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- [00:00]
Sally Wainwright
Foreign.
- [00:09]
Tiffany Hansen
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. You may have heard of the punk, political and musical feminist movement from the 90s dubbed riot girl. You can think of bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. Well, today we're introducing you to Riot women. Specifically a group of menopausal British women who are fed up.
- [00:32]
Joanna Scanlon
Women like this, women like us who are where they are in the world. And then suddenly all this nonsense happens that they never even saw coming.
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Sally Wainwright
Difficult parents.
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Joanna Scanlon
Oh my God. See, Mary, Midlife crisis, Husbands and your child still doing your heading. And then the menopause.
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Sally Wainwright
Menopause. Tearful.
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Joanna Scanlon
Every tiny stupid thing. The anxiety, the brain fog. And in the middle of all that, you become invisible, even to yourself.
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Sally Wainwright
You're right.
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Joanna Scanlon
Even when you're screaming and shouting, you're invisible.
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Sally Wainwright
I know.
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Joanna Scanlon
How does that happen?
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Sally Wainwright
I don't know.
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Joanna Scanlon
Just when you thought you've got traction in the world. Just when you finally think, I've got it sorted.
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Tiffany Hansen
I know.
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Joanna Scanlon
So I think whatever we do, we should do it with attitude.
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Tiffany Hansen
That is actor Joanna Scanlon, who plays Beth in the new series called Riot Women. From writer, producer, director, creator Sally Wainwright. The show centers on a group of five middle aged women who come together and form a punk band. Initially, they conceived of it as their entry into a local talent contest. Over time, the women realized they had a lot to say about grown up children, husbands, aging parents and their own middle age. Some of what they had to say was about the rage they feel, rage that can in moments feel very uncomfortable for everyone. Wainwright is responsible for writing and creating Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax and is also known for bringing strong female characters to the screen and for her rich storytelling. And now, if you believe the Guardian newspaper, she and her shows must also be prescribed as hormone replacement therapy. Sally Rain White Rain Wright, excuse me, created Riot Women. She writes and directs the show which will stream on Britbox in January. And she joins us in studio now to talk about it. So, Sally, welcome.
- [02:21]
Sally Wainwright
Thank you. It's nice to be here.
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Tiffany Hansen
So I summarized the series a little bit there. Did I do a good job of really what the essence of it is? 5 women coming together.
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Sally Wainwright
Yeah, I mean it's for me it was about writing about. I tend to write about the age I'm at and I was started to work to develop the idea for the show about 10 years ago and it was finding that I was in a place where I was just juggling a lot of life things, you know, big life things, you know, like having a, you know, pretty big career going on and teenage sons. My mother had started to develop dementia.
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My relationship with my husband was under the strain of, you know, me being away from home a lot and him bringing up the children by himself without me around so much. And.
- [03:11]
At the same time, the menopause kicks in. And I didn't even realize it was the menopause to start with because, you know, kind of symptoms that you don't always recognize or that you don't know are part of the menopause, like brain fog and low mood and that kind of tired. So you're kind of juggling a lot of things. You're really busy, and in the middle of all that, you start to kind of disappear or you start to feel like you're not quite the person you thought you were and that kind of thing. So I thought it was worth writing about. I thought it was something that I.
- [03:42]
Should dramatize the way I was feeling. And as I say, it became apparent that this was the menopause. I realized more about it, but I wanted to find a way of writing about it that kind of wasn't mourny, that was kind of uplifting. And saying that women like this at this age are interesting. They're not just people who are disappearing. They're women who are. Have still got a huge amount to offer. The women who are very capable and are capable of juggling a lot of things and managing a lot of things. But within the. But in the middle of that, you feel like you're being pulled in lots of different directions and no one's looking out for you anymore.
- [04:17]
Tiffany Hansen
Why a band?
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Sally Wainwright
Why a band? I've always wanted to write about female rock bands. There was a show on TV when I was a kid, I was about 13, and there was a show on telly called Rock Follies, and it was about a female rock band. And it changed my life. You know, I was like an obsessive TV watcher as a kid, but when I watched this show, it really hit me. It was like something had happened to me. It wasn't just a TV show. It made me think, oh, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to work in television. I'm going to write TV shows. And I remember really, you know, consciously thinking, I'm going to write shows like that. And that kind of never left me. So I'd always had this desire to write about a female rock band. So I was kind of putting the two ideas together. It was finding a way to write about. It's not a show about the menopause. It's about women at that age, when that's one of the things that comes to get you. But it was to find a way of writing about it that.
