It’s not often a piece of media comes along which resonates on such a deep level that it’s impossible to stop thinking about. One Night, a mystery set in a small Australian coastal town, is not a typical show that I would normally consume, but the announcement of Jodie Whittaker, Nicole da Silva, and Yael Stone taking on the leading roles sparked my interest considerably. The show is more than a “whodunit” with pretty scenery and moody music - it documents the relationship between three friends, Tess (Whittaker), Simone (da Silva), and Hat (Stone), whose lives were dramatically changed after a traumatic event 20 years previously. It’s a multi-layered story that intelligently approaches the difficult subjects of sexual assault, PTSD, and addiction with an authenticity that I haven’t seen explored this well in television for a long time.
I hadn’t intended on watching the 6-part series in one go, but the story and phenomenal performances captivated me. Online, in forums and on social media, there were intense discussions about the themes of the show, the story itself, and the characters - even the choice of camera angles and imagery were under the analysis microscope.
The creator and writer of One Night is Emily Ballou, an American-Australian award winning poet, novelist, and screenwriter, currently residing in Scotland, which is a stark contrast to the sun-kissed beaches of the Australian South Coast. A search reveals Ballou to be a somewhat mysterious character herself, the results consisting mostly of a scattering of interviews largely focusing on her work as a poet. I am intrigued, and, rather excitingly, we start mutually following each other on social media.
One does not just slide into a screenwriter’s DMs with a list of hard hitting questions “demanding” they reveal the inner workings of their creative process post haste. Enter Read The Room Magazine, founded in part by the urgency to delve deeper into the intricate and important world of One Night, but also to carve out a space for the diverse conversations relating to women, LGBTQIA+, and marginalised voices that we weren’t seeing elsewhere regarding our favourite media.
With a little encouragement from the newly formed RTR team, I approached Emily and proposed that perhaps we could have a little chat about her brilliant TV show for the magazine.
Fast forward a few weeks, and it’s almost time for the interview. I suddenly feel a rumble of butterflies enter my stomach as I’m about to join the Zoom meeting we’ve arranged with Emily and RTR co-editor Helena Emmanuel. There’s something about the anticipation of talking with a person who you hold in such high regard, even with the years of interviewing experience that I have, the nerves well and truly kick in… and, just like that, we’re all connected. Helena and I joke, apologising about the amount of all the questions we have. As we begin, I studiously cover my chin in the hope that nobody notices my shaking jawline.
// Please be aware that, due to the themes represented in the TV series One Night such as sexual assault, PTSD and addiction, it was inevitable that some of those topics would be discussed in our interviews. //
Alfie Whitby: Before we start talking about some of the serious themes, we’d like to talk about your choice to set the show in Australia. Had you intended the story to be set there from the outset?
Emily Ballou: Well, I mean it could have been set anywhere in some ways, but Australia is heart country. I lived there for 20 years; I spent most of my youth there. It’s a place that I miss every day, so any chance to set something there, to go back there, the opportunity to be there and to shoot there, that’s a no brainer.
Also, I suppose the notion of playing with an older and younger self fitted really well for me there because I lived on the South Coast where it’s set for a number of years. I think in Australia in general, the mix of the ominous and dangerous and beautiful - they’re always intertwined at every moment within the landscape. So in that sense, it felt very fitting. It’s a very safe place to live, but obviously the landscape can be deeply dangerous. Everything about it can be dangerous. So there’s something that I like about that, and it fits with the story.
Helena Emmanuel: It definitely fits with the story. The landscape totally adds to it.
You’ve spoken before in an interview about TV writing being “kind of creatively frustrating,” especially when you're in a room and you're breaking stories that don't really belong to you. How did the process of bringing One Night to life compare with those experiences?
Emily: I think that any story I work on belongs to me somehow - I always make it so. I don't work on material that I don't feel some connection with. I'm a very broad writer. I'm a ventriloquist, so I can write on other people's shows. I'm obsessive about research: you can give me any topic, and I will find it eventually interesting.
Obviously to work on the show that is my own, you still don't have control over everything. What I learned is that when I'm there every day, working with the directors, working with the actors, we would throw away so much on set and rewrite it on the spot, or the actors would improvise something, and I had no problems with that. So it's fascinating that once you actually have control of something and you're doing what TV is supposed to do which is be a huge collaboration between many creative people, then suddenly there's no precious "I am a poet and novelist, these are my own, my words only" kind of response. They're suddenly everyone's words. Everyone contributed.
HE: That's something I love about TV too, is that it's so much more collaborative.
