Bloody Difficult Women opens at Riverside Studios on 24 February
Tim Walker – the award-winning journalist, columnist, broadcaster, author and, now, playwright – is preparing for the opening night of his eagerly-awaited play, Bloody Difficult Women. This will open at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, west London on Thursday, 24 February and run until Saturday, April 2.
In an exclusive interview with NewsLeaf.com, Raza Hussain sat down with the playwright to talk about his motivations for writing the controversial play, and what it was like to work with the director, Stephen Unwin, the producer, Denise Silvey, and the cast.
Tim Walker also talked about how Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, unexpectedly came to be a leading character in his play, much to his apparent discomfort.
Interview
_____________________________________________________________________________
Raza Hussain: What inspired you to write this play that focuses on Gina Miller’s 2016 court case against Theresa May’s government over the issue of parliamentary sovereignty?
Tim Walker: I think theatre has a duty to address what is happening in people’s lives at any given time and clearly the current political shambles is now impacting on all of us. It strikes me as astonishing no one has seriously addressed this before. What I liked about Mrs Miller’s case against Mrs May is that it is really the whole story of the past six years in microcosm.
At its heart are the simple questions – do laws and rules matter and are some people above them?
‘I went into newspapers because I genuinely wanted to make the world a better place’
Tim walker
Raza Hussain: What did you think about James Graham’s Channel 4 drama Brexit: The Uncivil War?
Tim Walker: I can’t in all honesty remember anything about it, beyond the fact Benedict Cumberbatch played Dominic Cummings. I know that the journalist Carole Cadwalladr was very angry about it at the time – she felt it whitewashed corruption – but, as I say, it made no great impression on me. Its sole achievement, I fear, was to have made Cummings a bit of a star himself, as no one had really heard of him before Cumberbatch played him.
I was a great friend of the late playwright Sir Ronald Harwood and he always used to tell me the best dramas always had something to say as that’s how we remember them. I think the fact I can’t remember this particular drama meant it didn’t really have anything to say.
Raza Hussain: I have read that Paul Dacre – editor of the Daily Mail at the time Mrs Miller went to court against the then Prime Minister May – is upset about your play.
Tim Walker: I don’t know whether Paul is upset about it, but he has certainly had the Daily Mail’s legal department send my team an awful lot of letters asking to see the script on the basis they feel it needs to be checked for accuracy. Of course, we declined every time.
This struck me as ironic as I worked for Paul for 10 very happy years in the run up to the turn of the Millennium and it was never part of the culture there to give anyone ‘copy approval’ – letting people see stories about them and effectively approving them prior to publication.
I recognise of course it’s my job as a playwright – as it was when I was a journalist at the Mail – to ensure I’ve got the basic facts right. I must stress, however, that this is a dramatisation, not a documentary, so the Mail’s legal department can’t approach it like it is a story in a newspaper.
I suppose I might yet consider giving Paul copy approval so long as I can approve – and rewrite where necessary – the reviews that his papers run of my play!
Raza Hussain: Is there any personal antipathy between you and Mr Dacre?
Tim Walker: I may not agree with Paul about Brexit – I took the line of his predecessor Sir David English on the issue of the UK’s membership of the EU – but I would say Paul was the most successful and influential newspaper editor of his day.
When I worked for him, I would say we had a relationship that, while not close, was always respectful. I left the Mail not acrimoniously, but amicably to take a promotion at the Sunday Telegraph. Paul wished me well.
‘I think on the stage – as in life – if you have Johnson physically appear, he ruins everything’.
Tim Walker
Raza Hussain: Do you feel Mr Dacre will be happy with the way he is portrayed on stage?
Tim Walker: I think Andrew Woodall plays him with enormous energy and panache, and I hope – if Paul comes to see the play – he will appreciate that it is a great theatrical performance. To be honest, I never intended Paul to be a major character.
Of course, the Daily Mail’s infamous “Enemies of the People” headline – in response to the High Court judges finding for Mrs Miller – is an unavoidable part of this story, so it had to figure in there somewhere. Still, anyone who came to the first reading we had of the play will know Paul Dacre was quite a small part to begin with.
To my surprise, early audiences loved the character. This may surprise you even more, but they found him enormously funny. So the character sort of grew over time in the play through a great many rewrites and workshops and in response – you might say – to audience demand.
Raza Hussain: How do you feel now about the Daily Mail and the Telegraph?
Tim Walker: I went into newspapers because I genuinely wanted to make the world a better place. In common with many members of my generation, I was inspired by films such as All the President’s Men – about how the Washington Post revealed the Watergate scandal – and I saw it as a very idealistic and noble calling.
