Following Rogan’s BAFTA win for Grenfell: Uncovered, James Rogan caught up over lunch with Sandra and Jeannine Ruddock and Denise and Richard Gooding.
What began with memories of Uprising’s own BAFTA win became a candid conversation about telling a story they had carried for more than 40 years, the impact the series had on their lives, and why the relationships formed during production still endure today.
Then they popped into the Rogan office for another BAFTA photo opportunity.
Full transcript below:
00:00:00 Richard Gooding: There's a lot of things that we never spoke about over the years. And, you know, just talking to you on that day doing the recording and that to me was a counselling of its own self, you know?
00:00:12 Denise Gooding: And I think because we've done, well for me anyway, from eleven, one interview after another, when I look at the Windrush interview and I did so many things, I feel like this is the only time I've actually felt that I got some healing from it. I felt all the rest of the time, all the different interviews and all the different things I've done, and I've done a lot. So you know what I mean. So for me, it was like, okay, this actually meant something. I can now not put it to bed, but kind of move forward. I felt like I got something out of that because you genuinely, even though it was about making a programme, I felt like you lot, actually cared. I didn't think it was just for, you know, this is for media innit.
00:00:49 James Rogan: Yeah. Oh, that's really nice of you to say No. We really do care.
00:00:54 Richard Gooding: No, no, but it's true. And you and you've you've kept in touch.
00:00:57 Denise Gooding: And you've kept in touch, which to me, sometimes I just think this is weird because normally what it is to me. Because as you know, Sandra, you know, back in the day you'd do a little. You do a little. I remember one time we did a thing for twenty-five pounds with the Windrush. Big money. You never heard from people again. They didn't care. You did give you a little ten pound little twenty pound here. That's you. You give your story and that's the end of that.
00:01:15 Richard Gooding: But I remember after we did it and and James rang it asked if everything's all right. So he said, is everything all right apart from everybody not talking to you. But you know, the thing is right, you've got to be in that situation to know it's like, you know, like you can be at work and you've lost someone, right? And no one, no one speaks to you. But it's only because I've been experienced enough at such a young age to know, to know that you know what I mean? You know, because people just do that anyway. Oh, no leave him alone. His mum's died or something like that.
00:01:47 Sandra Ruddock: It's not that I just find that people just don't know what to say.
00:01:50 Richard Gooding: They don't know what to say. Yeah.
00:01:51 Sandra Ruddock: And at the end of the day, I'm not being funny. When someone comes up and says to you, well, I'm really sorry. What are you - Did you kill my dad or did you kill my husband? Or did you? What are you sorry for?
00:02:02 Denise Gooding: Well, I guess they don't know what else to say. I'm sorry, but.
00:02:05 Richard Gooding: I would just say I heard about something
00:02:06 Denise Gooding: Sorry that you feel that way. That you felt pain.
00:02:09 Richard Gooding: Yeah, yeah. And then also, anything you want me to do,
00:02:12 Denise Gooding: And they don't. And they don't understand. People at work when they called me because I just left work that April, they called me like, oh my God, I worked with you for how many years? And I didn't know you were going through this, because it's not something I want to come into work and say, oh, guess what, I was in the New Cross Fire, you know you know, nobody does that. Who does that?
00:02:26 Richard Gooding: That was the problem I had at work. No one knew about that at the time. I was going through what I was going through with my boss. It was only that that just happened to be the coincidence at the time that that program came on. And then, as I said, they've collected for me, but they wouldn't have collected for me just for being me. They've collected for me on something.
00:02:45 Denise Gooding: Because of that.
00:02:46 Richard Gooding: Trauma and achievement on something that we've achieved on, you know, achieved on my own, to be honest, nothing to do with work, you know.
00:02:53 James Rogan: Well, um, so Sandra and Jeannine what's your take on it? What, what did the doc do?
00:02:58 Jeannine Ruddock: I think that the documentary did amazing things to be fair. There is the exposure, the stories everybody got to to say their own truth. So that's never happened before. No one got to say their own truths in their own words, what their own feelings was, how it affected them and their significant others and things. And I think that is what made the documentary what it was. It was literally people's truth.
00:03:27 Denise Gooding: It was all a case of. Well, why were you there? Why did your mom send you there? You shouldn't even have been there. That's all I ever got. It's only now that people are starting to see. It helped to shift that. So now people can understand because they've told the story from the beginning. How it all started, how David knew people. Everyone just assumed that, you know, mum just sent us off to this party and you were just there one of them wayward kids that just do whatever.
