From The Hour and The Iron lady to Suffragette and River: Abi Morgan’s remarkable career
The veteran screenwriter looks back on her career as Stellan Skarsgard's Detective John River hits screens
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There’s something about her looks and cheerful, wide-eyed manner that brings to mind the actress Sally Hawkins. “I don’t think I do look like her, but you can flatter me. My mother often says, ‘Oh, that Miranda Hart, she reminds me so much of you.’ Well, I love Miranda – but she’s six foot tall and I’m a five-foot-one midget! I’d have loved a few more inches, actually, but there’s not much you can do about it – although I think maybe you can get leg extensions in Japan…”
Morgan describes herself as a “people pleaser”, also a teller of tall stories because of having gone to so many different schools as a child, with a rather itinerant, slightly chaotic-sounding upbringing. Her mother, actress Pat England, took her along when she had roles in rep in different parts of the UK and she went to seven different schools.
“I was always trying to fit in,” says the 47-year-old. “Ironically, you spend so much time creating other people’s characters, but sometimes you can get discombobulated yourself.
“If you want to fit in, you try to mirror whatever anyone wants from you. I always deeply admire people who can stay still in a room and wait for people to come to them. I also admire people who listen because I’m a terrible listener and I must shut up because I override what people say the whole time. I’d probably be a lot better if I listened a bit more. I do think it has something to do with where you come from and how much you move and how much you calibrate yourself to fit in.”
She describes working in the film industry as a necessary corrective whenever her ego threatens to inflate because, “As a writer, you’re not even at the party when you work in film. At best, you’re the one laying out the canapés. Whenever I get too big for my boots in television, I go back to film. I love writing for it, but it slaps your face on a regular basis.
The trailer for Morgan’s film Suffragette
“You are such a minor player. In your loftier moments, when you’re at home, you go, ‘This is the most important thing I’ve ever done and I’m brilliant’ but, actually, the truth is you’re only part of the process.”
Morgan admits to making mistakes and thinks they are a helpful learning curve. “It’s quite good when you fall flat on your bum on a creative level. Critics can hate what I do, or I’ve got something completely wrong, and it’s good because that ego thing gets zapped for a while.”
Could she give an example of a bad mistake? “There’s a key moment in the Brick Lane novel where there’s a riot and I took it out because I felt it didn’t happen – forgetting, of course, that it’s a work of fiction and dramatically it’s much needed. I think it’s a beautiful film, but I slightly lament the loss of the riot at the end of it.”
The Hour, Morgan’s first television series in 2011, was a BBC2 drama set in the newsroom of a BBC current affairs programme in 1956. It had a stellar cast of Dominic West, Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai, Anna Chancellor and (in the second series) Peter Capaldi. It was cancelled after two series because of falling ratings and its passionate core audience launched an online campaign that culminated in a picket outside the BBC’s offices. Morgan’s response, when I ask her how she felt about it is, “Ahhh, I love The Hour… I miss it.”
The cast of The Hour
Morgan was executive producer on The Hour – as she is on her new BBC1 crime drama series, River – and says that role is an essential part of what she does. “It allows you to be part of the creative conversation from editorial changes to sets to casting – and great actors are 99 per cent of the work.”
A case in point is Stellan Skarsgard, the Swedish actor who is best known for his numerous roles in Lars von Trier’s films. In River he plays the eponymous, emotionally fragile detective John River, and is a magnificent, brooding presence.
I didn’t know what to expect when watching the first episode, but River’s detective partner, Jackie Stevenson (played by Nicola Walker) is an enigma throughout the series. Morgan tellingly reveals that one character, the long-dead Lambeth Poisoner (Eddie Marsan), is a manifest of River’s mind, who keeps the detective company. Other subplots involve madness and loss, and includes an assortment of characters, such as a drug addict, an immigrant and a man who has to conceal his sexuality.
River airs on Friday nights on Australia’s ABC
