Nick Payne

Nick Payne
Born	1984 (age 39–40)
Occupation	Playwright, screenwriter
Nationality	British
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Nick Payne (born 1984) is a British playwright and screenwriter. Known for his work on the

Payne studied at the

He created and wrote the BBC One series Wanderlust (2018) and wrote the screenplay for The Sense of an Ending (2016). He co-wrote the 2021 screen adaptation of ‘The Last Letter To Your Lover’ from a book by Jo Jo Moyes.

Early life and education

Payne studied at the

Constellations opened at Royal Court Theatre on 13 January 2012. Directed by Michael Longhurst and starring Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins, it explores love, friendship and the notion of free will against the backdrop of quantum physics. It was extremely well received, with Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph commenting that "Nick Payne's drama lasts just over an hour but packs in more than most shows manage in three times that length. It is playful, intelligent and bursting with ideas, but also achieves a powerful undertow of emotion"^[3], while Paul Taylor in the Independent wrote that "one would be hard put to begin to do justice to the dazzling way it creates it own [sic] rules, while at the same time being wise enough not to jettison the old rule book either".^[4] It transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre in November 2012. That month it won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play.^[5] In January 2013 Payne revealed that a film adaptation was under way.^[1] This plan was later shelved.

In August 2013 his play The Same Deep Water As Me opened at the Donmar Warehouse, with a cast including Nigel Lindsay, Daniel Mays and Marc Wootton. In January 2014 Blurred Lines, a piece he devised with the director Carrie Cracknell, opened at the National Theatre's Shed. In 2014, two episodes of The Secrets which were written by Payne were broadcast on BBC One.

Incognito was a co-production between Live Theatre, nabokov, HighTide Festival Theatre and in association with The North Wall in spring 2014, which previewed at Live Theatre in April 2014, before going to HighTide Festival and The North Wall, Oxford. It returned to Live Theatre in May and then had a sell-out run at The Bush Theatre, London. Incognito was produced off-Broadway (in New York) by the Manhattan Theatre Club with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at New York's City Center in 2016.^[6] The play starred Charlie Cox, Heather Lind, Morgan Spector, and Geneva Carr and was directed by Doug Hughes.

The American premiere of Constellations opened on Broadway in January 2015 at Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, starring Academy Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. Constellations reunited Gyllenhaal with Payne and director Michael Longhurst, who were also making their Broadway debuts with the production. The three had previously collaborated on the American premiere of If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet.^[7] The play was next mounted in 2016 at Washington DC's Studio Theatre, starring Lily Balatincz and Tom Patterson and directed by Studio Theatre Artistic Director David Muse. The production was nominated for six Helen Hayes Awards, with Balatincz winning the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actress in a Play and Patterson winning the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor in a Play.^[8] In November 2016, Constellations opened at Canadian Stage in Toronto, under the direction of Peter Hinton.^[9]

A Life ran off-Broadway from February 2019 to March 2019 and transferred to Broadway at the Hudson Theatre in July 2019. The play ran with Sea Wall and starred Jake Gyllenhaal, directed by Carrie Cracknell. The plays were nominated for the 2020 Tony Award for Best Play.^[10][11]

In 2023, A24 acquired the rights to his romantic drama film We Live in Time starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.^[12]

Works

Film

Television

Theatre

Awards and nominations

References