Meet Ella Watts, Podcast and Audio Drama Champion

Jun 14th

Described as the “Queen of Audio Fiction” by The Guardian, Ella Watts is a recognisable name to most fans of the genre. She’s worked on audio connected to some of the biggest franchises of our time, including the hugely successful Doctor Who: Redacted (which Ella pitched and produced the first season of) and Marvel Move, a ‘narrative-led fitness experience’ that is a part of the Marvel universe canon.

Despite her connection to such big franchises, it is her passion for uplifting more marginalised stories that has put her on many audio fans’ radar. She was the producer on Crowd Network’s Eliza: A Robot Story, an award-winning show that used the theme of AI to discuss violence against women. She directed Re: Dracula, executive produced The Tower and most recently released Camlann, a re-imagining of the Arthurian legend that was one of our favourite podcasts this Spring.

Beyond her credits, she has a reputation for building a community and network around her – and encouraging others to do the same. As someone who’s very passionate about opening pathways into audio, she’s joked (with a fitting fantasy reference) that she’s like Hodor from Game of Thrones, stubbornly holding a door open for other creatives to step through.

Francesca Turauskis spoke to Ella about her work, how to start building your own network in audio, tips for directing voice actors and the undervalued audio in video games…

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

FT: You are quite well known for knowing a lot of people in audio, and being very good at connecting people. How have you built up a network?

ELLA: Just audacity. I think I’m in a position of privilege in that regard because I’m white, I’m cisgender, I sound very posh and so I think it’s easier for me to open up conversations with any number of people than it might be for others. But a lot of the time I’ve straight up cold contacted people who make shows and projects that I admire.

I have almost always contacted people when I know that I have something constructive or useful for them. It’s pretty rare that I’ve got in touch with someone in the first instance because I needed something and it’s more often that I’ve got in touch with them when I think I can offer them something – for example, getting in touch with a podcaster and saying, “Hey, there’s a big meetup of audio drama people. Do you want to come join us?”. I do a lot of resource sharing and I think that trying to be useful to people is very helpful.

FT: Do you have tips for people that want to build up their own network in audio?

ELLA: I think a lot of people make the mistake of exclusively contacting people when they need something from those people. You can really shoot yourself in the foot by doing that because what happens is everyone just associates you with a demand that they don’t have time for.
Whereas if you can instead position yourself as someone who’s making their life easier or providing a solution to a problem that they have, then when you do need whatever you need from them, they’ll be more inclined to help you.

FT: For people possibly thinking ‘well, I don’t know what I have to offer’ – would you have any advice in terms of pinpointing what you have to offer to people?

ELLA: Analyse your industry and analyse who you want to work with. In the past I have approached production companies that I’ve read are interested in going into audio or audio drama specifically and been like, “Hey, I know you haven’t done audio drama before. Can I help you with that?” You don’t want to approach a company like Audible and say, “do you want me to tell you what audio drama is?” Because they know. So instead it’s looking at who there is and what they need.

In terms of what you can provide, the mantra is ‘act with the confidence of a mediocre straight white man’ – give yourself that confidence! But in all seriousness, I notice this a lot in the media industry where women and people of colour and trans people, disabled people will say to me, “I’m an aspiring x… I am an assistant x…” And often they have significantly more experience than their white, male, able-bodied, cisgender peers. One of the best pieces of advice that I got in my early career was to stop saying that you’re an ‘aspiring producer’ or an ‘aspiring director’ and say you are a producer, you are a director.

Being flexible as well – for example, I primarily work as a director and producer, however, I will also work as a script editor and consultant because it’s a lot easier to get jobs. I have a good enough understanding of story that I can do those jobs, and I can do those jobs well. So sometimes it’s settling for a second prize because you know that you might be able to get better work with that company or that person in future.

FT: You mentioned flexibility and that is very noticeable in your portfolio. You have recently moved into video game audio and direction. Why did you make that decision and how do you find the work?

