91热爆 One's new family drama Gold Digger starring Julia Ormond and Ben Barnes begins on Tuesday 12th November at 9pm and on 91热爆 iPlayer. We spoke to the show's creator, writer Marnie Dickens, to find out more about her writing life and the inspiration behind the drama.
How did you get started in screenwriting?
It wasn't a conscious decision, all I knew was that I wanted to work in TV. When I was still at Uni, I got some work experience as a stand-in for . Complete with blonde wig. Slightly addicted to set life, I then set about becoming a Floor Runner on various before working my way up to Third Assistant Director. As well as holding umbrellas over actors and making a lot of tea, all this experience gave me a chance to read countless scripts. I began to think about the screenwriting process, analyse the scripts in front of me, and then eventually build up the courage to have a go myself. Several spec' scripts later, and a lot of knocking on doors, I secured an agent. She worked tirelessly to get me meetings and from one of these I got a trial on .
How did you get the opportunity to move to creating your own authored shows, beginning with Thirteen?
I was always working on my own shows, trying to force new ideas, getting them down onto paper. Either discarding them or pushing them out there to various production companies. This went in tandem with being on the Hollyoaks writing team and then being lucky enough to get an episode of Ripper Street. This was followed by The Musketeers and so gradually I was building up a body of work, and crucially a run of credits, that could reassure commissioners I wasn't a novice. So when the right idea hit the desks of the right people at the right time, continuing my theme of a lot of luck being involved, I was given the opportunity to fully pursue my own authored show.
How did Gold Digger come about? Did the idea come to you fully formed? What was the pitching and development process like?
It takes me a long time to have ideas, well good ideas at least. After Thirteen I threw myself into a lot of adaptations, many of which didn't work out. I suppose I felt like the original story well was dry. Anyway a couple of years later, the idea of Gold Digger came to me. I had known for a long time I wanted to write a family drama, but the matriarch falling for a much younger man was the new notion, and one that finally made a loose idea seem solid. I wrote the pitch very fast and got it out to my favoured producers at the time. We were very lucky that the project quickly found a champion in , who had been my Executive Producer on Thirteen. From there, with a lot of writing and rewriting the series outline and then an episode one, we moved towards a greenlight at the 91热爆.
What is Gold Digger about?
Gold Digger is a contemporary relationship thriller about second chances, family and betrayal. It tells the story of Julia Day, a woman turning 60, feeling increasingly adrift from her children and like she鈥檚 not sure of her place in the world any more. Then she meets Benjamin. This younger man makes her feel seen for the first time in years. Their romance changes everything. Whilst Julia revels in her second chance, her children and ex-husband are suspicious of her new lover, certain he has an ulterior motive. Their investigation of Benjamin sets them on a collision course with Julia.
You鈥檝e talked about the importance of the viewpoint on the story. How is that reflected in Gold Digger?
One of the main things I'd long wanted to explore in a family drama was the idea of perspectives. Each of us having our own version of events, each of us affected in our own way by the past, each of us remote from the other. So every secret or lie within a family is fractured into the various component parts, and no one person will ever want to face the idea that their truth isn't everyone's. Or worse, that it's a lie. With all this in mind, I set out to structure the series into POV's. One half of each episode would always be the lead character, Julia's, the other half would be the people around her, be it her eldest son in episode one or her only daughter in episode two.
Not only does this allow a closer interrogation of the supporting cast, but hopefully it means the viewer gets under the skin of why this particular character holds the view they do on the age-gap romance. The audience decides who to align themselves with, and so essentially becomes the judge of the story.
How crucial was it to find the right actors to portray the lead characters in Gold Digger?
Julia is the heart of the show, whilst Benjamin is the catalyst that implodes all the other characters lives, so they were big roles to fill. If the audience didn鈥檛 believe the attraction between them, then we鈥檇 be sunk before we started. We were very lucky to find two actors who not only embodied the parts on the page but also took them to completely new levels. From day one, Julia Ormond and Ben Barnes had an easy and natural chemistry that was a joy to watch and hopefully means the viewer can really get on board with their love story.
Why did you want to write this story and what do you hope the audience will take away from it?
We are so used to seeing older men with younger women in film and television, and indeed in politics and real life, it鈥檚 barely commented on, however yawning the age gap. Yet flip the genders and suddenly it鈥檚 a discussion point. As if it鈥檚 impossible to understand why a younger man might be attracted to an older woman without having some other motive. Gold Digger explores this taboo. I hope the audience will have their expectations subverted, and question their own rush to judgement, as I've had to question mine. Also, and this is a fundamental thing in everything I write, I want the audience to come away from the show feeling they've got to know these characters, love them or hate them, and that they're sorry to see them go.
How important is the past to how the story develops?
When I came up with the idea I knew the past would play a major role, it would almost be a character in itself. Benjamin isn鈥檛 walking into some gloriously functioning happy family, and much of the hostility he encounters is as much to do with events that happened long before he was on the scene as it is to do with his own behaviour. He鈥檚 almost damned from the off. Julia and her children have spent years not addressing what happened, but it鈥檚 leaked out in their behaviour, their choices, their ability to face themselves. Benjamin鈥檚 arrival causes the past to come to light, with devastating consequences.
Watch Gold Digger on 91热爆 One from Tuesday 12th November at 9pm and on 91热爆 iPlayer
Watch Marnie Dickens' previous show Thirteen on 91热爆 iPlayer