Man In An Orange Shirt BBC gay drama - Interview with Oliver Jackson-Cohen


Bestselling British novelist Patrick Gale tells two love stories set 60 years apart

How did Man In An Orange Shirt come about?

I got a phone call from my agents about it, saying they had been tracking the script for a while and they sent it through. It's very rare to read scripts that have something to say and I really felt it did. It was something that needed to be heard. It was an immediate connection. It has a story that is incredibly honest and that deals with love and love that is forbidden. There is something inherently potent about that and the way it spoke to me.

Tell us about your character, Michael

You meet Michael Berryman in episode one. He is a captain in the army and a middle class Englishman. We first meet him at the end of the Second World War, where he finds a badly injured old school friend and romance blossoms between the two of them. He’s mathematical in his thinking and chooses to conform in life, so he gets married, has a child. But as a result he is then forever conflicted because the man he loves - Thomas - keeps coming back into his life over the course of ten years. It creates chaos for Michael and his family. He chooses to continue on this life that’s a lie and the ripple effects are dramatic.

Do you think he loves Flora?

I think he does love Flora, I think... but it’s a different kind of love. I actually spoke to Michael Samuels, our director, a lot about this. I think that he has an awful lot of respect for Flora, but in a sad way he is sort of using her. He is using her to keep this sort of fantasy alive, this fictitious life that he has built with her. But I do actually think that it hurts, I think that is why there is the conflict. I think that if he didn’t love Flora then he wouldn’t care; I think it is because he cares so deeply about Flora, that he doesn’t want to hurt her at all, but he also doesn’t want to hurt Thomas. But of course in turn he is hurting both of them.

If he knew Adam’s story, what would he think?

I don’t know if Michael would be jealous of Adam, because I actually think that by the end of episode one there is sort of an acceptance that comes with the life that he has chosen. I think that Michael would actually feel horrified - because the choices that he makes in his life have such massive knock-on effects through the years, that are all apparent in episode two. I think overall he would be very proud to see Adam, and would want him to flourish.

How do you feel about Patrick’s writing?

He has a personal attachment to the story, so the writing is going to be a lot more honest, and he spent a lot of time on set which was very rare. No one told me the story about Patrick’s father until half way through filming - I then felt a huge responsibility to tell the story as honestly as I possibly could. He showed me a picture of his father and the equivalent of Thomas on a boat in Venice and they looked really happy. It was very moving because all of the other pictures he had shown me were his father looking very stoic, and manly with his wife. It was the first thing Patrick showed me where his father genuinely looked blissful, and it was so moving.

July 20, 2017 7:11am ET by BBC One   Comments (0)

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