Who's Running The Show ? Stephen Garrett:

Stephen Garrett has produced for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, Amazon and Netflix. He founded the production company Kudos, for a long time the UK’s leading drama producer, and is best known for turning out such programs as long-running BBC dramas like Spooks, Life on Mars and Hustle, as well as films and series such as Law and Order U.K, Ashes To Ashes, Eastern Promises, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Kudos also produced The Tunnel, Humans, Broadchurch, Grantchester, Apple Tree Yard and Utopia. In 2006, Kudos was bought by Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine TV for £35m. Not satisfied with just being an exproducer and resting on his laurels, in 2014 Garrett started a new company called Character Seven and continued making series like The Night Manager based on John le Carre’s bestselling novel, The Rook (for Lionsgate and Starz) and HBO’s The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. Stephen Garrett is currently in the final stages of post-production on his latest piece, CULPRITS, a thriller for Disney and directed and written by J Blakeson starring Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Gemma Arterton and Eddie Izzard.”

In addition, he returned to his university at Oxford to give a series of media lectures which offer insights into his approach and understanding of creating characters for a drama series. World Equal digs deeper into the mind behind the magic in an interview with Stephen by Teddy Hayes.

Interview by Teddy Hayes

The current internet streaming culture means that now a myriad of film and TV production companies are turning out programs in greater numbers than ever before. These programs are international via the internet and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon; they can be seen and talked about all across the globe in a way that was never before possible. When viewers see the programs, they tend to focus on the obvious people, on the front lines, mainly the actors who star on those programs. And sometimes if the series is popular enough, maybe the writer if the series was based on a best-selling book or even the director. Rarely however is the focus on the people who make the process happen. I’m talking about the people who might have the idea for a program, pitch it and sell it, organize the production, which includes hiring the cast and then nursing the project through the post production process where a big part of the look and feel of a project is decided in the editing room when they add music and texture and then finally working to market it to the public. That is why I thought it would be interesting and enlightening to talk directly with Stephen Garrett, who is one of the most successful executive producers in British history. Stephen has produced programs that have become household names and has a series of hit programs and films at least as long as your arm, (and both legs too!) making him one of the most successful producers in the history of the genre.

Teddy Hayes: Stephen, you mentioned in your Oxford Lectures that when you started your first production company Kudos, it almost went out of business twice. What was your plan that kept you in the game?

Stephen Garrett: I think a lot of people are like that, whether as a creative or somebody starting a new tech firm, they’re being very brave and consciously taking risky decisions. I think the great thing about doing what I did early on when setting up Kudos which was my first company, is that you're kind of naive, you know, you have the enthusiasm of the young and incredible optimism, and maybe an utterly full sense of your own talent and skill. So you kind of naïvely go into this, just hoping, praying, assuming it’s all going to work out, but I think that confidence takes you over the edge.

You mentioned to me those great books that sort of underpinned the film The Sting, and again I don’t mean this in any criminal sense but as a confidence trick, I think confidence is contagious, and if you appear to be confident, you create a belief around yourself. That can be, you know, in the wrong hands, that can look and feel nauseating and be really annoying and brash, but I think if you just are quietly confident and not arrogant about it, that can propel you and those around you into battle, and you stand the chance of winning against all the odds.

I remember an early boss of mine was Michael Grade who ran Channel 4, ran the BBC, and had almost every senior job in television that it's possible to imagine. He was my overall boss when I was a commissioning editor at Channel 4. I remember he came in early one morning, it was an open-plan office and there was just my immediate boss and me, and he was puffing a cigar in the days when you were still allowed to smoke in offices. My boss who also was responsible overall for entertainment but also some acquisitions was watching the pilot of an American show that was starting to appear in the States, quite a low budget, with a very cool indie vibe to it, called The Street. It just had two cops in a car, parked in a street talking. My boss had just started watching it and Michael Grade came in and said, “What are you doing?” My boss explained he was watching it just to see whether it was something he thought that the channel should buy, and Grade pulled the cigar out of his mouth and pointed to him and said, “Buy it.” He literally had watched it for five seconds. My boss quite understandably said, “Well, yeah, I thought I’d, you know, get to the end, it’s only a half-hour show, I’ll just watch it for another 25 minutes,” and Grade said, “Pick up the phone, call them, buy it.”

