Daisy May Cooper and Selin Hizli star in Am I Being Unreasonable? a new twisted comedy thriller about obsessive friendship, maternal paranoia – and a dead cat. They are real-life best friends and also wrote it.
Nic (Cooper) is grieving a loss that she can’t share with anyone and is unfulfilled in her marriage. Only her son Ollie (Lenny Rush), who she adores, keeps her going. But when Jen (Hizli) arrives in town her life is lit up with laughter and through this kindred soul her dark secret starts to bubble up. Shot through with whip smart humour, this mischievous and characterful blend of funny and frantic takes female storytelling to a refreshing and dynamic new level.
Executive produced by one of TV’s most exciting talents, Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials), this is a warped comedy about just how quickly life can change – and lives unravel.
A Boffola Pictures and Lookout Point co-production for the BBC. Starting in September.
How did Am I Being Unreasonable? originate?
Daisy – For me I always wanted to write something with Selin because I think she’s the most talented person I’ve ever met, I mean second to me, I am massively talented (laughs) but there’s nobody else who makes me laugh like her. There’s nobody on this planet who makes me laugh like her and during lockdown I’d been avoiding her for a long time, weirdly I wanted to avoid everyone.
Selin – I knew you were just at home doing nothing because so was the rest of the world. So I knew you couldn’t come up with a good excuse so I could just force you to be my friend.
Daisy – and then you phoned me, I answered and we had a conversation about wouldn’t it be great to do a show that was based on female friendships, toxic friendships and how many toxic friendships I’ve had in my life and that’s how it came about.
Can you give us an overview of the story.
Selin – So we start with Nic who is living in a village and I think the way we always described her is nothing is really terrible but nothing is really great either. She’s sort of stuck in this rut of going through the motions, getting her son to school, chatting to her husband after work and everything is sort of a bit grey for her.
Daisy – very unfulfilled
Selin – very unfulfilled and then in comes Jen who’s this new mum at the school Daisy – and turns her world upside down
Selin – it’s almost like a love story between them. When you have a friend you make a connection with you just fall head of heels in love with each other
Daisy – Aww Selin – and then...
Daisy – ...and then it becomes toxic as a lot of really intense friendships do. They get so close that it’s got to go wrong.
Selin – Nic is so focused on how Jen makes her feel, she starts to question who actually is Jen? What do I actually know about this woman who seems to be my perfect friend that’s just turned up in my life. You then follow Nic as she learns more about Jen, things are revealed and everything becomes much more intense for Nic and her family life with her son and her husband and it culminates in something that Nic’s been keeping in for a long time and it finally lets itself out.
What draws Nic and Jen together?
Daisy – What draws Nic and Jen together? They’ve got very masculine energies like Selin and I have. They are both very funny, they are both extremely vulnerable and not afraid to admit that and how else would I describe it?
Selin – there’s an honesty I think that really draws them together because that’s the thing. They’ll make a joke about themselves before anyone else can get in there, so they can make it and judge themselves. And I think that especially when there’s kids involved, it’s soo easy to get so worked up about what people are thinking about how you’re parenting your child and when you find a parent that doesn’t care in the same way that you don’t care about certain things, it’s really attractive I think.
What is the relationship like between Nic and Ollie?
Daisy – the relationship between Nic and Ollie is she treats him like the adult and he talks to her like the child.
Selin – I think that’s the experience that a lot of people will relate too. I’ve spoken to soo many people in my life who have felt like they’ve had to parent their parents from quite a young age and I think that Nic really relies on Ollie a lot.
How difficult is it to work together as friends?
Daisy – it’s difficult to work with friends if you don’t have a really truthful, honest friendship. For example, if I come up with a really bad idea, she can immediately say, that’s shit without having to worry hurting my feelings,
Selin – and vice versa
Daisy – and vice versa, you don’t have time to pussy foot around each other or to take offence and that is what the perfect writing partnership should be.
Selin – I feel very safe working with Daisy, I feel like it’s a place where I can suggest things whether it’s good or bad and it’s not going to be like get outta my house.
What is the tone for this series?
Daisy – Got a little bit of horror in there, got a little bit of laughter in there, got a little bit of mystery in there, got a little bit of drama in there, got a lot of very serious subjects in there, but then you do a serious subject and you come out on a laugh
Selin – because you’ve got to laugh
Daisy – I don’t think anything is truthful as a drama if you don’t have any humorous things in it
Selin – and I think that’s what we found when we first started working on the story of it, we’d come up with all these drama plot points and they didn’t start to feel real until we put the comedy in. They didn’t start to feel truthful and really like what we recognised as our own experience until we put that comedy in and started drawing out of those dark places.
Daisy – and that’s the thing about human instinct is when things are really really bad, you don’t dwell on that, you try and find the humour in life to try and pick you up. So that’s what we tried to be as truthful in that as we possibly could.
Why did you choose to have improvisation in the show?
Daisy – the real reason you have improv is that is real life. You talk over each other, it makes you react. When you say the same lines over and over again the scene can become stale and you know what that person is going to say.
Selin – and I think for the other actors in it as well, we’re not writing something and then it’s like a test to see if someone can do what we’ve imagined in our head. We want people to own it and bring their own experiences and their own lives to it. Then that’s when it’s truthful and that’s when it’s real and that’s when you get those surprises, you get those exciting moments that we might not have thought of if we just said those lines. It’s a real sort of collaboration that makes everyone feel...
Daisy – they have ownership of the characters they are playing.
Why should viewers watch this series?
Daisy - I’ll tell you what, you should watch this series, because I think personally it’s unlike anything that’s out there on the telly and we make television we would want to watch.
Selin - That’s what made us want to do it in the first place. We wanted to make something that we would want to watch that kept us interested and didn’t give us all the answers on a plate and was a bit of fun as well.
Sum up Am I Being Unreasonable? in 3 words
Daisy – I would sum up the series in 3 words, bonkers, scary, truthful, funny – that’s four. Selin – I would say...
Daisy – ....it is great
Selin – enjoyable, panic attack Daisy – yes, funny panic attack! Selin – funny panic attack
Picture credit: Boffola Pictures/Ben Meadows
Interview supplied by BBC
