James Graham

Craig Oliver: So James, it's great to see you, you're actually in my offices and you can look out the window and see the National Theatre, which is sort of a scene of so many of your triumphs, what do you think when you look across the water at it?
James Graham: I get really moved about it. I mean, I think there's, there's massive problems I have about the culture in this country being too obsessed with, obviously, London and the idea of a national theatre having like literal concrete routes on the South Bank of London, not able to move around the country, I think is a philosophical problem. But I love that building. I love the spirit of it, the endeavour of it on the South Bank. I think a lot about that 1945 moment when we decided that culture was going to play a huge role in our national rebuilding from the war.
And so I look at that structure and I get, I think it's, I think it's great. I love it. I really loved doing ‘This House’ there, which is a play about Parliament in the 70s and the feeling we've had this experience where all the members of Parliament from on the other side of the river crossed the river to come to my Palace of Westminster and that's that dialogue. I think that centre dialogue between that building and that building felt really satisfying.
Craig Oliver: I'm really fascinated that you're one of the most successful writers around and looking at you now, you're still incredibly young. I'm fascinated about how all that happened because you've got this amazing background.
So let's just start at the beginning, you were, you were brought up in Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. You went to a state school and I'm not going to suggest it's like a Billy Elliott type thing, but it seems to me that were you the sensitive one at school? Were you the one that was interested in all this sort of stuff and people thought it was a bit weird?
James Graham: Yeah, it's a huge cliche and really unoriginal, but I, it was a mining village in the north of Nottinghamshire called Annesley, near Mansfield, and we actually, I actually set a story there recently in a drama called Sherwood, which was an attempt to understand the slightly existential schizophrenic character that the north of Nottinghamshire has. It's kind of a borderland between the Midlands, which has a clear identity, and Yorkshire, which has a really clear identity. And we've always struggled with our, are we Northern? Are we allowed to be Northern? Sometimes I tell people I'm Northern and they go, ‘No, you're not.’ And sometimes I tell people I'm a Midlander and they go, ‘No, you're not.’ So, so it's a funny place in search of a an identity and a purpose but I kind of, I suppose I now retrospectively am grateful for that and it's lack of clarity because I find that more interesting.
Craig Oliver: And I just want to come on to that in a moment but tease that sort of sense out of you as a child who is obviously interested in drama and all this kind of stuff.You also, I didn't, in some of the research I saw you said you also spent time designing car parks and trainspotting?
James Graham: Oh my god, I forgot that, yeah. Yeah, well I guess, I don't know what that was about, but yes, I really enjoyed my own company. It was like a working class background. My parents divorced when I was six.My mum had loads of different jobs, was a barmaid, worked in a warehouse where she still works now. My dad worked for the local council in Nottingham. I was a happy child.
Craig Oliver: How did the divorce affect things?
James Graham: I think I was, I mean, at the, at the time it didn't bother me at all because I remember they argued a lot when I was very, very young. And we had this weird moment when he was, my dad was living in a caravan outside on the front lawn for about two years. And it was sort of a, you know, that purgatory where clearly something has to change, but nothing, we didn't know how to change it. And you're living in a middle ground between. Are they together?
Are they apart? So I remember being grateful for the clarity of that ending. But no, it wasn't, I don't think it was particularly traumatic. I think I've had….
Craig Oliver: Did you have to go into the caravan and that you were clearly visiting your father at that moment?
James Graham: Yeah, make an appointment and knock on the door and are you in? And you go in and yeah, I mean, it's all mad. And I think that probably has affected my views sometimes of relationships and things. But in terms of my growing up, I, I found huge peace and satisfaction in being on my own, in my room, and being in, in my own head. And then I think that had an outlet when I went to my comprehensive school.
And I did kind of struggle, like, I was a soft lad in a hard world, and it was quite tough in that part of…
Craig Oliver:How did that manifest itself at school?
James Graham: You know, quite macho, quite tough, working class community, socially deprived area. You know, there were bullies, it was tough. I was, yeah, I was very sensitive, and I just tried to keep my head down, find my crowd.
But then I remember we just had this incredible drama teacher and the school had a theater and he was just really determined that working class kids would do plays. And we, he, we would put on these really big productions in the summer, in the winter. What sort of thing? It'd be mainly musicals. We did, you know, Greece and, um, Romeo and Juliet. quite a bit of Shakespeare.
But my first play was, it was the Steinbeck play ‘Of Mice and Men’ and he just, I was just encouraged to audition and I couldn't imagine anything more vulnerable than, than…
Craig Oliver: Were you, were you Lennie?
James Graham: I was who the, how was I was…oh, Curlu. The guy with Vaseline in his glove. So the small man…
Craig Oliver: Is he the one that gets his hand crushed?
James Graham: Exactly. Yeah. By Lennie. Yeah. So small, small man syndrome. But my drama teacher just encouraged me to audition and I did. And yeah, none of this is original, but I do remember the feeling of, of people coming, people's parents and he'd always make sure, like the football team would come and see it. And I remember that feeling of making people laugh.
Craig Oliver: Did you think that's it? I want to do that. I want to write.
James Graham: I thought maybe I wanted to act actually because again, completely on original experience, but making people laugh and being able to show off in someone else's character was really liberating. And I just remember that feeling of, you know, the tough lads coming up to me in school afterwards go, yeah, that was, that was pretty good. You've made me laugh. And I say, ‘Oh, thank you’, and yeah, I got to express myself, but in other people's characters, not my own.
Craig Oliver: When was the moment you realized actually, that's not where I'm going. I'm actually going to be a writer.
James Graham: I mean, I think I was acting. What I was doing might not have been acting, but I was, I enjoyed playing other people and being, and yeah, as a, as a shy introvert, I enjoyed the, the freedom of, showing off as a different character in front of people and the release that gave.
But I think, I mean, I, I went to, um, I was the first in my family to go to, to uni and everyone was very excited and proud and I studied drama at Hull and I just met people who were really good at acting and I thought, oh that's a proper skill. I don't know if I have that. It's such a thrill to be a writer because it's this strange mix of intensely private and intensely public and it's actually those extremes that I found really thrilling.
So you find yourself extremely on your own a lot in your own head and the freedom to make things up and try things out and be a bit shit and be a bit vulnerable and type something and go, Oh, that's terrible. But you start to improve it, but it's incredibly private, safe, um, environment to create in. And then suddenly the day after you are the most public you can be, you're in a rehearsal room with lots of famous actors looking at you going, explain this, explain this.
And the way that you share your work, particularly as a theater playwright. with thousands of people turning up to your space, that's very, again, incredibly public. And I just, I find that rhythm delightful, to be on my own so intensely, and then be, be so vulnerable in sharing something so extremely.
Whatever that says about my personality, I don't know, but that, that ticks the boxes for me.
Craig Oliver: You talk about Sherwood, you mentioned it then, and you used the phrase when you were describing it about dealing with buried trauma, because a lot of the people that we've talked to in this talk about going back to their past and realizing that there was something there that they hadn't maybe quite dealt with or hadn't digested properly. I know that you were talking about the community feeling that, but it also seems to me that there's something quite personal in that about you resolving some stuff too.
James Graham: Yeah. And I'm, I'm not entirely sure how conscious I am of what that stuff is, but communities are only individuals, aren't they? And I think we all carry around these questions about ourselves. And I think we talk about this in the play, the Gareth Southgate play, ‘Dear England’ I think avoidance is not a healthy way of dealing with your, your issues. And I think on a national level, we are uniquely, characteristically, we lean into avoidance quite a lot because it's, it's just too much to deal with on an individual level.
Craig Oliver: Are you an avoider?
