Q&A: Screenwriter Emma Frost on Why Scripts Have No Inherent Value
This conversation may have given me heart palpitations at times, but there's so much to learn here from the intersection of the fine arts and screen in 'The White Queen' creator's life and work
Regular readers of 5AM StoryTalk know the primary reason for me to engage in my artist-on-artist conversation series is how much I enjoy discuss art with peers I respect and admire. It’s really that simple and, perhaps, even unambitious. But one of the less-advertised thrills I can take from the experience is when artists show up for a real debate of ideas, who push back with verve against something I propose, who, in their enthusiastic dissent from whatever narrative I might be un/consciously driving at, force me (and hopefully you) to reconsider aspects of craft, art, and even the creative instinct anew. Long story short: British screenwriter Emma Frost (creator/showrunner of “The White Queen” and its sequel series “The White Princess” and “The Spanish Princess”) showed up for a real back-and-forth that left me challenged — especially my ideas about the value of a screenplay, as you’ll read — and very excited to continue it in real life over drinks at some point in the future.
Amongst Emma’s myriad accomplishments are also writing the mini-series “Jamaica Inn” for the BBC, serving as the lead writer for three seasons of the original U.K. version of “Shameless”, and writing and/or developing a slew of of other episodes and films for major players on both sides of the pond. As you’ll discover, her mastery of the craft partly originated from her years as a development executive for British production companies. But after chatting with her, I think it’s fair to say her approach is equally informed by her — for screenwriters — very unique early arts training.
For artists of all varieties, I expect you’ll be intrigued and maybe even inspired by the intersection of various art forms that produced Emma Frost the Filmmaker. I’ve long maintained that the most interesting artists’ toolboxes are filled with creative wonders collected from many different traditions, and, for my money, Emma is proof of that. For screenwriters at all levels of their careers, you’re going to gain a lot from Emma’s perspective on period films/TV and be challenged — and, if you’re anything like me, shaken — by her feelings about the inherent value, or lack thereof, of screenplays. I encourage you to jump into the comments below and weigh in on the subject yourselves after you read.
COLE HADDON: Emma, I’m thrilled to be able to have this conversation with you about your art, but also art in general. I want to start by talking about history given how often you’ve worked on period stories. But specifically, I’m curious about the dissonance between producers, networks, studios, and similar that roundly declare “period is hard” – suggesting there isn’t enough audience appetite for it – and the audiences that regularly and emphatically turn up to watch period TV series. How do you explain this difference of opinions?
EMMA FROST: Okay, so my view – and experience – is that period isn’t hard at all. When networks say, “period is hard”, what I think they actually mean is “period is easy” as in “good period pitches/shows are very easy for us to find so we already have as many of them in development as we can accommodate, so please don’t bring us any more because it would be hard for us to buy them.” What’s really hard for them to find is contemporary shows that feel distinct and strong enough, so that’s often what they’re asking for.
Certainly, my own body of work thus far bears this out. It makes me smile that so often, when I’m interviewed, the first question is about history. And I understand that, of course – as you say, I’ve written a lot of historical drama, so people often assume that historical drama is my huge passion. But it isn’t. Or rather, no more so than contemporary drama is, and, in fact, my natural voice is far more irreverent than much period drama allows for - I was a lead writer on “Shameless” in the U.K. through the early series, for example. But the period drama projects that I engaged with were the ones that got made while many of the contemporary ones didn’t.
CH: Emma, you’re blowing my mind right now. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, more than a decade of which has been in the U.K., and not one person has ever come close to saying something remotely intelligent when the “period is hard” conversation comes up. It’s remarkable how your reframing of the statement shifts the problem away from period to the challenge of getting up contemporary shows – in the U.K., in particular – that feel like they might equally inspire audiences.
EF: [Laughter] Thank you. I may have peaked too early in that case, as it may be my only insight of the whole conversation!
CH: I doubt that will be the case. When discussing period stories – especially in the U.K. – I tend to make the argument that period has, essentially, the power of science-fiction for storytellers in that it allows us to talk about today from a removed, allegorical space rather than tackling prickly contemporary issues head-on. How do you feel about this position? I think what I’m really wondering about is, given how disastrous the 21st century has become, to such a degree that much of what’s topical is too controversial to make TV about, do you think the “period is hard” argument is depriving us of a vital storytelling tool to more full-throatedly explore the modern world?
