Netflix and BBC’s “Bodyguard” isn’t your typical political thriller, which could be why it has rocketed to success at home in the U.K. and internationally, picking up two 2019 Emmy nods—including best drama series—along the way. Jed Mercurio wanted to create a political drama, a realm mostly overlooked in British productions. But he didn’t want to tell the story fans of the genre expected.
Mercurio says that he set out to write “as mainstream a thriller as possible,” explaining, “I wanted to avoid something where you had to know a lot about politics and the characters were all politicians. That’s when I came up with the idea that we would tell the story from the viewpoint of one of the specialist protection officers. The bodyguards are police officers, so I felt what we were doing was almost a version of a cop show.”
That said, don’t confuse mainstream appeal with predictability: “I decided that we should bring the antagonist into the world of the protagonist so that there was a real possibility that the bodyguard could also be the assassin.”
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Season 1 of the drama focused on Metropolitan Police officer and army vet David Budd (Golden Globe winner Richard Madden). After saving a commuter train from a terrorist attack in the opening minutes of the pilot, David is assigned as the protection detail for ultraconservative Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes). The tension born from the characters’ differences paired with their parallel personal lives heightens the character-driven drama within the guise of a political thriller. When violence and tragedy strike midseason, suddenly all perceptions viewers may have had of these characters (and where the story was headed) come into question.
Unsurprisingly, casting the two central characters was essential, but Mercurio doesn’t write with specific actors in mind. “There were a number of names I considered with [casting director] Kate Rhodes James, and two names that came up at the beginning were Richard and Keeley,” he says. “Then, once someone is cast, I will have had an opportunity to see their audition or hear them at a read-through or in rehearsals, and that’s when their voices get in my head as a writer. Then I can imagine how they’re going to deliver the lines, how they look, how they move; that’s incredibly helpful to my process.”
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As the show’s creator, his work isn’t done once he’s finished a script. “I’m very involved the whole time,” he says of filming. “The work starts in preproduction, talking with the actors and directors about the scenes and the character arcs. That’s an opportunity for us all to collaborate. If it leads to a rethink or a dialogue change, then I’ll go back into the script and make those changes.”
Mercurio makes sure to be an “informal” presence on set so directors and actors can ask questions, plan future scenes, and discuss possible points of confusion without having to go out of their way to seek him out. And while he sits at the top of the production hierarchy, he prioritizes collaboration across the board to make the best product possible.
“When you’re dealing with people who are as meticulous and hardworking as Richard and Keeley, they’ll say really important things. I find it very helpful to get into those conversations and, generally, they lead to significant improvements in the script,” Mercurio says. “It’s about working with the cast and the directors and the crew so that we’re all part of the same conversation.”
Suffice it to say, that collaboration paid off. Mercurio is “incredibly flattered and humbled” by the global response to “Bodyguard,” even if he doesn’t know exactly what it is that has made the show, the latest in a long list of successful dramas he’s created, such a hit. “I think that you can only do your best work, try and tell the story in the best, most interesting way, and be true to the characters,” he says. “What happens after that is out of my control.”
This story originally appeared in the August 22 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.
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