MARIAYAH: Good afternoon. I’m Mariayah Kaderbhai head of programmes for BAFTA. Welcome to our closing lecture for the 12th edition of the BAFTA Screenwriters Lecture Series. The lecture series was founded in 2010 and we have over 60 lectures on the YouTube channel, if you scan that QR Code, it will take you to a brochure of the series and there’s a link which takes you to all of the lectures. I’ve got a bit of housekeeping before we begin. It’s a no photography event. If you could put your phones on silent or turn them to flight mode, please. There are cameras, so you are being filmed. If you need the bathroom during the event, please use the exits at the back of the theatre. We are not expecting a fire drill so if you hear the alarm, make your way out of the building using the stairs, and if you need assistance, please wait and a member of the team will come and find you. I want to thank the BAFTA team. The talent team, production team, press and comms team, the guys in projection over there who’ve worked tirelessly all weekend to bring this lecture series to you.
The founder of the series, Jeremy Brock, BAFTA Award winning screenwriter came up with the idea in 2010 and the JJ Charitable Trust and Lucy Guard who have supported it since its conception. To tell you about our esteemed final lecture, I would like to welcome Jeremy Brock to the stage, thank you.
JEREMY: Thank you very much. Before I begin, a word about why we are here. Film making – being a writer director or a pure screenwriter, what you puts down on page remains the template for everything that follows, whatever the genre, however loose the affiliation between page and screen, your words matter. Because without your words, nothing ignites. So let nobody make you doubt whatever the notes, whatever the humiliations, however long the road, screen plays are where it begins and ends. Those are the 100 pages of primary ideas, situation, context, developing character, plot, action, tone, pace, and all the drama and architectural upon which the film is inspired and lifted. That is why we are here. Now, our closing night speaker is the playwright and screenwriter Alice Birch. Her television credits include Conversations with Friends, Dead Ringers and Succession, and also Normal People. These multi award-winning dramas are matched by a superb body of work in film, that includes Lady Macbeth, Mothering Sunday, The Wonder and The End We Start From. She’s attracted some of the world’s finest actors, David Edgar Jones, Josh O’Connor, Olivia Colman, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Paul Mescal. We are honoured to close with her lecture with the moderator Wendy Mitchell. Ladies and gentlemen, Alice Birch.
ALICE: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. An extraordinary list of screenwriters this weekend, I’m very honour and quite nervous!
I want to talk about writing today. I want to talk about being a writer, I want to talk about writing. I both want and not want to talk about lasagnes and art galleries and rhythm and writers’ rooms and Wordle and selling sunset and baths and swimming and walking and distraction, food, money, and parenting and being a child, friendship, illness, sex, and writing. And grief and night buses and love and cheap wine and the perfect notebook and cinema, hope, theatre, world events and politics and want, and jealousy and Elon Musk and beginnings and middles and ends. I’m not good at endings. And writing!
Exterior Street Hackney, November morning 2024, it’s a bright cold day, not cold enough given we are in London in November but there are leaves on the ground, half dead pulped up pumpkins on door steps. Winter coats and mittens getting their first outing. A woman late 30s, tired, is half running along a suburban street, her daughters five hand in hers, she’s trying to wrangle the child into a coat as they move, the girl half on half off a battered second hand scooter. Porridge and jam and toothpaste on her face. The mother half checking for nits, as she attempts to put a helmet on the resistant child. They are chatting about the day ahead. The girl hopes there will be candy floss for lunch and maybe they can go to the zoo rather than do phonics. The mother seems distracted but attempted to join in with her daughter’s sweet, impossible wonderings. As they approach the school, there are nods and waves to other parents making the same journey. They make the same jokes they always make. The eye rolls as that I balance model volcanos, the don’t fucking look at me grips as they clutch children who’ve already fallen over or lost a battle with a prick l bush, the bicycles being wheeled for the morning commute, the yoga mats, the how early can we open the wine being shouted from one mum to another across the street. The woman steers her daughter towards her classroom, towards the kind, gentle adults who’ve super human levels of patience, a trait she thought she had herself prior to having children and says goodbye. She feels strangely emotional at this goodbye every day, something to do with time passing, something to do with the guilt at the relief and elation screen creeping in. Something to do with the panic arriving. She has no excuse now. She has to turn around and begin something now. She has to make something exist where it does not exist before. She has to write. The girl is not emotional, don’t cry, she snaps and thankfully joyfully literally turns and skips into the classroom. And the woman turns and stands, her arms suddenly empty and useless hanging by her sides.
Form is everything to me. Or at least I have decided it’s everything. And decisions, certainties, rules and boundaries are exceptionally useful to the writers. Particularly if the writer makes a pact with themselves, that they are allowed to break the rules whenever absolutely necessary.
But I have decided and therefore it has become the truth for me, that I can’t begin anything unless I know the form, the bones, the scaffolding, the shape, the structure of it. It doesn’t have any meaning to me without it.
The hope, the challenge, the pursuit, the word playwright is derived from the word wrought, an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder. This is not a sentiment my parents could get on board with. The play has to be wrought, writing the script is a physical task, a trade are, you are creating a piece of machinery.
I want to talk about writing and about distraction. No, but the hope is that the form and content align, as closely as possible. That the two speak to one another.
When I was asked to take part in this lecture series, lecture, I am struggling with the word lecture, I was deeply honoured, mildly terrify and suddenly found that I knew neither the content nor the form. Perhaps this is becoming very clear. I can only apologise. A lecture is an educational talk to an audience, a lecture is a long, serious speech. Length is relatively easy, one critic described a play I wrote as endless in a way that I don’t think he meant in complimentary terms.
