With Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight created an alternative to cosy costumes. Now new series Taboo will show a wild side to 1814 England.
Taboo Trailer (HD) Tom Hardy (Season 1)
There are
historical dramas, and then there are historical dramas written by Steven
Knight. The 57-year-old creator of cult gangster drama Peaky Blinders has built
a reputation as the man to go to for a risky period piece, and that is
certainly the case with his latest show, Taboo, which starts on BBC1 on Saturday.
It’s the
tale of James Keziah Delaney (Tom Hardy), a Georgian adventurer with a very
dark past who returns from America on his father’s death and promptly finds
himself up to his neck in intrigue, murder and revenge. Taboo might not feature
Peaky Blinders’ beguiling mix of modern music and sharp fashion, but Knight’s
muscular, colourful and occasionally shocking script ensures that it is very
much hewn from the same rock, although the writer insists he is not simply
aiming for outraged headlines.
“I hope it
will have the sort of loyalty that Peaky does and I think people will be
surprised by it,” he says. “It’s definitely a different way of doing English
period drama. Not that there’s anything wrong with how it’s done at the moment,
but I wanted to make something that felt more unfamiliar. I felt why not tell
this story, not for any political reason but because it’s there and it hasn’t
really been told.”
The story
he is referring to is the beginnings of industrialisation and the start of what
would eventually become the Victorian empire. Taboo is set during the regency
of the future George IV, but Knight is clear that the seeds of change were
already being sown.
“I see it
as a story not about class but about commerce,” he says. “The history of
Britain has always been written through the prism of class, and that’s fine,
but the 19th century was driven by money and this story reflects that. This is
a drama about the ships and money and warehouses and docks that formed the
engine of the empire.”
However, he
cautions against drawing too many parallels between the expansionist East India
Company, whose often malign influence is felt throughout the series, and
today’s corporations. “It is a modern story because it’s about big business and
corporate enterprise but I’ve tried not to make it simply ‘the East India
Company were evil’ because that’s so easy to do. They did things that we now
know to be evil, but if you want to learn anything from it you have to
understand that they were human beings like us. They were capable of both good
and bad.”
This sense
of the past as a shifting beast made up of many stories and personalities is
key to Knight’s view of history. “We tend to believe that history goes in
straight lines but it doesn’t,” he says. “We look back and believe that history
tells the story of how we gradually became more permissive but the reality is
that history goes in circles and if you look at the morality of 1814 [when
Taboo is set] it’s much more hedonistic and libertarian than the 1960s. It was
all going on.”
A key
player in this intriguing story is the East India Company. What started as a
trading company in 1600 became a powerful imperial interest, with substantial
commercial and political influence which ruled over India from the late 18th
century. Tales of misconduct, dishonest dealings and exploitation abounded. The
famous impeachment trial of Warren Hastings during the 1780s and 1790s
reinforced contemporary perceptions of a corrupt and unscrupulous organisation.
Fuelled by
concerns of mismanagement, Pitt’s India Act was passed in 1784, resulting in
the British government overseeing the Company’s rule in India. What’s very
clear in Taboo is that the East India Company is a dangerous force, reinforced
by Jonathan Pryce’s portrayal of the ruthless chairman Sir Stuart Strange.
While the
tale that unfolds in Taboo is pure fiction, there are certain elements of fact.
East India Company men did indeed spend years overseas in its service. Though
many perished under harsh conditions, some did return home. Even if their
repatriation wasn’t quite as dramatic as Delaney’s, nonetheless, a great deal
of intrigue surrounded the homecomings. These men were mockingly nicknamed “nabobs” and were seen as different. Most
certainly looked different – in the same way that Delaney’s sun-scorched skin
is a noticeable contrast in Taboo, returned Company men bore the mark of their
time away under tropical climes.
Looking at
the surviving memoirs, letters and diaries of returned Company men, the lasting
impact of the east is a running theme. Some returned broken in health and
spirits, bearing the physical and mental scars of their time abroad. Others
however came back with tremendous wealth generated through imperial
exploitation.
Indeed,
entry into the service of the East India Company could be a ticket to adventure
and great fortune. Through office holding, administration, trade, business or
high-ranking posts in the Company’s army it was possible to secure great
wealth. Other money-making opportunities, such as plundering or illegal trade,
were available and huge fortunes were generated. On his death in 1774, the
Company army officer and administrator Robert Clive, known as Clive of India,
had amassed a substantial estate amounting to more than £500,000.
