‘Dept. Q’ writer Chandni Lakhani has thoughts on who should play the next Bond

When Chandni Lakhani, writer and co-creator of Netflix’s latest genre triumph Dept. Q, settles opposite me at the exquisite Eccleston Yards in London’s Victoria neighbourhood, I immediately sense I’m in the presence of someone with the nuanced eye of a writer. Based on the best-selling series by Danish novelist Jussi Adler-Olsen, the show follows the story of detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode), his haunted ghost of a past, unheroic return to a disgraced place of work, and adventures along a four-year old case file with a motley, makeshift crew of misfits.

There will be time, Lakhani and I agree, to discuss in detail the saturated Nordic canvas of her tour de force but for now we order drinks. As we settle with our respective glasses of rosé, she relays, in well-parsed words, her adventures with the diabolically unreliable London Underground.

“I am already working on my next project,” Lakhani tells me when we move on to a discussion about her work. “I still procrastinate,” she laughs when I remind her of the ‘professional procrastinator’ moniker that headlines her X bio. “But I've got the Indian immigrant daughter work ethic. You never stop. Rest? What is that?”

Born in the UK to parents from East Africa (her dad from Kenya by way of Uganda and her mum from Tanzania), Lakhani grew up in the leafy English countryside of Hampshire. Picture quaint commuter town vibes with maybe three other Indian kids in her entire school. It was a childhood of cultural in-betweens, where she never quite felt British or Indian enough.

But one thing was certain: her dream of becoming a writer. “But I didn’t even know screenwriting was a thing until uni,” she says pleasantly with a shrug. Before that, it was all amateur short stories and spy thrillers featuring Indian girl agents inspired by Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Na (only by the end of our chat will I finally convince her to let me read this priceless story one day). She laughs about it now (“a little cringe” in her own words) but those early stories were her way of writing herself into a world where she belonged and felt cool.

Lakhani’s creative journey took a more serious turn at university. After landing a spot at King’s College London (we are both alumni and quickly spend a good 10 minutes exchanging notes on our favourite things about our alma mater), Lakhani detoured to University College Los Angeles for a study abroad year. “Their film school is insane,” she says. “Three sound stages on campus!” That’s where she took her first screenwriting course and started writing a reincarnation-themed feature. Although unfinished, and slightly “morbid” by her own admission, this exercise sparked something in her. 

Once she returned to London, Lakhani hit the ground running. She sent 50 letters to production companies looking for a job in TV. One reply came back. An interview over coffee led to a job, and Lakhani never looked back. Her first gig was as an assistant at Big Talk Productions, a house mostly known for comedy. “It wasn’t ideal because I wanted to write drama. But I learned so much on that job,” she reflects. From formatting scripts to sitting in on meetings, she soaked up the process. And at night, she wrote. Her first script, a family-crime drama about a cash-and-carry empire in Harrow, was a spiritual evolution of her teenage spy stories. And as the days rolled by, her big break finally arrived. 

Working as assistant to Charlie Brooker on Black Mirror seasons three and four “was like film school on steroids”. Lakhani recalls, “Every episode was its own world, with its own director, cast, and tone.” Was it intense? Definitely. But also playful. “People think it’s all doom and dystopia, but many of the ideas started as jokes. Charlie has this dark sense of humour, and he’d go from punchline to pitch in no time.”

She eventually moved into writing full-time, with her first episode credit on BBC’s Dublin Murders. “It was a pinch-me moment. I loved the books. And Sarah Phelps, who led that show, is just a powerhouse. She really took me under her wing.”

But it’s Netflix’s Dept. Q—in all its moody, cerebral, glory—where Lakhani steps fully into her power as writer and executive producer.

The show’s mix of darkness, mystery, and psychological depth is just the sounding board a writer of Lakhani’s stature needed. “It came to me in 2020, still in the pandemic,” she recalls. Left Bank Pictures (the folks behind The Crown) sent her the first Department Q book. After years of receiving IPs with South Asian tropes, this was a breath of much needed freshness. “I devoured the book in two days,” she recalls. “And from that first read, I could see the potential of telling it across two timelines,” she says of one of the many creative writing choices in the series that pleasantly takes the viewer by surprise. 