Serious I can do, the spectator once said of one of my plays if Isis had an Arts Council, this would be one of its proudest commissions.
Educational, given that a Financial Times critic closed his review of an early project of mine with the words, I have surely never seen a show at the National Theatre so utterly, utterly devoid of substance. We may be in some danger. Distraction. Digging in. I want to talk about digging in. When I sit down to write, no, I never believe that sentence – that’s not where it begins – beginnings is a useful thing for us to touch upon actually. Where does it begin and where do we find our stories, where do our stories find us, how do we hold on to them and spot the good ones from the ones that are not our time?
Whenever I begin to have the sense of the beginnings of an idea, and it is that coy, it is that gentle, I’m not woken up in the night with a bang fully formed idea. It does not mean it’s without pain, edge or panic. If an idea is worth pursuing, if it’s going to turn into something, it’s persistent, it’s an ever-present, dull ache, and a dark, depressing, exciting, definitely going to break my heart lover.
Write me, tend to me, feed me, discover me, unpick me. Be a bad mother and stop thinking about your children, stop running baths and peeling vegetable, don’t swim, aim for 10,000 steps, don’t work on that script even though the producer who wants that draft, or there will be an entertainment catastrophe of epic proportions. Climb into me, this new thought, I might hurt you, but whilst I am only potential, I am profound.
I find writing deeply painful. Difficult. Hard. Often I will do anything to not do it. Lasagnes, swimming, couch to 5K. I’m a proficient baker, not because I wanted to be good at it, but because I don’t want to write.
I have applied to medical school twice in the last year. It’s true. An application process that is incredibly complicated, thorough and demanded a lot of my time. This is not how it is for everybody. I have a tendency to romanticise the pain of it all, you may have noticed, which is of no use to anybody and there have been moments when I have, I wouldn’t use the word enjoyed, but found real pleasure in writing. I know for many writers the process has more joy than pain in it. If that is you, seize it. But when it is hard, that is okay. Making something where it did not exist, saying something, digging into yourself and sharing that, that should sometimes feel difficult.
So, for me, not joy, but it is necessary. Writing is how I make sense of the world.
And, I honestly believe that I am a writer before I’m anything else. I am a writer more than I am my own person in a body.
That badly written scene I read at the beginning of this incredibly long, serious lecturer devoid of substance is of course me, and not me, a version of me and not. It is how I feel. All of the time. Fraudulent, not really here, slightly to the left of my own life and being because everything is a story, a scene, potential.
When I swim I spend all 40 lengths thinking about how to describe the feeling of the water against an arm between toes, the cramp hitting the calves, they are not even mine calves, it’s not my body at this stage, but a vehicle for characters to come and occupy. If I get a stone in my shoe I think about the description of a stone in a shoe. When I bend down to retrieve said stone, I look at it for colour, shape, texture and wonder how to make it interesting. Between my thumb and forefinger, would this be a close-up? Then what happens?
As I stand up and continue my uneventful day and journey, I’m thinking about the woman who chooses to lie flat on the pavement on her stomach, pretending to have fallen because she’s so bored. Or perhaps the mother who pushes her to the ground stepping on the back of her head crunching her skull beneath his foot. Or perhaps the woman who doesn’t notice the woman on the floor trips over and they both end up in the hospital together and end up falling in love. When I am in the playground having said goodbye to my child, I turn around and I’m thinking, what next? What exciting event might happen next? When I was a child, my older sisters most often repeated phrase was, mum she’s looking at me again.
I want to write about all of it. The smallest, specific things, and the whole world.
I want to be rigorous, detailed, precise, and I want to say something about what it means to be human. The banal and sublime in every moment. There is no such thing as distraction. It’s all work, it’s all story, it’s all potential, everything.
The key I think is how you write all of it. How you choose the material that is to be wrought, how you wrestle it to the ground, how you apply the necessary rigour and precision, turn it into art, how you make sure you are saying what you most want to say, we must apply this rigour and be detailed, precise and thoughtful, the aim is not to write terrible scenes about dropping your child off to school or finding a stone in your shoe, or going for a swim, just because you are alive to story because you do those things.
I’m extraordinarily lucky, privileged to be in a position where writing is my job and I’m paid to do it. Easy for me to say that distraction is work.
I was born in a commune in a beautiful house with bluebell woods and chickens, and a vegetable patch. A lazy Susan was constantly spun back and forth in my kitchen. I would sit under the table tying shoelaces together and listen to the grown-ups talking about politics, art, childhoods and days at work, the architect, the Potter, the driving instructor, the English teacher, therapist, the supermarket worker.
Dinner scenes are my favourite scenes to write.
Go to a gallery and stand in front of each painting or photograph and turn it into a scene. Activate it, choose it as the opening image of your film. The closing image of your play. Find characters, look at the titles, go home and put your script on the wall and treat it like art, look at it as though you are in a gallery, take it fucking seriously.
When I was a teenager, I did work experience at the Royal Court Theatre in London. They had a work experience programme strictly for applicant who is lived in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. They said thank you but no. I called them and I begged. I don’t know why. I loved theatre. My mum would take us to a panto every year and started taking me more regularly when she could see how her inaccessible daughter was move and thrilled by theatre. She encouraged many to apply to the theatre. When they relented, I was thrilled. Knock on doors, ask people politely for things. Take a risk. Throw your face at it.
