Finding Lost Boys

Lost Boys & Fairies creator and writer Daf James reveals how the BBC series – following a gay couple’s journey to adoption – was inspired by his own life, and discusses one key scene “people always want to talk about.”

I was inspired to write Lost Boys & Fairies, a ‘coming of middle age’ drama, after adopting my children with my husband. Less than a year before my two sons arrived, my mother passed away. That first year of parenting was the most challenging, profound and life-changing experience I’d ever encountered. It transformed me as a human, and as an artist, and one of the ways I processed the enormity of it all was to write about it.

Produced by the inimitable Duck Soup Films, the show follows performance artist Gabriel (Siôn Daniel Young) and his partner Andy (Fra Fee) on their road to adoption. Gabriel is a singer at the queer club space Neverland; and because I’m also a songwriter and music director, it’s a show with songs, often used in surprising ways. As it was also the first bilingual Welsh/English drama on primetime BBC One, and put queer adoption in the mainstream, it was a personal political triumph.

In a crucial scene – and the one that people always want to talk about – Gabriel meets Jake’s birthmother, Becky (Gwyneth Keyworth). I’d previously explored this territory in my play On the Other Hand, We’re Happy, and knew this encounter would be pivotal to the series. Sometimes, when circumstances allow, adoptive parents are encouraged to have a final meeting with the birthparent/s of their child.

These emotionally challenging meetings can also be incredibly powerful. Birthparents can give a fuller picture of the child while gaining a better understanding of their lives going forward: that they will be safe; they will be loved. Adopters can gain vital knowledge to share with their children down the line.

I remember first hearing about these meetings during our formal adoption training and thinking, ‘Why would I want to meet the person who had physically and emotionally neglected my child?’ But we were asked to reconsider compassionately. Often parents who cannot model love were once children whose parents couldn’t model love for them either. This is at the heart of Lost Boys & Fairies: an understanding that our childhood experiences have an impact on who we become. In realising that, Gabriel will come to learn that he has more in common with Becky than he first imagined.

When Gabriel arrives in the scene, he’s been through the emotional wringer. He’s had to process his own childhood trauma: the death of his mother, bullying and growing up gay in a religious family during the time of Section 28. He’s been through an intense adoption process; been matched with Jake, followed by a challenging introductions; his partner was tragically killed; he fell off the wagon; he’s been through an intense period of recovery – grief counselling and getting himself clean – and has had to convince social services that he’s capable of taking on a traumatised boy as a single parent, despite everything he’s gone through.

Gabe himself isn’t sure either: “How can I possibly know what’s right? How can you know? It’s impossible. This isn’t science. These are emotions. Relationships. Vulnerabilities. We’re all just humans trying to figure out how to get through life. So we can’t know.”

Becky, however, has also been through so much: her upbringing was one of abuse and neglect, as a result of which she struggled with alcohol and drug dependency in a violent and coercive relationship. She charges into the scene a force of nature, having missed Llinos, her social worker, at reception. She announces that “all social workers are a waste of space,” mistaking Jackie for a friend rather than Gabe’s social worker “because she has a nice face.” She’s funny, disarming and unexpected; she destabilises Gabriel from the get-go: he’s a startled rabbit in the headlights.

A series of questions have been prepared. Becky derides the fact she can’t be told Gabriel’s name and must refer to him as the ‘adopter,’ which “makes him sound like Robocop or the Terminator or something.” Is it because they’re scared she might look him up on Facebook and kill him? Ironically, being tracked down by a violent birthparent was one of Gabe’s greatest fears at the beginning of the series. The fact that she now mocks this notion as a ridiculous joke is already, subconsciously, chipping away at Gabe’s own preconceptions.

Becky, at this point, is armoured up and very much in ‘charge.’ She remarks that Gabe’s questions are good ones, but when Gabe just nods, bewildered, she responds with: “Thought [mine] were shit, did you? … I said yours were good. You said nothing. Rude.” She’s joking, but her ability to mock, to get one up on Gabe, constantly throws him – his presumed ‘superior’ position persistently challenged.

As Gabe gets to ask his questions, her answers continually surprise him. She named her son Jake because she once danced in the musical, Joseph (“I didn’t want to call him Joseph, ’cause of Stalin, so I settled for Jacob instead”); he learns that Jake took his first steps during Call the Midwife (“I thought nuns were cunts before I watched that”); and that Jake’s first word was ‘mam.’ This word lands in the space like a missile. The armour slips. Something shifts in the room, and Becky’s vulnerability emerges. Suddenly, Gabe sees a flash of his own mother (played by the spellbinding Gwawr Loader) in Becky. It’s an unexpected, humanising moment, but in this continual dance between armour and vulnerability, Becky pushes down hard. She wants to move on, get things done as quickly as possible. It’s time for her to ask her questions…

Becky’s pleased that Jake’s going to a single man because that means she’ll be his only ‘mami.’ She asks Gabe why he’s doing it on his own? Is it because he’s gay? It throws Gabe – that question wasn’t on the list – but he answers truthfully, and again, she confounds expectation: “I’m cool with that. My nan’s a lesbian and she’s a total legend.” When Gabe asks her why her nan was a legend, she replies it’s because: “She was the only one that gave a shit that her dad was a fucking arsehole.” Gabe’s answer? “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

This is another crucial destabilising moment for Becky: Gabe’s empathy. It’s as if she sees him for the first time. She asks why he’s single: “I mean you’re hardly a munter. Haven’t met the right one yet, have you?” Again, this catches Gabe unawares, and he finds himself answering honestly. He explains his partner was attacked, knocked his head and… Gabe gets emotional. Becky demands Llinos gets the “fucking man a tissue.” Now her kindness moves Gabe, and when she asks what his husband’s name was, he answers before thinking: Andy.

