The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday October 02 2024 #BAFTAS

The Scotsman

Jane Bradley catches up with Scotsman Arts correspondent Brian Ferguson to discuss the Scottish BAFTA nominations

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to today's Scotsman's Daily Bulletin on Wednesday. I'm Jane Bradley on

00:06the Scotsman's News Desk and I'm here today with Brian Ferguson, our arts correspondent.

00:11Good morning Brian.

00:12Hello there.

00:13First we're going to take a look at today's front page. Obviously the big story of the

00:19day is the situation in Israel. There were huge attacks from Iran, missile attacks last

00:25night, but the latest this morning obviously is that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

00:33has vowed that there will be payback for Iran for these missile attacks and is continuing

00:40its assault in Lebanon. We also have a story from our Deputy Political Editor David Ball

00:47on assisted dying, where the Health Secretary Neil Gray has said that assisted dying proposals

00:52tabled at Holyrood are outwith the powers of the Scottish Parliament. But I think on

00:59a day when the news is not at its most cheerful, we potentially need a little bit of light

01:04relief, which is why we're here this morning with Brian, who will cheer us all up by talking

01:10to us about the Scottish BAFTAs.

01:12Well, yes, very exciting day today. In anticipation of a very exciting day next month, the Scottish

01:19BAFTAs, Scotland's answer to the Oscars, of course. And yeah, there's some some really

01:25big names in the mix, as ever. But it's really interesting this year. There's some names

01:31that maybe didn't mean an awful lot to people a few, just a few months ago. Really, Richard

01:37Gadd is maybe the most obvious one. Richard Gadd has been a fairly well-known comedian

01:42in Scotland, won the main comedy award at the Edinburgh Festival of Friends a few years

01:48ago. And as many people will know now, he's the writer, creator and star of Baby Reindeer,

01:56the Netflix series, which has been in the news quite a lot. The woman who claims she

02:02is the inspiration for the show and has been misrepresented on screen, obviously taking

02:08quite a high profile legal action against Richard Gadd. But the show has been an absolute

02:14phenomenon. It did really well at the Emmys recently. And Richard Gadd's show is up for

02:20two nominations at the Scottish BAFTAs, which are going to be held in November in Glasgow.

02:28And Richard is one of many fairly well-known people in the mix. The show that's leading

02:35the race, a lot of people might not have heard of the show, it's a relatively new comedy

02:39drama called Dinosaur, co-written and starring Ashley Storey, who's a fairly well-known comedian,

02:46but her mother is even better well-known, who's been in the news recently for quite

02:50sad reasons. Janie Godley is very ill at the moment. But her daughter has done extremely

02:56well to make a career for herself in her own right. And her show Dinosaur, which got really

03:01good reviews when it was launched earlier this year, the BBC Scotland show, that is

03:06in the running with four nominations. So that's that's leading the race, as they say. And

03:13the other film, which I'm kind of ashamed to admit, I've never actually seen yet, even

03:17though it's right up my street. And I did write about this very much at the time. It's

03:21actually one of the first, if not the first film to be made in Scotland when lockdown

03:27restrictions eased. It's a film called Out of Darkness by a guy called Andrew Cumming.

03:33It was his debut feature film and it's filmed in the Wester Ross area. And it's actually

03:39set 45,000 years ago. So it's a kind of really intriguing horror film set, filmed up in the

03:48hills of Wester Ross. Like I say, when I think the cast and crew stayed in a hotel under

03:55pretty tight Covid restrictions a few years ago. Now, it took a while to, it did the festival

04:00circuit and took a while to get a kind of big release. But again, it's done exceptionally

04:05well review wise. As ever, the BAFTAs, there's a good sprinkling of big names who will

04:13hopefully be coming down the red carpet next month. Most notably...

04:19Are you going to be on the red carpet yourself, Brian?