James Graham: Definitely, yeah. I think so. I, I, I'm really glad I found therapy in my mid thirties, but it took me a long time to get there. And I don't know whether that's the more traditionally masculine culture of the working class mining heritage, which is about knuckle down and crack on and and don't interrogate yourself too much because that's indulgent and middle class to be introspective is somewhere middle class and I really I used to roll my eyes at the idea of therapy the idea of talking about yourself and that you were even worthy enough or important enough of that level of interrogation.
So I avoided it for a lot and I'm glad I found it. But yes, to me that's, this sound incredibly pretentious, but to me that is the value of storytelling. It's not just a deflection, it's not just a distraction or a piece of entertainment. It has a huge social, political, and cultural responsibility to help us. Look at ourselves and ask some difficult questions and hopefully find some answers.
Craig Oliver: So I want to really explore ‘Dear England’ a bit later, but first of all, I read a reread quite a few of your place I couldn't go and see them some of them that aren't on. But I got the copies of them and read them and it seems to me that a good few of them are about finding a key moment in history and saying this is where it started or this is where things changed. So ‘Ink’ which is a play I love of yours, which is got about Rupert Murdoch buying The Sun in the early seventies or is it later?
James Graham: It's a sixty nine sixty nine seventy…
Craig Oliver: And it felt to me that you're pinpointing a moment where our media changed and became Mischievous and cheekier and a bit more humorous But also a kind of dark side was injected in and that almost like that was the point where our public dialogue became quite coarsened. Is that right?
James Graham: Definitely. Yeah, I couldn't have put it better myself. I mean obviously I really enjoy story and narrative in its, in its purest form. And when you find these incredible stories in our recent past, of which there are many, I get so excited about the challenge of how you construct that. So the story of this guy, Rupert Murdoch, coming to Fleet Street to immerse himself in the establishment of British news and being rejected.
So what he did was took, at the time, an incredibly unpopular, quite hoity toity broadsheet called The Sun and used it as a vehicle to change the news industry. And in so doing I guess change ourselves because the news is a window through which we reflect ourselves and how we did that over the course of one year leading to one the year anniversary of the launch of The Sun and coming up with the idea of the Page Three girl, in its own terms I find that just a really exciting narrative. Get a gang together, disrupt a system, see if you can beat your opponent but of course really what I was interested in was populism and the birth of that 40, 50 years ago and how you could draw a long line of that towards where we are today with Trump and with Brexit.
Craig Oliver: The New York Times review of ‘Ink’ says it foretells the age of populist media in which we live and squirm, which I thought was quite interesting. And then the intro to the play, in the book, somebody, it's not written by you, but written by somebody else. it says ‘The Sun’ heralded the vulgarization of the public sphere and the inauguration of a degraded and divisive political culture that has over time delivered outcomes disastrous to civilization. And when I read that, I went blimey. That sounds pretty intense.
James Graham: Yeah. I also want it to be a fun night out at the theater and then not be, you know, I don't want to give people a crisis every time they come see my play, but yeah, this is big stuff. But also look, I'm I was fascinated by the original intent behind it, which was, I always tried to play devil's advocate with my own prejudices.
And you go, okay, look, I'm nervous about a lot of the toxicity that came from, that comes from the tabloid press, how it infects a coarseness to our decency sometimes, and how it punches down to vulnerable people. But you go, okay, it is, it was at the time, the most popular paper in the English speaking world.
So why? So what am I, what am I not seeing? And what is the value of that? And when you look at the original mission of Rupert and his first editor, Larry Lamb, the current crop of newspapers do not reflect a whole strand of British and particularly English thought and English life, particularly working class life, their interests and what they really care about.
It's stuffy, it's humorless, it's boring, it's toothless. They actually don't go for the establishment and with the force that they should to hold them to account, so we're going to do that. And we're also going to ask a fundamental question, what do people want? And I find that really fascinating. So, so, so they started to understand some of what our darker needs are. Whether it's sex, whether it's money, whether it's fulfillment, lust, power. And put that into the form of a newspaper. And you go, inherently, that's not fundamentally wrong as a principle to go, well, what do you really want? Who are we really? But then the outcome of that might be not always what you want to see. 'cause, 'cause we're flawed as human beings and, and what we want might not always be what's right.
Craig Oliver:Yeah. And it might be like that you are gorging yourself on fast food or Exactly, yeah. Drinking you like it's nice to have a drink or go to a party or something, but it's not great to be an alcoholic I guess.
James Graham: Exactly. And that's kind sound patronizing, aren't it? Like the whole principle of the BBC, ‘You might want this, but we're also gonna have to give you some history and some nature because that's good for you.’ Rupert Murdoch would probably argue that if what was really popular was stories about climate change and the economy, I would give you that. But deep down, you don't want that. That's not my fault. That's your fault. If you were better, I would serve you better stuff.
Craig Oliver: So I remember at the time, fans of Murdoch described it as deeply sympathetic and something that he could be entirely happy with if he watched it. And I remember thinking like, have they actually watched the same play as me?
Because you are sympathetic to him at points, but you also give him a speech where he says, I like moving around, never in one place long enough. Isn't that the joy of a hotel? You can check in, turn it over, spill a glass of wine, take a shit in the toilet, fuck in the bed, make a mess and then leave, and someone else cleans it up after.
Isn't that wonderful? And it seemed to me that you were saying that he can treat countries like hotels, like Australia or U. K. or the U. S. and come in and not actually pay a huge amount of heed to the damage that he's caused and let somebody else deal with the consequences.
James Graham: Yeah, I think that is what I was saying. And I have, I do have, I do find this difficult. I feel like there's a, sometimes it must look quite cavalier the way I throw these difficult characters onto stage and screen and I'm sure we'll come on to something that you were involved in, in the form of putting Dominic Cummings in a television drama.
But I don't, I don't do that lightly. And I remember there was an experience when Rupert Murdoch came to see the show, both in the West End. And then on Broadway, I was there the night he came to see it in the West End and he came to see it in New York, and people, the news picked up that he was there and there were some stories about it the next day and some discourse online. Important discourse. The question being, if he is comfortable enough to come into the theater and watch it, then you, James, probably haven't done your job. And I do think about this a lot. Like, what is my job, and it is a conscious decision for me to go, I would like to create the kind of theatre experience. Where actually readers of The Sun or even the owner of The Sun feels like he is capable of coming in and engaging with it and watching it. And in that same space, you get people prosecuting them, but he's also allowed a defense.
Craig Oliver: So he is a media genius in lots of ways. To me, I also think that there probably was an element of him of like, how do I neutralize this? There's no better way of doing it. Do you remember when he went to the select committee and he said, before the select committee starts, I just want to say this is the humblest moment of my life. And I just thought, that's genius. You've completely framed this and that you're, that's interesting. He has the capacity to do that.
James Graham: He's a storyteller. He's a storyteller as well. And, and, and I take that really seriously. So some people are upset that. That he felt comfortable enough to go, but I, I, I fundamentally believe that it, unless if I'm just creating a play where only the liberal progressive left come and get their world reflected back to them and they feel good about it.
And you don't get the Fox News viewers or Sun readers coming and also engaging with it. Then that, I don't think that's a space I'm interested in creating and that sounds really centrist dad, but I don't know what the value of theater is if it's just to confirm what you already feel.
Craig Oliver: Nothing wrong with being a centrist dad. There's also, I think. If you want to find it in your plays there's something a lot deeper and so at the end of that play I think Larry Lamb the editor of the sun says There is no why most times. Why suggest there's a plan? Sometimes shit just happened and I think that that again resonated with me certainly rereading it is a lot of people we talk to Struggle to come to terms with the fact that there isn't clarity in life you know that good things happen to bad people and bad things have to good people and you're exposed to risk and darkness.
But ultimately, the way through that is to accept, hey, it's quite a ride. It's amazing being here and aren't I lucky to just to experience it. But loads of people struggle with the fact that there isn't necessarily a why or a reason or a point.