Viewers may
already have been suspicious that the relationship between Zilpha and Hardy’s
James Delaney wasn’t entirely on the up and up when, in the pilot, Zilpha
greeted Delaney’s initial return to London with an almost-orgasmic gasp. Any
doubts about the nature of his feelings for her were quickly dispelled when
Hardy, in full “bristly pig” (his description) mode, growled to Chaplin, “One
thing Africa did not cure is that I still love you.” There’s also a very strong
possibility that their “brother,” who was sent away, is actually their son: a
shameful product of incest hidden away.
And while
Zilpha and James exchange harsh words, there’s no denying that the tension
between the two of them goes far beyond ordinary family matters. This bad
romance, Chaplin explains, has everything to do with the title of the show.
“There’s a sexual libertarianism right now. Girls are walking around with their
asses hanging out, and guys are just as much. Sex has become a very public-display
type of thing, so there’s very few things that have remained taboo. Where does
the taboo lie now? I think it’s in incest.”
Chaplin is
working from a script originally conceived by Hardy, and his father, Chips.
Hardy as an actor is notoriously immersive—something that has caused conflict
with both co-stars and directors—but Chaplin found his hands-on process
enormously helpful when navigating the darker twists and turns of the
Zilpha/James relationship.
As her
producer and co-star, Hardy was especially invested in Chaplin’s interpretation
of the role. “He wants you to take part in the creative process. He’ll tell you
to fuck off if it’s not good, but he’ll tell you that it’s good if it is,”
Chaplin explains of their collaborative process on Taboo. “This was a very
particular context, so it makes him sound like a bit of a dick, actually. But
he’s a real hunter for truth, and I think that that is what makes him so
magnetic, is that he doesn't want to see a nice façade presenting and talk
about the weather. It was very challenging, because it makes you confront all
of these things that you’re not used to, which is the bullshit of life.
Actually, with him, very quickly I realized that the bullshit just doesn’t
work. It doesn’t fly.”
Digging
into hard truths (as Chaplin puts it, “your worms”) of human relationship,
Hardy has come up with an incest plot as the ultimate will-they, won’t-they,
should-they love triangle of Taboo. “Until we make it normal that brothers and
sisters can fuck,” Chaplin says, returning to the theme of “taboo” subjects, “I
think that’ll still be the only interesting aspect of sex that remains. Maybe.
I don’t know. I’ve never tried it”—she pauses and laughs—“. . . yet.” That’s an
answer that could make even a Lannister blush.
Vanity Fair
“However,
having said that, if you’re saying ‘here is television pointing a camera at 300
years of British history’, then there’s more than one way of skinning that
rabbit. And it’s great to do Poldark, it’s great to do Downton, but you can
also do this. It’s not shock that I would hope people feel, it would be a
realisation that there is another way of looking at something.”
Hardy has
said the character is an amalgam of “every classical character in one”,
including two he has played on screen: Bill Sikes and Heathcliff. His father,
comedy scriptwriter Edward ‘Chips’ Hardy, helped him to develop the idea before
taking it to Knight.
Knight had
never met Hardy before, but they struck a deal: the writer agreed to create
Taboo on condition that the actor would star in Knight’s 2013 film, Locke.
Hardy has
said of Taboo: “People will either like it or hate it… either it’s going to go
well or it’s going to go really f---ing badly.”
But
Knight does not agree: “It’s a very Tom thing to say. It’s not one of those things
where I think people are either going to not get it, or resent it, or think
it’s gratuitous. There isn’t gratuitous sex; there’s some violence in there
but, as you’ll see as the series develops, everything’s done for a reason.”
The Telegraph
DEADLINE:
Speaking of where it goes, there is a very distinct pacing to Taboo, an
unraveling of events and secrets and consequences that doesn’t conform to the
usual dramatic format. Why take that approach?
KNIGHT:
Well, I relish the eight-hour format of a single season because it gives you
time to do that. When we first discussed this we wanted it to feel almost like
a novel, and a novel can take its time to establish characters. And I think
once those friendships, if you use that as an analogy, the friendships between
the audience and the character is established, then you can start to take
liberties. I believe that as this unfolds people will find the time invested
worthwhile.
But also,
there’s something about the evolution of television where it evolved from to
the things that we’re now watching and loving. It evolved from film writers,
film actors, and I think gradually people are easing themselves into the amount
of time they have. So a creative person can suddenly realize it’s not 90
minutes. They haven’t got to do three acts, they haven’t got to do the arc, but
they can do other things. I think just as novellas turned into novels, I think
that television series can begin to have that depth. I’m not suggesting that
ours is unique in that, but they can begin to have that depth, that gravity,
they can spend some time, so it’s a bit more like reading a good novel, if you
like.
