'I can’t go to therapy, so I just write scripts' - Ashley Storrie on love, loss and a new Dinosaur season
In the second season of Scottish comedy-drama Dinosaur, writer Ashley Storrie has given herself a juicy romantic storyline as her character Nina navigates the affections of two men, played by Lorn Macdonald and Hyoie O'Grady. The three discuss the fun they had with their roles.
Love is in the air and the return of Dinosaur, the BBC’s award winning comedy series, sees Ashley Storrie’s palaeontologist Nina at the heart of a love triangle with coffee van barista Lee and American colleague Clayton, played by Lorn Macdonald and Hyoie O’Grady.
An autistic woman in her thirties, Nina has been living her palaeontology dream since season one ended on an archaeological dig in the Isle of Wight where she attracts the attention of the charming Clayton. In reality she misses Glasgow, Lee, her family, job and sausage rolls so returns home only to find that nothing is the same. How does Nina cope with change and feelings, the two things she finds most perplexing, in season two of the heart-warming six-part series?
The daughter of comedian Janey Godley, Storrie started her career in stand up and moved into TV and radio, hosting her own live Friday night show on BBC Radio Scotland. Her Radio 4 comedy show What's the Story, Ashley Storrie? has been recommissioned and she’s a regular guest on TV quiz and panel shows such as Richard Osman's House of Games and Breaking The News after winning a BAFTA Scotland award for best writers along with Dinosaur co-creator and writer Matilda Curtis in 2024.
Dinosaur season two sees Storrie, who also has autism, taking Nina’s story further, alongside Lorn Macdonald, who also won a BAFTA for best actor in Steven Soderberg’s 2019 film Beats, and starred in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Scottish black comedy psychological horror film Tummy Monster (nominated for Best Film at the 2025 Scottish Baftas) as Lee. They’re joined by Hyoie O’Grady, the British-based American actor who was last on our screens in Outlander as Lieutenant Judah Bixby after roles in Stay Close, Young Woman and the Sea and on stage in Les Miserables, as Clayton who follows Nina to Glasgow.
Dinosaur is a Two Brothers Pictures production for BBC Scotland, BBC iPlayer and BBC Three in association with All3Media International, the team that brought us Fleabag, Liar and Baptiste has a returning cast that includes Kat Ronney, David Carlyle, Danny Ashok, Sally Howitt, Greg Hemphill and Sanjeev Kohli, plus another new character, Claudette, played by Maddie Rice, who played the main character in Fleabag at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017, returning with her own show, Pickle Jar in 2018.
Since it’s a love triangle, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to speak to Ashley, Lorn and Hyoie to get their take on the new series.
What are the opportunities of having a love triangle as a plot?
Ashley: From the writing perspective, it's fun because there are lots of misunderstandings and opportunities for jokes. And from an autistic perspective it was fun for me to pick through bits of human interaction that sometimes don't make sense to me, like gender roles and how we interact. Like when people say they're ‘fine’ do they mean they're fine. Also, love triangles are classic romcom fodder and I wanted to do that.
Lorn: Last season was me and Ashley establishing our relationship together but never quite making it happen so it’s fun to take quite a comic character and look at it through the lens of maybe a slightly more heartbreaking and dramatic approach.
Hyoie: It's great with the love triangle thing where you get to play on those misunderstandings almost twofold because it's the case in life with everybody that there are always misunderstood messages or things underneath when things aren't spoken or feelings expressed.
Who do they think is actually best suited to Nina?
Lorn: I said while we were filming I was team Clayton the whole way. I think I was just charmed by him. It's not like Edward versus Jacob in Twilight. Lee and Clayton quite like each other, but because of the romantic thing they're never going to be friends. So there's a kind of heartbreak thing happening that not only are they both vying for the same woman's attention, but they're also going, I think you're probably great.
Ashley: Yeah, and that was really important in the writing, to make sure these are two nice guys. It's not the classic trope of bad boy versus good boy.
