Content warning: brief mentions of sexual harassment, misogyny
Gina Lyons, interviewed by Tamara Greatrix, is an award winning producer of TV and film who heads Gobby Girl Productions, a female-led production company emphasising work by underrepresented writers.
Tamara: Hi, Gina. Thank you for meeting with me.
Gina: That’s alright. Anytime.
Tamara: So, Gina, you’re a producer. What made you decide to get into the industry in the first place?
Gina: I went to stage school growing up, so I was dancing from a young age, but I wasn’t the best. Then I went to drama school at 18. I auditioned for Birmingham School of Speech and Drama — didn’t get in, so I went to a really rubbish drama school. Because I was working class, I was one of the only people to get a scholarship, but I got kicked out after nine months. Anyway, I left and I was working in telesales. I worked with a bunch of filmmakers and friends that I’d met. Nobody wants to be a producer, so in the short film, they were like: you can produce it. So I was making little things, and then I saw [an opportunity] in a magazine one day that said ‘do you want to be a producer?’ and I was like sure! I tried it, thinking it would be a scheme, but it was a reality TV show. It was called Get Me The Producer, and it was the same format as The Apprentice.
Greg Dyke, who was the director general of the BBC previously, was like the Alan Sugar, and there were two other counterparts who were TV producers. I didn’t make the final twelve at first, but someone dropped out just before filming started and they called me up and asked if I wanted to do it, and I said yeah!
And so I came back to London from Northamptonshire and did it, and then won it.
Tamara: That’s amazing.
Gina: Yeah. For years I didn’t tell anyone that I was a competition winner. No one knew [the show] unless you were in telly or a student at the time. But then you get to a certain age and you start going, actually it is quite interesting, and I’m gonna be honest about it.
[Gina picks up her coffee mug, and we have a brief pause to laugh about how she stole it from Netflix.]
Gina: My prize was a year at SoTV, which is the company that makes the Graham Norton show. I stayed for five years in total. They make chatshows and it was mostly unscripted. TV is in two parts, scripted and unscripted. The two don’t talk to each other, and I don’t know why but scripted gets paid a lot more. For any students wanting to get into telly I would heavily advise that, especially if they’re storytellers and they want to produce scripts, to go into scripted first. And I’d say either go into the production team or be an assistant coordinator, because it gives you a birds eye view sort of angle. That would be my advice for students.
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Jim Davidson just dismissed me and hated me. And I was like, ‘what’s his problem?’
Tamara: Thank you, Gina. So obviously you spoke a little bit about what got you into the industry, but what in particular inspired you to establish Gobby Girl Productions?
Gina: Jim Davidson, do you know him? He’s horrible. A racist, homophobic bigot that used to be on Saturday night TV. He did the Edinburgh Festival, which is obviously the biggest arts festival in the world. As a fifty year old comedian, I was confused why he had done the biggest arts festival in the world, especially considering his views. I was friends with a comedian called Russell Kane, and we were at a birthday party of a celebrity who was turning thirty. Jim Davidson was there because they met on Celebrity Big Brother, and I kept going going to chat to him like, you know, ‘what made you do the Edinburgh Festival?’ And he hated me from the get go. He just dismissed me and hated me. And I was like, what’s his problem?
But I thought, he can’t hate me, he’s just met me. So I’d drink more white wine, go back over, and try again. By the end of the night he made it really clear he didn’t like me. So I left, and said to my now husband, then boyfriend, ‘I met Jim Davidson tonight, and he seemed like he didn’t like me.’ And my husband went, ‘babe, he’s just tweeted about you.’ And he tweeted, ‘Casey’s party was a hoot, but why is there always one pissed Gobby woman?’
Tamara: Oh my God!
Gina: I know. And at the time, I was writing and blogging for the Huffington Post. So I wrote a blog, and said Jim Davidson called me a Gobby woman, and I made it funny.
