Rich Peppiatt on taking down the tabloids, Kneecap, and filmmaking

He struggled with the politics of the paper, which he says were “to the right of things” and didn’t align with his beliefs. “You work for a publication, and they have their views on things, and it's not your paper, right? You’re not there to write what you want to write,” Peppiatt explains. “But I think there comes a point where, for me, I found I couldn't quite walk those two lines happily.”

In 2011, the young journalist wrote a scathing letter of resignation to his employer, Daily Star proprietor Richard Desmond, accusing the paper of Islamophobia and unethical journalism.

It began: “You [Desmond] probably don't know me, but I know you. For the last two years, I've been a reporter at the Daily Star, and for two years I've felt the weight of your ownership rest heavy on the shoulders of everyone, from the editor to the bloke who empties the bins. Wait! I know you're probably reaching for your phone to have me marched out of the building. But please, save on your bill. I quit.”

The letter then outlined his specific grievances with the now-defunct tabloid. Peppiatt chose to make his views public and leaked the letter to The Guardian, which quickly went viral. In his own words, a strange time was to follow.

“You're sort of thrust into this spotlight, and suddenly doing things like Newsnight, sitting there with the deputy prime minister going like, ‘What am I doing here? How have I ended up on bloody Newsnight,” he laughs.

“And so, it was just a sort of bizarre time. I think that I've always been someone who can argue in a phone box, so I was never really intimidated by those sorts of situations having debates with politicians and things like that.”

Then one morning, he found himself being called up to chat about serious topics, like the genocide in Sudan, for example and he couldn’t help wonder, why him?

“You can easily become a rent-a-gob, right,” he adds. “Sling me 100 coins, and I'll come on your show and talk absolute gobshite about whatever subject you choose.” This new career path wasn’t for him, he didn’t want to get sucked into another unhappy work environment. “You've written shit for money, you're now not going to talk shit for money,” he explains.

Around this time, the Leveson Enquiry dominated headlines in the UK. The public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal resulted in hearings from 2011-2012. Peppiatt was asked to give evidence. He admitted that he had been a “terrible journalist” and “made stuff up” but that the wider environment was what he took issue with. “The media ecosystem in this country wasn't healthy then, and I don't think it's healthy now,” he explains. “It's probably less healthy now. But what I would say is that the focus on newspapers doesn't quite feel as relevant as it once was.”

After everything, he wanted to take more control over his direction and realized he had always been drawn to comedy, so decided to do a stand-up show about the past six months. Although he had never performed live before, he showed up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with his ‘One Rogue Reporter’ show and no real expectations.

Quickly realizing how tough stand-up could be, he honed his craft by performing daily for a month. The show got better with each performance, and Peppiatt even toured nationally. One show was attended by Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan who approached him after the gig to talk about potentially making a film. With no filmmaking experience - just prior experience writing scripts - he and a friend pooled a little money together and set out to create something.

The film focused on tabloid editors’ private lives, using paparazzi to test the boundaries of privacy, public interest, and freedom of expression. It was low-fi and rough, but that fits the subject matter well, says Peppiatt. They premiered it at the Sheffield Doc/Fest, and after the screening, it was picked up by Netflix.

“We were very lucky. It was one of the first wave of British documentaries on Netflix at the time 10 years ago,” he says. “I mean, I know now we were absolutely ripped off. We should have got a lot more money.”

The money they received allowed Peppiatt to start his own production company, Naughty Step, but after a decade of living in London, he moved to Belfast following a subtle ultimatum from his Irish wife.

Two weeks after arriving there he walked into a pub and Kneecap were playing on stage. “I was just blown away by them and their stage presence,” Peppiatt recalls. “And you know, the fact they were throwing baggies of white powder into the crowd was quite eye-opening.”

He remembers thinking that in a world where rock stars and musicians are quite PR-driven, packaged up all nice and safe, this band clearly didn't give a shit what anyone thought of them and didn’t care that they were doing things that might stop them from getting signed.

