Interview [Part 1]: Amma Asante, Director, “Belle”

Amma Asante has been an actress, TV writer-producer, and movie director. Her latest is the period piece drama Belle, written by Misan Sagay and directed by Asante. The movie opens this Friday, May 2nd in theaters across North America.

I had an engaging and informative conversation with Amma after she had just returned from the U.S. to her home in The Netherlands.

Today in Part 1, Amma details her path from actress to writer.

Scott: You’ve been an actress, TV writer and producer, screenwriter, director. Let’s start with this: What first put you on that path where you were interested in movies and TV?

Amma: It’s really strange, because I come from a family that has absolutely nothing to do with the industry at all.

My father was an accountant. My mother was a shopkeeper and a cleaner at various times in her life. They came over from Ghana, West Africa to the UK in late 50s and worked their way into some kind of reasonable life, I would say.

I was a pretty shy child. Around about the age of 10, my dad came home one day, completely out of the blue, and said that he had found a wonderful school that he thought I would enjoy going to. It was a private school that did traditional school subjects combined with drama and dance.

I really have no idea where this came from or why. Other than that, perhaps, he wanted to bring me out of myself a little bit, and also, perhaps, he recognized that creative bone in me really early on.

I was terrified. I was sent to this full-time stage school where we did the traditional math, English, history, all of that but also the dramatic arts. At that time, it was a little bit like being thrown into the middle of the kids from “Fame.” Me, being a complete outsider to that world and not really knowing how to fit in any way shape or form.

The day we arrived, for my interview for the school, there were kids running around in the school assembly room in leotards and tights. They were leaping around.

I just thought, “My God, this is never going to work.” I was 10 and I thought, “It was never going to work.”

Within about 18 months of being there, I felt relatively comfortable. The school was also a place where producers and directors would come to pick child actors for various TV series, and movies, and commercials. By the age of 14, I found myself in one of our regular TV series in the UK.

Scott: Was that “Grange Hill?”

Amma: That was “Grange Hill,” absolutely.

Scott: That had to have been a rather shocking thing for a 14 year-old to be working regularly on a TV series.

Amma: I feel like I went through that whole starting stage school thing all over again. I had to go through that same process, starting on “Grange Hill.”

Everything was alien to me. The TV studio was alien to me. The language of TV shooting and scripts was alien to me.

The stuff that we take for granted now that we’re older and once you’ve been around the industry a bit, you forget that there is a language to our industry. For me, that was very frightening, as a 14year old.

It was quite a tough schedule, as well. We were shooting two episodes a week. That was a lot of work considering you had to keep up with your school studies, as well.

I joined in a series that typically took kids on at the age of 10 and would keep lead characters on until traditional end of school age in the UK, which was about 16, 17. I started at 14, which was bang in the middle.

A lot of the child actors that were there had started long ago, had bonded, were very well versed with the world and, to me, were very grown up.

Subtly, looking back now, what I realized, what I learned is that it was a pretty male world. All of my directors, bar one, were men.

None of them looked anything remotely like they could have come from backgrounds similar to mine. So they were all pretty middle class, they were all white. They were all really in their late 40s, 50s.

Although that didn’t strike me in any sort of profound way at the time, I realized now, looking back, the message I received… when it came to the point where I was actually offered one of my own film scripts to direct.

I wrote something a little bit later on, it was the BFI, which I’ll come to when you get to it later on, who asked me to direct. It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard because, as far as I was concerned, directors didn’t come like me.

They didn’t come in my package. For me, it was the scariest thing because I thought what they were doing was leading me, inviting me into a process, where I was going to ruin my script. I didn’t want to go near it.

So I realize now that that was probably something subtle that I learned. But I also learned something else, another impression that I definitely left with. I was very lucky because one of the script editors on “Grange Hill,” was actually Anthony Minghella.

It was prior to him becoming a writer, then director. So this other side of that coin that I did learn is that you didn’t have to stay in the position or the role that you entered the industry in, that you could progress sideways, diagonally, backwards, upwards, however you want to look at it.

You could inhabit more than one role. I think that was an important impression that I was given there and an important message, really.

Scott: In fact, you did that. You transition from acting to writing. What was the reasoning behind that shift?

Amma: Dad did a really great thing in recognizing my creative need, if you like, my need to express creatively and he did the very best he could. He did that in a great way when he sent me to stage school.

