IR Z Direct Interview: Neil Forsyth For "The Gold" [Paramount+]

The Inside Reel

Creator/Writer Neil Forsyth talks to The Inside Reel about structure, motivation, basis and intent of story for his drama series: “The Gold” on Paramount+.

Transcript

00:00 (dramatic music)

00:02 - Now on we're chasing the interesting ones.

00:13 - We can't stop until it's done.

00:15 - Well if he won't stop and we won't stop,

00:17 then it's a race.

00:18 - Making a series like this in this sort of compressed area

00:26 of like the six episodes is interesting,

00:29 but you did all the research

00:32 and you did obviously co-write a book on this.

00:34 Can you talk about like sort of looking

00:36 at dramatic license versus real life,

00:39 versus the concepts of what it's talking about,

00:42 of course is with greed and all the logistics.

00:45 Can you talk about where the starting point psychologically

00:47 was for you because everybody's going

00:49 through so many things in this?

00:50 - Yeah, well the big thing was the research.

00:53 We did six months of full-time research

00:56 and it was actually as a result of that

00:57 that we decided to do the book that came along

01:00 with the show because we had this vast document

01:02 that I knew I was only gonna be able to really tell

01:04 a snapshot of in six episodes.

01:07 So it was all kind of concurrent and quite organic,

01:09 but it all came from just rolling up our sleeves

01:11 and putting in the work for six months,

01:14 looking through decades of newspaper archives,

01:17 court transcripts, old interviews,

01:19 and just trying to piece the whole thing together really.

01:22 It was a bit of a jigsaw, such a complicated story.

01:25 And then when we got into writing the TV,

01:27 creative license, I think is,

01:29 you need to have done the work first

01:32 so that you feel you can justify the creative license

01:34 and do it in a clear conscious.

01:35 And often it's just simplifying the story,

01:39 taking a story that's extremely complicated

01:41 and trying to tell it in a relatively cohesive way.

01:45 - Gold like that, you can't control it.

01:48 And if you can't handle it,

01:50 then it will find its way to someone who can.

01:54 - Six robbers have carried out an armed raid,

01:56 stealing almost three tons of gold.

01:58 - So for instance, you can shift it.

02:00 You can handle a job like this.

02:01 And out of it, you only hear about the people who get caught.

02:04 - But it's also the fact with all these characters

02:06 from Cooper to Boyce to Jack's character.

02:10 It's interesting because all have a motivation

02:13 out of almost class structure,

02:15 which I thought was really interesting.

02:17 'Cause you see that motivation,

02:19 even down to towards the end,

02:20 the way you have Dominic play it almost with his mother,

02:23 which isn't giving too much away.

02:25 Can you talk about that, looking at those motivations?

02:27 'Cause that's what fuels these people

02:29 is those emotional responses,

02:32 even Palmer, even Tom's character.

02:34 - Yeah, I think class is a big part of the story.

02:36 I mean, the fact it takes place in 1983,

02:38 which in the UK was a time when the government

02:41 were telling people that that very rigid,

02:43 traditional English class system

02:45 no longer applied to their lives.

02:48 And it was a classless society

02:50 and opportunity was available for all.

02:51 You just had to roll up your sleeves and take it,

02:53 which I think some of them took on.

02:55 And their motivation in the show.

02:56 But I think what we also show

02:57 is the kind of fundamental fallacy of that.

02:59 And the people that reach for the stars, if you like,

03:03 in terms of elevating themselves to new years of society.

03:06 I think the story ended pretty disastrously

03:09 all round for them.

03:10 - We're looking for six robbers and three tons of gold.

03:13 - Money like that will end up in surprising places

03:15 with surprising people.

03:17 Ready?

03:18 - This ain't just about six blokes in a van.

03:21 - Every ring, every watch.

03:23 - If you're looking for the gold, it's all around.

03:25 - But it's also the fact of, you know, between casting,

03:28 I mean, you know, it's almost against type.

03:30 That's what's so great about it.

03:31 Because I mean, I met Dominic many times

03:34 and he's much different in this thing as Nathan,

03:37 Jack, of course, from "Slow Horses."

03:39 And obviously, you know, Q, all these things,

03:42 it's about sort of playing against that.

03:44 Was that part of sort of the mindset

03:46 as far as when you were putting it together?

03:48 Or was it just trying to find the right people

03:50 that sort of embodied it at that moment?

03:53 - I think it's really exciting when you cast an actor

03:55 in a role that you've not seen them do before.

03:57 I think that's exciting for you as the creator,

03:59 exciting for the actor and exciting for the viewer as well.

04:02 So I think we, yeah, I think you're right

04:04 in that we managed to achieve that

04:06 with a lot of our core cast, if you like.

04:08 And I think maybe that's what helped attract them

04:10 to the project.

04:12 But I think when you do an ensemble show,

04:16 it's often very hard to get that real top level actor.

04:19 But I think, you know, often their agents

04:21 will be pushing them to only take lead roles, for example.

04:23 But I think they hopefully all saw something

04:26 in the characters that they recognised

04:28 that each character had a unique role in the show,

04:30 had their own motivations, their own storylines,

04:33 the same people or different people around them.

04:36 So hopefully they all felt they could make

04:37 their individual marks in the story,

04:39 which they very much did.

04:40 - 26 million.

04:41 That's what they say on television.

04:45 - It's 27.

04:50 - Yeah, it was enough to move the market.

04:53 So it's 27 now.

04:54 I'm not a villain, not like that.

05:03 - Neither am I.

05:04 - I mean, we talked about class, but it's also about family.