Emily: People are bringing their passion to it and they've embodied those characters by that point. Because obviously, everything is shot out of order. Generally, I just felt like the whole process of collaborating is deeply wonderful and every job - I loved all the jobs, everyone's job - everyone's important. Everyone brings something. And the crews in Australia are amazing, so chill.
We're on these beautiful beaches, this beautiful landscape. Everyone was really happy. Again, this is my first time showrunning something, but the crew was saying ”this was one of the best shows we've ever worked on.” The environment, the feeling of it. Catherine Millar (Director, set-up; episodes 1-3), she brings such a beautiful energy to her work. She really set up the tone for the show in terms of that. [The crew] were so respectful and kind and, you know, gave us space. They're just used to it, seeing a lot of different things on set. They didn't seem to be bothered or worried, but they weren't disinterested either when we were all crying or whatever. There was a lot of crying. They just took it in their stride.
We stay on the topic of collaboration a while longer. Emily recalls a scene from Episode Two where Simone and Tess share a tender moment on a windswept beach. Much of the dialogue is a product of an improvisation between Nicole da Silva and Jodie Whittaker, on the insistence of director Catherine Millar that there should be “more romance”. “You know, I'm a very cold person, and she wanted much more romance, like [for the scene] to be kind of seething,” says Ballou. The result of the improvisation is a powerful heart-skipping moment where we witness the characters' unresolved feelings erupt in a subtle yet electric exchange. “It's beautiful, and I'm not going to turn away from something that moving.”
Romance, however, is only a small fragment of the thematic focus of One Night, and the conversation begins to explore the more difficult and emotionally heavy scenes. Emily is incredibly open about her experiences on set, even the difficult ones. And surely, to be able to observe, in realtime, your own creative work being brought to life would overwhelm even the most seasoned of screenwriters especially when that work involves themes such as One Night’s. When speaking about the actors, particularly the younger cast, Ballou is in awe. “The younger cast, most of them had never done anything before. They had some really difficult [scenes]. That scene with Mikaela (Binns-Rorke) and Jodie on the conference floor - that was the first time Mikaela was in costume. That was her first scene she did. She walked in, and I just burst into tears…. Mikaela was like, ‘It's okay, it's okay.’ [laughs] She's telling me, ‘it's okay!’ That was just harrowing.”
“Crews have become, by law, even more respectful than they already probably were,” Emily explains, highlighting the supportive environment of the production and outstanding professionalism from the crew. For the cast, nobody was left to work things out alone, especially regarding the more physically intimate scenes, which made use of an intimacy coordinator. But what about Emily? How did she process and manage the emotional and personal toll of the subject matter? Co-editor Helena broaches the subject…
HE: How do you personally approach living in that space for so long and being so intimate with this story and its themes?
Emily: You drink. [laughs] I don't think I could prepare because I didn't actually know what it was gonna be like processing such personal material every day. I don't think you can really prepare for it.
Fiona Seres, who is arguably my best friend and who wrote Episode Four, was very instrumental in helping me to tell this story because of her having so much more experience of making shows - like, being a showrunner. She script-produced the second block. She also was kind of like a guard dog. She was very powerful and helped protect me being on set while a lot of the work of pre-production for the second block needed to be done. She did a lot of script-editing and defending the story we were telling and the way we were telling it. I was so stressed and I couldn't shut off the stress at the end of the day. I was kind of wired. Sometimes I'd get off set and I'd go out all night. Sometimes I'd refuse to go out and I'd go to bed straight away. I lived on gummy sweets and beer.
I think the whole process of shooting anything is stressful. Having responsibility for that many scripts is in itself stressful, and then to have it have that personal aspect and emotional aspect was difficult. What would I do in the future? I don't know. In some ways, it makes me think you can't tell any stories but the ones that are that personal. Then in other ways I think, “never again!” [laughs] I don't know what the answer here is.
The tone of the conversation shifts and the subject of sexual assault is brought into the discussion. It feels impossible to talk about One Night and not speak about one of its most significant themes, however, it’s still an uncomfortable topic to chat about, so we’re careful not to dwell.
Far too often in media, sexual violence against women is glamourised or leans towards voyeurism. Thoughtful research and a lived understanding are key to creating an authentic portrayal of such a traumatic event. One Night knows this and focuses rightly on the thoughtful understanding of the violence’s effects rather than the dramatic terror of the violence itself. For Ballou, the story reaches into personal territory, and while she is graciously candid, it’s obviously a difficult topic. “I grew up in a time where [sexual assault] was very, very par for the course,” states Emily. “That's a terrible thing to say, but that's how it was. Women were being sexually assaulted all over the place. I think that when [incidents of sexual assault] happen so much, you kind of start to think, ‘Well that's just how it is.' You kind of learn to live with it, but obviously, they have their effects.”