At the Royal Court, I read unsolicited play submissions, the stack of these entering the theatre was enormous. Teetering. I read one play that had what shocking scene involving necrophilia, involving that is not the phrase, it was a scene in which a man had sex with a dead body.
Truthfully, I had no idea if it was any good, what does good mean, but I offered a response. It could never be staged. The scene is too shocking. Unstageable.
They sat me in a room to read. Carl tries to pick up his hands he can’t he has no hands. They cross the Andes, a sunflower bursts from the floor and grows above their heads. Oh, anything is possible. This is the place where anything is possible. This is the place where everything happens. The writer’s job is to pursue the truth at all costs. When I began to write more seriously with such seriousness that hopefully one day Isis might consider commissioning me, I realised relatively quickly that what I was good at was the moment that led up to the action, or the moments that followed. For example, I could write the scene until the moment a character pulled out a gun. And then I quickly typed the words “backup”. I could write the lights coming up in a scene in which a man is waving a gun standing over a body, but I couldn’t write the moment the action happened, I could not pull the trigger, I could not sustain it. The machinery, the play, is to be wrought, the script is a piece of engineering, not a literary piece of prose. Form is everything.
So I set myself a challenge. I decided to write a closed time closed space play, the action happens in real-time, you are not allowed to break, no blackouts, no time jumps. It all happens in one location, you are not allowed to move. Four people in a room and you essentially lock the doors, I would be forced to make something happen.
I think by the way that what I found difficult is something that lots of writers struggle with, throughout their career, watching films, television theatre, you can sometimes feel when the writer is struggling to make something happen in a way of feeling exciting, specific and new.
I wrote and then deleted the words and a bomb lands and they all die, many times. Desperate to get out of it. It was the struggle. And I cannot comment on whether the play was any good or not or is good. The Guardian found it tested the audience’s patience, so perhaps I should have done more bombs, but the lesson was that form is crucial and that for me was invaluable.
Engage with what you find difficult, what you are not good at, work on it, through your writing, find the form that will challenge you.
When I moved to London, I worked as a receptionist, nanny, waitress, and I worked at an Italian. I was inventing an inner life for the people there, deciding on their secrets, how much money they had, what might make them spit with anger. On the night bus home I tried to go over it, the new cast of characters, but would get swept up in and distract bid a new set of people and stories. Be alive to it, follow everything that interests you and everything that doesn’t. And be rigorous.
Do you believe in God? How often do you have sex? Do you know who Miley Cyrus is? I have a list of 500 questions that sometimes I use when creating characters. What shoes you would or did you wear to your father’s funeral? Put your hand in your pockets. What’s there? How much money do you make? How do you make your money? On some processes, I go through all 500 questions for every character, even if that character just has one line. On some projects I’ll begin the questions and find that the answer to question 7 perhaps is so revealing or interesting or the heart of whole thing, I’ll fail to rougher return to the other questions. Some projects I went do it, it doesn’t feel useful or relevant. Who did you vote for in the last election? Swear, now. What keeps you awake at night?
How do you know what to follow and when and why, which jobs to take, which notes to attempt, which collaborators to work with? How do you know when you are writing something truthful? Unfortunately I don’t have a good answer to this. Or at least not one that feels like a particularly tangible piece of advice you can take away. The best I’ve got is guts, and rigour.
Writers have good guts. Good instincts. I know when I’m writing something that feels true to me. Perhaps I didn’t know that when starting out which is why rigour can be relied upon, you have to write and write and write and write to get better but also to get to know yourself as a writer.
Form is everything. In 2014, the RSC gave me an early commission, it was a specific brief, to be performed in the smaller theatre, the Other Place, in a season with three other female playwrights. It was going to be Called Midsomer Mischief and apart from being thrilled and a little confused to have won a commission from the RSC, I was frankly pissed off. The men got to be serious in the big theatre, and we were being labelled as mischievous. I got angry and read as much as I could, read, read, read everything and anything you can get your hands on. Read outside of your comfort zone, read things you hate, and disagree with, read lake it’s your job.
I decided to write a play in the form of a manifesto. The provocation that had so irritated me, the festival being Named As Mischief those pushed me to make the play about language. That play taught me how important language is. For me, it’s the whole job. It pushed many to be as precise as possible, no word on that page should be there by mistake and if you are rigorous, it won’t be.
Whenever I redraft a script, I write it all out again even if only addressing one note on page 18. Be in control of the rhythm, be precise. Writers’ rooms are a fantastic experience but they are still rare in this country, they are exceptionally hard to get into and just because we are talking about them more, does not mean that they are going to be the defining experience of your career. Find writers, make friends, celebrate the fact that they can be kind to one another. We have different voices, we cannot be in competition with one another, just be thrilled that we exist and we are attempting to tell stories. And that is as sentimental as I will ever get, I promise.
When writing a first draft, it’s only for me. I forget that there will be a reader or if I’m lucky an audience. It’s an entirely self-involved narcissistic process. I often write at night, it feels private, secret, further away from interruption, my life as a mother, a partner, a person who at some point has to empty bins or wash school shirts.
It’s a deep and complicated conversation that I’m having with myself. I’m trying to entertain, move, shock, enlighten, frighten myself. Of course, if the process continues, and you are in a position where the work is being made or going to be made, then you have to open out, collaborate, listen, consider an audience.
Always try the note. Going through the process of working that note through will never not be useful to you. That doesn’t mean you have to share it. But it does mean you have given it a real thought, it does mean that you will become more intimately acquainted with your work, it does mean that you will be a better defender and protector of it. Form is everything.