EF: Well, as I just mentioned, I don’t think period is hard. Just hard to sell because they’ve already got a lot of it. And, of course, harder to finance because the budgets are usually higher so it feels like a bigger risk to networks – especially in these increasingly risk-averse times - although budgets for period shows are generally on a par, or lower, actually, than fantasy, sci-fi, or big world-building shows.
I do agree that period only really works well when it is saying something about the modern world, though. It’s the perennial “Why now?” question. Why is this show relevant to a modern audience? And while the answer to that can legitimately simply be, “It’s just a great human story so it will resonate with a human audience,” it is often the case that the reason we, as writers, are attracted to specific period stories is because of the resonance we find in them with the modern world. For example, there is a project that a US streamer has just approached me to write and showrun. It’s period, based on a classic novel. But the issues it explores feel entirely 21st century and quite searingly political, with both a big and a small P. So, despite my usual mantra these days of “anything but period, please” – because I’ve written and produced forty hours of it and want to flex other muscles – in this instance, I bit their hand off for it because of what I can explore with it.
CH: But I think you may have just answered my question, or rather what I was trying to get at. That many of the 21st century’s issues now seem impossible to tackle head-on because the world has, in a sense, become so absurd and horrifying. Depicting a U.S. president or, say, British prime minister in a serious manner feels silly - as if we’re dramatizing alternate realities rather than our own. I’ve watched superhero films where the most unbelievable thing in them is the depiction of a functional U.S. government. Science-fiction/fantasy and period now seem like the best way, at least to me, to talk about these big issues without being overtly political. It’s also possible I’m being oversensitive at the moment because I live in Australia and this country will not look backward in TV and only under very specific circumstances in film. “Period is hard” is a hard truth here, to the culture’s detriment.
EF: I didn’t know that about Australia. But to your other point, I think that artists working in any medium have a responsibility to continue to engage with – and challenge – our leaders and dysfunctional political and economic systems - if “system” is even the right word now for what more closely resembles unbridled cronyism, overt corruption, and a capitalist free-for-all. I share your panic about the 21st century, but I believe that as storytellers who have been granted the extraordinary privilege and gift of mass communication, we have to use it to fight the creep of fascism and authoritarian rule and all threats to free speech. Yes, of course, it’s harder to get overtly political shows greenlit, because TV is a populist medium where politics are divisive at best and boring at worst, and right now escapism is more the order of the day because of how dark the world is becoming. But I’m a big believer in smuggling – you smuggle the subversive ideas and challenges to authority into mainstream narratives. That way the message has the best chance of reaching its target.
CH: Let’s talk about a different kind of history. Yours. Can you remember the first story – regardless of the medium – that made you stop and think, “I want to do that”?
EF: I can remember, but it wasn’t exactly a story. And that might require a little context. I have never trained as a writer. My huge passion, from when I was tiny, was painting – fine art. And I am a pretty good painter.
CH: Okay, I want to hear more about this.
EF: I went to art school, and my lecturers had high hopes for my career as a painter. But for me, that medium stopped working as an artistic form. I was painting portraits of people in relationships – the tension and subtext between them – and I quickly reached the point where I wanted to explore that relationship in more dimensions. Not just the flat plane of the painting, but in time and sound and greater psychological depth than just this one frozen moment. So, that artistic need naturally led to an evolution away from visual art to writing. Although people often ask me why I don’t paint or sculpt anymore, my answer is that I do. Because every discipline and stage of the process of making a painting or sculpture directly transfers onto the process of writing. I first sketch it out – block story – build structure – to get a sense of the whole shape in a broad way. Then, I work into it in greater detail, hang flesh on those bones. I work fast, trying to retain a kinetic energy in the work and both processes feel, to me, like a way of ordering my mind, of processing and ordering my lived experiences in a way that, for me, is a necessary by-product of being alive. I used to paint portraits. Now, I write them. The processes are the same, but now I have more dimensions to work in.
CH: This is fascinating. I’ve chatted with artists who transitioned to the fine arts after writing, but not the other way around.
