A year on from winning the 2015 Funny Women Comedy Shorts Award Rachel Marwood has a new comedy series out – people of London, get ready for Jessica Figg.
If you’re worried about diving back in to the dating scene or even dipping a toe in don’t watch it or, actually, maybe do watch it because it can only make that time your entire date lasted 3 minutes and 50 seconds seem pretty impressive. Either way, whether you’re half of 2017’s next power couple or being put in to a taxi clutching a kebab and your shoes before midnight Figg & Dates is for you.
We caught up with Rachel to find out a little bit more about the series before it’s launched online…
Funny Women: What pushed you to write a series specifically about dating?
Rachel Marwood: I think the subject of love and relationships is an interesting one because there’s so many variations and it’s such a universal topic. When I told people that I was writing a series about how hard it is to date in London, the missed opportunities, the bad timings, the brilliant men that are out there that just aren’t for you, so many people immediately launched into their own stories. All of them crazy, beautiful, sad, hilarious, and unique.
FW: What do you find to be the most challenging and the most rewarding parts of writing a series?
RM: I wrote almost all of the parts in Figg & Dates for specific actors that I know. So seeing them bring to life these characters exactly as I’d imagined was an incredible thing. The challenge was not to just jump up and down with excitement all the time, but I was producing the series as well as acting in it, so I had to behave like a grown up most of the time. And jump up and down in private.
FW: What do you think makes Figg & Dates different from any other series?
There’s a lot of shows about women hitting 30 and counting down that biological clock. Desperately searching for a man as all of their friends buy houses and have babies. When I hit 30 that just wasn’t the case at all. For me or any of my friends. My fierce, fabulous, independent, beautiful friends weren’t desperate for a man, any man. They just wanted to find their person. That person you can be the most close to. And it hit me that those shows out there were out of date. That’s not how we roll anymore. We’d be ok on our own, we’d be absolutely fine in fact. It would just be more fun to navigate through this silly world holding hands with that dude who makes you laugh so much a bit of wee comes out.
The thing that sets Figg & Dates apart is the fact that Jessica Figg isn’t painted as a lonely woman looking for a relationship to complete her, she just thinks it’d be good to have to someone. We are tired of slow motion shots of heartbreak ice cream and perfectly formed tears as the Abercrombie & Fitch guy fades in to the background, we’re made of stronger, funnier more interesting stuff than that. So underneath all the funny bits (and there are some bloody funny bits) ultimately Figg & Dates is about a woman who isn’t prepared to compromise on anything, including men – which is exactly why you should watch it. As in now. Watch it now. Here.
