Interview with Levi David Addai
Interview with Dark Mon3y writer Levi David Addai.
Published: 4 July 2019
When you pose the question to people you realise there is no straight answer to this, and you realise how evil and tragic such a thing can be.
What inspired you to write the series?
In celebrity culture there are a lot of stories of pay-offs, where parents have come out and said something’s happened to my child - and then all of a sudden the story disappears because of an out-of-court settlement. And I think, an out-of-court settlement? What’s happened there? And we never hear about the family or the case again.
Being a writer, I thought, if this was true, what next for the family? Because if this is true that they received money and didn’t pursue charges anymore, where are they now? What’s going on now in the dynamics of that family, especially if it was a huge pay-off where the parents don’t have to work anymore and can live off the money they’ve been given, I mean, could I do that?
Knowing that when I’m going to the shop to feed my children, to know that this has been funded by this pay-off, the clothes that they’re wearing... and even though the money could be used for the kids’ future, to go to university, whatever it is, it’s still the dark money. It goes back to that. So I just kind of ran with that. I never really had any fixed answers, I just had questions for myself and I thought, these would be good questions for the audience. So that’s how it came about, and that’s what I’m kind of doing in this series, I’m just throwing out the question, ‘What would you do?’
And it’s interesting, when you pose the question to people, whether it was the cast, crew or friends, hearing the different kind of views and the passionate discussions that come from it. You realise there is no straight answer to this, and you realise how evil and tragic such a thing can be. It’s a horrible thing. But in terms of trying to find an answer and a way out of that, what is the answer? What is the way?
The common way out of it for those trying to silence it is money. So through this series I try to explore and show what the money can do, and what it doesn’t do, and will this family ever get peace or justice...
How was it working with Babou again?
Why I love Babou is that he gets what I’m doing on the page, and where I’m coming from, and I don’t know if that’s because we’re both from South London but he is so intelligent, so smart. It’s so great as he is the sort of actor who will call me up and have questions about lines in the script and have me confirm things about my motives in my writing.
How do you think viewers will respond?
I know for sure there will be a lot of debate, because you put yourselves in the parents’ shoes and ask yourself would you do that, and each decision that the parents make will stir up a lot of debate. I didn’t have a fixed answer on what is the right or wrong way to deal with this, I have a moral guide where I don’t believe that accepting money for a wrong is the way forward - it’s not a judgement on people that do accept money, but it just doesn’t sit well for me. However, fortunately, I have never been in that position so it’s been really interesting to explore that through these characters.
Drama can reach a lot of people. Maybe there are people out there who have accepted money, who are dealing with regret or guilt and may see this, and see some sort of hope that there is still a way of finding closure. Maybe it will make people think twice about using pay-offs as a method of controlling people. I’m unsure, but I know for sure it will make people talk a lot and debate the decisions that the family makes.