Whilst I was doing “Grange Hill,” one of the things that I realized was that I wasn’t a great actress, at all. That isn’t me being humble or modest. It was just factual.

What I could do well was really recognize a great performance. Some of the kids that were working alongside me were absolutely incredible.

I was in awe. I was absolutely in awe of what they were able to do with their skill and acting abilities.

When I left “Grange Hill,” at the age of 16, going on 17, there were barely any roles on British television for black actors, let alone black female actresses. There simply wasn’t any work.

There just wasn’t anything out there. I would walk into one or two castings. They would literally jump out of their skin because everybody knew me as this child. I was now going through the transition of becoming a woman and blossoming into a woman.

They called me in for children’s roles and instead this woman — me — would walk in. Those three things really combined. Me, knowing I wasn’t a great actress. Not particularly loving it. No work, and not getting a great reaction when I went into castings. I did it for about two years and decided at about the age of 19 that I didn’t want to do it anymore. That it wasn’t for me.

It was very scary because all of my friends from back home where I lived in South London, were all prepping to eventually go to university, or go to college, or to start a job. I didn’t know how to do any of those things, at all, because I had gone to stage school and hadn’t really learned to do anything else other than act and dance, not very well.

My mother, in desperation, and worried about me, and always worried about my dad’s choice to send me to stage school, begged me to go to secretarial college. I was desperate to get my typing speed up from 60 to 100 words per minute, because I wasn’t getting any bookings. My typing speed wasn’t fast enough.

I would type anything during the day to get my speed up. I would copy type from the newspapers, but eventually, I found myself typing out this idea that I had in my head for a half hour sitcom.

I was typing it out in treatment form. I’d never seen a treatment. I didn’t know that that’s what a treatment was. I thought I was simply putting down an idea on three to five pages.

This idea was pouring out of me. These character descriptions and a brief structure of a plot for one episode. Then the episode story lines that could come afterwards, in one-liners, in block line style.

I gave it to a producer, a close friend of mine, and said, “I think there might be an idea in here. Do you think you might give it to one of the writers that you know? Maybe they might see something in it and they might want to write it.”

He read it and he didn’t think it was particularly good, but he said to me, “It’s so detailed. You’re so clear about what you want. I couldn’t possibly give this to another writer, because you’ve practically written it other than the dialogue.” Clearly, he didn’t know how difficult dialogue can be as well. He said, “Why don’t you go away and do this yourself?”

I did go away with my tail between my legs a bit. I was a little bit disappointed because I thought it was a good idea to myself. I went off and I started trying to write in script form. I ended up with a so-called half-hour sitcom that actually read about an hour and a half long. I hadn’t yet learned strong structure and how to focus my work.

I had no concept of how to edit it. Every line to me was drastically important, and my life was going to end if I had to cut any characters, combine any characters, cut any lines. I simply hung on to absolutely everything. Eventually, this very same producer got me to get to the point where I could do some cuts. I think I probably got it down to about 45 minutes in a read..

He sent it out. It landed, would you believe, all the way from England, on the lot of Fox Television in Los Angeles. It went through a very convoluted set of circumstances.

I married very young, and at 23, I went off to LA with my previous husband He was working in the industry as well and was filming out there. I got a call from the person who had sent the script onto Fox saying, “Do you know what, they’d like to meet you.” I had gone to LA as a wife and a very young wife. I had nothing in my suitcase to go to meetings with. I had nothing except holiday clothes, cut down jeans and cut down T-shirts and so on.

Off I went to Fox, literally, in these clothes. I remember my leg sticking to the leather chairs. To cut a very long story short, they liked the work, but had a couple of things that were quite similar so weren’t ready to start development with me. They were very kind, however. Very encouraging, typically encouraging in the way that Americans are, in a way that the Brits are not, and sent me away feeling a lot better about myself.

So when I got to England, I sent the script out in the UK. I eventually ended up with seven scripts being commissioned for that sitcom by Channel 4 and also I ended up with a separate four script deal from the BBC, which is lucky.

Scott: Serendipity, right?

Amma: Absolutely. My whole life has been in that way.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Amma describes how she worked as a TV writer-producer, then added movie director to her list of credits.

Amma is repped by CAA and United Agents.

Twitter: @AmmaAsante.

Here is a trailer for the movie Belle which opens this weekend in theaters across the United States:

For an interview with Belle screenwriter Misan Sagay, go here.

For when and where to see Belle in U.S movie theaters, go here.

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