Why are all
these people so drawn to him? There’s now plenty of evidence that being in the
Delaney business is a dangerous one.
KNIGHT: I would
say that it’s that question of whether you believe in destiny or
self-determination. I think this is an examination of self-determination, where
people are drawn to him not because they don’t have a choice, but because he is
the choice that is most like themselves. So he is the one that breaks the rules
that they would like to be broken. And I think spies and prostitutes and
misfits and all of these people are drawn to him because he almost grasps their
difference and makes a virtue of it, which is exactly what he does.
HARDY:
Absolutely. He’s assembled quite the diverse collective and it stands outside
the basic construct of civilized establishment, in order to evoke change for
the better, even though it’s a very painful transition and often it doesn’t
look civilized. There’s a strange nobility as well about that crew, the sort of
not-so-polished members of society. I think of the biggest things that we had
in the original context of the series is that you realize that James is the
least savage person in the room, whether around the company or the king. Those
who are seen as more savage to those that are on the outside, those who are the
voiceless have kind of banded together to use their collective intelligence to
become a force to be reckoned with. There’s something totally honest and noble
about everybody who gets on that boat.
KNIGHT: In that
society, in every society, people use each other, but James says it aloud, “I
have a use for you.” It doesn’t mean he’s good, it just means he’s telling the
truth and I think that’s a good first step.
As we’ve
discussed, a lot of characters were lost, but the most heartbreaking was at the
beginning and didn’t involve a bullet or explosion. Why was this Zilpha’s fate?
Was she just never going to fit in with Delaney and the Damned?
KNIGHT: What I
like about Taboo just in general, even in writing it, you are not certain what
the motives are sometimes because these characters are so odd that you let them
speak for themselves and you’re never quite sure where it’s headed. In my opinion,
and I do think it is a matter of opinion for anyone, one of the redeeming
features of James Delaney is that when he found out Zilpha had murdered her
husband, he didn’t like it, because he didn’t want her to be part of this. He’s
broken because she did that. He would never express this, but maybe somewhere
deep down, he wanted her to escape from him. She was never going to board the
ship, she wasn’t right. He didn’t have a use for her.
HARDY: The
nature of his relationship with his sister had more to do with obsession than
genuine love. The reason why he buried Thorne was because he felt bad that
Thorne had died when he didn’t have to die. James had plenty of opportunities
to kill Thorne, but he didn’t because Zilpha didn’t want him to — he wanted her
to leave him. And when she finally decided to kill Thorne, she had said that
James had told her to do that and he never had. Which I think goes on the
grounds of whether or not there’s a mystical quality to James and not just a
mental or traumatic hypervigilance that she hacked into. He’s not sure what
that is, whether it’s a gift or a curse. He genuinely doesn’t remember saying
that to her. Zilpha did that of her own volition, which ironically makes her
seem insane as he rejected her, in a passionate way. They knew each other’s
madness and she kind of stepped across an unwritten line between the two of
them. I think he felt they were one and then she actually outed the oneness, so
he started to step away from her. I believe after the funeral, he went to say, “That’s
it — I want nothing to do with you.” Instead of that, he says, “Take that f—ing
dress off,” which just came out of his mouth, like somebody trying not to go
back to their primary addiction or obsession. Then, they have sex and he starts
to see his mother and his mother is basically saying, “No, just realize this
isn’t love — this is obsession. And you’re not going to move forward
spiritually, because you’re having sex with your sister to punish your father
for killing me. So if you see women like that, you might as well be having sex
with me.” That shock completely pulls him out. I think he sees the light after
that.
KNIGHT: There
are issues throughout the series of rationality, reason, irrationality,
spirituality, mysticism, and all those things. And I think that you could see
James Delaney as a very mystical character, which he is, but in fact, this
event proves to him that he doesn’t have control of that side. He has absolute
control of the rational side, but that falls apart when he realizes he can’t
control that and what he has said to people and what influence he has had on
people subconsciously.
HARDY: He’s
really driven by that connection, driven to question if he really does have a
gift or if he’s not well. And it almost throws the whole plan out of the window
and it takes Lorna to talk him into it, to step up and do what he’s been
planning for the last eight episodes.
Entertainment Weekly
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