Lord of the Flies writer pushes back against 'anti-white' criticisms – "Ralph isn’t the hero"

When the casting was confirmed for Lord of the Flies with the release of first-look images online, writer Jack Thorne has said that he and the team behind the programme received a wave of online criticism, from those claiming the series was 'anti-white'.

Thorne has now pushed back against this reaction when speaking with us exclusively for our video interview series The Radio Times Writers' Room, in which we get to know what makes screenwriters tick. In the conversation, he revealed that a lot of the criticism seemed to stem from a misunderstanding about the nature of the character Ralph in William Golding's original story.

When asked whether the fact that so many people already know the story of Lord of the Flies changed the adaptation process at all, Thorne said: "No, because we followed the book. We took all our cues from the book. And the book is more complicated than people give it credit for.

"If you put Lord of the Flies in X or in Blue Sky or in any of those sorts of platforms, it's used as a way of describing situations that are black and white. And what Golding wrote was a glorious story in shades of grey.

"They put the photographs online of our casting, and it turned into a whole big moment of people saying, 'Ah, this is anti-white stuff, because Ralph is played by a mixed-race actor [Winston Sawyers], Jack is played by a white actor [Lox Pratt]. This is hating on white boys again.' No, it isn't, because Ralph isn't the hero of the story. Ralph is the central character of the story, but not the hero."

Thorne continued: "What Golding was doing was trying to express and explore a problem, and that problem has authors on all sides of it. And none of these boys are perfect, and none of these boys are imperfect - I'm excluding Roger from this because I think Roger is perhaps the one character that is slightly irredeemable.

"But all the others, there's a really complicated song going on and I think that's what Golding writes so beautifully. I hope if people watch the show, they will be encouraged to go back to the book and see that he did that and see that he wasn't making easy statements about society. He was making really, really complex statements about society."

Like the novel before it, Thorne's four-part adaptation of Lord of the Flies follows a group of boys who find themselves stranded on a tropical island without any adult supervision, following a plane crash.

As they attempt to form a cohesive society and remain civil, Ralph takes the reins as chief - however, Jack has his own eye on the role, and he his group of hunters start to form their own faction.

In his chat for The Radio Times Writers' Room, Thorne also spoke about a number of his other projects both past and present, including This Is England, His Dark Materials, Adolescence, Enola Holmes 3 and the Beatles movies.

Jack Thorne's interview for The Radio Times Writers' Room is available to watch in full now on RadioTimes.com and on YouTube.

Lord of the Flies will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from Sunday 8th February 2026.

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