Writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who, It’s a Sin, Queer as Folk) was one of the big-name creatives to grace the stage at SXSW London on Friday in a keynote appearance to discuss his work and career.
But before he took the spotlight at the second edition of the event in the British capital, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Davies at its SXSW London photo studio in Shoreditch to talk about his new five-part Channel 4 thriller-drama Tip Toe, whose first two episodes launched on Sunday.
Starring Alan Cumming as Leo and David Morrissey as Clive, the show, set amid a recent backlash against queer rights, tells the story of a bar owner in Manchester and his long-standing neighbor who become embroiled in a feud.
At its heart, Tip Toe is “about the anger of the online world creeping into the real world,” the creator told THR. A U.S. home for the show hasn’t been unveiled.
Why is this the time to tell the story of Tip Toe?
The time was right partly because I had the idea for the story, and you should always pounce before someone else has the same idea. But also it’s because of the stuff we’re saying about the state of the world, the anger that’s rising up in the world, and our opinions coming off scrolling [through social media]. It is about the anger of the online world creeping into the real world, and that was getting more and more urgent to me.
I wrote the first episode very, very quickly, and the series was commissioned very quickly. I told Channel 4 I was going to write it, and they were interested. That took me about a month, and then they commissioned it within seven days.
Wow, for most people, this would never happen that fast…
They may wait seven years. But that’s how topical it is. We raced it onto the screen. We’ve had two edit suites and two mixing suites to get it ready, because the stuff that it talks about in the law, and with [Labour Party boss] Keir Starmer being Prime Minister and Kemi Badenoch, the [conservative] leader of the opposition, that’s in danger of being out of date very soon. So we literally rushed to get it on air before any of those figures step down.
And there has been a backlash against LGBTQ+ rights, which makes this show timely…
Absolutely. Certainly, when I wrote Queer as Folk in 1999, that was a much more optimistic series despite some of its darkness and terrible moments of savagery. But actually, it was very much an optimistic series leading towards the future. And now I have grave fears and grave doubts. Certainly, the way that the whole trans argument is being weaponized against the entire LGBTQ+ community is frightening. You can see it happening right in front of us.
You mentioned social media…
I’ve got a friend who says that after we invented the printing press, we had 200 years of war. What we have here is a brand new form of communication that we’re not about to undo. We’re not going offline, it’s not going to stop, and we haven’t evolved to cope with it. I think our technology is way ahead of our emotions, and that’s a very big problem.
Tell me a bit about how you cast Alan Cumming and David Morrissey.
They are just amazing. By some miracle, they really are best friends in real life. I didn’t know that. We approached Alan Cumming before the script was even written. We did a very unusual thing and said let’s try to attach an actor to an idea, which I’ve never done before, but I always see other people doing it. And Alan said yes, and then received the script and loved it. So he set aside time in his schedule. He’s such a busy man, with The Traitors in the U.S., among other things. We waited to shoot with him, which meant I could also write all the scripts in advance, which was great.
Then it turned out he’s been best friends with David Morrissey for 40 years, and they’d never appeared on screen together. When they did their first little scene on Canal Street [in Manchester], we all gave them a round of applause. It was such a lovely moment. Actually, it was Alan who sent the script to David. You could technically argue that’s the second lead. But David makes it absolutely a co-lead with Alan, and Alan graciously loves that. David has no ego, no nonsense in his head. He just loves a good piece of work and just grabbed it. Episode three, which goes out this Sunday, swings the whole drama around, so you see everything from Clive’s point of view, from David’s character’s point of view. Once I knew he was in, I had a chance to really lean into him, which is brilliant.
Is Clive a conservative or does it go beyond that? How would you describe him?
Clive is homophobic and transphobic, but those are the extreme words. It doesn’t start there, and the series looks at what’s pushing him there. Despite all that, we show a gentleness to him, a civility, a decency to him that’s being undermined, and very clearly undermined by his online scrolling, and by his belief in conspiracy theories.
There has been a whole generation of people who were either let down by education or who spurned education, who are now educating themselves, and that’s wildly out of control. There’s a reason why education has syllabuses and filters and strategies. Otherwise, you just educate yourself in an age of untruths, in an age where anyone can post anything.
As I look at the world today, the number of people who now don’t believe in the moon landing is creeping up to something like 40 percent. It’s just absolutely shocking. How do we stop that? How do you stop that decay of information, this decay of knowledge in the world that I find terrifying.
I heard that Leo isn’t all perfect and heroic either?
I think it’s well written enough so that the gay man isn’t just the hero; he does things wrong. He doesn’t stop his friend from blathering sometimes. He over-sexualizes things and will go for a cheap innuendo in front of younger people. He is very much representing a generation that isn’t taking the growing problem seriously. He keeps putting up with Clive’s antagonism because he keeps thinking things will get better, and they jump right in front of his eyes. But he doesn’t hear a call to action that’s happening right next door to him.