ELLA: I feel safest by diversifying my portfolio as much as possible. I think it’s not smart right now to put all of your eggs in one basket because the reality is that the games industry had a third of all staff worldwide fired in January this year. The podcast industry has been taking similar hits, and whilst I do firmly believe that both gaming and podcasting will rise again, this is a cyclical thing that does happen again and again and you have to plan and prepare for it.

I’m a voice director. I specialise in audio drama, but that’s very, very specialised and there is not that much audio drama work in the world that’s paid. I think gaming and animation are the two most similar kinds of voice directing to audio drama. They obviously have their own unique characteristics, and they’re quite different skills, but they are similar enough that I can expand out into them.

I also just really love video games and I always have. I think the performances that you can get in games are brilliant, and I think it’s a really exciting time for acting and directing in games because we’ve had a few massive editorial successes in terms of games that succeeded because they were well performed and because they were well-directed. Baldur’s Gate 3 obviously, but also things like Red Dead Redemption and The Last Of Us. So it’s a really fun time to step into the industry.

For me, the thing that’s most important is an interesting and compelling performance and I want to interrogate and investigate that and work on that. And it’s kind of a fun time to be doing that in games.

FT: How do you work with actors to get that compelling performance out of them?

ELLA: I’d say there’s – at least – two really important things.

The first one is you make your actors comfortable. A comfortable actor will always be able to give a better performance. You have to understand that your actor is a skilled professional who has skills that you do not have. Trust your actor to do their job and make it possible for them to do their job by communicating with them clearly, giving them clear signposts about timings, what you want to get out of things, making sure that they’ve got refreshments and water, making sure they can sit down if they need to, being aware of their safety, being careful about things like consent – which not only applies to sex and intimacy, but also if you’re covering culturally difficult topics.

For example, if there are slurs in your script, you should talk to your actor about whether or not that’s something that they’re comfortable performing, especially if they’re from a background that you do not share. I would not feel comfortable asking a black actor to perform a slur for me unless they specifically ask to do that. There’s lots of horror stories that really come out of misogyny and racism and terrorism about directors tricking their actors and surprising their actors. And I am powerfully of the opinion that that’s never, ever, ever going to get the best performance.

The other big one is do not ever give your actors a line read. This is so important. It happens a lot with new directors [who] have a way that they imagine a sentence is said in their head. The problem is, what an actor will do is imitate you instead of actually performing the line. And this is always very, very obvious and very frustrating.

What you need to do instead of giving your actors a line read is explain to them what the intention is, why the character is saying what they’re saying. So instead of saying, “no, no, put the emphasis on the word money,” you should say “What you need to understand is this character is broke right now. They’re really stressed about money and they really need an answer to this question.” Your actor will convey the urgency and need, but they’ll do it a lot better if you let them do it in their own voice.

So yeah, don’t give them line reads – unless the line is in a different language that you speak and your actor does not, in which case, you can tell them how to pronounce it.

FT: Where have you gained the skills for directing? What’s the kind of background that you need to do that job?

ELLA : I think people can approach directing from a number of different angles. My personal background was that I did the LAMDA speech and drama qualifications as I was growing up. I went up to the gold medal for acting, and I had been interested in directing since I was about 14 when I put on a promenade evening of drama, which I’m not going to go into – it’s a little embarrassing!

And then my master’s degree at Goldsmiths, it’s the only master’s degree in the country or indeed the world that not only teaches radio, but specifically radio drama as a major element of its course*. So it’s a really great degree for that reason. I learned a bit about directing actors for radio specifically during my masters at Goldsmiths.

[*Editor’s note: It’s recently been announced that Goldsmith’s has stopped this degree for 24-25 entry, but some universities offer drama and creative writing courses with radio drama modules for those looking to direct, act or write.]

FT: What is your favourite aspect of working in audio?

ELLA: I think my favourite aspect of working in audio is that it is a fundamentally unprofitable medium, and as such, we can be significantly more politically and socially radical than we can in other media. Obviously audio is commercial, however [podcasting and audio] make less money than film and television and video games do, and as a result, there are less stakeholders and there is less political influence and less monitoring and control of the space. Now, this can be a bad thing – for example, Joe Rogan is a Nazi, and it’s terrible that he has as much influence as he does.

