Hot Shots 2022: Daisy Martey

Daisy Martey’s flourishing career as a screenwriter, on shows including Sky dramas Bulletproof and Britannia and BBC1’s Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators, is testament to her “tenacity, collaborative spirit and iron focus”, says West Road Pictures managing director Jonathan Fisher.

TV drama is the second chapter in a remarkable career. Martey was lead singer with the internationally successful band Morcheeba, but turned her back on music at he age of 30 after suffering a near-catastrophic breakdown and went to university to study creative writing. 

Within two years, she had an agent and was soon writing for Hollyoaks. But it was her pilot script, Rage, that made people sit up and take notice, catching the eye of Kudos and receiving a table read at Sky.

Martey is now writing on both sides of the Atlantic, on shows such as FX’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and US writer Soo Hugh’s latest series for Apple TV+. There’s also a pilot for The Africa Channel and adaptations of Mel B’s memoir Brutally Honest for Sony and Harriet Tyce’s bestselling thriller Blood Orange for West Road Pictures.

“Her characters and stories centre on moral grey areas, piercing the veneer of the human experience,” observes Fisher, who says Martey uses her wealth of lived experience as a working-class, mixed-race female writer and performer to breathe life into stories across many genres.

“Daisy is a brilliant talent, and a joy to collaborate with,” he says. “She works in a diligent and methodical manner, and always comes to meetings armed with creative ideas.

“She is extremely receptive to notes and her enthusiasm for the projects is energising. It is only a matter of time before Daisy helms an original series of her own.”