Director Molly Manning Walker on ‘Major Players,’ Chloe Kelly

Created by “How to Have Sex” director Molly Manning Walker, upcoming series “Major Players” is all about the love of the game. 

“I’ve been obsessed with football forever,” said Walker at Series Mania, following the screening of a sneak preview. 

“It all started because I played football all my life. I ran Babe City FC, a football team for women and non-binary people in the film industry, and I went to school with footballer [and Arsenal forward] Chloe Kelly. We used to fight boys in the playground just to play football, and then she scored the winning goal for the Lionesses. I couldn’t help but cry, thinking about all the times we fought for space. She’d done it. She’d done things for women in sport everywhere.” 

Co-written by Walker and Yasmin Joseph, “Major Players” follows two girls and their mission to start a women’s soccer team at their school. Commissioned by Channel 4, it’s produced and sold by A24 Films, and co-produced by ZDF. 

During a Q&A after the screening at the festival, Walker was joined by Joseph and producer Matthew Mulot. She admitted that, when it comes to football, women still need to fight for their spot. 

“Even now, when we play in a big city, men are shouting: ‘Enjoy your yoga!’ There are different layers of violence in this sport. Perhaps it has something to do with men not being able to talk about their emotions, especially in the U.K..”

Joseph recalled: “My role was to offer my insights on what football meant to me as a teenager. Today, Molly reminded me of a couple of hilarious stories, mainly about how bad I was at football at school. Any time I joined a team, the girls would just sigh,” she laughed. 

Together, they set out to explore how “culture, football and community are intertwined,” with their characters dealing with the rejection and ridicule that can quickly turn aggressive. One of them is slapped on the field by a frustrated boy.

“I think there was something about the slap that said: There’s a time when we’re all playing together and we’re equal, and then there’s a turning point where we carry our bodies differently,” said Joseph.

“It says something about football and it says something about gender and how differently we bring ourselves to the sport. I thought it was a perfect way for them to tap into the next level of maturity and responsibility, and to show how they conduct themselves.” 

For Mulot, who also produced “Baby Reindeer,” “Major Players” was “an incredibly fun challenge.” 

“Molly and Yasmin’s scripts were just fantastic. You read Episode 1 and your first thought is that you want to make it. And your second thought is: how on earth do you make this? You realize pretty quickly that, if you’re going to do it properly and authentically, and it’s going to feel real, you need girls who can play football.”

Working with casting director Lucy Pardee, they auditioned two thousand girls. All of them played football, but none had acted before. 

“It was a very collective process of involving everyone; it was also about not scaring them. Much of the way the production was organized was geared towards making it a safe space for them to be able to do their thing,” said Walker, who welcomed the actors’ input.

“The script can be made someone’s own. We don’t do full improv, because if you have six kids improvising, you just get nothing. But we allow them to make the words their own.”

For inspiration, the team looked at “Atlanta” – “And ‘Bend It Like Beckham,’ obviously.” The 2002 comedy was directed by Gurinder Chadha and starred Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra.

“But it’s hard to talk about what inspired us because much of it came from the kids themselves, from following their needs and being excited by their presence.”

Having already explored teenage sexuality in “How to Have Sex,” Walker didn’t shy away from it in the series, either.

“I was interested in the difference between a queer relationship when it starts out, and a heterosexual relationship – especially in a violent teenage space. I’m still interested in it.”

Showing “How to Have Sex” in schools was actually one of the things that birthed the series – including the scene in which boys make a bet that girls won’t be able to beat them at football.

“There was this one school with a big manosphere vibe. That was pre-‘Adolescence’ and pre-Louis Theroux [who recently made Netflix’s doc ‘Inside the Manosphere’]. They were also saying that football was ‘too butch’ for women to play. This conversation really inspired the show.”