Dickens Re-imagined: with Steven Knight

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Steven Knight who's exciting and daring screenplays include Peaky Blinders, Taboo and SAS Rogue Heroes.
Steven also adapted the dark and thrilling FX A Christmas Carol  (with Guy Pearce as Scrooge) and has now re-imagined Great Expectations in a new series led by Olivia Colman. Now screening on Hulu in the US and BBC One in the UK.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hi everyone. Today's guest has written some of the most exciting and daring screenplays I've ever seen. I first became aware of him some 20 years ago when I went to the cinema to see a film called Dirty Pretty Things, which follows the lives of immigrants living in London, trying to make their way in a society where they are invisible. Fast forward to today, and his credits include the hugely successful Peaky Blinders, Taboo, and SAS Rogue Heroes. He also adapted a dark and thrilling Christmas carol with Guy Pierce as Scrooge and has now reimagined great expectations in a new series led by Olivia Coleman. I'm thrilled to welcome the inimitable Stephen Knight. Stephen, welcome to Charles Dickens, A Brain on Fire. It's lovely to have you with us. It's a pleasure to be here. Oh, I'm I'm so thrilled, and you're here right at the moment where your new reimagining of great expectations is out there in the world. Something that I find astonishing about you, and I didn't realize this until prepping for this interview, is that you are the son of a blacksmith.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, which is why great expectations has always resonated for me. And the difference is that Pip decides he doesn't want to become a blacksmith. My dad used to take all of us out, all my brothers and me, uh, and we used to be like shoeing, not putting the shoes on, but taking the shoes off and dealing with the horses and doing the forge and all that. And I wasn't very good at it. So it was the opposite to Pip. It was like at that age, I really wanted to be successful at being a blacksmith because that's what our dad expected us all to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Wow, that's an amazing inversion, isn't it? And and so the the detail in the first episode where Joe and Pip are saving nails. Is that straight from your own experience?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, money was tight. Um, and even though iron is not expensive, uh, you know, there was a there were procedures that you followed. And and I mean it's a it's a wonderful thing. It's very, it looks great, it's very romantic. And I remember you used to cook breakfast on the forge and all of that stuff. It's beautiful, but it's really brutally hard work. So I do know why Pip decided he wanted to be a gentleman.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, and it's very interesting. I mean, I feel like with all of your work, there's nothing left to chance. Everything feels very intentional. And Pip at the very beginning is quoting Shakespeare, but he's quoting Malvolio's line about be not afraid of greatness. And of course, in Malvolio's case, his ambition leads to total disaster for him. Are you baking in then into the episode a sense of Pip's ambition is actually a bit dangerous?

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Well, I I think in the in in Dickens' work, especially in Great Expectations, there's always a sense of foreboding. There's always a feeling that this is gonna go badly, you know, and and all the way through the setup with uh Miss Havership, you know this isn't gonna this isn't gonna end well. So I I do like to plant those things in there to to for those who care.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

But where do you begin? Where do you start when it's a classic novel unlike an original series you're putting together? Where do you begin in terms of deciding what to keep in and what to cast out and and all of that?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Well, I think the important thing is not to be afraid of it. And the way to do that is to know something very obvious, which is no matter what you do in your adaptation, the book is still there. The book, it doesn't affect the book, the book is there. So if someone wants to read the book, the book exists. You're not chipping away at a monolith, you're just taking a photograph of it, or you're doing a painting of an abstract painting of it, is probably more accurate. So, what I tend to do, I knew the book anyway, and then I read it again. Um, I haven't watched any adaptations of it. I mean, I've watched them in my life, but I didn't do that deliberately for this. And my only analogy would be for me, adapting something, it's like reading the book in the day and then going to sleep and dreaming about it at night. So it's related to the book because it's inspired by what you've read, but different things happen. And the way I tend to write is I do tend to leave it to a sort of subconscious process rather than being consciously outlining things and deciding how it's going to go. So I do try to apply that even to an adaptation, and and it's not out of any sense that Dickens got it wrong or there was a mistake, or it's better this way. It's just the way I respond to it. You know, it's the impression it has upon me. And how the and the other aspect would be sort of imagining what Dickens would do if he was writing now, in the sense that he had the liberty to write about things he couldn't write about at the time.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, that's so interesting. And is and is that process, you know, is it is it character-driven? Is it that you you yeah, I feel like it must be. Yeah, and so these characters walk about in your subconscious and they make these demands on you.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Good demands, though. When it works, it's wonderful. And and you know, you just you know who jaggers is, or you have your idea of who jaggers is and who Pip is and what their ambitions are, and you just sort of let them meet and and interact with each other. Um, and I sometimes read Dickens and wonder if he knew at the beginning where he was going. Because I don't I think that you know, when I start writing anything, I don't know, I don't know where it's gonna go really. Um, and I sometimes the twists in Dickens are so unexpected, I wonder if he expected them.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yes, probably probably not, actually. I mean, and he always keeps alive that spontaneity, doesn't he? And you know, and in his manuscript's got all these sort of crossings out and everything. I was interested to also know, because I've not looked at any of your scripts, not read any, as in Redden, any of them, but with I mean, with this astonishing uh setting in this episode with the aerial shots of the flats, the marshes, and everything. Do you write a lot of those in, or do you leave that to somebody else to sort of decide? Where where are you on that?

