Actress, writer, and producer Emer Kenny approaches every character and script as a chance to embrace the unconventional and unexpected.
After making her debut over a decade ago, actress Emer Kenny is now leaning into a new chapter of her creative life — one where she can truly be defined as a ‘triple-duty’ talent. Since she’s been in shows like EastEnders and Father Brown, Kenny has been crafting a filmography that doesn’t just showcase her talents as an actress, but as a deftly powerful writer and producer as well. Her latest writing credit just so happens to be season two of The Curse where audiences can also see her return as the fiery mastermind Natasha “Tash” Fantoni.
Compared to season one, things look and feel a lot different for the characters of The Curse. The show, which is a comedy crime drama series that follows a group of down-on-their-luck crooks who find themselves embroiled in one of history’s biggest gold heists, sees the gang fleeing to Spain in the mid 1980s to enjoy their newfound wealth. There is a shift in Tash’s mindset between the two seasons and, although she was the puppeteer of the entire sting last season, Tash finds herself in difficult situations she didn’t anticipate when she made the move and is desperate to keep the facade together.
Kenny’s approach as an actress is similar to her approach as a writer: do the opposite of what people would expect. The desire to lean into the unexpected and unconventional is something that ties her work together, regardless of genre. In 2022, after spending a few years adapting the Inspector Karen Pirie books, Karen Pirie was released to critical acclaim. The series, which stars Lauren Lyle as the lead, demonstrates Kenny’s dedication to creating projects that revert stereotypes and tropes. The result is a compelling character-driven series that doesn’t just turn what we know of traditional detective shows on their head, but embodies Kenny’s desire to bring female storytelling and their stories to the forefront.
1883 Magazine’s Kelsey Barnes chats with Emer Kenny about the second season of The Curse, her work as a writer on shows like Karen Pirie, and more.
I read that you were writing your scripts when you were still a teen and you took part in John Yorke’s writer’s training scheme as part of the BBC Writers Academy back in 2011 — when you look back between then and now, how would you describe how you’ve grown as a writer?
The first thing that comes to mind is that I was a very last-minute, procrastinating, chaotic writer. When I began, I would put it off, and then I would stay up all night. I wrote an episode of Holby City and I would write for half an hour and then sleep for half an hour. It was chaos. I’ve grown up in terms of the actual process of writing and what I put down on paper. I’m more confident and I realized that you have to take creative risks to get the greatest stuff, whether you’re acting or writing. It’s good to just try to be weird and eccentric and funny and unexpected. I’m much more confident with that now and more confident about asking the big questions, like what I think and who we are, which, at first, I was a bit nervous to do because I didn’t think I knew anything.
Yeah, in a past interview I read that someone told you that you needed 10 years of experience to become a good writer and, at the time, you thought that was crazy. Now you feel differently. Is that advice something you’d give new writers?
Yeah, it was John Yorke who taught me to write. I was 21 when I did that course and he said I’ll be good by the time I’m 30. I thought it was such a long time away but I think it does take practice. It’s a craft like any other; you can’t just become an amazing footballer or an amazing singer overnight. You have to practice. With writing, I think the best practice is writing on shows and I did lots of that. Then I did scripts of my own and it did take me a long time. I think that you probably can get there quicker though! [laughs]
Touching on soaps, I know people roll their eyes at soaps but it’s such an intricate project. Not to discredit shows that have only 10 episodes or less, but soaps are so detailed.
Yeah, and the budget, the sets, figuring out what actors are available… It can come with some amazing writing challenges. For an episode on EastEnders, they’d sent me a story where I had to write about the redecoration of one of the restaurants in the square. A week before filming they told me they don’t have the set ready, so I had to write my way around that story without ever stepping on set. That environment makes you more creative and it makes you more inventive in what you have to do.
Given that you already had series one and the character already fleshed out, how did you approach writing that episode?
It was a funny episode because it’s the episode where Tash finds out that Albert has made a deal with Pablo Escobar. My first thought, which is the expected thing, is that she’ll go mad at him. As a writing and character experiment, I like to always work out what the most unexpected thing for the character to do is. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And it just felt right that Tash would suddenly get really turned on by the fact that Albert had made a big drug deal.
That was another scene where I was like, Oh, this is so good. I loved when Albert starts telling her that he paid a prostitute not to sleep with him and he is so concerned whether he believes her or not and she says yes because that’s like the most you thing that you can do!
