Can you talk about the inspiration behind your new show, I May Destroy You?

I was sexually assaulted in 2016. It’s a flashback I don’t remember, because my drink was spiked. That experience formed the basis for this show. I’m very vocal and transparent. I share a lot. That’s just the way I am. After the experience, I began to talk to my friends and I quickly realized that they had things they wanted to share with me on this writing journey about consent. That became my motivation for pushing the story out way beyond my personal experiences. I decided I wanted to bring other characters into the forefront to explore how consent affects lives.

What does your writing process involve?

It took me two and a half years to write I May Destroy You. It’s been the only job during that time. I haven’t done any multi-tasking. I’ve been working in quite a monomaniacal fashion. When I begin a show, I pitch the idea and describe what the story is about. The BBC gave me a straight-to-series commission, so I teamed up with [executive producer] Phil Clarke to work on my first few drafts. I usually go away from home to focus on writing. I go to places like Lake Tahoe or Kent or wherever to create the first set of script drafts – and then the team ask me questions about what I mean, because a lot of it doesn’t make sense in those early drafts. I listen to their questions and I go back to the drawing board to create something that has more clarity. That process goes on for two years and then you shoot – but as we shot this, I was constantly making amendments because I co-directed and executive produced the show, too. I am always trying to make it better.

As the show is based on some level of truth, how challenging was the writing experience?

Writing the show was incredibly cathartic. Let me describe it this way… If you’ve got a dog, you walk your dog. In this scenario, it feels like the story is the dog and it’s unruly. The dog drags me across continents, up into the heaven and down into hell. Over and over again, I kept finding myself in the shock, the delusion, the anger, the denial, and the depression. But what’s amazing is the process. As you move forward with different drafts, the process has enabled me to push through so much of the pain that I’d attached myself to. This trauma had become my narrative and I allowed myself to dominate that narrative rather than let it dominate me.

What research did you tackle during the writing process?

In 2018, I was a Fellow at [the British research charity] The Wellcome Trust, which means I was given access to anybody that I wanted to speak to. It was incredible. If I wanted to speak to an astronaut, I could speak to an astronaut. If I wanted to speak to a scientist, I could speak to a scientist. I wanted to speak to somebody who studied the effects of date-rape drugs, dissociatives and sedatives. I was writing in Lake Tahoe at the time, but I spoke to a specialist and I basically ran by him this story. I would ask him questions like, “Is it possible that someone’s memory could come back?” Hearing him talk allowed me to feel more confident in what I was writing. I wanted to know if it was plausible in science that a head injury could also have something to do with the problem of memory loss, along with date-rape drugs. Talking with those doctors was very helpful.

I don’t have a word for the tone of the show and I don’t try to create the tone. The tone is already there. It was always there. I wonder whether it’s because sometimes life is so absurd and all your ideas of certainty fall through the floor? Maybe I have to laugh first to get me into what’s traumatic. Or perhaps I laugh to disassociate first?