That characterized the way he operated, and it was very interesting to watch him because of course, he had no idea how good the show was. I mean you couldn't tell with that short a viewing, but he trusted his instincts. He also worked out that to be a successful leader, you need to appear to be decisive. That means actually making decisions quite quickly, and he also realized that quick decisions are usually no worse than slow decisions, so you might as well make them quickly and at least you save people a lot of time. So, I think that was quite an important lesson and one of those manifestations of confidence. When you feel like the end is nigh, you sort of have no option but to carry on, and you can do that looking like you're drowning, or like the poem goes, looking like you’re waving, if you look like you're waving then you stand a chance at persuading people you're waving and everything’s going to be hunky-dory.

Teddy Hayes: At one point during your career, you worked for Channel 4 as a commissioning editor. What is the difference in approach, as opposed to being an independent producer?

Stephen Garrett: I think it’s a bit like the difference between journalists and newspaper editors. They're two very different skills and both can be done really well or really badly. As a commissioning editor, I think you're a bit more detached from the process, you have a sort of helicopter view, and that’s good and bad. The good of it is that when producers and the team around the creative enterprise have been immersed in a project for weeks, months, or years in some cases you really sometimes can't see the wood for the trees and a smart commissioning editor can come in and give really great advice about the script development process or a cut or a piece of music because you're so close to it, as a creator, you can't see that and you’ve lost the ability to have that level of detachment. A great editor can come in and really help shape materials and shape the story collaboratively. Their value is actually in not being so close to the material. For my part, having been a commissioning editor and TV executive and now as a producer, I found it very frustrating because I like being there at the beginning and I like having those early creative conversations. Inevitably when you are a commissioning editor, people are coming to you with something that’s already partly formed, in some cases fully formed or nearly fully formed, and I found that depressing, that’s just not what worked for me. You know, I think we’re all different versions of a control freak and my manifestation of control freakery is to need to be there at the beginning and to kind of have that relationship with the writer or director or creative team and knowing that you were there as those early kind of idea bubbles started to ferment.

Teddy Hayes: You hired Robert Vaughn for Hustle, and you told me before, he was not really the first choice for the BBC, but the way things worked out, he got the part anyway.

Stephen Garrett: Well, for Hustle, Robert Vaughn was our first choice, and again, it happened. I’m very drawn to the role that luck, chance and randomness plays in these things. We were looking to cast the Hustle gang, and needed what we called a kind of good old boy for the makeup of the team, some grizzled old guy who had a history in the con game world in a way that would be eclectic and complementary. I happened to have lunch with an old friend of mine who was a veteran agent called Jean Diamond, and she had a collection of clients all of whom were, I think I’m not doing her a disservice, there wasn’t a single client under 60. She’d kind of grown up with this amazing collection of people and represented, among others, Liv Ullmann. And she was delightful to have lunch with and she’d always talk about her list of clients and say, “have you got anything for this one for that one… '' and then she mentioned Robert Vaughn. And I’m old enough to have grown up with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and I suppose if you asked me what are the shows that inspired me to do what I do, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. would be up there. So Robert Vaughn was my hero, I wanted to be Napoleon Solo which was the character he played. So, when Jean mentioned him, I thought, wow, this is just too perfect, he’d be brilliant in the role, how cool, how amazing, what a coup for the BBC, what a coup for us, and I get to meet one of my heroes. And we pitched the idea to the BBC, all of us very excited. And the BBC said, “you know what, we are the British Broadcasting Corporation, our British audiences do not want to see Americans as lead characters in their shows, they just don’t,” And they vetoed it. And so we ended up with a relatively high profile, long in the tooth British actor who was a very good actor, nothing like as famous and iconic as Robert Vaughn, but perfectly decent. But that actor failed his medical three days before we started shooting, so sheepishly we approached Robert Vaughn again. It was obviously embarrassing to approach him so late in the day because it was clear he was replacing someone but the BBC had no option but to go with him.

