Set in Tudor England, against the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s arrest, 1536 has become the runaway, must-see show of the year. Since its award-winning, sold-out run at the Almeida in 2025, the play—penned by breakout playwright and screenwriter Ava Pickett and directed by Lyndsey Turner—has picked up a new producer in Margot Robbie, been transferred to the West End, and will soon be adapted for the BBC.

Ahead of its opening at the Ambassadors Theatre, where it runs until August 1, Margot called Ava to discover just how—and why—a play about Anne Boleyn has become one of the biggest critical smash hits of recent times.

Margot Robbie: How are you, babe? Where are you?

Ava Pickett: I’m good, babe. I’m in Dublin. Where are you?

Well, I’m in LA. Coming to London very soon though for the opening night of 1536—not gonna miss that! Ava, for people reading this, if they have never even heard of 1536, can you give us a little rundown?

It’s a play about three young women living in Essex in Tudor England, set over the course of a summer against the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s arrest and eventual execution. But it’s a play about lots of things. It’s a play that asks if female friendship can survive in a patriarchal society that’s violent against women. It’s about how what men do in the corridors of power—like when a king kills his queen—affects women everywhere. And also it’s about love and sex and friendship and dreams and all of that. And it’s very sweary.

It’s very, very timely. It doesn’t take a lot to connect the dots between what you’ve just described and what’s in the news every day. But this is also so entertaining. How did you balance that?

I think they help each other. I love stuff that is both really, really funny and really, really dark. It’s about allowing an audience to decide their own opinion. I feel like if you’re being told what to think, you just switch off. I know I would switch off if someone was hammering home a point to me for an hour and a half on stage.

For anyone reading this who is a writer, or has thought about writing, or wants to be a writer, tell us: what’s the process? Where do you write? What aspects of it feel difficult? Because it is a bit of an isolated craft, and then all of a sudden, it’s incredibly communal. That must be a really bizarre switch, and you need to have a personality that can cope with both.

I tend to write in cafés. I like writing around other people, and I like the noise. Sometimes I write by hand because I find it easier and quicker. Because nothing is more daunting than that final draft, when you’re three days out from a deadline. Maybe I just feel more poetic if I’m doing it by hand, who knows?

I’m a really ambitious writer and I’m a really ambitious young woman. I can’t stand when people are not telling me what they actually think, even if it’s negative. I cannot fucking stand it. I feel like people infantilize creatives all the time. And it’s like, “I know how to handle myself. Let me.” You do get some quite brutal notes where you’re like, “Okay, that’s gone into my soul, but fine.” It is really hard, and it is a muscle, I think. Like, I think you get better at it the more you do it.

I’ve asked a couple writers, really great writers, how did you get so good? And it really comes down to rigor, and just doing something a lot. I got my start on a soap. I did over 300 episodes of TV in three years. That has to have had something to do with why I can operate the way I can on set. It was just doing the thing so much.

And also you learn how important everyone else is. You realize that part of your job is helping other people do their job, and you can’t just sit and think about that scene for three weeks—you need to get it out so that they can do their job and we’re not going to lose or waste loads of money. All of that stuff is really important to know and to learn, and I think I’m already empowered when people share that information with me. I don’t find it overwhelming.

I couldn’t agree more. I’m also incredibly excited because one of your latest collaborations is with the iconic film director Baz Luhrmann. You’ve just written his next film, Joan of Arc. Every time you work with someone like screenwriter Tony McNamara, or with Baz (both Aussies!), do you find yourself adapting to their process? How do you navigate it?

So much of it is chemistry, and I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve never been on a show where I’ve gone, “Oh, fuck, I’m in the wrong room.” Along with chemistry, so much of it is both of you being able to slightly yield to what the other person needs. And also, processes change. Like, when I was 23 I didn’t need any sleep. I could just roll into the office, but that’s not my life now!

Completely. Where did you accumulate the knowledge that you have? And then can we talk about where the idea for 1536 came from? What sparked you to write that play?

So, I started writing because I had tried to be an actor and it had gone so badly.

Why so badly?

I went to drama school and I had been so loud about going to drama school to my family. I had been so like: “You’ll never see me again!”

I’m off to Hollywood!

Yeah [laughs]. And then I eventually got into drama school and it was great. And then I came out and I was one of the only ones to not get an agent. I couldn’t pay an agent to represent me. I was working in a cinema, and it was so bleak. And then I wrote a 30-page pilot about moving home and based it on my life. I sent it to a producer who had auditioned me a couple of years before (he was the only industry person in my email contact list), and I was like, “You probably don’t remember me, but can you read this and can I make you a cup of tea?” He read it that night and got back to me an hour later.

