‘My Dad Wrote A Porno’ Creators Joke About Leaving A Black Mark On HBO’s Record Ahead Of Comedy Special

The team behind hit podcast-turned-cable special My Dad Wrote A Porno have lifted the lid on how they scored a deal with HBO and joked about how they were concerned about “leaving a mark” on the premium broadcaster’s exemplary record with their comedy adaptation.

HBO is to air the one-off special, which was filmed at London’s historic Camden Roundhouse venue earlier this year, on Saturday May 11 at 10pm.

Jamie Morton, James Cooper and Alice Levine had been touring the podcast, which tells the story of saucy saucepan saleswoman Belinda Blumenthal, as a live special in the U.S. when HBO got in touch.

Morton, whose father had written the series of 50 Shades of Grey-style raunchy novels, under the pen name Rocky Flinstone that the podcast is based on, told Deadline, “HBO came to one of our shows in New York and go in touch pretty soon after. We genuinely thought it was a joke, we didn’t think HBO would want to do something about British pornography, but they weren’t joking.

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Levine, who is an on-screen star fronting series including Channel 4 reality series The Circle, added, “HBO don’t make bad stuff so this would be the mark on their record if it was really crap. When you look at the back catalogue, you think oh, shit.”

The special is produced by Done and Dusted and directed by Hamish Hamilton, who has directed the Super Bowl halftime show for a number of years, and is exec produced by former Top Gear showrunner Lisa Clark alongside Hamilton, Simon Pizey, Morton, Cooper, Levine and Rocky Flintstone himself..

“HBO was amazingly open and let us make the show that we wanted to make and let us get on with it,” said Morton.

The special is based on a “lost chapter” of Flinstone’s work. “Dad’s interesting in terms of how he writes; he sends it to me immediately after he’s written and most of it I don’t look at. So, I have a bank of stuff that’s never been used before, which is great to have. He thought it was too bad, which it is. It’s terrible. The worst thing he’s ever written is now on HBO,” said Morton.

The special is largely similar to the podcast with a handful of visual elements including a cervix presentation from Levine and some live interactions with the crowd. “We wanted it to feel like a filthy book club in a living room. We wanted to bring that to screen. It retained the spirit of the podcast but hopefully moved it on with the visual aspect,” said Cooper.

While all three have worked in television for a number of years, Cooper and Morton, who have worked on series including The Apprentice and The X Factor with the latter creating hit BBC Three format Eating with my Ex, have never performed on screen before.

Morton said, “For the first thing I’ve ever done on television, it was terrifying.” Cooper added that he too was nervous.

The trio are preparing to record the fifth season of the podcast later this year. It marks the first book that Flinstone, who is a builder from Northern Ireland, wrote after they started the podcast. But Morton said this won’t affect the story. “I’ve got the book, I haven’t’ read it yet. What is interesting if that he finished by Christmas 2015, so that book he wrote while the podcast was on but before it hit. His writing style is so unique, I don’t think it will change him.”

The HBO special, which will also air on UK’s Sky Atlantic on Thursday May 16, opens with a number of celebrity spots including Michael Sheen and Thomas Middleditch. They joked that they could tap up The Good Fight star and the Silicon Valley star to appear in a scripted version. “Emma Thompson can play my mum, she’d love that,” Morton added.

They hope to do more projects based around My Dad Wrote A Porno and are still having fun recording the podcast, in Cooper’s kitchen, albeit with the noisy fridge turned off. “Our litmus test is that we just wanted to make each other laugh,” said Levine. “We’ve never run out of story. Bearing in mind they take between two and three hours to write, Rocky’s way ahead of us. Spoiler: I think we’ll tap out before he taps out.”