Hyoie: I don't want to spoil anything but I felt like we concluded things really nicely and when you see the whole journey it slightly subverts expectations, almost in a more realistic way.
Ashley: Guys, I can't go to therapy, so I just write scripts and try and work out my feelings via them, and I think that's what we did.
In Ashley’s Radio 4 series What’s the Story, Ashley Storrie, she shares how she has invented a therapist in her head (inspired by the one in The Sopranos) so she can talk to one but doesn’t have to tell a stranger things you might not want to tell a stranger.
Ashley: Working in stand-up comedy, do you know who don't keep their mouths shut? Therapists! See if you're standing on stage and you're like, ‘what do you do for a living?’, oh therapy, what's the weirdest thing you've ever heard?’ They'll tell you in front of a room full of people!
So has dating changed for the younger generation? Is it easier or harder, with or without factoring in autism.
Ashley: I don't know. I remember asking my granddad how he met my nana and he said he just followed her about until she said yes. And I don't think you can do that anymore. So I think it may be slightly more complicated, but I think relationships have always been complicated in their own way and it just changes with the context we're in. But we're all just people trying to touch other people in the private bits.
Ashley: Yeah, it's definitely good. I love when we get messages from people who see themselves. I got one recently from a guy who said he’d just watched it and it made him ask questions about himself and he’s just gone and got diagnosed. That's a wee dude in his 50s from Glasgow and that makes me feel good.
My dad didn't get diagnosed until he was in his late 30s, early 40s, and he spent a good portion of his life not knowing what was wrong with him. It wasn't until I was in school and saw the Baron Cohen test, the original test for Asperger's, and I went ‘oh my God, that's my dad!’ He went to the GP and it was the quickest diagnosis anybody's ever had in their life. That made him suddenly understand his own brain. It was such a big weight off because he'd been so angry up until then and then he got the diagnosis and he could regulate and articulate and say this is why I feel this way and it was such a big change. And if we can offer that to anybody that feels like a wonderful thing.
But I say this all the time, I don't really feel the weight of representing autism, I feel the weight of representing Scottish people because that's so much scarier.
From a gender reveal party where relatives overshare to Scots going rogue on holiday, do they think the series has a uniquely Scottish element?
Ashley: I think Scotland's got that thing where you can go to a bus stop and find out a wumman's entire medical history in 15 minutes and know her whole business and it’s the reason that I love it. At Radio Scotland I love the text messages about people's private lives they send in, knowing about Colin and Brenda who broke up in their 20s but met again in their 50s and now they're getting married. The gender reveal scene was very much a tribute to my ma. Because that was her birth story. So, yeah, that was my ma.
Hyoie: I think in America it's a bit different because in Europe so many cities are walkable. People will walk from place to place or there are more pub crawls. In the States, you drive somewhere and there are house parties. So being on the bus and hearing somebody's life story is less common.
What was the biggest challenge this time round?
Hyoie: For me it was finding where Clayton exists within this world of already established characters. He's so different to everybody and it highlights that lovely, unique Scottishness about all the characters.
Ashley: It was a wonderful experience and you don't want to be like ‘oh this was hard’ but I was writing the show when my mum was in the hospice and making it just coming off the back of her dying, and just kind of keeping going, it wasn't the easiest thing in the world. But I'm lucky to have so many supportive and kind people around me. So it was a good thing and a bad thing combined and that was hard.
Also, I’m in every scene and the sound of my own voice was making me sick! I just wanted to shut up. So I wish I’d written myself less lines.
What do you think your mum’s reaction to Dinosaur would be Ashley?
Ashley. I think she'd be awfy chuffed. I think she'd be really pleased. Like I say, there's a wee nod to her in the story. I think she'd like that. I think that she would go ‘that’s ma Ashley’, and then she'd sit outside her favourite cafe with the dug and tell everybody that went past to watch it and would have been our wee vocal billboard in the street shouting about it. So I think she would have been chuffed and then privately would have been ‘could you no have wrote me a wee part? Could you no get the dug a part, Ashley?’ The dog came to set once, almost bit two people. My da had to take her back in the pram.
