C
an you make a joke out of
#MeToo? Steve Coogan and
Sarah Solemani hope to prove
that you can. The raw material
of the movement — sexual
harassment, women with
shattered careers, powerful men getting
away with it — isn’t exactly a promising
source of laughs. But the difficulty of
the subject is precisely why the co-writ-
ers and co-stars felt drawn to it with
their new six part comedy Chivalry.
“It’s one thing me and Steve have in
common — if it’s something that makes
people uncomfortable, it kind of turns
us on. That’s exactly the kind of joke we
should be telling,” says Solemani, 39,
eyes flashing mischievously. Coogan,
56, agrees that people’s discomfort is a
litmus test for comedians. “If it’s prob-
lematic, my initial reaction is to walk
towards the fire.”
Both made their names as perform-
ers on the fringe of the comic main-
stream — Coogan broke through as Alan
Partridge in The Day Today, while
Solemani’s first big hit was as the epon-
ymous “her” in the filthy bedsit sitcom
Him & Her with Russell Tovey. They’ve
expanded over time into increasingly
serious terrain: last year Solemani
wrote and produced the anti-fascist
period BBC drama Ridley Road, adapted
from from Jo Bloom’s novel, while Coo-
gan’s work includes co-writing and star-
ring in the Oscar-nominated Philomena.
In Chivalry Solemani plays the up-
and-coming feminist director Bobby,
recruited by old-school producer Cam-
eron (played by Coogan) to salvage an
erotic Nazi drama from a European
auteur who’s starkly out of step with the
post-#MeToo mood. Cameron is the
kind of man who dates his 24-year-old
assistant (“nearly 25,” he fumblesdefensively in one scene). Bobby’s the
kind of woman whose dream project is
a “menstrual Bible film” and has strong
opinions about the need for intimacy
co-ordinators in sex scenes. The inevi-
table tension between them mirrors the
real-life relationship between Coogan
and Solemani.
“It started as an argument we had
when we were shooting this film called
Greed, a Michael Winterbottom film,”
Coogan says. That was 2018, at the
height of #MeToo. “I was just playing
Devil’s advocate and firing off salvos,
knowing I was in the safe space with
Sarah Solemani. And someone said,
‘You two should write something.’”
Solemani breaks in: “I think Michael
said, ‘Stop chatting when you’re trying
to film and go and write a show.’” Which
is what they did, collaborating over
Zoom through lockdown.TELEVISION
Steve Coogan
says the feminist
uprising changed
him — Sarah
Solemani hopes it
will improve our
sex lives. But will
their new comedy
make us laugh?
By Sarah Ditum
For both, #MeToo was a revelation,
but in starkly different ways. “It was an
education for me,” Coogan says. “As a
man, you rewind and look at your
behaviour.” He has admitted he’s not a
role model and in his 2015 autobiogra-
phy says: “I don’t regret sleeping with all
those girls, not really. I thought I was
Byronic... if I was still shagging around
now, it would be a bit grim.”
His initial impulse to the movement
was to “shut up and listen” — the right
impulse in the moment, but not a per-
manent basis for relations between the
sexes. He draws a distinction between
men who were “overt predators or
abusers” and “men who are only
responsible in so far as they are passive,
which does confer some responsibility.”
It’s that latter group that he thinks need
to be brought into the conversation. “A
lot of men have felt strangulated, petri-fied, and don’t know how to even start
that discussion. So they don’t say any-
thing, and after a while that point of
view atrophies, because it’s unheard.”
Is there a risk that, as well as bringing
down high-profile abusers such as Har-
vey Weinstein, #MeToo could overreach
by enabling whisper campaigns against
men who haven’t done much wrong?
It’s one point where Coogan’s fervour
for discussion is muted. “Even that,
even now, I’m uncomfortable talking
about,” he says. “What I mean is that I
don’t do social media. If I’ve got some-
thing I want to air, I put it in my work.”
“It comes down to what the nature of
a movement from the people is,” Sole-
mani says. “It bursts out from the street
up, so it won’t be this faultless road-
map. Of course, it’s shocking to see
someone lose everything on an anony-
mous letter and there’s been no ‘due‘METOO WAS AN EDUC
8 10 April 2022