<\/p>\n
\u201cI never wanted to work in America or for a Studio,\u201d veteran UK producer Tessa Ross began this morning when prompted on her working relationship with the Hollywood studios during an expansive and illuminating career Q&A session with BFI chief Ben Roberts.<\/p>\n
Across her decades-long career, Ross has held commissioning and exec roles at virtually every public funding body, from the now-defunct British Screen to the BBC, Channel 4, and Film4.<\/p>\n
More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Ross continued to explain that her dedication to the UK industry gave her power when it came to working and negotiating with Studios.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is power in knowing that you\u2019re fine where you are, and therefore, not pleasing those studios is quite important,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom time to time, I\u2019d tell my team that we have to bend over and take it, because deals are never ever in favor of money that isn\u2019t theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n Ross\u2019s experience producing British features with the studios was one of the most interesting notes covered during this morning\u2019s lengthy session, which served as the keynote event of the London Film Festival\u2019s industry forum.<\/p>\n Ross described the studio exes she tussled with over the years as \u201cbrilliant people\u201d who simply had different priorities, which can often be difficult to juggle when a project brings together \u201ccomplicated mixtures of money.\u201d Ross said that her goal was to simply protect her projects and collaborators. She used the example of selling projects to Harvey Weinstein to illustrate her point.<\/p>\n \u201cHarvey Weinstein was still active when I was at Film4,\u201d Ross explained. \u201cWe sold two films to Harvey, Carol<\/em>, and The Iron Lady<\/em>. And I remember thinking, How do we protect the filmmakers and films from how he works?\u201d<\/p>\n Ross worked at Film4 from 2000. She served as Head of Film4 from 2003 and subsequently took on the role of Controller of Film and Drama in 2008. She left the broadcast in 2014. Under her watch, Film4 developed and financed critical and commercial hits like Steve McQueen\u2019s 12 Years a Slave<\/em>, Danny Boyle\u2019s Slumdog Millionaire<\/em>, Kevin Macdonald\u2019s The Last King of Scotland,<\/em> and Shane Meadows\u2019 This is England.<\/em><\/p>\n Ross arrived at the broadcaster during its rebuilding phase, after it was essentially disbanded and restructured after a commercially-focused period that failed to reap rewards.<\/p>\n Ross said her initial job at the company was to make her chief executive \u201cproud of spending and losing 10 million pounds\u201d per year on projects. \u201cWhat is it that 10 million pounds can do and be consistent and sustainable for the industry?\u201d Ross said she asked herself.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to do two things. I had to go outwards and say, How do I make this the most attractive place for people to come? I had to make people believe we could do it again,\u201d Ross said. \u201cI had to ask myself, how does our money work? What do we believe in? And what\u2019s the minimum I need to please the channel?\u201d<\/p>\n Ross said Channel 4\/Film4 was a \u201creally exciting place\u201d at the time, shaped by an attitude of \u201cbravery and boldness\u201d where \u201cthings that were different and experimental, at the edges, not the center\u201d were prioritized.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have those words swirling around your head with regard to film, that\u2019s a very exciting place to be, particularly here in the UK,\u201d Ross said. \u201cSo I was able to say to the board, I\u2019m going to give you at the very least 10 million pounds worth of things that you\u2019ll be proud to transmit under the brand Film4 on your channel.\u201d<\/p>\n Ross is perhaps now best known as the producer of projects like Conclave, Bird<\/em>, and The Zone of Interest<\/em>, through her House Productions label, which she runs alongside former Working Title Television chief Juliette Howell.<\/p>\n Ross said she was unexpectedly forced to make the jump into indie producing with House in 2016 after her tenure as chief executive at the National Theatre in London came to an abrupt end.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat drove me was my lack of ability to make it work at the National Theater,\u201d Ross said. \u201cThe honest truth is, I left Film4, I went to the chief executive of the National Theater, which is a place I love, and I couldn\u2019t find the right structure to make that work for them or me.\u201d<\/p>\n Ross described her exit from the National as \u201cdevastating.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the right structure at the right time, and I didn\u2019t want to hurt it, and they didn\u2019t want to hurt me, so I left,\u201d Ross said.<\/p>\n Ross added that despite her successes at House, progress on some of the company\u2019s biggest hits, like Conclave<\/em>, has been slow.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so important to say, Conclave<\/em> took eight years and was financed twice. It\u2019s so important to know this., Ross said, adding that she is able to shepherd projects like Conclave<\/em> over several years because her company is sustainable.<\/p>\n \u201cI needed to be in a place where I could hold on to Conclave<\/em> because I believed it should happen. That mix of determination, mixed with the ability to stay safe and keep other ideas and people safe, is important.\u201d<\/p>\n Charlotte Regan made Scrapper<\/em>, which is an amazing first film, and she\u2019s just finishing the edit on her eight-episode series for the BBC. It\u2019s absolutely wonderful,\u201d Ross said.\u00a0\u201cJames Graham is finishing a third season of Sherwood and has also written an adaptation of Ink<\/em> for Danny Boyle, which is going into production. And Alice Birch is making her first feature as a writer-director.\u201d<\/p>\n LFF runs until Oct 19.<\/p>\n Best of Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI never wanted to work in America or for a Studio,\u201d veteran UK producer Tessa Ross began this morning when prompted on her working relationship with the Hollywood studios during an expansive and illuminating career Q&A session with BFI chief Ben Roberts. Across her decades-long career, Ross has held commissioning and exec roles at virtually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2079498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[360369,304614,351896,390724],"class_list":["post-2079497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-film4","tag-harvey-weinstein","tag-hollywood-studios","tag-tessa-ross"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Tessa-Ross-Talks-Protecting-Films-Filmmakers-From-Harvey-Weinstein.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2079499,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079497\/revisions\/2079499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2079498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}