Ashley has said don't ever meet people you've admired (in her case done erotic fan fiction about), do you agree?
Ashley: Well, I met Craig McGinlay, he knows about this, I went to school with him. He is an actor/model and I used to write really weird stories about me, him and Charlie from Busted and I met him at the BAFTAs and he said ‘oh, you're a writer now’ and I went, ‘yes, and I started by writing stories about you’. Then I had to moonwalk out of the building. But he was very kind and recorded a recreation of that moment for my Radio 4 show.
And the other person I met at the BAFTAs, who I'd written erotic fan fiction about, was Podrick Payne [Scottish actor Daniel Portman] from Game of Thrones, and that was uncomfortable. So, I moonwalked away again.
Lorn: I didn't write fan fiction but I did a play once with Neve McIntosh who worked with Peter Capaldi [on Doctor Who] and she said, do you want to meet him afterwards? This was around like Doctor Who fame time, and I'm a big Thick of It fan too, and he came and shook my hand and leaned in towards my face and I thought he must be one of these la-de-da actors, so I gave him a kiss on the cheek and he pulled back and went, ‘What? I thought you were going to say something.’ And I just started dry mouth monologuing, making up a story about how because bad things happen to my character in the play people usually want to give me a hug. It was the worst thing ever. I don't think I ever won him back.
Ashley: See if he puts on the telly and sees Dinosaurs, and goes ‘look there he is, that weird boy that kissed me!
Lorn: It’s that kissy boy!
And Hyoie?
Ashley: Hyoie is very cool and charming. I bet he’s not blundered in and gone ‘hiya! I’ve been writing weird stories about you!’
H: I'm a little bit shy actually in those moments. I tend to be a bit like this [smiles charmingly]. Everyone I’ve met has been lovely.
Ashley: I've already exposed myself so much with the radio that it just feels like ‘whatever... they already know everything bad’.
Is comedy harder than serious drama?
Hyoie: I think it's exposing because if you have to be funny and people don't laugh it's like you’ve failed, whereas if you're playing a character you can rely on the narrative a bit more. However, it is more fun while you're filming because everyone is trying to make each other laugh. But I'm fairly new to it and when you're working with such great people it is definitely intimidating.
Ashley: This is the only thing I've done. It's not like I've got a big repertoire of [does posh voice] ‘dramatic acting behind me’. I can do sad bits, I can do funny bits. I'm all right, but it makes me feel uncomfortable if there isn't a rhythm of a joke in a sentence. I know where I stand when there's jokes involved but if there's emotional raw feeling, that makes me feel like I'm going to vomit.
I don't have that fear of ‘what if people don't laugh’ because I've stood in a room and died with a bunch of squaddies on a Christmas night out. I’ve posted stuff on the internet. I've had comments. And it doesn't bother me that much. I know when we're doing the scenes, I'm always looking at the sparks [electricians] because if I get them, it’s ‘this is a joke’.
Lorn: Yeah if you see the boom shaking, you're like, oh, something's good, because they are probably the funniest people on set.
So what is different about Dinosaur?
Ashley: It’s Scottish.
Lorn: It’s Scottish, but warm Scottish. We’re very good at gritty, passionate dramas and films but wherever you go there's so many Scots that are just this big, warm hug. And when you watch Dinosaur, it's still got that gritty Scottishness but it is just like sitting down and having a wee cup of tea and a hug. I think that is the trick of the show, that we can be funny, dramatic, but also we’ve got that relaxed feeling that people just want to spend time with these lovely people. And I think that's what I celebrate most about the show.
Ashley: Yeah, I like that we’re people's comfort watch.
Hyoie: It has a real sense of optimism. It feels positive, which is what you want when you're trying to wind down after a long day. You don't want to put something on that's going to stress you out or be really crazy. It's got a real good, positive vibe to it.
Dinosaur series two is available now on BBC iPlayer and airing weekly on BBC Scotland and BBC Three.
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