Interview with David Gyasi (Steve)
An interview with David Gyasi, who plays Steve
Published: 20 July 2017
I hope that it will create a more empathetic response to love in all of its guises, all of its shapes and forms
Pictured: Steve (David Gyasi) and Adam (Julian Morris)
What attracted you to Man In An Orange Shirt?
It felt like a narrative I hadn’t seen before, certainly on TV. The themes that were addressed may be out there, but I hadn’t seen them and that made me feel like this was a story worth exploring and trying to do justice to.
Tell us about Steve
Steve is really interesting; of all the characters I have played he is the most similar to me. Literally the only difference is our sexuality. In terms of what he believes - in terms of a relationship being a commitment, and the attempt for it to be a lifelong commitment - we’re very similar. He seems to be someone who looks for the good in people - I can see that and I certainly try to do that. And he seems to be able to cut through all of the white noise of the facades that we put up and say, "this is who you are and this is who I believe in”.
Steve’s an architect. Adam (Julian Morris) becomes a client of his and - without giving too much away - then presents Steve with an amazing opportunity that’s the most exciting blank canvas. This is the point in Steve’s life where the stars align: Adam not only appeals to him as a client, but as a person he really appeals to where Steve’s at in his life.
Tell us more about Adam and Steve’s relationship
Steve meets Adam and there is an intrigue from both sides, I think. Certainly from Steve there is an intrigue where he wants to cut through this kind of ‘wall’ that Adam has put up emotionally. I think Steve really wants to check out if his instinct is right about Adam, and they begin a relationship. But that doesn’t come without its bumps in the road, shall we say. They meet, they fall in love - but love for them is something that is precious and is kind of mysterious. They have to approach it gently.
What do you hope viewers will get from Man In An Orange Shirt?
I hope that there will be more of an empathetic response to love in all of its guises and shapes and forms. I think in our world - in our sort of media bubble - that already exists, but there are different corners of our society where that doesn’t exist, and so hopefully that will be challenged by this series. Julian’s character portrays the plight of someone who is - it seems crazy to say - but someone who is coming to terms with his sexuality and how society might view that. I think there is a lot for us as a society that we can look into, there is a lot that we can learn from that.
An introduction, by Patrick Gale
My commission to write this show couldn’t have been more fortuitous: Commissioning Editor Lucy Richer let it be known she was after a script reflecting gay male experience in the 20th century, which ideally would have the flavour of a Patrick Gale novel.
Happily she said this to Kudos’s Sue Swift, who just happened to be an old friend from my days of bridge addiction. With such a vast subject, I had to find an involving, intimate story within it and, as with so many of my novels, this was a fragment of narrative from my own life.
When my mother was pregnant with me and preparing for us to move - from Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight to Wandsworth, where my father was to become governor - she found a stash of personal letters hidden in his desk. At first she was amused, assuming they were from an old girlfriend he’d never mentioned, then horrified, as she realised they were from an old school and university friend who had been his best man.
In real life she destroyed the letters, terrified he’d be arrested for what was then an imprisonable offence but also disgusted because, in her ignorance, she assumed this meant he was a paedophile. In true buttoned-up English fashion, she never let him know what she had discovered.
What I’ve done in Man In An Orange Shirt is to take that scene of discovery and wind backwards, imagining the two men’s impossible love for each other being shipwrecked on the demands of respectability and the law. And then I’ve wound forwards from it, imagining what would have happened if my mother had instead confronted my father with the discovery. Readers of my novels will know I’m a psychotherapist manqué, fascinated by the effects of secrets and lies within a family.
Man In An Orange Shirt takes those secrets and lies and imagines the long-range damage they might do if the understandably embittered wife of episode one went on, in episode two, to find that her grandson was yearning for the fulfilment her late husband had never known.
Although it’s brilliant that transmission will coincide with the BBC’s celebration of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, I hope this is much more than just a drama about gay men and their difficulties.
I hope that its two love stories will touch people simply as love stories, and that the torments and frustrations in the family I portray will set viewers wondering about their own ancestors, grandparents and parents - and what secrets and lies they might be concealing.
GK
