CAPITAL Press Pack

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CAPITAL Press Pack

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

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.

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.

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.

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. So it a really complicated, and complex story, that’s tied up in this house. Every house has a different story to tell and their story is the past making sense of the future.

Do you have any favourite scenes?

Some of my favourite scenes have been the scenes that I’ve shot with Gemma Jones, which felt like a privilege. We catch Mary and Petunia at a terrible time in their relationship because it’s the end of Petunia’s life. I also enjoyed the scene in the church hall, when all the community come together to talk about the postcards being dropped through their letterboxes. That was great fun because everybody was there and it was fun to spend time and have a laugh with everybody that I didn’t get to see all the time.

RACHAEL STIRLING – ARABELLA

What was filming Capital like?

I’ve loved being part of Capital. It’s an ensemble piece about the changing fortunes of a street in London and its inhabitants with all their different classes and creeds. It’s been a joy being part of a company because you don’t carry all the weight of responsibility; you just need to look after your aspect of the story.

Mine is about Arabella’s marriage with Toby Jones’ character Roger who’s a ruthless city worker. Arabella his wife is appallingly materialistic without guile.

Did you do any research for the role?

I went and hung out on a street which I felt was similar to the fictional Pepys Road. I sat there for a few hours and observed the various inhabitants of the street, all of whom looked at me rather disapprovingly. Everybody was having their basement dug out and everyone has their cookie cutter rich houses but you don’t get a sense of community and people don’t talk to their neighbours. The intertwined plot lines in Capital have a strong sense of that insularity.

Tell us about Arabella…

Arabella has absolutely nothing to do with her neighbours. The only person she does have anything to do with, other than her family, is Bogdan. She is permanently redecorating the house and I tried to get into the psychology of why somebody would do that and think that she is trying to get her husband’s attention by controlling his environment. The only time she goes to the corner shop, which clearly doesn’t sell fresh herbs, is to go and buy fresh coriander, and you can clearly tell she’s never been into that shop before. She absolutely isolates herself and thinks herself superior to the rest of the community.

She does have some redeeming qualities because she’s very funny, doesn’t pull any punches, is a very good wordsmith and is always telling Roger off. I had to scream ‘Roger’ at Toby every day of filming. She is pathetically in need of permanent reassurance and has a humanity to her for that reason, she is vulnerable although she doesn’t show it. Pete has beautifully written in these odd glimpses of her being hurt, but she never reveals that to Roger.

Did you have any favourite scenes?

I’ve enjoyed all my scenes with Toby as getting to know him has been a real treat. He’s such a good actor and you can’t be lazy acting opposite him. We found together the humanity within this appalling couple and we worked hard to get to the heart of that.

I’ve also loved working with Euros Lyn because I trust him entirely. As a Director he’s so instinctive and he works so hard and I’m not buttering him up because I want another job! He knows how he wants to shoot a scene before we even get there and we’ve wrapped early because he so disciplined and organized in his preparation.

ADEEL AKHTAR – AHMED

What was filming Capital like?

It was a lot of fun and a real pleasure to work on. It was nice to do a story about families, it’s very different from other work that I’ve done and there was a very different feel on set. You looked forward to coming in to work every day.

What was it like working with Peter Bowker’s script?

The dialogue flows so well between the characters, it all feels real, which is an indication of how good it is. He’s captured the reality of living on this street, which is enhanced by Euros’ direction. There’s a feeling of underlying tragedy with some of the characters but even with the moments of high drama, it doesn’t feel like high drama, because it feels very real, and it’s also often underpinned with comedy. The characters feel like believable people.

Do you think that Pepys Road could be any street?

We’re living in a strange time now. I think we’re at a crossroads and a lot of things are slowly happening, socially, economically and culturally. Pepys Road is a manifestation of this. It’s an example of what is happening on a lot of roads in London and Britain.

Tell us about the Kamal family…

I play the older brother, Ahmed, who has taken on the father figure role, but not very well. They all take the mickey out of him, in a nice way. Then Mrs Kamal, played by the legendary Shabana Azmi, comes back from India to try and sort things out. But while that is going on, something happens that has a huge impact on the family, and raises questions about their relationships within their family and within the community.

What does Capital tell us about living in a city?

