Interview: Misan Sagay

Misan Sagay is a screenwriter whose credits include The Secret Laughter of Women, starring Colin Firth, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, starring Halle Berry. Misan’s most recent writing project is Belle, an historical drama starring Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Gugu Mbatha-Raw playing the title role.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview.

Part 1: “I sent my first screenplay to British Screen. To my surprise, they called me back the next day. They loved it. Someone there had sent the script on to Jeremy Irons. He loved it, too.”

Part 2: “I was visiting Scone Palace in Scotland. I walked into one of the bedrooms and came across this extraordinary painting. This beautiful black girl staring out of me. Her companion in the painting was an equally beautiful white girl. They were equals in that painting. I was struck, intrigued but I wasn’t a writer yet.

Part 3: “Dido’s journey was always central to me. How she goes from a child to woman. How she goes from accepting the limits placed on her to demanding her rights.”

Part 4: “I set out to rewrite the emancipation story, to tell it form our point of view, a black point of view. To throw away the Wilberforce view of history in which we are pawns of greater minds — a big ambition for a little film.”

Part 5: “Oppression based on gender was terrible and women were certainly not free but we must not take that analogy too far. Slavery was something else and the unique horrors of that must not be trivialized or diluted by overdoing the comparison.”

Part 6: “Theme is what the story is really about and in many ways, the theme reflects who the storyteller is and what story they want to tell.”

Misan is repped by Independent Talent Group.

Twitter: @MisanSagayFilm.

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