00:03:45 James Rogan: It's so strange how people are always rushing for that negative assumption, aren't they?
00:03:49 Denise Gooding: I watched the documentary with the two, you know, the sisters that got killed in Clapham. I never watched the documentary before, but my first thought when I saw it, I thought, oh, they're probably out there high. That was my first thought. And when I watched the documentary, I thought, this is why it's important to watch documentaries. So you really learn the truth. Yeah. And you're not making a judgment based on what you've read. You know, I mean, two lines of something.
00:04:08 Sandra Ruddock: I never trust the media. At the end of the day, you know that from a fact. At the end of day, look at the things that they used to write in the media about the New Cross fire at the beginning of the thing. I mean, they had my dad painted as a, as a as a scarlet man that was going off with my mother in law and had an affair with her. My dad was up north for away wrestling. He didn't know anything until late the Sunday night when he, he arrived home. He got dragged down into Lewisham police station for nine hours. And and and my dad said they were awful to him. They treated him like a criminal. He was up north. Do you know what I mean? It was like, you know, all of these scenarios that people said that they were happening and. Da da da.
00:04:53 Denise Gooding: Yeah.
00:04:53 James Rogan: What was the experience like working with Rogan Productions?
00:04:58 Richard Gooding: I found the way that you spoke to us, it was like we could open up to you, you know, you know, I felt I felt comfortable.
00:05:08 Sandra Ruddock: You made talking easy.
00:05:10 Richard Gooding: Because even I was told on the day then I still didn't have to do it right. I didn't have to do it then. And, but by the time I sat down and talked to you guys and that everybody made me feel warm in there at the time, even though the subject that we were talking about wasn't something- It was hard, you know? Yeah, it was it was a hard subject.
00:05:29 James Rogan: And do you think you would recommend other people working with us?
00:05:34 Denise Gooding: Definitely. No, no, on a serious note.
00:05:38 Richard Gooding: Well, we're here now. We're here now we're here now. We are talking about four years, like four, five, five, five years!
00:05:45 Denise Gooding: Listen I would never I mean, I'm not not shy. I'm not shy, but I'm someone that don't like, I don't do public speaking and all that sort of thing. But you guys kind of brought that out of me, which I think is amazing. Yeah, definitely.
00:05:59 Richard Gooding: Definitely, definitely. I agree with my sister on that. I mean, I, I never got involved.
00:06:04 Denise Gooding: Yeah. We don't.
00:06:06 Sandra Ruddock: A lot more vocal than I would ever have been.
00:06:07 Denise Gooding: Definitely.
00:06:08 Richard Gooding: Like Denise used to do things before when she was put out there young. And I used to say to her, how do you do that? She goes, well, you're looking at the people, but you're not looking at them. And for me, it was just like fear and stuff. Like, you know, when you see people or it was even fear of thinking at the time to be aired this documentary. Right? But as time went on, I'll be honest, Rogan Productions took a lot out of me now because, you know, I'll be honest, I'm out there speaking. Yeah, a lot now for my family, you know.
00:06:45 Denise Gooding: And you didn't just use us just to do the documentary. And this is what makes it even nicer. This is why I have to give you guys props even more. You'll still message. You're still, you know, I mean, you still still talk about Yeah. You're family, you haven't just dropped us and got what you needed from us and that's it. You are still there. So, you know, we're.
00:06:59 Sandra Ruddock: Still keep in contact.
00:07:01 Richard Gooding: You keep us together and you keep us.
00:07:03 Denise Gooding: Keep us together.
00:07:04 Sandra Ruddock: And the thing that I liked about it the most that when my granddaughter wanted to do something at her school.
00:07:09 Denise Gooding: They're there for you.
00:07:10 Sandra Ruddock: And I said to James, Will you do this? And he went, yeah, no problem.
00:07:13 Denise Gooding: One hundred percent.
00:07:14 Sandra Ruddock: Yeah. Sort it out. I'll be there. And at the end of the day since then, he's been able to do other things for other people. And I think that's really good.
00:07:24 Denise Gooding: What put other people off when you were first doing it. That's probably why people didn't want to do things because from the years going back, people would ask you to do things and then you'd do it, and then you never hear from them again. You don't know, do you know what I mean? And you're kind of just left exposed.
