Writers Oriane Messina and Fay Rusling interview
Oriane Messina and Fay Rusling created Me And Mrs Jones...
Tell us about the show, how did the idea come about?
Fay: We came up with the show about four or five years ago. We were thinking about actresses in their forties and that there isn't anything really strong or powerful to do. We were trying to think "what would we like to watch as women in our forties?"
Oriane: We would like to watch a woman in her forties being with a man in his twenties, it turns out. So Fay said I think I've got an idea for a show that is about a woman who falls in love with her son's best friend.
F: Her son isn't ten...
O: And I was like "how old is this son? Have he and the friend grown up together" and she's like "no, no." We had a bit of an argument about how old he should be and that's really how we came up with the characters.
F: So that was our sort of nub. We knew that the main character Mrs Jones would be single, at a good point in her life, not really on the look-out, she's not a cougar, that's the whole thing, she doesn't go out looking for men. She's just coping with life, like women do. She's doing the school run and she's trying to earn a living but she's not out there in high heels going 'let me nab a young man'.
O: We wanted to surround her with other family members. We wanted her to have an ex-husband, Jason, who's played by Neil Morrissey. We wanted to have a father who was still in his children's lives so he wasn't someone who was a real scumbag, he's just a bit of an idiot.
F: He means well but he doesn't take full responsibility, he doesn't quite see it.
O: And then we had Tom, Nathaniel Parker, who's a single dad himself. We wanted to have a male character who was a primary carer of his child and he's trying to be good at everything and means well but doesn't always succeed.
F: He's been very hurt by his ex-wife. He's been quite damaged by the whole situation and so he's a very good father and a very good, nice man. He's interested in Gemma even though he has the pick of the playground because every yummy mummy there...
O: ...Fancies him.
F: They wouldn't necessarily because a lot of them are married, but he's still their Tom.
O: And then we went for an older son who's Alfie, played by Jonathan Bailey. We just wanted a character we could really have fun with.
F: Jonathan is brilliant at being a bouncy, young guy who has no cares in the world and just wants to live.
O: He's a really physical performer so he brings a lot of surprising elements to the character.
F: And he has a really good relationship with Jason, Neil Morrissey's character as well. They've got a kind of love-hate relationship where they bitch at each other but at the same time, you know that they kind of care about each other.
It's essentially a family comedy but quite an untraditional family, compared to other comedies like My Family or Outnumbered. To what extent were you redressing a balance, and trying to portray the single-mother life?
O: I think we looked at our own families and the families of our friends and they're not really '2.4 children'. Fay's a married parent. I'm a single parent. I've got friends who are single parents.
F: And I've got friends who are single parents with grown up children who are in their 20s and I've got friends who are the same age as me who have got children who are 2. There's no sort of set thing. If anything it's women in their forties where they still feel attractive and not that life is over. And also you want to fall in love don't you.
O: I don't think it was a conscious thing to write a piece about a single mum I think it's just that it kind of resonated with a lot of our friends.
F: It's kind of normal I think.
O: We really wanted her character to be in constant motion; picking kids up, very little time to find romance. So we always imagined that the only time she had any stillness was when she was with Billy. We tried to reflect that in the script. She doesn't realise to begin with that the first slow conversation she has is with him.
F: I guess we just wanted it to feel like when you're younger and you fall in love for the first time. Why shouldn't you have that feeling in your forties? You want to feel excited about meeting someone.
What about the writing process? Is it different from the writing process of series like Green Wing and other series that audiences will be familiar with?
O: It is different from how we worked on Green Wing, which was a more collaborative show that we wrote. Campus and things like that were all team lead shows driven by the producer. In this case we came up with the idea and the characters and then did an overall series arch of what we wanted to do. Then we'd do a scene breakdown. Fay writes the odd scenes and I write the even scenes. Then we put them together. Then we i-chat and act out all the parts online to each other.
F: She's very good at doing Billy...
O: ...When that crashes we have to do it over the phone
F: So it's like an awkward lovers' conversation...
O: So when we do the love scenes together online it's a bit embarrassing but that's the only way - when you hear it out loud.
F: Oriane still acts and she's in Me And Mrs Jones.
O: So are you - you're in it as well!
F: We used to act so you want the words to feel how people speak. They don't always finish what they were going to say. You want somebody to speak like that.
O: After having done a pilot and knowing who is playing the parts it becomes much easier to write for them because you hear their voice.
