I, Jack Wright cast and creator on the family saga and courtroom drama thriller, sparked by the reading of a Will

As his many wives and children fight over the remains of his estate, a dogged police detective investigates – and uncovers the shocking truth about a man’s well-heeled clan.

A death in the family. A bombshell will. A murderer in their ranks?

The apparent death by suicide of high-powered businessman Jack Wright sends shockwaves through his family.

As his many wives and children fight over the remains of his estate, a dogged police detective investigates – and uncovers the shocking truth about this well-heeled clan.

Chris Lang (writer/creator of I, Jack Wright)  

What was your inspiration behind the series?

The idea came from a conversation with a friend whose mother’s Will caused huge familial ructions. Although she understood the financial reasoning behind her mother’s decisions, she was still left with a lot of unanswered questions and emotional distress, and I was struck by how potent an echo of a lived life a Will can be.

That became the foundation of the story, which I expanded into a larger family saga, a thriller and a courtroom drama, with all three of those genres interweaving throughout the story.

Can you tell us about its journey from script to screen? 

The journey from script to screen was a long one. Ideas often come to you and stay with you for a long time before they find the right form. Over time, it went through different versions as I refined it and shaped it into what it eventually became. I took the idea to production company Federation Stories and they just got it.

What happens at the reading of the Will?

The Will hearing is the event that sets the whole series in motion. I always knew it had to come at the end of episode one because it brings all the key characters together and marks the point where the main story begins. In that scene, our key characters are sitting around a table, waiting to be told their fate.

For many of them, this is a life-changing moment they have been relying on and hoping will improve their future. However, for some, the outcome is disappointing and leaves them much worse off than they expected. As a result, the will hearing creates resentment, jealousy and bitterness. While some feel good about what they’ve received, they also know the others may be coming to take it from them.

It’s the perfect starting point for the drama that follows.

How was the scene shot?

It’s a highly stylised scene that uses a range of visual devices, including freeze frames, voiceovers and flash-forwards. The sequence is complex because it reveals the characters’ psychology from multiple perspectives, showing how they feel in the moment and how those feelings evolve two years later. It allows the audience to examine the impact of the revelation in a forensic way. Ultimately, that’s what the series is about: understanding the psychology of people raised within a family led by a deeply toxic man.

Can you introduce the Wright family and its central character, Jack? 

In order to sustain the story and the series, I had to create this extraordinary character at the heart of it. Although he dies very early in the story, his presence lives on in the actions and the thoughts of every character, shaping their memories and relationships. His portrait stares down at them in their homes and the boardroom, so he appears in many scenes.

Ambitious and driven, Jack married three times and built a remarkable life, but he left behind damaged relationships and lasting hurt. At its core, the story follows those closest to him as they try to rebuild their lives in the shadow of his death.

Why have the interviews in the future been set up in a true crime style? How does it add to the story? 

I wanted to experiment with the idea of seeing the characters in two different timelines. Obviously, the body of the drama is about them in the present day, but I always thought it would be interesting to show where they end up. It’s a powerful tease and provokes endless questions in the audience’s mind about how they got there and what their journey was along the way.

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Nobody wore clothes like the late Queen. By Royal Appointment considers the meanings that lay behind all those dresses and hats. It begins in late 2022. The Queen has died and her devoted dresser (Caroline Quentin) is being asked by the curator (Gráinne Dromgoole) of a multi-media retrospective show to reveal what records she has kept of all the clothes and jewellery that the Queen wore on public occasions. Quentin vividly conveys the dresser’s combative character, fiercely protective of her past role as the Queen’s companion and confidante. Initially reluctant, she is persuaded to hand over her meticulously detailed records.