I find the central mechanism of their relationship is that she bosses him around and every time she does that, he becomes less sexy when all he wants to do is be the big man and all she wants him to be is the big man. That’s not who he is, so they just go around in circles. I also thought that the boys wouldn’t write that scene. It had to be me to write it because I think they feel nervous about necessarily putting that in her character. I got to be a bit bolder with this whole seduction aspect. I knew I was gonna do it and it was so fun to do as well because Allan [Mustafa]’s face as I’m doing it is just amazing.
I’m a big fan of Narcos and as soon as I saw Allan I thought he looked like a mini Pablo Escobar. How did you guys decide to write Pablo Escobar into it?
I think the boys were like big Narcos fans, I think we all kind of knew his story and we knew there was crime in the Casa Del Sol in the 80s that was connected to that drug route. So it kind of made sense to write him in, but it’s fun to take a story that is normally dealt with a lot in drama and put it in comedy.
I love that this show spins traditional gender roles and toxic masculinity on its head. Natasha calls a lot of the shots and I love that she narrates the show. When you first got the script, was it obvious that Natasha is very much the one in charge? Is that what first enticed you?
Yes. I think it was really exciting to me as well because you get to be the smartest one in the room with a bunch of idiots. That speech that she does at the beginning of episode one where she convinces Albert when they’re in bed to do the heist and she kind of seduces him again, that scene was essential to her character. It’s just such a great thing to play someone who is pulling all the strings or the puppet master and they don’t realize it. The second season is really exciting because one of the things I find challenging in the first series is that, if you’re always the smartest one, it’s harder to play the clown. In the second series, because she is sometimes in rooms with a lot of people who are a lot smarter than her, like the mayor and these other characters that have a lot more power than her, she becomes the idiot. That was a new challenge and helped me make her funnier.
When you look at the difference between Natasha in the first scene of season one where she’s cooking in the cafe to season two, as she waltzes around all done up in her new hotel. I read that when you went into the first season you assumed you’d be wearing what was around in the 80s, but, with Tash’s finances, she was stuck with what she had in the 70s. What was it like seeing Tash’s wardrobe expand as you started season two and how do you think that shifted her mindset?
Yes, I think she’s getting the moment that she’s dreaming of. Even in series one when they have money, she’s not allowed to spend it because they need to hide it. I think it visually shows how much she’s enjoying it while also showing what she has to lose. The reason she does everything she does to become so cold-hearted and ruthless, through the show, is because she wants to keep the life that she’s got and she wants her villa and she wants a hotel and she wants her nice clothes. She doesn’t want to go back to making bacon sandwiches again. It was nice for me to get to wear something a bit more glamorous, although I was seven months pregnant so it just didn’t feel as glamorous as I could have but we tried with a lot of our makeup! [Laughs]
There are so many funny moments in season two — the one that made me laugh a bunch is the bit in the first episode about the prison letters Mick has been writing and the line about “erotic codes” needing to be aligned. Is there a certain line or scene that really sticks out to you?
I love writing the most eccentric, weird stuff, for Mick to say because he is the weirdest character.
It makes sense for him, though.
He’s so weird. And when we were writing, I was thinking about what the maddest thing I can get Mick to say and then he always goes for it. My favourite line from someone else is when someone says “We don’t want to always be looking over our shoulder” and Phil says, “That’s what shoulders are for.” [Laughs] They’re just so stupid.
So much of your work has been about putting women in the forefront. For Karen Pirie, which you spearheaded the adaptation of, you were able to both write and act in it and because of your writing people said you “breathed new life” into a stale genre. The beauty of the show and the writing is that it’s approachable — so many of the lines I love, like “It’s not a great time to be named Karen.” Typically actors are vessels to someone else’s creative vision and words, so what was it like to call the shots in that regard?
I loved it. I loved having the creative control and the power to fine-tune exactly the tone of the show like, as you bring up, moments of humour, and lightness. I wanted the character to feel like a real person who I might know or might like. As an actor, you don’t get that control. I love going on a set and not having to call the shots and having to just concentrate on my tiny part of this character. But on Karen, I just really enjoy being able to be the full-blown perfectionist control freak that I am.
I do love that you get to have both sides of it — I find writing to be a very solitary process if you’re doing it all on your own, but it’s great that you can also be on set and watch what you’ve written come to life.
