Creator/Writer Neil Forsyth talks to The Inside Reel about structure, motivation, basis and intent of story for his drama series: “The Gold” on Paramount+.
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - Now on we're chasing the interesting ones.
00:13 - We can't stop until it's done.
00:15 - Well if he won't stop and we won't stop,
00:17 then it's a race.
00:18 - Making a series like this in this sort of compressed area
00:26 of like the six episodes is interesting,
00:29 but you did all the research
00:32 and you did obviously co-write a book on this.
00:34 Can you talk about like sort of looking
00:36 at dramatic license versus real life,
00:39 versus the concepts of what it's talking about,
00:42 of course is with greed and all the logistics.
00:45 Can you talk about where the starting point psychologically
00:47 was for you because everybody's going
00:49 through so many things in this?
00:50 - Yeah, well the big thing was the research.
00:53 We did six months of full-time research
00:56 and it was actually as a result of that
00:57 that we decided to do the book that came along
01:00 with the show because we had this vast document
01:02 that I knew I was only gonna be able to really tell
01:04 a snapshot of in six episodes.
01:07 So it was all kind of concurrent and quite organic,
01:09 but it all came from just rolling up our sleeves
01:11 and putting in the work for six months,
01:14 looking through decades of newspaper archives,
01:17 court transcripts, old interviews,
01:19 and just trying to piece the whole thing together really.
01:22 It was a bit of a jigsaw, such a complicated story.
01:25 And then when we got into writing the TV,
01:27 creative license, I think is,
01:29 you need to have done the work first
01:32 so that you feel you can justify the creative license
01:34 and do it in a clear conscious.
01:35 And often it's just simplifying the story,
01:39 taking a story that's extremely complicated
01:41 and trying to tell it in a relatively cohesive way.
01:45 - Gold like that, you can't control it.
01:48 And if you can't handle it,
01:50 then it will find its way to someone who can.
01:54 - Six robbers have carried out an armed raid,
01:56 stealing almost three tons of gold.
01:58 - So for instance, you can shift it.
02:00 You can handle a job like this.
02:01 And out of it, you only hear about the people who get caught.
02:04 - But it's also the fact with all these characters
02:06 from Cooper to Boyce to Jack's character.
02:10 It's interesting because all have a motivation
02:13 out of almost class structure,
02:15 which I thought was really interesting.
02:17 'Cause you see that motivation,
02:19 even down to towards the end,
02:20 the way you have Dominic play it almost with his mother,
02:23 which isn't giving too much away.
02:25 Can you talk about that, looking at those motivations?
02:27 'Cause that's what fuels these people
02:29 is those emotional responses,
02:32 even Palmer, even Tom's character.
02:34 - Yeah, I think class is a big part of the story.
02:36 I mean, the fact it takes place in 1983,
02:38 which in the UK was a time when the government
02:41 were telling people that that very rigid,
02:43 traditional English class system
02:45 no longer applied to their lives.
02:48 And it was a classless society
02:50 and opportunity was available for all.
02:51 You just had to roll up your sleeves and take it,
02:53 which I think some of them took on.
02:55 And their motivation in the show.
02:56 But I think what we also show
02:57 is the kind of fundamental fallacy of that.
02:59 And the people that reach for the stars, if you like,
03:03 in terms of elevating themselves to new years of society.
03:06 I think the story ended pretty disastrously
03:09 all round for them.
03:10 - We're looking for six robbers and three tons of gold.
03:13 - Money like that will end up in surprising places
03:15 with surprising people.
03:17 Ready?
03:18 - This ain't just about six blokes in a van.
03:21 - Every ring, every watch.
03:23 - If you're looking for the gold, it's all around.
03:25 - But it's also the fact of, you know, between casting,
03:28 I mean, you know, it's almost against type.
03:30 That's what's so great about it.
03:31 Because I mean, I met Dominic many times
03:34 and he's much different in this thing as Nathan,
03:37 Jack, of course, from "Slow Horses."
03:39 And obviously, you know, Q, all these things,
03:42 it's about sort of playing against that.
03:44 Was that part of sort of the mindset
03:46 as far as when you were putting it together?
03:48 Or was it just trying to find the right people
03:50 that sort of embodied it at that moment?
03:53 - I think it's really exciting when you cast an actor
03:55 in a role that you've not seen them do before.
03:57 I think that's exciting for you as the creator,
03:59 exciting for the actor and exciting for the viewer as well.
04:02 So I think we, yeah, I think you're right
04:04 in that we managed to achieve that
04:06 with a lot of our core cast, if you like.
04:08 And I think maybe that's what helped attract them
04:10 to the project.
04:12 But I think when you do an ensemble show,
04:16 it's often very hard to get that real top level actor.
04:19 But I think, you know, often their agents
04:21 will be pushing them to only take lead roles, for example.
04:23 But I think they hopefully all saw something
04:26 in the characters that they recognised
04:28 that each character had a unique role in the show,
04:30 had their own motivations, their own storylines,
04:33 the same people or different people around them.
04:36 So hopefully they all felt they could make
04:37 their individual marks in the story,
04:39 which they very much did.
04:40 - 26 million.
04:41 That's what they say on television.
04:45 - It's 27.
04:50 - Yeah, it was enough to move the market.
04:53 So it's 27 now.
04:54 I'm not a villain, not like that.
05:03 - Neither am I.
05:04 - I mean, we talked about class, but it's also about family.
