Simplicity of Narrative & Complexity of Character: A Conversation with HBO’s ‘Rain Dogs’ Creator and Writer Cash Carraway

​A dark comedy from the brilliant new voice of Cash Carraway, Rain Dogs chronicles the life of Costello Jones (Daisy May Cooper), a devoted mother who wants more for her precocious young daughter, Iris (Fleur Tashjian). As she hustles to survive, Costello leans on Selby (Jack Farthing), Iris' pseudo father (and Costello's pseudo soulmate), and Gloria (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo), the duo's loyal yet chaotic godmother/best friend – together forming a makeshift swaggerous family bound by a complex but deep-rooted love and defiance towards a system built against them. An extraordinary tale of a mother's love for her daughter, Rain Dogs explores a dysfunctional family on the fringes of society, attempting to go straight in a crooked world.

There are a number of films, television shows, albums, and pieces of art that have seemingly inspired one to write wildly and intensely from the heart. And the whimsical and sometimes dark television series Rain Dogs is one to add to your roster of inspiration. The flawed yet likable characters that live in a burning dumpster fire world were created and written by author-turned-TV writer Cash Carraway. 

Carraway has a wonderful intuition for writing authentic dialogue and creating chapfallen characters, that leave you wanting more episodes to binge than there are produced. Her characters are Bukowskian-like but tempered by honesty and humor from unexpected scenarios that you'd expect from a wordsmith like David Sedaris. As you chip away at the surface of the story, these characters walk to the beat of their own drum, a rhythm they can't shake and is uniquely their own. Similar to the likes of a Tom Waits album - as you'll read later on how his music was the exact needle drop Carraway needed to tie loose ends for her show - there's an unlikely love story, a chosen family, anguish, heartbreak, and the burning dumpster fire that makes this show worth watching.

Most recently, Cash Carraway spoke with Script about the inspiration behind the title of the show, her approach to writing dialogue and characters, the importance of rhythm, and so much more. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: I’m absolutely hooked by these great characters who are incredibly flawed, but so fun to watch and see what kind of debacle they'll get themselves into. It’s a fun ride.

Cash Carraway: Oh, that's good! It was fun writing such broad characters, actually, because they're all so messed up. We live in this world where you're sort of expected to present yourself in a sort of sellable way for likes and followers on social media, but the real world isn't like that is it? In the real world, people have messed up and say really awful things to each other. And when you do that, you have to forgive and move on and try and find a way to live. And that's what these characters are doing, really. But I mean, they mess up so often. I don't know how they get away with it, to be honest.

Sadie: Yeah, how do they even eat? [laughs]

Cash: [laughs] Yeah, exactly.

Sadie: I feel like this isn’t particularly discussed in interviews, but film and television titles – how did you land on the title Rain Dogs for this show?

Cash: Yeah, it was sort of titleless for a long while actually. I was probably like two scripts in before I knew what it was called. And I always like to look to my favorite artists and writers and musicians for inspiration. And I thought, who are these characters? They're just such wastrels sort of drifting through the streets with nowhere to go. And I was going to call it originally, there's a Replacements album called “All Shook Down” - I love The Replacements. They're one of my favorite bands. And I was sort of toying with the idea of that. 

And then one morning, I was listening to Tom Waits, and it just hit me, ‘Ah, rain dogs.' This show is called Rain Dogs after the Tom Waits record. I'm not a massive fan of that album, actually, it's not my favorite, but I think it really does sum up these characters, and it just sort of stuck. It suddenly felt like it really informed the writing after that, it became almost Tom Waits'ian - sort of this lens.

Sadie: OK, now that really ties things together and makes so much sense. Especially with his songwriting and his distinct sound – from instrumentation and vocals and the storytelling in his lyrics – it’s all very authentic and that’s definitely what your characters are in this world.

What’s your approach to character writing and dialogue?

Cash: I think writers steal from their life. I think that's just a really natural thing to do. We always start with what we know. I always think writers are lying if they say, ‘No, no, there's none of me in there at all!’ I don't believe that for a second - but yeah, the area that I live in London is very vibrant and working-class people have a really sort of interesting approach to language because you have to say what you want to say very quickly, there's no time for rambling and you have to make it as interesting as possible. Otherwise, no one's going to listen to you because no one's got the time. 