“The most challenging aspect of writing the show wasn’t necessarily specific scenes but creating something that felt fresh, bold, and specific compared to other British crime thrillers,” elucidates Lakhani. “It's why I spent so much time digging into the characters, finding more story within them, and then working closely with Scott to create a very specific tone for the whole show.”

Lakhani’s character-first approach is one of the biggest joys of this show, and also part of a larger, quieter shift in the way crime thrillers are being written for our screens in recent years. Think Mare of Easttown, but with its own Scottish noir soul, perhaps best illustrated by a sequence in the series’ second episode where Carl undergoes a panic attack. “It was quite a technical sequence to write. We wanted this to feel real and visceral and terrifying, without going too over the top,” she explains. “Scott Frank [Lakhani’s co-writer on the show] suggested adding the line where Akram tells Carl never to bother him when he's praying, right after he’s calmed him down. I just loved that.” 

Crime fiction, as it turns out, was always in Lakhani’s blood. “I grew up on John Grisham and Harlan Coben. My mother’s a massive reader of the genre as well.” As she immersed herself in the world of her pilot, an equally exciting and daunting piece of news came her way: the onboarding of the legendary Scott Frank as a co-writer for the show. “I wrote the pilot while The Queen’s Gambit was becoming the biggest show in the world. And I was like this guy is about to read my script?” she laughs. Luckily, Frank loved it. “From there, we worked really closely together. He’s the toughest, most generous mentor I’ve ever had. One hour on a call with him taught me more than years of experience.”

It was Frank who imparted Lakhani one of her biggest lessons in screenwriting. “He really drilled into me: don’t superimpose plot onto your characters. Let them drive the story.” The Department Q books already had great bones. Adapting them for nine episodes meant going deeper. “Every character, no matter how small, had to be interesting enough that they could carry their own spin-off.”

But my favourite character in the show, as I tell Lakhani, is not the people but the city of Edinburgh itself. As a thoroughbred Londoner, Lakhani is not alien to the tonal difference between the Scottish and British capitals, the former possessing a quiet melancholy and slowness that feels almost necessary to the series’ pacing. When writing the script, it was Lakhani’s years spent at the city’s comedy and theatre festivals that finally came in handy.

“I was very familiar with that gentle melancholy, as you put it. The last trip I took before the pandemic was to Edinburgh and I got stuck at the top of Arthur’s Seat; my glasses were covered in rain, I couldn’t see anything to find my way down. I suppose that inspired me,” reflects Lakhani. “I also spent a lot of time on Google Maps, mapping out the different areas the story would be taking place with. Our location manager was actually impressed with how spot-on I’d gotten it!”

Casting the show was another turning point. “We had Olivia Scott-Webb putting together this absolute dream team. I’d just list them like Scottish royalty,” she says with earnest admiration.

And speaking of the indomitable Matthew Goode, Lakhani beams. “Scott had worked with him before and knew he’d nail it. When I saw his screen test, I was like, yep, that’s it.” But it wasn’t just Goode. “Alexei Manvelov, who plays Akram Salim, and Leah Byrne, who plays Rose... When I saw their auditions, I literally got chills. It wasn’t acting; it was instinct.”

As a responsible Gen Z writer, I immediately alert Lakhani to the current predicament of TikTok, X, and Reddit combined: a heated debate on who should be the next James Bond between Goode and Manvelov. “They both have the looks, the darkness, and the punching power,” she says after a pause and a smile. “But I would have to say Alexej because I’d love to see his version of that role—that is, only if I get to write it.”  

As a writer, Lakhani describes herself as a heady mix of superstitious, disciplined, and swole. “I do powerlifting three times a week,” she says. “It’s all about consistency, and writing is exactly the same.” Her ideal day includes bouncing ideas off producers, building killer playlists to match the mood of each script (Radiohead, Pixies, R.E.M. played on loop as she wrote Dept. Q), and battling the dreaded blank page with what she calls her “critical voice”. “I tell it, ‘I hear you. But stand 10 metres away and let me work. We’ll shake hands at the end.’” Genius, I whisper, making my own mental notes. 

And her ultimate dream? Something sweet and humble: to overhear strangers on the bus talking about one of her shows while she sits quietly nearby. No fame, no big reveal. Just that quiet power of knowing she told a story that moved people.