It certainly feels like Disney+ EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) scripted originals are in a good place. That’s according to the man in charge, Lee Mason, executive director of scripted originals, EMEA Disney+, who sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for an interview on how his team’s successes are shaping the streamer’s strategy.
“I’m feeling positive,” Mason, previously the commissioning editor for drama at Channel 4, says. “[Especially] off the back of Rivals and A Thousand Blows.”
These two shows — vastly different in terms of genre — have a lot in common, the executive argues. “My feeling has always been about not moving too far away from what Disney+ is,” Mason explains. “That’s characters you care about, worlds that intrigue you and stories that move you. That’s got to be the starting point.”
Rivals, already confirmed for a season two, took the U.K. by storm upon its October release (on Hulu in the U.S.). The series follows Jilly Cooper’s novel on the infamous scoundrel and old money MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and his rivalry with Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) that seeps into the 1980s-set world of Rutshire, a fictional county in the Cotswolds, England. Amidst a stellar supporting cast of beloved characters like Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), Lizzie Vereker (Katharine Parkinson), Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer) and Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), is a love story emerging amidst the raucous landscape of sex and mischief.
“It is,” Mason agrees when probed on the show’s raunchiness considering the Disney audience. “But I don’t think it’s gratuitous. In the writers’ room, it was considered what those moments were telling us about character and the power dynamic in relationships, as well. So they were never there just for the sake of it. But,” he adds, “it does broaden the perception of the kind of show that could be available on Disney+.”
Rivals is Disney+’s most-viewed general entertainment series in Britain. So it might be a surprise to learn Mason wasn’t immediately sold when showrunner Dominic Treadwell-Collins approached him with the idea. “Initially I said, ‘I’m not sure that this would be quite right for us,’” Mason tells THR. “And then Dom wrote the pilot script and I read it, and I think that night I texted him and said, ‘Okay, let’s talk.’ Because he just nailed it.”
“You can never tell what the reception is going to be,” he continues. “Usually about 24 hours before any show ever launches, I tend to call everyone and go, ‘Do you know what? It really doesn’t matter if nobody watches the show. We should all be really, really proud of it, and it’s a great piece of work.’” Adds Mason: “[But], okay, if I’m crying in the edit, that means something.”
Lee Mason
Disney+
There isn’t much about season two Mason can reveal, aside from his “genuine excitement.” He says: “I was actually in the writers’ room yesterday and it’s the best part of the job. It’s like kids in a playground.”
In Steven Knight‘s A Thousand Blows, which dropped late February, Malachi Kirby plays Hezekiah Moscow, a Jamaican man who finds himself thrust into the violent melting pot of post-industrial revolution London. Drawn into the criminal underbelly of the East End’s boxing scene, he meets Mary Carr (Erin Doherty of The Crown), leader of The Forty Elephants — the notorious all-female London gang. Hezekiah comes up against Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), a seasoned and dangerous boxer and the two are soon locked in an intense rivalry that spills out way beyond the ring.
Early on, this one was more of a no-brainer for the television exec. “Liam Keelan [senior vp, original content, EMEA at Disney], who was my boss at the time, said this project’s come in and it’s by Stephen Knight, Stephen Graham’s attached. You’re like, ‘Oh my god, okay.’ I can’t think of another two Stephens you would rather work with.” It didn’t matter that Mason’s boxing knowledge was limited, as that isn’t the show’s only appeal. “It’s just about these incredibly, beautifully drawn, complex characters… In the number of the shows that I’ve worked on, finding the vulnerability in each character — that’s what you really want to access. And Steven did that so brilliantly from the first script that actually, no matter how terrifying Sugar is, I read it and thought my heart’s breaking for him already.”
Whether it’s true crime or romantic comedies, it’s always character first for Mason and the team at Disney+ EMEA Scripted Originals. It also, he adds, helps to attract big talent; this guarantees a sense of trust between actor and viewer. “You have to find a way for audiences to find it,” he explains. “And I think casting does help with that… There’s a great relationship that audiences have with actors and particularly some of the great British actors and TV actors, there’s a trust. If David Tennant’s in, it probably means it’s good.”
Mason uses the three generations of his own family as a measure when it comes to casting — if his parents, brother, and nieces and nephews approve, it’s a safe bet. “With Stephen Graham, most of my family will watch it, no matter what it is.”
Does good television require risk-taking? “It depends what you mean by risk,” Mason considers. “If you’re talking about risk as in a show story that is controversial, then, no, I don’t think that has to be the case. You can be surprising with tone and you could be surprising with casting. And I always enjoy when you work with actors that do have a particular profile or they’re known for a certain type of show, I’m always excited to put them in something else. ‘Let’s see how that would work.’”
He continues: “I think to make something that is risky and contentious isn’t always a bad thing at all. It’s just about being clear about why you’re doing it. You shouldn’t do it because it’s a risk — you should do it because you think it’s a good show. You think it’s a good story.”
Also coming this Spring is Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, with Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones), Russell Tovey (Years and Years) and Emily Mortimer (Paddington in Peru), following the events surrounding the tragic killing of innocent Brazilian de Menezes after he was mistaken for a terrorist by London police in 2005. “It wasn’t anything to do with the Metropolitan Police or the case,” Mason says about revisiting the incident. “It was about this actually untold story about a young man who is forgotten about… With everything that was going on around it, there was a man who got up one morning and went to work, and he was wrongly killed. What was the impact of that? That could have been anyone’s son, brother, boyfriend.”
Mason confesses the show might prompt conversations about the Met’s wrongdoing throughout the case, the cost of which was an innocent man’s life. But Disney+ isn’t making shows to start conversations like that. “[That discussion] is already going to be out there,” he says. “Documentaries are discussing it, and I’m sure that the press will cover it, and when the [20th] anniversary comes… But that was never the focus.”
The Disney boss adds that his team “says ‘no’ a lot.” With each project, they have to assess how confident they feel in the show and whether it would work for a Disney+ audience. While the department are tough on themselves, he admits, there’s a lot to be excited about: Nicola Shindler’s The Stolen Girl and further afield, France’s Bref, Spain’s Invisible, as well as Italy’s This Is Not Hollywood, all of which Mason says have been hits on the platform. “Local content is always going to be really important,” he says. “And building a relationship with your local audience… [But] you still want to make shows that as many people as possible can watch.”
