Candice Carty-Williams was never short of inspiration growing up in a lively and vibrant South London. “I feel like we’re all immigrants who are finding home, but in South London, you’re still catered to,” she tells me. “I love the community of it all. It’s a place where people from every walk of life are able to talk to each other, in a way that I don’t think happens anywhere else.”
It is in South London where the best-selling author and TV showrunner discovered a profound love for storytelling, journaling and magazine-making by writing the pages of her own novels—which would go on to include the widely-loved and critically-acclaimed book Queenie—as well as continuing her childhood passion for theatre studies. And having lived in a number of locations across South LDN, incuding Lewisham, Croydon, Streatham and Clapham, she absorbed so much from each borough, all of them carrying totally different vibes to one another.
Candice’s passion for writing blossomed as a means to navigate and articulate the complex emotions and experiences in the lives of herself and others, exploring what the voices and stories around her were experiencing during this period. Through her writing, she captured the struggles, triumphs and dreams of other young Black British women and beyond, via topics concerning race, relationships and familial dynamics, using her words as a tool for universal understanding. This journey transformed Candice from a celebrated author, connecting deeply with readers who saw their own lives reflected in her warm and often hilarious writing, to a two-time showrunner (first Champion for BBC/Netflix, and now Queenie for Channel 4/Hulu), uplifting emerging talent in front of and behind the screen.
I took a trip from Newham, East London, down to Candice’s office in Peckham, South-East London, to talk about her important work. The space is bright pink, filled with books, art and trinkets—mostly ones celebrating her Jamaican heritage—with colourful sticky notes covering the walls. Miss Carty-Williams’ creativity, warmth and dedication to her craft shines through as soon as we begin conversating, which is punctuated by an abundance of relatable humour and anecdotes.
What becomes clear early on is Candice’s love for music, especially grime and UK rap, the television industry and her commitment to representing diverse voices—particularly young Black women and their experiences across media. “I would love to see all types of presentations of Black women because that is important to me,” she says. “We are here, we exist, and we are not going anywhere.”
As someone who has been inspired by her work as a writer myself, I left feeling full: full of pride, full of inspiration, full of excitement for the future.
“Everything is always about the surroundings in what I create. I think that it’s really important to focus on looking around us and not be individualistic.”
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COMPLEX: Was English your favourite subject in school?
Candice Carty-Williams: My favourite subject was Theatre Studies because I could never focus at school. So when it came to Theatre Studies—all that drama—I could get up, I could move, I could talk and engage in things; I learned so much about human nature. English was cool, especially studying classics like Wuthering Heights and Of Mice and Men, but I was more interested in moving around and talking to people, which is what I experienced with Theatre Studies.
Would you act in school plays and/or help produce them?
I used to be in choirs and the vocal consort. The vocal consort was around eight people, and we would just have to go around and do stuff. I remember having to sing for the Mayor and it was just great to move around and use my voice, being creative and feeling like I was achieving something that wasn’t academic.
When it comes to your beginnings in writing, did you ever write songs from your choir days or journal before you became a critically-acclaimed writer? And at what point did you consider yourself a writer?
The other day, my mum found my day book that I used to take to school. I used to get sanctions a lot, but the thing I got credits for were my projects, especially magazine-making. I would put together lots of music features of bands I liked, and So Solid Crew—I made a whole Neutrino edition [laughs]. I forgot about it entirely because it was so long ago and you tend to forget the fun things you did as a kid. I would also journal a lot. I’ve always been a big feelings person; I haven’t seen those diaries since, and never want to see them again. Basically, I have always been a very prolific writer—even in exams, I would be the person that would put my hand up and ask for more paper.
Today, we’re in your stomping ground, and every South Londoner is known for their South London pride. What was it like growing up on this side of the river and how has it informed your work?
I was always very safe and I was always very happy. I lived in Lewisham for most of my life and it was so multicultural growing up, which was really important to me. Growing up here would have been a lot harder if I couldn’t see myself in the people, the hair shops and the food shops. I feel like we’re all immigrants who are finding home, but in South London, you’re still catered to. I love the community of it all. It’s a place where people from every walk of life are able to talk to each other, in a way that I don’t think happens anywhere else. There are also so many musicians, artists and painters from South London and I’m always like, “What is the common denominator?” But when you look at the work, it’s always about community and about where we’re from.
Home and community are recurring themes across your work—do you tend to explore it intentionally or does it just come naturally?
I think I do it subconsciously. I think everything is always about the surroundings in what I create. But also, it’s about the genesis. For example, in Queenie, it’s not just about her—it’s also about her family, but also who her family are and there are five kids. The genesis is, who their dad is and who the women are, who their mums are. I was thinking about family and space. Where did we come from? I’m always thinking about what it was actually like to come to this country from Jamaica, where my family’s from, and just be here. I think that it’s really important to focus on looking around us and not be individualistic.