And when the show was launched to the press, every headline, every single headline said “The Man from U.N.C.L.E. returns to the BBC” and I’ve absolutely no doubt in my mind that one of the reasons Hustle was successful, very successful, apart from the fact it’s really good, is that we got all that press and we got all that press initially because of Robert.

Teddy Hayes: The term show-runner is one that you hear around a lot these days, connected with people who pitch and plan, and produce shows for companies like Netflix and Amazon. For most people who have not met one in the flesh, a show-runner is still a kind of mystical character. People hear the word thrown around, but if you’ve not worked in television or films, most people don’t know what that means or what a show-runner does.

Stephen Garrett: Well, to be clear, we have very different models in the UK and US, and my credit has never been and never will be show-runner, my credit is executive producer. In America the show runner tends to be the lead writer, often the writer who has come up with the idea or the writer who has been brought in by a team or a studio to drive the writer’s room and creatively reside over the whole project. But in the UK, the producer was king or God, not the writer. And so, we evolved the tradition of the nonwriting show runner. So, I suppose, that’s what I’ve been, the non-writing show runner. And that’s the role I’ve had in many of the shows I worked on. You are the chief alchemist because the whole thing is a kind of alchemical process and you're casting this team of people. You might have an idea or buy the rights to a book as a producer, and your first step then is to decide who’s the writer you want to make this come alive, then the director, then the cast. You're the person making those decisions, you're the person hiring all those people but to say that you're hiring people makes it sound rather mechanistic. There is a kind of, if you get it right, a kind of magic or alchemy that takes place because you're wanting to bring together a team of people who will add up to more than the sum of their parts. So at your best as a show runner, whether you're writing or not, you're a kind of magician and you have some understanding of the spells that you cast. You're never sure whether they’re going to work, you mean well, you hope your spells are benign, but you kind of see what happens.

We have this great day in the UK, called Guy Fawkes Day or Fireworks Day, November the 5th, where we celebrate the man who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. And I remember on Firework Day you would see the rockets, that had this warning which said “Light the blue touch paper and retire.” And I think as a show runner, you assemble the firework, you put all these bits together and you light the blue touch paper, and then you see what happens, and hopefully you get the sort of fabulous magical explosion in the sky, or it’ll just fizzle out and disappear without a trace and I’ve done that too.

Teddy Hayes: In your first time as a show-runner, what were some of the biggest surprises you encountered?

Stephen Garrett: I don’t even know which I would characterize as my first show as a show-runner because you kind of evolve into the role. I think the show which I’m most proud was The Night Manager where I joined forces very early on with The Ink Factory who were part of John le Carré’s family, and they trusted me with that project to drive it forward. And so, my first act there was to bring in the director Susanne Bier who at that point had only made movies. I’d been a huge fan of her movies, a lot of them very kind of indie depressing Scandinavian movies, very brilliant. She won an Academy Award for best foreign film, but she recently had made an American movie, a Hollywood movie that hadn’t worked out, probably through no fault of her own, but what happens is, you know, we have an expression which I’m sure you're familiar with, she was in “director jail”. She’d made this one movie that had tanked and was perceived to be not good. So, she was more available than she might have been. I’d always been a fan. And I just thought because le Carré created in The Night Manager a very quintessentially British, rather old fashioned, very male world; that to have a female non British director would be an interesting, again, alchemical mix. And so, that began a process, you know, with me I suppose in that role as a non-writing show runner where you start to bring together different talents and watch the magic happen. And, you know, in all honesty, we obviously set out to make The Night Manager as brilliant as it could be and it was just one of those projects where as we filmed and as we then started the post-production process, the editing, you just got a kind of tingle in your spine, it just felt special, and as a show runner, all you’ve done is to bring these elements together, and as I say, hope that something magical is going to happen, and it really did that time.

