- Man in an Orange Shirt is a painting, it's a character, and it's the title of our new drama.
The piece consists of an episode in the 1940's and an episode set right now.
The episode in the 40's tells the story of the impossibility of a domestic, gay relationship.
- You surely don't think we can set up house together like man and wife.
- Please.
I read it and I was really hooked, it was such a page-turner and it wasn't patronizing.
It was romantic.
- I had this idea of a portrait done in the height of passion that you would look at and immediately know, yes, the painter was in love with the man he was painting.
- Love shouldn't be taken for granted.
What's so devastating about the story is that it's people making decisions out of fear and social conditioning.
- Man in an Orange Shirt is challenging, honest and it can be brutal at parts.
- It's a drama about the difficulty of intimacy, people trying to love against the odds, but also a story about family secrets.
- Because it is terrible, it's disgusting to live as if you were animals.
- Argh!
- It was important to us to get a sort of iconic actress to play older Flora.
And we were fantastically fortunate with Vanessa Redgrave, because she has the capacity to sort of not say very much and to communicate so much in a look.
- Flora is an incredibly universal character, it seems to me.
She's anyone who's ever been the third wheel in a relationship.
- Michael.
- The thing I'd love people to take away from it, is just to enjoy and to experience these two emotional stories, and the fact that they're gay is sort of incidental.
- Hey Steve, come on.
Steve.
(chairs fall to floor) (dramatic music)