What happens when you cannot be in control of the form? Film is the director’s medium, I’m not holding the frame, I’m not in control of the lens, the pace of storytelling, where the camera or performance is. Writing films like Lady Macbeth, The Wonder, The End We Start From, the first drafts are quite different to the final product. The first drafts written in the middle of the night at my kitchen table were mine, belonged to me, something I created where it did not exist before. I’m fortunate that on the films and television series Normal People and Conversations With Friends the collaborators were brilliant, good, kind artists whose notes and ideas made it better, who listened when I tried the note and made a case for something else. Put your strongest arguments in the mouths of antagonists, just as an experiment. What do you do when you lose control of the form? For several years I worked on a television show called Dead Ringers for Amazon. It was the most rewarding and challenging experience of my life. I was show-running for the first time, though I don’t know that I understood that I was show-running until I was on set and somebody was frantically asking me whether I was happy with how the wallpaper turned out. Show running can feel a long way from being a writer. Record a conversation, write it out as faithfully as you can, include all the ums, the uhs, and rewrite it and make it more interesting.
The show was a spin on Kronenberg’s masterpiece about twin gynaecologists, played bid the extraordinary Rachel Weiss. It was about pregnancy. I decided there would be nine episodes. Each would be named after a different fruit beginning the apple seed, ending with watermelon. They would show up in the show. Pregnancy symptoms would exist in the show in a strange, haunting way, nausea in episode 1 and bodies splitting open in episode 99. I wanted to honour the body horror that Kronenberg gave us. One episode was cut at the end of the writers’ room process, it was a bottle episode that happened to take place in three different time year periods in six different countries. I had to grieve through it quickly. I was the show runner, a producer, more conscious of the budget than ever, and understood why we needed to give it up but I was losing the form. How do you keep writing when losing the form?
We lost another episode, one week before shooting was due to begin.
I was about to get on a plane with my two children, on my own in the middle of a pandemic.
And the network said, you are over budget and over-schedule. We lost another episode. How do you keep writing when you are losing the form?
The networks and producers claimed the same problem, the show was too slow, the pacing was off. My gut said otherwise but I tried the note and tried the note! How do you keep going when you are losing the form?
I don’t have a good answer. It’s hard. You have to dig in. It was impossibly, desperately hard.
Be rigorous, dig in, head down, follow the characters, follow the characters, follow the characters, be kind to yourself, make rules, break them, submit to distraction, and then be rigorous. I’m not very good at endings!
Q&A
WENDY: Thank you so much, that was just brilliant to listen to and it did talk about what it means to be human and a human writer. You can thank you, there’s a lot to unpick there. This concept – I might try to go a bit more practical and basic because I think you gave us a wide view – the concept of scaffolding that you brought up. I wanted to ask you how you start to build it. Because I think I’ve read or heard at BAFTA in previous talks that if you are adopting a book, let’s say, you will write it out long hand.
ALICE: Yes.
WENDY: Do you always do that, what does that give you?
ALICE: I don’t always do it now because I don’t think there’s enough time always. I do try really hard to do it though. I didn’t do it on Normal People because there wasn’t time and that turned out really well, so… anyway, yes, honestly, the first time I did it was for Lady Macbeth and it was because I was terrified and it was something to do.
WENDY: And that was Lady Macbeth of Minsk?
ALICE: Yes.
WENDY: Not well known.
ALICE: Yes, very short. At the time it wasn’t this crazy idea but then that process was really useful. You notice things that you wouldn’t on a read and there is something there for me about taking claim. I wrote that book so I can adapt it. I think it’s about having greater intimacy with it, and yes, that is useful, and honestly yes, it started because it was a task. And I didn’t know how to write a screen play.
WENDY: I first met you around Lady Macbeth time and it’s one of my all-time British favourite films, not just debuts, so credit to you and the whole team. You write it out long hand and then are you trying to like diagram scenes, are you writing characters, writing out plot points, are you writing about themes? How does the scaffold start to build? And maybe that was different because it was your first?
ALICE: Yes, I probably tried loads of things. Yes, sometimes you try character biogs, a timeline of the events that exist within that world, you might go way beyond the film or might sort of want to imagine what happens to a Florence Pugh character for the rest of her life, but all of it is not – it’s not a sort of calm, logical – this is what we’ll do today, it’s quite panicky. It’s quite like…
WENDY: A constant state of panic?
ALICE: Yes. Let’s try this, this and this and let us see what will happen. Because working on a film or a TV series, that is what is going to hold your interest, so it has to be something that you think will hold your interest for years.
WENDY: Yours or the audience?
ALICE: Not very good at thinking about the audience, so mine, yes. Yes.
(Laughter)
WENDY: And with that, how much of that, and then I’m not going to go project by project like this, I promise, but how much of Lady Macbeth then changed with notes Will was giving you? And I love the fact that you are trying to, each note, if it’s really true, that you get, you will think about it, experiment and make your own choice? So yes, when do you know, is it just again instinct, like a gut, this is right, I got this note but this is right instead?
ALICE: I think with notes, sometimes it’s a gut thing, but because it’s machinery, you know, you might really feel that cog needs to be there, because otherwise the whole thing collapses. But if you work through it and it doesn’t and like okay that’s interesting, it can stand up on its own, it doesn’t need that scene even though I thought it was the best scene ever, you know, I think that there is a fare of notes because they could crush your precious thing. So I really understand it. But it needs to be robust, it needs to work. That also doesn’t mean you can think on that note. That could be trying it if that is what it is for you. An instinctive no, I would just question it a bit. Hopefully you are working with people who want to make, it’s always good if you are working with people who want to make the same thing as you. That definitely felt like that happened on Normal People in a profound way. We were all facing the same direction. But, yes, notes don’t have to be frightening, terrible, yes.
