Sid Gentle Films’ Sally Woodward Gentle

Sid Gentle Films’ Sally Woodward Gentle talks to TV Drama about navigating the high-risk drama business with shows like Killing Eve and the upcoming adaptation of Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change.

In 2018, BBC Studios picked up a majority stake in Woodward Gentle’s Sid Gentle Films after having worked with the outfit on The Durrells and SS-GB. The relationship has given the well-respected indie a support system as it navigates the high-risk drama business, one in which Woodward Gentle has carved out a distinctive voice.

TV DRAMA: After leaving Carnival Films, what did you want to achieve with Sid Gentle Films?
WOODWARD GENTLE: It was really to be completely self-defining in terms of the projects that we do. Everyone says, I want to find a high-end, authored, original series. And that was sort of what we wanted to do, too. We’re a small company, but I think our taste is slightly leftfield of a lot of people. We like being challenged by something that feels new and hasn’t been done before. So we make our lives quite difficult! It’s become really boring [to say this], but we want to work with brilliant writers and then also brilliant filmmakers: so great directors, fantastic HoDs, amazing actors. And be led by our gut, really, rather than somebody else dictating what we need to do to make the business plan work.

TV DRAMA: What are the greatest challenges in operating a U.K. indie today?
WOODWARD GENTLE: Everybody thinks it’s easy, so everyone is setting up an indie. It’s really hard! The competition for IP is high and the competition for talent is high. I don’t think there are many writers now who are a slam-dunk; if you go in with a piece of IP and say, this writer wants to do it, it doesn’t necessarily get greenlit. The British broadcasters are swamped by pitches. The hardest thing is convincing the broadcasters that you’re the genius you’re convinced you are!

TV DRAMA: Tell us about the relationship with BBC Studios.
WOODWARD GENTLE: We didn’t have a relationship with any distributor when we set up. Lee Morris [managing director] and I wanted to be completely independent to begin with so that we could be competitive in terms of who we partnered up with for shows. BBC Studios worked with us as the distributor on The Durrells, and they were incredibly supportive. We’d come out of the BBC, and we knew a lot of them personally, and to have that shorthand and that trust was really important. At the same time, we’ve worked with Endeavor Content, who are brilliant. BBC Studios gives us all the support we want. If we want them to help us in terms of setting something up, they will; otherwise, they let us get on with it.

TV DRAMA: Do you think it’s tough to go it alone in this landscape?
WOODWARD GENTLE: It’s hard to tell. I quite like being a little punky, a small unit that operates below the radar. But starting up is hard. The Durrells was hard. We had a crunch moment where our tripartite agreement wasn’t signed and we were about to go into production. You might have loads of things booked, but cash flow can bring you down. That’s where having the backing of a big company helps. But we like being a little bit Wild West about it!

TV DRAMA: How did Killing Eve come about?
WOODWARD GENTLE: That came together in the way things tend to, which is in a sort of random, ad-hoc type of way. A colleague had dinner with Luke Jennings, who had written the [Codename Villanelle e-book] novellas. She said, he’s given these to me, do you want to take a look? We all love a female assassin, and this was a great female assassin. They were lovely little short stories, designed for people to essentially read on their commute. At the center of it was this relationship between Eve and Villanelle. He also established this separate universe that Eve goes to work in. We loved all of it, but then also realized there were other projects like La Femme Nikita and Hanna out there, and I didn’t want to do another sexy male-gaze female assassin. I’d read Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman play Fleabag before it was on at the SoHo Playhouse and met her and liked her because she was just this wild, enthusiastic, extraordinary ball of charisma. I thought it would be good fun to see what it was like putting a piece that was essentially genre through a different kaleidoscope. That’s how I paired Phoebe up with the books. We got it developed by a different broadcaster than BBC America, and it got turned down by them. And then BBC America was over in the U.K. meeting people and popped in to see us. We gave Phoebe’s scripts to Melissa Wells [VP of international co-productions and development at BBC America]. At the time, they were looking for something that had more of a female skew. They fast-tracked its development and we ended up making it for BBC America. Because they are a hybrid between the U.K. and the U.S. models, they allowed us to operate in a way whereby we kept the IP and they licensed it, very much in the way the U.K. does. I have a longstanding relationship with Lorenzo De Maio [a partner at Endeavor Content], who was tracking the project before he was at Endeavor. They put up the deficit against [the rights for] the rest of the world. So it’s the U.K. model, except the primary broadcaster was in the U.S.

