![Andrew Davies says casting of stronger women characters is down to more female TV executives at the top of the industry](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/08/04/TELEMMGLPICT000301899469_16911816944780_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqi8VutO5dPRPhdDWeqTKgl6GJHQBqy42csvwxTLJdQ_U.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Leading scriptwriter says TV execs won’t cast ‘soppy’ female characters
Andrew Davies, who wrote the much-loved 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice, says a strong woman is at the forefront of every major drama
![Andrew Davies says casting of stronger women characters is down to more female TV executives at the top of the industry](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/08/04/TELEMMGLPICT000301899469_16911816944780_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqi8VutO5dPRPhdDWeqTKgl6GJHQBqy42csvwxTLJdQ_U.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The rise of senior female TV executives has led to more strong women on screen, at the expense of their “frail, delicate” predecessors, the acclaimed screenwriter Andrew Davies has said.
Davies, who wrote the much-loved 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice, said that a strong woman is at the forefront of every major drama, with bosses unwilling to cast weaker female characters.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Davies said that he believed this was down to more female TV executives at the top of the industry.
“Quite rightly, over the years, it has become [the case] that the executives who control drama are mostly women,” he said. “They’d say that the heroine, of course, has got to be a strong woman, and I’d say, ‘Can’t we have a frail, delicate, slightly soppy one?’”
In his previous screenplays, Frances Grey played the sweet and insipid Amelia Sedley in his 1998 BBC adaptation of Vanity Fair, while, in comparison, Charlotte Heywood was the courageous and principled heroine in ITV’s 2019 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sanditon.
![Andrew Davies says cannot find a home for his John Updike adaptation because the US author (pictured) has been ‘a bit cancelled’ for perceived misogyny](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/08/04/TELEMMGLPICT000002250524_16911818526430_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqP794i8zub1KbjVuJr3xjVmymwfxgHQuryvrYAjO8QpY.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Other recent screenplays have seen Lily James play the inspiring Natasha Rostova in the BBC’s 2016 adaption of Tolstoy’s War & Peace.
Davies, 86, was speaking as he admitted he cannot find a home for his John Updike adaptation because the US author has been “a bit cancelled” for perceived misogyny.
The screenwriter, whose lengthy list of credits also includes House of Cards and Les Miserables, announced in 2018 that he planned to bring Updike’s Rabbit books to the screen.
But efforts to secure a deal with a streaming service or broadcaster have failed, because Updike is considered problematic for his depictions of women.
He said: “It seems to be a very difficult sell because somehow poor John Updike is seen as… a bit cancelled.” Executives had expressed initial interest “and then they think, ‘uh-oh, maybe not’”.
Davies added: “I think this is the trouble – you don’t find an awful lot of women who are crazy about the Rabbit books.”
Updike died in 2009. The libidinous Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom appeared in four novels, beginning with the 1960 bestseller Rabbit, Run, in which he ran away from his suburban existence and unhappy marriage, cheating on his wife with a part-time prostitute.
One of the greats
The books established Updike as one of the greats of US literature, but he has been criticised for misogyny. David Foster Wallace, the US writer, once joked that people under 40 considered Updike to be “just a penis with a thesaurus”.
Davies said he had developed the adaptation in collaboration with younger people who did have early misgivings about Updike’s work, which won two Pulitzer Prizes. “We went through the whole process with a charming married producer in her 30s, a gay guy in his 30s and a lesbian in her 20s. They struggled with various bits but I brought them round.”
The screenwriter said that a lot of rich and powerful men today will have had lives “kind of moulded by Rabbit. He is a great American character. He’s not a figurehead by any means, he’s a very imperfect man, but he’s certainly representative”.
When he announced the project five years ago, Davies said he would redress any imbalances by writing extra scenes for Harry’s wife and mistress.
In 1988, Updike told The New York Times that some readers had accused him of portraying women as “wives, sex objects and purely domestic creatures”.
Updike said he wrote his 1984 novel The Witches of Eastwick, with its three female protagonists, as “one attempt to make things right with my, what shall we call them, feminist detractors”.