Page 21 of Total Creative Control
“Come on, Toni. We’re talking about Charlie Alexander here. By the time the contracts arrive, final approval will have been watered down to ‘being consulted,’ but the funding will already be in place, and the locations will be sorted and the actors cast, so we’ll decide to go ahead anyway, and fucking Charlie will getexactlywhat he wants, just like he always does, because Telopix’s money’s too good to turn down.”
Toni opened her mouth to respond, but then closed it again. They both knew what he said was probably true. Charlie Alexander might act like an affable hipster, but the truth was, he was a great white shark in fucking tie-dye.
“Look, I get it,” Lewis said wearily. “The money will be great—and it will be an amazing opportunity for me personally—but there are some things Ireallydon’t want to compromise on.” He rubbed at the perennial sore spot between his neck and his right shoulder where the nerve pinched. He needed a decent massage.
“Okay,” Toni said seriously, leaning back in her chair. “Let’s talk about what you don’t want to compromise on. Obviously, I get why you don’t want to change Faolán’s sexuality, and we can absolutely address that. For example, we could make him bi instead of straight.”
“Toni…”
She held up her hand, acknowledging his protest. “Orwe introduce another central gay character that can carry those storylines. But my question is whether your issue with the request goes deeper.”
“Deeper than Charlie’s plan to erase Faolán’s fucking sexuality?”
“Deeper than a question of representation. You’ve always said that Skye’s straight. That there’s no canon UST between him and Faolán. From that point of view, Faolán’s sexuality doesn’t actually impact the story.”
“I’ve always seen Skye as straight,” Lewis conceded. “I never planned to get Faolán and Skye together romantically, but their relationship—their friendship—is still key to both characters.”
In fact, when Claire, their development executive, had brought up the possibility of developing the ‘bromance’ a couple of years ago, he’d been adamant he’d never consider it. He’d given her a twenty-minute lecture on why the will-they-won’t-they between Amy and Skye was a key pillar in the story structure and that making Skye and Faolán more than friends would undermine the integrity of that.
Even then, though, he’d been secretly aware that matters were not quite so clear-cut as they’d been when the show began. Over the last few years, he’d found Skye and Faolán’s friendship increasingly compelling, to the point that, now, the idea of Faolán’s attention switching from Skye to Amy felt utterly out of character. Wrong. Amy was like Faolán’ssister, for God’s sake.
“All right. So, it’s not changing Faolán’s sexualityper sethat’s the problem?” Toni suggested, once again displaying her witchy ability to read his mind. “It’s the idea of his storyline being less focused on his relationship with Skye and more focused on his relationship with Amy.”
He eyed her. “Go on."
She canted her head to the side. “How do you see Faolán’s character?”
Lewis leaned back in his chair and thought. “I didn’t intend him to become a major character when I introduced him,” he said at last. “He wasn’t even meant to last the season.”
“Season three,” Toni mused. “Yes, he was supposed to die after the cliff-hanger finale, wasn’t he? When I saw that he’d survived the massacre in the early season four scripts, I thought,Ah!”
“Don’t bury your gays,” Lewis said softly. He was silent then for a few long moments. “The Skye and Faolán scenes justworked. Maybe it was partly the actors, but from early on, it felt like FaolángotSkye in a way no one else did, not even Amy. There’s something about that relationship that’s just special.” He frowned, thinking. “Maybe it’s that Faolán’s the only one who ever criticises Skye, you know? Skye’s so cocky that everyone thinks he’s immune to disapproval, but…” He trailed off, then added honestly, “Maybe it’s that I feel protective of that relationship dynamic. I don’t want some clunky romance plotline taking Faolán’s focus away from that.”
“I get it,” Toni said, smiling. “You don’t want Skye to lose his only real friend. The only person who is unequivocally loyal to him.”
Lewis blinked at her. Goddamnedwitch. How did she see stuff like that so easily?
“Can I just give you another perspective on this?” she said. “Just something to mull over.”
Instinctively, he wanted to say no, but he didn’t really have a choice. And he had to admit, Toni was good at stuff like this. “Okay."
“So, I know it’s galling to have major changes imposed on your story, especially on important characters and their relationships, but one big issue we know we’re going to have is that the US version will need a bunch of extra episodes. Charlie wants to keep the basic story structure and plotlines, but he’s going to need more characters—and more drama between them—to fill those extra hours. From a totally practical perspective, a Skye-Amy-Faolán love triangle is a great solution for that.”
“I didn’t dispute that—”
“I know,” Toni said, holding a hand up to silence him. “And another thing we both know is that, once you start outlining this, you can absolutely make this sing. Whether that’s by working your magic to protect the stuff about the Skye-Faolán dynamic that’s important to you, or whether that’s by introducing a new character—who may be gay—to replicate that dynamic and letting Faolán develop in a different direction. Either way, I know one thing for sure: once you start, all you’re going to care about is making the show as awesome as it can possibly be.”
Lewis felt suddenly, stupidly emotional. A tightness seized his throat. He shrugged again. “Probably,” he conceded gracelessly.
“So listen,” Toni said, “my advice is this. Just let your mind turn all this stuff over for the next couple of days, and I’ll do the same. And then, when we go to Safehaven or Belchy Park or whatever it’s called, we can have another brainstorm and see where we get to. Does that sound okay?”
He groaned. She’d outplayed him again. Planted a seed in his brain knowing full well he’d have no way of stopping it germinating and growing out of control between now and leaving for Safehaven.
And yeah, she was probably right about everything else too. While he still hated the idea, his reaction to Charlie’s plan had been a bit knee-jerk, born of being told, too many times, that the audience—for which, read investors—weren’t ready to see a romantic relationship between two male main characters on screen. Looking at it pragmatically, though, Faolánwasjust a character. A figment of Lewis’s imagination. It wasn’t even as if the same actor would be playing him in the US version—Charlie wanted a completely new American cast.
Not that Aaron would see it that way.
No, Aaron would fight this all the way, but then Aaron was an idealist—though not in a pie-in-the-sky way. He was fucking phenomenal at coming up with solutions when the script team boxed themselves into a corner.