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Would allow it to be uplifting. It's about the fact that women at that age are still very creative and we're still capable of lots of things. And I'd never seen it dramatised on tv. If ever it is dramatized at all, it's usually in a sort of comedic context.
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Tiffany Hansen
Sure, right. Music, though, can be a very.
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Good outlet for women who are interested in telling their story. And I think for the music as a medium for the storytelling for these women to each talk about what it is that you've outlined that's happening for them. But punk.
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I mean, I get the rage, don't get me wrong.
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Sally Wainwright
Yeah, no, it did seem very appropriate. I remember talking to someone early on about the idea and they said, oh, you can't use. They can't be punk. Punks about youth. It's about youth and rebellion and anger. And I thought, like, there's nothing more angry than menopausal women. So that it seemed very amen. It seemed very appropriate on that level. But also they age. Beth, Beth, who's the kind of the catalyst of it all, is the same age as me and when I was 14, 15, punk was what we were listening to. It felt, it felt very much. That was like the, the soundtrack to my teenage years and, and the attitude as well.
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Tiffany Hansen
There is a lot of anger in middle aged women. I can say this as speaking as one. And you, you know, she mentioned it, the character Beth mentioned it in her little soliloquy there. You've mentioned it. How do you address it in the show, that rage?
- [06:58]
Sally Wainwright
I think what's interesting, hopefully interesting about Beth is that as we're introduced to her, she goes into work where she feels nobody kind of notices her. You know, she's a very nurturing person and the kids at school kind of take her for granted. Don't notice her, she's a bit of a jerk. And then she has an encounter with her boss, the deputy head, where she's being taken to task for speaking in a way that's been perceived as a put down to one of her junior members of staff. And she tells her boss that she tried to commit suicide last night. And he literally doesn't hear what she's saying. He thinks she's exaggerating. And I think it's kind of about that the anger comes from being. From feeling that you are now invisible. You've got to that age where people literally don't notice you anymore. They take for granted everything you do, all the big stuff you do. And it's kind of taken for granted. And I think that's where that. Certainly where I feel that anger comes from me, when I feel that people just don't notice. They want what you've got, they want what you can do, and they want what you can offer, but they don't notice what you're going through. They don't know if. They don't always notice if you're having a bad time or if you're struggling with stuff.
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Tiffany Hansen
How do you think society accepts or doesn't women who are angry?
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Sally Wainwright
It's interesting. Joanna, when she was doing an interview in London, was saying that it's not a feminine attribute, anger. We're sort of persuaded that we shouldn't appear to be angry or difficult or that kind of thing, because in women, it's perceived as.
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Weakness, a nastiness.
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Whereas in men, it's. It's. It's probably perceived as something very different. It's perceived as being decisive or not taking any bullshit off anyone, you know.
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So I think. I mean, that's part of the rebellion. And part of what I wanted to write about was women who are suddenly empowered to be just as angry and as difficult as they choose to be to express them. And that's. That's what comes through in the songs, that they can write these songs where they do express those emotions that are, you know, generally considered to be unf. Unfeminine.
- [09:23]
Tiffany Hansen
We're talking with the writer, director, creator, producer of the new show Riot Women. It's a show that will be streaming on BritBox coming in January. It's about a group of menopausal women who form a punk band, which I just think that alone sounds like a brilliant idea. Do you think Society. Sally Wainwright. I didn't say your name. That's right. There it is. Sally, do you think that society is sexist about aging in general? We have silver foxes, you know, men who are with the gray. You know, Pierce Brosnan with his graying locks, and women who are cougars, which has a very negative connotation to it as a sort of predator and a kind of.
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Sally Wainwright
You know.
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Tiffany Hansen
There'S something inherently dismissive in that about aging women is. Are we just all sexist about the way women age?