It looks at the idea of a community, and what it means to belong to the community from whatever background you’re from. One of the problems is that some people within a community, such as

Ahmed’s brother Usman, feel ostracized from it. They feel like they don’t belong and are on the outside looking in. Capital looks at that concept and also that they are all part of something bigger than themselves.

Have you had any favourite scenes that you’ve filmed?

I don’t really have specific scenes but Ahmed is behind the counter in the shop a lot, serving the community, and I like that revolving door feeling, of different people coming in and out. Whenever the door opened, it was always someone new. I’m going to go away and pay more attention to people on my street, people in the corner shop, and maybe say “hello, how are you?”, to the person behind the counter.

SHABANA AZMI – MRS KAMAL

How did you become involved in Capital?

It just fell into my lap! My agent told me about it and they sent me the script and I loved the part. She’s a feisty, domineering, authoritative, matriarch of the family. She’s not your stereotypical, whimpering Asian woman, she’s a woman who is made of steel, and is bossy but also has a heart. I just warmed to the part.

You’ve had an extensive career, how has this role fitted in?

I liked the screenplay, I liked that it is saying something that needs to be said in this day and age. Although Mrs Kamal is just one part of this large story, it is a very pivotal part. I enjoyed the experience and would have liked to have spent a little more time on the set. I got along really well with Euros (Director) and the crew. I wish I’d had an opportunity to work with Gemma Jones and I got to do one scene with Toby but I would have liked to have done more. It was a pleasure.

How do the Kamal family react to her arrival on Pepys Road?

They find her too much to handle but she is their mother. They are used to her ways, and her getting in their way, but ultimately, at the end of it, there’s a very strong bond there. The thing about Mrs Kamal is that she says the most horrendous things in the sweetest manner possible, so you really can’t quite tell what exactly she’s up to, except for her daughter-in-law, who quite understands her.

Do you think that the Kamal Family is a fair representation of what it’s like to be an Asian family in Britain now?

I think so. If you look at the subject of Capital, and the number of communities that are being represented, there’s awareness that the world is shrinking, and becoming a global village. We are absorbing cultures, and understanding them, or at least trying to understand them within their own paradigms.

Capital is also often comedic…

It’s funny with Mrs Kamal because she doesn’t even know that she’s being funny. There was an understanding with Euros and me that I shouldn’t play the comedy but to always have it ticking in the back of my head as that is one of the things at the heart of this family. In order to do comedy, it is extremely important to do it really seriously, and to do it in all earnestness, and it’s only then that it becomes funny. If you’re trying to play funny, then of course it doesn’t work.

What do you think hope viewers will take from Capital?

It’s a very interesting story. The lives of all the characters are very interesting, and I feel that if I’m interested, the audience would be interested. It’s all related to this notion of ‘Capital’ and what it means in todays’ world, where everything is changing. Everything is becoming monetised, the landscape is changing, people are moving around, the old is giving way to the new. There are many issues and questions raised but they are not shoved in your face, it’s for you to go away and think about.

Are these issues universal?

Absolutely, this could have been set in Mumbai, Singapore, New York, many places. I can see the parallel with Mumbai, which at the moment is going through a huge transformation. So I do think it’s universal in that sense.

PETER BOWKER – ADAPTOR

How did you become involved in this project?

I was already reading Capital when Derek Wax (Executive Producer), who I’ve worked with before, sent me it. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could be adapted because so much of it is people’s internal dialogue and thoughts, so I thought the challenge of that would be intriguing. I’ve admired John Lanchester’s writing as an economist so to begin with I was just excited to meet him! Then the more I read the book the more I thought it was similar to Dickens, both in terms of catching a moment of time and how the big decisions filter in to everyday life. If you start with the people at the bottom, who absorb the impact of those decisions, there’s something dramatic there. So that’s how it started.

How did you go about adapting it?

One of my first realisations was that in order to turn it into a contained series, I’d have to lose a couple of story strands. But I wanted to maintain the wonderful mix of people and the near misses that people have. We live next door to people for years and never say anything other than hello and goodbye. People who live there, work there, and deliver stuff there, all have their own lives but all intersect in this one location. I wanted to maintain the spirit of the book. We meet various people at different levels of the economy and see the impact it has on them through their lives and stories. I also wanted to catch the humour and the humanity of the book and through that filter look at the wider political and economic issues.