F: That's very similar to Green Wing. Once you know who your cast are you can just go to town. You can see Neil Morrissey or you can see Stephen Mangan and you can think 'we can be really mean about them!'
O: We spent a lot of time going 'what can we do to Neil Morrissey this week!'
F: ...Because you know he'd do it brilliantly - he's just genius!
O: So he gets a lot of awful things done to him, doesn't he. But he was in his element I think.
Were you involved in the casting process at all?
O: We've been really lucky because Hartswood Films have been really supportive of having us involved, so we got producing credits. We were lucky to be involved in all the casting of it and went to most of the auditions. We were very clear about how we wanted it to look. We were amazingly lucky that Nick Hurran directed it and he just made it look so beautiful, better than we could have possibly imagined.
F: Plus he had to put up with us on set every day going 'should it be like that?' He's got all these women going around going 'could you make it a bit more romantic?'
O: But he made it look incredible, as did Owen the Director Of Photography, he's amazing as well. So you're just lucky if you find people who want to be collaborative and we were lucky that Hartswood wanted our views.
F: It is your vision but often in TV, or film maybe more, your vision is taken away from you and everyone else makes a decision.
O: It becomes diluted. What you imagined it was going to be on screen and what it is are very different.
F: If it is really awful it'll be our fault!
O: There was an amazing team working on it. Harry Banks who designed it made it look really believable. When we'd spoken to Nick we were like 'it's a romantic comedy' so he has made a romantic comedy six times over.
F: Bite size chunks of romantic comedy. We don't want it to be a comedy drama, we don't want it to be a slapstick farcical sitcom we wanted it to be a romantic comedy where you have that heart in the middle, and you have all the crazy characters around the two lovers.
Do you have fondness for specific characters in the series or relationships between the characters?
F: I think Tom (Nathaniel Parker) is quite a nice character to write for. He's such a brilliant actor and he does it perfectly, so beautifully at times.
O: I think I really like the relationship between Jason (Neil Morrissey) and Alfie, his sort of post-stepson. I just like the idea of parenting someone who doesn't really want to admit they're parented by that person. I felt like as a comedy double act there was a lot of mileage between those two performers. They didn't do anything together in the pilot so we had no idea whether that relationship was going to work and it really did.
F: I would say all of them we've enjoyed writing for. Sarah Alexander is breath-taking at being Gemma Jones. You knew she was giving 100% and she just became Gemma. That was really exciting.
O: We liked writing the Gemma and Billy scenes obviously. We'd sort of imagine ourselves as Gemma with Robert, so it would always become very embarrassing when we'd see Robert on set because he'd know that we'd been thinking about him and writing lady porn! But he was great. It's very surprising when you think about the kind of parts he's done before. He's really different in this.
F: He is mesmerising.
O: Alright!
F: He is though isn't he - breath-taking. He makes you suddenly go *gasps*.
O: Which you told him!
F: Oh did I? How embarrassing.
O: You told him you'd had a stroke!
F: Oh yeah I did - felt like I'd had a stroke. I couldn't actually physically speak to him I felt like a ten year old.
What would you like audiences to take away from the series?
F: It's warm. All the characters are good people. No - one's really awful. It's a warm feeling I guess.
O: Our hope was that when people watched it they'd be caught up in the story between Billy and Gemma - the will-they-won't they story - but also that they'd laugh along the way. And that people would recognise themselves or their relationships within the show is what we're hoping.
F: And the situations, because they are everyday situations, maybe slightly heightened at some points but mainly I think they're everyday situations.
O: We hope there is a character for everyone. There are so many different dynamics - you've got two young boys going out trying to pull women...
F: ...two guys in their twenties that you hope all the girls will go *gasps*.
O: You've got a fifty year old man with a terrifying Swedish, beautiful partner. A single mum, then Fran her friend... so we hope that people will recognise the characters.
F: And whoever you are there will be somebody there for you, to like, to champion, to fancy.
O: We've had a really amazing experience making the show and we're really excited and happy and proud of the final product.
F: It's taken a long time to get here but at the same time all the hurdles we've jumped have been very positive experiences. It's great to have a show that's about to go out on BBC One - it's very exciting.
F: Our mums are very excited.
O: Our mums are very excited! Also to have a strong female lead as well is really nice.
F: And for us it's the first series that we've written on our own. It's great to write something on our own and get it on TV.
O: And people believe in it. We've worked with brilliant producers Serena Cullen and Beryl Vertue, so we've been very lucky.