#joy press

Excellent interview by Joy Press with Jodie Foster in Vanity Fair.

1). Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television (Joy Press)

2). Actress (Anne Enright)

3). Reading in the Dark (Seamus Deane)

4). The Argonauts (Maggie Nelson)

5). Blueberries (Ellena Savage)

I feel like you mostly hear the narrative, especially if you don’t work in or around the industry, that development executives are dumb, penny-pinching un-creatives who stand in the way of greatness, but development executives are actually often responsible for nurturing the TV and movies we love into existence. (There are other kinds of executives who are less cool, but this isn’t an article about one of them.)

For Barnett, who took over at BBC America in 2014 after nurturing such critically acclaimed series as Rectify and Top of the Lake at Sundance Channel, Killing Eve has the potential to help define the network as a space for daring drama. She and fellow Fleabag fan Nena Rodrigue, BBC America’s head of original programming, began developing Killing Eve a few years ago. They were attracted, Barnett said, “by the thought of Phoebe being attached to an hour-long drama that had some of the big swings in storytelling that our audience loves, [but set] in this very female world.”

BBC America had attracted a ferociously devoted following for the twisted-sister drama Orphan Black, a fandom that came to be known as the #CloneClub. With the series ending after five seasons last August (after earning its star, Tatiana Maslany, a lead-actress Emmy in 2016), Barnett was keen to build on that enthusiasm for oddball, female-driven genre programming.

Rather than pushing Waller-Bridge to make more of a conventional thriller, Barnett encouraged her to probe deeper into the psychology of these women. “The note we kept giving, actually, was, ‘Keep it weird,’” she said.

Simon Reynolds and Joy Press, The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'n' Roll.