James Graham: Yeah. And we invent whole structures to circumvent that don't we? Like religion is designed around around there being a why there has to be a reason why bad things happen. So it's all part of a wider plan. Don't worry, don't don't fret, there is a reason and you'll understand the reason when you get to the end of your journey. I think theatre and drama and storytelling is also an example of that, and I think a vital one.
I think you know, we are floating on this random rock in space, and shit happens, and often it probably doesn't really mean a whole amount. But that's, too torturous for us as rational beings.
Craig Oliver: And it's, it's so interesting, because when I was a child, I just used to immerse myself in books and films and everything, you know, story. And, and I think that looking back, what I liked about stories, and plays and watching films and stuff, was that you kind of knew there was a beginning in the middle of it. And at the end a well made drama ties up the knots. There's a bit at the end of Shakespeare in love where Queen Elizabeth comes in after the end And she just goes, ‘Well, that's all very well. It's top but it's now it's time for the settling of accounts.’And I just thought that was Tom Stoppard saying very cleverly I'm now going to tie this up in a really neat bow for you. Yeah. But of course, again, that's not what life is. But I thought as a child, I sort of liked the safety of that.
James Graham: And it's important, isn't it? Because the story's also essentially a lot often where we get our values from. They're all basically morality tales. You are looking at people making choices because they want something and then there are consequences to those choices. And I think particularly in the modern age, which is often an age of no consequence, whether it be our public figures who don't have to resign because they've done something wrong, or a president who caused an insurrection facing how many indictment charges may well be the next president, I think we, we all feel that consequences have, have sort of died. And so we, we really value drama because as you say, there's a beginning, a middle and an end. I was always taught the fundamental rule of drama when you're writing a character is you have to ask three questions. What do they want? What's stopping them from getting it? And so how do they go about getting it?
And so Macbeth wants to be King. He's not King. So he kills the King and then he had to go on continuing to kill. And in that, you undertake an exercise of empathy. You are trying to understand why people behave the way they do. And as an audience, then we're looking at a metaphor for the human condition. Why do we behave this way? Why do you do that to me? Why do I do this to you? And I still find it really moving that.
Craig Oliver: I agree that that's really moving and I, and I love it and just love drama. What I find interesting though is that Robert McKee is this guy who writes about Hollywood drama a lot. And he, he talks about the characters are, and that it's not a good drama if the character hasn't gone from one place to another. The character is fundamentally changed by the end of it. And I think that that was another thing. It's not just the beginning, middle and end that people do in drama, you know, learn or grow? And again, in real life, there are people who just don't grow and you want them to learn and grow and you want that person to understand and get it but they just don't.
James Graham: Of course and actually in the modern age we are more able to silo ourself into an experience of not learning; so I'm only gonna follow these people that tell me what I already feel I'm not going to engage with people who have a different point of view. So the value of drama, of locking people in a cinema or a theater for two hours, is you are forced to confront people you wouldn't normally want to engage with. And that might be Rupert Murdoch, or if you're on the right, it might be a Just Stop Oil character. And I think there is real value to that. But also I'm glad that you're, that you find the value of that and that you're moved by a story because I think, I think it does get dismissed sometimes as being, as being irrelevant.
And I love that quote, I think it's from the History Boys, Alan Bennett, where the teacher character is trying to describe what it is to read a book or a story. And I think I'm going to paraphrase, but it's something like, ‘It's like the first time a hand reaches through the page and grabs yours and goes, I know, like I know, I've been there too.’
And even though we think of reading a book as a lonely experience, I think I found that as a child, that it's going, oh my god, someone else. Yeah, and I'm not mad and I'm not alone.
Craig Oliver: Let's move on to ‘Best of Enemies’ because I think this all fits in a lot with what you've just been saying. And for anybody who's not seen it, it's a story of how ABC News in the 60s basically found itself in the toilet in terms of ratings. And they had to go and cover the conventions the Republican and Democrat convention and they decided to completely reinvent it by getting an arch conservative William F. Buckley and arch liberal Gore Vidal to debate each other each night.
And again, when you watch the play, it's like watching two highly intelligent narcissists trying to destroy each other. And Buckley's wife says to him at one stage, ‘People are tuning in to watch you play against the man’ and then she says, ‘Who do I like the most? That's all it is. And it seemed to me, again, that you're trying to crystalize how we talk to each other and debate with each other now that you can almost go back to this point and say it's here.
James Graham: Yeah, it's a perfect vehicle, I think, to understand the crisis that we have in conversation in dialogue and how that's been corrupted in the past decade or so. And also the cult of personality politics. So yes, as you say, the joy of finding that story for me, and it's based on a documentary, is it's again a story of unintended consequences.
So you have the lowest ranked television network in the U. S. trying to find a way to get viewers for the presidential election coverage in 1968. They come up with this idea of having celebrity pundits. The first time anyone had done it, prior to that it was just newsreaders and gatekeepers. And here are these celebrities coming on to spar with each other and turn political debate into confrontation and theater and entertainment and it was so successful they jumped to the top of the ratings. They became the most successful news channel in the America and then everybody then wanted the same, and everyone went, ‘Yes, all right. I see, this is what you - again the Murdoch you thing - this is what you really want’. I thought you want to debate, but this what you want.
Craig Oliver: So it comes to an explosive moment where Vidal calls Buckley a Crypto Nazi and that triggers him and he says ‘Now, listen, you queer, stop calling me a Crypto Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.’ And he really did say that, and I thought it was such a fascinating, explosive, revealing moment and I'm just interested in your reflections of how it all exploded in that moment.
James Graham: I keep using this word, moving, but I find it incredibly moving, the ideals and the aspirations of Gore and Buckley in engaging with this and going on television at a really critical moment for America, not unlike the one we're in at the moment, an age of protest, of anxiety around race and identity and class. And they wanted to try and make sense of it and actually elevate the discourse…
Craig Oliver Do you think that they did?
James Graham: Yeah, I really do.
Craig Oliver: It's so interesting you say that because there are bits where they definitely want to say this is how society should be built and how we should lead our lives. But they also, they clearly just want to kill each other.
James Graham: But because they think the other person is so dangerous to America that they have to be crushed. But it does get personal and actually if I'm being th most fair, I think, probably the guy who I'm more aligned with, which is the queer playwright left wing, Gore Vidal. I think Gore Vidal actually was more mischievous. He actually did want to tease and provoke Buckley. Buckley, the arch conservative, the guy who basically invented the modern conservative movement that would lead to Reagan. I, think he's more the victim. He really, really, really wanted to calmly in a tradition of debating societies and universities, he wanted to elevate the discourse in front of a popular audience. And then cut to hours later, he's screaming ‘queer, you queer’ on national television.
Craig Oliver: So this is really interesting because it's so you…a lot of people would say now, if that happened on television now and somebody calls someone, quit, that person, game over, you're out, you're cancelled, unacceptable. You can't go on from this moment. And it's also so fascinating, isn't it, because so much pressure was put on him that something inside him came out.
James Graham: That, again, they're but for the grace of God. I think that's what makes drama often compelling because I think we all worry that we have that inside us.
Craig Oliver: And you sympathize with him in that moment. Because I did, it's, it's interesting, isn't it? Because he is literally called a Nazi. And you think, and he's like, hang on a minute. My father fought, and I'm not a Nazi. Stop calling me a Nazi. But then the thing that came out from here was like, you are less than me because you're queer.
James Graham: Yeah, and it's unforgivable and I was actually really surprised…we were worried, I think, in the rehearsal room. That's just that word queer these days, which has been co opted as a progressive word to be something to be celebrated hearing that in 2022 in a theater wouldn't people would be go really, that's what that was what this whole play was leading up to someone using that word that feels a bit slight in the modern age, but actually every single evening and all these would gasp when he said it and like would get quite upset.
