From an awful encounter aged 19 to being told her ideas are ‘too female’, the actor and writer has battled sexism for 20 years. But, she says, things are changing
In the sharp and smart new Channel 4 comedy-drama Chivalry, written by Steve Coogan and Sarah Solemani, the acclaimed feminist director Bobby (Solemani), who has to work with Cameron, a classic chauvinist studio boss (Coogan, in a classic Coogan role), explains why her progress in the film industry has been so slow compared with her contemporaries: “I’ve been hacking through this jungle that the most average man can stroll into,” she says with feeling.
“Steve came up with that line, actually,” Solemani, 39, tells me over a breakfast of brisket and scrambled eggs in a deli around the corner from her home in Los Angeles. I’d assumed she’d written it, because she herself has been hacking through the jungle of British TV and film for two decades, to the point where she considered writing her memoir just to title it “Nearly”. “Because it was always TV commissioners telling me, ‘Right, this is so nearly what we want, but … ’” she says. Over the years, she has been pitched by magazines and the TV industry as “the new Lena Dunham”, “the new Amy Schumer”, “the new [insert any big-name female comedian]”, only to then be told by British TV bosses that she was nearly what they wanted, but not quite.