It’s time to move on to the next question. Visually, One Night is full of clever signposts and signifiers that are not always noticed on first viewing. These layers of deeper meaning in the show are a media analyst's dream with both myself and co-editor Helena sometimes spending hours lost in a whirlwind of semiotic debate. A prominent and repeated use of imagery is the white lily, so we ask Emily about its significance.
HE: The white lily comes up a lot in the show and is clearly quite significant given that it recurs within every episode. We see it within the flashbacks to that night, and it's the last shot of the opening credits. It's one of Tess' professionally done - and most prominent - tattoos, and obviously, there’s the character Lily, Vicki and Tess' daughter. Can you talk about the lily, its symbolism, and what drew you to it?
Emily: It's an iconic part of the South Coast, but they are weeds. So they're an invasive species that line the coast. Under the eucalyptus, it's this very dark brooding sort of bush landscape, and there's a certain time of year - spring and summer - they're just everywhere. They glow in the dark and they're beautiful, but they're obviously not meant to be there. So I suppose that image was in my head. I guess I've always loved lilies as a flower because of their scent. There's obviously an innocence about them in some ways, but there's something ominous about them at the same time.
Lilies just have this sort of resonance for me in ways, and I suppose that's why I wanted to [include them]. At one point I wanted to call the show The Lilies, just about the three friends. It feels like it represents their youth, their innocence, but something's tainted about it.
Then when I kept trying to encourage the filmmakers to get out and film the actual lilies on the South Coast before they disappeared, they kept going, “Oh, we'll do it at the end. We'll do it at the end,” and I was like, "They're going to be gone! They're gonna be gone!” They ended up setting up this shoot with the women walking through the lilies, which involved using fake lilies which was to my horror, but it works really well. And obviously, with the amount of time and care Catherine (Millar) put into shooting that, she was eager to make sure that it paid off. That became a kind of trope for the past and the loss of memory and the loss of innocence and the kind of hauntedness of that night for them.
HE: Well, I wouldn't have known they were fake, so she did a great job.
Emily: Exactly! That's Victoria Williams, our production designer. It was all her doing. I think they did collect some real ones, but I'm not sure that they ended up using them. They transplanted some.
As a predominantly queer publication with many of our team part of the LGBTQIA+ alphabet, it would be remiss of us not to bring up the lesbian relationship between Tess and her wife Vicki. On a personal level, seeing an established female queer couple around my age, that very much reflects my own experiences, depicted without fanfare or unnecessary drama was profoundly meaningful. Domestic queerness, without the threat of significant emotional trauma, seemingly inevitable breakups, or even death, still isn’t represented often enough in film and television. We asked Emily about her decision to centre a queer couple and how grateful we were that she didn’t bury any gays.
AW: What made you decide to centre a queer couple? How important was it for you to show the relationship between Tess and Vicki?
Emily: I thought it was important and true. Certainly, when I lived down the South Coast, I was in a long term relationship with a woman and had had several already before that. So again, that space of the South Coast was a kind of cherished place for me there. Even just like right next to where we shot Helen's house, that was where I lost my dog Hilda. Turned out she was living in the bushes next to Helen's house for three days on the beach by herself. There were lots of resonances in those beaches and places of a time capsule of my life. Nothing bad happened to me on the South Coast, it was only a place of good, but it definitely represented a time in my youth.
I also think that there's a truth - whether or not one feels that they're queer from birth or not - that there's a lot of sexual assault that’s happened to lesbians that I’ve known in their past. I've always been interested in writing those friendships that border on sexual but aren’t necessarily. In a group of three friends, there's always two that are kind of way closer or kind of more crush-y than one. Poor old Hat's just sort of left out of that dynamic.
AW: Well, we did want to just say that it was really refreshing to see a lesbian couple that nothing happens to. They don't die, they just stay married!
Emily: [laughs] I mean obviously emotionally a lot happens, but it's just part of the rollercoaster of any marriage. There were emotional moments when everything feels like it's going to fall apart, but then it doesn't.
HE: I think at least for myself, I finished it and I was like, “Oh my god! All the queer women are still alive!”
Emily: [laughs] That's so bad.
HE: Usually, you know, one of them dies, so that was pretty cool [that they didn't]. So thanks for that! Or if they don't die, the show's just cancelled so you don't find out what happens. So getting some closure is great. It was very significant for me and for a lot of other people, so thank you for telling the story that way.
Emily: You're welcome!
