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Interview With Eileen Gallagher

Exactly a decade after the U.K. series Bad Girls was conceived, the prison drama is coming to America. HBO is adapting the show for U.S. television and is placing some of its biggest talent behind the effort. Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under) is the supervising writer, and Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl, Six Feet Under) and Raelle Tucker (Supernatural) are the lead writers. The three will executive produce along with series’ co-creator Eileen Gallagher.

As CEO of Shed Productions, Gallagher is one of the most powerful and successful lesbians in entertainment. Together with Maureen Chadwick, Brian Park and Ann McManus, her partner of 24 years, Gallagher formed Shed in 1998. Seven years later – and based in part on the enormous popularity of Bad Girls,their first production – the U.K.-based company went public and was valued at more than $85 million.

Gallagher spoke with AfterEllen.com about HBO’s early plans for the show’s development and about the challenges of bringing a British drama – and a lesbian romance – to American television.

Eileen Gallagher

AfterEllen.com: I want to jump in and ask what AfterEllen readers most want to know, which is whether the characters of Nikki and Helen are going to be part of the American version of Bad Girls. Eileen Gallagher: Oh, certainly. Yes, I mean the great thing about Nancy and Raelle, the writers on this, is the reason they want to do Bad Girls is they’re big fans of the show. I think they found the show on a local channel and they’ve been watching it. They want to keep true to the heart of the show and true to the characters and stories.

Clearly there’ll be some changes in terms of the prisons, just to be true to the American system, but they’re absolutely committed to reproducing the show in a way that reflects what they enjoyed about the original. It will be very recognizable but with a lovely HBO gloss, and I’m sure they’ll add great things to the stories and characters.

AE: With HBO, I assume there’s no hesitation to create a central lesbian story line. EG: Well, I haven’t been in the HBO meetings so I can’t talk first-hand, but I have spoken to Nancy and Raelle, and they like the series as it is, and I can’t believe for a minute that HBO would buy the series and give it to this team and then shy away from a lesbian love story. And I don’t think it’s in HBO’s history or DNA that they shy away from anything.

It’s just terrific, because if I could choose a home for Bad Girls, the top of the list would be HBO. It’s a fantastic place for it because HBO – they’re a trailblazer, high quality, and not afraid to have controversy.

AE: Do you know how closely they plan to stick to the original characters and story lines? EG: Yes, very close. That’s what they said to us. They love the characters and the stories and the tone of the show, and they want to stick with it. That’s one of the reasons we’re so pleased. We had tried it previously with another writer at FX, and we didn’t want to go ahead with it because we just felt the characters and the tone was wrong. We want to protect what we think is special about the show, and so do the writers that will be doing it for HBO, so it feels like a very good relationship.

AE: You sold the rights initially to the FX network, but they came back with a script that I think you said was “too gritty.” Can you talk about what they missed that you’re hoping HBO gets? EG: I think it’s really important that the female characters, the prisoners, are well-rounded, that you like them despite the fact they’re in prison, that you see the good in them. Also, there’s camaraderie and humor in women’s prisons that I think we got over, which is important. I think, quite frankly, the writer was directing it more toward a kind of Oz feel, because he probably thought that’s what FX wanted, and that’s just not the show. Our show is not Oz. We like audiences to laugh and cry in the same episode if possible, and that’s just not what we saw there.

We’ve waited patiently, and it’s more important to us to get it right than just to get it done. We feel that with Nancy and Raelle and Alan Ball, and with HBO – it’s a fantastic combination of talent – and also they’ve made it very clear that they really want input from the Shed creators in the U.K. They want to be able to collaborate with us, and we want to be as helpful as we can.

And, you know, there are some episodes and some stories and things that we felt worked better than others, and we can give them our opinion of what we’d have done the second time around. The great advantage of being able to do it a second time is you can make it even better, really, because there are some things we’d change. But certainly one thing that will not change is the love story between Nikki and Helen, which of course defined the first three series. And I’m sure, with Nancy and Raelle, that’s one of the major elements they like about it.