05:07 The whole thing with Spencer, you know, with her father,
05:10 and then, you know, obviously Palmer and his wife.
05:13 Can you talk about the notion of family,
05:15 of loyalty versus sort of ambition?
05:19 Because that's a sort of an interesting thing
05:21 of how the characters are portrayed as well.
05:25 - Yeah, I think so.
05:26 I think we showed, sadly, how greed can sort of smash
05:30 through all these other emotions,
05:32 such as loyalty and morality, if you like.
05:36 But the family, I mean, what was interesting
05:38 with Jennings' character is she's a composite character
05:43 of several real-life female detectives,
05:46 and a lot of their story went into her.
05:49 And certainly at the time, you did have members
05:53 of the police and members of criminal fraternity
05:55 that were from the same neighborhoods.
05:57 They didn't know each other.
05:58 Sometimes that helped, you know, in terms of detection,
06:02 but we also show the more sinister side of that,
06:04 I think, in the show.
06:05 We show police corruption, and we do show also
06:10 the often negative influence of Freemasonry
06:14 within our story, that if you have members of the police
06:18 and members of the criminal class
06:21 who are both members of secret society,
06:25 then in the wrong hands, that can have
06:27 highly negative effects, which I don't think
06:29 we shy away from.
06:30 - That's why we didn't nick it.
06:33 All we'd be doing is turning it legit,
06:36 like we do with all the other stuff.
06:39 - It's a long way from that.
06:42 - 27 million is a long way from that.
06:46 Look, we've done all right, considering where we're from,
06:49 but I wanna do all right the way the other side
06:52 of this country does all right.
06:54 - But you also get, yeah, I like the fact
06:57 that you make it specific enough,
06:58 but you also make it not too dense
07:00 where people cannot follow it.
07:02 I mean, the whole thing, when bringing the guy
07:04 from Customs that shows the path of it,
07:06 I thought that really nicely did it,
07:08 and then it also extrapolated the whole idea of the system.
07:12 You know, those are very, very specific things to write,
07:15 but you also don't wanna overwrite them.
07:17 You know, can you talk about that and finding that balance
07:20 in terms of that in progress,
07:22 'cause it feels like a character drama,
07:24 and yet there's so much detail in it,
07:25 and that's just a progress of the writing
07:28 before you even get to production.
07:30 - Well, yeah, definitely.
07:31 No, I mean, I think it's, firstly,
07:33 it was a very complicated story,
07:35 and you have to find a way of telling that
07:37 that is both narratively cohesive,
07:41 but also giving the viewers some credit, you know,
07:46 not kind of hand-holding them through that story,
07:49 like letting them find the twists and turns along the way,
07:51 maybe not pick everything up as they go,
07:54 you know, and piece it together later.
07:56 So that's often a hard balance to strike.
07:59 I think that particular sequence
08:01 you're talking about at the end of episode two,
08:03 yeah, I mean, that, we had to tell this complex story
08:09 of how the gold was stolen out of this warehouse,
08:13 and you ended up with this heavily laundered money
08:16 hidden in London real estate, for example.
08:20 And, you know, I battled for a long time
08:22 in how to tell that, and then we went for this
08:25 sequence effect that I think was brilliantly directed
08:28 and brilliantly edited,
08:30 and managed to make it kind of exciting
08:33 and thrilling along the way.
08:34 So there was a constant battle
08:36 of how to tell a complex story cleanly
08:39 without oversimplifying it
08:41 and taking out some of the nuance and magic of it.
08:43 - People that come from money,
08:46 they don't think much about what's right or wrong
08:48 when they want to make more of it, no.
08:51 They use what they have.
08:53 Well, what we have and they don't
08:57 is that we know villains, and villains know us.
09:00 So let's use it.
09:08 - And that leads to my last question,
09:09 but I have time, thank you very much, Neil.
09:12 Because I like what you were telling,
09:13 it's like consequence of action,
09:14 but the thing is that you let the viewer
09:17 take away certain things without spoon-feeding,
09:20 and that's one thing I think that is great about it.
09:23 And not a lot of shows do.
09:25 More are doing it now, is that aspect of allowing people
09:29 to bring on their own sort of experiences to this,
09:33 even though this is set in '83.
09:35 Can you talk about looking at that
09:36 and looking at the evolution of the story
09:39 so it has those moments of like,
09:41 what's gonna happen with Spencer's character and her father,
09:45 or what's gonna happen afterwards to Cooper or to Palmer?
09:49 Can you talk about the importance of that
09:52 in allowing the bodies to bring their own experience to it
09:55 in a certain way?
09:56 - Yeah, well, I think if you write a show
09:58 that's got a very, very strict,
10:00 very designated black and white morality,
10:03 I think that's uninteresting.
10:05 I also think it's unrealistic in terms of reflecting life.
10:09 And for the viewer, I don't see that
10:12 as a particularly satisfying experience,
10:14 whereas I think when you tell a story
10:15 like this one naturally is,
10:17 where morality is a bit less defined than that
10:20 and a bit murkier and a bit morpheus and ever-changing,
10:25 then I think that's a more immersive, emotive experience,
10:30 I think, for the viewer to be part of,
10:32 and they really can choose their own moral path
10:35 through this story, I suppose.
10:37 And that's hopefully part of what makes this show
10:41 slightly unique.
10:42 - This will only get faster and faster till one day
10:46 it's all gone.
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10:52 (screaming)
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