So, I listened to a lot of conversations in my local Nisa - it's like, I guess you guys have 7-Eleven, Nisa is our version of a 7-Eleven - which are really sort of fertile ground for interesting conversations and people getting upset about things or kind of offloading. You used to do that in the pub over here - you'd go down to the pub, you'd have a few drinks, you'd offload; that would be sort of the way working-class people would converse. But they closed down all the pubs here, so those conversations are sort of happening now on the street and in the supermarket. So, I always have my sort of ear to the ground for that and you do hear people say really interesting things and I just pick up on that and try and make it more interesting. And you always got to try and be entertaining, haven't you?

Sadie: Yeah. Do you carry a little notebook with you? Or is it more like if it’s good enough that you remember later at home, you’ll write it down?

Cash: I think if something's good enough, then you will remember it, and it will hit you when you most need it. 'What was that mad thing that guy said that he was shouting at that driver the other day?' It just sort of comes to you. But it is curated. It's not like just overheard conversations. I was a big fan of David Mamet growing up, and Harold Pinter. And that sort of poetry of language and the rhythms, I think rhythm is really important. But for me, I try and embody the characters. So, when I'm writing, I'm almost sort of talking out loud to myself. I mean, I certainly should never write in a cafe, because people would think I'm an absolute lunatic, but that's how I build the rhythms. It's like a piece of music sort of cobbled together. And then obviously, once the actors get their hands on it, it becomes something else entirely. And actually, that's when you fine-tune it. It’s constantly changing things to make it sound better and more interesting.

Sadie: I love that idea of the rhythm of these conversations and dialogue and how the characters embody those voices. And the casting across the line is just fantastic on the show. They seem like real people that you would meet in London somewhere.

Cash: [laughs] That's good, because they are real, there is truth to them. But they are sort of like, fantastical in the sense that they get away with so much. And they always seem to have a comeback, which I don't know about you, but my comebacks always come ten minutes after the conversations ended. [laughs] It's a TV show, so we can get away with that.

I was thinking about rhythms and inspiration -I don't know if you ever got a show over in the States called Peep Show?

Sadie: Yes!

Cash: Oh, you got it?! For me, I think, I sort of learned to write by watching those kinds of shows late night, channel four shows, and you sort of work out the rhythms and what's funny, and what works and what doesn't work. And as long as you're building character, and as long as you're moving the story forward, I think you can get away with using those rhythms that sort of seem out of place in the real world.

Sadie: Totally, absolutely. And that's such a great reference to that show. Those guys are just again, like these characters that you would probably bump into – but they are certainly characters.

There are a couple of lines that just really stood out to me and really hit home, especially in terms of Costello’s journey. One of them being "I tell my own stories." And the other she says, "I'll write us out of it." But then you give us this heavy hitter line from her daughter, Iris, "Don't promise just try" it just perfectly encapsulates their journey. What was your North Star in terms of theme when writing this first season?

Cash: Well, I think yeah, I think by choosing those lines that you really summed up what it's all about - like the stability that they're both seeking. They're not actually seeking anything that's out of the ordinary, they just want a stable family life. And when Iris says “Don't promise just try” she's seen her mom go through the most awful things, trying to be something special, trying to be something big, but Iris saying that, it's just a reminder, like, actually just try doing something normal and we might actually have a shot at that stability that we're really craving here. And I think to Costello that's the worst thing ever because she doesn't want to be normal, she doesn't want to be invisible. She wants to be something. But at that point, she sort of has to do whatever she can for her daughter.

And going back to the line you said about, “I tell my own stories.” That was actually a really personal line for me, because I always found that as a working-class writer, I was always approached by journalists to help me tell my story, I thought it was very strange. I had a memoir published over here back in 2019 with Penguin Random House. And what was really odd was that it wasn't like, judged on its literary merit. It was judged on who had written it. And journalists wanted to talk about me as a person rather than the actual writing of it. And I found that really condescending and confusing.

