Hot Shots 2025: Daniella Isaacs

If Sharon Horgan puts her weight behind a new writer, they surely have a bright future ahead. London-based Daniella Isaacs was writer/director on Merman’s first podcast drama, People Who Knew Me (an adaptation of Kim Hooper’s novel) for BBC Sounds.

With Isaacs starring alongside Rosamund Pike and Hugh Laurie, Radio Times praised the podcast’s “masterful script” and said it “demands attention”. It garnered just that: the 10-part series drew more than 1 million listeners on release in 2023, and earned two Lovies and a BBC Audio Drama award. Now Merman has it in development for a major streamer, with Isaacs as writer.

Miriam Margolyes is another industry figure who’s putting her faith in Isaacs: the pair are working on a semi-autobiographical comedy about reaching fame in one’s later years.

Isaacs began her interest in the creative arts as a child actor. After leaving drama school, she created her first theatre show, Hear Me Raw, which debuted at the Edinburgh Festival and paved the path for her writing career.

It’s certainly a purple patch for Isaacs – she continues to collaborate with Pike on a psychological horror film project, and is working alongside Jeremy Dyson on Monsters’ Shrink (Canal+ and ITVX).

Isaacs is the scribe behind The Healer, in development Tim Hincks and Morwenna Gordon of Expectation TV. “Daniella’s curiosity and creativity in her storytelling is infectious,” they say.

“We all love her writing, how she brings characters to life on the page with great dialogue, and gets under their skin to create drama, tension and emotion, but always with something timely and insightful to say about the human condition.”