How would you describe Capital?

The great thing about Capital is that it works on a number of levels. What hooks you in is the initial mystery, residents of a street in London, from mixed racial and social backgrounds, all receive a post card on the same day and that post card says ‘We Want What You Have.’ That is the starting point, what could it possibly mean? The postcards become the engine that drives the story as we get to know the community in the street and become involved in their own mysteries too. That’s the joy of Capital, there is always mystery at the back of your mind in every scene.

What was it like working with Toby again?

I think Toby is a genius and thought that long before I worked with him. He always wants to know a character’s needs, and what’s beneath those needs. Then he takes all that material and somehow embeds it into the character and physically inhabits the character, so that you never think he’s playing the character. It’s fascinating to watch him close up. He carries the emotional complexities in every tiny gesture that his character makes so that you immediately can see what his character is like. A character like Roger is full of contradictions, a city banker with an air of entitlement but also a little insecurity picking away at him. Toby can portray that in his walk alone. That’s what’s great about him, he can portray cold he can portray warm and he can portray both of those things at once.

Do you have any favourite moments in Capital?

I have a few favourite moments in the book which I wanted to make sure stayed as favourites in the adaptation. Christmas morning where Roger has been abandoned and left to look after his two

14 children is one that Euros (Director) has done brilliantly. Roger realises that his life is changing but it’s done with such comedy! It is one of those glorious Basil Fawlty moments where the farce is working at one level and the emotional farce is working at another.

I also love the Kamals’ chaotic family meals. They are quintessentially archetypal family scenes that everybody lives through, but played with great comedic panache.

And when Bogdan the Polish builder talks to Matya the Hungarian nanny about the affluent Londoners they are working for, it’s fascinating. Capital has a wonderful scale but is all about the minute observations of human nature.

DEREK WAX – EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, KUDOS.

What made you interested in Capital?

The novel really spoke to me as it has a sweeping Dickensian ambition to it, all life in one street. I loved the sense of this big, expansive panorama of life as well as the small details of human behaviour. The whole of London seen through the microcosm of one street. And the characters are so complex, real and believable. Sometimes big ‘state of the nation’ novels use characters to illustrate political points, but Capital is far more subtle and nuanced. John gets inside their heads and allows us to engage with their thoughts and feelings, observes them with insight, humour and humanity, allows the story to breathe.

What does it tell us about the way we live now?

It definitely speaks to me about where London and the country is now. The obsession with property, the fact that London house prices have risen extraordinarily, has only intensified the sense of a society of haves and have-nots. Your home becomes the thing by which you are defined at some level, and in Capital we go from Bogdan's bedsit to Petunia's home untouched for 60 years, to Roger and Arabella with their multiple homes and constant refurbishment, which is a fascinating way of entering the psychology of these characters. Everyone’s connection to money is explored but then the novel expands to ask what life’s real value is, and it does this with a very deft, light touch. I’d say the novel is profound but never overtly polemical.

There’s comedy peppered throughout it too… Yes. It’s a funny novel with a warmth and humanity to it. Darkly funny at times. For example the relationship between Roger and Arabella is often hilarious, full of robust mockery, totally unsentimental. And the Kamal family tease and josh with each other, only to be massively undermined by their very loving mother when she arrives from Karachi. It's funny and real. There are many great comic equences in it that Pete has adapted with great skill. Roger’s Christmas at home without Arabella is a wonderfully rich comical piece of writing both in the novel and the screenplay.

How did you get Peter Bowker involved in the adaptation? I’ve worked with Pete four times before and we have always enjoyed the experience. Occupation and From There to Here were explorations of family life too, and Pete writes those relationships superbly. I sent him the book but he was already reading it.. I was thrilled that he liked the novel as much as I did. There are very few writers that have his ear and eye for psychological detail and his ability to get inside characters’ heads and emotions. His writing innately captured the humour without in any way writing gags – it all comes through the truth of the characterisation. And it was difficult because the characters have a rich interior life and don’t always externalise it through dialogue. So Pete had to get Roger and Arabella talking! Also the characters in the novel don’t often understand their own shrouded motivations, and writing inarticulate characters is one of Pete’s many strengths. Pete got the comedy of the book and spirit of it as well as the political social vision. It was delightful to introduce him to John Lanchester and they got on very well.