WENDY: Oh. Let’s talk about Normal People. So many people in this room will have been so impacted by that show. The way that happened if I understand correctly. You read the book, you were obsessed and said, to your agent, who is doing it, and they said, Sally’s writing it herself and you were like, oh, well, there goes that dream, you know. Then it came back around that Sally didn’t have time to write all of it. She’d already written some episodes so. This is an unusual thing to get thrown into, your dream project and the dream is half built without you. How did you come into that?
ALICE: It’s exactly as you describe. It don’t do this very often, but I did put my hand up, call my agent and say, yes, who is doing that. And he was like, Sally’s writing it and Lenny is directing, Rose is producing it and I was like, brilliant, can’t wait to see it, great, good, it’s happening. It was more like, this needs to happen. I can help out, you know. And then, yes, I think that maybe that was one of the reasons why they thought to come to me. She had written the first draft of the first six episodes and beautifully, like. She’d done an incredible job. But she was on a book tour and wanted to write her next book and had her fill of screen writing.
WENDY: How did you then, because it’s 12 episodes, how did you then write the other six but then work on the first six to make sure that it’s a voice throughout?
ALICE: Yes. It’s a really good question. I think the feeling was at first – actually when they first asked me, Sally was going to stay on her six and I was going to write the second half. So I just sort of began that and, you want to, particularly with a book like Normal People and that is so beloved, and I would get on the bus and everyone was reading it and I was like, I’ve got to go and write it and not ruin it – so it was quite a lot of pressure. It was all about honouring. I had an emotional experience reading the book and I knew that that is what it had to be on screen. It was a really quick process, a quick job, it really helped that the episodes were half an hour. That was like a really nice shape that worked really well. And then Sally decided not to continue, so then I was sort of doing both. Which was…
WENDY: Does that mess with your head?
ALICE: No. Because I think I’m quite good at – I quite like, you know, there’s a playwright Bryony Lavery said if it’s not working shut up shop, it’s okay. So it was like having ten shops and like, episode 1, we know that’s not working so I’ll see what’s happening in 7, it was like, my brain likes that. I like bouncing around.
WENDY: That is amazing. On something like Dead Ringers, do you write out Kronenberg’s… was there already a firm idea of the framework?
ALICE: No.
WENDY: They just said here is Kronenberg’s Dead Ringers do something with it?
ALICE: It was Rachel Weiss’s idea, she loves that film and had been looking for something, you know, she wanted to play something that had a female relationship at the centre of it and thought about sisters and remembered that film. So she took it to Anna Perner, then they came to me and Rachel and I met. I hadn’t seen the film. I watched it and was like, I don’t know if I’m the right person to do this. But, I was always really interested in more like new characters who were sort of related to those ones, and sort of being able to talk about women’s health and the body horror was really fascinating. And obviously Rachel Weiss is a dream to write for. I did a pilot and a Bible and we started pitching and Amazon were quick in saying they wanted this and they green lit it.
But no, I didn’t watch the film, like I would occasionally check in with it, but, you know, I wanted to make something that was quite new.
WENDY: You would say, other than your theatrical work, is that one of the more original blank pages that you had to work with in a way?
ALICE: I think so, definitely. It feels like it’s more me than some of the others.
WENDY: I want to see all 9 episodes you will have done at some point. Somebody make that happen. With that situation, you are writing with Rachel Weiss knowing you have got this brilliant actor who will bring it to life. How closely, especially with her as a creator of that show, even though you were the runner, as we have said, but how did you work with her through the process or, how comforting or terrifying is it writing words that you know Rachel Weiss is going to inhabit?
ALICE: By the time I was writing the words we had spent a lot of time together so it was less terrifying, it was more like just a wonderful challenge. Like writing something that was worthy of her, like that was… I mean she was in the writers’ room, which was on Zoom, during the pandemic and she came into the writers’ room every day, which is really unusual. But, it was brilliant, and it meant that by the time we were on set, she had been part of every conversation, she knew the origin of why everything was where it was. She was really part of it. She also was generous in the ram and never came, it was never like please don’t go down that one because I don’t want to do that, she was really generous. So, yes, when it was difficult, she was incredible and amazing as a support and a collaborator, and she was in the edits right the way through.
WENDY: Yes. What happens when you get stuck? Like you said when it was difficult. But I would love to interrogate that a little bit more and, is that when you go for a swim and start thinking, I’m describing the way things are or when you watch some bad reality TV or drink wine or, do you ever just have to put it aside for long periods of time, not just like, I’ll look at that again tomorrow, but do you ever have to stop because you feel stuck?
ALICE: I will stop for short periods, but not long, no. Because then it’s gone. I’m very proud of things that I’ve done, but I’m not really interested in them once they have happened. It feels like it’s quite urgent, I need to say this now, I need to write this now, and I’m quite impatient. And then, once it’s in the world, I would never sort of look at it again. There’s no the interest in looking at it, it’s happened, I want to say something else new now.
I’m quite used to, and okay with it being difficult. I might go for a walk or something, you know, the sort of kids or like that kind of thing. But no, I think that I really do need to work it out on the page as well with the words.
WENDY: You mentioned – and I don’t know whether it was a joke – sitting at the kitchen table at night. Is that when you do your best writing, and has that been the case before you were a parent, and why kitchen table, why night-time?