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Uh I do write, I I write more direction than most people, I think, which makes the scripts longer, which makes everybody freak out because they think it's too long. I always have to say, no, no, no, it's just that I've got loads of direction in there. Um, so I do write a lot, but then what happens is the director, when you get to the location or when you're selecting a location, when the director's doing that, they will come and say, you know, we don't have a lime kiln there, but we have this amazing twisted dead tree that looks incredible. Could they meet there? And you look at the photos, you think, well, that would look great. Yeah. So you are, I think you should be subordinate to the beauty of it rather than the letter of the law of it.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

And in terms of the modern sensibilities, which is in all of your work, actually, that I've I've ever seen, especially in the Christmas Carol as well, but also in here, what I get from this is that deep sense of shame and self-loathing with regard to empire and the characters that are sort of buying into it and trying to get things out of it. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, I mean, I I I tend not to be one of those people who rampantly condemns the empire. The empire happened, empires have always happened, the Roman Empire happened, and they happen as a consequence of battles that are won, but more often economic decisions and um sort of boldness in a way. This is a tangent, but I've been with film crews when you go to a place like Mauritius or somewhere, and the film crew turns up, and you're so certain of what you want to do and what you want to get, and it makes no sense to the people who are there that you want to move a tree. But there is something about, and of course, you've got money and you're paying people, but suddenly it's like colonizing. It's like your concept, which is completely alien to the place, takes over the town or the village or whatever. And it becomes normal and it's not normal. And I think that maybe empire, and you read about these people that 25, 26, a married couple, and they go off to the Far East and run a plantation, you know. But they only did that because they were so sure of themselves. It was partly religion, I think. But they were so certain that they were right. It's a really odd thing, I think, now to conjure with. So it's this idea that here's this thing happening, and it's you know, it's not we it. I mean, in East India Company, you could say it's very, very organized and deliberate. But I think a lot of it was individual decisions, little companies going out there and doing stuff. And the consequence was awful, and obviously the ultimate consequence of it was um slavery. And what I find difficult to do is for all of that, for having said all of that, I find it difficult to write about that era without having reference to it. It would be a bit like writing something set in Johannesburg in the 60s and not mentioned in the past. You know, it's very difficult to do unless you're very selective.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

