me. If I didn’t do it the way they wanted, they might not make the movie.
I agreed to reimagine five of the 10 characters as people of colour, including two of the three leads. We agreed that Jessica Williams, formerly a correspondent on The Daily Show, would be perfect for one of the leads, so I rewrote that character with her in mind. A lot of the rewrites were done in collaboration with Williams, before and during filming.
For the other parts, I didn’t specify the race of the character or fully rewrite it until the role had been cast. This spirit of open-mindedness had its limitations, however. At one point, we discussed offering a part to an actor with a dark complexion who happened to be 100% Greek. We quickly agreed that it wasn’t appropriate to fill one of our BAME slots with someone who just had a great tan.
As I rewrote, I noticed the script was starting to evolve. Specifying the ethnicity of each character brought the subject of race more and more into the script – culminating in that high-pressure discussion in the cave and my doughnut-inspired attempt to get laughs out of the US’s racial divisions. During that discussion, the most important voices were those of the actors. Listening and responding to the people who actually had to say the stuff I was writing – and who knew what it was like to be a person of colour – was a crucial part of the process. Something that is theoretically offensive to me as a white guy may be viscerally offensive to a black man or an Asian woman.
I asked Jennifer Kim, the Korean-American actor who plays May in Corporate Animals, what she makes of diversity casting. “It’s not enough for casting directors to say: ‘Submit all ethnicities’ any more,” she said. “People have been patting themselves on the back for being open to ‘others’ (which is a shitty feeling already, being the ‘other’). And yet, when it comes down to it, often the majority has had more experience because they’ve had more opportunities and therefore are more skilled.”
She’d like to see more substantial roles for under-represented actors. “To be honest, I know when I’m just being seen for a ‘submit all ethnicities’ role, to fill a quota. I know I have a trillion times more chance of actually getting a part specifically written for an Asian actress. We have to create meaty parts and stories specifically. And the best way to do that is collaboration, and creating the space for new voices.”
***
The second US film I’ve made is The Stand-In, starring Drew Barrymore. Drew plays two lead roles: a jaded movie star and her ambitious stand-in. In the first draft, both roles were written as men. After a frustrating few years during which various male stars were sent the script and didn’t respond, I had an epiphany while watching Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock. It struck me that the film was twice as compelling as it would have been if a man had been playing the astronaut. The freshness of making the character female seemed the simplest, most effective rewrite imaginable.
I went back to The Stand-In and made the gender switch. Despite surprisingly few changes to the basic story, it felt as though it had been given a fresh coat of paint. From a business side, it proved a smart move: I was able to attract an in-demand female director, Jamie Babbit (Girls, Silicon Valley), who managed to get the script to Drew – and we had our movie.
Actors in Drew’s age bracket (she is 44) just aren’t catered for by the Hollywood script machine in the way their male counterparts are, so the chances of signing one up are that much greater. (The same applies to Demi Moore, whom we were lucky enough to get as one of the leads in Corporate Animals.) The willingness may be there, but the scripts aren’t.
Working with legends such as Demi and Drew has been a surreal but wonderful experience. Watching Demi perform lines I had written, I felt like I was seeing three different people: the fictional character she was playing, Demi as she is now and the Demi of St Elmo’s Fire and Ghost. At one point, she asked me to rewrite some edgy pillow-talk dialogue to make it “more extreme”. I did so conscientiously – only to see her appalled shock when I pitched my suggestions. (She went with one of them, though. She is a pro, after all.)
Drew told me that she liked my script because it gave her a chance to channel her own experience of fame, having lived in the public eye since the age of four. We did an early makeup test for the character of the stand-in – Drew was fully made-up, including wig and prosthetics. She decided to walk into midtown Manhattan “in disguise” and experience her first taste of anonymity. To her delight, no one recognised her. She ended up going to an open casting call and auditioning in character. She didn’t get the part, which was great – it would have clashed with our filming dates.
***
When I was starting out 25 years ago, I don’t think I had the confidence to write women as leads. It just seemed natural, as a man, to write men. When facing down the terror of the blank page, it felt safer to write about “the default sex”, the one I have experience of – men. I had a fear‑based resistance to making a woman the centre of a story.
When we were making the pilot of Peep Show, David Mitchell and Robert Webb suggested an actor they knew to play Sophie – the actor we now know as the Oscar winner Olivia Colman. When it started to become clear just how talented Olivia was, Jesse and I had a twinge of regret that Sophie had been sketched out pretty thinly as Mark’s love interest. We tried to amp her up by bringing out the more extreme sides of her character; and when it came to creating Dobby, played by Isy Suttie, we tried hard to make her weirder and more distinctive.
For me, Fresh Meat was a turning point. One of the things I’m proudest of is that the three female lead characters are funny protagonists in their own right, who never play the “sensible woman” or the “straight man” to the male characters. Jesse and I co-wrote the pilot episode, but the show itself was written in collaboration with a team that always had a female element. I don’t believe those characters would have come fully to life without that.
Like a lot of writers (and actresses), I recoil at the concept of the “strong female character”. A well-rounded female character, sure. But in comedy it’s more important to make any character arrogant or stupid or selfish or, ideally, all of the above. It feels just as important for audiences to see women on screen fall on their face – literally and figuratively – as to see them being high achievers doing great things. From Absolutely Fabulous and Fleabag to Bridesmaids and Chewing Gum, there are few things more enjoyable than watching a first-rate comic actress being allowed to make a total tit of herself.
People sometimes ask if I look at my earlier work differently now – whether my shows would have been better if they had been more diverse. What would Peep Show have been like with women as the two leads? It’s a great question – and it’s one I’ll shortly have the answer to, because there is a script in development for a US Peep Show with two female leads. It’s at FX Networks and it will be written by top comedy brain Karey Dornetto (Portlandia, Community).
Ultimately, the best way of building gender inclusivity into scripts is to get women to write them. I can’t wait to find out what sick and twisted bullshit goes on inside the minds of a pair of female losers.
• Corporate Animals has its European premiere at Sundance film festival: London on 1 June at Picturehouse Central.
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