Lord of the Flies: How a 13-Year-Old Rewrote Piggy
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- Jack Thorne and David McKenna are featured discussing their four-episode 'Lord of the Flies' adaptation, in which McKenna plays Piggy (renamed Nicky).
- McKenna, 13, auditioned via a self-tape shot by his dad in Tenerife in 2024, telling the casting room he'd want to be stuck on a tropical island with the West End 'Les Misérables' cast so he could 'sing my heart out.'
- Thorne described a 'handover of authorship' after hearing McKenna's take in a London church basement audition, saying the character became 'someone who is joyful and enthusiastic and excited' rather than a classic bully target.
- Thorne had pre-written Nicky with a love of Groucho Marx's comedy; McKenna eventually embraced Marx after watching a few films and adding two of his songs to his Spotify, even performing a Groucho line in his filmed death scene.
- The cast rehearsed for a month in Kuala Lumpur before filming on remote Malaysian islands, where an organic pool game called 'Save David' — in which nine boys split into police and robbers and tried to carry McKenna across the pool — built the camaraderie that fed their performances.
- McKenna's death was filmed twice: the rock and conch in September, then a 'long death' in December where Nicky delivers one more Groucho Marx line before losing consciousness, with co-star Winston Sawyers in an intimate, hushed set.
Why it matters: The piece frames a major literary adaptation as being shaped less by the showrunner than by its young lead — Thorne explicitly credits a 13-year-old's audition with changing his script — offering a rare, specific account of how casting redirects writing. It also surfaces the production's high-stakes remote shoot (a month of rehearsals in Kuala Lumpur, filming on remote Malaysian islands) and the in-cast bonding rituals, like the 'Save David' pool game, that the creators say made the performances work.