Teddy Hayes: I remember watching that show and Hugh Laurie was, to me, what made the show really work. I thought because he was such a charming character as well as such a bastard; that the ambiguity of the character made it work.

Stephen Garrett: I can take no credit for Hugh though I’d love to. You may remember, he was described by people in the show as the worst man in the world, but we wanted the worst man in the world to be so charming and so lovable that however badly he behaved, you still wanted to sit next to him at dinner.

Teddy Hayes: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Stephen Garrett: Hugh, interestingly, had been a lifelong John le Carré fan, still is. He’d actually tried to buy the rights to the book when it came out from 25 years before, and Hollywood got there first. So, he was obsessed with that and, you know, him coming in was pushing against an open door.

Teddy Hayes: Yeah, it was very interesting because I think I saw The Night Manager as a streaming show and you’ve been involved with streaming for a while, how was it in the beginning, streaming—working with a streaming company as opposed to how it might be now?

Stephen Garrett: I think streaming kind of crept up on us all because if you take The Night Manager, we were working a co-production essentially between the BBC in the UK and AMC in the States, neither of which were streamers; but it ended up on a streamer because Amazon bought the second window in the States, and I think probably the vast majority of Americans saw it on Amazon as a streaming show. If you watched it on AMC, you had seven commercial breaks in each episode. On the BBC, obviously, no commercial breaks. But for me, what the streamers have done, is to make what used to be impossible, the untellable stories have become not just tell-able but gold dust. And that for me as someone who just wants to tell great stories is the most thrilling side of it because of course, they needed from the get-go to differentiate themselves from the terrestrial broadcasters. I think my favorite example really is Amazon commissioned Transparent. If you remember, that was about a man in late middle age who comes out to his family as someone who wants to change his gender, so daddy wants to become mummy to a big family. And there’s no doubt in my mind that before the streamers, you would not have got arrested with that idea. It’s one of the shows that differentiated a streaming show from a terrestrial show, and was a huge success and was very brilliant and rightly one that surprises from the get-go. So, it blazed a trail for really left-field ideas. And suddenly, all those things that you wouldn't necessarily pitch to broadcasters, you could go, oh wow, this is special, this is different, this is interesting, this can bring new audiences, this is perfect for a streamer, and that goes on.

Teddy Hayes: Because you’ve been in the business a long time, you’ve seen many changes, and being a creative person, you may see ways in which streaming companies can change their model and do things differently in future and maybe even better. What would you like to see happen with shows that make it to streaming the future?

Stephen Garrett: I’m not sure, I think in a way they need to not change, they need to be their best selves. And by that I mean, the shows that have really punched through have been really bold commissioning decisions, and I think what they need to do is to go on in the face of insane competition and escalating prices, just go on taking risks and trusting the instincts of creative people.

I think it’s tough when you're working for a streamer or broadcaster because when you green light something, you're committing tens of millions of dollars to a project, and it’s not your money and you've got a boss and they’ve got a boss who’s scrutinizing you, and you make one decision that looks like a turkey, and, you know, the world comes down upon your head. I remember again in the early days of Channel 4, before I got there, the man who created it said that the mantra of Channel 4 is the right to fail, those words were actually on the wall, and I think it’s really important that broadcasters and streamers and particularly their commissioning executives encourage the right to fail. Not obviously if everything’s failing, because then you’ve got a problem; but you know, you don’t get those big bold breakthrough shows unless you take bonkers risks and you’ve just got to go on taking bonkers risks. And they’ve done it and they just need to go on doing it and not go back to the days when that wasn’t the case and that was one of the reasons that terrestrial TV suffered. Going back to when Spooks was our first show for Kudos, we kind of broke the mold with that because TV was full of shows about doctors, lawyers and cops, and you couldn't break out of those precincts. But Spooks was a very early one that showed you can, there were different places to play, and audiences were really open to that. And the danger is if the streamers go backwards and start to try and play safe bets, they’ll die.