What was the adaptation process like? Compressing it into three episodes was quite tough and we had to excise a couple of characters to do that. The football story went. It’s very hard to do a multi-stranded story and ask viewers to emotionally invest in lots of characters, so we did need to slim it down a little bit, but I dont think we’ve lost the moral dimension or breadth of any of the characters. What I admired hugely was Pete's ability to weave all these characters together in a completely organic and effortless way.

Roger in the adaptation is very different to how he appears in the novel. How do you feel about Toby’s take on him? It would have been very easy to have cast Roger as the physical type he is in the book, a six-foot alpha male. Instead we cast somebody who is one of the most brilliant actors I’ve ever worked with. Toby Jones captures all of the humanity of Roger and inhabits his internal struggles as well, the poignancy of a man who finds himself adrift in mid-life, while on the surface thriving in the ruthless macho city culture. Toby brings wonderful nuances to ever scene he is in.

What can viewers expect from Capital? There a wonderful line in the first chapter of the novel in which John describes London as a city of winners and losers and ‘everybody in the street, just by living there had won.' But of course the winners and losers turn out to be different from what appears on the surface. Who are the real winners? Capital challenges easy assumptions. The plot trigger of the entire story is the postcards the Pepys Road residents receive that say ‘We Want What You Have.’ But that also reflects a wider theme. A lot of people come to London as they want what London has. There’s a sense of aspiration for people from poorer countries and that isn’t about envy, it’s about the huge opportunities that London offers, a place of refuge, a place where immigrants can make a living. That is explored in the lives of Quentina, Bogdan, and the Kamal family.

Pete has said that all of the characters are on a journey of some sort, but Petunia is on her last, very emotional journey. The novel starts with Petunia staring out of the window contemplating her life and we wanted to find a way of making that resonate in the adaptation. She’s the oldest resident on the street, she’s seen the decades come and go, she got her house for a tiny fraction of what it’s worth now and now she’s on her final journey. The detail that Gemma Jones has brought to the table in this has been wonderful to observe, as have her scenes with Lesley Sharp as Mary, because they are about those difficult moments.

In a way Capital is about families as much as its about individuals. It deals with the complexities of family life, the squabbles and the moments when we don’t connect and things are left unsaid because some conversations aren’t easy. Capital explores that in a very sensitive and often emotionally complex way.

How important was casting the right actors in an ensemble cast like this? It was very important. It’s an ensemble piece and very diverse in every way, and we wanted to reflect that. Also there is a vulnerability and humanity which makes these characters very compelling, we want to invest in them emotionally, and we needed to see that in the acting. Apart from the actors whose work I knew well and have admired for a long time, such as Gemma Jones, Lesley Sharp, Rachael Stirling, Adeel Akhtar, Bryan Dick, it was fantastic when our casting director Toby Whale brought in actors whose work I wasn’t personally so familiar with…but all gave such detailed, truthful, authentic performances, Wunmi Mosaku as Quentina is amazing, as is Robert Emms as Smitty, and all the Kamal brothers. We were hugely honoured that Shabana Azmi came from Mumbai to play Mrs Kamal. She is a formidable actress, with great authority and warmth. Such a great cast, I wish I could name them all here!

Were there any challenges you thought you would face in producing Capital for TV and how were these overcome?” The biggest challenge was finding the right director, who would feel as invested in this project as Pete and I did, and would bring to life all the nuances, complexity and humanity of the Capital world. I had loved Euros Lyn’s work on Happy Valley, Broadchurch and Last Tango in Halifax, and

17 was thrilled when he came on board. For Euros it’s all about getting inside characters, finding moments of truth , finding the detail but also the sense of scale and vision. And we were extremely fortunate to have Matt Strevens as producer, he’s a brilliantly creative producer, and incredibly thorough, and succeeded in getting us through a very tough shooting schedule, as we were in scores of locations over a period of only seven weeks. Without this tight-knit collaborative team, including designer Clare Kenny and DOP Zac Nicholson, we could never have achieved what we did.