A series of short vignettes follows, starting in 1969 with the investiture of the Prince of Wales, and progressing then on through significant years in the Queen’s reign. Each is introduced by the curator with a whimsical precis of that year’s events, juxtaposing the serious with the banal. For example, we learn that 1979 featured both Jeremy Thorpe’s trial for conspiracy to murder and The Village People’s performance of YMCA on Top Of The Pops. Each scene focuses on a discussion between the Queen (Anne Reid), her dress designer (James Wilby) and her milliner (James Dreyfus – gloriously camp). Jonathan Fensom’s uncluttered set design, hinting at grandeur, allows space for back projections of photographs showing the real Queen wearing the relevant clothes.

Queen Elizabeth was famously reticent. We can be sure that she loved horses, corgis and Prince Philip, not necessarily in that order, but much else remains hidden. Writer Daisy Goodwin has centred on the idea that she had a silent mode of expression. Each dress colour, or piece of jewellery, carried a significant message. For example, the jade green dress she wore on her state visit to the Republic of Ireland was most certainly not a random choice, though we might suspect that it was one directed more by the Foreign Office than by the Queen herself.

Goodwin is a witty writer, and the play comes to life in the moments where the dresser, the designer and the milliner waspishly bicker. Based upon the real-life Scouser Angela Kelly, war hero Hardy Amies and Australian Freddie Fox, they fire off critical barbs while reluctantly recognising each rival’s expertise. Much of this is comic, but James Wilby is particularly impressive in a darker scene where he reflects bitterly upon his fraught relationship with his father, who never recognised his wartime bravery or accepted his homosexuality. Amies and Fox were both gay, and Goodwin writes in the programme notes that the Queen was often ‘presented to the world through a queer lens.’ An interesting thought, though not one that By Royal Appointment really explores in any depth.

As the Queen, Anne Reid looks the part, but wisely does not attempt an outright vocal impersonation. But other than presenting the Queen as a stoical believer in the virtue of a stiff upper lip she has little scope for revealing her as an interesting character. When faced with her milliner’s extreme distress at his partner’s death from AIDS her bland response is, ‘Whatever it is, will pass.’ Goodwin has shied away from any suggestion that there might have been much more to the Queen than met the eye, or that she might have had any interesting flaws. She remains a blank canvas.

Both the gentle humour that pervades most of the writing and the bite-size nature of the scenes make By Royal Appointment an undemanding, cheerfully royalist piece of entertainment that in no way challenges the assumptions that lie behind the institution that it portrays.

★★★☆☆   Mike Whitton

Source: Stage talk Magazine / Reviewer: Mike Whitton / Photo credit: Nobby Clark

Daisy Goodwin’s new play ‘By Royal Appointment’ – which opened last night at Malvern – is neither a biting satire nor does it set its stall to be a platform for conspiracy theory. Rather it is a charming, chronological collage of vignettes, based on real events and people woven into a timeline which triggers memories – particularly for my ‘baby boomer’ generation.
Although it is set entirely in the intimacy of the royal dressing room, what goes on there between Queen Elizabeth II and her personal trio of majestic attire creators has repercussions that resonate with international importance.

The trio consist of a fulfilling performance by Caroline Quentin as ‘The Dresser’ – a loyal confidante who guards her royal relationship with a passion bordering on obsession. She also harbours more than a whiff of jealousy towards the other two, which shows itself through numerous waspish comments and occasional minor sabotage. James Dreyfuss is spot on the money as the ostentatious ‘Milliner’ who loves to seize the theatricality of the moment (any moment). Hot to trot too is James Wilby as the ‘Designer ‘with an uncanny talent for matching colours and styles to moods and designs along with a generous dollop of obsequiousness.

he tour-de-force that is Anne Reid literally becomes her late Majesty the Queen for the entire performance Every move, pause, line, expression was joyous. It was a privilege indeed to be in the presence of theatrical royalty.

Designer Jonathon Fensom brings the unseen rooms at the Queen’s homes onto the stage without losing any of the intimacy and Dominic Dromgoole directs with warm and gentle brush strokes.

Another Dromgoole, namely Grainne, completes the company as the Curator and our ‘what’s going on’ outside the room narrator.