Lynda La Plante

April 2008

Lynda La Plante started her career as an actress, then became an author and screenwriter, creating the much acclaimed Prime Suspect series. She founded La Plante Productions to maintain control of her work and to have a say in the choice of directors and cast. She is currently working on projects for both American and British networks.

WS: Many of your series have featured strong women. Has that been by design?

LA PLANTE: On Prime Suspect, I wasn’t actually thinking I should write a very strong female character. I was very fortunate to be attached to a very high-ranking female police officer. She so impressed me and guided me as to how I should write about the police that up onto the screen came a very fresh individual that I don’t think anybody had seen before. And [I have been associated with] consistently writing very strong women. Prime Suspect broke the mold, so to speak, and as a result so many people have followed it, using female high-ranking policewomen. I do enjoy writing for women—I love it—but I don’t want to put myself in a box and say that is all I really want to write.

WS: Do you think the drive for ratings is preventing networks from taking risks?

LA PLANTE: Definitely. Nobody is actually looking at a show and saying, “This was a really beautiful, artistic piece of work.” What they are saying is, “Whoops, it got a million viewers, we’re down 2 percent in our viewing figures.” Viewing figures have now become of such importance. And the sad thing is that if the BBC has a terrific show, they will put it against ITV’s best show.
If two prestigious dramas are on at the same time, viewing is cut by half.

WS: What new projects are you working on?

LA PLANTE: I’m doing one pilot on Mafia wives for NBC and a detective show for CBS. ITV has commissioned two new series from me, and I’m very excited by this because they are very innovative, new and fresh. [Recently] I have attempted to not write every single episode on a series, and I’ve drawn in new hungry writers. In America, writers are very used to [team writing]. In England, they are not used to that. Contractually it’s very problematic. So I’ve attempted to do it within the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and guide writers, and some of them are doing astonishing, wonderful work. It’s very exciting. I encourage them to have freedom of speech when they are in the workplace with me. I find that [to be] of utmost importance. I do demand one thing, and that is respect. But that respect does not mean that they can’t sit down and say, “Look, I don’t think this works in the script.” Then I have to be big enough to say, “Oh, it doesn’t work?” [Laughs]

WS: So you are breaking ground encouraging a team-writing approach?

LA PLANTE: Yes, and the more ground I break the better it will be, because running a big company like La Plante Productions, I can’t possibly be as hands-on as I’d like to be as we grow. What I’m inclined to do is work very closely with the directors and casting and choosing the actors, up to the point of filming. Then I turn away and say, now it’s your turn.

WS: Is that difficult to do?

LA PLANTE: It’s less difficult for me because of my acting experience. I remember what it was like acting on a film set and the suits would arrive and it would immediately put a tension on the floor and take away control [from] the director. Whereas I like to feel that the director is in total control. I have a producer monitoring everything and I see the rushes every day.

WS: Have you heard the saying, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women in the workplace?”

LA PLANTE: It’s very true. They used to say that breaking through the glass ceiling is exceedingly hard. But so much has changed. There used to be a fear a woman executive had, that if she got to a very high position, she had to flank herself with male colleagues, rather than trust the females, whereas the men will bring in all their mates. But women are now changing. I have a lady running my company who is very formidable—she terrifies me! But I trust her implicitly. Another very good feature of women is that they can delegate. They haven’t got that obsessive thing that they have to control everything. To delegate to the right people is of great importance, and so is trust. If you break the trust with a woman executive then she’ll have you out, because it all depends upon trust.