CAPITAL Press Pack 1 CONTENTS Programme Information – Page 3 Interview with Toby Jones - Page 4 Interview with Lesley Sharp – Page 6 Interview with Rachael Stirling – Page 8 Interview with Adeel Akhtar – Page 10 Interview with Shabana Azmi – Page 12 Interview with Peter Bowker – Page 14 Interview with Derek Wax – Page 16 2 PROGRAMME INFORMATION Toby Jones (Marvellous, The Girl), Lesley Sharp (Scott And Bailey, The Shadow Line) Wunmi Mosaku (Dancing On The Edge, In The Flesh) and Adeel Akhtar (Utopia, Four Lions) star in BAFTA-winning Peter Bowker’s adaptation of John Lanchester’s critically acclaimed and bestselling novel Capital, produced by Kudos for BBC One. Joined by Rachael Stirling (Detectorists, The Bletchley Circle), Gemma Jones (Marvellous, The Lady Vanishes), Robert Emms (Atlantis, War Horse), Bryan Dick (Wolf Hall, Eric And Ernie) and Radoslaw Kaim (Spies Of Warsaw, Wallander), the line-up also includes multi-award-winning Indian actress Shabana Azmi and, fresh from her Olivier award-winning role in West End musical Once, Zrinka Cvitešić. Set on a single street in South London, Capital is a portrait of a road transformed by soaring property prices: what was once the home of modest lower-middle class families, Pepys Road has been continuously gentrified into a street of multi-million pound houses. The denizens of Pepys Road include investment banker Roger (Toby Jones), rubbing his hands in anticipation of his £1m bonus, his spendthrift wife Arabella (Rachael Stirling), Polish builder Bogdan (Radoslaw Kaim) who has come from Warsaw to indulge the rich in their interior decoration whims, Quentina the Zimbabwean refugee with a PhD working as a traffic warden (Wunmi Mosaku), local newsagent Ahmed (Adeel Akhtar) and OAP Petunia (Gemma Jones), who has lived her entire life on Pepys Road, and who is now contemplating death in the house in which she was born. One day, the street’s residents all receive an anonymous postcard through their front doors bearing a simple message: “We Want What You Have.” Who is behind the anonymous hate campaign? And what do they want? As the mystery of the postcards deepens, we learn more about this vivid and unforgettable ensemble of characters. Interweaving stories reveal lives filled with love and loss, fear and greed, fortune and envy and most recognisable of all, family and home - stories bursting with piercing and funny observations on modern life and urban existence, of ordinary people who find themselves caught and changed by a city at a time of extraordinary flux. Directed by Euros Lyn (Happy Valley, Last Tango In Halifax), Capital is a 3x60 produced by Kudos for BBC One. Executive producers are Derek Wax (The Hour, From There To Here) and Peter Bowker (Marvellous, From There To Here) for Kudos and Lucy Richer (Marvellous, The Casual Vacancy) for the BBC. It is produced by Matt Strevens (Cucumber, An Adventure In Space And Time). Commissioned by Charlotte Moore, Controller of BBC One and Ben Stephenson, Controller of BBC Drama. Filming took place in London. 3 TOBY JONES – ROGER What was it like working with Peter Bowker again? I was a bit worried I was putting a curse on things by working with Peter again, as we’d just finished working on Marvellous and it had been such a success. But this was such different material and Roger is such a different character. I adore Pete. He’s fantastic at writing emotions and Roger is on an emotional path. Pete and I discussed that a lot and he was always very receptive to my questions. Adapting the book for television is a huge achievement of Pete’s and I really enjoy the way in which he’s done it. What was it like working with Euros Lyn? He is one of the most passionate directors I’ve worked with on television and I really enjoyed working with him. It’s extraordinary to be a part of an ambitious show like this as there is never much time, but he was so focused in the midst of rapidly shifting scenes and locations. Although all the characters are connected they are also very disconnected, and yet Euros found a way to bind it all together. What was it like being part of this ensemble cast? It was a bit like actually living on Pepys Road. You know what some people are doing and you don’t know what other people are doing, some people you know very well and some people you get to know better over time. So in that way the form matched the content. Tell us about Roger… Roger isn’t an evil banker, he’s a slightly complacent banker. He’s become used to a certain way of life and has a self-imposed pressure to live that way. He spends a lot of money on things that other people don’t spend money on – for example fixtures and fittings - but that is normal to him and his wife. He is not totally in charge of his life or his work. 4 What really attracted me to the part was that he’s a very well educated, functioning human being on one level, who has obeyed the rules and earned a lot of money, but on another level something is happening to him internally that he doesn’t have the language to articulate. Something is shifting and changing within him, and what happens to him in the story makes him realise that his life is not all it might be. It’s a creeping dissatisfaction, a creeping sense of loss and directionlessness. He has no way of expressing that or even understanding it himself. He’s not self-reflective in that way and lives with someone who seems to be totally unself-reflective too. Which character in Pepys Road do you entirely most identify with? Roger. He has two kids and his work takes him away from home a lot, as mine does. I can identify with the challenge in life of the transition of going from the work space to the domestic space. Did you do any research in to the role? Derek Wax (Executive Producer) arranged for me to go and have a meeting with a banker in the city and that was invaluable. He was in charge of handing out the bonuses so had seen some of the more wayward reactions of bankers, who live and die by the numbers they make, when they have been told the bonus that has been settled on. He was also highly articulate about the context in which banking takes place. I thought it was interesting that for all of the opulence and brilliant design in these offices, they are really sterile environments. There’s a monastic and slightly sinister silence with this huge traffic of vasts sums of money surrounding everything. 5 LESLEY SHARP – MARY What was working on Capital like? It was absolutely delightful. It’s an ensemble piece so some days it was very full on and sometimes less so. It’s great being able to dip in and out of it like that, it never got too exhausting or stale and there was always something to engage with. How did you become involved in the adaptation of Capital? I read the novel a few years ago, and thought it was fantastic. Then when the scripts came along, and I saw that it had been adapted by the fantastic Peter Bowker, I was really intrigued. He’s done an amazing job of adapting John’s book; it’s very pacey and moreish. Mary’s relationship with her mother Petunia is really complicated, strange and difficult. So, from an acting point of view, it was great and felt like a stand out role. So there were lots of things about the project that appealed. Also, the rest of the cast are an amazing group of actors, so it felt terrific to be keeping such good company, even though I don’t crossover with that many of them. I’ve worked with Gemma Jones before, so the opportunity to re- connect with her, and for us to play mother and daughter, was superb. I know Toby Jones very well, we’ve done yoga together in the past and get on very well. He’s a fantastic actor, but also extremely good company, very witty, and smart. So, just hanging out with him has been great. Euros Lyn, is also an amazing Director, so it was a really great project to be involved with. Tell us about Mary… Her relationship with Pepys Road is different to most of the other characters, because although she was brought up there, she left as soon as she could, so is more detached from it. Her re-connection with it, via Petunia, is a difficult one for her. Pete has absolutely nailed that in the writing, every time 6 she’s in the house there’s a feeling that she wants to get out again as quickly as possible. It was very interesting to play, as even though it’s her family home she doesn’t feel like she belongs there. What is her relationship with her son like? Mary is trying to make sense of her relationship with her mother and with her past, in the hopes that if she can do that, then at some level she can re-connect with her future, which is her son. Something has gone wrong with her relationship with him and he holds a secret that he doesn’t want to let her in on. It’s an interesting journey they go on together because she’s able to make sense of what’s happened between her and Petunia.