Based on the best-selling novels written byHarry PottercreatorJ.K. Rowlingunder the pseudonymRobert Galbraith, the three-part, seven-hour miniseriesC.B. Strike(airing Friday nights on Cinemax) follows private detective Cormoran Strike (Tom Burke), a physically and psychologically wounded war veteran, and his new assistant and protégé Robin Ellacott (Holliday Grainger), as they take on clients and try to not let the complex and sometimes horrific cases they work bleed too deeply into their own lives. With “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” “The Silkworm” and “Career of Evil,” the writing is excellent, the casting and acting is top-notch, and the character relationships will leave you hoping for more Strike stories in the future.
During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, executive producerRuth Kenley-Letts(Head of Drama at Brontë Film and Television and Snowed-In Productions) talked about how she started working with J.K. Rowling, why they made the decision to shoot all three of these stories, back to back, that they’re looking to continue making Strike movies, as they’re written, the challenge of casting the roles of Strike and Robin, breathing a sigh of relief when the actors had a natural chemistry, and what she looks for when developing projects, as a producer.
Collider: Thank you for talking to me. I absolutely loved this mini-series!
RUTH KENLEY-LETTS: Oh, I’m delighted to hear that because we’ve spoken to very few people that have seen the show, that are U.S.-based and I have absolutely no idea how the show will go down with the Cinemax audience. I’m a little bit anxious about it. Obviously, I’m a British producer and I get the audiences here. I know BBC One, and I know the audience. You’re always nervous for a new show, but I’m absolutely in a dark hole. I have no idea if people will just think, “Oh, my god, this is so boring.” I literally have no idea. In the U.K., the books have been very popular. A lot of the pressure for us making the show was knowing that the books had a lot of fans and they were going to be very vocal about things we might have changed, or what they thought of the casting. And of course, a lot of those fans are J.K. Rowling fans, so you feel a responsibility to her. If all her fans hate what you’ve done, it’s her that they’re going to be tweeting.
You’re the Head of Drama at Brontë Film and Television. How did you and J.K. Rowling start working together, and how did you end up in that position?
KENLEY-LETTS: Well, I’ve always been a freelance producer. When J.K. Rowling and her agent, Neil Blair, were approached by the BBC to produceThe Casual Vacancy, which was her first adult book, and adapt it to TV, Jo and Neil decided to set up their own production company because it would allow Jo to have a bit more control over her work, so they set up Bronte. And the BBC introduced me to Jo and Neil to help produce that drama, which is how I got involved with them, in the first instance. So, I came on to produceThe Casual Vacancyas a freelance producer, which worked out well. Whilst we were makingThe Casual Vacancy, the Robert Galbraith books had just come out and the BBC knew that they wanted to do them, so Jo and Neil asked me if I’d like to stay on as a permanent member of staff, in order to oversee the transition of the Galbraith novels into a TV series.
Because you shot all three stories at the same time, what were the logistics of that? Did you shoot each one of the stories, back to back, or did you shoot all of them together?
KENLEY-LETTS: We shot each story, back to back. When we first went in to BBC and we knew we were going to make them, we hadn’t gotten any scripts, at that moment, and there were only two books out, but at the time of meeting, I knew that a third book was due to come out and would already be out there before we started filming the first two books. It just made logistical sense to suggest to the BBC that, since there was a third book coming out, we should just that while we were shooting the other two, simply because, even though we didn’t have a clue who we were going to be casting, at that point, because it was very early days, I knew from experience on other shows that it’s very hard to bring your lead actors back once you lose them. It can take another year to find a moment where they’re both free to resume filming. The more successful an actor, the less likely it is that you’re going to be able to get two people free, at the same time. So, it really was a common sense thing to do, to do all three, back to back. The BBC, who were the first people involved in commissioning it, didn’t have to show it back to back, but at least we’d have them on the shelf and the job would be done, without being powerless over when we could shoot that third book because of actor availability. That’s why we decided to go for all three, in one go.
