Q&A with Camilla Whitehill, writer and creator of Big Mood

I understand you wrote the role of Maggie specifically with Nicola Coughlan in mind. How did that come about?

I've known Nicola for — I forget every time — I think it's 17 years this year. We met at drama school in Oxford and stayed friends ever since. So when I started developing Big Mood, I was just like, well, obviously Nicola would play the lead part. She’s my favourite actor and one of my favourite people. And then I just never really asked her. I sort of told her she was doing it, and luckily she was just like, okay, that's fine. If she hadn't been able to do it, I can't imagine it, really. She's so easy to write for. It's like a dream.

When did you get the lightbulb moment for Big Mood?

My first job working in TV was with Dancing Ledge, who made Big Mood. I worked on their show Porters, and afterwards they said they'd love to develop a show with me. They did a really good thing — instead of saying come back with an idea and we'll see, they gave me a development deal and said let's decide the idea together. That meant I could go back and forth loads of times until I found what felt right for both of us.

I always wanted to write about female friendship. Always. They’re definitely the most interesting relationships in my life. Female friendships are still dismissed as a bit silly by most people — even if they pretend they don't think that — and it's my mission to get everyone to understand that the best and most interesting relationships are the ones that women have with other women.

So many shows centre on romantic love, but the beating heart of Big Mood is Eddie and Maggie's relationship. Was that always the intention?

I honestly struggle to be interested in their romantic lives. Eddie and Maggie have, I'm sure, fulfilling active sex lives, but you don't really see it — because that's just not the thing about them that interests me. What interests me is their relationship with each other.

That age, in your early thirties, is such a time of change — everyone around you starts giving birth, getting married, moving across the world. Friendships you built in your twenties might not survive that, or they might. I know for sure there are friendships I had in my twenties that just didn't make it through, for no one's fault other than that everyone's life changed so much. And then there are others that are forged in iron and nothing could undo them. For Maggie and Eddie, they have the additional challenges of Maggie's mental illness and Eddie's emotional restrictions, which mean they are constantly, sort of accidentally, winding each other up.

Big Mood is very funny while also dealing with mental health in a genuinely nuanced way. When you started writing it, what tone were you trying to capture?

That's pretty much my garden, really. When I was trying to give tonal references I'd say things like Bojack Horseman — which maybe sounds weird because it's a cartoon, but it straddles comedy and drama so well. Or Master of None, or Search Party — where you have the space to go big and broad with comedy when you want to, or as silly as you want to. I find the entire concept of genre quite restrictive and needlessly so. Life as I see it is making jokes in between horrible things happening. That's kind of how I write.

Where does that sense of real, observed humour come from?

I keep a notes app of things that really make me laugh in real life, and most of them never find their way in. But if one of my friends tells me a story I find funny, it'll find its way in there more than likely. My mum came to set when we were filming this series for the first time, and it happened to be when we were filming a scene where Niamh, who plays Maggie's mum, has a line about Mr. Big dying on a Peloton — which was quite literally copied from my own mum. I'd forgotten to warn her, and when she heard it she looked at me and rolled her eyes, but it was just too fun not to take. The funniest people in the world are just real people.

How did you approach writing series two?

You can really freak out about it, and it's very easy to do so. But then you just have to remember it is just a TV show and all you can do is your best. There's no real right or wrong answer to what happens in a series two.

I wanted to see what would happen if there was a love triangle — for Maggie and Eddie. You see it a lot in romantic relationships on TV, but I was really interested in seeing it play out in a friendship, because it's so much more complicated to negotiate. I was also very interested in healing — what healing actually looks like. I wanted to explore genuine healing, which I think is what Maggie represents this series, and then also capitalism's idea of healing — what can be sold to you, what can be told to you that will help you. The wellness industry and its effect on people really interests me. Everyone's just trying to survive, but there are also a lot of people trying to sell you healing in a bottle or a thirty-day yoga programme.

Mental health narratives can easily tip into being very dark or quite preachy. How did you write bipolar disorder in a way that still let the show feel alive?

To me, mental illness is quite funny — I mean, everything is, really. Any obstacle that's thrown in your path is funny if you look at it from a certain position. It's all about how people cope with problems, and people are often bad at coping, and those coping mechanisms are frequently hilarious. There's a natural humour to it that maybe is hard to see for some people but seems clear to me.

But in series two, I also really wanted to show that having a mental illness doesn't mean you're always in crisis. It doesn't mean it ever goes away or that it isn't an influence on your life — but because Maggie is in such acute crisis in series one, I didn't want to give the impression that this is what bipolar disorder always looks like. I wanted to go further than that. I also made a deliberate choice to avoid therapy scenes altogether in series two — that's been done, and it's a slightly too easy way into those narratives. If you've seen the scene before and you know it, don't write it.

What new questions about Maggie and Eddie's relationship did you want to explore?

I just wanted to stress test them — a bit like on Love Island when they send someone to Casa Amor. I didn't really know how it would end up. There were a few different ways series two could have gone and I didn't decide until I wrote it. Eddie has ghosted Maggie and returned with a new best friend — I mean, that is the ultimate stress test. I wanted to genuinely see how they'd deal with it.

I think there's something interesting in long-term friendships where sometimes you just plaster over a lot of stuff because you love the other person. If you got into the weeds of every problem or difficult moment, you'd be getting into the weeds of it forever. And sometimes love is just moving on completely.

The chemistry between Nicola and Lydia is so palpable on screen. Did you encourage them to improvise with each other?

No — we were just lucky that they got on really well immediately. Nicola had met Lydia at the BAFTAs before we'd even confirmed the casting and immediately said how nice she seemed. And I think if you want friendship to be authentic on screen, the best thing you can do is cast two genuinely friendly people. Nicola and Lydia are both really warm, lovely people who were up for having a nice time together, and you kind of can't go wrong with that.

One of the reasons I wanted to cast Lydia was how believable a friend she was in It's a Sin — she knows how to connect with another actor on screen. And they both just have that. I did a read-through months before I'd even finished writing the first series, just in the production company's offices, and I listened to them together and thought — yes. That's immediate. They just get on.

Series two has some incredible cameos. Were those always part of the plan?

I love a cameo, though you have to be careful — you don't want to overdo it. Having Rupert Everett in episode two was just mad. It was so extraordinary watching him work. He is such a movie star, and so completely professional and on it — he brought so many good ideas and was so into it. And episode two is also a love letter to drag, which is essentially my religion — Drag Race is my football. Having Kyran, who won series six of Drag Race UK, was one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I was just trying to give myself a nice time as much as possible, really.