Yeah, it’s so satisfying, especially with comedy. When you write a line that you think is funny, and then you hear someone else deliver it and it lands and people laugh… There is no joy like it. Similarly, when you say a line yourself and you can’t stop laughing, even though it ruins the take, it’s just such a joy because as a writer you want to do your job well. On Karen Pirie, there are funny lines sometimes, but it is much more of a drama. There are moments when some of these amazing actors will say things I’ve written that I wasn’t sure about and I wouldn’t know if they would land, and they would hit the right note. Seeing some of the performances… They just take it to the next level that I would’ve never even imagined. I’d be crying at the monitors with some of the stuff that Lauren [Lyle] was doing. It’s just a magical experience. I remember turning to the director at one point and I was just so blown away and I just said to him that I felt like I’m on drugs! He’s so calm, he was like, “Okay..”.
Somebody get her a chair and some water! [Laughs]
Yeah, she’s not okay! [Laughs]
When you are approaching characters to flesh them out, does your approach differ as a writer versus when you’re acting?
Backstories are good for me. With Tash, I had to work out in my head where she and Albert met. I feel like they’ve been together since they were 13 and were on the playground at school. At that point, she was shorter than him.
She kind of gives me the vibe of somebody that would say, “You’re dating me now,” and he’d just go along with it.
Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. I fleshed out her parents in my head because she and Sidney [Tash’s brother] are so different. I love to imagine who their parents might be. There was a line that their dad is a thief so I imagine that he maybe was in prison. I go back and work out why this character would be the way she is and why she would choose Albert as a husband and all of that. That’s big for me. When you get into the costume and makeup, I find that helpful as part of the process.
When I’m writing, I make loads of mood boards for the characters, the show, and the tone. I tried to think about if I could cast anyone who would it be because it helps me get the voice. I think about costumes and backstories for them as well. It was big with Karen to work out what she looked like because I didn’t want her to look like every other female detective and in an ill-fitting suit or a slick female detective. I wanted that to feel quite real and normal and accidentally cool. I think costumes are also big for me when I’m thinking about why a character is choosing to put something on every day. So, I have the same focus on both, but from different angles.
Somebody get her a chair and some water! [Laughs]
Yeah, she’s not okay! [Laughs]
You’re writing season 2 now, are you approaching the writing any differently than you did with the first?
It’s the second book in the series and the story is different. The court case that she takes on is different so it is naturally taking a different tone. She’s much more confident and she is feeling encouraged, almost like she’s gone up a notch. She doesn’t have the same insecurities that she did in the first season, she has other problems that come up for her. It’s just about working out how to take it to the next level. To be honest, I felt like I just want to do as good of a job as I can but it’s gonna be hard because I took four years to write the first season! [Laughs]
Well, you have the 10 years’ of experience that you needed! I read in another interview that you described writing as a lonely process. Are you somebody that kind of needs a second eye on things as you go to gauge reaction?
Yeah. I don’t know if this is common or not but I sort of have this mad anxiety that I’ve lost my mind in the middle of it and started writing absolutely nonsense. I deal with it in emails as well. I have to go back and reread them and make sure I didn’t say something insane. My husband reads absolutely everything I write and it’s almost like I need him to read it just to check I haven’t gone insane. But he’s amazing and I’m so grateful to him because he was reading 1000s of pages of my writing during the pandemic. He corrects my spelling, tells me I haven’t gone insane and he also has great suggestions for funny lines and little things. But mostly he’s just a support to keep me on track.
Lastly, I was lurking on your IG and saw that at the end of 2021, you posted about not trying to control everything which I can relate to! So, to end, I wanted to see what you’re trying to accomplish or manifest for yourself this year.
Oh, god, that’s a good question. I spent a lot of time acting in things and spending a lot of time writing things and sometimes they overlap a little bit. But I think it’s time for me to merge the two things — I want to write and star in one project together. So, my goal is to get that going this year alongside Karen Pirie and possibly more of The Curse, and other things. I think I’ve been a little bit afraid of it for the past 10 years. There’s no hiding if you’ve written the character and you’re acting it, too. I’ve been nervous to ever do that. But so many amazing kinds of women are doing it, like Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Michaela Coel.
The two that I thought of as soon as you said it! They paved the way for you.
Yeah, exactly. There are so many. I’ve been a little nervous to go there but this year I’m like, “Come on Emer, this is your time! Do it.” So that’s my next project basically. I guess if I was learning how to control these before, I think this one is about kind of turning off the fear in my head and just jumping for it.
The Curse is streaming now on Channel 4.
Interview Kelsey Barnes
Photography By Pip
Styling Hebe Fox
Makeup Francesca Brazzo
Hair Sven Bayerbach