After that I had a limited company for a long time, and I was getting frustrated because there’s sort of five or six companies that make comedy. They’re all male-owned. Most of them are posh, and I wasn’t being hired. I’m too loud. I’m too gobby. The new thing is too creative. They want a producer that isn’t the creative sort. So it was out of frustration that I set up Gobby Girl Productions. I thought, why aren’t women running the companies making comedy? I’ll just do it.
And then when it came to naming it, my husband said, what about ‘Gobby Woman’? And I said, what about ‘Gobby Girl’?
And that’s how that came out. I love it. It’s silly, but I love it.
Tamara: What challenges did you face in bringing that vision to life?
Gina: Oh, all the challenges. They don’t like people that speak like us in telly. It’s quite middle class. I didn’t even know private school existed growing up — I didn’t know that you could pay to go to school. Why would you pay — you can go to school round the corner!
Here’s something you’ll be shocked about. I face difficulties because as working class people, we talk differently. I think we communicate differently. I think we tell stories differently. I think our DNA is different. I constantly feel like the odd one out.
And the financial difficulties… I’m a mum. When you’re filming, you’re on set at 6am and you’re off set at 8pm, and then you’re doing emails until 10. So juggling that and 2 kids is hard, yeah.
The negatives do outweigh the positives, but I’m a storyteller. I work in comedy and I love comedy — I can’t not do it. What else am I gonna do? My backup plan is work in Aldi. But if something lands, you are paid really well.
The issues are constant, but we’re starting to change that, and it’s people like you that are gonna help. You’ll lead the way.
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There’s some great commissioners and producers and directors and stuff, but it is an industry that breeds narcissism
Tamara: Gobby Girl champions underrepresented voices, particularly from working class backgrounds. Can you share a specific moment or story that reinforced why this mission is so vital?
Gina: For starters, they never call men ‘gobby’, do they? Never ever, in the history of anything, has a man ever been described as that. We’re living in a world of Andrew Tate and Boris Johnson and Trump. We’re all reading the same stories. You know, Adolescence was the most watched show on Netflix, and it’s essentially a girl being killed at the hands of a male. It’s a very tough world to be in as a woman at the moment, and I don’t understand why you need a penis to be funny. I just don’t understand the situation.
The last stats taken by an official body was that 18% of sitcoms are written by women and 25% are directed by. And I don’t understand that stat. I don’t understand why it’s not fifty-fifty.
My last show was a brilliant ten-part series for Amazon with a 41 member crew, but I don’t understand why I go onto a set and there’s 41 people and there’s only two mums including myself. It’s time to readdress why the majority of crews are male dominated.
I didn’t even mean to set up Gobby Girl — I just tweeted and said ‘can anyone make me a logo’, and this guy replied called Dan Truman who lives in Brum. We became great friends, we work together and we run Gobby Flicks Comedy night together in Birmingham.
The night we launched the website I got 141 scripts, mostly written by women, and it showed me that these writers and their agents were frustrated with the people they were dealing with. I think they were sick of being the only female voices in the room constantly.
I mean, I’ve been perved on and private messaged and spoken to badly. It’s all coming out now, isn’t it? We all have a story. When the Russell Brand documentary came out, my WhatsApp groups were going off, and every woman had a story.
There’s some great commissioners and producers and directors and stuff, but it is an industry that breeds narcissism because of the nature of it. It’s not the safest place to work with late shifts and long hours, so now, more than ever, producers need to try and be productive in making the industry a better place.
Tamara: Well, I think you’re doing a very good job of that.
Gina: I’ve actually set up a Whatsapp group for women in comedy, and it started off just like, ‘Hey, do you work in comedy? Let’s unite in a Whatsapp group.’ Now we’re at 762 members.
Tamara: That’s crazy. Your work has received extensive recognition, including a BAFTA Cymru win and Emmy nomination. How did those milestones impact your career and future projects?
Gina: Both felt like anticlimaxes a bit. I did the pilot for both, but I didn’t do the season for either. I was pregnant with my first-born, Denver, when I did In My Skin, and I loved that show. I loved the writer and the team, but it was a tough gig while pregnant. I was eight months on set in Cardiff.
