The new project from the creator of Pulling and Utopia is the real-life tale of a teacher whose life is upended by working with inmates. ‘It upends your prejudices,’ he says
W
riter Dennis Kelly has a few mantras he’s always lived by. They’re all there, clearly defined in his very earliest interviews, right from the start of his career. Write like you mean it (perhaps that’s why his plays have so much heart and drive). Never write for money and never compromise (maybe that’s why two of the best TV shows he had a hand in, the controversial conspiracy drama Utopia and the Sharon Horgan comedy Pulling, were cancelled after two series). And finally: make sure your writing always contains a secret.
In the case of Matilda, the smash-hit stage adaptation he wrote alongside Tim Minchin, Kelly only figured out the secret hidden inside his writing long after the awards came flooding in. It turns out that Matilda, a show that glows with love but also aches with a sense of a loss, was all about Kelly’s longing to be a father – a longing that was met just a few years after the premiere with the birth of Kelly’s now six-year-old daughter, Kezia.
As we chat over video about his upcoming BBC prison drama, Waiting for the Out (WFTO), I repeat Kelly’s mantras back to him. So, what’s the secret contained inside his latest TV series? Kelly laughs and, after a thoughtful silence, offers up his answer. The secret to WFTO, which is all about men living in the shadow of a life in prison, is fear. Fear of speaking out. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of simply being oneself. It’s the kind of fear that Kelly knows intimately: “I spent the first 30 years of my life utterly fucking terrified but always pretending I wasn’t scared. I thought it was blasphemy to admit fear. I’m not an idiot but that’s what I felt.”