And I think that's because hopefully you've told a story of this guy, like any play, any film, you're watching people often try to be the best versions of themselves, and they end up being the worst versions of themselves. And you go, gosh, I think I'm capable of that as well. And it really scares us.
Craig Oliver: And so, the wisdom of that, looking at a human being that is capable of doing something that's deeply wrong, but being able to understand them as a human being and to feel empathetic towards them.
James Graham: It's the job. I don't believe, most people, there's probably a couple on the planet right now, but most people don't wake up every morning and go, how do I make the world worse? They want to contribute something and they may want things, selfish things. They may want to get the promotion over that person. They may want their political party to win over that political party. I don't fundamentally believe that innate in the human character is something malign. I just think we get corrupted. We get corrupted by other forces and other people. You can ask those three questions, either in drama or in life. Why are they behaving that way? What do they think they're doing? What do they want? And why do they want it? What's happened to them that makes them want that thing? Wait, that's how you generate empathy.
Craig Oliver: We talked to a…he's a neurologist and a psychiatrist, um, called Bruce Perry. And I've mentioned this a few times in interviews is that, what I thought was fascinating with him was he said that psychiatry for the last 100 years has been asking the wrong question, which is what's wrong with you, but actually the right question is what happened to you and as if we were able as a group to understand that about people, then we would be much more sympathetic and we'd actually find more common ground.
James Graham: Yeah, and it's the lack of generosity or the lack of, I'm in no doubt that if I've been born. In a different family, in a different part of the country, under different circumstances, at a different time, I would be behaving differently, and I'd have different views. Maybe me now, James, would look at those views and think, that's, that's abhorrent, how, why are you doing that?
But it's all consequence, it's all a result of our upbringing and the socioeconomic condition and the culture and the time in which we're in. And I accept in the modern world, it's really hard sometimes to summon that level of generosity, of understanding. You're a lorry driver, there's a Just Stop Oil campaigner in front of you, stopping to get, stopping you get to work. You're the campaigner in front of the lorry driver going, I can't understand why you don't understand, this is about saving the planet. Two people clash, and they'll never meet, morally or intellectually. They are too far apart. But drama demands that of an audience. It says, you are going to have to, Just Stop Oil protestor, sit in the mind of the lorry driver and lorry driver you're gonna have to sit in the mind of the protester and I will make you briefly curious about why that person's behaving that way

James Graham

Craig Oliver: I wanted to come on to another drama, which is Brexit, the uncivil war, which is very personal to me because I'm represented in it. And I thought it was really interesting watching it again, preparing for this interview, I felt understood by you in it and I thought you were incredibly fair to me. And that I thought you also captured the madness of that time, that we were in this kind of completely crazy situation where actually some truly terrible things did actually happen.
James Graham: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it was a mad time and again I suppose, well, I'm so curious about what it must have been like for you to have an actor play you like the great Rory Kinnear gave his Craig Oliver.
Craig Oliver: He did and what was odd was that I sort of met him a couple of times before and had dinner with him and it was a very pleasant chat. And then when I actually saw him on screen, I thought, Oh God, you were actually just. Clocking me. My mannerisms. The fact I wear my glasses on my shirt. That was an obvious one, but he caught my mannerisms and I thought that was quite interesting that for me, oh great, I'm having dinner with Rory Kinnear, but for him it was work. It was like, yeah, actually, let's do that. And what I thought was interesting about the process was that I was lucky enough to read the scripts as they were coming out.
I don't think I saw every iteration, but I thought you showed them to me at certain stages. And I suppose the first time, I remember I was actually in Seville, and so I went to a cafe and sat and read your script in Seville, and I did think you'd done a brilliant job. But my first reaction was, you've been really kind to Dominic Cummings.
And I felt that you hadn't captured that there's a dark side to him and I kind of didn't feel comfortable saying that because I just thought well obviously you are going to say that you've just lost and you know you have this terrible defeat and obviously you don't really like this guy but I'm just interested what you think about me thinking and feeling that.
James Graham: I think any response is completely valid, especially when you were inside the story and have personal experience of it. And any audience response is valid. I get, I try not to get too defensive about it because that particular drama did provoke a lot of reactions and discourse probably more than anything I've ever done. And it actually, even the release of the trailer, I remember exactly when it was. It was, it was on a Saturday morning.
It was, I think the week before Christmas and I was going around to a friend's house. We have, every year, we have this thing called fake Christmas, which I guess is your found family. You have your Christmas with your friends before you go home. And the trailer just got released. HBO did quite, quite an American trailer.
So it wasn't particularly sensitive at a time when Brexit was still feeling quite sensitive. Uh, and it was like, ‘Here's a man who takes on the world, and it's Dominic Cummings.’ And it was, I could see how people immediately thought. that we were going to present Dominic as a, as a disruptor and sort of, something to be admired and not, um, interrogated. And I, hopefully, that isn't what we did. I hope we both prosecuted and defended him. But I remember, I remember, I couldn't quite believe I could feel my phone going in my pocket, the buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz of messages…
Craig Oliver: But it's interesting, isn't it, because Benedict Cumberbatch. You played him, and he's an A list star, and he brings a baggage with him. And it also felt slightly, to me, is that, that he couldn't play somebody who had that dark edge too much. It felt like, you know, there's a thing with A-list stars that they kind of feel like they're slightly protecting their…because they know that they are inhabiting a role, but there is also this kind of thing that goes, that’s Benedict Cumberbatch.
James Graham: Of course. But like, I sort of go, well, what did, what did people want me to do? Cast a bad actor rather than a good actor just because they don't like this guy. So get someone who isn't good because I don't like it.
Craig Oliver: I guess, yeah, but I think it's more than that. I think it's like, does that then affect where you go?
James Graham: Without a doubt. I think it affects, I, I'm really cognizant and I want to take responsibility for, for the unintended consequence probably of what happens when you portray real people and put them on screen…is that you do contribute slightly to narratives around them and in some cases possibly with Dominic Cummings some of the mythology around him which may be contributed to his own sense of self when he when he became the special advisor to Boris Johnson. Did I contribute in some small way to even the
concept of Boris Johnson going I want this guy in my war room because Benedict Cumberbatch played him, like I don't think so, but you, you do contribute small elements to the whole, to the whole, don't you? Fundamentally, I think people who don't like him and wish that Brexit hadn't happened is they really want to believe that he's an idiot. That he has this grand sense of himself of being an intellectual genius and this four dimensional chess player and he's deluded and he's slightly mad. That's what people want to believe because they can't believe that maybe he has got skills. That he is quite smart.
Craig Oliver: I'm struck by the fact that people can be genius in certain areas and idiots in other areas.
James Graham: Of course. We all have blind spots and I'm sure he has huge blind spots. Literally, he drove to Barnard Castle as a blind man.
Craig Oliver: He's clearly a genius campaigner and his insight about not just like ‘Take Back Control’ but also ‘Get Brexit Done’, the ability to crystallize something into a very short thing that loads of people can invest lots in, there's absolute genius in that. I suppose where he, people have the difficulty with him is. That he does have a pattern in his life, which is if he has to sustain a relationship for a long period of time that is more than a campaign, it seems to fall apart.
And actually we're, we're recording this at the time of the COVID inquiry and what was interesting about his appearance there was that that side of him, like calling people, fuck pigs and morons and people suggesting that he was misogynistic to me, that was all sort of widely known about him. But there was a sort of creation of a character who is like, it's only the genius…the ability to like, there's a scene where he literally goes down on his knees on the road and listens and he can hear Britain. He can hear the sound that's going on that people like me couldn't, and I totally signed up to the idea that we got it badly wrong, but that now exists with history continuing, I suppose is the point I'm making in that when the history continues, it's quite interesting.It changes.