EF: Back to your original question of the first story. I was twelve or thirteen and living in a house with warring parents who would soon divorce. My bedroom was up in the attic, and I had a small portable TV up there. And I would stay up half the night drawing and painting - and oversleeping every morning and being late for school. But one night, as I was painting, I had the TV on for company in the background and this… thing… came on. I say “thing” because at the time I had no language to even describe what it was, but it was a televised performance of “Nelken” – aka “Carnations” – by Pina Bausch, one of the world’s most preeminent dance-theatre choreographers, and this live performance piece was a collage of movement, images, words and repetitious motifs that evoked tussles between the sexes, between the individual and the state, and between child and parent, in a way that transcended words and that thrilled me. It lit a fire in me that served as a bridge from painting into the world of performance…first performance art, and theatre, but eventually led me to become a screenwriter.
CH: Alright, there is so much to discuss about everything you’ve just talked about. For context, could you tell me how old you were when you began to experiment with screenwriting?
EF: That’s hard to answer. I feel like I’m saying that a lot. But I didn’t really have a straight line to writing.
CH: What did it look like then?
EF: I was always very good at English at school and I loved it. But when I was sixteen, I bailed from my grammar school to do an arts foundation course – causing everyone great consternation because I was a very high achiever academically and they couldn’t, for the life of them, understand why someone who could be a doctor or a lawyer would throw it all away to paint. Fools that they were.
I’d hoped to do English A level alongside my arts foundation, but the course was full. When I went to university – a “polytechnic” back then – I studied “Visual and Performing Arts”. The ethos of the degree was to find the middle ground between visual art of whatever kind – and the range was broad, painting, sculpture, printmaking, installation, video art, textiles, etcetera – and an “option” study in either dance, music, or theatre. Mine was theatre.
CH: What was that like?
EF: I spent three years exploring the space between visual art and theatre, which essentially meant that I devised, designed, and directed pieces that were closer to “live films” than any conventional form of theatre or writing. I used a visual language to tell a narrative, and what text or spoken word there was, was largely collage in its form and from “found” sources like fragments of other texts or plays or even scientific tomes or dictionaries.
But it definitely wasn’t a straightforward or linear narrative. Instead, the meanings were drawn from juxtaposition of image and text and were very interpretive – in the way that “meanings” of paintings or poems are.
CH: This sounds amazing – and not all that different from many of the film traditions that most inspired me to become a filmmaker in the first place. What was inspiring you at the time?
EF: My influences and huge passions were Pina Bausch - of course. But also, French-Canadian artist and theatre maker Robert Lepage (a genius); New York based performance group The Wooster Group (ditto, plural); and Polish theatre director Tadeusz Kantor (yes, another genius). All of their work I had the great pleasure and privilege to see live because, despite being afflicted by the normal levels of art student poverty, I made sure I found a way to beg, borrow, or steal my way to London, Krakow, or New York for that sole purpose! I am nothing if not committed.
CH: You’re also a creature after my own heart. I thought I was the only poor university student who spent whatever money they had traveling obscene distances to experience new art.
EF: [Laughs] Far from it! But I haven’t answered your question.
CH: No, but you’re being much more interesting than my question probably was.
EF: So, my early work was still visually constructed and definitely not scripted in any conventional sense. So, when I graduated, I was adrift for a while because I couldn’t see a way to continue making that art because a huge space, a load of actors, and the money and resources to design and build sets or accompanying video art were clearly unachievable.
I cobbled together a living from an eclectic range of making and selling hats in Camden Market, answering phones for a post-production facilities house, working in pubs and restaurants, and every summer the shining beacon of working at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival - where I very quickly proved myself capable of interesting and challenging roles, such as stage managing a production of Macbeth for the Official Edinburgh Festival, which was entirely performed on the tiny and remote Inchcolm Island, which didn’t have any power and was a 30-minute ferry ride from the mainland harbor of South Queensferry. That was a summer of no sleep! But I also started to develop my producer bones alongside my creative ones.
CH: I feel like you just pitched me a hilarious and deeply charming British feature film.
EF: Well, funny you should say that, as my husband Mathew Graham – creator of “Life on Mars” – and I went to Edinburgh last year for our wedding anniversary and over too many drinks one evening I relayed to him, in great detail, the full story of the Inchcolm Macbeth and we laughed ourselves silly and have since then been developing the idea as a movie or limited series. So, “watch this space,” I guess!
CH: [Laughs] Perfect. Sorry to interrupt. Please, continue.