So I prefer to think it's not me banging on about empire. It's more that if you go there to this period at this time, it's everywhere. It's what, you know, it's it's got to be part of it because it's absolutely everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, also, but I I do feel that as a Brit, you know, there's a cultural amnesia, isn't there? I certainly wasn't. I don't know if you were taught about the empire at school, but I I absolutely wasn't. It was Tudors, and then we jumped to the first world war pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yeah, yeah. But I I also think, you know, this this it's a much more complex. Like my mum used to tell me that when she was a kid, she used to walk. I mean, they had no, they were absolutely poor as hell in small heaths, and they didn't have enough food and all that. She'd walk to school with no shoes on, no shoes. And they'd sit in the classroom, and the teacher would show a map, and most of it was pink, and the teacher would say, All of the pink belongs to you. It didn't belong to my mum. Do you know what I mean? It's not like these individual people in Britain were lording it and swallowing around and being rich, they were just as poor as anybody else. You know, the system didn't, it wasn't like the British people, it's there was a system that affected everyone. And I think the sooner people get to understand that things like empire, they are about race, but they're also about class. And that's why I'm really interested in Great Expectations, because I think that's a book about class, which is so unfashionable now. Yeah. Talk about you know all the divisions of gender and race, but the the idea of the division of class, which I think is really, really, really significant in the UK. I think in America it's different, but in the UK, it's very significant. Um, and it's it was interesting to to write something about that. Because, you know, when I was growing up, politics was about class.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah. And in terms in terms of that background, could you have imagined as a little boy with your own expectations? Could you imagine you'd be where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

No, absolutely not. I mean, my ambition was to work somewhere where you didn't get wet when it rained. That was pretty much it.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Although on locations, on locations. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

My ambition, that's very true. Um, no, I'm I'm the youngest of seven kids, and my mum was a cleaner, and my dad was a blacksmith, and there was no expectation of doing anything other than what all my mates ended up doing should factories and and building, and they're happy as anything, and they have great lives. I'm not saying they're not, but the expectation was different was not there to do something.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

So, when where did Dickens first arrive in your life then? You you know, you're obviously a bright kid and you like to read, I guess, and and and it Dickens was was a feature for you?

SPEAKER_01 12:06

It was a couple of things. There we used the BBC used to do um really good adaptations on Sunday afternoon, probably in the 60s and 70s, and the scenery would move around, and you know, it was really low tech, but they they used to get the best actors and the performances were really good. And going back to class, you'd see working class people not being idiots in that. Whereas if you looked at the the sitcom that followed it or the drama that went before it, you were either a criminal or a joke, you know. Um, and just it made me interesting, but that didn't lead me to the books. What happened led me to the books is I had a the brother who eventually became a blacksmith, um, used to go to second-hand book because he was very bright, and he used to go to second-hand bookshops and bring books because there were no books in the house, and he started bringing all these books back, but they were secondhand, they're so random. And it'd be like 19th century science books and The Fairy Queen by Edmund Spencer and Shakespeare and Dickens. So you'd see this title and you start reading it, and it's like the smell, and the smell of the books is very interesting. You know, that moldy, I love it, that smell of an old book, and just reading it in a in a way because it's for me, it kept you you're racing to the dialogue in Dickens for me, when especially when I was a kid, you're waiting for the line because the line's gonna bang, it's gonna tell you what's going on, you know, and then you get the description and then the line, the dialogue. The dialogue is just I think that's where that's why I think Dickens is would now be a screenwriter. Is that it's the dialogue is just so amazing.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yeah. And do you do you remember the moment you first read Great Expectations?

SPEAKER_01 13:43

I don't know. I can I can remember the moment I first read it, it just became part of my consciousness quite early.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

On this project, and as with with other FX projects, you're you're also a producer, aren't you? And so you're are you uh involved very much then in in the casting of this adaptation?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, I mean the casting is a is a collaboration, it's a bit of a sort of a veto system where there's a group of people who are making the choice, and if somebody really doesn't think this is right, then it sort of acts as a veto, not always. Um, but we keep we kept getting first choices to say yes, which was fantastic. So and I mean the real challenge is finding the kid. Always, always, always. Um, because you especially episode one, because it's episode one, a lot is hanging on the performance of Pip, but he's so good, he's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, Tom Sweet, isn't it? As Pip. Yeah, he's excellent, he's excellent. And and with these characters, but I mean, people that know great expectations that they can enjoy it because they have a sort of level of foreknowledge. People that don't will of course enjoy it. But what I love about this is the fact that you make the characters a puzzle again, you make us see them with fresh eyes. So I think I think immediately the gargeries. So Joe Gargery he's not um he's not naive, he's he's he's very present and he's very switched on, and and Mrs. Joe Gargery is Sarah Gargery.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

