Together is the hilarious and heartbreaking story of a couple forced to re-evaluate themselves and their relationship through the reality of lockdown. The film is set in the UK from the first days of the Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020 until the present day.
Dennis Kelly, the creator and writer of 大象传媒 Two's Together, joins us to discuss the drama's writing process.
Watch Together on 大象传媒 Two on Thursday 17th June at 9pm or on 大象传媒 iPlayer
How did Together come about? Tell us about the process of writing the script.
I just started writing it really. I probably shouldn't have been writing it because I was busy writing a bunch of other things. But I started writing it and at the time I didn鈥檛 know what it was. It could have been a play or for TV. I didn鈥檛 know what I was going to do with it. When I finished, it did feel theatrical because it included direct address to the audience but after speaking to Sonia Friedman and Stephen Daldry we felt it would work best on TV as a film. So, it became a film-play-TV programme.
What are the challenges of writing about such a recent major event that is still ongoing and that continues to evolve? How do you separate yourself and find that creative distance as a writer?
I don鈥檛 think I did separate myself from the work. I wrote it from a very personal viewpoint. What it isn鈥檛 is a record of what happened during that year. Instead, it鈥檚 what happened in that house during that year. Hopefully, that allows us to look at the bigger things as well. I don鈥檛 mention a lot of things that happened because it wasn鈥檛 about putting everything in. It was about looking at those two people. Lockdown was a strange thing. It was terrifying and then if you were lucky enough to be put on furlough and your wages were going to be paid, you were able to relax again. But there was a real divide between peoples鈥� experiences. There was a discrepancy between people feeling relieved and people feeling terrified. On one side it was sort of 鈥榳e鈥檙e all in this together, let鈥檚 make some videos, let鈥檚 learn stop motion animation鈥� and then on the other side of it were people in pain or people who were trapped together who just didn't want to be trapped in the same house. That's where this idea came from.
How do you distil a concept down into something so personal? What is your process in turning statistics into something more relatable?
I think the thing about statistics, facts, and research is you've got to be careful of them as a writer. I found that out early on when I researched things too much, I just put all the research in, and the work stopped being a play or TV show and just became research. So, with this, I started doing lots of research, but it was quite shallow research. I don't mean it wasn't thought through, but I didn't want to know anything that my characters wouldn't know. Early on I did speak to a virologist, because I wanted to get some things straight in my own head, which the characters wouldn鈥檛 have done but apart from that, everything that they say is freely available to find out on the internet. It鈥檚 the information that ordinary people can access. And that was important. There is the scene where she lays into the government and the government's approach to the pandemic especially in the early days and it was important that everything that I found out; she could have found out.
With research, on one level, you don't put that stuff in, what you do is you write from the character鈥檚 perspective. At one point we have the explanation of the word exponential which is really about mathematics and you never quite know if that's going to bore people but you just have to have faith because I think we didn't understand what it meant and I think it's been bandied about loads but actually knowing what it means really matters, so we tell you straight down the camera.
What was your process in finding the characters and the story? Did you draw a lot on your own personal experiences, or did you rely on stories of people you are connected to?
I don't see things when I write but I hear voices really clearly in my head. So, it was about just following them and where they go. I should say very quickly that I'm not in a relationship like the one in Together and I live with someone and she's great, she is a real laugh. But even still there were difficult times during lockdown, and it was a stressful thing. I think you draw on your own experiences but you're also drawing on other people. Also, in a way, it鈥檚 an easy subject to talk about because you don鈥檛 need to look back and kind of find out what the general feeling was at the end of the first lockdown because you remember it. You remember being there. But also, you understand as well that everyone had a different lockdown. For some early on it was hopeful, while for others it was depressing. We had clap for carers, and it felt good to get out there, but you also think maybe don鈥檛 clap for them, maybe give them protective gear to wear and maybe give them a pay rise.
The main characters have very different views politically and socially. How do you as a writer find your way into a character and how do you bring out the humanity in a character whose views you might not agree with.
I think that is important and that it is something that writers should be doing. I think we are in an increasingly polarised world and we don鈥檛 always see other people鈥檚 points of view. We are all guilty of that. I spoke to someone recently who is a Tory but because they were in London, they felt they couldn鈥檛 really tell people. I don鈥檛 share her politics, but it struck me that there's a danger that we don't see our own kind of intractability and our own prejudices and biases we only see the other person's. And I suppose I wanted to write about that. I think we are still in a really polarised world on a big level, and on a small personal level as well. At the end of the day, the other side isn't going anywhere (unless you believe in genocide, which is very embedded in the history of the 20th century), we must look for a way to find a common ground. It's about our extreme reactions to friends and sometimes those reactions can be very judgmental as well. With cancel culture, we kind of consider certain people beyond the pale, there's no coming back for them now and that worries me because I think there should be a way back. I believe in rehabilitation for murders. At my core, I believe those people can be rehabilitated and that the judicial system should be about rehabilitation rather than punishment. And that should be part of our everyday lives as well.
Arthur is such a powerful character and yet almost a completely silent one? What do you see as his role?
Well, initially in my mind Arthur wasn鈥檛 physically present, they talked about him, but you never saw him. It was Stephen who suggested we should add him in, and I really liked that idea of him being a presence in the background. Once he was there it felt right that he would get to say something at some point, and I went back and forth about what that should be. Whether it should be something profound and deep or something awful and rude. In the end, it's none of those things, he just happens to be there at a crucial moment, and I think he kind of says the right thing but that doesn鈥檛 really matter. I enjoyed him as a character. There is a way of looking at the whole thing that it really is about him. His parents are going to go on and do whatever it is that they are going to do but he's the one that's going to take the scars with him.
