{"id":22597,"date":"2022-09-25T10:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-25T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1710338"},"modified":"2022-09-25T10:16:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T08:16:10","slug":"emer-kenny-i-definitely-had-to-learn-to-assert-myself","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/emer-kenny-i-definitely-had-to-learn-to-assert-myself\/","title":{"rendered":"Emer Kenny: \u201cI definitely had to learn to assert myself\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Morgan Jeffery\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 25 September 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Since making her screenwriting debut on EastEnders<\/a>\u2018 online spin-off E20, Emer Kenny has penned episodes of Irish crime drama Red Rock, the punchy period drama Harlots and award-winning Sky series Save Me<\/a>. It was by way of that last commission that she came to take on her latest, most ambitious and most personal project to date: an adaptation of Val McDermid\u2019s crime novels featuring young, fearless Scottish investigator Karen Pirie.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been such hard work,\u201d Kenny tells RadioTimes.com<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s been a real mountain to climb for the past four years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She serves as both writer and executive producer on ITV\u2019s Karen Pirie<\/a>, having previously worked with production company World Productions on the second season of Save Me. Kenny credits Lennie James, the creative force behind that series, as her biggest inspiration when it came to tackling the role of showrunner.<\/p>\n

\u201cLennie James\u2026 I think he\u2019s a genius, but the way that he led that show\u2026\u00a0 he had such clarity of vision, he knew that the buck stopped with him, always, with the story and the tone, and he always had an answer to what the show should be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was amazingly collaborative, he would take on ideas, he would listen to everything, but he always knew what the show was. Being a lead writer and executive producer is a very different experience to writing on someone else\u2019s show, because the buck stops with you. I really held Lennie up as a kind of inspiration, because I knew that I was going to have to have those answers for everybody.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI also knew that it was really important for me to be across every single creative element right from the beginning, right to the end, because when you have that central voice, a show feels really cohesive and clear. All of my favourite shows have a real sense of identity in what they\u2019re trying to say and I think that just feels more identifiable if it\u2019s through one person\u2019s view. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI really wanted to be that for this show, so I was really in the weeds with this: with the casting, I was on set every single day, all the way up to the trailers and the poster. I\u2019ve wanted to be across every single thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, I\u2019m collaborative, and obviously, you have amazing people who come in and work with you and they have amazing talents, but you just need someone to keep their eye across everything and that\u2019s what I learnt from Lennie, I think.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Kenny has adapted McDermid\u2019s first book to feature Karen Pirie, 2003\u2019s The Distant Echo<\/a>, into three two-hour episodes. The end result is, she says, \u201creally different to the book\u201d \u2013 not least because the character of Pirie only appears towards the climax of the novel.\u00a0\u201cKaren is only in, I think, about 20 pages of a 600 page book, she comes in at the end and she\u2019s quite instrumental, but she\u2019s not the protagonist in any way. But then Val takes her through the rest of books on a bigger journey.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The TV version also updates the book\u2019s timeline \u2013 the story follows both the events that led to the murder of a barmaid, Rosie Duff, and Karen\u2019s cold case investigation three decades later, with the novel\u2019s two timelines of the 1970s and the early 2000s shifting to the 1990s and 2022. Otherwise, though, Kenny has kept what she felt was \u201creally essential about the story\u201d: the two timelines, the central character of Karen, a few other regular characters, and a gang of university students who find themselves the chief suspects.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThose were the core things that I wanted to stay true to from Val. But then I kind of just threw everything up and went, \u2018Right, now I\u2019ve got to write a TV show\u2019 \u2013 because most of the people coming to a TV show haven\u2019t read the book, so you have to make sure it fits in the TV landscape as its own unique thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI both stayed quite true and loyal to what the book\u2019s about but also let the rest fall away and then brought a lot myself to it after that \u2013 and Val was was really cool with that, which was great.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One of Kenny\u2019s innovations was to have the police\u2019s renewed interest in the Rosie Duff case be sparked by an amateur investigation conducted by a true crime podcast \u2013 a phenomenon that hadn\u2019t taken off when McDermid wrote her story almost 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really worried about it being another \u2018dead girl show\u2019, because we see a lot of murdered women on screen,\u201d Kenny admits. \u201cI wanted a way to comment on that and become quite meta with it \u2013 so I could have the podcast commenting on the case, I could have Karen commenting on the podcast, and it\u2019s just ways for me to layer up the discourse around what we\u2019re showing and what we\u2019re doing and the issues that are at play.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n