It was emotionally hard in both cases. I think with Dreaming Whilst Black there were some issues that affected me. I don’t feel like they’re my wins. I think they were wins for the writers. For starters, they were both personal stories. So I think although it is a team effort, and I’ll shoot anyone down that says it’s not, I do think that win goes for the writers, and the companies, rather than myself. I didn’t even go to the Welsh BAFTAS, I was at home watching it on TV.
I have an agent so I have to start on those accolades, you know, but I have done lots of nice things because of it. I’ve got into women in film and TV, I’ve got into BAFTA Elevate, which was amazing.
But after In My Skin it took me four years to get another pilot. After Dreaming, I still couldn’t get a series producer job. I had to set down as an associate producer on a show called Breeders. So then I got my series job, and that was two years ago, and I haven’t done another. It’s not easy. I think for an average white man, it would do them a world of good. But for a woman, you have to be excellent at every stage in comedy.
A friend of mine just got nominated for a BAFTA. She’s an amazing comedy director, and she can’t get a series. There are a lot of average white men who probably went to Oxford or Cambridge who have never had her accolades, who will get job after job after job. It makes no sense.
I got too bloody honest there, didn’t I? I’m gonna get in trouble!
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Comedy is almost dying — it’s not even being treated as an art form, and it should be!
Tamara: Well thank you for that, that’s given some very valuable insight. So can you give us a glimpse into your upcoming projects and what excites you most about them?
Gina: I’ve just submitted a Radio 4 series, which is a comedy with two of my favourite people in the world. They’re both comedy performers, and they kill me. For ages, I was like, ‘You two should work together!’, and then they got booked together. So they do now, and they work brilliantly together. That’s been shortlisted and hopefully going to Radio 4.
I’ve also got a film I’m trying to sell at the moment, and I’m working on finances for the next film. Weirdly, I think film is happening a bit easier than TV, mostly because there’s a proper independence to it. If you raise the money and cast it, you can go and shoot your own film. You don’t need someone to say yes. Whereas in TV you have to go to a broadcaster, and they have to greenlight your project. If you shoot something independently, they won’t buy it afterwards, so TV does feel like there’s gatekeepers at every channel.
Some of them are nice. Some of them come up with excuses why your project isn’t right. Film feels a bit more accessible, so I’m very focused on film.
There’s no place to do commercial comedy films. Comedy is almost dying — it’s not even being treated as an art form, and it should be! Ofcom, our regulators, say that comedy is at risk on television at the moment. It’s not being properly funded or supported, and I don’t see anyone in Britain making proper comedy films. That’s my goal: to make out-and-out hilarious comedy films that you watch from start to finish.
The BBC have apparently been a little bit highbrow as well and, you know, sometimes we all just wanna laugh, don’t we?
Tamara: Yeah, definitely! So, Gina, as a female producer in the entertainment industry, what’s the biggest obstacle you faced, and what lessons have you learned from it?
Gina: I mean, the obstacles, I think I’ve banged on about all them. You turn forty, you hit the ‘fuck it’ button, and you stop caring all that much. I would say that I wasn’t authentically myself for a long time. I would try and act a bit posher or speak a bit nicer. And I think, actually, being authentically yourself is going to be your superpower. Even if you’re not in the right room and people don’t like it, that’s just because you’re not in the right room.
It’s not because you’re not right. So the big lesson for me, and the thing that I promote as much, is just to be authentically yourself. And also as storytellers, it matters, you know? We can all sniff out a sort of badly written show that just doesn’t feel authentic.
If you know what’s funny and makes you different, then the audience knows what’s funny and makes you different. So be authentic.
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I think the Midlands overall gets ignored […] Peaky Blinders was the first thing I saw set in Birmingham
Tamara: That’s lovely. Thank you. So how would you like to see the industry grow and change to make more room for women?
