Mark Kermode interviewing Mike Leigh

Episode 12, The Culture Show, 2010. [TV], BBC2, 4th Oct.
Transcribed by Micheál O’Connell

MK: I’ve asked you about this before and you’ve attempted to explain it to me before and I confess I’ve never really understood it Mike. The workings you use to arrive at that complexity. Do you want to have another run at trying to tell me how it happens?

ML: Well I can tell you in the general way, as I already have, what the principle is, which is that I work up a script and I work with actors first of all individually and then we create characters, put them together, gradually a world forms and having done that for a few months we go out on location and make up a film, if you like scripting it by rehearsal. Now, what I haven’t just explained to you, and I played it different the last time and I will the next time you ask, is actually what happens because it’s extremely complicated, it involves all kinds of creative things which go under the general heading of instinct, inspiration and telepathy. And apart from anything else it’s nobody’s business except for we who do it. [They both laugh]

MK: Very early on I interviewed you and you bit my head off really badly. I had attempted to put into words the working method that were devised and directed by, I didn’t know what I was talking about but I was trying and anyway you gave me a really hard time.

ML: I’m sorry for that.

MK: No, right, its fine, the interesting thing is from your point of view, the thing that seems significant is you are never afraid of saying something like “no that’s wrong and you don’t know what you’re talking about”

ML: So what are you asking?

MK: Is that genuinely how you look at it?

ML: Look the truth of it is that interviews are not easy for any of us who are on the receiving end. All I know about is trying just to be oneself, be honest and tell it like it is and we need to try and be truthful really, that’s all it is.