James Graham: Of course it does. Yeah. And I think that's to the credit of any art that as we learn more, you look back on a story and feel different things. I would say that in my reading of that, I think when Benedict as Dominic gets on the ground and thinks he can hear Britain moving and in so doing, get some sense of the mood that he can, he can, um, he can use. I think my character thinks he can hear Britain. He thinks in his head he's got something. I'm not saying he can.
And in the drama, I'm not saying he's a genius. I'm saying some people think he is, and some people think he isn't. It's really satisfying for me to have characters going, ‘He's the real deal, like he's got something’ and then I think I put in your character's mouth, a rejection of that. You're going, he's just a very naughty boy or something.
Craig Oliver: He's not the messiah. He's just a fucking something or other. I can't remember what it was.
James Graham: Which I imagine you probably feel and would say.
Craig Oliver: Yeah, I think that was fairly accurate.
James Graham: Yeah, but that's my job. Like, I've got characters saying he's this and I've got characters saying he's that. I'm not saying he's anything. But in real life some people think he's a genius and some people don't.
Craig Oliver: And I don't want to turn this into sort of like some anti-Dominic Cummings rant because there is a big part of me that has a lot of respect for him and another side of me that just feels he's a dangerous individual and it's got problems, but that's my personal…
James Graham: But my favorite scene actually I want to know what you think about this is my favorite scene is the most made up scene, which is an imagined encounter where you and Dominic go for a drink. And of course I had to do that scene because a bit like Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth and Mary never met../I'm not sure who you are in that relationship, but, but you need your antagonist and protagonist to meet as well as I hope being a good dramatic scene. I feel like that's my moral responsibility is to put two people who represent two sides of the view at a table. So you get your voice and he gets his voice.
Craig Oliver: So I got asked a lot afterwards, did that ever happen? And they all asked assuming it had happened and that this was a sort of like… and I always said to people that it didn't happen. But I totally get why you did it because you kind of needed a moment where the characters came together and expressed themselves and how they were left thinking and feeling.
And so I've literally written down some of the parts of the scene here, I say to him, ‘You are feeding a toxic culture where nobody can trust or believe anything, nobody listens to each other they just yell,’ and then I lament a lack of kindness. And that was all very me. And then he says, makes a very, very clear point, which I think is a fair point, which is there's a new kind of politics coming down the track. one that you won't be able to control. And then there's a massive dramatic pause and I say, ‘You won't be able to control it either,’
And I think that has been shown to be true. That a lot of the populist thing, which you're getting to in the drama, is, did we incite or catalyze a kind of populism by the stupidity of having a referendum? You're sort of discussing that. But it's also discussing the fact that it is here and it's real and politicians have just completely struggled with it ever since, really, even the ones that are promoting it.
James Graham: Well, exactly. Look at all the architects of that new politics. They're all gone. They've all fallen on their own sword. It's the phrase that,whatever the phrase is, about populism and riding that tiger, it is going to eat you in the end. And at some point we're going to have to decide whether or not we try to reverse that culture and, and I guess that's what Biden was trying to do in the US. He hasn't completely succeeded. It's still there. But I hate all of it and that is what I, I, if I had a personal blame towards Dominic, even though I actually do think, I think you're exactly right. I think he actually is a skilled campaigner and a street fighter. Uh, I think it was genius for him to decide to have a different referendum from the one I think you called and decide this isn't a referendum.
Craig Oliver: David Cameron, please, that David Cameron called. I was just caught up the mess, is in my view.
James Graham: I apologize…Um, Dominic decided it was going to be a referendum on how people felt about everything in their lives at that moment. And people were unhappy and they wanted to change. And that was genius. Whether he's a genius or not. I don't care. But that moment was..
Craig Oliver: It's genius in a sense that look, we can create this cipher that you put any problem or trouble that you've got in front of and it suits you. That is that is genius. But it's a kind of destructive genius.
James Graham: Of course it is. That's why I loathe referendums, because it's to engineer civil war. It's to go, pick a side, you over there or you over there. And it lacks all the nuance and the complexity that mature politics needs, and an empathetic politics needs. I just don't think we should have them. And to be fair to people like Michael Gove, and I think even Dominic Cummings, they went, this is a stupid idea, this referendum, it's not going to allow us to arrive at a healthy place. The divisions and the rifts and the fraying of the social fabric that's going to come from it are going to be longstanding. Nevertheless, it's been called, we're going to fight it, we're going to fight it dirty and we're going to win.
Craig Oliver: Yeah. I noticed at the end of ‘Ink’ that Larry Lamb also is left sitting at his desk saying he thought he could control it and he couldn't and that he realizes that he'd unleashed demons too. It's obviously a theme that you're developing that the populists have just allowed or created or catalyzed this kind of slight mayhem that we're all trying to cope with.
James Graham: Yeah. I mean, I actually think the crisis of our modern politics is a crisis of storytelling. I think we have, I think we have not very satisfying storytellers telling the wrong story in a bad way rather than uniting us around a kind of reality that we can all accept. There are competing realities that I think is a really new phenomenon.
And like America is a story. It's a story they tell themselves about themselves. It's not an aspiration, the shining city on the hill. It's all about myths and characters. I think what's happening there, like when you look at the storming of the Capitol that is a result of a multitude of realities that cannot sustain alongside each other. He won that election. No, he didn't. He won that election. And I think that's quite new, like we all previously we used to agree on the story even if we disagreed about what we felt about it.
Craig Oliver: Well, it's interesting because I think it's even deeper than that, is that one is true, he won the election and any rational person who cares to look knows that Joe Biden won the election. But what is interesting is that there's this other figure, who is capable of creating his own reality and then getting tens and tens of millions of people to buy into that reality. And trying to pierce that and say that this just is objectively incorrect is the problem here. It's not like there's competing realities.It's competing, reality competing with unreality.
James Graham: Without a doubt, one is true and one is not true. There is a, there is such a thing as objective reality. But, but, the problem is, Donald Trump is a more compelling storyteller at the moment than possibly Joe Biden is. And his narrative has taken root. And it's impossible to uproot it. So you get real world consequences. Inside the Capitol building, you have people trying to declare an election. And outside it, you have people going, it's not true. And those two realities can't sustain alongside each other. So it glitches, it explodes. And I worry about it. And I worry about my responsibility.
As a storyteller, contributing more narratives on top of these fictional narratives and how we're ever going to unite as competing realities again. I don't know what storytelling's role is in doing that, but it will be.
Craig Oliver: There's another scene in ‘Brexit of the Uncivil War’ where I burst out of the back room into a focus group and start trying to explain to them that we don't actually pay 350 million pounds a week. That also didn't happen, but I certainly felt like doing more than once, but it's fair enough again, but what was interesting about that is being tongue tied in saying here is a complex nuanced situation. Um, and we need to be able to deal with complex nuanced situations.
So the whole referendum, like, Dominic Cummings spotted if you can tell people that Turkey will join the EU and David Cameron has said he wants Turkey to join the EU And of course the subtext is to that and the racists ideas that basically a whole load of Muslims are coming your way Yeah, and you're not gonna like it. Never mind the fact that, that there's a complex reality where a prime minister needs to say to Turkey.
‘Look there is a hope for you’ versus the fact that it's never going to happen. It would take 3, 000 years if it carried on at this pace. That's a very, very long winded way of saying, we seem unable to actually be able to talk about complex, nuanced, layered reality. That the people who can just go straight to the heart of it and just say, ‘that's a load of old crap,’ are much more successful.
James Graham: Yeah, I mean, it's the difference between what you think and what you feel. And increasingly, I think, you know, you could go to, you could go to places and go this has made, this has made things worse, hasn't it? This has made your life worse. The economy suffered because of Brexit. A lot of people just go, ‘I don't care. I don't care if that's the truth. This is what I feel.’