Teddy Hayes: When I worked in New York, we used to hear so much about people making the right wrong decision. For example if an actor has been successful in many films, the traditional thinking among most media executives would be, “let’s get this actor” even though the actor may be totally wrong for the part. The thinking behind this kind of decision making is even if the project fails because the actor had a track record of success, then the decision to hire the successful actor would have been the right one and the executive wouldn’t get fired, however if the exec chose someone who was much more suitable, and the project didn’t work, then of they could get fired because the traditional thinkers would have said the executive had made the wrong decision and should have chosen the successful actor for the part. And streaming, it seems, has kind of challenged that kind of decision making, because like you say, streaming is a different format and you can get into something over six, seven, ten episodes and bring the character out, which again gives the actor much more freedom and chance to develop and show what they can do, but in a two-hour film, it’s not going to happen.

It’s not so long ago that with terrestrial broadcasting, if you missed the show and your VCR didn’t work, that was it. You know, this means that you're never getting that back and you just gave up. Obviously, DVD’s changed that a bit and actually DVDs were fantastic for independent producers because of course people did miss an episode and then thought, oh fuck it, I’ll buy the box-set. But what the streamers have now is the ability to be there on demand, therefore word can spread. So something can actually have quite a soft launch, and can seemingly disappear, and then you find that everyone you meet is saying, “hey, have you seen this or that?” And so you go find it. You know, I’ve actually been out hearing people next to you on the street talking about a list of shows and saying these are the things you’ve got to watch. And I’m only watching them because I’ve been triangulated by two or three friends and I’m going, okay, now I know I need to watch this. And it’s just sitting there waiting on your demand, and it’s great.

Stephen Garrett: I think the right/wrong decision, the wrong/right decision, they're both two sides of the same coin. And I think you're right, I think again because it’s so expensive and everything needs to market its way into a place where audiences can't avoid it, the pressure is on to have very high profile stars because otherwise, how do you differentiate yourself from all those other shows that seemed to be launching at the same time. But, again, I think some of the great successes on the streaming platforms have been with shows that don’t have necessarily very high profile casts. And you look at one of the very early ones which was The Crown, there was no one particularly famous initially in that. Of course, you could argue that the fame was brought to you by the subject of the story namely, the former Queen Elizabeth, but I think the other great thing that the streamers had in the trail they blazed was just being able to sit there, so word had time to spread.

Teddy Hayes: It was like that for me and The Wire because I saw the first episode and I’m like, meh, but by the time I got to the third episode, I was hooked. And because it allowed me to get into the characters to see the subtleties, the ambiguities which you spoke about in your lectures. And because as a writer, I’m a big one for ambiguity in the writing. Because we are all a combination of supposedly logical things and also, the emotional things, which seemed to take up a whole lot more space than people are willing to admit. And they often try to wrap them into a nice logical framework because that makes them feel good. It’s almost like stereotyping, and I find when you deal with people, people are so complex and those complex aspects in people’s characters, may punch through at any time, which surprises you. And if you're telling a story with that kind of character, it surprises the audience as well. Now with new producers, and I’m sure you work with guys who are looking at your seat and saying, hey, (chuckles) in five years, I want to be in that seat, what would you tell new producers about getting into the game, some things that they may take on as words of wisdom or something that they may do to help them avoid stepping into that huge pile of shit and frustration that any producer is bound to encounter?

Stephen Garrett: I think there are so many things. I think that you can't beat experience, the wisdom that comes from that, and there's something to be said for, you know, growing older is obviously frowned upon in many circles but actually, that can be a good thing because like blotting paper you just absorb stuff if you're listening. But I think the old adage, surround yourself with people smarter than yourself. There's nothing wrong with smart people, they're not threatening to you, they can only add value, and you can learn from them. And I think the other thing is you never stop learning. Don’t ever think you stop learning and if a day passes where you haven't learned something, it’s gone wrong. So, just always be open to that. And there's no idea, no approach that can't be improved. I think a lot of people through insecurity, lack of self-confidence, close themselves down to other people’s ideas, and the great thing is to be able to differentiate between those ideas that will add value to what you're doing and those that won't. If it’s going to add value then why not embrace it?