So, how did you set about there um filling out she was the most uh challenging and interesting one, the one I'm most pleased with, actually, because in the book she's pretty irredeemable, you know, and she's constantly beating Pip and she's always beaten him. And and I just wanted to think of a way that, but then there's mention of her food, about her food is really nice. And I thought, well, maybe that's what it is, is she doesn't know how to show affection, but and this is what Joe says she he says, you taste that, you'll taste love in there, and that sort of cracks it for her, and then she laughs and they have a bit of a joke, and then they'll you know, it's like that. Um Tolstoy said all happy families are the same, but all unhappy families are different in different ways, and you know, the the unhappy family has all this complexity to it, and I just really wanted to give her, and she breaks the cane and puts it on the fire, just as he's betraying her, you know, and she's trying to be nice. So I did want to do that, I didn't really want her to be the the emblematic character that she is in the book. Because I think Dickens is really sort of saying about the way children are treated and the beating children and stuff. But I wanted and that you know the those moments I thought were really good.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Yeah, that they're excellent because also something else that really jumped out with your adaptation is the fact that in the book we see everything, everything through Pip's eyes, either as an adult or as a child, but because it's through Pip's eyes, we don't always get the fully rounded um but what I love about Sarah Gardery is that moment where she tries not to laugh. Yeah, that's I mean that's extraordinary, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

I I was really pleased with how that turned out because that was really important to because it's so early to do that really early that she's been really horrible, and then she's not, and she's nice. And and I mean the point about it being Pitt's point of view is absolutely right, because you have to bear in mind that he's quite a flawed character, and his perceptions and his point of view isn't always right. We and he admits it later. So when he's talking about how terrible everything is, it probably is, but it may not be that terrible, it may not be as terrible, you know what I'm saying? That that that is from his point of view. So if you're objective, you might find and and you know, Joe, he sees Joe, he's embarrassed about Joe in later years because he's he's a blacksmith and he's not educated. And maybe in his memory, he's seeing him as far more of that than he actually was. Do you know what I mean? It's like just because he's just because he speaks in a certain dialect, which Dickens writes beautifully, doesn't mean he's an idiot.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, absolutely. And it's that childhood thing, it's that adolescent thing of being ashamed of your parents, isn't it, embarrassed by them? Yeah, it's that thing. I think there's a line in the original about it's a terrible thing to be ashamed of home, which of course, when you are a small boy, you can be very easily. And then when you become an adult, you really understand. But it's odd, isn't it? I know uh Sarah Gardery or Mrs. Joe Gardery can be irredeemable in the book, but I've always felt slightly sympathetic towards her actually, especially after what happens to her with Orlick and all of that. So it's really and I really was really sort of delighted with that sort of way of seeing her. Um I have to say, I think that uh Ashley Thomas as Jaggers is absolutely extraordinary as well. I've and in our conversation, I think we're we're allowed to talk about the first two episodes, but he just the way he sort of I mean, where did you begin with him?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

It I mean, a lot of it is him, uh some of it is costume, the costume is amazing, I think, but he was perfect for that role. I mean, he's just he's nothing like that in real life, he's just such a force when he comes on the screen and just takes it over. And I think that's what Jaggers has got to be. He's gotta be. I mean, I I think of Jaggers as representing London, really. Right. Um, you know, because he brings Pip to London, but he's like London, he's amoral, he's motivated by money, you know. But there are little alleyways that are quite beautiful. So there's elements to to Jaggers where we find out he's not Hallbad.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Oh, you see, but that's so interesting. It's so interesting you say that because I he's he's again he's a puzzle. I can't work him out. And I'm sort of thinking, is he because he takes a shine to Pip, doesn't he? He seems to take him under his wing.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, he does, and um it it's sort of trying to find the the reality of a bad person, you know. And I believe that there are exceptions, but I think Dickens either loves, likes, or forgives all his characters, and he at least forgives them. And you feel the forgiveness in the way that he describes right, there's a sort of amusement sometimes uh the the larger than life bad characters that's almost like re not redeems them but forgives them for what they are, um, and suggests that maybe it's a consequence of of where they're from. I think he couldn't help himself. I mean, Comperson, you could say, is not redeemable, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

And I just I love what you're you're doing there with Compass and Magwich. I mean that's brilliant because in the book, Comperson is obviously a little bit a bit of a gentleman and a bit sort of fear for afraid. But he he just this one this this this big sort of clash between the two of them is is fantastic. It's how did you where did that come from for you in your mind?

