Inside the Gray Area -- "Dearer than Earsight"

Our showrunner Edward Champion discusses the uniquely personal creative beginnings of “Dearer than Earsight,” what it feels like to act in your own productions, becoming an accidental regular character in your own show, the real British woman who inspired Lucinda, his strange reservations about writing from autobigraphy, Penelope Fitzgerald, his long path in finding the confidence to expand the storytelling, “plagiarizing from reality,” unintentionally copying dialogue from real life, his deep need to tell the most romantic story he could, Billy Wilder, romantic comedies, King Lear, anxieties as friends to the writer, his fear of turning cynical, John Hughes, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, creating a love letter to New York City, grounding a love story in a passion for a city, what he did to get real heart and tears for his performance, emotional sensitivity, why actors always need to challenge themselves, the difficulty of casting a highly specific British character while living in New York, the moral obligation to care for actors, going out of your way to find a place for a supremely talented actor who wasn't quite right for the role she originally auditioned for, just how close he was to traveling three thousand miles to record this story, why Emily Carding is a genius and why he shall always be eternally grateful to her, recording a lot of dialogue in a short amount of time, recording in extreme weather, how to get a performance out of an actor that always originates from the talent, how Emily corrected one of his very glaring British flubs, rewriting during a recording session, the importance of pronouncing words correctly, why he hired a German consultant, discovering accidental performance chemistry while editing, the ravenous nature of British gulls, the genius of Tanja Milojevic, why Maya was recast, when the real life British woman encountered her fictitious British counterparts, and being excited about culture. (Running time: 22 minutes, 47 seconds.)