SPOILER ALERT: Details follow from Season 3 of “Gangs of London.”
After saying goodbye to some of its most-known characters in Season 3, the “Gangs of London” team is ready for more.
“The challenge is the same challenge we have every season: to keep delivering more surprises for the audience, and we still have an embarrassment of riches in the cast, obviously, with those that survived,” laughs producer Hugh Warren.
“We have some great things in mind, because we don’t want to disappoint people. I think it’s really important for the audience to understand that, by killing these lead characters, there’s no predicting what happens next.”
That included Sean Wallace, played by Joe Cole, and Ed Dumani (Lucian Msamati).
“It’s always a shock. It was a shock when Sean died, it was a shock when Ed died – people really didn’t expect that. But I think they’ve learned through three seasons to just expect the unexpected,” he says.
“The temptation is to hang on to those characters, because they’re great, but it’s also exciting to keep reinvigorating the show and ‘regenerating’ it. This way, each season is different and feels fresh. There’s a clue in the title: ‘Gangs of London’ is plural. The original concept was always that it could be a rolling theme and that the gangs would be different. We are thinking through all those issues around the next season. There’ll be some new characters and some new surprises,” he says, mentioning Season 3 addition Zeek (played by Andrew Koji).
“We’re always looking for ways to expand this world, and his backstory, obviously, has a real connection with the Wallaces [he’s Finn Wallace’s illegitimate son]. We hope to explore that a bit further.”
So far, each season was overseen by a different director.
“More than any other show I’ve produced, it’s conceived as a directors’ show. Pulse Films had never made television before, so their network was all film directors, like Gareth [Evans]. Each season we’ve had a strong authorial voice: Gareth, then Corin Hardy and Hongsun Kim [in Season 3]. It was also really interesting for all to have Hongsun’s outsider’s perspective. He certainly wanted it to feel more commercial visually.”
And as for the director in Season 4?
“We haven’t confirmed anyone, but we have some ideas. There are conversations going on.”
Whoever ends up taking over the universe, violence will still be an “integral part” of the show.
“Gareth’s famous for very balletic, extended violence sequences in the ‘Raid’ movies, so that’s a part of the DNA of the show. We need to maintain that. Sometimes there’s some humor in there, and it’s all very heightened. It’s almost cartoony, and that enables us to go a bit further. We’re on an endless quest for new means of death, and new weapons, and whatever props are going to be used violently.”
Warren adds: “On Season 2, Corin Hardy witnessed a very violent fight in London, and he was completely shocked by it. He said it showed him how far removed we’re from it all.”
At Monte-Carlo Television Festival, Warren was joined by actors Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù – playing ex-undercover cop turned gangster, Elliot, and Narges Rashidi.
Warren also opened up about another Season 3 cliffhanger, with the mayor of London (T’Nia Miller) announcing a drug legalization plan.
“We’re not exploring it as a political argument so much as what the impact on the gang world will be. One of the biggest industries in the world is an illegal operation that’s handed to gangsters – if you remove that and turn that into a legitimate world, like that did in the U.S. [after Prohibition ended], what happens to those people?”
“That prospect of legalization would be incredibly threatening to them. All this money that at the moment is enjoyed by very affluent gangsters, would be enjoyed by governments through taxation. Of course, the two worlds can still co-exist, but it was an interesting thing to explore in terms of the psyche of our characters.”
The show keeps on portraying London as a diverse and varied city.
“When I started out and went to the first meetings, I heard: There are so many roles for you – so many terrorists. It literally made me cry, I had depression,” recalls Narges Rashidi during a roundtable interview. Born in Iran, she grew up in Germany.
Dìrísù adds: “This [multiculturality] was always a part of the show, also when it comes to the people behind the camera. Sometimes you’re walking down the street in London and within the 100 meter span you’ll hear 16 different languages. People are allowed to express themselves in languages they speak at home.”
Rashidi learnt to approach the show’s violence like “playing make-believe.” “You feel like you’re a child again and you get to play more, but it’s not real. That helps for sure. It’s fun, because it’s fictional. It wouldn’t be in real life.”
“There’s this moment in one of your fight sequences where, well, some organic material was used as a garrote. Let’s be real. There was a group of people in the corner, going: ‘It can’t work. No one’s going to believe this. But in the heat of the moment, you fight with everything you’ve got. Tooth and nail, and organic matter,” laughs Dìrísù.
In the future, Rashidi would like to see her character, Lale, “in a mundane situation.”
“What if she found a dog all of a sudden? You know, like a little puppy. And she has to deal with it. How does she go shopping? How would she choose her groceries? I would love to see her do that,” she says, with Dìrísù joking: “Forget about Season 4 – let’s just have the Lale spinoff. These are the stuff we really want to see: Lale with a dog, Lale goes shopping. Every episode is 15 minutes long.”
But finding a way to empathize with their flawed, criminally minded heroes is key.
“We understand their motivations because similar things motivate us, although hopefully not to the same degree. People understand how violently Sean was willing to defend his family because they would want to do the same should their family be in similar situations,” he notes.
Ultimately, in “Gangs of London” – just like in real life – family always comes first.
Warren adds: “When I first came to the show and first talked to Gareth about it, I said this to him very clearly: ‘It’s not my genre.’ But I was absolutely gripped by the family saga. It’s Shakespearean. I always felt that was the way into a very violent story. Their behavior is massively extreme, but everybody comes from a dysfunctional family.”
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