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Well, it felt to me, and I can't remember what the line was that made me think it, but that in Dickens's mind, this was a a battle that would go on forever, beyond the grave. These two forces were always gonna be fighting. So uh it's not one chasing the other, even though it sort of is um across England and Australia. It's you know, they they um they're they're destined to always fight.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah. But they're more equally matched.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

I mean, Comperson can really Oh, he's yeah, he's a nasty piece of work, yeah. But you know, it has to be, I think, because of the way of what he does.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah. And uh I think Magwich in the first episode describes himself as a just cause and Comperson as a lost cause, yeah, which I think is so great. I mean, what you do with your characters is you seem to you just throw it open at the very start. I think you've already mentioned that, and I think that's incredibly powerful, the way they just kind of display themselves. And so Biddy in that first episode, you know what what we we read quite a few pages before we work out what isn't seeing, but we see it in that first episode, don't don't read that.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it everything has to um most things have to come more quickly, I think, on a screen. But um, you know, the the the the the philosophical dilemma with biddy is and with the whole book is is Dickens saying, Look, you're a blacksmith's son, you know your station, biddy's perfect for you, you should be shooting on us, or is he saying, Isn't it awful? Here is this boy who's so smart and he can't escape. Um, you know, and so the acceptance of Biddy or the love for Biddy or Biddy's love for him, is it uh poisonous thing that's trying to drag him back, which you know it could be, or is it the natural thing that he should be accepting? I think in Dickens it favours the idea that it's the natural thing he should be doing, and that Estella is beyond him. But then you know you have to remember that in the in the book, Estella is adopted, she's not from a you know a privileged background herself.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Yeah. And of course, Olivia Coleman as Miss Havisham. So how how soon into this project did you think we've got to get her in for Miss Havisham?

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Well, we wanted her from the beginning, and then I've written, I mean, you don't get her without providing scripts. So I think I've written, I've either written all of them or three of them. Um and then when we knew we got her, I could then go back and make changes to sort of the um, you know, to take advantage of what you've got that recently.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

And and in terms of the betrayal, was that was there a backwards and forwards about how she was going to look and and and all of that?

SPEAKER_01 23:20

And yeah, I mean, it's very difficult because it's been done so many times. But the idea was, and I think Olivia said um that she really got it when we were talking about that she's she's not dusty and dry, she's rotting. So it's quite damp. And the house is sort of rotted, it's still alive, it's still organic. And I think a lot of times she's depicted as being like dry and and dusty and dead. She's not, she's still alive, and it's just just rotting. The whole thing is rotting, which is much more uh sort of worse, really. But that's that's how she's that's how she is.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Well, that's very interesting you say that because I I saw that when they approach when they go into Saty's house, the whole house, like you said, it's not falling and it's not all collapsing in ruin. It's actually pretty well furnished. And then you when you get to the the center where you find Miss Havisham, then you start to see the decay in the yeah, and if nature is coming in and taking it all back. Yeah, yeah. So there's this most enormous tree, isn't there, around the staircase. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

But the uh I wanted it to look like nature had after when you think about it. If you left your house completely, it didn't do anything for however many years, nature would reclaim it bit by bit. I mean, that's just the way it is. And I just think it's more interesting that here's this person who's trying to keep the world out, but the world is getting in. And you'll see in episode five or six that it comes in a very spectacular way.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Oh, okay. This we're in spoiler territory here. This is fun. This is fun. Okay, great. Um, Stephen, this has been so wonderful to talk to you. And I just just to finish, I wondered, are you already thinking of the next potential Dickens adaptation?

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yes. It's between two choices, but I'm not allowed to. If I say it, it'll sound like a nonaltimate, but it's it's one of two really good big mark. Okay. But there we are.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Well, on that very, very tantalizing note, thank you so much for your time. It's been such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Thank you. It was a pleasure to do, it's great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Thank you.