You shot these three movies in 2016, and now there’s a fourth book that’s been finished, which puts you in the situation of having to get everyone back together, if you’re going to shoot that one, too. Have you already started looking into the possibility of doing that?
KENLEY-LETTS: I’m not concerned about that because we know when that fourth book is coming out and we can pre-plan, and Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger really enjoyed working on the first three books. They made a great coupling, and they’re lovely people who are very committed to the characters. My theory as a producer is that, if you make it work the first time around and everyone has a good time, it’s much easier to persuade people to come back, and we did all have a good time. We really enjoyed working with each other, and I know that Tom and Holliday both really loved playing Strike and Robin. And if you’re only going back to do one book, then the time commitment won’t be overwhelming for them. It’s not like you’re doingGame of Thronesand signing actors up for seven seasons, where it’s going to be nine months a year of their lives that’s tied up and they’re not able to do anything else, in that time. The commitment would be maybe four months and, as long as we know well in advance when we’d like to shoot, then I can be in touch with their agents and say, “I’m thinking about filming on these dates. What do you guys think?” And then, you block out that time. The fact that we know when the book is coming out means that we can gauge how long it will take to get the scripts into good shape, and we’ll work backwards from there. It’s all about being ahead of the game rather than behind, and just planning. I think all of us are really excited about getting back together again, in the future, for the fourth book.
Have you gotten to read the fourth story yet? Do you have any idea where things will be going with the story, or are you as much in the dark as everyone else?
KENLEY-LETTS: I can’t say. I’m sorry. But just as a reader of the books, it seems fairly clearly to me that what Jo has written, as Robert Galbraith, is a love story between two characters. She’s clearly a master of spinning stories, and spinning them out into the right length, and her intention has always been to write a handful of these stories. As long as she feels that that relationship is alive, exciting, and fresh, I think she’ll continue. I think there will be a number of books. She’s been quoted as saying that she’s got 7 to 9 Strike books that she can imagine writing. Whether it will end up being five, six or nine, I don’t know, but I would put money on a bet that she will make us all wait for quite a few books before that relationship between the two of them is resolved. That, for me, is the joy of those books. There’s a crime story, and then there’s Robin and Strike. A number of people have said to me, when they’ve read the books, that they just love being in the company of those two people, and I hope that, in the television adaption, people feel the same way. You know they should be together, so we’ll hope that eventually they’ll get together, but at the same time, they have a really strong, ethical work relationship. There’s concern, from my point of view, that if they did get together, that it would affect their working relationship. This job is really important to Robin and her character development, in terms of her past and what happened to her at university. She’s finally doing something that she loves doing. She’s found her vocation and what she’s meant to be doing. So, I don’t really want them to end up together because that would ruin everything, wouldn’t it? You can’t mix work with pleasure. We all know that that’s a really bad idea. So, I’m sure Jo will really enjoy spinning those plays.
There are terrific characters, which means they’d be attractive roles to actors. What was the casting process like? How difficult was it to find the perfect actors for these characters?
KENLEY-LETTS: Well, it was difficult, and it wasn’t difficult. I had worked with Tom Burke, on a show calledThe Hour, so I knew him, as an actor. I’ve always been a fan of Tom’s, and when I first read the books, for some unknown reason, Tom just popped into my head, as I read it. I read the books with him in my head, as that character. But as always happens, when you start the casting process, lots of names are suggested. You bring on a director, and Jo was involved in the casting, and you want to give everybody due consideration that’s a possible candidate for the part. As we talked about people and met a handful of people, Tom kept rising above all of the other people. I just always believed, with a passion, that he was our Strike. Eventually, I brought everyone along with me, and that’s who we offered to. That was the casting of Strike.
