Writers The Williams Brothers Talks ITV’s The Widow

Conspiracy Theories

ITV’s The Widow starts this week and here’s its writers Harry and Jack Williams, talking about the show…

Q: How did The Widow come to the screen?

Harry: “I had just started dating a woman who is now my fiancée who is a widow. So it was a thing we were talking about in the way we do when we’re working. We talk around areas and subjects. She had written a blog about losing someone close to you which was very touching and moving. That area felt like something that was interesting to us. An emotional way in. We do thrillers. That’s what we’re more known for. And the idea of using that emotional jumping off point and blending in a conspiracy thriller felt like a really interesting marriage.

“We sit and talk about lots of different things then follow the stories and see where it might take us. And stop and tear our hair out. Then eventually continue once we’ve figured it out. We plot the whole thing out roughly and then do a more detailed breakdown of what the episodes are. Then we divide them up and write them.”

Jack: “With The Widow, perhaps more than any other show, we got further in the plotting process before writing anything. Because it’s so interlinked and serialised. Almost like chapters in a book. So we actually plotted out most of the series before writing the episodes. It’s different in that sense. It’s quite a sprawling complex story. What’s exciting is by the final hour you, hopefully, feel that journey that can seem like it’s sometimes going off on tangents all actually marries up and adds up in the end. One of the sequences near the end was very big and ambitious. When you finally sum it all up for the audience. Our second director Olly Blackburn did a remarkable job on that.”

Q: Why did you set much of The Widow in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)?

Jack: “I had done some reading about the Congo and just found it fascinating, a place of contradictions that not a lot of people know about. So it always stuck with me. Then when Harry started talking about this character we talked about what would be the most interesting combination. And the two ideas fused together. We started to come up with a story taking Georgia Wells (Kate Beckinsale) to this place and really putting her through the wringer emotionally. It just felt a really good fit.”

Q: Did you realise how topical the drama would be in light of the recent disputed election in the DRC and further ethnic violence?

Jack: “It’s always hard when you write about somewhere like the Congo where it’s so fluid politically and things are always on the move. Which is why we tried to take a step back and talk about the country as a whole and the general patterns there so it doesn’t feel dated. But at the moment, it feels oddly prescient following the election there and ethnic violence.”

Q: Why could you not film in the Congo?

Jack: “We really wanted to film in the Congo. Our lead director Sam Donovan and our producer Eliza Mellor did go to the DRC for a recce for a week. Against the strenuous objections of every insurance company in the world. But it was just too dangerous. Even to film some general views. So sadly we weren’t allowed to. We then worked with a brilliant designer to film in South Africa. Every frame had to be treated and dressed. You can’t just go to South Africa and pretend it’s a street in the Congo. Everything had to be rebuilt.”

Q: What themes do you explore in The Widow?

Jack: “The setting in The Widow is absolutely intrinsic to the story. As with everything we write we don’t pick places just because of how they look. As it becomes clear over the eight hours, this story is one that could only ever be told in the Democratic Republic of Congo and could only be told in the DRC now.

“The Widow is a conspiracy thriller with a big emotional heart. But by the conclusion, without being tub-thumping or issue led in any way, there is an element where it has some food for thought about the world we live in and the way we choose to exploit our natural resources. We wanted to write something about the connection to the West. To things we use every day.”

Q: One character talks about the darkness beneath the beauty of the DRC. Was that an important line for you?

Harry: “That really sums up the whole thing. There is such darkness underneath.”

Jack: “It’s a beautiful environment but the way people live and interact there is sometimes human nature at its most desperate and violent. There’s such a contrast between that and some of the kindness and empathy you also see there.

“There are people who wear their heart on their sleeves and say they are doing good things. But for their own reasons. Which, again, is true to the theme of the show. The things we say we do are different from the reasons we actually do them.

“As you read the news, it’s both gratifying and horrifying how we have actually written something that is reflecting the reality of what has subsequently happened in the real world. If you do a real life thing it’s the story of what has happened. You just write it down. But if you wrote that in a drama people would say, ‘That’s too convenient.’ We expect our fiction to have rules in the way that, obviously, real life doesn’t.”

Harry: “We say it all the time. That the world is too mad today to do it justice. It constantly surprises. And it seems to be getting madder and madder.”

Q: Rotterdam is also a major location in the drama. Why choose that city?

Harry: “We went to Amsterdam for our drama Baptiste. But even before we’d had the idea we had passed through and saw Rotterdam on the way. Rotterdam is very striking, angular, urban and symmetrical. Visually it’s the antithesis of the Congo. So it just felt like, ‘What’s the biggest contrast we can make visually?’”

Q: What were your thoughts in the casting process?

Jack: “It’s really exciting to have someone like Kate Beckinsale play Georgia Wells. A film actress who hasn’t done TV for over 10 years. She brings so much to the role. I don’t think viewers will necessarily know what to expect from her. From the first episode we’re trying to work Georgia out and why she is like she is. That gives us a lot. Kate is, certainly to a TV audience, a bit more of an enigma. She has done a variety of roles. The hope is to confound that expectation with an audience who don’t necessarily know what kind of person she is.