ALICE: Kitchen table, because it’s near the fridge, and…
WENDY: And the kettle.
ALICE: Yes. And lots of stories, you know, I didn’t have a desk. That’s a flat surface, isn’t it?! And yes, I do write in the day, but where I really – every time I’m writing in the day, I’m like, how on earth did I write anything longer than three sentences because it’s so difficult. Then at night it flows a bit more. It feels secret, it feels like no-one else exists. Er, it feels like I can really going into the characters and feel what they are feeling and I don’t have to sort of go and do other boring life jobs, yes.
WENDY: When you are doing that, do you stand up and act it out, say things out loud?
ALICE: No.
WENDY: Some people do, you know.
ALICE: That’s really funny. Er, no. I do say it, I think I say it, but I think maybe I said it in my head but I think I’m saying it, I don’t know. It’s quite – I’m sure it would be quite a horrifying thing to watch – I’m sure I look quite mad. It’s just me entertaining myself, and I really go to that place, and become all those people, yes.
WENDY: And I’m going to use your words which I don’t agree with but you said this notion of being self-involved, especially when you are writing and it’s not for an audience. So I’m wondering how we take – and that I can identify with whatever kind of writing I do, it’s at the kitchen table on my own, I don’t talk to anybody – but how do you then go into a writers’ room, and I think this is such a very, taking a very interior thing and making it a communal endeavour, just to me, scares the be Jesús out of me that you would go into a room and say the things out loud. The first writers’ room you got invited into, was Succession. I mean wow!
ALICE: Yes.
(Applause)
WENDY: How did you adjust the mindset of being part of a writers’ room? I’m just very curious.
ALICE: I found it really hard. I was on season 2 and 4 of Succession. Jessie Armstrong is the kindest and most brilliant of men, so there’s a version of a writers’ room that’s frightening, you know, and he knows he’s got incredible instincts and he knows what he is doing. There’s really a face when you’re not hitting what he thinks. But he’s always very kind and it’s generously done.
I don’t think I really said anything for the first few weeks. I think I was quite overwhelmed. And every day, a pep talk like, hey you are going to say something today, you are going to say something, it doesn’t have to be, you know the, on the first day I’m going to solve the whole thing it’s going to be great, then by the end of the week it’s like, just say a word and it can’t be your lunch order, like say something about the show.
You know, I didn’t want to look stupid, I didn’t want to be vulnerable, I didn’t want to fuck it up. So you really have to get over all of that and it’s a completely different thing. That is why writing for screen is so funny, so strange, because yes, it’s not just you at the kitchen table, it’s you standing on set working with loads of other heads of department and making sure you look confident and calm so that they will feel like you know what you are doing and it’s holding your nerve on set. Like everyone else wants to move on and you are standing with the director and the DoP and saying you haven’t got it and pissing everyone off. I don’t like doing that. Being in a writers’ room is not your show, but trying to help Jessie get exactly what he needs, and also sort of offer him things that are going to be helpful and that he might not have thought of. There are lots of different things, like pitching as well. When I’ve wanted to be a writer and I have wanted to be one for ever, I didn’t imagine any of those things, and it’s a stretch. But it can also be wonderful.
WENDY: Yes. I’m curious. There must be something about you wanting to write for theatre to begin with. You do want to see this as a collaborative process otherwise you would write a novel and you are so collaborative with the editors, maybe so. What is it about writing for a stage and screen that you think is right for you?
ALICE: Yeah… it’s a really good question. I do Ugh I don’t want to say these words but I do think it’s magic. I do.
WENDY: You are allowed. We are at BAFTA.
ALICE: I know. I want to be cooler, but it’s magic, and it’s just – I don’t know – it’s the way that – I have told this story before I think, but when I was a child, I wrote a pantomime.
WENDY: You were seven.
ALICE: Yes, it wasn’t any good. I made my friends do it. Really fun, cool person. And I don’t know when I was playing with toys or anything, they would talk to each other, there would be drama, it was like a lot going on, it’s just how it came out.
A novelist feels like applying to medical school as well, it feels like a whole another industry and whole other thing.
WENDY: Do you want to be a doctor?
ALICE: No…
WENDY: Still time. Under 40 which is remarkable. And a lot of your work, especially for screen, has been adaptation.
ALICE: Yes.
WENDY: Nearly all of it for screen has been adaptation.
ALICE: Yes.
WENDY: What draws you to that. I am sure you have original ideas, do you think you will do more of that, where do you see the balance or do you think adaptation gives you an extra layer of challenge?
ALICE: It’s honestly because that’s what the industry has offered me. Though I am trying now not to do so many adaptations, I want to do original things on screen, because I haven’t…
WENDY: But you have in theatre?
ALICE: Almost exclusive stuff in theatre. But there are a couple of TV things and film that are original that I’m working on.
WENDY: Do you have to have this huge body of incredible successful work to get you to listen, to get people to listen to your original ideas? What is it?
ALICE: Oh, no, no. No, no. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want people to… erm and I really enjoyed the adaptations, it felt like a slightly different puzzle. It’s been really challenging. It’s taught me a lot about my own writing and rhythm and pace. And it’s been great I don’t want to stop doing it all together, but I think maybe… a little pause. I’m going to ask one more question, then see what the smart audience wants to hear from you. Which is, the other lecturers in this year’s series all happen to be writer directors. So I’m curious if you ever personally feel pulled to maybe try that one day or if you feel like the industry might push you to try directing at some point?
ALICE: That is interesting. Erm, I don’t think I feel pushed to do it. But yes, no, I would like to. Yes.
WENDY: Soon?