It just was a really sort of horrible place to be, but this character is sort of making up for me not standing up for myself, I guess, around the time and she's like, ‘No, I'm going to do whatever I want to do, I'm going to tell the stories I want to tell. And I'm going to do it in my own way.’ And of course, she finds that impossible to do, she's not really given the chance to do that. 

But that was sort of a little bit of a chip on my shoulder that I had left behind from that period. And I do write from the chip on my shoulder. I know lots of writers write from their heart, or they write sort of intellectually, but I write from this sort of axe to grind. [laughs] There's always a battle to sort of solve and to sort of get my own back. I think it's because I'm really rubbish in conversations - you know what I was saying earlier about not having to come back to 10 minutes later, ‘OK, I'm going to settle all these scores on the page right now.’ [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] That's the beauty of writing - having your character say things that you wish you could say. And they say it better somehow. [laughs]

Cash: Always! [laughs] It's so unfair, isn't it? I know writers who are also incredibly, incredibly articulate in conversations, but I think lots of us we're really rubbish when it comes to actually using our mouths. [laughs] So it all does go on the page. And it all becomes very neat. And suddenly you become really intelligent, like, you're definitely not in real life.

Sadie: [laughs] Yeah, let me get back to you. I'll write you a letter. And I'll actually tell you how I really feel about this sandwich.

Cash: Exactly! Yes, exactly that. [laughs]

Sadie: You have this great trifecta that is Selby, Costello, and Gloria - how those three intersect and feed off of each other – what’s your process of world-building for these three characters?

Cash: Yeah, I knew that I wanted to write someone who was not of Costello's world, who could get away with more, who was like a parallel to her. But it was also of the same sort of mentality and spoke in the same kind of way. And for me, it made sense to make him a gay privileged man, just because of the amount of what he can get away with. And a gay man, I didn't want to complicate their romance with sex, because when something isn't physical, everything they do is very verbal. And so that was really, really important to me is that we don't see them having sex. Obviously, you wouldn't see them, because he's a gay man. But what I mean is a normal couple you would see them have romantic moments physically, but because they can't do that, they have to sort of spar with each other verbally. So, I knew I wanted that element of it.

And then I wanted someone from Costello's past who had known her far longer than Selby - Selby met her at University - but Gloria knows all the dirt. Gloria has been there since she was a child. And I thought it was really important to show the way we act differently around certain types of people. Someone who's known us for a long time we are sort of aware that they know the very truth of you. And with Selby, she can play a little bit more because she'd already sort of reinvented herself by the time they met. But I think what I really wanted to do was to create this family unit who, completely unrelated by blood, but all came together. And I think that could only happen with strong characters.

And also, I just wanted to make this working-class character just full of life, because when we see working-class characters, they're normally victims. And they're normally really struggling and Costello is struggling, but I don't think you ever see her as a victim. And I don't think you ever see Selby or Gloria as a victim. I think that's probably their downfall in a way. I wanted to write something that was just really entertaining, and hopefully, people will have a favorite character out of those three.

Sadie: Honestly, it’s hard to choose a favorite. What inspired you or continues to inspire you to be a storyteller?

Cash: I grew up loving so many great storytellers that I sort of felt like I had to do it. It's been a long journey to get here. I really I love the work of Paul Schrader. I just think he's a magnificent writer and director. And actually, going back quickly to the last question creating the characters - his work is always character driven. And I think that's been a massive inspiration for me my entire life. I think he even says, ‘simplicity of narrative complexity of character.’ So, yeah, he's a massive inspiration.

Music is always a big drive. But I just want to keep on making stuff that entertains. I don't have political points of anguish, people always think because of the kind of things that I write because it's set in a world of poverty, people think, ‘Ah, what's the political angle here?’ But there is no political angle, it purely is to entertain. I am writing just about the world I know.

My aim after Rain Dogs is to write a sitcom. I want to write the next Only Fools and Horses, where it goes on forever and ever, and you have Christmas specials and that kind of thing. So that's the aim. [laughs]

Rain Dogs is now streaming on HBO Max.