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Sally Wainwright
I think the way women are portrayed in the media and certainly in drama is a problem. I think it seems to be acceptable on TV for men to be older.
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Not necessarily attractive, interesting to look at all shapes and sizes. Whereas predominantly women tend to be thin, glamorous, under the age of 30, and not really very interesting. And I think.
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That'S probably. Probably because historically, women have been dramatized by men. You know, women on screen have predominantly been male constructs of what women are or what they want women to be. And I think it's only in the kind of last 20 years or so when more women have been writing screen parts. Well, even now, I think it's a problem that women.
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Writers still tend to write what they think people want on tv, which is kind of inauthentic women, which I think goes back to the idea of.
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Women being male constructs on television. And I think it's. It's unusual to see women as they really are. You know, it's still considered quite niche. So I think. I think, yeah, there's definitely that by, you know, you talk about Pierce Brosnan be the silver fox thing, that it's still. That's still sexy and interesting, whereas women. Cool guards. I mean, I think that's a male construct. Is that idea that women, you know, if you put a group of women together, they'll just be bitchy. Or the, you know. You know, the old idea that if you put women together together, they'll talk about men, you know, which, you know, they don't. They talk about what they're interested in, and it's not all men. So I think, you know, I think things are changing. But as ever, it's slow. It's a slow process, and it doesn't always move forward. It's off. It often feels like one step forward and two steps back, or women who.
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Tiffany Hansen
Are portrayed in an. Who look authentic, whatever that means, are the butt of the joke, or they're meant to be funny, or they're not. You know, they're not the tall, skinny version.
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Sally Wainwright
I suppose what I mean by authentic is women that you recognize. I mean, one of the nice things since the show's gone out in the UK is that we've had a huge response from women saying, thank you for representing me as. As I am not just not a sort of glamorized version of women that I fall short of or makes me feel inadequate. You know, this is. It's women seeing themselves recognizable on screen.
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Tiffany Hansen
One of the things that I found so lovely about the program is that these five women are not all cookie cutters of the same woman.
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Sally Wainwright
No, the.
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Tiffany Hansen
The. They are. You know, they they each have their own very distinct past, their own very distinct view about how to approach the world and approach their life now that they are at this certain age. So just talk a little bit about those characters and how they differ and how maybe how fun and challenging that might have been to create all of these differing viewpoints.
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Sally Wainwright
Well, it's kind of embarrassment of riches, really. You know, I got a chance to create five women and. And they. They're all. They're sort of loosely connected with one another. Like Holly and Yvonne are sisters. Jess runs a pub and she knows Holly because as a police officer, Holly's had to go in and occasionally sort things out at closing time, when it gets a bit rowdy. Jess was at school with Beth, so they're old friends and Kitty doesn't know any of them. She's like a complete wild card when she comes into it. So they're all women who live in the same area and they're all of a certain age and they're all similar class. But, yeah, I mean, they are all really distinct personalities. They're all a nice complement and contrast.
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Tiffany Hansen
To one another and they all have a differing response to their circumstance. So not everybody is angry. Not everybody is, you know, a doormat. Not everybody is.
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Sally Wainwright
How did. Oh, not at all. I mean, like Holly, for instance, who's the police officer. She. She. She's. She joins the band because she's can do. She's like. Jess has a list of people she could ask to be in her band and they've all been crossed out because everybody said no. And there's one tick and it's next to Holly's name because Holly's the kind of person who will always say yes. So, you know, life's for living. So, yeah, they're a nice mixed bag of different personalities and each of them.
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Tiffany Hansen
Has specific challenges that they're dealing with. Job, grown children.
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Sally Wainwright
Yeah, well, again, it's the kind of issues I was talking about earlier where they're all women who are balancing a lot of things. They've all got a lot on their plate, a lot of things to deal with. For me, this. That one of the catalysts for wanting to write it was when my mum started to develop dementia. And, you know, it's one of those things you don't really see coming, even though, you know it's a lot of people experience that with their parents and have to deal with it, but you kind of don't plan for it because you don't expect it to happen or you don't. It's one of those things you don't think is going to happen to you, and then when it does, it's, you know, how do you deal with it? There's not a lot of help out there. There's not a lot of guidance about what next steps are and that kind of thing. And of course, it brings. It brings with it a lot of issues in the sort of personal politics of famil.
