Cash Carraway

Cash Carraway is an Irish-English screenwriter, director, and executive producer best known for creating and writing the HBO series, Rain Dogs for which she was nominated for a Gotham Award and won a BAFTA Breakthrough.

Cash Carraway grew up in Penge, London and studied theatre at the BRIT School. As a teenager Carraway worked in a Soho clip joint and lived on the Churchill Gardens estate in Pimlico.

Skint Estate

In 2019 Penguin Books published Carraway's memoir Skint Estate. The book was met with critical acclaim and The Times called her "The new voice of a generation." A prequel to Skint Estate entitled Fleshpot was announced by Ebury Publishing in 2020. The film and television rights to Skint Estate were sold in a bidding war and the project went into formal development with the BBC. Billie Piper was attached to play the role of Cash Carraway. Carraway began work on the screenplay before quitting the project, stating it was "too exposing." She later told the Hollywood Reporter "I disliked the fact that writing about myself was the only way I was allowed to make money from writing, so I quit."

A rumour started by the online pseudonym ‘Alice In Wanderlust’ claimed Skint Estate was a hoax leading The Guardian to investigate Carraway for literary fraud. Carraway proved the authenticity of her memoir and in an interview with journalist Laura Pezzino for L'Espresso Carraway said “I was not treated as a writer but like someone who sold her story to a tabloid. I have discovered that writing really is the most dangerous sport for a working class woman and for this I have decided that I will no longer publish anything autobiographical."

L'Opera del Lavoratore

Carraway wrote and directed the BBC short film L'Opera del Lavoratore starring Neil Maskell which premiered at the 2022 Glasgow Film Festival.

Rain Dogs

In March 2022, the BBC announced that production had begun on Carraway's original comedy drama series Rain Dogs. As the creator, writer and executive producer of Rain Dogs, Carraway serves as showrunner on the BBC and HBO original starring Daisy May Cooper. In an interview with Warner Media, Carraway said "Rain Dogs isn't autobiographical but it definitely has firm roots in the chip on my shoulder." In March 2023, Carraway told the Hollywood Reporter "There's a lot of me in Rain Dogs but it's not my life story. I'm not Costello Jones, if anything I'm more like Selby, I've just hidden myself inside an upper class gay man."

Carraway was originally going to call the series All Shook Down after an album by The Replacements but later changed it to Rain Dogs after Tom Waits’ booze-soaked record about “people who sleep in doorways” All of the music featured in Rain Dogs was specified in the scripts written by Carraway.

Future Projects

In November 2023, the British Comedy Guide announced three new Carraway projects. A sitcom titled Big Shot for Boffola Pictures, a comedy drama called Reserve List for Objective Fiction, and a feature film with Playground Entertainment.

She was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Series. Carraway was awarded a place on the 2023 BAFTA Breakthrough list.

Her writing is often compared to Hubert Selby Jr. and Charles Bukowski. Time described Carraway's writing style as "Raunchy gallows humour. And she's genius at it."

Her artistic influences include the cinematic works of Paul Schrader and Jean-Luc Godard as well as the satirist Chris Morris and screenwriter John Sullivan.

Plays

• The Last Peepshow in Soho (Soho Theatre)
• The French Inhaler (Clean Break)
• Refuge Woman (Battersea Arts Centre)

Books

• Skint Estate: Notes from the Poverty Line (2019; Penguin Random House)
• La Porca Miseria (2023; Alegre)

TV

• L'Opera del Lavoratore (BBC) – writer, director; short film
• Rain Dogs (BBC/HBO) – creator, writer, executive producer