ALICE: Maybe, yes.
WENDY: Okay! Agent on the ball! Let’s see if – there is an amazing crowd of BAFTA guests and members – so let’s see who has some questions for Alice. One right on the corner there, and we are recording so we have a microphone coming.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Thanks. Big fan, Alice, and one of my favourite bits of theatre, I can’t believe I got to saw it, but the way you structured it with three things going on at the same time, how did you where I that? That is quite a, like you said about form is everything, the form of that, if something slips, the whole thing would fall apart?
ALICE: It did, yes. Thank you. Yes, it was – I had sort of – for those of you who haven’t seen or read it, I wrote it landscape and there are three scenes happening at the same time, so it is scored so sometimes everybody’s saying a word together or sometimes there are breaks. Yes, writing it – maybe I just can’t remember – but I didn’t find it – what is the word? I wrote across the page, always. So never in columns. Because that wouldn’t have justified the form, like I had to be thinking of all three at the same time. It’s about inherited depression and trauma and so I thought, I wanted to structure something that was like a round, a musical round. The first scene is a hospital, the second scene, the character who is in a hospital is now cooking apples and her daughter years later is in a hospital. The first character at another scene is at a party, her daughter is cooking heroin and 20 years later her daughter is working in a hospital. And so, yes, it was something about the technical bit of it that I think allowed me to lose myself a bit more within it. There were rules which I really like. On stage, it was incredibly complicated and Katie Mitchell, a brilliant director, directed it. There was a click track, she had a composer create a musical score of it. It was really complicated. When it occasionally went wrong, they would have to stop and begin the scene again, because you can’t just pick up, yes. Thank you.
WENDY: There is one there. Two right here, so we’ll start on the end and then move in.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Writers’ block and challenging that, what sort of things to you, to bring it out, what sort of challenges do you use to get past the blocks that you might encounter? I’m a writer and encounter the same thing. I want to know how you deal with this sort of thing.
ALICE: All writers get it. Anyone that says they don’t is not telling the truth. Yes. I think there are different things. Feeding yourself in as many different ways as possible and giving yourself permission to do that, just because you are not in front of a screen, typing furiously, does not mean everything else isn’t working. Like whatever it is, going for a walk, going to a gallery, watching films, plays, reading, like all of that is, like you have to feed yourself, otherwise that block will last for longer, I think.
So just allowing it, I think, give yourself permission. You can’t force it sometimes. I think being really kind to yourself is really important.
And speaking to other people about it. Like having good collaborators, friends, not being lonely and overwhelmed by it and trust it will come back. Yes.
WENDY: Just next door?
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Hi, Alice. That was really fascinating, and a lot of it resonated with me, in particular getting good at baking because you didn’t want to write. I think over the years I’ve built a lot of unnecessary skills because I didn’t want to write. So my question is, as writers, we face a lot of rejection and setback, so what is your process for overcoming that for, you know, bouncing back from rejection and setbacks?
ALICE: A great question. From one baker to another – yes. It happens all the time. It still happens to me. I had a real period this year of pitching for things and them not happening, and that felt really destabilising. I mean, it just never feels nice. It’s really vulnerable, what we do, and so I think allowing that, just giving yourself permission to feel that way. But keep going, keep trying, keep asking for feedback as a practical thing, you know, the understanding why the rejection is there, and if anyone has any notes or anything, and you can take that or not, if it sounds like it’s going to be of no use, don’t listen to it. Like nothing that is going – anything that is going to stop you writing is not going to be helpful so you get really good at figuring out what those things are.
But just keeping going, keeping going, no-one else has your voice, so we need it, so keep going. Yes.
WENDY: Good advice. There is a question in the second row. And then one back there. Another one on the second row then maybe one at the back.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Thank you for a brilliant talk. Considering you are a writer, not a director and you have to hand over your work, how do you find the experience of letting your work go and letting it being taken by other people and do you ever watch things back and go, that’s not right, that’s completely wrong, I hate that?
ALICE: Yes, all the time! Great question! I my that just is the process, that is just it. Film particularly. It’s the director’s medium, they are holding the frame, like. And there are things that happen all the time on set that might mean an actor has had a line completely differently said, and everyone else is excited by that, not by the thing that you knew was right when you were writing it. It’s why choosing your collaborators as much as you can choose them and I totally get that sometimes you can’t, sometimes you are given somebody. Particularly when you are starting out, and that is hard.
And as much as you can be involved in the process as possible, if that works, you know, if, particularly Lady Macbeth, Will and I had a really good relationship and he was respectful of the script and he said that was a happy experience, there have been others where it was just sort of less harmonious, and have definitely sort of watched something and thought, that wasn’t my intention, and that’s not how I wrote it. That is painful. That is difficult. But I think you have to figure out what you can learn from it and so I don’t think there’s a way not to have that experience. Have that experience and you will be able to take something else going forward.
And also that happens in a really joyful way as well. Like, that wasn’t how I imagined it, but it’s so much better. Like being open to that and graceful about that is important. Saying that to myself as well!
WENDY: When do you go on set or not go on set?
ALICE: It varies. The director has to want you to be there. That is important. I haven’t gone a lot on films. Obviously, Dead Ringers I was there every day, but for the films, it’s a handing over, and there’s something about that as well that makes it slightly easier when you are watching it, that there’s the being respectful as well, I want to write – I have said this before – I don’t know if it’s totally true, but like a robust map and working document for the director so they can get what they need for it. I try it and it doesn’t always happen because people drop out, but writing for a director rather than without a direct attached that. Is not how films are set up, but as much as that can happen. I want to write for that director’s vision, I don’t want to write and be difficult for the sake of it. I want to write for what that director wants to do. So having them involved earlier I think makes a real difference.