It feels like they tapped into something, something true. When you speak to a lot of Trump voters, they go. He's saying what I feel. I don't really care if it's true or not. Yeah. I know he's a liar.
Craig Oliver: I remember somebody saying to me during the Brexit referendum is, is ‘I don't want your facts. I want you to understand how I feel.’ And I think probably my biggest lesson for that is that you can't just make a rational case until you've actually dealt with somebody on an emotional level and recognize their feelings. They're not necessarily going to listen to you that they might recognize what you're saying is true, but actually it's far deeper than that.
James Graham: I actually think one of the, one of the struggles, and you must have felt this really keenly, is, is there are easier stories to tell. And they are the ones that sustain. So it is, if the fact is, I'm not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of Brexit, but it is an easier story to tell to go, there's this big block over there that is making all your decisions for you, and it's unrepresentative of what you are.
So we should leave, and we should have more control ourselves. That's a really easy story to tell. Your story was harder to go, yes, I understand that, but also, actually being part of a big supernatural structure actually benefits us in ways you can't immediately see, blah, blah, blah. It's, it's less romantic. It's hard.
Craig Oliver: And you're also dealing with something that's existed for 40 years versus some kind of utopia that's in the future. Of course. Yeah. But I wanted to challenge you on that because I think that I don't believe for a second that you think that Brexit was a good idea, but you say to me, I'm not making one comment one way or another.
And it's like, and I can't, there's part of me that wants to go, come on, James. You don't think that.
James Graham: I don't think that, of course, I think it was a terrible idea. What… the reason why I say qualify that is because I think as a storyteller who wants leavers and remainers and left and right to come and enjoy my stories. I do think it's important for me to make sure that people feel You've been fair to the other side. Yeah, but of course I have my biases, of course I have my opinions.
Craig Oliver: I want to just unpick another couple of small scenes from that. One of which is watching Bob Geldof on Thames during the middle of the Brexit campaign, flicking the Vs at other people and shouting and swearing at each other.
And me just like Um, saying this is what we've become. And then the other scene is right at the end after the result, where Nigel Farage says, we did it without a shot fired and Dominic Cummings says, ‘Well, there was one shot fired’ and of course, the shot that was fired was the one that killed Joe Cox.
I don't want to draw lines and say that it's because of the Brexit referendum that Joe Cox was murdered, and it's obviously a much more complicated thing than that. I suppose what I'm trying to get to is that point about the unkindness, the bitterness, the difficulty of overcoming that side of it, that that we've lost that capacity. Just to say you are another human being and you disagree with me, and that's okay.
James Graham: Yeah, and like I talk to my friends a lot about this, who think that kind of respectability politics, that middle ground is not right for now. That the dangers of the world are too vast and too great, that we actually do have to be aggressive and pick a side, and hit the streets and be angry, and I get all that, and I don't think either you or me are campaigning for just niceness, for niceness sake, because it's more pleasant, I think it goes through to what you just said, I think it's about the forces that you unleash, And the darker side of humanity that exists in all of us and in all nations and in all cultures.
It's always closer to the surface than we think. And I was surprised how close to the surface it was when Joe Cox died. And you go, gosh, that was there all along, was it? That mood, that potential to so immediately ask a question of a nation in the form of a referendum and discover some things about yourself and what we're capable of that are really upsetting and really shocking. I think our responsibility towards not inflaming those forces and those feelings is really deep and I don't think our current flock of politicians in government are taking that seriously.
Craig Oliver: I've been looking at some research about next year, the big known unknown or this year, the next known unknown, it's going to be a U. S. Presidential election where there's an 81 year old man against a 78 year old man
James Graham: And then the same two people who fought it last time, which has never happened before
Craig Oliver: And they’re diametrically opposed. And when you look at the polling, the one thing that comes through is, I think it's well over 70 percent of Americans just saying, we don't want this choice and they're like confronted by a choice that the politics has almost given them the inevitable answer, which is here is Trump versus Biden two. And yet the people are going, we just don't want this. That to me just seems to sum up a spiral that we're really trying, struggling to get out of. Um, this is a massive question and I wouldn't expect you to necessarily have an answer to it.
Can you see a way out of that spiral when you, when you're analyzing these things? Can you think there is a better way or a way that we can get through it? Or do you think we're actually just doomed to more of the same?
James Graham: I do think it's a question of storytelling. Again, societies and history has, has often reset itself and it has been capable of resetting itself. We did it in 1945. It happened in this country in 1979. I think something has gone wrong in the past 10, 15 years where we're unable. We're pushing a button, a reset button, and it's not connected. I think that goes all the way back to 2008 and the financial crash. That felt like a moment where we go, okay, one story's over and we're going to begin a new story with new characters and new narratives. For some reason it just didn't quite happen. I have this weird theory that's a bit shit, so forgive me, but it's like, you know, the film’ Inception,’ don't worry if you haven't seen it, but it's this idea that you can go into people's dreams and affect them and then this thing happens where, when you're in someone's dream, you can go further down into their dream and keep going down levels of levels into people's dreams who are dreaming. And the further you go down, the weirder and the darker and the madder it gets. But you have this button you can press and reset it and go back to the top.
And I feel like that's where we are as a society, we're going down into levels of, of madness because we're unable to reset the story. And down at this level, there's characters like Donald Trump. And it's weird, it's weird that he was the President. We're glitching because we're repeating the same election again the same people because we weren't able to find new characters to run for President.
Craig Oliver: I agree it's a brilliant film and I think it works totally that film doesn't it? It's like a very very clever idea and we clearly both feel that there needs to be a reset in politics and our public discourse and that kind of thing. How would you press the button? It's a very big question to make it change we kind of need people to come along and be brave don't we?
James Graham: And accept the past and not just disregard it, not just tear it all down and pretend it didn't happen, but come to terms with it so that we can imagine a future. And I probably, as a playwright, would say this, but I think, unfortunately, I think it needs new characters with new stories to tell. That might be in the form of a general election. it might be, might be something else. I thought it would come at the end of the pandemic. I thought that apart from the, you know, whatever the pandemic was, which was an extraordinarily painful, traumatic Loss of so many lives. I kind of also felt like that was the universe. Glitching and going, enough is enough.
Like, you need a moment of going, let's all breathe. Let's all take a second. What the hell have we been doing to each other? Once we emerge from this trauma and open the doors and come back out into the light, what is the new thing we're going to tell? Which was the 1945 moment that was going.
Now, what do we want to be out of the ashes of this? And it just didn't happen, because unfortunately, no disrespect to Boris Johnson, but he wasn't a good enough storyteller. He didn't want something enough. And so we lost that moment, but we still yearn for it.
Craig Oliver: So interesting, you don't want to disrespect him.
James Graham: I do want to, actually, actually, fuck it. I do want to disrespect Boris Johnson. Yeah, he, uh, he fumbled the ball, and we've lost that moment, and we may never get it back again.
Craig Oliver: Yeah, I want to talk a bit about ‘Dear England’, which is currently on in the West End and I saw it at the National Theatre and it's the play about England football coach Garisalke and the England squad and it's an amazing feel good play and and I'm not spoiling anything but you know, like the entire audience is on its feet at the end singing Sweet Caroline and you leave the theater feeling on a high, and it's great for that. It's entertaining, it's funny, it's clever. But it also feels to me that you are making a very, very steep, serious statement about mental health in that play. And that we as a country need to address that. So, Gareth Southgate, one of the sort of, like, motivating moments of his life was missing a penalty, which, in the scale of things, shouldn't matter.
But to him it was life changing. And also, the reaction of the nation to him was, you know, you total idiot. How did you manage that? And then he was sort of lampooned. And it takes seriously how that impacted on him and the weight of the country being on him and the fact that there was nobody there, really, to pick him up.
