Q&As with the writer and director

13 October 2011

WRITER RONAN BENNETT

What attracted you to the world inhabited by Top Boy?
What I wanted to do was almost journalistic.Everyone's heard about this world, but I wanted to get in to it more and find out the stories behind the people involved. Gerry Jackson put me in touch with people between the ages of 14 and 22. All of them talked very openly.  I don't know what image the words ‘drug dealer' puts in the minds of people who hear it, but these were kids. Most of them seemed sad, some seemed weary. Some were tough.

 

One of the main characters is Dushane, a 26 year old gang-leader. Do you think the Dushanes of this world have been stereotyped by TV? Was part of your mission to show a more rounded character?
I flinch at words like ‘mission'. This is drama. What I try to do is take you into people's worlds. I wanted to show that there is a deeper story. I'm not flying the flag for the Dushanes of this world by any means, but I also know that you can't lump them all together. Going into estates I saw that they felt locked out, they knew there was another world out there, that people have better opportunities, but they feel locked out of it. That's what we show, the struggles that they and their families have, getting by on very limited resources. 

 

Are there politics involved here at all? Or is it something that transcends politics?
Well, nothing transcends politics. But when I sit down to write a drama, I don't think "What political point can I make here?" I come to the material with my own preoccupations. All writers do. I always think my first responsibility is to make the drama work, not to get a political point of view across. Politics come into it from your selection of subject, but audiences don't want a lecture.

 

DIRECTOR YANN DEMANGE

What makes Top Boy different?
I hope people won't think ‘Oh it's one of those urban dramas'. It was all filmed in London, predominantly Hackney, but the council wouldn't let us film on Hackney estates. They're all real places, very tricky to shoot, very difficult, but you'll see the city in a way you've never seen it before.  We're depicting a world that you don't often get to see with truth. It's uncompromising at times, and it needs to be. But equally there's humour and warmth there. You're telling the story from the inside, and these people don't think they're in a worthy drama, they're laughing, having fun. There's warmth, there's friendships. They're kids, and there's something outlaw-ish about it.

 

What was it like casting 68 speaking parts?
It was clear as soon as I read the script that I wouldn't have classically trained kids in the cast, so we went into secondary schools, youth clubs, community centres, local drama groups. It was a long process, and that fed into the writing as well. When I came on board there was one script. Ronan had done all the hard work on characters, but when we looked at who we'd met, that informed a lot of it as well.

 

Did people want to take part? How difficult is it working with novices?
It was incredible. People were so open, so up for it. I loved it in the end but the first couple of weeks on the shoot itself were a bit difficult because nobody understood [the] concept of having to do things maybe ten times, it was completely...like ‘What the f**k? We've just done that!' But they got the hang of it pretty quickly. They came with no baggage, so actually it was quite free. You direct them differently. You can be quite prescriptive, but it's more playful. We were asking people to come when they weren't in the scenes because there was such a nice vibe on the set. Sometimes with the younger kids it was nice for the older ones to be around even when they weren't in the scene. Ashley Walters or Kano (Kane Robinson), the more they were around the better.

 

How many of the untrained performers might go on to have acting careers?
Hard to say. I think a few of them will. I just wrote a reference for one of them for drama school. Another one's got the bug and I think he's a real talent and I'll definitely be using him again. But there aren't many roles for these sorts of kids on TV.

 

Music is a central force in the drama. How important is it?
For me the music landscape of Top Boy is absolutely integral. It informs what the kids are listening to in the storyline. I'd describe the soundtrack as blacksploitation meets Brian Eno meets John Carpenter. Urban drama is a genre in itself and I wanted to cast against type with the music element. I've always been a huge Eno fan and love the ethereal, magical quality of his music. So we decided to approach him to see if he'd consider contributing to Top Boy - and the result is that he agreed to provide an original score all the way through.