There is an old writing adage that says writers should write

about what they know. But successfully following that advice first means

knowing something worth writing about. Fortunately for British television writer

Paul Abbott, the creator of the hit UK drama Shameless (successfully remade this year for the U.S.), that was the

easy part.

As horrifying as it might sound to some, the alcoholic,

abusive and frequently criminal shenanigans the Gallagher clan gets up to week in and week out on the hit Showtime

dramedy aren’t all that different from how Abbott actually grew up.

On Shameless, the Gallaghers

are a large dysfunctional family with absentee parents and kids who disregard

all authority as they raise themselves. Plus, they have access to copious amounts of alcohol, drugs and sex.

Abbott’s own family was large as well, totaling eight

children, with Abbott being the second youngest. His mother abandoned the

family when he was nine-years-old, leaving his ne’er-do-well father in charge

of the brood. Even that was temporary, however, as two years later, his father also

left, leaving Abbott’s pregnant sixteen-year-old sister to take charge of the

family.

If you’re a fan of the show, all of this sounds familiar.

One difference between Abbott’s family and the fictional Gallaghers

is that Abbott didn’t have a gay brother (although Abbott and three of his

brothers did have some same-sex experiences, not uncommon for teenage boys).

Instead, the character of Ian (Cameron Monaghan, in the U.S. version) was inspired by one of Abbott's nephews, while the affair with a

married shopkeeper came from Abbott’s own life.

So how did Abbott go from poor kid in the estates of

Burnley, Lancashire in the United

Kingdom to award-winning television creator?

Circumstances that might have destroyed another man by

turning him into, well, the drunken, irresponsible Frank Gallagher, only inspired Abbott to become something

different. AfterElton.com recently spoke with Abbot about the circumstances in

which he grew up, how he escaped, and how that nephew became an inspiration for Ian.

Asked how he turned out so differently from his racist,

anti-education family, Abbott says “I’m not sure. I don’t know because I think

it’s fair to say out of 10, I’m the only literate one. And I wasn’t mega

bright, just brighter than the average.”

But being brighter than average, as well as the second

youngest of eight in a dysfunctional family, also meant Abbott had to find

different ways of coping with his chaotic family life. “I was the second from

the bottom,” says Abbott. “So I would say I learned how to write as a means of

talking without being contradicted. Because in a big family it’s, ‘Shut up!

Shut up!’ So I would write, ‘F*ck you!’”

But Abbot did more than just tell his family to shut up. He

actually dreamed of being something more than what they believed him capable of.

“I would just sit and type and pretend I wanted to be a journalist. [But] just

wanting to be a writer was crucifiable as well.”

But that didn’t stop Abbott from becoming a keen observer of

humanity – and by extension, a successful writer. Says Abbott, “Learning how to

navigate things made me a really good writer. I was writing by the time I was

15, and I think my first radio play was when I was 19. I realized how I’d

learned to observe human behavior without opening my mouth. I did not dare open

my mouth until I was getting paid for it.”

Abbott isn’t just getting paid for his writing these days.

He’s also received a great deal of success and critical acclaim. Abbott

received two BAFTA TV Awards, an Emmy and a host of other honors and

the remake has pulled off the difficult feat of jumping across the Atlantic and

finding an audience in the U.S.. Even better for Abbott, Showtime just announced it was picking up a second season of the series.

Actor Cameron Monaghan plays Ian in the American version.

One of the most popular characters in both the British and

U.S. versions has been fourteen-year-old Ian, the gay teen who, like Abbott did in real life,

must navigate the treacherous waters of a family who aren’t well-equipped to

understand his differences.

Abbott has especially enjoyed writing about Ian’s being gay,

which is drawn from several different real life sources in Abbott’s past.

“[Ian’s] not a direct link to my family,” says Abbot. “It was a nephew of mine

who, when he got to the age of 18... and I’ve got to be careful because my

family still doesn’t know about him."

Abbott describes his nephew, but in order to not inadvertently out him, let's just say he doesn't have a "stereotypical" gay job, is tall and beefy and not what Abbott's family typically thinks of as "gay." Abbott says, "And he just came to me, and with a family like that, he couldn’t tell

them. He couldn’t tell. And he still can’t come out. They’d kill him. Stone

dead. They’d kill him stone dead, socially at least. They’re a tough bunch.”

Asked how his nephew knew he could trust him, Abbott says,

“Because I’d written already two radio plays that involved gay characters. They

were written with equal standards. I’ve always done that with my family. The

minute I think they don’t like something – I find them racist as well – so I

deliberately write speeches for Frank that are racist, just to wind them up.”

As for Ian, Abbott explains he drew on two different

experiences to create the character. “I mixed two stories,” he says. “One was

an affair with a grocer’s wife [I had] and I just switched them around. It was

a grocer that used to employ me and his wife used to tamper with me when I was

14. And I switched it around for my nephew’s benefit and made it an Asian

grocer and I slammed my family between the eyes and said, ‘It’s not f*cking,

this is a love story.’ It’s not just fucking. I wanted it to grow as a love

story.”

Ian and Kash (played by actor Pej Vahdat)

Asked if he’d expected any backlash from the storyline in

the original UK

storyline, which aired back in 2004, Abbott is emphatic that he had. “I thought

and expected to get a hammering for it. Not just from my family, but from

around the country."

"I’m so proud of this," says Abbott. "And we’ve worked so hard on that

relationship and the humanizing of that relationship we didn’t get a complaint.

It was stunning. I was amazed. I was so proud that we didn’t get complaints

from the fascist society. We didn’t get a single complaint. They kept talking

about the underage sex. You got a dad like that and you’re worried about underage

sex? I think they’ve got bigger problems to cope with there.”

It was incredibly important to Abbott that the relationship

between Ian and Kash was seen as

being a love story and not just about sex. “It does take engineering because

the way we were shooting it, it’s quite delicate between Ian and Kash. I was

determined to make it look like a love story so nobody could make it look like

somebody f*cking an underage kid. In the first episode where Lip finds out Ian warns him to leave

Kash alone saying, ‘Don’t you dare, he’s done nothing wrong!’ No it’s a love

story, it’s reciprocal and it’s taken the edge off the fascist complaint lobby."

Asked if any of his family has said anything negative about

the character, Abbott is pleased that they haven’t. “None of my family

complained about it,” he says laughing. “I snuck that one past them and

eventually you educate them by millimeters.”

For more about Shameless, including our weekly recaps, visit our Shameless resource page!