AE: Can you give me an example of something – a story line, perhaps – something you’re looking forward to a second chance on? EG: I think toward the end of the series we took too much of it outside the prison. Some of the stories of maybe the – I don’t want to speak out of turn – but maybe we went too far with the relationship of Neil Grayling, the prison governor, and Jack Ellis [who played Jim Fenner]. I just think sometimes we went a bit too far away from the original core values, which is the women in the prison. There’s something about the atmosphere of Larkhall Prison, and you don’t really want to spend too much time outside of there because it sort of breaks the magic.

And another part of it is, we love the camp elements, but if it gets too campy, that doesn’t work, and maybe in later seasons it got a bit over the top, too camp.

It can also be very small things. In the very first episode, we introduced a new story three-quarters of the way in with an older woman coming into the prison with hygiene problems, and that story structure, that story at the end, didn’t merge with the other stories particularly well. We can see how we could do Episode 1 a little more successfully. There are small things like that, and then there are big directional things towards the end in Series 5, and I think 7 and 8.

But for my money, I think the first three series in particular, which were the Nikki-Helen years, defined it. The tone was perfect, and I’d like to see that reproduced as far as we can. These are really fantastic writers – you know their work – and if anyone can enhance it, I think they will.

AE: With the Nikki and Helen story line, you had to make adjustments as you went along, based on the actresses and their contracts and various other issues. Is it your plan to follow the story line as it turned out, or is there leeway in that? EG: Well, there’s leeway. You’re right, the reason we wrote out Helen and Nikki was that the actress who played Helen, Simone Lahbib, wanted to do other things, as actresses do. And we don’t have the same system in America – you tend to have the budget to sign actors on for seven years. In the U.K., we don’t have that ability. In the U.S. version, there’d be the opportunity of keeping the characters longer and keeping them in and not writing them out, if we’re lucky enough that it goes that long.

I think you know that when Simone decided to leave, we were really keen that for the first time in television, a lesbian love story would end happily. The history of lesbian love stories in movies and television is that they end in tragedy because they’re punished for being lesbians, and we wanted to end our story happily.

We did discuss keeping Nikki on and have Helen in the background, and we just couldn’t find a way that would be believable and happy. The only alternative was that we have them going off in the sunset together. It was a good run of 39 hours. But absolutely we don’t have to do that the same way again.

Simone Lahbib (left) and Mandana Jones

AE: I believe Alan Ball once said that it used to require courage for actors to portray gay characters, and now it reveals a distinct lack of courage if they’re not willing to portray gay characters. It seems to me your show and Simone and Mandana [Jones’] portrayals may have helped make that statement true. EG: That’s very interesting and a great compliment to us and to the actresses who played those characters. Bad Girls came on the air in 1999 and it was on at peak time, 9 o’clock, on what was the biggest channel, ITV.

It’s interesting. I always think that broadcasters are much more behind the curve than the audience. Broadcasters are more nervous about the audience’s reaction, and we got the most fantastic audience reaction to Bad Girls from day one. And to be fair, ITV didn’t try to tone it down at all. They thought it was very brave. They were probably nervous about the reaction, but they never tried to tone it down.

We had live web chats all the time, and hundreds of people writing in, and the ones that made me most proud were the middle-aged women writing in who said, “I never thought I’d be so tolerant towards lesbians and prisoners and feel the connections and sympathy I have.” And mothers talking to daughters about being gay, and daughters talking to mothers. We’re just really proud of creating that. It’s amazing what drama can do.

AE: Speaking of the fans, you create very big characters in general, and certainly with Nikki and Helen you created iconic characters. Are you concerned about the comparisons when you bring those characters directly over to American TV? EG: I think that’s always the tough task. I think for fans who have loved Nikki and Helen, it will be a little tense, wondering how they’ll appear in the American version. … It will take just a little bit of adjustment and a bit of making yourself readjust to the new actresses, but I think before a very short time, people will accept that this is the new Helen and Nikki.

AE: A number of shows have been transferred from Britain to the U.S. Do you have any models that you look to for how to do it right, or perhaps what to avoid? EG: The biggest success I know of is The Office. I think what is good and brave about The Office is that it’s very true to the British show, but it’s still got the very good American feel to it, so that’s the kind of model we’d be looking for. It’s faithful without being slavishly tied to the U.K. version.

