Everywoman optioned by RED Production Company
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Editor
| 29 May 2019

BAFTA award-winner RED Production Company has optioned the critically acclaimed book, Everywoman: One Woman’s Truth About Speaking the Truth, by UK politician Jess Phillips, to develop it into a TV drama.

Phillips was elected to Parliament in May 2015 as the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley and has been making the headlines ever since for doing what women are simply not supposed to do: speak up. Whether that is talking about her own sexual assault, reading out the names of one hundred and twenty women and girls who were murdered, the unnecessary VAT on sanitary products. Phillips hasn’t been afraid to stand up and tell the truth.

The Labour MP’s much talked-about book is a collection of stories from her own life, told with characteristic honesty. In Everywoman: One Woman’s Truths About Speaking the Truth, Phillips encourages all women to follow her lead and to stand up and speak up, even when it seems that the world is against them, to dare to alter that world and – maybe – make history.

The book was shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards in 2017 and has received rave reviews, winning her fans across the UK for her honest and outspoken views.

The Manchester-based production company has become renowned for producing boundary-pushing drama for over 20 years, including Happy Valley, Butterfly, Safe, Cucumber, Clocking Off, Queer As Folk, Scott & Bailey and the recent hit Years and Years, which is currently airing on BBC One. The new drama will be a co-production, and co-developed, between Red and executive producer Lucy Dyke, whose credits include Abi Morgan’s The Split, Black Mirror and Ripper Street.

“I'm utterly thrilled to be working with Red,” Phillips remarked. “It makes the kind of television that truly represents people and events as they are and that was deeply important to me. The story of women in politics is complex and nuanced and intriguing, and it's a story that needs telling.”

RED Production Company executive producer and chief executive Nicola Shindler added: “Jess is an inspirational woman who fights for what she believes in and isn’t afraid to be honest and outspoken. Using her book as a source we’re excited to create a drama that explores how an engaged woman can make a difference in today’s very complicated world.”