I relate to all of them in different ways. I'm the detective, so I've definitely got some Hat in me, and I also feel like I am as cold as Tess - as hidden and secretive as Tess. And as messy as Simone.
EMILY BALLOU
HE: Moving on to Simone's character specifically, especially since you said that you are Simone and you relate to her the most.
Emily: I relate to all of them in different ways. I'm the detective, so I've definitely got some Hat in me, and I also feel like I am as cold as Tess - as hidden and secretive as Tess. And as messy as Simone.
HE: In one of the roundtables that the cast did that Paramount+ posted, Nicole da Silva said that she thinks Simone writing the book was almost like a compulsion, like she had to get it out. Do you feel the same? For you, what was her reasoning?
Emily: You mean why did she have to write it? Definitely. Also, I think writing is such a private act. I've written books that are just still sitting in a drawer. If you're lucky, you publish them. My first novel was basically about my family, and writing it is just an act of purge, with yourself. You don't really think “Oh someone's gonna read this”. Someone, a stranger, okay that's one thing - but your family? You're in this situation when you have to kind of answer for what you've written in private, which you were compelled to write. It's a very tricky thing to be a writer, so I think for Simone, it's almost like she couldn't move on with her life until she wrote this. Obviously, she wants to be a writer, and that's double the reason to write it.
AW: Let's move on to Hat, who I think is a really interesting character. Obviously very different from the others as well, in dealing with the trauma in her own way. Is her current life as a lawyer with a husband and kids a direct response to that? Does she hope that the adult life she’s created will make her feel worthy enough to be equal to Tess and Simone?
Emily: She was always on a path, for sure. She was always the way she is, in some ways. I think there's part of her that kind of hates that about herself. She wishes she could be more like them. Everything she's done - she's not in criminal defence, she's in employment law. She's married to Mark. He's emotionally there for her, but how, practically, on a day-to-day basis, is he really? She kind of picked something when she was young. When she was 11 she said she wanted to be a lawyer and then she just stuck diligently with that. She met him that night, and that was like a way of making good of something. Would she be more satisfied with someone else? Potentially, but then she's also a person who's very loyal. She's going to stick with what she's done. It's so hard for her to even go on holiday at the end. [laughs]
I think that her triumph in this is her need to make amends and to figure out, to get to the bottom of something. We can see how she would probably have made a better, different kind of lawyer. Maybe that would change things for her, I don't know. I feel like she's done a good job even though it seems like she's just meddling. Constantly. She kind of has to do that, she needs to know the truth because she's been so in denial for so long. She didn't see it, she didn't see anything.
HE: Right. And the dichotomy of that. You know, she didn't see the assault; that’s the same night she met Mark. It’s one of the greatest moments of her life, but meanwhile, this terrible thing is happening to her best friend. How does she reckon with that? It's very interesting.
Emily: It’s not like she's trying to diss her friends, but there's also a knowledge that this is the way they behave a lot. It's hard to know what really happened. They were so drunk, that's just a fact. It's hard to know. It was important for me to have that, even though it's quite a contentious character to build, but truthful somehow.
HE: I think the way she's processing it and carrying it is a lot more muted compared to Tess and Simone.
Emily: She had to. If she got hysterical in the way that she feels they're sometimes behaving hysterically, then everything in her life would fall apart. And she doesn't have the evidence. That's the way she thinks - what is the evidence here? It was really important to me to try to chart a changing landscape around consent in the show, because it is changing. It was not a word we even had when I was young in the way that, obviously it existed as a word, but it wasn't a word that we used in that way. It wasn't in existence.
Then you think about Lily…. There's a scene that didn't make it into the show where she tells Jason's friend Jed that she doesn't appreciate being objectified. It's showing that kind of difference over time. Then there’s Tess' mother and the way she approached it, which I felt was very typical of women of her generation. They'd be like, "Well, you put yourself in harm's way…”
HE: "What did you think was going to happen?"
Emily: The way the people of the town would talk about these girls - Mary Calley has a personal investment in dismissing everything they have to say, but the way she talks to them is also very indicative of a certain kind of view around these issues. Just trying to chart those things, I think, was important. If you say someone was drunk, then that shows they couldn't consent. But that's not how the police treated it back then.
HE: It’s kind of similar to what we said about the queer representation and how authentic it felt. The portrayal of Tess' PTSD, trauma, and addiction felt very relatable. All the details of how they manifested themselves were very authentic and deeply personal to a lot of people. How does it feel to have people really pick up on and be grateful for that level of accuracy and specificity that you put into your characters?