They’ve gone off script. They’re not supposed to share personal information. A moment of panic. But Becky insists she wasn’t trying to trick him. She genuinely wanted to know what his name was because Andy would have been Jake’s dad too: “Lucky boy, not just one but two nice dads to keep him safe.” We feel the weight of this. She never had a dad to keep her safe, and when she looks at Gabe directly again, what she says always floors me: “I mean look at you. Look at your kind face.”

It’s one of my favourite moments of the entire show. The way Gwyneth Keyworth delivers this line in acknowledgement of Siôn Daniel Young’s beautiful humanity is poignantly devastating. This whole scene, punctuated by the brilliantly judged responses of Elizabeth Berrington as Jackie and Mali Ann Rees as Llinos, in combination with James Kent’s exquisite direction, is a masterclass in performance.

James and DOP Philipp Haberlandt had decided to shoot the series using an aspect ratio of 1:1.85, a cinema format, which is a bit wider than the common 16:9 for television, but not as wide as the 1:2.35 format. This decision was made because Lost Boys & Fairies is such an emotional, character-driven story. It allowed them to focus on those characters rather than environment; to see the humanity in their eyes – a decision that really comes into its own during this moment.

I cried buckets writing this scene. If I’m not laughing or feeling when I’m writing, then how can I expect my audience to feel anything? I cried in the readthrough. The actors brought their A-game to the table, and something electric happened in that room. No one could speak afterwards. We were all shell-shocked by what we had experienced. Commissioners, execs, cast and crew were in pieces. Nothing, however, prepared me for how I would feel the day we filmed it.

It’s a 12-page scene and we filmed it over eight hours, mostly just letting it run as a piece of theatre, but from a variety of setups. Whether on camera or not, the actors gave the most intensely committed performances every time, to support their collaborators. It was astounding, exhausting, humbling. I sobbed watching it on the monitor.

Gwyneth’s ability to shift from exuberant bravado to broken vulnerability in a moment was breathtaking, as was Sion’s fragile, empathetic counterpoint (after what has already been a tour de force of a performance throughout the series). Gone is the sparkle of Neverland and the mask of drag: this is a scene in the cold light of day. Of two humans encountering each other for the first time in all their naked vulnerabilities. At one moment I noticed the first AD, Dominique Wedge, looking upwards, focusing hard on something. “What were you doing?” I asked later. “I was counting the tiles,” she said. “Looking up was the only way I could stop myself from breaking down.”

I thought I had done my crying that day, but their performances continued to move me in the rushes, the edit and, especially with Peter Gregson’s magnificent score, in the final cut. Towards the end of the scene, Becky asks one additional question: “You will love him, won’t you?” Gabe responds: he already does. It catches Becky by surprise: “Because I love that boy too, see. And I want him to have a good life. I want him to be happy. And you will let him know that, won’t you? You will let him know that I loved him? That he was loved. That it wasn’t because I didn’t love him.” Gabe can’t help but share with her what he sees in her too: “He takes after you, you know. He’s bright. Funny. So funny. And loving. You should be really proud of that.” We get the impression this is the kindest thing anyone has ever said to Becky. Gabe is stepping into his power to nurture – a sense of the parent he will become.

After they take a photo together, for Jake, it’s time to say goodbye. Becky tries one final act of bravado – “Goodbye, Robocop” – but Gabriel smiles meaningfully and tells her: “My name’s Gabriel.” The armour slips completely; for both of them. This sharing of his name is a moment of absolute openness and trust. It tells Becky: I want you to have this part of me now, because I value you. He’s parenting her with compassion, and it touches her to the core. Her final words are a simple “Thank you,” and through that simple phrase, Gwyneth manifests the child Becky once was, and the parent she was never allowed to be because of that. It’s a transcendent moment.

In just over 12 minutes, two characters go on the biggest journey of their lives, during which they transform each other irrevocably. For me, this is the power of writing. It has the capacity to compassionately dramatise and humanise its subjects. Anyone who claims that drama, a subject that models empathy, is irrelevant for schools and society does so at our peril. In a world of war, fake news, and where the notion of truth itself is under siege, telling redemptive stories about love, which encourage us to look into someone’s eyes to see our common humanity, feels like a radical act.

tagged in: BBC, Daf James, Duck Soup Films, Lost Boys & Fairies