Interview with Candice Carty-Williams (Creator, Showrunner, Executive Producer)
Category: Press Pack ArticleTell us about Queenie, who is she?
Queenie is a 25-year-old British Jamaican woman living in South London where she was born and bred. Queenie came about because I was always interested in what it was like to be caught between two worlds, to the person who is like, ‘I come from this Jamaican family and have Jamaican ideals, thinking and ways of processing’ and then growing up and working and loving in a world that was not Jamaican. You are born and then you are raised, and you are told this is how things are and how things should be and who you are in the world, and then you get into the world, and it doesn’t abide by the ideals. Then you have to figure out how to navigate the two worlds and I struggled with that, there is no handbook. Queenie was born from that struggle and from that constant trying to figure out where my place was. I thought if I’m struggling then surely other people are and I wanted to create a character who doesn’t have all the answers and can be confused.
When you were approached to adapt Queenie into a TV series, what was the initial process like?
Before the book was published, I had meetings with lots of production companies who wanted to option it. I went with Lionsgate based on the shows they’d already brought to the screen, and once we were in the development process, Gemma Boswell, the Drama Commissioner at Channel 4, got in touch with me. I’d met her when she was working at one of the production companies that had wanted to option Queenie around a year before. She’d loved it so much that she was determined to work on it in one way or another! Soon after, Onyx Collective jumped on and joined Channel 4 as the show’s networks. And the rest is history!
How did you find the casting process and putting faces to the characters you’d created?
I had some very strong ideas about who would play who. For me, Llewellyn Gideon was always going to be in the show, she was going to be Grandma and Michelle Greenidge was always going to play Auntie Maggie. I had seen Jon Pointing in ‘Big Boys’ and I was like ‘that’s Tom!’ Bellah was a really big surprise because she’s a musician and I’ve loved her music so much. Her song ‘Cause U Can’ was my number one most listened song in 2020. I was a fan of her work and then when she came up in the casting sheet, I was like ‘oh my god’ and in the audition, her ad-libbing was so incredible and I left that room thinking ‘we have found Kyazike!’ Joseph Marcell was another surprise for Grandad, I feel like I had written the part for him, he was so amazing! And everyone else, they all fell into place. All the men, they were very fun to pick but my favourite was Frank. Frank had been in the novel in a non-named way, he was Kyaikze’s cousin who had asked Queenie to dance at a party and I felt it was time to explore him more and in the TV series, we could do that. Samuel Adewunmi came in and he had to do an entire day of chemistry reading and he had to do the same actions and lines about 15 times over and he was not tired by the end of it. Tilly Pearce who plays Darcy, again felt like it was written for her because she slipped into the role so easily and she brought her amazing humour on-and-off screen. The funniest person was Elisha Applebaum who plays Cassandra, I had to leave the room because I was laughing too much at how she was delivering lines, she was amazing! When it comes to Queenie herself, it was an interesting one and I remember thinking once we leave this audition room then we will have found our Queenie. Dionne Brown offered a very different version of the Queenie that was in my head, she’s a less chaotic Queenie and she’s done an amazing job. Her commitment to understanding who the character is was really something. I could tell that she’d studied the novel and she would always ask me about Queenie’s thought processes, motivations, and feelings. Being able to discuss those things with her is why she was able to create her own version of Queenie.
The show tackles some hard hitting topics blended with lighter moments and fun humour, how did you strike that balance?
I think it helps that I don’t take anything seriously in life. Even though there is hard stuff in the show, I have been through very difficult things in life, and nothing really bothers me. I have always been able to laugh at things. I come from a family that laughs at the worst possible things which isn’t great, but you do get used to it. When I was covering all these heavy topics in the show and the painful moments, it was very natural for me to put something funny in there. My thing is to laugh and to offer the perspective I have in my head. I want to move people but not make them feel so sad that they can’t enjoy or take in what they are seeing, but moving people is very important to me.
You are the Music Executive in the show. Can you tell us a bit more about the process and working with Swindle?
Music has always played a big part in my life, in my creative processes and in my day-to-day life. Even before the show was written it was important that we’d have music to punctuate tonally where we are. I’m obviously from South London, I wanted to have a very South London sound and that was really important to me. One of the first songs in the show is from a rapper called Ty called ‘Wait a Minute’ and he was a Brixton native. He had passed away and he was such a legend in South London, and I will always try and honour the place that I’m from. I worked with Swindle on my other show ‘Champion’ and he was brilliant and really good at understanding what I needed. When it came to Queenie and before he even came on the project, I sent him an episode-by-episode breakdown of the songs that were the theme of the show and then I called him up and he was like ‘great, I get what I need to do.’ I then went to his studio and I sat with him for about 15 hours and I spoke through every episode with him and he played me some score that had come to his mind based on what I had sent him and after that, it became the best creative partnership in my entire life. He understood where we needed to be tonally and what we needed to say. I can’t even put into words, I’ve never had a professional relationship feel so easy, so cohesive and so inspiring and brilliant and all my favourite moments in the show have his score running underneath them. He’s a music wizard and very humble and I want to work with him forever. There is a scene in the final episode where my note to him was ‘make me cry’ and when I saw what he had done, I was sobbing, it was so beautiful! We also produced a song with Bellah which everyone will love and it was one of my favourite musical moments from the show.
Queenie was filmed in South London, why was that important and did you enjoy being on set?
I went onto set every day and I had an amazing relationship with the cast and crew, they are my family now. I loved filming in South London and in places that I know and hang out. Filming became part of my life. I would walk home from set and it was very special and quite funny seeing people guess what the show was and a lot of people taking pictures. Many of my friends and family would be passing by and wanting to stop to chat or would hear that I was filming on their street. We wanted the show to be as recognisable as possible and it was important to me that it was all filmed in South London. I’m born and bred in South London, and I will never leave. We wanted to show important landmarks, we are a tiny part of the world, but we have something to say.
What do you hope audiences take away from the TV adaptation of Queenie and how closely will it adhere to the novel?
I think the series is an opportunity to show Queenie’s outer world because in the book, we spent all the time in her head. My favourite thing about adapting for TV was being able to see, in a way that Queenie might not, how the other characters care for her. There are many people in Queenie’s world that love her, but she doesn’t love herself yet so she’s not able to see that. The book was written in first person but in the TV series, it was important for me as a writer to see what happened once Queenie left the room because she is always in her own head, over-analysing everything, her relationships, everything she says and does. It can also be very different what you write and then what other people take away from it. The book was an exploration of someone with trauma, someone who wasn’t loved enough, and I think we managed to do that in the TV series. Sometimes Queenie had to leave the room for a bit so we can see what other people think about her and to see how loved and cared for she is.