04:22Hopefully, fingers crossed. Who knows what I'll be wearing? All will be revealed. Shirley

04:27Henderson and Tilda Swinton are both up for Best Film Actress, with one of the stars of

04:36Out of Darkness, Sophia Oakley Green. The Best Film Actor nominees include Lorne McDonald

04:43for A Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That was a really intriguing kind of film

04:49theatre project that was filmed in Leith Theatre a couple of years ago now. Again, it was one

04:54of these kind of lockdown projects, but it took a while to get out. It did really well, it

04:59had a cinema release and was produced by the National Theatre of Scotland. So that's a

05:05really interesting nomination to come out of that. And the Best TV Actor is Richard

05:10Gard is one of the nominees up against David Tennant and Khalid Abdallah for his role in

05:18The Crown. And intriguingly, in the Best TV Actress category, Dune McKeegan and Elaine C. Smith

05:26are both nominated for their roles in Two Doors Down, up against Ashley Storey, who's in Dinosaur,

05:34and Nicola Walker, who's in the crime drama Anika, which was filmed in and around the

05:43Helensbury area. The one other one I wanted to mention, a couple of people I wanted to mention

05:51were Nicole Taylor, who a lot of people might not have heard of. She's a very, very good

05:56Scottish writer. Her feature film Wild Rose is being adapted. She's working on an adaptation

06:03of that for the stage next year, but she was basically the main writer who adapted

06:09David Nicholl's book One Day for Netflix this year. It seems a long time ago now, but

06:14we had these really two big series with Scottish connections earlier in the year, Baby Reindeer and

06:20The One Day, so it's been a really terrific year TV-wise. Nicole is up for Best TV Writer against

06:27Ashley Storey and Richard Gard, so all the big hitters are in there.

06:30Yeah, that's going to be quite an interesting category, because I mean, you know,

06:34talking about Baby Reindeer, everybody's heard of it. Everybody was talking about it earlier this

06:38year, but it's still in the headlines, isn't it? I mean, we're still looking at a potential legal

06:43case rumbling on in the States. What's the latest with that?

06:47The latest is that basically the judge who's presiding over the case

06:53reckons that there's certainly a case to be answered, and that Fiona Harvey is the woman who

06:59is suing or taking a defamation lawsuit. I think it is against, over the show, basically. I think

07:08the thing that her case seems to be pinned on is the description of the show as a true story,

07:16and that seems to be at the heart of the case, basically. So it's quite a big case, to say the

07:22least. I think I saw earlier on that it's a $170 million lawsuit, but maybe not surprising given

07:30that the incredible success the show has had. I mean, any show that gets picked up by Netflix,

07:36I think, is going to be huge, but I think even its success certainly surprised Richard Gard

07:43himself. It's not so long ago he was playing. He basically always did free shows at the Fringe

07:51for a long, long time until he won the main comedy award. Then he had a break for a few

07:56years and came back with Baby Reindeer, by which time he had the producer of Fleabag on board. It

08:02was a much bigger scale production that then went to the West End and then got quickly snapped up by

08:08Netflix, and obviously it took a long, long time to kind of adapt that. But there's been all kinds

08:13of discussion in the industry about the need for great care to be taken with any kind of TV or film

08:23productions that are even loosely based on true stories. This description of it as a true story

08:31does seem to be at the heart of this legal battle, but it's going to be an interesting one to play

08:38out, and maybe it'll be slightly kind of an extra layer of intrigue, because obviously it's been

08:44rolled out in the United States as well. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it's well known

08:48across the world, isn't it? Well, I'd love to see how it does at the BAFTAs, which are in

08:53the event is in November, is that right? Yep, November the 17th.

08:57Perfect. Well, thank you very much. That's all very interesting, and you can read more about this

09:01at scottsman.com, and please do follow us on our social media on X and Facebook and Instagram,

09:08and if you're out and about today, please buy a paper. Thank you very much, Brian. Nice to speak

09:12to you.

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