“The Widow was so dependent on getting the right person to play the role of Georgia. This character who is emotionally closed off. It was such a different character for us to write. What’s exciting about Georgia for us is that when you first meet her she can seem a little brittle and cold almost. She is a character who is emotionally shut down. Who has suffered immense and unfortunate tragedy. She is the epitome what the show is about. Hence the title The Widow. Having suffered that loss, what do you do and how do you recover? It’s a natural reaction to wall yourself off.”

Harry: “And then how do you open yourself to people and dare to love anyone again after you have lost so much? It’s a really difficult thing to do that. Knowing you have lost so much and that could happen all over again. That felt like a very potent emotional story to tell for us.”

Jack: “We also have people like Ólafur Darri Ólafsson who is an amazing actor. He had a much smaller part for us in The Missing 2. When we started writing that role we always had him in mind. And we were lucky enough to get him.

“We had casting directors in America, England, Africa and France. Which gives you a range and access to people we’re not as familiar with here. Like Bart Fouche and Jacky Ido, a French actor who lives in Los Angeles. Plus Babs Olusanmokun who plays General Azikiwe. We were just blown away by him. We couldn’t believe it when we saw the audition. He was busy doing another American show and we tied ourselves in knots to get him out to do the role. And we’re so glad it worked out. Once we saw him audition, we couldn’t have anyone but him.

“We also have Shalom Nyandiko as child soldier Adidja. We saw a lot of people for that. It was a very hard role to cast. But as soon as we saw her we fell in love with her. She gives an amazing performance. It’s a really important role. She had to act in two languages and doesn’t have a lot of previous acting experience. But she was brilliant.”

Q: Do you have big debates about when you should drop in ‘reveals’ for the audience to give them more clues as to the bigger picture?

Harry: “Very much so. You never want to hold things back, be cynical about it and just be playing a trick. It has to be something that comes organically from the story and feels natural. Equally the audience are leaning in for the answers to those questions. So it’s essential that you land them properly and they have an impact. That’s a constant source of discussion. Audiences want to find that stuff out for themselves. They will be curious. Just being handed it all makes it slightly less interesting.”

Jack: “To some extent it’s a question of holding your nerve. Particularly with The Widow. In episode three and four you learn a lot about Georgia that you don’t know in the first two episodes.   Which makes it harder to empathise with her fully in the opening episodes because she is holding things back. Writing it you think, ‘Should we tell people more so they love her from the start?’ But you just have to hold your nerve.

“It’s important we meet her in a closed off way and see how she interacts with the world. Before we tell people more about what has happened. We don’t want to start by asking people to love her. That never really works. This is a more interesting way of telling the story. We don’t want to alienate people. We want them to stay with us for the journey. Because, trust us, it’s worth it.”

Q: Is there a great difference now between the scale and ambition of a production like The Widow and a big screen movie?

Harry: “There doesn’t seem to be a great difference now. Looking at the scale of a production like this shooting for six months in three countries. And looking at the actors and talent available to you. It’s indistinguishable in many ways.”

Q: Do you think about the fact that with smart TVs and streaming people can now access your work all over the world?

Jack: “It’s brilliant. We never write with that in mind. But it’s always a huge relief and honour that people watch and engage with it. Something like this is on ITV in the UK and Amazon are showing it all over the rest of the world.”

Q: One character in The Widow says we can never hide who we are. Do you agree?

Jack: “One of the reasons we write is because people are hard to work out. Some people surprise you and some just never change. I don’t think we necessarily believe that. But that guy definitely does.”

Harry: “People do a pretty good job of it a lot of the time.”

Q: A plane crash is at the heart of The Widow. Are you nervous flyers?

Jack: “I’m a pretty terrible flyer. I hate it. I try and avoid it where possible. But I think I’m improving. We’re working through it. I couldn’t believe I was writing about a plane crash. I really didn’t want to. I think we really capture that terror on screen. It was a case of, ‘If it can’t terrify me then it won’t terrify anyone.’ So when I finally watched it and had nightmares about it I knew it was good. But I can’t watch that scene anymore.”

Harry: “I couldn’t watch most of the rushes of the plane crash.”

Q: Is it an increasing challenge to keep today’s sophisticated drama audiences on their toes?

Jack: “You have to work harder than ever. We feel it every time we sit down to write. You come up with an idea and some characters you think are interesting. Then you start to write a scene and think, ‘Well, OK, I’ve seen that before. How do we make it different?’ It just gets harder and harder.

“We’ve found that even since we wrote the first series of The Missing. I’m not claiming ever to be wholly original. No-one can be. But we spend a lot of time discussing scenes and ways to make them surprising or different enough so that we – who write a lot of TV and watch a lot of TV – can look at each other and go, ‘That feels different and surprising.’ It just takes us longer to do than it ever did because there is so much drama around.”

Harry: “It makes me want to want to watch less. So that I know less.”