TV DRAMA: Can you tell me anything about the third season, which launches this month?
WOODWARD GENTLE: We know Eve is still alive, and we take all of our characters to a much deeper and darker emotional place than we have in the previous series. That includes Carolyn and Konstantin, who play quite major roles in it. Eve and Villanelle’s trajectory is quite different, and their exploration of who they are is something that we haven’t looked at in the way we do in season three.

TV DRAMA: What’s the approach to finding new talent and then helping them hone their craft?
WOODWARD GENTLE: We work with a lot of female writers on the Killing Eve team. It has been a predominantly female writing team. Moving onto season three, Henrietta Colvin, our head of development, read about 60 new-ish female writers and we met about 40. The hardest thing about the show is you can be an extraordinary writer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you can get the tone. So it was about drilling down to see if they could get the tone. All of our writers for season three really delivered because we had gone through that process. A lot of them were quite new writers, and we tried to give them as much support as we possibly could in terms of structure and timings. We will give everybody as much as they need, but all writers need different things. What emotional, practical or physical support do any of us need? It all varies. So it’s also about trying to work out what help works. We quite heavily note and support through the whole scripting process, which is, in turn, frustrating and helpful.

In terms of other talent, we’ve had some amazing directors, including Lisa Brühlmann, the fabulous Damon Thomas—who has done every season and is now an EP—Miranda Bowen and Shannon Murphy, who we booked off the back of her film Babyteeth. So it’s just casting your net wide and taking a chance and being supportive and having enough prep and enough post. The best shows need time, and we have amazing producers who are kind and supportive and experienced. Also, everybody knows it’s a safe space to play. It’s not, Can you do the same thing again? It’s, What do we do now? That is fun!

TV DRAMA: What’s been more stressful: preparing season two on the heels of the breakout debut of season one, or making season three, where you have a bonafide hit to sustain?
WOODWARD GENTLE: They’re all stressful! It shouldn’t be–it’s only telly! It’s not like we’re saving lives or anything. I try not to read any press. That takes the, “How could I ever possibly live up to season one?” stress away from anything. I think most people, if you read any press, don’t look at all the good stuff; you just look at the one snarky line that somebody wrote in a minor newspaper somewhere and it eats at your soul. I can’t do that, so I try not to read anything. And then I just try to be as true to what we think the project should be as possible. But it’s all stressful. I hate shows going out; it’s like getting your exam results. [Laughs]

TV DRAMA: Did you have Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer in mind at the outset?
WOODWARD GENTLE: When you’re developing and writing, we sometimes like to think of actors in those roles. Sometimes the characters are actually called actors’ names while we’re developing. You never end up with those people. It was a real search to find Eve. When Sandra was suggested, we were all such huge fans and it made complete sense from every perspective in terms of her acting chops and her edginess. Everything felt right for it. The search for Villanelle was hard. Our casting director saw over 100 actors for that. Jodie read for it, and we adored her. And then she did a chemistry read with Sandra. Other than that, all the other actors didn’t have chemistry reads. They just turned up. It’s all luck, isn’t it? We had no idea that Kim [Bodnia, who stars as Konstantin] was going to get along so well with Jodie and that their chemistry was going to be so good. And then Fiona Shaw [as Carolyn Martens] is just—she’s a god. She’s mind-blowing all the time, but this season she has a really, really good season.

TV DRAMA: How do you structure the production schedule so that you’re not overextending yourself?
WOODWARD GENTLE: You don’t, because inevitably you have three things greenlit and you think you’ve staggered them well and they will all start filming on the same day! It’s Sod’s law! [Laughs] You just have to pace yourself and realize if you’re burning out and take a day off. I have the most amazing team who work incredibly hard. But also, it’s only television! We do get stressed. But you know it’s going to get better. And we can take on a lot—our capacity for work is enormous!

This interview was conducted prior to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Media companies are currently shifting their strategies in the wake of production postponements.