James Graham: I think that's it. Uh, I'm so impressed by the mission that Gareth went on and different people again, sorry to be sitting on the fence, it's the it's the impossible job because different people have a different opinions about how successfully he is with this crop of players but his mission I find incredible and that was to go..
Craig Oliver:Although we have just drawn one-one or with North Macedonia
James Graham: But sure, but also semi-final final quarter- final, no one's had that stream exact as in the modern history. And he decided he was going to do something that no manager had ever really done before. And that was to engage in a level of introspection in the football team. To understand what was going wrong. And it was going wrong. And when he took over in 2016, which very conveniently for a political playwright, that this is the year of Brexit. And the chaos that's ensued ever since. You have this political life going on and I think it's one of the most important things that you can ever convey about Prime Ministers and national leaders who seem unsatisfying and then in the national football team, you have this quiet, shy, introvert guy, who's defined by his decency, trying to fix the football team.
But really, obviously, I think he's also trying to fix the entire nation. If he can fix these 11 men, he can fix all of us. And quite simply, what he did is he just looked at the anomaly that was, here's the national game, and we invented it. And yet we are really struggling with it. And in particular with penalties, his personal demon.
We were the very worst in the world at penalties, in the game that we invented. We had never won a World Cup penalty shootout. He just, and he just asked the question, why? And he spoke to loads of players, and the thing that they would always talk about is that when you're walking to that spot as an England player, With the burden of all these national narratives and all the myths of English exceptionalism and being the home of the sport, it just feels heavier.
And he wanted to psychologically and emotionally understand that. So previously everyone had looked at tactics and technique, which obviously has a place. But because of his own personal trauma, he wanted to understand the mentality behind that as well. And none of it sophisticated, particularly, but just no one had ever dared to ask and the first thing he discovered when he got a team of data scientists to look at penalties - they looked at thousands of penalties across the world - hey discovered that England men take their penalties the quickest in the world. And so you have this whole team of people then going, Oh, there you go. That's great. We've discovered that. Tell them to go slower. But then he had a psychological team with him going, Yes, but why? Why the hell do England men go quicker? What are they afraid of? Why are they trying to get it over with quicker?
And they didn't know, but they went on this whole brilliant, beautiful journey.of doing things that England teams had never done before. They had workshops with the players, these multi millionaires turning up in their Porsches, they sat down and they had workshops about English history and English identity. And they talked about the flag and they talked about culture and myths and legends.
And they just tried to understand Englishness that means. You're all struggling and by the way, also it's okay to admit in front of all of you that you're struggling Can we at least do that?
Craig Oliver: And I think that that's it's so interesting because obviously and you the way you talk about it you take it to the national level is like they are the England football team and there is an obvious metaphor for this is a country, that maybe isn't sure where it is anymore, and makes mistakes and is maybe gets a few things wrong and isn't really necessarily dealing with how it's getting those things wrong…
But I suppose for this podcast, I want to sort of take it the other way though down, which is down to the individual. It seems to me that you're saying there's a metaphor for us as human beings as well and unless we go there unless we actually deal with it face what is the thing that's not quite working in my life and be introspective You said earlier that, you know, that therapy had been a revelation to you.
I'm just interested in hearing, drawing you out on that. But just talking to you now, it feels to me that it's also sort of your story as well.
James Graham: Yes, I absolutely threw my own anxieties into it. And I think the word we said earlier was avoidance. And on a personal level, I can totally see why. In my life, I behaved that way, um, where something I found difficult or that it felt too big to look at it.
So you just look the other way. That's what these players were doing. They didn't know how to ask for help, they didn't know how to admit that they were afraid. And they were afraid of taking those penalties. And I guess in the culture of a dressing room, it's all about confidence and believing in yourself and stiff upper lip and all that English stuff.
I think it's a weird, complicated mix of Englishness and masculinity that was really a really unfair, toxic combination on these guys that meant they couldn't go. I'm, this really frightens me.
Craig Oliver: And you said that before doing therapy, you had been dismissive of the idea that you actually thought there's something almost narcissistic about doing it.
And, and I actually do think that sometimes I've done a lot of exploration of this area is sometimes there is a danger that it tips into being self absorption. But actually that's not really the problem. The problem is actually getting yourself to a place where you can actually say. There are things I haven't dealt with, there are problems I've got.
You, can you talk a little bit about your experience? Like, you don't necessarily need to go into the, every, the blood and guts of it, but facing up to that and realizing that there was some help to be got?
James Graham: I think the fear, I think the fear is once you, once you stop pulling in that thread, you lose control of where it's gonna take you and then suddenly you find yourself tumbling down a psychological rabbit hole that you're not in control of.
Whereas keeping a lid on something, or at least only skirting the surface of it, you are in control of where that's going to lead. So it's all about vulnerability, I think. And both me personally and I imagine the England players have found it really difficult to be vulnerable. And I understand that in the England football changing room because it's a competitive environment where you are.
We're being elite, we're being the top, we're being strong, was seen as the most vital attribute. Being weak, being, fairly being vulnerable, uh, exposing yourself is only going to diminish your ability to be at the top of your game. And I guess on a personal level, I, um, I've always found it hard to be vulnerable, and I think a lot of it's, uh, to do with intimacy as well, like, to be truly intimate. In a relationship, in a family, in a group of friends, you have to be vulnerable.
Craig Oliver: So interesting. The very first interview we did for this podcast was with George Aligaia, who died, and then it was his memorial service just a couple of weeks ago. And the thing that he talked to me about was we talked about vulnerability. And I kind of think that this is what I'm trying to do here more than anything is he said, be vulnerable. It's, you know, it's a good idea… and it struck me, it's not just a good idea, it's highly advisable.
And then his other big thing was learning to be intimate with others. So it's so fascinating you say that was that if you're going to have a successful life, if you're going to resolve that be prepared to be vulnerable ,be prepared to be intimate, But that for a lot of people is quite scary.
James Graham: Of course it is and I think actually it's a lot to do with shame, isn't it and and and And I think I've had a problem with, um, did a play a few years ago called ‘Privacy’, which ostensibly was about data and surveillance and things, but also really it was about I put a character in it who was a writer who struggled with issues around privacy and and being very protective of his interior life.
I guess it was a revelation to me in that play that I thought I had an issue with privacy, but I really had an issue with intimacy and with being known and being okay with being known and not everything being good about me and people being and not needing validity presenting a certain image of myself.
Craig Oliver:What do you mean, everything not being good about you?
James Graham: I don't think it's particularly more sophisticated than that. I would often just try to present an image of myself, even to my closest friends, that everything was okay and everything was fine and I'm not really struggling with this. Like I, it's probably not surprised you that I identified through therapy a problem with work and work life balance and work addiction. And not dissimilar to other addictions, whether that's alcohol or drugs or sex, using work as hits to get me through, like achieving something in, in my, in my creative life...
Craig Oliver: But it's also a way, I think that when we talk to people that, you know, there's lots of ways in which people, as you say, workaholism is actually, can be as bad as other forms of addiction, , but it's also a kind of way of like crowding out your life.
So, so I look back at like among my many problems and weaknesses and whatever, I was aware that I'd fill my days with meeting and meeting and meeting and going running here and doing this and doing that and doing the other. And actually it's, it's, it sounds a bit trite, but actually in reality, there weren't the moments of just being there with myself and having to, like, realize what that was like.
James Graham: Yeah. Or the people. Like I, like, I've definitely used my busy-ness as a weapon to destroy relationships…
Craig Oliver:Yeah. like, uh, I don't have time for you...
