SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Marlon James, who won the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel, "A Brief History Of Seven Killings" that brought us through drug gang rivalries in Jamaica has created a series for HBO in which an admired Scotland Yard detective returns home to Kingston and draws a missing teen case and discovers it is even more than that.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GET MILLIE BLACK")
TAMARA LAWRANCE: (As Millie-Jean Black) If you didn't know me, you'd say I was just doing my job. Nobody knew I was paying an unpayable debt to a ghost. But on the day Mama dropped dead, who should raise up like Lazarus?
SIMON: "Get Millie Black" stars Tamara Lawrance, Chyna McQueen and Joe Dempsie. And Marlon James, the creator of the series joins us from his home in Kingston. Thanks so much for being with us.
MARLON JAMES: Oh, thanks for having me.
SIMON: So I am told you were in your hotel room in London after accepting the Booker Prize when this idea for a TV series began to grip your mind.
JAMES: It actually was before the Booker Prize. I was definitely in a hotel room. My very good friend, the producer Leopoldo Gout - who is a producer on this - he basically was stalking me to write an idea. And I'm trying to think of, what is the easiest way to get rid of my friend? Let me write a show that's so unfilmable and so unwatchable. I'm going to have it set in Jamaica, everybody speak Jamaican Patois, and I'll never hear from them again. And then he's, like, hey, we sold the show. And I'm, like, damn it.
SIMON: Oh, wow. Well, I'm both happy it worked out for the viewer and then sorry - well, tell us about Millie. Scotland Yard-legend wants to work missing persons for a personal reason, doesn't she?
JAMES: Yeah. Millie lost her brother. Her abusive mother split them apart so much that she sent Millie to live in London. And at some point, Millie gets this news - false news - that her brother is dead, her brother passed on. And that develops in her an obsession with saving children, particularly young boys. It's not an obsession that she necessarily acknowledge or even knows. At some point in her career, her brother shows up - you know, her brother that she thought was dead - and that immediately compels her back to Kingston, but it doesn't quench her obsession. Because her brother is not quite her brother anymore.
SIMON: I mean, can we tip the fact that her brother has become Hibiscus?
JAMES: Her brother has become Hibiscus, her sister. Her brother has transitioned. It's not that she doesn't recognize her brother as her sister, and it's not that she doesn't recognize her pronouns. She's not transphobic. It's just that the obsession is still there. It means that her brother is more gone than ever.
SIMON: Both your parents were police officers, I gather.
JAMES: Both are police officers. My dad quit pretty early to become a lawyer. My mom stayed in the force, and she was a detective. You know, I think my mom would be the last person to call herself a trailblazer, but the fact is there was no precedent for her in Jamaican law enforcement. And my mom was a cop from 1956. The joke in my family was that my mom put them in jail and my dad took them out.
SIMON: (Laughter) Well, I'm sure this is a thoroughly unoriginal question, but how much is Millie Black based on your mother, Detective Shirley Dillon-James?
JAMES: I'm sure Shirley Dillon-James will say everything is based on her, but it's not. I think what's based on my mom is her process of detection. My mom is a pretty logical person. She knows when a scene doesn't add up, and I think Millie gets that from her. My mom - more of an influence on me than on a character in that I've always looked at writing as detective work, trying to solve the mystery of the character that ended up in my head. And I'm not sure why they're there. What are you all about? What are you hiding from me? What am I going to uncover?
SIMON: The Jamaica we see in "Get Millie Black" is not the one of blue beaches and tourism commercials, is it?
