Kaamil Shah

Did you always want to be a writer?

I wanted to be a director when, aged seven, I saw the behind-the-scenes Lord of the Rings documentaries. It was fascinating to see Peter Jackson running around and I thought, “That’s what I want to do.”

Life gets in the way and you’re pulled in other directions but, at Cambridge University, where I was studying history, there was a talk by the film screenwriter Jay Basu. I went away buzzing from that talk and, since then, everything I’ve done has been working towards being a screenwriter.