TELEVISION
The acclaimed screenwriter and creator of Suffragette Abi Morgan reflects on how her own unbelievable recent experiences helped inform her surreal new thriller starring Benedict Cumberbatch
‘THE ONLY THING I’VE GOT THAT HAS HELPED get me out of most sticky situations is my imagination,’ says Abi Morgan. The star screenwriter is best known for films such as The Iron Lady, Shame and Suffragette, and more recently, the much-loved BBC drama The Split, and in 2022 published her first book, This is Not a Pity Memoir. Aceaselessly honest, often agonising and regularly very funny account of the preceding three years, it details what happened when her now-husband Jacob’s severe brain injury put him into a coma.
When he awoke, not only did Jacob not recognise the mother of his children, but he also thought she was a malign duplicate standing in for ‘the real Abi’. During this time, Morgan was also diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. Throughout this living nightmare, she’d picture it as a screenplay, an editor’s voice in her head continuously scolding her for the story being too melodramatic, with outlandish plot twists likely to lose audiences.
The couple both survived, today live happily in London, and Morgan has turned her sharp observational skills and emotional insights back to inventing stories and putting them into scripts. This month, Eric airs: a drama series set in Eighties Manhattan, led by Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent, a puppeteer, husband and pretty neglectful father of nine-year-old Edgar, who goes missing. Already teetering on the edge of mental crisis, Vincent becomes hooked on the idea that if he can get Eric, a puppet Edgar dreamt up, on television, it will bring his son home. It is partpsychological thriller, part-study of New York during that era. ‘I was there a bit then, and it encapsulates so many things we are still preoccupied with today: racism, institutionalised corruption, strikes – and that idea of parenting at a time when we don’t necessarily let our kids walk out.’
While Morgan’s most famous projects have female protagonists, she has always liked writing nuanced, v