James Graham: Yeah, or go to that friend's birthday or I'm sorry, I can't be loving and intimate with you tonight because I've got to finish this scene. And that was one of the revelations when I first went to therapy was I thought I was struggling in my life to be happy, to be fulfilled, because. I, a relationship had just ended and I want to understand why I was self destructive in that relationship and this amazing therapist I sat down for the first five minutes self diagnosing and going why can't I be with people?
Why am I self destructive? And the first question she asked me is was where where's your coat? I didn't have a coat on and it was snowing outside. I hadn't had time in my life to go and buy a winter coat. It was on my list of things to do, but I didn't really, self-care is not like a huge thing for me, and she's just like, you haven't got a coat on.
And I was like, yeah, I know. Oh my God, that's so irrelevant. Talking about my relationships. And she wouldn't let it go. And like an hour later, and like, if the, you know, it was a classic movie scene. An hour later, I was in tears going, ‘Oh my God, you're right. I don't look after myself,’ and I use work as a way of avoiding that.
Um, and so I got into some, some work addiction sessions. And like you say, I mean, it's a distasteful joke, but you go into these rooms where addiction meetings happen and then, you know, it's a pretty desperate people there, bless them, who are dealing with. drink and drugs. It's so distasteful, but the workaholics room is full of people in amazing suits, amazing hair.
They look fabulous. But you know that internally they're absolutely killing themselves in the exact same way that everyone else is who turns up to those those meetings. And it was a revelation to me. My problem still is. They all hated their jobs and I fucking love my job. I really, really love making art with people and sharing it.
So I've never been able to quite reconcile the fact that, I know it's, there can be an unhealthy relationship with it where it's all you invest in, but it gives me such value and such joy. It gives me such joy to do what I do and I've never quite been able to reconcile that as a work ethic.
Craig Oliver: Well, you're brilliant at it, genuinely, and I mean, I think that's what is, I love talking to somebody who's so good at what they do. I suppose the big thing that is really hard when you, when you're listening to all that is I can imagine my dad or you maybe before you'd had therapy and stuff that they come back, not, not with your total snowflake grow up, but actually that there is a place for resilience and there is a place for.
Just getting through stuff. And I suppose somebody of my age, I'm, I think I'm about 12 years older than you. Um, but somebody of my age definitely, like, you're taught resilience and taught, like, you will bounce back from this and you will do it there to the point that I think it is actually destructive.
But there are moments when I kind of want to say to younger people, you know, it's okay. You're going to jump off here and you're going to land and it's going to be safe and you will be fine. Don't worry about it, but that you end up spending a lot of time discussing about it that in the past that have just been like, just jump, just buck up.
Yeah. And then that's not that. And that's not to dismiss it because I am 100 percent behind you. We've got to be vulnerable. We've got to talk. We've got to deal with these things. But what would you say to people who would say to Gareth Southgate. for God's sake, it was a bloody penalty. You made a complete meal of it for the rest of your life.
James Graham: But what I would say is that all of that, um, yeah. what they would call the soft and fuzzy and warm stuff that they did as a team in going, are you feeling okay? And it's okay to be vulnerable and scared. That was still with the intent of winning the World Cup Like they wanted, they wanted to break you down so that you could build back up stronger so that you could do the thing…and not because winning is everything, but because similar to what I just said about the joy writing these players love football…
Craig Oliver: And I think that there's a, I don't think this is a spoiler, but Harry Kane misses a vital penalty and the aftermath that that scene is Gareth Southgate putting his arms around him and saying I've got you and you realize in that moment nobody did that to Gareth Southgate. Nobody, he was just left. And actually, being able to say who is one of the greatest strikers in the world at the moment, I've got you, it's okay. And you will continue to be one of the greatest strikers. And we're not going to blame you for the fact that you made a mistake.
James Graham: Like, what happened to those, the whole world's reaction to those three lads missing in the Euros, Saka and, you know, unfortunately the two white players scored their penalty in the final in the Euros, and the three black players missed, and the racism that exploded as a result of that, I think historically would have destroyed those players.
The joy and the hope I get from this story is that they're fine and you watch them playing now. You watch them playing, they're okay. Like, Saka's extraordinary. And he's this young, impressive lad who's going to be fine. But that's because they've done the work. His confidence is still there and they've just done the work.
So, I agree with you. I think it's not just about wallowing and saying and dealing with your flaws. The end result is, if you can, if you can break yourself down, you can build yourself up stronger again. So I don't think resilience and, and uh, and uh, oh just come on let's just give it a whirl is a, is an inherently wrong thing or comes from that toxic masculine or working class trait of don't talk about it, just, just book up and carry on. But it's, I agree with you, I think um, I think we are all stronger than we think we are. But you have to be allowed to be weak and vulnerable first to get there.
Craig Oliver: Yeah, we're coming to the end of the conversation and The final question that we always ask in this is is like these what's the one piece of wisdom? That you would pass on if there was one thing that you would say to people that having written Done everything you have what would you pass on?
James Graham: I think this mainly comes from a regret I have about wishing away the journey. In a way, like I, I think it probably comes back to my desire, um, in a work addict's way to, to, to validate myself through success.
I look back at my twenties when I wasn't successful and I was, I was working my way up the ladder. I was doing very small plays in tiny theaters. Painting my own sets, buying my own props, getting middling reviews in national newspapers and looking at other people and going, God, I just want to get to the point where I am right now.
And now I'm here and I'm very grateful for the opportunities I get to have plays in the West End and put television dramas on screen with Craig Oliver as a character and it's all thrilling. I really regret wishing away that time where I was struggling and just wanting it to be over. Because I was young, and I was excited, I should have been excited, and yes, I was failing.
But without romanticizing the struggle, the joy of that failure, I just wanted it over. I wanted to be here, and I feel like time will just pass you by if you wish away the struggle.
Craig Oliver: I think that's really interesting because one of the sort of insights that when I sort of did therapy and started thinking about these things was a sense that there is a real danger of people who live in the past and that they can't get over the past and that they just travel round and round and round it and it goes round and round their head.
But more, I was like you was like constantly living in the future, constantly trying to get to another place. And one of the insights that somebody said to me, look, you know, the only thing is real is now there is no such thing as the past. It doesn't exist in any meaningful way, and you've probably created a story about it anyway that wasn't actually what happened.
And similarly, you create a story about the future and you have all your worries and anxieties and doubts and hopes and dreams and all that kind of stuff, most of which will never pan out in the way that your brain is doing. Of course. So can you get to that moment where. You're just experiencing now and just grateful and happy for the thing that you've got.
James Graham: Definitely. And also you'll never get the future. It's the classic hero's story. The thing they're chasing is not really the thing they're chasing. Indiana Jones doesn't really want the statue. He's, he's, he's looking for something else. In the future, you'll never get there. So actually when I was painting those sets and I was really poor as a 20 year old aspiring playwright, I probably just wanted to play at the National Theatre.
Um, and I got that in about 10 years ago. But the opening night of the National Theatre play, I went home early from that party because I was really hoping to get a play in the West End. And in the West End, I was really hoping for Broadway. And right now, I'm wondering where the hell my Oscar is, where's my film?
So, you never get there, ultimately, and I think you're exactly right. Again, it's not rocket science, is it? But, unless you're present in the moment, from moment to moment, Time just goes, man. It just, I can't believe how quickly I've become the age that I have and I look back and I think there were probably so many moments just, just to take stock and go, I'm really happy right now, and I'm really proud, and I'm surrounding myself with abundance and joy and people.
And I didn't really. I was always looking forward to the next thing, so and I'm still struggling with that, so I'm not giving it as wisdom because I don't live it myself.
Craig Oliver: I really struggle with it. No, no, but I think you're halfway there if you at least acknowledge it. Yeah. I'm sure. James Graham, you've been incredibly generous with your time.
You've also been vulnerable, which I appreciate because I know that that's not easy, but it's been fascinating. Thank you. I've enjoyed it.
James Graham: Thank you.