“We were absolutely huge fans of the French show,” Ten Percent director, writer, and executive producer John Morgan said during a TCA press conference for the Sundance Now streaming series. An English-language adaptation of Call My Agent!, the series explores the lives of talent agents in London. “A lot of people with this precinct would have gone for a much more cynical, hard-edged, adversarial term where everybody was out to clamber over everybody else and there was dishonesty and there was acquisitiveness. And that is sort of in the mix, but with the French show they went for something much gentler and kinder and I think more true, much more true. So that no matter what you thought of any of them ultimately, you are rooting for them. You want things to turn out well for whoever it is, even if they have committed some kind of cardinal sin.”
(Sundance Now)
Part of the fun for viewers is the lineup of celebrity guest stars who play themselves, including Helena Bonham Carter, David Oyelowo, and Dominic West. “I've either worked with or am friends with, like seventy percent of our guest-stars, and it’s very strange to shoot scenes with someone notionally playing themselves, and you’re playing some other guy, and it’s very discombobulating, or it was in the beginning,” revealed Jack Davenport, who stars as Jonathan in the series. “I kind of got used to it, but there were moments where it was very strange. It was enjoyably strange. In terms of all our guests being a good sport, oddly enough the storylines for our guests is like it’s not enough just to be a good sport. The storylines for each of our guests are really quite complex in terms of what they reveal about themselves. I mean not themselves, themselves, but themselves as professionals… Watching them wrestle with that, in a way, added to the overall stakes of it, which made it really, really fun to do.”
“We all thought what incredible, good sports they were, to come into a series that hasn’t yet proved itself,” added Maggie Steed about the number of guest stars willing to play themselves on the show. “To be prepared to expose themselves like that, to walk on set and just try to be themselves, which was frightening and whatever. We just applauded them and loved them for doing it and we’re really grateful. It was a very, very nice experience.”
“In terms of research, we didn't have to look very far,” Lydia Leonard shared about preparing for her role as Rebecca. “My own agent people always ask me if it’s based on one’s personal agent. And I can’t say that Rebecca is exactly based on my agent, but we have at least all had decades of experience in the field, so plenty of things to draw on.”
“You see these kinds of people who probably are up nights waking in the middle of the night worrying about you, worrying about you in the daytime when they're on school run when they should be worrying about their children,” Prasanna Puwanarajah said of the support system behind the industry. “There's a kind of like extended flock of actors and writers and directors who are looked after by people: agents, managers, lawyers even potentially. And I think what it made me think is that people who work with us and who we work with have specific reasons for being in this business. And it’s because they love stories, and they love creative people, and they love actors. And they go to extraordinary lengths to try and cherish those people and offer them up to the world.”
The first two episodes of Ten Percent are now streaming exclusively on Sundance Now, with new episodes released weekly on Fridays. The series will also be broadcast on Sundays at 7/6c on BBC America beginning May 1st.