The following interview appeared as an extract in BAFTA's official 2022 Awards brochure, which is now available on Issuu.
Little did screenwriter Edward Cripps know that a tiny suggestion he made at a BAFTA event would be life-changing.
INTERVIEW & WORDS: Toby Weidmann
BAFTA/Alecsandra Raluca Dragoi
It was while attending a round table with a big Hollywood screenwriter, organised as part of the BFI and BAFTA’s development programme for emerging and mid-level creatives, BFI NETWORK vs BAFTA Crew, that Edward Cripps asked if it would be possible to do something similar with a British creative who was closer to their entry level.
As a result of that request, BAFTA arranged a round table with the multitalented Charlie Covell, a former BAFTA Breakthrough participant (2015) whose show The End of the F•••ing World (2017) had just been nominated for a BAFTA. “It was amazing,” says Edward. “Charlie is one of the smartest, most generous and decent people I’ve ever met, let alone in the industry. She was very kind and candid and we kept in touch afterwards.”
Skip forward to 2019 and things had taken a downturn: Edward was working as an usher in a cinema in Battersea and his writing aspirations, while not done, had taken a bit of a hit. “I guess I’d fallen out of the industry a little,” he reflects. “It wasn’t a very busy cinema, so I’d spend my time writing, reading scripts and watching films. I had a few things in development, but I was worried it was all falling apart.”
And perhaps, in an alternate timeline, that’s where Edward’s story and connection to the industry might have ended. A narrative that started when he was just a child, enamoured by storytelling, sitting in front of the television watching children’s programming or family-friendly films on the ol’ video cassette recorder. “I’d be quiet for hours... I was just drawn to storytelling, I couldn’t tell you why.”
By seeing things I recognised, especially as a young gay teenager, I associated storytelling with being myself and feeling alive.
A quick biography check: in Edward’s teenage years, storytelling took on greater significance. “It became more about finding escape,” he explains. “I had a difficult time being in the closet as a teenager and with the homophobia at school. Films and TV enabled me to disappear or go somewhere else that was different. Also, it vicariously let me feel or experience things that I thought were forbidden or out of reach. By seeing things I recognised in characters, especially as a young gay teenager, I associated storytelling with being myself and feeling alive. I remember that being a big deal.”
I felt how powerful storytelling could be. I wanted to find a way to tell my own stories.
Although Edward wrote plays secretly during this time, he took his first proper step into the theatrical world when he directed a stage version of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen at university. “I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be creative,” he notes. “I did a filmmaking MA at the Northern Film School, which is part of Leeds Beckett University now, because I felt like I didn’t have any experience in the practicalities of production... I made a couple of shorts and then settled on wanting to write, because I still felt how powerful storytelling could be. I wanted to find a way to tell my own stories.”
After university, Edward initially moved into script development – “I was just trying to learn as much about the industry as I could and thought this would let me see how other writers and producers worked” – which led to Farah Abushwesha’s company Rocliffe. For the past few years, BAFTA and Rocliffe have worked closely together on New Writing Showcases for different mediums, so this step brought Edward closer to BAFTA.
“Although I’d worked a bit in development, I didn’t really know many people in my peer group, who were the same age and experience level as me,“ he says. “That’s why I joined BFI NETWORK x BAFTA Crew. I was quite mercenary about it – I looked at the list of everybody on it and highlighted the names of people who had made stuff I liked and tried to arrange coffee meetings with them... I always want to make the most out of opportunities.”
Back to 2019 and Edward ushering in that Battersea cinema. A significant moment occurred when he applied and was accepted onto the BFI Flare x BAFTA programme, a more intimate offshoot of Crew that supports LGBTQIA+ filmmakers. He had applied a few years in a row and not made the final cut, so this was a big confidence booster. Perhaps more importantly, part of this year-long initiative offers recipients the opportunity to select a mentor. Edward knew immediately who to request.
“Charlie Covell was the person at the top of my list,” he states, “and she very kindly agreed. When we met up, I’d written a sample script and it just happened to be in a semi similar genre to her next project, Kaos. She liked the script and so did the producers, so she asked me to come in for an interview. I pitched some storylines to them and wrote some sample scenes, because it was about trying to write the way she writes. That’s not a job, that’s a treat, because Charlie is so good, funny and cinematic.”
Interview over, the nervous wait began. Edward was working a shift at the cinema when Charlie called to tell him he had landed a spot in the writers’ room. “I just went into the toilets and cried. That was towards the end of the summer 2019. It was the first time that I could properly write fulltime. Everyone on that project were so incredibly generous and I learnt a huge amount.”
I can trace it all back to Crew. It’s really changed my life, especially BFI Flare x BAFTA.
Edward now has two projects of his own in development, one with Two Brothers Pictures and the other with Objective Fiction, and has a film treatment (“a queer coming-of-age vampire flick”) in the process of applying for funding. He was also recently selected as one of 12 writers for the Channel 4 Screenwriting Course 2022 from more than 2,800 applications.
“I can trace it all back to Crew,” Edward states. “I’m so grateful for these opportunities. It’s really changed my life, especially the Flare scheme. It’s given me a huge confidence boost... I’d love to do more writers’ room work. I love the challenge and feel I have a good brain for world-building and big picture stuff, which was really helpful for Kaos. The dream, of course, is to have my own project with my own writers’ room, but right now I’m focused on getting more experience and credits and working with people I can learn from.”
Find out more about BFI Flare x BAFTA here.