Emily: I think a lot of the comments in my early scripts were: “Does she really have to have all these things? She has to pull out her hair as well?” And I was like, “Well, yeah.” I've been pulling out my hair since I was seven or something...Eating disorders? Tick. Drinking? Tick. We were kind of happy to get away with showing all those things. I'm glad that it does feel truthful and subtle in a way.
AW: I felt like it was one of the first times I've really seen something so authentic. I was doing the little tick boxes of those, going, “Oh yeah! I do that as well,” and it felt for the first time in a long time of just, “Yeah, this is how it is.” There's not one thing - you're not just depressed. You don't just have anxiety. It's multi-layered.
Emily: Yeah! You don't just have panic attacks, you don't just push people away, you don't just suffer from depression, you don't just lie in bed, you don't just drink, you don't just self harm. It's just all the ways of coping as well as invasive thinking. I suppose in that sense, it might feel like a lot. I think it's also that Jodie manifested it as one true character.
AW: It was very, very good. I was very moved by it.
Emily: So powerful in the way she took on this role and transformed it. It’s someone who could seem very cold, and I just think she's brought such balance to it, the emotional range.
AW: What I did like as well [was at] the end when we see a resolution, some hope. I was gone by that point. I was just a heap of tears, going down to my wife sobbing, "It's so beautiful!"
Emily: [laughs]
AW: I liked that hope at the end. That was very important, I felt.
Emily: Mm-hmm, yeah for me too. I wanted the book to somehow inadvertently, against all other expectations, help her. The process of going through all this - in a way none of it would have come to the fore had [Simone] not written the book. All the shit they had to go through in these six episodes had some resolution that was powerful for them all.
HE: In that vein, regarding self-harm and coping mechanisms, tattoos are a big part of Tess’ character even though we only see them twice. How prescriptive were you with what they were, if at all?
Emily: I wasn't really in the sense that I knew she needed to be covered with them and some needed to be created out of self harm and some then evolved into things that she chose that were meaningful. There is a poem of mine that Sheldon (Wade, Hair & Make Up Designer) transcribed and put onto Tess' arm. The rest were done in consultation with me, with Jodie, and himself. Just kind of collaborative, you know. He had to draw them all, turn them into decals and apply them over the course of five hours. I never intended for them to be seen other than twice. For both of those it was a lot of work.
Jodie and I talked a lot about her clothing and how she would dress, which is also in keeping with not wanting to show her body. Obviously, having a certain role in her workplace meant that she needed to look expensive and well dressed. Even though we think she looks sexy in it, it's not meant to be sexual in any way. She obviously looks great in what she chooses to wear, but it is meant to cover her up completely.
HE: It's all very muted colours as well. You never see her in a bold colour.
Emily: That's Damir (Peranovic), our beautiful costume designer. He did an amazing job. Amazing.
We covered a lot of ground so it’s time to ease the intensity a little as we approach our final questions. We ask Emily a general question about her favourite scenes and what she hopes audiences will take away from One Night.
AW: What was your favourite scene to see performed? Was there anything that surprised you?
Emily: I loved all the long scenes where the actors would always go, “Oh, here's a play. Oh god, here's another play from Ballou.” You know, very long dialogue scenes. I loved seeing those. I loved Simone and Hat outside the farm in ep two. I loved Tess and Simone when Tess confronts her about the book. It was devastating and beautiful to see.
Probably my favourite scene to shoot and the moment of most joy was Tess and Lily dancing. Harper (Simon) did that whole scene - it was just beautiful. The cameras were all moving on the dollies and she did three minutes just alone, again and again and again before Jodie came in and joined her. It was just wonderful to see her owning the space. She is a person who is a very emotionally wise soul and does truly represent that generation and the way they approach the world. I'm glad that Lily came out of this experience relatively unscarred.
HE: And the last question is: what do you ultimately hope the audience will take away from One Night?
Emily: I think the power of telling a story, your story, even if it's also someone else's story. That the act of telling a story that has been silenced or repressed can be very powerful, too, and healing. I suppose it was a way of trying to… it was like an act of love for one's younger self and forgiveness, I guess. Love and forgiveness for the younger self.
A little under an hour and half later, we conclude the interview. I take myself out for a walk to allow my brain to process our unexpectedly candid conversation. Helena, the New Yorker that she is, goes in search of an emotional support bagel. It feels like we had been invited into a magician's inner sanctum, just for a moment. How lucky and privileged we were.
Words: Alfie Whitby
Interview: Helena Emmanuel & Alfie Whitby (with questions submitted by the RTR team)
You can watch One Night on Paramount+ UK & Ireland and Paramount+ Australia now.
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