I met him and he was like, “You should be a writer. This is brilliant.” From there, that script got me an agent and then that agent managed to get me work on shows. I just learned by doing. I wrote a lot on spec—I was always writing—and then I was lucky enough to be in jobs that were really hard and quite big. It was sink or swim.

When you went to drama school, had you learned screenwriting at all? How did you know how to write that pilot? How did you even know how long a pilot should be? How to format it?

I googled, like, “screenplay format,” and then I downloaded Celtx because it’s free, and I just wrote the dialogue and put stage directions in. I didn’t get Final Draft for like 18 months—I think eventually someone was like, “You need that if you’re gonna write.” And then that whole summer he [the producer] had to sort of teach me how to format it properly.

With 1536, do you consider yourself a history buff, or did you just go, I happen to like this one aspect of history, now I’m gonna deep dive and research it?

I’m kind of a history buff. I love the Tudors, and have always found that period really interesting and been low-key obsessed with Anne Boleyn. I don’t know why. I actually feel like lots of women are.

What sparked the idea? I love the vibe [of the play], that it’s about these three women essentially getting the celebrity gossip of the time, that then affects their lives in a crazy way. Why set it amongst these women and not [make it about] Anne Boleyn herself?

I write from quite an instinctive place, like, I’m not that intellectual. I knew that I wanted to write about friendship and how difficult it is to keep hold of a friendship and how volatile friendship is. I also knew that I wanted it to be period, because then you get rid of all of the modern distractions. I’m shit at writing social media. I’m shit at writing, like, “I’ve got a text.” I can’t do it.

It’s not quite as cinematic, for sure.

Yeah [laughs]. I don’t like to use the word inspired because I feel like it’s such a positive word, but [when I was writing the play] I felt incredibly—what’s the word, “disaffected” or “overwhelmed”?—by the amount of stuff I was reading in the news about women getting attacked or going missing or being killed. There was just article after article of these awful things happening to women and nothing really changing. There’d be a vigil, there’d be a protest, there’d be a march, an MP would say something about how it must change, but it didn’t. Me and my friends were having the kinds of conversations you have when you’re terrified, like: “It wouldn’t happen to me, it wouldn’t happen to us. It wouldn’t happen here.” But it does. And I just couldn’t get it out of my head. And then there’s how we’re living through a time where really powerful men are not being held to account. And that is becoming so incredibly public and yet nothing is happening. All of these things sort of fused together and it evolved into the characters talking about Anne Boleyn, and then immediately I was like, “Okay, I know what I’m going to do here.”

The cast is incredible. Can you please talk about our three main ladies?

I mean, I would die for these women. I just think they are so brilliant. All three of them [Tanya Reynolds, Siena Kelly, and Liv Hill] were so brilliant in their audition. Like, I just knew. They really make you believe that they have been friends for 12 lifetimes. They are great friends now, but they didn’t know each other before the run at the Almeida, and they have created such an alive friendship that feels incredibly dangerous and incredibly volatile. Whenever I watch them on stage, as an audience member, I feel left out. I’m like, “I want to be friends with you! Pick me, please!”

What they’re able to do, which is such a skill, is they’re able to make these women feel incredibly modern, but also [like] products of their time. And they have to do the Essex accent 400 years ago. For that alone they deserve all the plaudits. You know, there are some girls doing bits of it on TikTok now?

Like performing the play on TikTok?

Yeah!

That’s so cool, love that. Okay, if you were completely removed from the project and you went and saw this play, what do you think you’d say to your best friend afterwards?

I think me and my best friend would go for a big drink and argue about which version of the women we are.

I feel like my friends and I would do that. Like, “You’re her. No, you’re her.” It’s a sign that you’ve written really incredible characters, that you can truly identify someone you know as being a certain person in a play. There’ll be some spicy, spicy debates after people have seen 1536.

Yeah.

It’s just so fun. Congratulations again, and as you know, I adore the play, and I adore you, and I think you are one of our generation’s greatest talents, and I can’t wait to see what you keep doing. Definitely no return to the acting dream? You’re going to leave that one behind?

I’m gonna leave that one way behind.

Those dreams could still come true! Well, thank you for this. And to anyone reading this, I’m telling you, you do not want to miss this play. See it with friends, have your cocktails afterwards, and debate it. It’s a fun night out.

Thanks, babe.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity