Variety: Netflix U.K. Content Boss Anne Mensah on Creating Blockbuster British Shows, Steady Commissioning and Genre Expansion

Story from Variety:

Anne Mensah, Netflix’s U.K. VP of content, is one of the streamer’s most senior U.K. executives, overseeing scripted, unscripted, film and acquisitions. “Any content that comes out of the U.K. slate I look after in some way,” she explains before adding: “Or, more specifically, somebody who’s better than me looks after it and I cheer in the background.”

It’s a statement typical of Mensah, who throughout our hour-long interview is always quick to give credit to the colleagues and creatives she works with both locally and internationally as well as being unabashedly enthusiastic about the content. Before I’ve even managed to hit “record” on our conversation, we’re chatting about “The Gentlemen,” which has been renewed for a second season, and “Love Is Blind U.K.,” which is just about to launch when we speak. When I tell her I’ve seen the first four episodes under embargo, Mensah grins conspiratorially: “It only gets better and better.”

“I think I’ve got the easiest job because the U.K. is just brilliant,” she says. “You’re working with such an incredible base of talent, so then the question is just how do you provide them with the space and the platform to do their best work?”

Mensah was hired in 2019 from Sky, where she’d worked on high-end original productions such as “Chernobyl” and “Gangs of London.” The streamer had already greenlit a number of British shows out of the U.S. – including “The Crown,” “Top Boy” and “Sex Education” – and Mensah was hired as the first U.K.-based commissioner. Her task was to create a steady “drum beat” of top-class U.K. content to follow the benchmark that had already been set. “I’m not going to lie, it was scary coming off the back of such well-loved shows,” she says. “They demonstrate the range of variety but they’re also incredibly well loved in the U.K. and then globally. So, yeah, that was a little bit sweat inducing.”

Five years on, Mensah and her team can boast their own outsize hits, from the remake of “One Day” starring Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod, to teen fave “Heartstopper,” to Harlan Coben adaptation “Fool Me Once,” which is Netflix U.K.’s most successful show of the year and one of the streamer’s most successful of all time. Of Netflix’s 107 Emmy nominations this year, 47 are U.K.-originated, including nods for “Baby Reindeer” and “The Gentlemen” (Mensah is quick to clarify not all the U.K.-nominated projects were commissioned by her team, such as “The Crown,” which has garnered 19 noms. However, Mensah’s team managed and produced the series).

Still, Netflix’s success in the U.K. is testament to its investment here, amounting to more than £6 billion alone in the past four years, including in soundstages and skills training as well as development and production. And there are no plans to slow down. While the U.K. TV landscape has contracted significantly over the past 18 months, with commissioning budgets at both PSBs and streamers slashed, when I ask Mensah if Netflix is cutting back on commissioning she categorically replies “No.” “We take the business seriously,” she says. “So we do look to make sure that we are delivering value for money, but no differently than we’ve always done.” In particular, the U.K. team are focused on expanding the local factual entertainment offering, from the recent “Selling Sunset”-inspired “Buying London” to “At Home With the Furys,” a docuseries about boxer Tyson Fury and his wacky brood and, of course, “Love Is Blind U.K.” (“I’m so tickled by the socials on that,” Mensah says.)

Mensah has also managed to lure a number of cinema heavyweights over to the streamer, including Guy Ritchie and Keira Knightley, both of whom have worked on their first ever serialized projects at Netflix, Ritchie with “The Gentlemen” and Knightley with upcoming Joe Barton-penned thriller “Black Doves,” which is currently in post-production. (“It’s brilliant,” Mensah says of the show, which hasn’t set a release date yet. “Like, properly brilliant.”) How did she convince Ritchie and Knightley to decamp to the small screen? “I don’t think we’re having to convince anybody,” she replies. “That idea of authorship in the mainstream is allowing bold voices to be themselves. And in truth, it’s not massively dissimilar to what I was doing at Sky.”

It was at Sky, for example, where Mensah worked with “Edge of Tomorrow” writer Jez Butterworth on “Britannia,” which ran for three seasons. “Sometimes people are quite snobby about where they think ‘great’ lives,” she says of her ambition to make both popular and critically-acclaimed shows. “Great doesn’t live at the fringes. It lives right in the center, because our audiences are clever and they are diverse.” And, Mensah is not shy about pointing out, she’s had her share of losses too. “They don’t always come!” she says of trying woo talent, revealing she had wanted to adapt James Graham’s play “Dear England” at Netflix. “I went and saw it [at the National Theatre in London] in the first week and I really tried, and he chose to go to the BBC. And that’s a good thing and it’s probably completely right for the show, because he knows the show better than I do.”

“I just loved it,” she says. “And then I have to have a small cry and then I will cheer for it and that’s the whole point.” 10-She’s not just saying it. Mensah – who was once head of independent drama at the BBC – radiates genuine enthusiasm when talking about U.K. TV industry as a whole, including her rivals. Although she cringes at the word “veteran” (“I can’t bear it,” she jokes), over a decades-long career Mensah has worked at a number of U.K. production companies as well as Sky and the BBC. 11-“What matters most is that the U.K. [industry] is thriving,” she says. “In the U.K., I believe that media is hugely important, so we have to build the infrastructure well and we have to take it seriously. I can get misty-eyed about the shows, but I take the business of it really seriously because it’s supported me my whole life.”

The arrival of deep pocketed-U.S. streamers on the U.K. scene has been a learning curve for everyone, but Mensah says “we don’t need to fight, we just need to be consistent” — by which I think she means being clear about Netflix’s role in the ecosystem, whether it’s investing in training initiatives or doing bespoke deals for every project (a common misconception about Netflix is that they always buy out all the rights on a commission, which “just isn’t true,” she says.) “Sometimes people fight with us a little bit, because I think that sometimes people can’t reconcile the idea that we have a very U.K.-focused team in the U.K. and it’s truthful and it’s real and it’s consistent and we care about the industry,” she says. That care is why Mensah isn’t hesitating about “properly cheering” for many of her counterparts at the PSBs, whether it’s ITV’s head of drama Polly Hill (“She’s an old mate”) or Channel 4’s head of drama Ollie Madden (“He killed it at the BAFTAs!”). She also credits Lindsay Salt – who was a colleague at Netflix before moving to the BBC as director of drama in 2022 – for originally pitching “One Day” because she was such a fan of the book.

Part of the reason Netflix has ruffled feathers is because it often punches above its weight in terms of the cultural conversation, despite have less than 10% of viewing in the U.K. Even so, shows such as “Heartstopper,” “Fool Me Once” and “Baby Reindeer” have become monster hits, dominating social media and newspaper headlines. “Is that because we’re talking to the audience?” Mensah muses. “Is that because we’re hyper-focused on having a conversation with our members? Because if we were making really boring shows that nobody watched, nobody would write about us. The two things are completely linked.”

Occasionally, of course, that has its drawbacks, such as in the case of “Baby Reindeer.” Created by and starring former comedian Richard Gadd, the series became one of the most talked about shows of the year before being hit with a $170 million defamation lawsuit from a woman who claims she inspired one of characters. With the court case ongoing, Mensah is limited in how much she can say but she maintains she is “intensely proud” of the show and “the connection it made with its audience.” The show has earned 11 Emmy nominations, with Gadd in the running for best actor and writing.

Netflix strenuously denies the claims in the lawsuit. In a legal declaration made last month as part of the case, Mensah averred: “The series includes no characters named after real persons, and stars hired actors. Netflix would have never released the series had it believed the series would be understood as stating actual facts about anyone.” Fortunately, the experience doesn’t appear to have frightened Netflix away from series based on real events. “We’re doing a number of true stories and we’ve always been careful,” Mensah says.

Before the legal drama, one of the reasons “Baby Reindeer” became such a success was because it felt so fresh. Over seven sharply-observed, 30-minute episodes Gadd tells his story of sexual abuse, career failure and stalking with unflinching honesty. Netflix is often criticized for kowtowing to its algorithm when deciding whether to commission or re-commission shows but many of its hits, including “Baby Reindeer” as well as the recent “Supacell,” about a group of Black superheroes in South London, don’t seem like the kind of shows a computer would spit out. When I put that to Mensah, she replies: “I would say that none of our shows are what an algorithm [would come up with] … Why would you do five Black superheroes in South London? It’s in the specificity. It’s in the specificity of ‘Baby Reindeer.’ It’s in the specificity of [upcoming Jeff Goldblum-starrer] ‘Kaos,’ even though ‘Kaos’ is bonkers big and really like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

Mensah also points out that all broadcasters look at the data when greenlighting a project. “I did at Sky, and I did at the BBC as well, because you would be very, very short-sighted to think that you know everything,” she says, adding that the most successful projects tend to come about because someone is passionate about them, pointing again to Lindsay Salt’s love for “One Day.” “So I think it’s passion first, but then passion that’s informed.”

Mensah’s own passion for the job is, of course, unwavering. “I get excited by what we’re doing,” she says. “I think the potential of really speaking and having a conversation, it’s what BBC does at its best as well,” she continues. “That idea that you can speak to a nation, just in different ways. But what’s amazing is we can take that national conversation to a global platform.”