05:07 The whole thing with Spencer, you know, with her father,

05:10 and then, you know, obviously Palmer and his wife.

05:13 Can you talk about the notion of family,

05:15 of loyalty versus sort of ambition?

05:19 Because that's a sort of an interesting thing

05:21 of how the characters are portrayed as well.

05:25 - Yeah, I think so.

05:26 I think we showed, sadly, how greed can sort of smash

05:30 through all these other emotions,

05:32 such as loyalty and morality, if you like.

05:36 But the family, I mean, what was interesting

05:38 with Jennings' character is she's a composite character

05:43 of several real-life female detectives,

05:46 and a lot of their story went into her.

05:49 And certainly at the time, you did have members

05:53 of the police and members of criminal fraternity

05:55 that were from the same neighborhoods.

05:57 They didn't know each other.

05:58 Sometimes that helped, you know, in terms of detection,

06:02 but we also show the more sinister side of that,

06:04 I think, in the show.

06:05 We show police corruption, and we do show also

06:10 the often negative influence of Freemasonry

06:14 within our story, that if you have members of the police

06:18 and members of the criminal class

06:21 who are both members of secret society,

06:25 then in the wrong hands, that can have

06:27 highly negative effects, which I don't think

06:29 we shy away from.

06:30 - That's why we didn't nick it.

06:33 All we'd be doing is turning it legit,

06:36 like we do with all the other stuff.

06:39 - It's a long way from that.

06:42 - 27 million is a long way from that.

06:46 Look, we've done all right, considering where we're from,

06:49 but I wanna do all right the way the other side

06:52 of this country does all right.

06:54 - But you also get, yeah, I like the fact

06:57 that you make it specific enough,

06:58 but you also make it not too dense

07:00 where people cannot follow it.

07:02 I mean, the whole thing, when bringing the guy

07:04 from Customs that shows the path of it,

07:06 I thought that really nicely did it,

07:08 and then it also extrapolated the whole idea of the system.

07:12 You know, those are very, very specific things to write,

07:15 but you also don't wanna overwrite them.

07:17 You know, can you talk about that and finding that balance

07:20 in terms of that in progress,

07:22 'cause it feels like a character drama,

07:24 and yet there's so much detail in it,

07:25 and that's just a progress of the writing

07:28 before you even get to production.

07:30 - Well, yeah, definitely.

07:31 No, I mean, I think it's, firstly,

07:33 it was a very complicated story,

07:35 and you have to find a way of telling that

07:37 that is both narratively cohesive,

07:41 but also giving the viewers some credit, you know,

07:46 not kind of hand-holding them through that story,

07:49 like letting them find the twists and turns along the way,

07:51 maybe not pick everything up as they go,

07:54 you know, and piece it together later.

07:56 So that's often a hard balance to strike.

07:59 I think that particular sequence

08:01 you're talking about at the end of episode two,

08:03 yeah, I mean, that, we had to tell this complex story

08:09 of how the gold was stolen out of this warehouse,

08:13 and you ended up with this heavily laundered money

08:16 hidden in London real estate, for example.

08:20 And, you know, I battled for a long time

08:22 in how to tell that, and then we went for this

08:25 sequence effect that I think was brilliantly directed

08:28 and brilliantly edited,

08:30 and managed to make it kind of exciting

08:33 and thrilling along the way.

08:34 So there was a constant battle

08:36 of how to tell a complex story cleanly

08:39 without oversimplifying it

08:41 and taking out some of the nuance and magic of it.

08:43 - People that come from money,

08:46 they don't think much about what's right or wrong

08:48 when they want to make more of it, no.

08:51 They use what they have.

08:53 Well, what we have and they don't

08:57 is that we know villains, and villains know us.

09:00 So let's use it.

09:08 - And that leads to my last question,

09:09 but I have time, thank you very much, Neil.

09:12 Because I like what you were telling,

09:13 it's like consequence of action,

09:14 but the thing is that you let the viewer

09:17 take away certain things without spoon-feeding,

09:20 and that's one thing I think that is great about it.

09:23 And not a lot of shows do.

09:25 More are doing it now, is that aspect of allowing people

09:29 to bring on their own sort of experiences to this,

09:33 even though this is set in '83.

09:35 Can you talk about looking at that

09:36 and looking at the evolution of the story

09:39 so it has those moments of like,

09:41 what's gonna happen with Spencer's character and her father,

09:45 or what's gonna happen afterwards to Cooper or to Palmer?

09:49 Can you talk about the importance of that

09:52 in allowing the bodies to bring their own experience to it

09:55 in a certain way?

09:56 - Yeah, well, I think if you write a show

09:58 that's got a very, very strict,

10:00 very designated black and white morality,

10:03 I think that's uninteresting.

10:05 I also think it's unrealistic in terms of reflecting life.

10:09 And for the viewer, I don't see that

10:12 as a particularly satisfying experience,

10:14 whereas I think when you tell a story

10:15 like this one naturally is,

10:17 where morality is a bit less defined than that

10:20 and a bit murkier and a bit morpheus and ever-changing,

10:25 then I think that's a more immersive, emotive experience,

10:30 I think, for the viewer to be part of,

10:32 and they really can choose their own moral path

10:35 through this story, I suppose.

10:37 And that's hopefully part of what makes this show

10:41 slightly unique.

10:42 - This will only get faster and faster till one day

10:46 it's all gone.

10:49 (upbeat music)

10:52 (screaming)

10:55 (upbeat music)

10:58 (upbeat music)

11:01 (upbeat music)

11:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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