McCredie’s juggling act
Australian screenwriter Elise McCredie reveals how she manages multiple projects, from topical dramas like Stateless to airport-set development project The Chaplain, and discusses her passion for telling bold, character-driven stories that explore the depths of humanity.
Like most television writers, Stateless creator Elise McCredie is well used to the rigours of juggling numerous projects in various stages of development.
In fact, the Australian believes writers should have up to 10 different projects on their books at any given time – she has a mixture of adaptations and original ideas – though some will always be higher priority than others.
“Some are dormant, some are heavily asleep, some of them are sedated. Some are in the morgue,” she jokes. “Hopefully they will be re-envisioned, but it’s [about] fashions too. Things that may not fly now, may fly in five years.”
One project that is very much alive is The Chaplain, a series currently in the works with local producer Wooden Horse and broadcaster SBS. A pilot script and series bible are in place, and McCredie is actively looking for partners after pitching the series at French television festival Series Mania earlier this year.
It’s the story of an airport chaplain called Tobias Wallace, who is convinced the airport couldn’t possibly run without his devotion to serving the needs of passengers and staff. Both aided and obstructed by his colleagues, Tobias makes every effort to find lost baggage, transport dead bodies and offer salvation to lost souls. But while his new boss believes he’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, Tobias will stop at nothing to keep his job – it’s the only thing that’s keeping his deeply submerged demons at bay.
The “great conceit” emerged from McCredie’s partnership with Wooden Horse joint CEO Jude Troy, who once left her handbag in an Uber at an airport and then realised that, in one single moment, she had lost her phone, wallet and all her ID. As Troy began to wonder what to do, “this man appears in a high-vis vest – on the back it says ‘Airport chaplain’ – and he says, ‘I hear there’s a distressed woman up here,’” McCredie says of Troy’s experience.
Troy then followed him as he walked through some security doors and into the depths of the airport, past staff rooms and store cupboards, until they reached his office, which was covered in Thank You cards.
McCredie immediately thought about how the chaplain’s role could be the basis for a series. And after partnering with Wooden Horse on Disney+ drama The Clearing, she and Troy set about developing such a show.
That preliminary work has included shadowing a real chaplain as part of McCredie’s research for the show, which she describes as a workplace drama with an ensemble of seven or eight main characters, whose arcs will run in tandem with episodic stories about mishaps and other events the chaplain must deal with.
“But he’s not without ego, and he’s not without his own dark past, because it’s drama,” she notes of the central character. “He’s not all warm and fluffy, so it’s a really interesting character. It also gives you this incredible scope as a writer, from doing high tragedy like dead bodies coming in on planes to hilarious things that can happen in an airport, which there are many of.”
As well as psychological thriller The Clearing, McCredie’s career has seen her write for series such as teen fantasy Nowhere Boys, Anna Torv-led thriller Secret City and immigration drama Stateless, which she says is the show of which she’s most proud. Yet if they and The Chaplain all feel completely different, that’s on purpose.
“I feel like I’m incredibly eclectic and genre-agnostic,” she says. “I’m really just drawn to the complexity of humanity, I guess. I’d love to do more stories like Stateless, but it’s hard, and I had Cate Blanchett [on board the project]. That’s a superpower in itself and [with her on board] you can tell a story that’s gritty and dark and important. It’s very hard without that person, without that superpower.
“I have stories I’m desperate to tell but they’re hard to get up in this climate because people want safe, they want fluffy, they want warm, and I like to do things that are important. I want to tell stories that change and illuminate things, and I have them in my juggling set, but it’s about what the market wants. It’s commerce meets heart; you’ve got your heart, but if that doesn’t hit the commerce then you can’t get it made.”
Co-created by old school friends McCredie and Oscar-winning actor and producer Blanchett, together with Tony Ayres (Nowhere Boys, The Survivors), the 2020 series remains a powerful and topical story of four disparate characters whose lives collide at an immigration detention centre in the middle of the Australian desert.
Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid’s Tale) stars as free-spirited flight attendant Sofie, whose life begins to unravel after she falls in with the leaders of a ‘self-improvement group’ (played by Blanchett and Dominic West), before quitting her job and inexplicably turning up at the centre claiming to be Eva Hoffman.
Jai Courtney (American Primeval) is Cam, who takes a job at the centre in the hope of better providing for his family but clashes with his colleagues over their poor treatment of detainees, while Fayssal Bazzi (The Commons) is Ameer, who is separated from his family during an attempt to enter Australia with help from people smugglers. Asher Keddie (Fake) also stars as Clare, an ambitious bureaucrat who is appointed as the new general manager at the centre amid rising media scrutiny.
Episode one largely focuses on Sofie’s relationship with what turns out to be a cult led by Blanchett and West’s charming couple. It proves to be a disarming opening to the six-part drama, which McCredie admits took a long time to get off the ground owing to the difficulty in making a series about refugees and the actions of the Australian government.
“Cate’s an old friend of mine. We went to school together and uni, and we were just sitting around her kitchen table [when Blanchett lived in Sydney] throwing ideas around,” McCredie recalls. In particular, Blanchett was interested in the story of Cornelia Rau, a German and Australian citizen who was unlawfully detained in an immigration centre – and inspired Strahovski’s Sofie in the series.
“Then I took the idea to Tony Ayres, who’s a collaborator I work with a lot, and the three of us got in rooms over the next three or four years, whenever we could, and thrashed it out. We had money, through Tony’s company, to develop it. But then getting it actually financed was hard and it took a long time because it was like ‘Ah, refugees.’”
In fact, Blanchett didn’t initially want to appear on screen in the series. “But when we’d been working on it for so long, she realised [she had to do] whatever it takes to get it made,” McCredie adds.
The show had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2020, just weeks before the world fell into the grip of Covid-19 and numerous national lockdowns followed. That meant cast and crew weren’t able to promote the series ahead of its local launch on ABC in the way they had intended, but the debate around immigration they hoped to have soon began after it was picked up by Netflix.
“It was really interesting to hear what people thought of it and what it meant to them and their immigration systems, and what they’d gone through,” McCredie says. “It really opened up a door, having it on Netflix, to speak to all sorts of different people in different countries, so that was validating and amazing.”
Stateless also marked McCredie’s first job as a showrunner – a role that gave her creative control over the series, though she says the position’s job description in Australia is more like the creative-focused British interpretation of showrunning than the all-powerful figureheads who run US television programmes.
“The American [version] means you’re in charge of all the budget, and that’s why some people say they don’t really like using it [the title], but I think it’s really valid because you’re a creative producer. The two shows I’ve showrun, you’re there from the very inception, from the very first writers room to the end of the sound mix, and you are creatively across every single little thing,” she explains. “You are the creative mind across the whole thing from the very beginning to the very end. You’re not responsible for the budget in the Australian model, but you are responsible for the creative, from the choice of every single cast member, every costume. That’s your job.”
McCredie’s job might have been different, however, if she had decided to become an actor or director instead of a writer, having been pursuing all three disciplines earlier in her career. “And I’m glad, actually,” she says of opting for writing. “I realise now that, particularly with acting, it’s the same muscle for me because I’m developing character and I talk to all the characters as I write them.
“I listen to the way I write, and whether it’s the right tone and cadence, and then I’m thinking about what their backstories are and what their motivations are. That’s exactly what I would have done as an actor when I’d be given a character. So it’s actually the same muscle, except I don’t have to be public-facing about it; I can do it all in my room and then the actors get to do that bit.”
As well as The Chaplain, McCredie is also developing a series with Sharon Horgan’s Merman (Bad Sisters) and working up ideas with actor Ruth Wilson (The Affair). Other than that, “it’s just my agent putting me up for things and then meeting people and a lot of Zooming,” she says.
But whatever project she’s working on, “I don’t ever want to just be writing on-the-surface stuff,” she says of her fascination with complex human emotions. “I want to find a way to really go deep into character and surprise myself – and then surprise the audience. I want to keep pushing myself.”
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tagged in: Elise McCredie, SBS, Stateless, The Chaplain, Wooden Horse