WENDY: Did we have another question? I promised somebody in the second row I think, then the person right at the back there in the middle. So two more. So yes, can we come to this person in the second row on this side? Thank you.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Thank you so much for your talk. I really enjoyed going through your story and it was really fun to listen to.
ALICE: Thank you.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I wanted to ask you, I really like how you talk about form and structure. Have you ever broken your own rules and have you enjoyed doing so?
ALICE: Great question. Yes. Have I? Yes.
WENDY: We were talking about rule breaks.
ALICE: Yes. It’s really important to be very, very clear and then, oh, actually, I’m just gonna… you know do it just this once! If it’s right. Well, yes, in film and TV, yes, yes, you have to because I’m not in charge of it. And that was difficult, learning that. I don’t think I have in theatre. I don’t think I have. I think that is just how I make sense of it. And it might not be very clear or it might not even be very good but it helps me write, so therefore it’s useful and I’m going to hang on to it. But in film and TV, I suppose that Dead Ringers experience having to drop the episodes and feeling like, I don’t know what this is anymore because I don’t understand what it’s lost its shape, it’s lost what it’s supposed to be, it’s lost how I conceived it. That was NOT fun realising that, but it was useful.
WENDY: Somebody in the very back row, I think, sitting directly under the projector. Might be the second to last row. Can’t see. Stripey I think.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Hi, Alice. A simple question but might be slightly complicated to articulate so I wrote it down, so, but I’m also a playwright who writes for screen now as well and I can identify how the qualities that make me “a good playwright” informing my writing for television but I would be interested in hearing about which qualities help you so great and how it helps you create work for the screen seeing as they are completely different medium. And is there anything about writing for theatre you think hampers your work for the screen?
ALICE: Great question. I love that you wrote that down! That is so nice.
Yes. I mean, I think it hampers and doesn’t. I think that there are things – like I always start a TV or a film process nearly thinking, it’s going to be great and we’ll have some really long scenes and everyone’s like, not so into that, sort of. Particularly mentioned the dinner scenes. I love a dinner scene. I think it’s the technical thing like maybe Anatomy of A Suicide managing something technical as well about that. But having done that, we had a big dinner scene almost every episode of Dead Ringers and by the end of it, the crew were like, they are really hard to shoot.
I think – such a good question – trying to be really precise about language. Again that is sometimes really good, but if you are on set and an actor wants to try it in a different way and I’m going, but I agonised over that line and crafted it in the middle of the night perfectly, that doesn’t really matter, like you are not sort of being a great collaborator.
I think play writing is the best place to learn, and being in control of rhythm and that was such a good question I’m going to be thinking about that for ages.
WENDY: I wanted to start to wrap up by – where do I ask – you mentioned unlocking, like if you go look at painting, you can sort of unlock a scene and I love this idea, I think I’m going to try it as a creative exercise. But I’m wondering, already other pockets for you, are you taking notes on the bus when you are hearing people talking? Like where is life coming into your work do you think?
ALICE: Yes. I don’t go to galleries as much as I tell people to go to galleries.
WENDY: You don’t have time.
ALICE: Kind of, but I think I should do, don’t be lazy, your know, but I don’t write anything down because I’m a bit, not superstitious, that’s not the word, but I think what will stick, you know, on the way here today there were these three amazing women on the bus having like such a boring conversation, but in tones as though it was the most exciting thing anyone had ever witnessed and it was so interesting and I nearly missed my stop.
Maybe they’ll wander into something one day. But, you know, I am alive to it all the time in a way that probably makes me a terrible partner and friend, you know. Everything is potential story. Yes.
WENDY: And you said it beautifully at the end of your lecture you are not good at endings, which I think we’d disagree. Are you good at beginnings, or where is a beginning, because Anita, she spoke about spoke about the image of migrants on the news, and showed us a scene that it became and it was totally different. I’m just wondering, where something begins for you? Different every time?
ALICE: Yes, it is different every time. It might be line of dialogue, it might be an image, it might be a character, it might be a place. It’s different every time. Beginnings, I think I’m okay at them. But then I sort of need to work into them and even writing this which was my full-time job for like the last two weeks, I rewrote the beginning about 15 times, yes.
WENDY: Was the ending easier for this?
ALICE: No, because I decided that I’m not good at endings, so therefore I formally gave myself a get-out. I knew I was going to end on “I’m not good at endings” and I knew it could be not a good end.
WENDY: I want to say a big thank you to Alice.
ALICE: Thank you.
WENDY: I wanted to try to wrap up the series a bit by saying thank you to all the screenwriters who spoke, thank you to Jeremy Brock for having this idea years ago, and for working on this year’s series. Thank you to BAFTA, to Sam, Beth, the whole team, the technical team, the captioners, so many people work an event like this, and yes, most of all to the screenwriters, because it’s not easy writing a lecture if you are not a lecturer. So thank you for all your brilliant work on screen and off. Also just to remind people that all of these lectures will be available online so keep an eye on BAFTA’s socials for seeing the ones you missed or want to rewatch and have some inspiration to keep going at the kitchen table.
And also if you are not a BAFTA member, and you want to know more about BAFTA events, keep checking out bafta.org. I think that’s most of the thank yous done. But congratulations to Jeremy, the BAFTA team, to Alice Birch for a great lecture. Thank you so much.
(Applause) (Concluded)
