Interview with Rebecca Asher, Director

Series one established such a distinctive tone — it's funny and touching while also being sad and confronting. How did you approach maintaining that balance in series two and did directing it feel different the second time around?
In both series directing the show has been about honouring the shifts Camilla writes as she so good at those shifts. You have to let the funny, touching, sad and confronting overlap one another like they do in life. Not be afraid to take something dark or sad and put it right on top of something funny is key.

Nicola and Lydia have an extraordinary chemistry — they're a joy to watch. As a director, how do you work with that — do you try to protect it and stay out of the way, or is there more active shaping involved in getting those dynamics on screen?

Lydia and Nicola love each other so much, it really is, like you said, my job to not get in the way of that and making sure they have the space they need. And of course to track the emotional arcs through the 6 episodes so I can be helpful when we’re shooting out of order.

The second series opens with a year of silence between Maggie and Eddie. How do you direct around an absence — the weight of everything that hasn't been said between two people who usually can't stop talking?

You have to be willing to sit in the silences. There are a few wonderful awkward pauses between them the first day they see each other again. We kept them long so the audience can feel Maggie’s longing and Eddie’s guardedness. The way Nicola and Lydia play with and against each other is lovely. 

Depicting bipolar disorder on screen carries real responsibility. How closely did you work with any consultants to make sure Maggie's experience felt honest rather than dramatised?

I think it’s just about not shying away from the darkness or making the mania seem superficial in an attempt to be “hilarious”. The manic episode that Maggie’s in at the beginning of series one, for instance, seems like it could be just the heightened personality of a character we’re just meeting. You might think ‘oh sure, let’s go on this adventure with Maggie and Eddie.’ The way it unfolds though is pretty satisfying, I think. She’s in over her head and going to her old school isn’t some lark, it’s a manic delusion that gets very uncomfortable, even destructive. That’s honest, and honesty keeps you from trivializing things or tipping into melodrama. Camilla has done a great job drawing multi-dimensional characters, so Maggie is many, many more things before she’s bipolar. That helps keep her bipolar from having to shoulder the responsibility of the comedy or drama, which can lock people into tropes.

Whitney's arrival introduces a very different energy into the show. What was your approach to making her feel like a genuine presence rather than just a plot device?

Honestly, that has everything to do with casting. Hannah Onslow is remarkable. The task of casting Whitney was worrisome. Series two relies so much on Whitney as a foil for Maggie, in that, though she as a character is a bit out there, she has to be a plausible replacement, so she had to bring a charisma that wouldn’t get swallowed by Nicola. If the actor playing Whitney couldn’t pull off the balance of being likable, but with darker undercurrent, it really wouldn’t have worked. Camilla wrote her really well, but Hannah was able to bring a wonderfully layered Whitney to life. It helped too that the minute Hannah showed up for the table read it was clear she was family.

What do you think Big Mood understands about female friendship that other shows get wrong?

I don’t know if I can put this in the context of what other shows get wrong. We’re all just telling stories, after all. What I appreciate about Big Mood is Eddie and Maggie’s friendship isn’t muddied by boyfriends or girlfriends. There is a little of Jonah in the first series, Eddie’s ex, but we spend very little time with him. Maggie and Eddie have been each other’s most important relationship, platonic or otherwise, and Camilla has written the show honouring that. It’s really a romantic comedy that mines the romantic ideas we have about friendship in our youth—and how difficult it is when those ideas collide with real life, which is what makes the transition into our thirties so difficult.

If you had to describe what series two is really about — underneath all the comedic chaos — what would you say?

I would say it’s about healing, forgiveness and the hard-won understanding that we have to work for what we value. Maggie and Eddie have an ease with each other that was clear from the moment they met. It’s easy to take that for granted and fall into dynamics that inevitably shift as each person grows. When that shift starts to happen, do we feel betrayed and turn away? Or do we dig into the soil of that foundation and work to save the friendship? It’s a crossroads.