‘A lot of these scary guys doing time are terrified little boys’: Dennis Kelly on writing a new kind of prison drama | Dennis Kelly

WWriter Dennis Kelly has a few phrases he’s always lived by. They are all there, clearly identified in his first interviews, from the beginning of his career. Write like you mean it (perhaps this is why his plays have so much enthusiasm and drive). Never write for the money and never compromise (perhaps that’s why two of the best TV shows he’s been in, the controversial conspiracy drama Utopia and the Sharon Horgan comedy Pulling, were canceled after two series). Finally: Make sure that your writing always contains a secret.

In the case of Matilda, the smash-hit stage show he wrote alongside Tim Minchin, Kelly didn’t discover the secret hidden within his writing until long after the accolades were pouring in. It turns out that Matilda, a show that glows with love but also aches with a sense of loss, was about Kelly’s longing to be a father — a longing that was met a few years after the premiere with the birth of Kelly’s six-year-old daughter, Kezia.

As we video chat about the upcoming BBC prison drama, Waiting to Get Out (WFTO), I repeat Kelly’s mantra to him. So, what’s the secret inside his latest TV series? Kelly laughs, and after a thoughtful silence, offers his answer. The key to WFTO, which is about men living through life in prison, is fear. Fear of speaking in public. Fear of being exposed to danger. Fear of simply being oneself. It’s the kind of fear Kelly knows firsthand: “I spent the first 30 years of my life completely terrified but always pretended I wasn’t afraid. I thought it was blasphemous to admit to being afraid. I’m not an idiot but that’s how I felt.”

What was he afraid of? “Everything! I was afraid of what people would think of me. I was physically afraid in situations. I was afraid of who I was or who I wasn’t. I was just a afraid person but at the same time, I was constantly saying that I wasn’t afraid.” Only in his thirties, when Kelly confronted his alcoholism, got his life in order and began writing seriously, did his unspoken fears finally disappear.

The day after our interview, Kelly – now 25 years sober – explains over email how close he came to ruining his life: “Living in addiction is a very scary way to live, but for me, alcohol was the answer to the fear and shame that I generally carry with me every second of the day. It was only through having disastrous sex that I was able to get to a point where I could admit weakness and fear. A lot of men never get there, and it can lead them to commit stupid, terrible acts.” “Things.”

His upcoming series is based on Andy West’s memoir Life on the Inside, which explores West’s time teaching in prison and the clear – but also deeply disturbing – impact it had on his private life. While researching the show, Kelly registered the same debilitating fear in some of the inmates he observed inside: “I’m always amazed at how many of these big scary guys giving hard time are really just terrified little kids. This isn’t to excuse what they did. It’s just to try to understand it.”

WFTO focuses on philosophy teacher Dan, who has a lot in common with real-life Andy West. In fact, the central character was for a long time called Andy West – until Kelly started messing around with Andy’s story and felt it was better to change his name to Dan. For example, the real-life Andy has no interest at all in finding his absent father, a man who spent a lot of time in prison and was a difficult presence in Andy’s life. But in the show, Dan becomes dangerously obsessed with his father and tries to track him down.

Both Kelly and West are working class and grew up in London. West spent his childhood in the shadow of prison, where much of his family — his father, brother and uncle — served time. Thanks to hard work, determination, and maybe a little luck (all ideas the show grapples with), West was able to break the cycle and establish his own successful, and very different, life.

Kelly grew up in north London to relatively poor Irish immigrant parents. His father was a heavy drinker and worked on buses, and his mother was a cleaner. For both Kelly and West, there is a disconnect between who they are today and where they come from: “I’m from a fairly poor background and yet I do this job. It’s the least working-class job you can get. So there’s a contradiction between those two parts of yourself,” Kelly says. “This is normal. I think humans are perfectly capable of dealing with these two contradictions. It is okay to be working class and eat olives. This is not some kind of betrayal.”

The show has always been about Andy, says Kelly: “He’s easily the most interesting person on this project, and I’m including myself with him.” He reads like this middle-class person, and because we’re so weird about class in this country, your mind just goes off. You start thinking you know who he is. But then Andy tells you these amazing stories and turns your prejudices upside down. His presence challenges you to some things you didn’t even know you thought but you really do.”

Kelly visited a number of different prisons – Grendon, Isis and Belmarsh – while writing the show. These trips were partly about seeing Andy in action, but also about trying to find a new way to portray prison on screen. Something quieter, slower, and hopefully a bit more honest: “A lot of times when we have prison dramas, they’re very tense. They’re about people being stabbed or blackmailed. It’s not that those aspects aren’t there, but the fact is that a lot of what prison is about is waiting. You basically get a few hundred people, put them in a building that they can’t leave and they just have to wait.”

Some of the episodes were written alongside Rick Renton, who has served hard time and was really helpful in fleshing out the series’ sweet depiction of life behind bars, including his role as an actor: “There’s a speech later in the series when Rick talks about leaving prison and it’s his real experience. In prison, no one moves fast because you don’t want to get where you want to go.”

The first few episodes are directed by Janet Nordahl, who also directed the show’s star Josh Finan in The Responder. She has a consistent directing style, often sitting with her characters and letting the silence surround them. In many ways, Kelly suggests with a chuckle, this is an old-fashioned way of making TV: “A lot of modern TVs seem to offer a line of speed before they come out and talk to you. And I’m not knocking this TV. I made this TV. Sometimes it’s great. But after a while you feel a little drained by everything. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to tell the story in a different way.”

Many set-piece scenes are spent quietly observing Finan, who instills in Master Dan a painful but also more tense and darker innocence. As events unfold, Dan’s doubts begin to pile up, and his father’s mistakes begin to feel like his own. By the end of the series, Dan’s story is relatively resolved – although Kelly believes there is potential for further exploration. Another series maybe? Kelly lets out a wry laugh: “I’ve kind of given up thinking about that kind of thing. To be honest, a lot of shows have been cancelled. Two series and I’m out!”

There is talk of a revival of Kelly’s latest play, The Regression, which is about a movement that rebels against technological progress. So far, the play has only been performed in Germany, to frankly terrible reviews. Kelly, who seems as comfortable with failure as he is with success, laughs at this crucial hit: “It’s a weird silly play but I’ll try to make it work. Let’s see if I can make people in this country hate it too!” And so we end our interview where his career began, with his complete refusal to compromise. Write like you mean it – and to hell with the consequences.

Waiting to Get Out will be released on BBC One and iPlayer in January.