She spent two decades trying to get Gentleman Jack onscreen – but the world wasn’t ready. Sally Wainwright talks about the return of her lesbian trailblazer, her Happy Valley finale – and why Renegade Nell is next
When it first aired in 2019, Gentleman Jack seemed like quite a departure for Sally Wainwright. Previously, the director and screenwriter had been everything period drama wasn’t: she started her career on The Archers and Coronation Street, found her voice with lottery-winners comedy At Home With the Braithwaites, went on to write septuagenarian romcom Last Tango in Halifax, and then created the globally lauded crime drama Happy Valley. More to the point, historical drama really isn’t her thing.
“There has been this slavish adaptation of things like Jane Austen, which I just find irrelevant,” Wainwright says, ahead of a screening of the new series of Gentleman Jack. “They seem to be obsessed with: ‘Can you find a man? Are you pretty enough to find a rich man?’ As if that’s all women care about. It leaves me cold.”