Teddy Hayes: You’ve pitched a lot of things, some of which were accepted, and obviously some of which were not accepted. What have you learned about pitching?

Stephen Garrett: (chuckles) It’s fucking frustrating. t’s fucking frustrating.

Teddy Hayes: I understand that exactly, yes.

Stephen Garrett: Yeah, I guess, you know. You and I met when you pitched something to me, so I’m sure that was frustrating. But the difficulty is that I don’t have a huge slate, the Character Seven slate, maybe there's 10 or 12 projects which is quite small, and I try to make sure that everyone is loved equally, you know, they're like your children. But when you pitch, you just know the law of averages, and most of those ideas are not going to happen, ever. When I was a student, I trained to be a traveling salesman of stainless-steel cookware. I didn’t last very long, but I learned… I was taught—one of the things that kind of amused me and also depressed me was you were told that when you pitched your saucepans, you didn’t say, “So Mr Hayes, would you like to buy the set of very stupidly expensive saucepans?” Instead you said, “So Mr Hayes, would you like to pay for these saucepans now or over a sixmonth installment plan?” In other words, it’s called a double barreled ending.

Teddy Hayes: Yeah, you assume that they're going to buy, that’s the assumption it’s just a matter of how you're going to pay.

Stephen Garrett: Yeah. So they don’t have a choice. Unfortunately, broadcasting streamers have all the power and they're completely free and usually do just say no to everything. So, I don’t think there's any particular skill. I do know there are some really smart, talented creative people, very brilliant, more often writers than producers, and that’s why the American model I find fascinating because they're often great writers who are terrible show runners. You know, they should just write. But as a producer, a part of your armory has to be the ability to sell But I think it’s tough because actually being in a room and selling an idea, it’s not always the best people who are doing that, and sometimes I think good ideas just don’t happen because they’ve not been presented in the room correctly and that’s a shame. So the model, it’s worse in the States where you do have to go in all singing and dancing, and again I know—I’ve show-runner friends who bring in wall posters and, PowerPoints and slides and, you know, dancing girls. And you know, as you pointed out, the British are a little more reticent so we take a slightly more subtle approach, and the more British way of, “Well, you know, we’ve got this idea,” “It’s okay, it’s quite interesting.” Is obviously that’s not going to get your foot in the door. But what you really want to do in the pitch is just get someone interested enough to read a script. Now, we develop scripts. We used to go to a broadcaster and take their money and develop scripts. Now we fund that development ourselves. And so, you're really saying, “Here are the scripts I want you to read, I’m not expecting you to read all of them but of my three or four projects, I’m pitching it to you today, which of these scripts do you want to read?” So that’s the sort of double barrel ending, it’s very hard for them to say no, I won't read any of them. In the early days, I remember the career’s advice I got was not to write to people to ask them for a job but to say, “Can I come and see you for some advice?”

Because it’s really mean if you're relatively elevated in the industry and you say, “No, I will not give you tragic young person any advice,” that just is mean, and people do it but it’s hard. So, you want to get people excited enough to say, “I’ll read the script,” and then the script hopefully can do the talking.

Teddy Hayes: Thank you so much. It’s been an honor and a privilege. And aside from that, it’s been very interesting, Stephen Garrett: Teddy, thank you so much. I’m very grateful.

The Rook

My past interviews have included highly acclaimed individuals, Mayor of Beverly Hills Lili Bosse, Smokey Robinson, Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire, Tata Vega, Freda Payne Nobel Prize Winner, Lou Ignarro, Authors, Dance Theater Directors, charitable organizations, artists and Prince protege Jill Jones. Many guests have a connection to Beverly Hills, while others are celebrities who our community would enjoy. It would be a pleasure to do presenter work projects in the U.K.