However, it can also be a really good thing. Where I work in the audio drama space, some of our most successful shows are about non-binary characters, and black bisexual detectives, and half-blind people, and disabled people, and deaf people, and wheelchair users, and indigenous people. That’s really cool because it’s quite rare that that much power remains in the hands of marginalised communities when they’re telling their stories. Often marginalised communities will pitch a story, but then it’ll be taken out of their hands by more powerful, wealthier people, and the message of their shows will be defanged, and defanged, and defanged until eventually the thing that comes through maybe has a glitter of something a little bit countercultural, but fundamentally has been groomed into being something acceptable for US imperialism, for white imperialism.

So I love the creative freedom that I have in audio. I think that’s fundamentally not exclusive to audio. I think it moves with wherever the least profitable medium is. One of my favourite quotes about the history of radio drama is a sentence by Dr. Leslie McMurty in her book Revolution in the Echo Chamber, she said “radio executives somewhat naively saw in the new medium of TV a place where they could realise their creative ambitions that had been frustrated by the over commercialisation of radio”. There was so much advertising on radio that they couldn’t tell original stories. Obviously now it’s flipped completely around.

Right now, in this moment, in the 21st century, the thing I love about audio is that it can be the voice of marginalised people expressing radical political opinions to each other and reaching our communities. And I think that is incredibly powerful.

FT: You said you love creative freedom – how do you keep your creativity topped up, particularly when you’re working for a long time in the space?

ELLA: One thing I think about a lot is fallow fields. So, in mediaeval crop rotation, you’ve got four fields, three of them have various crops in them. One is left fallow, and you stick the animals in there and you let it fill up with manure and weeds and all sorts. After it’s been fallow for a while and it’s gotten all of those nutrients, then it’s a good field again for your crops. I think about this for your mind with creativity. You have to let yourself have fallow periods where you are not making anything.

It’s important to go to an art gallery and listen to a piece of music and go to a concert or a spoken word night or read a poetry anthology or read a novel or watch a movie and just put art inside of you because it will inspire all kinds of new things, but you have to let yourself rest. I think sometimes people, because of the infinite growth of capitalism, try really hard to just squeeze constant new work out of themselves, and that doesn’t work. It never works.

When you let your mind lie fallow, you don’t just have to consume media. I think sometimes there’s a really distressing habit of looking at art as content that we consume. I keep saying the word ‘consume’, and I don’t like that I keep saying the word ‘consume’. I think that also going on a boat or going for a walk in a park or baking some bread or talking to your family or babysitting some kids or looking after your friend’s cats or whatever, all of these things can also inspire you. All of these things lead to little moments of inspiration.

I think you have to have a mixture of projects. I have projects that pay the bills, and I have projects that make my heart happy. I recently made this podcast called Camlann. What was so nice about that was because it was grant funded, our job was not to make it commercial. Our job was just to make it.

That was such a beautiful project to do. I try really hard to do at least one project like that every one to two years, which is just a passion project that I know is going to really fulfil me and make me really happy and be something that I find very inspiring and exciting.

And then in the meantime, in the background, I will take whatever projects I need to pay my bills and cover my rent and all the rest of it. But I think you have to remind yourself to have both. If you just stick to the ones that pay the bills, you’ll be getting by, but you won’t be happy.

FT: You mentioned Camlann, that was an idea you had for seven years, but it’s come to life this year – can you give us some background on that?

ELLA: Camlann is my baby. I did a thing, which I think a lot of people in media do, especially if you come from a background that is in any way marginalised – and that is up to and including if you are just a woman or a white woman like me, and the biggest challenge that you face in your life is misogyny, misogyny is still a big problem. – I really, really wanted to tell my own stories, and then I felt like they weren’t good enough and I didn’t have the right to put myself first.

So I got a career in media, and I kept working towards this hypothetical horizon of the day when my story and I myself would be good enough, or experienced enough, or worth enough time that I could tell my own story instead of just helping other people tell theirs. I’ve been very fortunate in the seven, eight years that I’ve been working in podcasting to develop a community of fantastic colleagues and peers who are very encouraging and very kind. Over time I came to change my mind.

