The real stories that inspired Ken Loach’s new film

With Sorry We Missed You, the director has zero-hour contracts in his sights. Screenwriter Paul Laverty reveals their sources

FINDING THE STORY

Ken Loach and Paul Laverty’s 15th collaboration focuses on zero-hours delivery drivers and care workers, and the impact the work has on their lives. But there was no easy way ‘in’ to this world. Franchisee drivers are private entrepreneurs, and proved hard to track down. “What I eventually started doing was just going out to car parks and speaking to people, listening to their stories.” He spoke to “dozens and dozens” of drivers, but finding willing talkers was the easy bit.

GAINING TRUST

“People who speak out could lose their jobs,” Laverty says. “You meet them in a place where they feel safe and guarantee you’ll never reveal their identity.” Laverty admits the stories he uncovered were worse than those in the finished film. “I spoke to drivers who were suicidal after their routes were changed.” Among care workers, he met a young woman who had 37 missed calls from her employers on her day off. “The truth is way beyond what you imagine,” he says.

GETTING OUT IN THE FIELD

Things really coalesced when Laverty started going out with the drivers to see the realities of the job; in Newcastle, he rode with drivers eating for the first time on the way home (“Imagine what ten years of that does to your body…”); in Glasgow, he saw plastic bottles filled with urine because there’s no time for toilet breaks. “The Devil is always in the details,” he says.

SPINNING THE YARN

The process doesn’t end with a magical epiphany. “There comes a point when you’re fucked off running around,” Laverty laughs. “And there’s a deadline and Ken is going, ‘Where’s the bloody script?’” At this point, the journalist gives way to the screenwriter. “In essence, I guess what I try to do is soak everything up and then forget it. If it’s a thesis it’s dead. It needs to surprise me as a writer and excite Ken as a director.”

SORRY WE MISSED YOU IS IN CINEMAS FROM 1 NOVEMBER

Clockwise from top left: Driver Ricky (Kris Hitchen) with daughter Lisa Jane (Katie Proctor); Carer Abbie (Debbie Honeywood), ‘tucks in’ with a ‘client’; The Turner family together. Below: Director Ken Loach.