In all honesty, it breaks my heart the Mail and the Telegraph – in championing Brexit in the ferocious way that they did – played such instrumental roles in getting us all into the mess we are in now. I don’t believe history will judge them kindly.
I think, too, the papers have betrayed their own histories – I mean Sir David English, the creator of the modern Daily Mail, was a passionate Europhile who saw to it the paper campaigned vigorously for the UK to join the EU in the first place. The Telegraph of, say, Lord Deedes and its old owner Lord Hartwell, was a paper that believed in a One Nation Conservative Party. It was a tolerant place of urbane, knowledgeable and under-stated individuals, not the ghastly shouty lunatic asylum it is now.
‘Leavers and Remainers are all, now, united – alone and adrift off the coast of Europe…’
Tim Walker
Raza Hussain: Your play was originally going to open last June. You must have been depressed by the delay.
Tim Walker: It made me very sad during the lockdowns when I thought my play – the best thing I’ve ever written in my whole life – might never see the light of day.
Now, however, I think the pandemic has done us all a huge favour. A lot of what the play has to say about Johnson, about the state of our politics and the casual disregard for the laws of the land, now have a resonance with ordinary people that they wouldn’t have had to quite the same extent last summer. The moment for this play is now, and, I might add, I bring it bang up to date in the final scene.
Raza Hussain: Is this an anti-Brexit play?
Tim Walker: What would be the point of that? Leavers and Remainers are all now united – alone and adrift off the coast of Europe – and no one has got what they wanted, except of course for Boris Johnson.
Raza Hussain: As anyone who has followed you on Twitter will know, you took a very strong view against Brexit right from the start, even perhaps before 2016. Why was this?
Tim Walker: Put simply, I had worked with Boris Johnson for 12 years at the Telegraph and I could see this was very uniquely his device for seizing power. I knew, too, he was a charlatan and he had always attracted other charlatans around him. I also knew him to be very lazy and ignorant and he would never be able to get his head around a task as enormous and complex as this.
I have good friends in America and they told me when Trump got into office that it wouldn’t really damage their country all that much as the country was sufficiently big it could afford to be parochial. They then added that the problem with Britain is that it’s too small to be able to afford to be parochial. I suppose that’s a fair summary of my view of the ideology of Johnson.
Raza Hussain: Is Boris Johnson in your play?
Tim Walker: Anyone who sees the play will be aware of Johnson, even though he is never seen and his name is not even uttered. I think on the stage – as in life – if you have Johnson physically appear, he ruins everything. He turns everything into a pantomime.
Image: Tim Walker. Picture credits: Raza Hussain.
Raza Hussain: Was it difficult to make the adjustment from journalism to writing plays?
Tim Walker: It was necessary to approach the new job with humility, to listen to Stephen Unwin – my brilliant and highly experienced director – and also to the actors and other creatives. Of course there were passionate arguments, but that’s always going to be the case when people care.
I think it’s fair to say Stephen pushed me very hard indeed – certainly harder than any newspaper editor ever had to – but I understand now what he was doing. He knew he couldn’t write my play for me, any more than he could act for his actors and so on, but he’d certainly tell me when what I was writing was boring him. I found that very hard to handle sometimes, but, you know, I see in the play we have now – all the layers there are to it, all the complexities – that it was worth all that pain.
It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my professional career and it wouldn’t have been anywhere nearly as good without him pushing me on, so I am very grateful to him.
Raza Hussain: Who first gave the show the green light?
Tim Walker: Denise Silvey, the first producer I went to, who saw the potential in it, said let’s do it, and got Stephen on board. I owe her everything. I am also enormously grateful to Rachel Tackley, the creative director of the Riverside Studios, who has given us one of her coveted stages, and of course all those who invested in it during a bloody difficult time for theatre funding.
I am grateful to them all for keeping the faith during the protracted delays that the lockdowns lumbered us with.
Raza Hussain: What was it about Mrs Miller that made you become her friend?
Tim Walker: Put simply, I admire courage.
Raza Hussain: Why do you think people should see this play?
Tim Walker: Because, as I say, it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s a very human play, it’s funny because all plays that really look closely at human beings are always funny, and it says something that I think is important about the state of our country. You know, I would want people to say of me, if I die tomorrow, “oh yes, he was the bloke who wrote Bloody Difficult Women.”
That’s all I ask for.
- Bloody Difficult Women opens at Riverside Studios on 24 February