Are there any films, series or directors/showrunners that you particularly admire and maybe inspired some of your own work in this space?
I admire Baz Luhrmann. The scale of things that he does is amazing! Visually, I think that no one can come close to him; he just creates these worlds that are so all-encompassing. Romeo and Juliet is one of my favourite films and for the newsreader and Mercutio to be Black was important to me because it was just like he sees the world and all the different people in it. Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is also one of my favourite films of all time. I love the work of Ava DuVernay and Raine Allen-Miller too; it’s important that we have Black female directors because there are still so few. There’s also Regina King, and I love that she was both in front of and behind the camera. I think so many great actors make great directors, because they’re there and they can see what’s going on, same with Dev Patel and Monkey Man. Other directors I think are great are Maya Jeffers (Bathsheba), Destiny Ekaragha (Gone Too Far), William Stefan Smith (Top Boy, The Vince Staples Show), Dionne Edwards (Pretty Red Dress) and Mahalia Belo (The End We Start From). I’ve kind of watched everything in terms of TV series. I really enjoyed Fallout, GEN V and Breaking Bad. The Bear is definitely inspiring, too, because it’s such a simple concept, but it’s all about character. For me, character is always going to be what drives storytelling.
“I just want to continue to archive the world that I grew up in, and a lot of that is rooted in South London.”
You have a very hands-on approach with the music side of the two series that you’ve worked: Champion and Queenie. Why is it so important for you to be across the sound department?
I am obsessed with music, as you can imagine, but I also think when I’m writing something, I know the tone that things have to be in and I understand their sonic world and sometimes that is actually quite hard to get across. I realised Champion was obviously a different thing, because we were creating music to put into a show and then also having to build a score around that music, which is where Swindle came in to work with Paul Saunderson. For Queenie, I just went with Swindle alone because I knew exactly how I wanted the show to sound. So it was about me briefing these people that I’ve chosen, and I chose people that I admired and have wanted to work with. Music, to me—whether it’s in the show, the soundtrack to the show, or the score—it’s the beating heart of the show; it just sets pace. You can change the meaning of a scene with the song that you choose to use, so that was important to me to work really closely with our music supervisors. I’m just so 360 about everything that I work on.
What was it like working with Swindle again? And why did you choose to add the Champion score on DSPs?
Swindle and I work really well together, and he’s also from South London so we would just talk so much and connect on the fact that we love the same music—and I loved his music. When it was time to work on Queenie, I wanted to work really closely with someone who understood me and because we already established that relationship, it was so easy. His thing was to leave the ego outside and how to best serve the project. I remember driving to the studio watching episodes one to four, and him playing me stuff that he had kind of worked on. The way his brain works and the way my brain works are very similar. Working with him was the easiest part of the entire process, actually. I would say Swindle is my creative soulmate. For Queenie, there is R&B, rap, funk, jazz and a bit of electronica. Swindle combined all of these different things to make Queenie his world in the most incredible way. The score for Champion, done by both Swindle and Paul Saunderson, was so beautiful as a standalone body of music, combining all these different worlds, so it made sense to upload it to Spotify.
Given the abundance of grime and rap in both Champion and Queenie, I think it’s safe to say you were a pretty big fan of these genres growing up.
I grew up listening to literally everything possible. So, as I said before, I was in the choir and I would be listening to choral music trying to figure out how to get to those high notes. I was a soprano, so I had the highest voice. Also, I love the drama that classical music provides. But also I grew up in a house of reggae on my dad’s side and Lover’s Rock on my mum’s side. My nan loves pop, especially icons like George Michael, Elton John and Freddie Mercury—those are my guys. I also love R&B, dancehall and hip-hop. I also sit in my house and often watch grime sets and rap freestyles. My favourites include Cristale and TeeZandos’ Plugged In freestyle, Lioness’ Jail Tales freestyle, Frisco’s Face Off freestyle for SBTV, Novelist’s Warm Up Sessions for SBTV, Nines’ Fire In The Booth, and Devlin’s F64.
Who excites you from the scene at the moment?
I’m really excited by Chy Cartier, obviously Cristale who I have been excited by since I first came across her. I love Zino Vinci, and I think that what he’s doing is so different. I just think he is so innovative and so fun. They are my top three right now.
In the intro of the first episode of Queenie, we see a montage of Brixton with the late rapper Ty’s mural and his music being played. What did you want your audience to take away from this particular moment?
