Interview With Eileen Gallagher

Exactly a decade after the U.K. series Bad Girls was conceived, the prison drama is coming to America. HBO is adapting the show for U.S. television and is placing some of its biggest talent behind the effort. Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under) is the supervising writer, and Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl, Six Feet Under) and Raelle Tucker (Supernatural) are the lead writers. The three will executive produce along with series' co-creator Eileen Gallagher.

As CEO of Shed Productions, Gallagher is one of the most powerful and successful lesbians in entertainment. Together with Maureen Chadwick, Brian Park and Ann McManus, her partner of 24 years, Gallagher formed Shed in 1998. Seven years later — and based in part on the enormous popularity of Bad Girls, their first production — the U.K.-based company went public and was valued at more than $85 million.

Gallagher spoke with AfterEllen.com about HBO's early plans for the show's development and about the challenges of bringing a British drama — and a lesbian romance — to American television.

Eileen Gallagher

AfterEllen.com: I want to jump in and ask what AfterEllen readers most want to know, which is whether the characters of Nikki and Helen are going to be part of the American version of Bad Girls.
Eileen Gallagher: Oh, certainly. Yes, I mean the great thing about Nancy and Raelle, the writers on this, is the reason they want to do Bad Girls is they're big fans of the show. I think they found the show on a local channel and they've been watching it. They want to keep true to the heart of the show and true to the characters and stories.

Clearly there'll be some changes in terms of the prisons, just to be true to the American system, but they're absolutely committed to reproducing the show in a way that reflects what they enjoyed about the original. It will be very recognizable but with a lovely HBO gloss, and I'm sure they'll add great things to the stories and characters.

AE: With HBO, I assume there's no hesitation to create a central lesbian story line.
EG: Well, I haven't been in the HBO meetings so I can't talk first-hand, but I have spoken to Nancy and Raelle, and they like the series as it is, and I can't believe for a minute that HBO would buy the series and give it to this team and then shy away from a lesbian love story. And I don't think it's in HBO's history or DNA that they shy away from anything.

It's just terrific, because if I could choose a home for Bad Girls, the top of the list would be HBO. It's a fantastic place for it because HBO — they're a trailblazer, high quality, and not afraid to have controversy.

AE: Do you know how closely they plan to stick to the original characters and story lines?
EG: Yes, very close. That's what they said to us. They love the characters and the stories and the tone of the show, and they want to stick with it. That's one of the reasons we're so pleased. We had tried it previously with another writer at FX, and we didn't want to go ahead with it because we just felt the characters and the tone was wrong. We want to protect what we think is special about the show, and so do the writers that will be doing it for HBO, so it feels like a very good relationship.

AE: You sold the rights initially to the FX network, but they came back with a script that I think you said was "too gritty." Can you talk about what they missed that you're hoping HBO gets?
EG: I think it's really important that the female characters, the prisoners, are well-rounded, that you like them despite the fact they're in prison, that you see the good in them. Also, there's camaraderie and humor in women's prisons that I think we got over, which is important. I think, quite frankly, the writer was directing it more toward a kind of Oz feel, because he probably thought that's what FX wanted, and that's just not the show. Our show is not Oz. We like audiences to laugh and cry in the same episode if possible, and that's just not what we saw there.

We've waited patiently, and it's more important to us to get it right than just to get it done. We feel that with Nancy and Raelle and Alan Ball, and with HBO — it's a fantastic combination of talent — and also they've made it very clear that they really want input from the Shed creators in the U.K. They want to be able to collaborate with us, and we want to be as helpful as we can.

And, you know, there are some episodes and some stories and things that we felt worked better than others, and we can give them our opinion of what we'd have done the second time around. The great advantage of being able to do it a second time is you can make it even better, really, because there are some things we'd change. But certainly one thing that will not change is the love story between Nikki and Helen, which of course defined the first three series. And I'm sure, with Nancy and Raelle, that's one of the major elements they like about it.