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I found it's. It's often the way that when that happens, one sibling is left to look after the parent while the others sort of happily turn a blind eye. So there's all that, which is what happened. One of the stories in the show.
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Tiffany Hansen
Of course.
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You know, we've been talking a lot about being angry and women feeling invisible and. But there's a lot in this show that is hopeful.
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Sally Wainwright
Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, I want. In a way, it's a celebration of women at this age too. You know, it's a celebration of.
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The idea that.
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You'Ve reached a certain maturity and you kind of know who you are and your. Your personality is layered and developed. That's why I do like writing about people who are more mature. It's one of the things I've learned as a dramatist as I've got older, that characters who've got some history have a lot more about them. I wrote a drama called Last Time Going Halifax a few years ago, which, again, was based on my mum. And it was about two people who got married at 7, fell in love and got married at 75, and they'd known each other since they were little. And so it was a story that kind of started 60 years ago and the penny dropped. For me then, that a story that starts 60 years ago is inevitably gonna have so many layers and depth and anecdotes from the past and just two people who know each other incredibly well, even though they haven't seen each other for 60 years because they knew each other as children. So I always think that a story that has some history to it and we meet it at a certain point when a lot is already underway and there's a lot of backstory to it, inevitably it's going to be a richer tale that you're telling.
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Tiffany Hansen
These women are very resilient.
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Sally Wainwright
Mm. Well, we kind of, aren't we? When we get to this age, we've had a lot of things to deal with. We've seen a lot of stuff.
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Tiffany Hansen
We have, haven't we?
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Sally Wainwright
Yeah.
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Tiffany Hansen
And I think this show for me also illustrates something that I really have come to understand as I've gotten older, which is the power of friendship.
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Sally Wainwright
Yeah, yeah.
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Tiffany Hansen
And how much my women friends.
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Sally Wainwright
Absolutely.
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Tiffany Hansen
And how important it is to cultivate those friendships.
- [18:08]
Sally Wainwright
Yes. Again, I think there's this kind of myth in the way women are often portrayed in drama and on tv. And again, it's a male construct. You know, if you put women together, they're going to be scratching each other's eyes out within minutes and it'll probably be over a man, you know, that's a complete myth. I think one of the really interesting things about. I've discovered in recent years, like, particularly when my mum developed dementia, the people who helped me were my friends. You know, there was a real sense of support from amongst my friends in terms of not just listening to you, but just giving you practical advice and help. I mean, my best friend came with me to help empty my mum's house, for instance, which my sister didn't want to do because my mum and my sister had a difficult relationship.
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And it was. It was a real eye opener, that. That's true, that your female friends do become much more important the older you get, I think. And it's an important part of the way we now talk about the menopause, you know, and, you know, we are all talking about the menopause more. Yeah. But it's really helpful and supportive and brilliant that women, you know, talk to each other about it in a way that people just didn't used to do.
- [19:19]
Tiffany Hansen
The show is called Riot Women, Sally. The show premieres on BritBox in January.
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Sally Wainwright
That's correct, yeah.
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Tiffany Hansen
We have a text here from someone who says, I'm an OG riot girl, drummer in my 40s. Excited to see Riot Women. Really love Gentleman Jack. We'll let it go on this question. Does Sally have any more shows in the works? There's a season two of Riot Women, right?
- [19:43]
Sally Wainwright
Yeah, yeah. We've already been recommissioned for a second series of Riot Women and I'm working on. I'm writing a film at the moment which I'm working on with James Norton, who was in Happy Valley, and. And I've got two other series.
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Busy lady, which Busy Lady. I'd love to tell you what they are, but they've not been announced yet, so I'm not allowed to talk about.
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Tiffany Hansen
Well, we're happy to have talked to you about Riot Women that premiering on Britbox coming up in January. We've been talking with Sally Wainwright, who is the creator, producer, director, writer. Sally, thanks so much for your time.
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Sally Wainwright
Today we appreciate it. Thank you very much.
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Tiffany Hansen
This is all of it. I'm Tiffany Hansen, in for Alison Stewart today. She'll be back tomorrow. Join us then.
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