I just want to continue to archive the world that I grew up in, and Ty’s music was a really important part of that. He was from South London, and when he passed away, it was devastating because was one of, and still is, one of the South London greats—such a pioneer—and his sound was so unique. He was a very special person and to immortalise him felt really important for me to do, and it was something I had to do. I walk past his mural every time I get my nails done. I was like, “I am going to put him in this show.” Queenie and I have similar music tastes, and I really wanted that to be the first song that we hear on the show just to set the tone for who she is as a person. She really gets it.
“I think people have to put their respectability politics aside. Queenie is one presentation of a Black woman and I welcome people to write different presentations of Black women who are put-together, who don’t make mistakes, and who are perfect. There is space for all of these presentations.”
Queenie is about a messy and imperfect Black girl, and we don’t see many characters like her on-screen. Do you feel like this could be the start of a shift in how Black women are represented in TV and film?
I think people have to put their respectability politics aside, and I would also say that Queenie is one presentation of a Black woman and I welcome people to write different presentations of Black women who are put-together, who don’t make mistakes, and who are perfect. There is space for all of these presentations, but I will say: it is important for me to have contributed something, and to contribute to someone who I understand is a real presentation of what it means to not be perfect and have everything together. To me, it would be more damaging to put someone into that space that I didn’t recognise or subscribe to. I’ve grown up making mistakes and I haven’t been perfect, but I have grown up learning things about myself through the mistakes that I’ve made. I will always say as long as people are trying, that’s all that matters, and so I would love to see all types of presentations of Black women because that is important to me. We are here, we exist, and we are not going anywhere.
The casting for Champion and Queenie is great and uplifts emerging talent in British television. Why is it important for you to shine a light on up-and-coming talent in front of and behind the camera?
It’s important to me because everyone has to start somewhere and if I can help to do that, then I will. I would say Champion is the show that has the most new and emerging talent, and that was based in London and Birmingham, which was really important to me. Obviously, you have people who went to Theatre School, but I’m looking for more than that: I’m looking for someone who maybe didn’t have access to that, or couldn’t afford to get the train to go to castings. I believe that everything should be based on how good you are at something, not about who you know, not about your connections, not just because your agent managed to get you in the room. So I will always happily open my search up to people who haven’t necessarily trained. As a showrunner, I have time and patience, and if I believe that someone is the best for the job, then they’re gonna get the job.
Queenie touches on mental health struggles from the lead. I wanted to know, why is it so important to tell that story, especially as a Black woman?
I did the same thing with Champion: Bosco had his mental health troubles, too. In my understanding of the world and also as a Black person who has grown up in London, this country is not for us—it is a hostile space. Black women often grow up believing that we should be strong and perfect and just get through things or just knuckle down. It can be very detrimental to our mental health and our ways of understanding ourselves. I wanted to share what happens when we feel that pressure, both to Bosco who was on a different journey, but also to Queenie, who are both good people but the world around them hasn’t been very kind to them.
As someone with ADHD, did you find it difficult to navigate the TV industry and produce both of these series?
I guess I didn’t have a lot of support for that. I don’t think I was very vocal about it. My brain is always running on, like, seven tracks at once, so it helps me get everything done; I can always focus on very little sleep. I would have loved to have had more support but, ultimately, my brain is my brain and I was able to just kind of cut through and do what I needed to do. It was never really a hindrance; if anything, it made me more determined to recognise that I got here by myself, that no one gave me a leg-up and I had to just work hard. I definitely should have spoken about it, which is ironic because I write about people who talk about what they go through. I also understand that I am someone who came up at a different time: I came up when social media wasn’t really the thing that it is now, so I didn’t feel that pressure that young people are feeling now.
Do you feel like there’s an issue with accessibility in British cinema and television, and even publishing, for people of different abilities and from different demographics?
I think that we all need to be moving towards a more inclusive society. And not because it’s box-ticking, but because people are good at their jobs. One thing that I’m interested in is making sure that if there is even one person in front of the camera, I want to make sure we see their full self. Also behind the camera, too, because there are schemes and those reports, but there just needs to be so many more and who is commissioning these things? We still make up a really small percentage of the country, but we are here, so I think we need to be served. Everyone needs to be more inclusive, but it’s not just about getting people of colour and Black people in these spaces, it’s also about how they’re supported because it can be very isolating. I always focus on how we fix the problem in the TV space, and it’s always the same problem: there just aren’t enough of us, or shows representing us. I always make sure that I’m in every marketing meeting to make sure that we’re working with our communities and organisations, including the brilliant Free Books Campaign founded by Sofia Akel.
What advice would you give to up-and-coming Black female writers, or aspiring showrunners, wanting to get their work out there and be seen?
Know your work and know your worth—they go hand in hand. In every room I have been in, I have always known what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. Be prepared and don’t let anyone catch you short or insert themselves. You are in these rooms for a reason.
Queenie is streaming now on Channel 4.