JAMES: No, it's not. It is Jamaica, though. It is - in fact, it's Kingston. It's an urban metropolis, but it's a kind of urban metropolis that's sort of almost consuming itself. So in some ways, it's like Mexico City or Mumbai, you know, these kind of maximum cities where so - there are so many versions of the city in one. And because there are so many versions, there are so many secrets. And I wanted that. I wanted urban Jamaica, the Jamaica I grew up in. Yes, you know, we're an island. You're never far from a beach, but honestly, I rarely saw the beach. I saw the streets, and I lived in that kind of life. And I wanted a Jamaican story, a tropical story that could still in its own way be a film noir.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GET MILLIE BLACK")
LAWRANCE: (As Millie-Jean Black) Most people would call this place a sewer. My sister calls it home. Mama's ghost has kept Hibiscus out here.
SIMON: As we heard in that clip, Millie's sister is living as a woman named Hibiscus. Tell us where - about the place where she lives called the Gully.
JAMES: So Jamaica, of course, has a very complicated relationship to queerness, queer folks, queer people, homosexuality. Homosexual acts are still illegal. You know, we have a rep for being homophobic. There's no shying away from that. But different queer communities find different ways of existing. And just as it is in many countries, our trans people are on the frontlines of discrimination. They can't hide it.
And what used to happen - they're not there anymore, but in Jamaica, they developed a sort of a social network in the sewers, in the exposed gullies. And that's where they were. That's where they lived. That's where they loved. And that was their sort of refuge until the occasional police purge. And some of those women actually ended up in the show itself. And being in the sewers, being in a gully, they're literally below everybody else. So Jamaica moves on. Cars move over. People go to work. Jamaica moves on at its pace sometimes not even knowing that there are human beings right below.
SIMON: Mr. James, may I ask why - I mean, you're back. We're speaking to you in a new home. Why did you leave Jamaica years ago?
JAMES: I left Jamaica for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons was homophobia - not that I was a victim of any homophobic attack. I don't think you need to be. I think it was just the atmosphere. As somebody who was queer and barely being able to even admit it to myself, I wanted somewhere where I'd have felt more free. The irony, worthy enough, is in some ways I feel more free here. Two of our most prominent queer writers, myself and Staceyann Chin, we - ironically, we kind of both moved back. And I think one of the reasons why we moved back is that it is, in many ways, a clearly different country than the one we left behind.
SIMON: Look, this is not the most important question, but I have also read you spent part of the Booker Prize money - which is considerable - to buy a lamp in the shape of a life-size horse.
JAMES: See, this is how rumors start. Yes, it was. So somebody dared me to buy an outrageous gift for myself, which is the last thing to tell somebody like me. There's this lamp. I can't pronounce the name. It's M-O-O-I - Moooi or whatever it's pronounced - and it's a life-size horse, so almost, like, 9 feet by 9 feet, with a lamp shade on top. And I tell people, well, it's in MoMA. So that was being something. But, yeah, I'm the person who you should never give a dare to.
SIMON: I will remember that. I have to ask, did you write this series by the light of that lamp?
JAMES: No. I wrote this series at my work office, which is in another writer's apartment - a novelist, John Ray. We kind of captured his house, and a lot of us have a room in his house where we write. So there are, like, four or five of us at any given time. The only person who doesn't write in John Ray's is house is John Ray.
SIMON: Yeah. Well, it sounds like there's no room for him. Yeah.
JAMES: Yeah, he - there's no room for him. He writes in a cafe across the street.
SIMON: What do you hope people who watch "Get Millie Black" might understand better about Jamaica and Jamaicans?
JAMES: Well, one thing I hope they have is a more complicated idea of the country. Certainly, more complicated idea of the city. I think that there are people on both sides. There are Jamaicans who are worried about showing anything in a negative light. I think there are people who think the country is just beaches and people, and it is. But New York is flooded by tourists who want to end up in an episode of "Law & Order."
SIMON: (Laughter).
JAMES: I think it's - the idea that the country can be a hotbed of complicated stories is exactly what makes it so interesting. And I think I hope people get that out of it, that, you know, it's a place where a million complex stories can happen.
SIMON: Marlon James - he's created the new HBO series "Get Millie Black." Thank you so much for being with us.
JAMES: Thanks so much for having me.
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