Why do you feel the need to tackle mental illness, to deal with bipolar disorder and depression?

I don’t know if I would call it a need, although maybe it was. I just sort of couldn’t help it. I didn’t know how deeply the series would delve into these issues when I first set out making the pilot, for example. It just happened. So my instinct to write about these issues wasn’t socially motivated initially – which isn’t to say how we handled it wasn’t socially motivated and in fact we worked quite closely with the charity Mind on this series, because I wanted to make sure I was handling the subject sensitively. But I was mainly concerned with telling a good story and it always felt like it was the characters who were leading me into more challenging territory. That said, I’m drawing on my own experiences, not directly normally, but how the world looks and feels to me.

I have type 2 bipolar and I have always wanted to write about manic depression. I’ve never quite found the right way – until now, maybe. It is a difficult thing to communicate. Depression, weirdly, is arguably a more immediately relatable subject, because even if you don’t have it as a condition, many people might have experienced circumstantial depression, when they’re having a difficult time, or experienced grief perhaps which has some similarities. In that sense, this felt like an ambitious subject to take on, but it made sense to me to make this a different season with different energy and also, perhaps, to look at the two sides of my mental illness.

Do you worry that dealing with stuff that’s so personal and so resonant to your mental condition might in some way impact on your mental health?

Yeah, I did worry about that. I did wonder sometimes: “Is me going into this world, is this good for me?” I still don’t really know the answer. On the one hand, I do find it quite an intense and exhausting world to be in. On the other hand, it’s also a really exhilarating and enriching world. And I love the characters. They’re good company. It was helpful to have it as an outlet I suppose is what I’m saying, a way to process things. So it can be healing as well.

So there’s an element of catharsis to it as well? Or is that a bit glib?

Is it glib? I don’t know… It probably was cathartic. Sometimes when I was writing the series, it felt like stepping into a wind tunnel, or being beaten up by it or something. It was hard going sometimes. But, as it went on, I realised that maybe it was actually helping me and that I was only having a hard time because I was having a hard time, not because I was working on a show that deals partly with mental illness. In the end, it was a very liberating experience to write and make this show, with such a remarkable group of people. So yes maybe it was cathartic.

You worked a bit with Mind on this series – in what way?

We consulted them on the series. They met with Sophia and she talked to someone who had experienced similar things to what Amy goes through during the course of the series. Even though a lot of this is drawing on experience, I wanted to make sure that we were telling the story responsibly and thought it would be no bad thing to have experts cast an eye over it to make sure we weren’t doing anything unhelpful. So they didn’t have a hand in structuring the story, but they reassured us about what we were doing right and helped us to nuance things occasionally. They were extremely helpful and a pleasure to work with.

Is it difficult to concentrate on your own performance, while watching and overseeing everything else?

In some ways it’s helpful to have the scene as a whole to focus on, because it means I don’t have time or space to overthink what I’m doing from a performance point of view. I find it most difficult when Shun is playing a small part in a big group scene, because it’s harder to judge it on the basis of the chemistry in the scene between the other actor, or actors, and me. And there’s normally quite a lot going on already. So I deliberately tried not to write Shun as a bit part in a group scene too many times. When it’s a two-or-three-hander, I don’t find it too difficult, partly because I’m used to it and the cast seem very comfortable with it. We try to keep a really non-hierarchical shoot. We’re all just working our way through it together, trying to find the best way. The atmosphere on set was very collaborative and we all trusted each other. And when it’s your own writing, it’s easier to judge when it feels right than, say, if I was trying to direct someone else’s script and to play a character they’d created at the same time, because I’d constantly be trying to work out if this was what they’d imagined.

What would you like viewers to take away from this series?

One thing I wanted to achieve was to give the audience a sense of how it feels to have a mental illness, or to be around mental illness. Awareness is one thing, but I don’t often get a sense, when I’m reading articles or interviews for example, of how it actually feels, of how relentless it can be, of what it is that’s being asked of people with a mental illness to cope with it, or how painful it can be to love someone who is suffering. At the same time, I also want the audience to feel like living with mental illness doesn’t rule out a joyful and fulfilling life, that it doesn’t rule out laughter and that it doesn’t mean this is a world without hope. The characters in the show make mistakes, as all families do, but they are all trying and, ultimately, they are good to each other. I feel like it doesn’t mean anything to have a positive outlook if you just ignore everything that’s hard. It only means something if you can have a positive outlook while still accepting that there are certain things about this world that are challenging.

The making of this show has been an unbelievably enlightening and fulfilling experience for me. I felt incredibly supported, both as creator and just as a person who occasionally has a hard time handling their own head. Throughout the process, from developing the scripts to the shoot to the edit to post-production, there was never any sense of judgement, never any sense of shame from anyone about working on a show that handles these difficult subjects in an unusual and hopefully uplifting way. In fact, maybe the opposite. It almost felt like “Flowers” became a space where we could all safely express our vulnerabilities, could use them to a creative and productive end, to tell a story. We trusted each other and that communion of trust, I think, in turn, has given the show its heart. I would love for the audience to feel like they can be a part of that, of the world of “Flowers”, where everyone is vulnerable and everyone is strong.

Interview supplied by C4.