ADULT MATERIAL/ I HATE SUZIE
The creators and star of Channel 4’s celebrated porn drama Adult Material on pulling off one of the year’s riskiest shows
Hayley Squires and Georgi Banksdavies on two of 2020’s most provocative dramas.
Lucy Kirkwood [writer]: It was impossibly hard to get this made: it took nine years to [get a] commission. I was continually surprised by how wary people still were of the subject matter. We were adamant we were making a serious, high-minded drama that’s not about being salacious or provocative for the sake of it, but the topic still has this radioactive glow.
Hayley Squires [actor]: Lucy was trying to find the right home for it where they weren’t afraid of the content. It feels like there was finally a shift with conversations over the last few years: #Metoo, the way women are under-represented on screen, the idea of women being able to own and tell their sexual stories.
Dawn Shadforth [director]: There’s not that many scenes of pornography in Adult Material. Part of the approach was for our show not to have any of the tropes of porn. We were always looking for a camera position that didn’t objectify, that didn’t feel pornographic.
Squires: Dawn and I had spoken at length before we started shooting about the idea of inverting the male gaze, and not just for the porn moments — but to the more personal moments that you see, like when Jolene is having the urine test.
Shadforth: A lot of the time in porn, you get a sense of the camera being held from the point of view of someone. It was very intentional that we decided to shoot mostly with static cameras and not hand-held; to be a certain distance from our performers, to create a grammar that felt very unintrusive.
Shadforth: We made our approach of shooting as uncomplicated as possible, using natural light, a locked-off camera and being very simple with our coverage. There are only three scenes shot