succession Creator Jesse Armstrong came to the Banff World Media Festival on Tuesday to praise British actors Peter Capaldi and Brian Cox for their foul mouths.
“They both give very good performances,” Armstrong said of Capaldi, who starred in one of his series. thick of it, And Cox, who was famous for flipping the bird in his aristocratic role succession. He added: “There are some things that the British idiom is good at, and I think ‘fuck off’ sounds better in British and Scottish accents than it does in American and Canadian accents.”
During a keynote speech in the Canadian Rockies, Armstrong also revealed his habit of sitting with a pen in his hand when watching television or reading books. “When I read a novel, I read with a pen in my hand, and I think that’s how I watch TV and how I grew up watching TV and reading novels,” Armstrong said.
“To make corrections,” revealed Armstrong, the son of an English teacher. He broke out in his native United Kingdom by co-creating British comedy show Peep show With his long-time writing partner Sam Payne, before they collaborated on it Fresh meat.
“That’s what got me into writing, reading the script with pen in hand, making corrections, and he (Payne) didn’t take offense to it. He loved them and that’s what encouraged us to write together,” Armstrong recalls. The duo also adapted That ’70s Show For British television, it failed with its audience, but it became a great learning experience.
The power of the pen has also served the multiple Emmy Award winner, making his directorial debut on the HBO film starring Steve Carell. Mountainheada drama about billionaire friends and tech tycoons during the ongoing international financial crisis.
“It’s no fun not having any friends,” Armstrong said of real-life tech moguls like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. He added: “The quality of their personal relationships seems weak and unsustainable. I feel sorry for that, but that is not separate from how they move in the world.”
on successionArmstrong said that writing about power, as opposed to the world of the wealthy, was most effective when he was writing his scripts. “I think I can write about this field. I think I have some things to say,” he added, without being able to specifically answer why people in power are so important in his writing.
“Why are these people like this? Why is the world like this? I think those are the basic itch that I’m trying to scratch, and they’re the questions that I’m trying to answer for myself,” Armstrong explained. to successionHe stressed that the famous HBO series does not revolve around the Murdoch family.
“I sometimes feel like I’m trying to evade some basic truth when I say that, but that’s not really the case,” Armstrong said in his research that preceded writing the book. succession The texts included studies of a range of other powerful people in American and British media, including Disney’s Michael Eisner, and Conrad Black and the late Robert Maxwell in the UK.
It was no coincidence, Armstrong said, that it began and ended in many ways around the character of Greg “Cousin Greg” Hirsch because he was new to the Roy family’s world of wealth and privilege, as were the long-running drama’s loyal audience.
“It always felt like a bubble that you get Dallas or west wing, “It’s often good to have a character that the audience can follow, who knows as little as the audience about the social mores and details of this world, because they can be told information that the audience wants to know.”
Armstrong also warned against writing television series about the rich and powerful to bring about change in the world. He explained that documentaries and opinion articles in newspapers are much better ways to achieve this.
“It’s not a sword, and it’s not even a medical drug that can cure something,” he said. “It’s like a recreational drug that might change someone’s way of thinking, but they won’t see in the mushroom trip what you want them to see. They will find their own thing.”
“Ultimately, that’s the great thing about what a lot of us in the room, in film and television, are giving people in terms of drugs,” Armstrong added.
