Nina Sosanya on Channel 4's Screw: "It never goes where you think it's going to go"

It’s a provocative detail that instantly piques your curiosity. Who is this peculiar woman? And what, exactly, is she running from?

“That scene portrays somebody who is not what she seems, who might not be what she says on the tin,” said Nina Sosanya of her character Leigh in an interview with RadioTimes.com. “The prospect of playing somebody who clearly has an inner life and something to discover about her, that's just immensely attractive for an actress.

“And to be able to go on a real – I hate saying the word journey – but where she starts when you meet her and where she gets to by the end of the six episodes, is wholly unpredictable. And that goes for the whole show. [Creator and writer] Rob [Williams] (The Victim) sets up these situations and then is always pulling the rug out from underneath you as a viewer, and as a reader of the script. It never goes where you think it's going to go. It's unpredictable, and that was fresh and interesting to me.”

When you recall characters in TV shows and film that wind up sleeping at their respective offices, or wherever it is they earn their crusts, their lives are either falling apart – The Sopranos' Davey Scatino immediately springs to mind – or they’re utterly wedded to their work, like DS Stella Gibson in The Fall.

Leigh sits somewhere in the middle. As a supervising officer, she wants her wing of the all-male prison to run smoothly, both for her own professional glory and for the inmates, with whom she is firm but fair. On a personal level, her life isn't falling apart, but she's choosing to spend her nights holed up in a prison cell, which signals a rupture or absence of something, whatever that maybe.

“She is clearly invested, personally invested, in this particular wing of this prison," explained Sosanya. “She's clearly a bit of a control freak, perhaps, because she's trying to run this thing according to her own rules. She does bend some rules in order to help certain people that she feels need her support. Her need for control, her absolute compassion, her inability to allow anybody else to get very close, all of these things will be instrumental in where she ends up, and where everybody ends up."

Alongside her choice to live, in part, like the men she presides over, there is another narrative detail which signposts the disquiet bubbling beneath her unflappable exterior: the image Leigh keeps on her bedside table. It's not a photograph of an estranged child or a former lover, but something entirely other.

On further research, we learn that it is a replica of Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, a painting which depicts a young woman in a pink dress who is lying in a grassy field with her torso propped up by her arms. The picture was inspired by a neighbour of Wyeth's, who was unable to walk due to a degenerative muscle condition. But rather than use a wheelchair, she chose to crawl, as captured in Wyeth's work.

“The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless," he explained (via Moma).

"The first time you see it, it looks sort of pastoral and rather comforting," said Sosanya. "And it's about some sort of longing. And by the end, you look at it again, and it has really different connotations. It’s just a very good hint at the darkness that is there."

But while it's Leigh's secret that weighs her down rather than the job itself – although she does feel the heat when her position as SO appears to be in jeopardy – the vast and varied demands she encounters in Long Marsh Prison would have been ample fodder. Conversation quickly turned to the real-world women and men who clock into prisons up and down the country on a daily basis, several of whom provided invaluable insight for Sosanya and her fellow cast members.

"The first question I wanted to ask [the prison officers we spoke to] was why? Why would you put yourself into this position of what seems like quite a frightening situation," she said. "And it really does seem to be because you can make a difference, even if that's just a difference for somebody’s lunchtime, just an hour in somebody's day.

"As Leigh says, one of the issues here is the punishment, which is loss of liberty while you're in prison, but there's no reason why you should be having a terrible time, which is what I think most of society thinks should be happening. But once you're there, there's no judgement. Well, I think that prison officers that have the most productive time are the ones that are not judging. They're just taking each day and each person as they come."

The cast were given an education in multiple different aspects of the job, including how to restrain people. The prisoner officers that lent their expertise improvised scenarios, which Sosanya and co observed from afar, before diving in themselves.

"I'm just standing there watching and realising that actually, in order to get through this, they are putting on a performance," she said. "They're putting on a persona to get through their day. You put the uniform on, you put the persona on as well."

There is much that isn't a laughing matter in Screw, from the frequent drug abuse to the unsettling exchange that takes place in the shower block between two inmates. But there's also plenty of humour between the prison officers, which isn't revelatory, but also between the staff and the convicts, which might catch you off guard.

"That's the thing that surprised me," Sosanya said. "And that was something that I learned from actual prison officers as well. The relationships that they have with them, just on a day to day level, the word banter was used constantly. That's the currency in prison. That's the way you get through the day."

Gallows humour is a survival mechanism adopted by many in jobs which often stare into the abyss. It might sound somewhat crass to those on the outside who are shielded from the scenarios that others frequently find themselves in the middle of but without it, the reality of what they're dealing with would become too much to bear.

"And also, if you've got that as a prison officer, there tends to be a bit more respect given," she added. "You can’t be a wall flower. You can't take things to heart. It's got to bounce off you and you’ve got to laugh."

For some, of course, the situation in UK prisons has become unmanageable, with few – if any – positives to speak of. Officers are leaving the sector in droves, with job adverts increasing by 13% in late October and early November last year, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), via BBC News.

Mick Pimblett, the assistant general secretary for the Prison Officers Association (POA), said that the system was "close to breaking point" as Christmas approached, with 134 officers leaving Berwyn Prison in north Wales in the previous three months alone. An increase in violence and self-harm among prisoners and attacks on officers following the lifting of COVID restrictions has created a dangerous cocktail.

In 2020, England's prison system was described as being in “deep crisis” by a delegation from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), with the prisons they looked at found to be “violent, unsafe and overcrowded" (via The Guardian).

As Sosanya notes, Screw's arrival on our screens cannot be described as timely because its content would have rung true five years ago, and the five before that, and so on.

"It’s tapping into things that have always been there," noted Sosanya. Instead, she's more interested in talking about the role that prisons serve in society.

"There's always been a lack of awareness of what prisons are there for, what they're setting out to do, and how they’re actually failing," said Sosanya. "Because clearly, something is failing. They don't seem to be acting as a great deterrent."

According to the Prison Reform Trust, 47% of adults are re-convicted within one year of being released. That rises to 60% for those who have served sentences of fewer than 12 months for lesser crimes, and further still to 75% for children and young people in custody.

"It's never gone well," added Sosanya. "And I think that people feel that rehabilitation is treating people softly. But clearly, it doesn't work the other way around, so we may as well give that a try."

All six episodes of Screw are available to stream now on All 4. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or visit our Drama hub for more news, interviews and features.