Interview with Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival - Radio Times, October 2006

Features

Interview with Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival - Radio Times, October 2006

Writers Daniel Percival and Lizzie Mickery tell Vincent Graff how they were given extraordinary access to the world of Washington power brokers as they devised the conspiracy thriller.

"A Heathrow-bound plane falls out of the sky near the White House, killing nearly 200 Americans and 97 Britons. Was it a bomb? The chief suspect is British, but the only thing we can be sure of is that nothing is as it seems.

From the first episode, it's clear The State Within is a seat-of-the-pants thriller. But co-author Daniel Percival says he's trying to do more than entertain. He's got something to say about the people who pull the levers of power.

"Right now, there are things going on that you could hardly believe," he says. "There are kidnappings by mercenaries, CIA secret prisons, even killer dolphin squads…"

And he's not making it up - when Hurricane Katrina hit, its victims included dolphins trained by the US military to shoot people underwater. "The most insane conspiracy theorist in the world couldn't write that," says Percival. "So much is hidden, so much is secret - we wanted to tap into that world."

Percival and his writing partner Lizzie Mickery based the plot in the real world, but wanted the freedom of fiction. Central to the tension is the strained relationship between Jason Isaacs's Ambassador Brydon and Sharon Gless's Defense Secretary Warner in the aftermath of the plane crash. Both Brydon and Warner feel obliged to take morally questionable actions that have far-reaching political consequences.

"We're saying that the 'special relationship' between Britain and America is fragile," says Percival. "When you spend any time in the embassy, you realise very quickly that we have no special position of influence - we're distant cousins, once removed."

He and Mickery were given extraordinary access by the British ambassador to Washington, Sir David Manning. They were invited to lunch there, with silver service, a butler and, says Mickery, "Sir David to my left and a rear admiral to my right." They also met CIA analysts and went to the Pentagon, the West Wing of the White House and the State Department.

The State Within will be shown in the USA on a BBC cable channel. So how will American viewers react? "Americans are very good at criticising themselves," says Percival, "but they're not keen on other people criticising them." But this isn't "easy anti-American propaganda. What we do is raise a huge number of questions: how far would you go to achieve what you believe in?"

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Now take a look at our full guide to The State Within.

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