EXCLUSIVE: Flack writer Oliver Lansley on creating complex female characters and unmasking the modern woman

Oliver Lansley, the creator of Anna Paquin's show 'Flack,' wanted to create a TV series about women, who could grace the cover of the female version of 'Difficult Men', a book that originally featured the bad boys of American television industry who revolutionised TV shows with interesting narratives and characters.

Brett Martin's book 'Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution' refers not just to the anti-heroes of shows like 'Mad Men', 'The Wire', 'Sopranos' and 'Breaking Bad' but also the creators who revolutionized American television with their innovative narratives.

The show that Oliver has penned has four women - Robyn, Caroline, Eve and Melody - who lead the series which puts a spotlight on the field of celebrity PR management.

The women in the show are unapologetic about their flaws and go about the day helping celebrities fix the scandals that they land themselves in. In an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide, Lansley spoke about his complex female characters, and what he aims to achieve with the series.

What is the inspiration behind Flack?

When I was an actor, I got a good look at the world of PR and also did a film for BBC. I noticed how [celebrities] look well on all these talk shows and TV shows. I also got to see a little snippet of how it works and it fascinated me. It reminded me of the imaginations of politics we see in shows like 'The Thick of It,' but it all just felt immediately more accessible to the everyday person, because we're always constantly looking and the stories are now beeping on phone or on the Internet or to newspapers. We're aware of PR now because we PR our own lives on social media. So, it seemed like a really interesting and accessible world that I've not particularly seen before.

As a writer, what was the most challenging part about 'Flack' character sketches?

The most challenging part about creating the characters in Flack was to get the right balance between comedy and drama. The world of celebrity and satire is quite heightened and at the same time, you have these female characters that you have to be truthful to, to tell their stories. So, to find the balance between personal lives and work life and to find a balance between humor and drama was the most difficult part.

The character of Sophie Okonedo as Caroline is eccentric and her characteristics are what one would find on stereotypical shows about PR. Is she intentionally a caricature? 

The character is the boss of the company. So, she is almost a perfect creation of PR in herself. She has created an image to perfect effect on what she needs to achieve. The version that we see is kind of a caricature but hopefully, the series will resolve your thoughts and you'll start to see layers of dirt of the human beneath. The thing about Caroline is, she shows the world what she wants them to see, which at this stage is this perfect formidable terrifying boss. In a way, I think she is good at what she does and she has become a kind of creation of her own.

Robyn is self-destructive, but how much of it is guilt over her mother's suicide?

I think Robyn's self-destructive nature is kind of the key to her release. She's probably got a lot of self-loathing within her as a character, which is why it seems that whenever she feels like something is going good for her, she decides to hit the self-destruct button. A lot of that is to do with her mother and mother's suicide, but not just specifically to it. Her ongoing relationship with her mother before that also plays a role. Robyn found herself in a situation where she had to grow up early and be a caregiver when she hadn't chosen to do that. She wasn't quite ready. So you've got a lot of conflict in her about that and there's a lot to unpack with Robyn. She's a complicated beast.

Robyn's habit to bottle up of feelings - is this in any way significant of how women have to wear a mask in society today?

She has got in deep because she's constantly putting on a mask, as everybody is either the girlfriend or she's at work or she's the best friend or the mental. So the only time you really see her is when she's on her own in the bathroom. Which Anna Paquin would complain about a lot because you just constantly forced her to stand in these tiny little rooms. She did a very good job. Some of those moments where you see Anna looking in the mirror, I think that's when you really capture what's going on inside. I think that's common, not exclusively to women. We all in this day and age are forced to wear a lot of masks and it can be quite challenging.

Are the women in Flack inspired by someone in your life? Can you tell us about what was your inspiration behind creating a character like Eve?

I guess all of them, in some way, are the amalgamation of people I've known. All of them probably got a bit of me in them in a different capacity, but they're not one person who is connected to one character. They are very much a collection of people that I've known over the years and also of myself. There is a lot that's gone through the processes and ended up in those girls.

 What are you trying to achieve with a show such as Flack? 

What I'm trying to do is create an ensemble of women who are all interesting and diverse from each other and have their own things going on. In this world, they don't offer up easy answers and easy explanations for why they are the way that they are. That was one of the things I felt, particularly, five years ago when I started working on this. That if it were to be female characters, we make excuses for them and we apologize to them in a way that we don't with the male characters because you have these iconic male anti-heroes. Whereas, we don't allow women that sort of freedom. We judge them a bit more. I wanted to create this ensemble of women where we could really take our time to explore in a complex kind of way. I really hope that it's started to do that.

Are the scandals of celebrities featured on the show real? The first and second episode does remind us of different real-life celebrities.

I did everything that was inspired by a story that I heard and go with what I thought is the source - an interesting human element that comes from that story that I want to talk about. But they all started to come from somewhere and I think that's part of the positives. There are people, constantly asking me if I saw this person or that person. But, yet none of them is directly based on any one specific person. 

'Flack' is aired on Pop TV every Thursday at 10 pm EST. The show stars Anna Paquin, Sophie Okonedo, Rebecca Benson, and Lydia Wilson in lead roles.