International Disruptors: Working Title TV’s Surian Fletcher-Jones Talks BAFTA-Winning ‘We Are Lady Parts’, Working With Dolly Alderton & Her Mission To Bring Young & Diverse Voices To Screen
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Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re speaking with Working Title Television’s Surian Fletcher-Jones, the executive producer who is responsible for bringing the likes of Nida Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts and Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love to the small screen.
Surian Fletcher-Jones has spent the last two decades of her career fighting to bring important and diverse voices out of the periphery and into the spotlight and now, after her latest efforts at Working Title Television, it seems the needle is finally moving in the right direction.
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The esteemed executive producer and head of drama at Working Title TV, which is a part of Universal International Studios, is coming off the back of a banner few years with the knockout success of female Muslim punk-rock series We Are Lady Parts for Peacock and Channel 4 and Dolly Alderton’s BBC drama Everything I Know About Love. The former, which was created by Nida Manzoor, was the recipient of three Bafta TV awards this year while the latter, based on British writer-journalist Alderton’s personal experiences in her twenties, premiered this summer to rave reviews.
“I am obsessed with thinking about female voices, diverse voices and counter-culture and alternative culture,” says Fletcher-Jones, speaking to Deadline from her London office. “I feel like my mission in life and in my career is to find a wide audience for those voices and not just dabble around on the fringes.”
But it’s taken a long time to get here, the former Channel 4 and Scott Free exec admits. “It’s taken me 20 years to make a show with someone the same color as me and there still are not enough of these stories being made – we need more.”
Fletcher-Jones, who started her career working in theater before moving into the television sector, has always been passionate about discovering and nurturing new and first-time creators and writers who tell stories from perspectives that aren’t typically embraced. “I’ve always believed, since my early days in theater, that stories can change the world. I really, genuinely and fundamentally believe that.”
She’s been championing eclectic stories from writers of diverse backgrounds since the beginning of her career and has overseen scripted productions such as historical drama Indian Summers and LGBTQ programs Banana and Cucumber for Channel 4. “It’s in my upbringing to champion different voices,” she says. “It’s just in my DNA.”
Now, after more than six years at Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner’s Working Title banner, she says she’s finally found the place where she’s been able to marry her passion for championing new and unique voices and help elevate them to the global stage. “That marriage – that kind of meeting in the middle – it really excites me,” she says.
We Are Lady Parts is perhaps one of the best examples of this marriage that Fletcher-Jones is talking about. Manzoor had been on her radar since her time at Channel 4 when the writer had come in for a training program at the commercial broadcaster years ago.
“We’d been tracking each other for a long time,” recalls Fletcher-Jones. “And what I love about Nida is very particular, in that she always knew who she was. She always had a sense of ‘her’ thing, which was really goofy comedy with action mixed into it. I think for a while people tried to pigeonhole her into things saying, ‘oh you’re Muslim so you’ve got to write about honor killings and that sort of thing.”
When Manzoor came to Fletcher-Jones with the idea for the series, inspired by the writer’s experience from the rich and diverse cultural collectives and artists in London, she says Manzoor had been “bent out of shape by other producers.”
“She came to me because she knew that I didn’t think she needed to be pigeonholed like that,” says Fletcher-Jones. “We were drawn to her more whacked out comedy side.”
Admittedly, says the exec, she put her head above the parapet to get We Are Lady Parts off the ground. The story follows the eponymous Muslim punk band featuring geeky PHD student and lead guitarist Amina Hussein and fierce enigmatic front-woman Saira. “Nobody wanted that show, nobody asked for that show – it was what I wanted to do,” she says.
Even when she put out a call to agents to see who would populate the cast, Fletcher-Jones recalls that “there was hardly anybody around.” Today, however, she notes that the talent pool is gradually getting more varied but “there’s still a lot of work to do.”
We Are Lady Parts, which has been renewed by Peacock and Channel 4 for a second season, went on to win three Baftas earlier this year: PC Williams for costume design, Aisha Bywaters for scripted casting and Manzoor for writer.
“One of the things I’m most proud of on this show is that we championed women of color to the heads of department in various positions on the production,” she says. “At the Baftas, that was one of the proudest moments of my life to see these three brown and black women up there. It was phenomenal.”
For Fletcher-Jones, it’s paramount that Working Title TV is part of the “cultural conversations” in the UK and abroad. While she speaks fondly of her time working in the broadcasting sphere – “everyone’s at the top of their game and god, this industry is just bursting with clever people” – she admits it’s been liberating to move away from that world and into one that is “more about following your nose.”
“I’ve just found it truly liberating being a producer here and being able to do my own thing within this enormous entity,” she says, adding that the rise of the streamers has opened up a plethora of opportunities for young and diverse voices.
She says, “If it wasn’t for the streamers, I genuinely don’t think I’d still be in the industry – it feels like the floodgates have just opened up now for everybody and you can do things that are more transgressive and more challenging.”
She is keen to stress that when it comes to diversity in stories, it’s imperative that the female voice isn’t left out of the conversation, pointing to voices such as Alderton and Kayleigh Llewellyn’s In My Skin as being examples of some of the “interesting work coming from the white female voice.”
“I feel like women kind of get left behind in the diversity conversation,” she says. “It’s important that we have a multitude of different voices and I feel we’ve still got a way to go with that.”
She speaks fondly of working with writer and podcaster Alderton on Everything I Know About Love. The much hyped seven parter stars The Witcher’s Emma Appleton and Bel Powley and is based on Alderton’s memoir: “[Dolly’s] worked in so many different mediums and so she’s incredibly savvy about storytelling.”
Fletcher-Jones adds, “She’s also got a huge understanding of people, cultures and ideas and how the world works. She has so much humanity and so much time and compassion for people and that natural empathy breathes through in her work.”
Admittedly, when it comes to shepherding new and young voices to screen, the exec says it’s hard not to feel protective of these talents in assisting them execute their vision. “You’re there to support that person but you’re also there to protect that vision and not let it get bent out of shape by other people in the mix.”
Going forward, Fletcher-Jones is excited and encouraged about the rich canvas of writing and directing talent on offer in the UK space. She sites playwright Inua Ellams and Cherish Shirley, who co-wrote an episode of Everything I Know About Love as two key talents she’s hoping to work with.
“With Inua, we need to see his voice because he could write the era-defining show about the migrant experience,” she says of the British-Nigerian poet and playwright. “The movement of people is the biggest theme of our times, and his writing is so full of vitality and humor. It’s cool and it has heart – I’d really love to bring his work to the screen.”
The exec also says she’s working with Alissa Anne Jeun Yi, a mixed-race Chinese writer, actor and drag king who is “penning something autobiographical for us.”
“I’m really challenging them to find the right vehicle for their voice so that they can operate on the main stage or a bigger scale than perhaps they’ve been used to or have hoped to do in the past,” she says. “It’s about the marriage between the alternative and authored singular voice and commercial sensibility and, if you can get that marriage right, it’s really special.”
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