“One of my favorite bands growing up was Rage Against the Machine. And they really hark back to them for me,” adds Peppiatt. “Tom Morello from Rage was tweeting the other day about how much he loved Kneecap, and I was like, it's all come full circle.”

After weeks of trying to get the attention of Kneecap after seeing them at a gig and making no progress, Peppiatt fortuitously bumped into band member Mo Chara’s ex girlfriend who gave him his number.

“He met me that evening with the other two boys, and that sort of became kind of the scene in the garage in the film,” he says. “It was kind of the big test of, can he keep up with us, and is he a peeler [police officer]?

“I stumbled in about eight o'clock the next morning back home, my wife was like, ‘Where the hell have you been, it's a Tuesday’. But from then on, we were firm friends, and we spent just a huge amount of time together for the next five years,” he says.

It was agreed that Peppiatt would write and direct a narrative film about the band, not a documentary, and the next six months that ensued became the “longest interview period ever” of sitting with band members Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí getting to know them.

The writing process of Kneecap, the film, had to be collaborative from the get-go. As an English person, Peppiatt was “very conscious that the English have been exploiting the Irish for 800 years, and I didn't want to make it 801,” he explains.

From day one, Peppiatt made it clear that if Kneecap allowed him access, he would ensure they were with him every step of the way. It was a big risk for them to let him make the film and failure could have had a significant impact on the band.

“I’d always had this idea in my head that the music biopic was a genre that felt like it had been run over 1000 times, it was just tired,” he says. “I was like, could you do a music biopic where, rather than it being at the end of a career, a band that is dead or nearly dead, could you do a biopic in real-time?”

This idea didn’t come without some major hurdles. It was tricky to get the trust of others to believe in the film. Peppiatt understands why. He was asking people to give him millions of pounds to do something that hadn’t been done before.

“And then, in our case, give you millions of pounds to do something never done before, with three lead actors who have never acted and rapping in a language that barely anyone speaks,” he adds. “It doesn't exactly scream Hollywood blockbuster.”

But it did all work out, attracting the attention of established actors like Michael Fassbender, who eagerly joined the cast. Around the time of pre-production, Kneecap also signed a record deal with Heavenly, so as their album Fine Art was released, so was the movie. The result is a gritty, black comedy in the Irish language that looks to the future rather than dwelling in the past.

“I'll never make a film like this again, this has been such a kind of a collaborative experience, like a group of friends embarking on this mad idea we come up with a pub five years ago,” Peppiatt explains. “And seeing it all the way to potentially the Oscars is just a crazy experience.”

The writer says that he loves Kneecap as people but equally as a band, noting he’s probably seen them 100 times now.

With the success of the film still going strong, it picked up top honors this week at the British Independent Film Awards, Peppiatt is riding this wave and thinking of future projects. His production company, Naughty Step, has been a little dormant since he left London – and the advertising world - almost a decade ago.

“I became a little bit disillusioned, I suppose, with the advertising world in London,” he confesses. “It's the same old faces, the same old boys’ network. And I was just like, it just feels a bit tired and kind of the creativity is not really there.”

Looking forward, Peppiatt is keen to bring the level of creativity that has worked so well in Kneecap to the commercial world, although its very early days. “There was a heyday when you had filmmakers’ kind of crossing over from narrative stuff into doing commercial,” he says. “And they were given the freedom to really kind of push the boat out creatively and do some really cool stuff and test out ideas.”

As for what’s coming up next for Peppiatt. Well, there are more awards and promo to be done for Kneecap and he’s tight-lipped about something he’s working on in the Caribbean for an American studio. Then there's a project he’s been developing called Bad Bridget, which is about the fate of Irish immigrant women who moved to New York during the famine.

“You spend all this time developing things, writing things, and there's a madness of the shoot for six months, and then you and there's a promo madness,” he says.

“I'm at the nice bit again, where you've got your research blanket out, and you can kind of have a bit more structure in your life at home, and I can take the kids to school, and yeah, so I'm having a nice time.”