Then at the beginning of last year, January, 2023, I contacted a very dear friend and colleague, Amber Devereux at Tin Can Audio, and said, “look, I previously contacted you to make the music for this. How do you feel about just fully producing it and doing all the sound design? I love your work. And we’d been wanting to work together for a really long time…”

And they said yes, and brought Ross McFarlane on board because they knew that he was a) a really good Production Manager and Project Manager, and b) very good at applying for grant funding. We knew that we would need money if we were going to make this, because I have gotten to the point in my career where I am experienced enough that I don’t feel comfortable asking for people to do things for free. I think if you’re just starting out, that’s fine, as long as you are clear about it and transparent up top.
And so we got the money. That was great. Ross and Amber gave me feedback on the script. That was amazing. Amber jokes that everyone in the audio drama industry has read the pilot script, and it’s probably true.

Fast forwarding to the place where now it exists and it feels very surreal. I’m so proud of it, and I could not have believed eight years ago that there would ever be a version of it that would exist in reality that would be as good as the version that existed in my head.

What we created is a little bit different from what I imagined because it has the creative input of every person who worked on the project, but I also think it’s so much better than I could have imagined by myself.
It’s done really well. We are actually coming up on a hundred thousand downloads one month after our final episode, which I think in six months is pretty good for a nine episode show. [Editor’s note: Camlann has since crossed a hundred thousand downloads!]

FT: You funded Camlann through grants, would you have any advice in terms of what goes into the most interesting grant applications?

ELLA: Both Creative Scotland and Arts Council England have funded a few podcasts, however, they’ve specifically funded audio dramas, [e.g. Beneath Our Feet, The Ballad of Anne and Mary, Land Skeins, The Tower, and Folxlore] so I don’t know how open they are to funding nonfiction podcasts.

The thing that I learned over the process of applying for funding for Camlann was that for both Arts Council England and Creative Scotland, one of the most important things for them is that you have to already have some funding from somewhere else. They really, really value co-funding. Ross, Amber and I looked for other funding that we could apply for and found the Inevitable Foundation, which is a career development grant for disabled podcasters. I am disabled, I’m chronically ill, and I was able to use some of the money from that grant – not all of it, but some – towards Camlann as part of my professional development.

When we could say “well, we’ve got some money here from this charity” it really made our application much stronger.

FT: The final question we ask – Content is Queen are the co-leads of the Equality In Audio Pact now – what does equality in audio mean to you?

ELLA: I think it means taking meaningful action with money and employment contracts and career steps to expand the inclusivity in your workplace and in your art. I think that there is a lot of gesturing and political gesturing. I think we really need more serious, meaningful action from major companies in this industry and smaller companies in this industry to create actual steps. Don’t just post a graphic on Instagram, create a paid placement, create actual formal training.

Something that I find really frustrating is that a lot of the media industry relies on peer-to-peer networking and informal training on the job instead of formal training on the job. And white privileged people don’t understand that means people who are not sharing that cultural capital, people who are not also white, people who are not also abled or whatever, don’t have access to that community of knowledge and that shared pool. And so it’s much, much, much harder to get ahead.

I think in the media industry, what we really need to do is move away from informal contracts and informal exchanging of handshakes behind closed doors, and “oh, I’ll just do you a favour” and towards formalised, structured, monitored, actual opportunities that are paid and really survivable for people.

The other thing that I think happens is that senior executives in the industry seem to treat working in this industry like it’s a fun hobby instead of something that needs to pay people’s bills. It makes it incredibly inaccessible to working class people.

And at the end of the day, what I think ‘equality in audio’ means is more interesting stories. It means more interesting voices. I live in a culture that is not a monoculture, and I want to have art that reflects that. It’s far, far too late already, and it should have been done a long time ago.

—

Find out more about ‘Directing Audio Fiction’ at Ella’s workshop as part of the International Women’s Podcast Festival in partnership with Spotify. Or, find more from Ella right now in her masterclass on How To Write A Killer Script For Your Podcast.