SALLY4EVER
Julia Davis talks us through the creation of her stunning new comedy
ACTOR/ WRITER/ DIRECTOR Julia Davis’ love for probing the ugly, funny underbelly of human sexual relationships has been evident since Human Remains, her BBC comedy collaboration with Rob Brydon 18 years ago. But even by her fearlessly frank standards, this new seven-part SKY/HBO co-production takes her depiction of adult acts and bodily functions to stunning new heights. Davis herself plays Emma, a decadent actress, singer, musician, poet and author, who inveigles her way into the life of ad agency operative Sally (Catherine Shepherd), on the eve of her wedding to her nice but dull long-time partner, David (Alex Macqueen). We spoke to Davis while she was still in the edit putting the finishing touches to the series, although luckily we did manage to see the finished opening episode, complete with lesbian sex montage played out to the strains of ‘China In Your Hand’ by T’pau...
The working title of this series was “Lesbians”, so presumably you wanted to explore that area of sexuality?
I think it’s probably about exploring the fact we’re all sexual beings, and therefore suddenly becoming gay or exploring that is not that different. The idea for the story just came to me while I was improvising with Catherine Shepherd [who plays Sally]. I said to her: “You live in a house, I move in, maybe I’m a lesbian and I try to come on to you.” And that part of Sally is obviously quite repressed. That’s what interested me about it.
There’s a spectacular sex scene in the first episode with a montage of breasts rubbing together and such. Was that all in your script, or is there a certain amount of making it up as you go along?
I really thought through that one, actually. It’s really hard to get montages right. There were going to be lots of other elements, like at one point we were going to have snails crawling over the women, and other
animals as well. I remember writing it and putting in very specific movements up and down, left and right, then when I actually got to do it with those body doubles I felt like I was some kind of weird porn director. It was very funny on the day we filmed it.
I’m not sure we’ve had lesbian rimming on TV before. Did you feel like you were pushing back the boundaries?
Yes, it’s very interesting to do that stuff. It’s showing on Sky and HBO and I feel British people will think it’s funny but people who don’t like my stuff will think it’s gross. I wonder if the Americans might be a bit more squeamish about certain elements.
There’s also a classic sequence of poor Alex Macqueen’s character pleasuring himself. How was that to film?
We literally had ten minutes to do it at the end of the day and he had two quick goes. I said, “Just do it like a weird animal, like a monkey.” And that is what he came up with, which was just genius.
You’ve got brilliant guest stars Sean Bean and Lena Headey, who were both in Game Of Thrones. Is there a hidden GOT theme?
I do love Game Of Thrones so maybe that’s why I thought of them, but there’s no complicated sub-text.
It was literally that Lena and Sean were up for it. Lena plays herself in a scene where she’s the main character in a film set in a bakery in 1800s France and I’m an extra who keeps upstaging her by walking behind her in a really stupid way and throwing a baguette around!
I think she enjoyed it.