Did you have James and Sharon in mind when you were writing the script or did they join later? Do you always write with an actor in mind?
No, I didn't have them in mind at all. Sonia suggested Sharon. I know Sharon really well and she is amazing, but I hadn鈥檛 considered her because I knew she would be too busy. She was too busy, but she really wanted to do it. I was very lucky. And again, with James, I hadn鈥檛 thought of him, but once they suggested him, I knew he would be amazing and that I鈥檇 love to see him in it. Fortunately, they both wanted to do it, and I think they're amazing together as well. They had never met before this, but it came together brilliantly.
What do you consider the major themes in Together? What do you hope an audience will take away?
I think the bigger overarching theme is this thing of difference. It鈥檚 no coincidence that they come from different parts of the political spectrum and they regard themselves as different people. But I watch scenes like where they're talking about the mushrooms, and I think they are exactly the same. They think they are totally different but there's not a hair's breadth between them. They are the same kind of people; they are pissed off by the same kind of people and there are just these tiny little differences. Then at the end, she鈥檚 got a speech where she sort of says the entire human race all look the same. If you dropped a medieval person from medieval England into modern-day France or Korea or Britain, or Moscow they would see these strange people that are looking at their phones and listening to the same things. They wouldn't really be able to see that much difference between us; other than the languages we are using.
It鈥檚 interesting because it鈥檚 even deeper than that. We do listen to the same music, we are interested in the same things, yet at the same time, we are getting further and further away from understanding each other. We feel like we're angrier than before. As we get closer and closer, we see the differences more and more and we鈥檙e becoming more fractured. This piece is about that and it鈥檚 also about the terrible response from our government to the early part of the pandemic.
Everyone has experienced a version of lockdown of some kind, how did that change how you approached the script?
I probably had a first draft in maybe April or May of 2020. Every time I went back to rewrite it, I would end up stripping stuff out because the audience already know so much. What was a more difficult thing was different people鈥檚 lockdowns. You need to be aware of that. So, for example, they talk about a Covid funeral at one point. And that was taken from someone I spoke to who'd lost someone who said how hard it was because you couldn鈥檛 have mourners. Then I spoke to someone else and she said no that was f***ing great because it meant they didn鈥檛 have to deal with all those mourners that they didn鈥檛 know. In writing a piece like this you have to be aware that a lot of the people watching this will have had those experiences themselves. So, you have to kind of tell them that this is a singular experience, to communicate that this is an experience that might resonate for some people but won't resonate for others. So, I think there's a lot more that you have to be aware of than you probably normally would. For example, if you're writing about the Vietnam War, there's a certain amount of people that know about the Vietnam War and have experience of it but the majority of us don't. With lockdown everyone has an experience of it.
What advice would you have for a scriptwriter starting out?
I have said this a lot, so people are probably tired of hearing this, but it is really good advice. If you compromise now, you'll compromise all the way through your career. I was given that advice right at the beginning of my career. I personally believe it's important not to compromise on the things that you believe. That doesn't mean you shouldn't collaborate. Collaboration is amazing and Together was a very collaborative process between myself, Stephen, James, and Sharon. With James and Sharon, they are brilliant actors and really smart people and they got to know those characters so well and they would have suggestions and that can be really useful. But at the end of the day, it's your script and your name is going on that script as the writer, and therefore you should fight for the things that you believe in. If you are with a bunch of good people, you'll all be fighting for the right reasons, you won鈥檛 be fighting for your ego. It鈥檚 important to make sure you are not that person as well.
What makes an idea, a TV idea, or a film idea?
It's really difficult to sort of concretely say what those things are. I think theatre is easier to define because you don鈥檛 have short takes, you can let things expand and the dialogue is more muscular and rhythmical. You have more freedom to let yourself go. While on-screen doing that just feels really big and kind of crazy. A lot of things that happen on-screen happen off the dialogue. I think I've always taken that to heart especially with films. When you're writing films, films are not about words, they're about images, so really, you're writing a story through those images. TV offers such a wide variety of things - you have a single film or a series or a miniseries. I think there is something in the idea that will show you where it will work best but it鈥檚 hard to define definitively because I think it's as much about what you're feeling as it is about a fact.
How do you stay brave as a writer?
I don't really like to do the same thing again and again. When I started out writing plays, people would say you find your voice, but I wanted to write different things, I wasn鈥檛 worried about having a 鈥榲oice鈥�. I was really inspired by Caryl Churchill who completely changes herself every time she writes. Then I started doing TV and I wanted to bring that spirit into TV. So, the first thing I wrote was a comedy Pulling with Sharon. And then the next thing I wrote was Utopia, which is very different and then we recently did The Third Day which had a kind of live theatre element. I think those differences keep me from getting bored and it also means I get to investigate and figure something out, which keeps me on my toes.
I mean bravery is an interesting thing to talk about because it's not like real bravery is it, it's not like throwing yourself on a land mine. When I鈥檓 writing I always assume no one is going to make what I鈥檓 doing and that helps. When I'm writing I try not to think about it going out. I just think about what it is. When you are writing the only person that that thing has is you. You have a responsibility to the thing you are trying to make. It鈥檚 not about the audience or the multitude of other things that you really want to think about because you're scared. It鈥檚 about what you are creating and being true to that.
Watch Together on 大象传媒 Two and 大象传媒 iPlayer from Thursday 17th June at 9pm
Listen to our Inside the Writer's Room podcast with Dennis Kelly