‘We Are Lady Parts’ Reaches New Heights by Getting the (Filmmaking) Band Back Together
It’s not often that a creative team makes a season of television, then makes a completely different feature film, and then brings their new skills to a second season of that TV — but that’s exactly the experience that creator, director, and executive producer Nida Manzoor and members of her core creative team had on Season 2 of “We Are Lady Parts.” That the Peacock series accomplishes as much as it does, from complex musical numbers to slapstick comedy to involving action sequences, is a testament to the benefits of getting a band, as it were, back together.
In just six episodes, the British comedy about the best all-female, all-Muslim punk band in London (apologies to Second Wife, but you’re just not there yet) expanded its storytelling scope without losing the visual playfulness with form that’s such a part of its humor. Manzoor told IndieWire on an episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast that having the confidence to really go for bigger visual beats — while still getting the balance between the ensemble cast just right — is something that came out of the experience of making “Polite Society.”
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Whether importing some of the wirework stunts from her action comedy film or structuring musical numbers around the oomph they needed to have in the overall flow of Season 2, Manzoor stole liberally from her own feature filmmaking experience. “So many of my crew who I did Season 1 with came with me onto the film and then onto Season 2, so we’re all going through this growth together,” Manzoor said.
The shared growth comes through in a lot of different places — from costume designer PC Williams’ Westerns-tastic duds for the iconic number “Malala Made Me Do It” to Manzoor’s songwriting collaborators Shez Manzoor, Sanya Manzoor, and Benni Fregin tackling the sad girl bedroom rock versions of established ‘Lady Parts’ bangers. An invisible but incredibly important place where collaboration opened up possibilities for Season 2 is in Manzoor’s work with editor Robbie Morrison, who also cut Manzoor’s first series “Enterprise” as well as most of what she’s done since.
“We’ve been honing our working relationship, and luckily it’s always lived in a heightened comedy space, so his assemblies are really good,” Manzoor said. “I think our taste in comedy and drama and our rhythmic taste are really aligned. So we’re starting off from a really strong place. It’s a testament to his incredible talent and us understanding each other; and then I get to come in and we can play, but we move really fast in the edit.”
Manzoor isn’t sure if it’s just the demands of a TV comedy schedule or the series’ punk aesthetic or the hunger for a Season 2 of the show to finally come out, but the edit had to move pretty fast, too — and that’s actually something Manzoor ended up preferring. “I like to move fast in the edit. What was interesting with ‘Polite Society,’ which also had its positives, but you have much longer in the edit. You have much longer to second guess. And comedy’s all about instincts and feelings and moving, so there’s something really joyful in television,” Manzoor said.
Manzoor and Morrison were able to focus on and refine complicated sequences knowing they could move quickly under a deadline. “I trust how [Morrison] will find the rhythm that we’re both working towards, and so it was just the combined growth of all of us going into the film and then into Season 2. It just felt like, ‘How can we keep this upward trajectory?’”
Some of that upward trajectory comes from the team knowing how long things will take, from producer John Pocock to first AD Clare Awdry, and being able to both make the most accurate plan and adjust gracefully on the fly.
“I think it’s just coming from that low-budget television space, where, whilst also having ambition, sometimes I’m shooting the edit. I’m always talking to my editor on the phone. If we’ll have shot something and I’m not sure, I’m like, ‘Can you do a quick cut? Can I pick something up?’” Manzoor said. “Because the ambition of the show is so high and I want to meet it, I have to be flexible. So I really make prep work for me.”
Manzoor and her team drill down in prep to find the comedy and the beats within the scene, as well as shot listing and storyboarding the biggest setpieces, with constant communication between all departments. Arming the team with that kind of clarity comes back to Manzoor and her writers’ room, too. The decisions on which numbers need to pack the most visual punk or have the most coverage are integrally bound up with how they support the season as a whole, and that is a lens that Manzoor, the director, can apply while the writing is still happening.
“Just having heard [about] the nature of bigger television shows, writing is happening as you’re directing, and unless it’s a really well-oiled machine, you can just tell at the end of a season, it kind of loses its way,” Manzoor said. “[Our] scripts need to slap, and everybody needs to be happy before we even enter into shooting because I really don’t like rewriting as I’m directing. I like to be there, and we’re prepped, and we’re rehearsed, and then as things evolve, we can be light on our feet if we want, but [we know] the journey of the show.”
“We Are Lady Parts” is available to stream on Peacock.
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