The hot new trend in the acting world is playing your own relatives. You will remember that last year Kit Harington starred in Gunpowder, a BBC One period drama about his distant ancestor Robert Catesby. But now it is really picking up steam: both Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson are about to star in projects about members of their own family.
In The Wilsons on BBC One, Ruth Wilson will play her own grandmother: a woman who was married to a spy who was also married to another woman. And over on Sky1, Idris Elba is currently starring in In The Long Run, a series loosely based on his childhood where he will play a character based on his late father.
Now that we live in an age where people can sue television networks for the way they are depicted – as Olivia de Havilland did after Catherine Zeta Jones played her as a catty gossip in FX docudrama Feud – making shows about your own family seems eminently sensible. After all, you know them better than anyone else, right? So long as you tell the truth, everything will be OK, right?
Well, not quite. Take it from me, writing about your family can be fraught with headaches. Last year, I wrote a book about mine. The aim was to tell a story about a group of people enduring a period of trauma, as seen through the prism of my relationship with my younger brother Pete. Then I decided to call the book Don’t Be A Dick, Pete. And that’s when things started to get testy.
Immediately, two competing narratives were set in motion. There was my version of Pete, the lunk-headed ultra-lad who once went by the nickname Shagger. And then there was Pete’s version of Pete, the normal man who didn’t really want his past mistakes splashed across a book by his brother. In truth, all I really wanted to do was spend 250 pages slagging Pete off. But that couldn’t happen because he’s my brother, and once the book was published we would still have to spend all our birthdays and Christmases together. Offend De Havilland and the worst you can expect is a lawsuit sent via an intermediary. Offend your own relatives and you depth-charge the rest of your life.
In the case of Wilson, who will be playing her own real-life grandmother as opposed to a distant ancestor or a composite based on a relative, this must have also been an issue. She will want to play her grandmother as knotty and complex and possibly occasionally difficult – because that’s a more interesting role – but in the process she runs the risk of upsetting or alienating her own family, especially members old enough to remember what her grandmother was really like. The Wilsons needs to be dramatically interesting, but not so interesting that it ruins all of Ruth Wilson’s Christmases for ever. It’s a tricky balance to strike.
Going back to my book, I eventually struck a balance by handing entire chapters over to Pete. I would write reams and reams of insults about him – albeit insults rooted firmly in truth – and then he got the chance to respond in print. He could huff and scream about all the perceived inaccuracies contained within (there weren’t any), while giving his side of the story (which was badly remembered and largely wrong). In the end, everyone was happy. Pete was given the right to reply, and I got to include loads of pages of him angrily proving my own thesis.
That might be how Ruth Wilson chooses to attack The Wilsons – by including some Reds-style interviews with her own family members, who can either back up or dispute her version of events – which would certainly add an edge of tension and verisimilitude. Then again, she could just bulldoze through the story however she likes and accept the consequences. It might make the drama meatier, but I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes come Christmas.
