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EXCLUSIVE: British TV has featured its fair share of wealth on screen down the years – just think Downton Abbey or Brideshead Revisited – but in Wild Cherry, creator Nicôle Lecky wanted to shine new light on the super rich.
The thriller is set in a gated community, a collection of large houses and apartments in places like the Home Counties in which mini ecosystems develop, where wealth can be an ultimate currency whatever one’s background.
“I used to drive through a gated community in Surrey and I would look at these mansions and think, ‘Gosh who lives there?’,” Lecky told Deadline. “It had such a strong sense of an England that I hadn’t seen before. I knew I wanted to set something there.”
Starring Eve Best and Carmen Ejogo, who are coming off the back of HBO tentpoles House of the Dragon and The Penguin respectively, Wild Cherry follows Lorna (Ejogo), a self-made, successful Black businesswoman from South London who has worked hard to get to where she is. Best plays her closest friend Juliet, a woman born into the privileged gated community they both call home. The safe haven is a place where bad things never happen until their kids are implicated in a shocking scandal at their exclusive private school and Juliet and Lorna are forced to take sides. Lecky also stars alongside Imogen Faires (Marcella), newcomer Amelia May and Sophie Winkleman (Peep Show).
Lecky, who won two BAFTAs for 2022’s Mood, researched the series by spending time in these communities and found they were referred to by insiders as an “Island.” She went about creating a map, pinpointing who lived within and who lived outside the “Island” and where they came from. “The way it is so detailed and you have this melting pot is so new,” added Lecky. “You’ve got generational wealth mixed with people who’ve ‘done good’ and come into money and then the way class intersects is really fascinating.”
Elizabeth Kilgarriff, who runs Wild Cherry producer Firebird Pictures, said the show “takes audiences into a world that you don’t see on British TV.” “It’s a world of beautiful interiors but it’s very real at the same time,” she added.
Wild Cherry is as much a generational story as it is a wealth story, and Lecky was keen to represent the mother-daughter relationship in 2024 as authentically as possible.
Diving into these relationships amid a haze of social media, apps and peer pressure, Wild Cherry aims to “try not to fall into a clichéed version of kids on social media,” Kilgarriff said.
“The teens in some cases hold a mirror up to their mothers,” added Lecky. “It’s the mums who have WhatsApp groups and sometimes don’t let everyone into these groups.”
“It shouldn’t be a rebellious act to cast correctly”
With this in mind, Lecky said leads Best and Ejogo “inhaled the script, bringing so much of themselves and crafting these beautifully nuanced performances.”
Lecky wanted to avoid the arcane casting trope of having “20-year-olds playing mothers of teen daughters,” and Best and Ejogo are 53 and 51 respectively. “Watching the show makes you feel like you’re watching a family,” added Lecky.
While “it shouldn’t be a rebellious act to cast correctly,” Lecky feels the industry has a long way to go before older actresses are landing the roles they deserve 100% of the time. “It’s less of a problem nowadays but I’d be keen to see the statistics of female versus male actors,” she added.
Her musical drama Mood, which was based on Lecky’s one-woman play Superhoe, garnered rave reviews and won two BAFTAs, victorious in a crowded category that included Ben Whishaw-starrer This is Going to Hurt.
Thematically, Lecky said there are comparisons to be drawn between Mood and Wild Cherry, as she flagged the notion of “exploitation versus liberation.” But having previously said that streaming platforms did not grasp the nuance and specificity behind Mood when it was being pitched (the show was co-produced for BBC America), Lecky thinks Wild Cherry is more sellable. She was speaking with Deadline in the days before BBC Studios takes Wild Cherry to buyers at the London TV Screenings.
“This show is much more commercial – it’s detailed and nuanced but also glossy, beautiful, soft, feminine and a real thriller,” she added. “Commercial is the word.”
Wild Cherry is written and created by Lecky with Toby MacDonald (Extraordinary, Fifteen-Love) directing. EPs are Kilgarriff, Craig Holleworth for Firebird Pictures, Lisa Walters, Lecky, Macdonald – and Lucy Richer for the BBC. The producer is Ado Yoshizaki Cassuto. The series is currently filming in Surrey. BBC Studios is selling worldwide.
