Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer best known for television series Widows, Civvies, and Prime Suspect.
On the island
Eight records
Give me strength. It is like my song for all those people that you can come through it.
My granny used to play this... Later on, when I was researching for widows, I met a woman whose husband was imprisoned for life... and she was playing the same piece of music.
Because it is the tangled up moment of my life, but I also had a great time.
This is a piece of music that I used to love to dance to... albeit probably out of time and out of rhythm.
Nessun dormaFavourite
Sometimes when I'm working and writing... I can't crack a scene... I put this on and I think if big man can get that note, I'll get the scene.
Which is to the boys that I work with in Civvies. And for my dear friend Mark Knopfler.
I was so shattered by this guy informing me that he was moving out... and this was the record that I used to play over and over.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:18Was there a specific moment when you ceased to be an actress and became a writer? Can you remember something happening or how did it come about?
I remember the very moment when uh acting stopped. And that was when I'd written my first series Widows. And I went in to see Verity Lambert, and there I'd written these four mega-rolls. ... And Verity looked at me and she said, Well, which one of the women are you going to play? And there was that extraordinary moment when I knew I wasn't right for any of them. And I said I don't think I can play any one of them, and the relief on her face was extraordinary. ... I never acted again.
Presenter asks
5:06Your reputation is for strong stories with strong, feisty women. How much do you invent those people, like Dolly Rawlins in Widows or DCI Jane Tennyson in Prime Suspect, or have you actually met them in real life?
Dolly Rawlins, where's her? A woman on the next store when I when I was broke. I used to run this market store. ... I slowly began to uh get to know everyone in the market, and there was one woman, Audrey, ... She was so abrasive, she was so incredibly rude to everybody. And yet still no matter how nasty she was, there was something inside this woman ... And this was you're at this extraordinary relationship form.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
11:26You're obviously a lot more worldly-wise than you were when you were a teenager at Rada drama school. Is it true that Iain McShane had to take you on one side and tell you the facts of life?
Yes. Him him and John Hurt, actually, the pair of them were ... I was terribly, terribly young to be at Rodder. I shouldn't have been there. I was fifteen. ... I always remember at one party hurtling out of where they'd thrown the coats to and I say, Who won't believe what's going on in there? I said there's two blokes, and they're kissing each other. ... So McShane comes over and goes, Oh, for God's sake, what are you doing? ... He said That's what some people do. I said what? He's aware, you know, you have uh men that go with men. De don't I said He said you ought to have women that go with women. What?
Presenter asks
18:08What about your parents? What do they think of you today? Do they understand where this writing talent has all come from?
No, not at all, not at all. They look at me as if I have two heads sometimes. I know, I suppose, they're proud. But they really don't understand it. Particularly my mother. She does look at me sometimes with a bemused look, I don't know where you get it from, you know. I mean, these filthy scenes you write about. I'm glad some of my friends aren't here to read about them. And she just mutters to herself, or seller tapes up certain areas.
Presenter asks
26:08You wrote about the army in Civvies, about the emotional and practical problems faced by a group of paras released after twenty years' service. How did you come across that story?
I met a group of paratroopers because they were working for a builder. He just came to me and he said, Listen, there's some mates of mine and they can't get a job. He said they're lovely guys. Is there any way you could get them maybe some work on security firm or something? And I tried and I failed because every time I mentioned to the people that I knew ran security firms, that they were paratroopers, they just said a flat No. ... It made me deeply angry the betrayal these men had done to me. And so I wrote Civvies. There's an angry plea that the government must do something about post traumatic stress.
Presenter asks
34:14If you could only take one of those eight records, Linda, which would it be?
I suppose I'd have to go with Peverotti because, I mean, if he's gonna do that to get me into a script. He might give me the strength to plunge in and swim to this extraordinary glittering yacht I can see on the horizon.
“I am like a a kind of tigress about criticism, I like to succeed.”
“This appalling class system we have here.”
“I looked at this board and my heart it was just the worst moment, I think, of my youth. Old Croker aged sixty-eight. The Sister Teresa, seventy eight first act, aged eighty four in the second act. And then there was another ancient aunt, Edith, seventy-four in brackets, deaf mute. And these were my final parts that I was going to get an agent and it was like It was just dreadful. I mean, it broke my heart.”
“My father told me it numerous times. Coming out of the Eleven Plus was the classic one, and he said, So how did you do? I said it was the easiest exam I've ever had in my life. I said, I've sailed through. He said, oh, that's very good. Is it what kind of things did they ask you? I said, stupid questions. I said, do you know they asked me? What's heaviest a pound o' coal or a pound of feathers? Well, pound of coal, of course.”
“I wanted to show that this woman that I was putting on the screen was not disgusted by what she had to handle. And so I chose to depict something that was particularly horrific to show the way she dealt with it. So it was not me necessarily thinking, Ooh, I'm going to get into ooh sex crimes and such. I chose it because I wanted to put her in a light that had not been seen before.”