The terror and mystery of writing for TV

Georgia Pritchett on The Thick of It, Succession, and not running away when you're asked to do a difficult thing.

Marcia doesn’t make lunch.

Paying subscribers can hear me read this newsletter aloud here or in any podcast app.

---

The In Writing Creative Hour returns this Sunday, 21 May, at 5pm London time. Here’s some more info on what this involves – I hope you’ll join me for a writing session on Google Meet. Look out for an email with the link.

---

Hello! I’ve been a bit off-radar recently, which is perhaps going to be the case while I’m working on the In Writing book – or maybe my chattiness will ebb and flow.

One of the loveliest parts of working on the book is that I’ve been revisiting old interviews from the podcast. I have fond memories of so many of those conversations, but I’ve recorded 52 of them now, and you do forget some of the details. Here’s an extract that I really enjoyed this week, from my conversation with Georgia Pritchett – a British TV writer who has an extremely impressive CV, including Smack the Pony, The Thick of It, Veep, Succession and The Shrink Next Door.

I wanted to talk to you about working with Armando Iannucci, which you did on The Thick of It and again on Veep. I would imagine that must be a masterclass in writing. Did it feel like that?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was life-changing, definitely. And it was terrifying – I was in awe of him, and when I got asked to write for The Thick of It, I was so excited and so scared. I turned up on set the first day, and they used to film it in this weird abandoned office building. And I walked in, and he said, ‘Right, so we're going to be writing this [government] inquiry, and the vibe I'm going for is less Chilcot, more Leveson, OK? So off you go.’

This wave of panic washed over me, because I’d just about heard of Leveson, but I thought Chilcot was some lovely spa that I wanted to go to. I thought, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do?’ And there was no wifi in this weird abandoned office building, so I couldn't even Google ‘What the hell is Chilcot?’ I did seriously look out of the window and think, ‘Shall I just run and keep running, and never come back?’

But then I thought, ‘Right, I understand the word inquiry, and I understand that all these characters are going to be asked difficult questions, just as I've been asked to do a difficult thing. So I can channel this terror.’ And it worked out quite well. I channeled the terror and I thought, ‘Well, all these characters are going to be lying,’ and it's interesting – when you write someone lying is often when you really get to their truth. So actually, it ended up being a really exciting day. I'm glad I didn't run away, move to Panama and start a new life – because it was OK in the end.

Georgia also wrote the anxiety memoir My Mess Is a Bit of a Life, which is excellent, and perhaps surprisingly funny, considering the subject matter. I loved this part of the interview, because – can I just shock you? – I, too, have experienced anxiety and a fear of giving things a go in case it turned out that I was terrible at them.

I’m also a huge fan of Armando Iannucci, and like Georgia, I could not begin to hazard a guess at the tonal difference between the Leveson and Chilcot inquiries, so the scene that she describes is a stress dream to me. How encouraging it is to hear that this brilliant writer, who has worked on several of the absolute funniest and cleverest TV shows out there, is accompanied by the same chorus of self-doubt as the rest of us. I’m so glad she has kept going anyway, and has not disappeared to Panama.

Here’s another bit from the interview – mainly because it made me laugh, but also because it’s a good reminder that you can fake a lot of knowledge and competence simply by asking the right people for help. She is talking about being in the writers’ room on Succession.

None of us had a clue what it was like to be rich, so we had to get these rich consultants on to help us, and they really gave us a hard time. I remember them saying to us, ‘What are you doing? Rich people don't have coats! They just go from their car to their jet to their building.’

In the first season, I wrote the Thanksgiving episode, and I'd written ridiculous things like Marcia saying, ‘I'm cooking a turkey’ or ‘Let's sit down and eat.’ They were like, ‘Oh my God, she wouldn't even know where the kitchen was! She wouldn't sink so low as to say what was being cooked or when it was time to eat.’ Then I'd written that the staff was wearing maid's uniform. I don't know – I was basing it either on porn, or old racist episodes of Tom and Jerry – I don't know what staff look like. And they were like, ‘No, no, they'd be in chinos and polo shirts.’ I think I wrote that the napkins were in serviette rings, because that seems really posh to me, but they basically said I was trailer trash and knew nothing. So yeah, there were ways in which we didn't pull it off – but luckily, these people came to our aid. 

We had a funny stalemate with this one consultant. We were talking about how, quite often in super-rich, media-owning families, they sue each other – you know, parents suing children and vice versa. He was telling us about some people he'd known who did this, and we said, ‘But why did she sue her dad?’ He said, ‘Well, you know, she'd been given £70,000,000, but there was a way she could get another £70,000,000.’

We said, ‘But why would you need another £70,000,000?’ And he was just: ‘Because it’s £70,000,000.’ We were like, ‘Yeah, but why?’ And he was like, ‘Because it's £70,000,000.’ And we were like, ‘But why?’

It was as though we were speaking a different language. He was looking at us as though we were insane. We were still at the stage where we were so excited that HBO was paying for our sandwiches – we couldn't conceive of why you might need more than £70,000,000.

This made me laugh, but it’s also such a testament to doing thorough research and applying empathy, and making sure you really understand what it’s like to be your characters. Watching Succession now, you’d never imagine that it’s written by a bunch of normals who don’t take private jets – they’ve absorbed and reproduced the world of the uber-wealthy so completely that watching it, you can almost pretend that you wouldn’t be excited by a free sandwich either. By doing this imaginative work, writers and other artists allow us all to know and understand everyone else a little better – even the most unappealing people in the world.

---

I’m really looking forward to seeing some of you on Sunday, when I think I might dip into my attempt at a novel – though I’m slightly dreading what I’ll find after all these months of neglect. If you’d like to join the Creative Hour, just upgrade your subscription if you haven’t already.

Until then, good luck with your writing this week!