I don’t think it really works – and no one would ever suggest – that we Americanize the actual, same scripts. That doesn’t work. I think as long as the soul of the show is there, with the main characters and stories, and the tone is right, then I think that Nancy and Raelle will put their own great spin on it.

AE: You’ve said before that Shed has “a moral edge.” What does that mean, and what in particular does it mean in relation to Bad Girls? EG: Well, it was very important to us that we portrayed two things. First, there’s a prison issue, and our political view is that there are far too many women in prison. Most women are not in for violent crimes. Most women are victims of their partnerships, their often-violent partnerships with their husbands. I’m not saying they’re all great, good girls, but they’re generally more victims than male prisoners. So we try to humanize the women and portray them with their good and bad sides.

Our ambition was to give people a more enlightened view about the imprisonment of women. I don’t think it particularly worked, because in our country we’re imprisoning more women than we’ve ever imprisoned, although I think the sentiment is growing that it’s probably a daft thing to do; it’s not sensible. But still at this stage we can’t claim to have changed anything.

So there was that and also, obviously, the lesbian agenda for us is very important – the fact that the love story was one where any audience would like Nikki and Helen. You have to be very prejudiced not to like them and their story and feel for their predicament. That was very important to us, and we felt really proud that we had a lesbian love story on for 39 hours in peak time. I like to think it changed attitudes.

AE: At the same time, you’re the CEO of a multimillion-dollar organization, and you’re responsible to your shareholders. You must struggle at times to balance those two things. You have a profit-making agenda, and yet you’re also pursuing creative work that has a moral agenda. EG: There’s no conflict there at all, really. We make programs that we like to watch, and I think as long as you continue to do that, there will be an audience there. That’s a commercially smart thing to do, as well as emotionally and morally smart. As soon as you start making programs you don’t like yourself – as soon as you say to yourself, “I won’t watch this, but they will” – then you’re down the right track. It won’t be good. The chances are it will be rubbish.

AE: I want to back up for a minute: I understand the initial idea for Bad Girls was yours. Is that right? EG: I think Maureen Chadwick and myself kind of share the honors in terms of the original idea. I started work as a broadcaster, and I don’t know if you remember there was a drama called Prisoner Cellblock H. Do you remember that?

AE: I didn’t see it, but I’ve heard of it. EG: It was very Augustinian. Even 20 years ago, it was 20 years old [laughs], but when we moved it in the schedule, it caused a huge outcry, and this was a late-night program. It lodged in my memory that there’s a great demand and following for prison dramas. It had lesbian story lines and it was really in many ways was ahead of its time. I watched it, and all my university chums watched it, and I always thought when I was working that I’d love to make a really good women’s prison drama.

AE: And then the four of you came together to work on the show. EG: Right, Ann McManus, Maureen Chadwick, Brian Park and myself invented the characters. You’ve probably heard or saw it on the website that we went to Italy together, and the first week we drew up the characters, and the second week we drew up the main story arcs. Those initial ideas are very close to what eventually came on stage. It’s amazing, really.

AE: Do you ever sit back and laugh, thinking of how far you’ve come and how far Shed has come? EG: We are very, very proud. We’re a profitable company with offices in L.A. and London, and we’re about to open another office in Scotland. We’re making a new drama up there called Hope Springs, which is another female-led drama, and there’s a lesbian character in it – not that we’re obsessed [laughs].

So, do we ever sit back and laugh? Yes, we do. We sit back and laugh with a glass of wine and think, my God, how did we manage this?

But you know, there’s nothing I’m prouder of – it’s great building a company, it’s great employing lots of people, it’s great floating it – but when you get right down to it, what I’m really, really proud of is entertaining people in a way that means something. When I was a child, I loved television, and I really looked forward to seeing certain dramas. Sadly, there were never any lesbian characters in them [laughs], but some dramas kind of spoke to me. I watched Lou Grant, and I became a journalist because I loved Lou Grant.

I just really like the idea that people look forward to our dramas coming on-screen, and they settle down and watch them. I’m so proud that we can entertain people – that’s certainly worth a glass of wine.

Nancy Oliver and Raelle Tucker are expected to write the pilot episode for the American version of Bad Girls later this year. The original British version of Bad Girls can currently be seen in the U.S. on Logo.

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