Of course, casting was difficult because the books were so popular and there were certain things about Strike, like his height. He’s supposed to be 6'4" and pretty overweight, with curly hair that’s continuously described as looking like pubic hair, and that wasn’t Tom. Tom isn’t 6'4" or overweight. So, we did look for actors that might fit that physical build, but in reality, especially in the UK, there aren’t that many actors that are big guys. We wanted to do due diligence when we were casting. We wanted to throw the net open, so that we didn’t feel that we had missed a trick, and we wanted to be as true to the characters that Jo wrote as we could be. But there was just something about Tom’s soul and spirit, as a human being and as an actor, that I always felt was very right for Strike, and I think that belief paid off. He’s brilliant in the part. I don’t think anybody has questioned that casting, even the fans. Even though some of them would tweet, “This guy is not 6'4" and he’s not massively overweight,” those tweets quieted and then stopped happening, within half an hour of the show going out, so I guess he did embody the part really well and the fans were behind him.
And with Robin, we saw a lot of fantastic actresses for the part. Holliday was filming in Georgia and couldn’t come meet us, but she did a self-tape and it was absolutely genius. It was brilliant. I remember, so clearly, the morning it dropped into my inbox and I watched it. It was one of those moments where you go, “That’s our Robin!” She’s everything that the character needs, and she was able to nail it so beautifully in her audition, so we pretty much offered to her, straight away. We started to get nervous that we were going to lose her because she’s a pretty successful actress, so we jumped in pretty quick. She’s a brilliant actress, a lovely person, and a great Robin.
As a producer, knowing how important that relationship is to the story, did you have a moment where you were able to breathe a sigh of relief, that this relationship between these actors was actually working?
KENLEY-LETTS: You can cast brilliantly and you can get it right, but the one thing that none of us can do is guess whether there’s going to be any chemistry there. You just can’t. I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time, and that’s just not something that you can predict. You often put actors together, thinking they’re going to love each other and it’s going to be brilliant, and then there’s just nothing there. I think we all felt, pretty quickly, that the chemistry was great between them. There was a sigh of relief that it was working. At the end of the day, until the show goes out and the world is commenting on it and tweeting about it, you wonder how people will react. You just don’t know because you’re too close to it, by that time. You’ve been involved in prep and you’ve watched it all being made, and then you sit, for weeks and weeks and weeks, in a cutting room, and you just can’t be subjective anymore. It’s impossible. So, you never feel safe until it goes out. Only then, can you breathe a huge sigh of relief, if it goes down well. Often, you can be involved in something that you think is absolutely bloody brilliant, and then people just don’t get it and it doesn’t go down that well, which is terribly gut-wrenching and disappointing. You just have to wait until that first [episode] goes out there.
You also develop and produce non-J.K. Rowling projects, through Snowed-In Productions. What’s your goal there? What do you look for, when you’re figuring out what your next project or projects will be?
KENLEY-LETTS: Well, I have a fairly simple mantra, which is, does a story grab me and would I want to watch it? If I don’t want to watch it, why would I want to make it? That’s not necessarily the smartest, cleverest way to go about one’s business because we live in a world where something that’s hugely popular might not be something that I particularly want to watch. There are lots of shows that are massively successful, that just aren’t my cup of tea, so I don’t watch them. But when you get involved in projects, it’s so all-consuming and takes up so much of your life that, if you don’t feel passion for a project, then it’s really hard to stay engaged and make the best possible show that you can make.
You have to have strong feelings for the subject matter, the story, and the characters. When I look for a story, that’s what I look for. Would I want watch this, and does it interest me? Those stories can come in all sorts of different guises. I don’t just love one particular type of show. I watch a lot of television. I pretty much go home, every night, and watch television, as I eat dinner, and I watch all sorts of shows. I love stories where the characters completely engage me and I absolutely want to know what’s going to happen next. Whether that’s aGame of Thronesfantasy show, or a show likeThe Night Of, it doesn’t really bother me, what genre it is. I just need to care about the characters, and want to find out how they’re going to get through whatever situation they’ve been thrown in. That’s how I end up choosing what we work on.