Gina: I’d like to see fifty-fifty on everything. I think that’s the bare minimum. This is a bit of a swear word in comedy, but I think the budgets have got too big, because Netflix comes over and everyone wants everything to look amazing. You’re then shooting two or three scenes a day in two locations.
You’re killing the crew. You move and it’s the moves that cost you, basically. Plenty of scripts I pick up and they want it shot like a drama, and I think if you failed at being funny, you’ve literally failed as a comedy.
No-one watches a comedy and goes ‘beautifully shot!’ It’s funny or it’s not funny. Simple as that.
Because comedy is like the naughty little sister to drama, it’s historically had less budget. Well, it still does, really. But it should have less budget, and it should move less because your focus is to be funny, not to make it look amazing. Obviously, we live in a streaming world, and we can all see shows that are funny and look amazing.
But if you cannot do it both for the market that you’re doing it for, just do something funny, and I feel quite strongly about that. So right now, as a commissioner at the BBC said, well, say that when you’re pitching. So now my new thing is, I say ‘I wanna make this at your lowest tariff.’
Like, I think restrictions help comedy. It helps. I think knowing that you can’t do something makes you rethink, and you should always be thinking: how do I make it funnier?
Tamara: So what projects have you done locally?
Gina: I love the Brummie accent — I think it’s the best accent. I pitched a show set in Birmingham, and it didn’t land anywhere, it was such a shame. I think I will put most of the things I can set in Birmingham. It’s a great place to shoot. It’s in the middle of the country, and I think the Midlands overall gets ignored. It goes: The North, The Midlands and then London. I think Peaky Blinders was the first thing I saw set in Birmingham.
Tamara: You’re launching Gobby Flicks Comedy night in Birmingham. What drew you to the comedy scene, and how do you see it evolving in the UK?
Gina: Look, the comedy scene is huge in the UK — we have the biggest scene to any country I can think of. Go to New York and LA, and you’ll find less comedy gigs than you can in London. At any time, you can look online, and you’ll see 400 comedy nights across London.
We have a huge, multimillion pound industry, and it’s just run by a few jokers, which is the problem. And it’s not always the safest space because any bloke in a pub with a room upstairs can run a comedy night.
I’d say the style of Gobby Flicks is the opposite to Glee Club, which is your biggest comedy show in Birmingham. They are what we call circuit comics. They are strong, witty, tight set, and they will perform at some of the toughest gigs in the UK. And I love circuit comics — they’re probably my favourites.
But Gobby Flicks is a little bit more experimental than that. It’s a fundraiser to begin with, so the money raised goes into a pot that then funds short films by female comedy directors. Like, what script you got? Do you wanna put on its legs? Here’s £3000. Hopefully, we’ll work with a lot of kit hire companies as well.
We need uni students there! The night starts with networking, then there’s comics and a short film. It’s really fun.
So if you’re an actor, a director, a writer, a media student, journalist, then that’s who I wanna do it for.
I’m hopefully going to bring a lot of London creatives up as well and show them: ‘look, it’s the Midlands! It does exist!’
Tamara: Thank you so much for your time, Gina — this is the last question, I promise! Looking back, what is one piece of advice you wish you received earlier in your career?
Gina: If you are starting out in the industry, keep a spreadsheet with everyone you meet and their job title and their email. They’ll have a work email, so when you work with them, say: ‘Oh, can I grab your personal email as well?’ They might leave the company, and then you’ve got a database of people.
Social media helps because you follow people online, but there are some people that you won’t be adding on social media. Keep a spreadsheet. I wish I had.
Then, when you do have a bit of work, you can email a director or producer, ‘I’ve got a short film and it’s out at this festival’ and you’ve then got a database to copy and paste and send them all an email.
It’s a very solo industry. You work for yourself. You’re mostly a limited company. Your entire success or not really does live on you. So be your own publicist.
Tamara: Thank you so much for that Gina, I’ll definitely take that onboard. Thank you for your time.
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