From Scrubbing Loos to Netflix: Jade Franks’s ‘eat the Rich’ bites Back at the Elite
A searingly honest and darkly comedic play born from personal experience, Eat the Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates x) is captivating audiences and sparking a bidding war for a television adaptation.
Jade Franks’s journey is a stark illustration of class disparity. While her peers at Cambridge University enjoyed lives of privilege, Franks was working as a cleaner to afford her studies – a reality she now brilliantly skewers in her award-winning play. Eat the Rich has rapidly ascended from a buzzy hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to a critically acclaimed production with a London run, regional tour, and a hotly contested development deal with Netflix and Philip Barantini’s It’s All Made Up Productions.
“I was always really aspiring,” Franks says, her Scouse accent still vibrant despite her success. “I don’t think I was fully aware of class until it was stopping me from getting where I wanted.” The play, a fictionalized account of her experiences, doesn’t shy away from confronting wealth inequality. Franks vividly portrays her first term at Cambridge, navigating arcane rituals and alien social environments that repeatedly land her in awkward situations – from formal dinners conducted in Latin to peers mimicking her accent and the rejection of her humble cheddar offering at a lavish party.
Beneath the surface of these daily absurdities lies a constant fear: the discovery of her secret employment, which violated the university’s rules. Franks reveals she only learned about available bursaries for financially struggling students shortly before her finals, having spent three years secretly balancing studies with cleaning jobs and work at a punt boat tour company, often concealing her identity to avoid detection. “I wasn’t good enough to do the tours,” she laughs, displaying her long, patterned acrylic nails, “so I was in the cash office and moving the boats.”
Growing up in Wallasey, wirral, Franks was the first in her family to pursue theatre.”I’m just an attention seeker,” she deadpans, recalling her early days in local drama classes while her friends were “getting drunk in the park.” Despite gaining acceptance to prestigious drama schools, Franks felt pressured to take a gap year to earn money. “I was told, ‘You’re not really drama school material, you need to get a bit of life experience,'” she explains. “Which is code for, ‘You need to get a bit of money.'”
Franks’s commitment to supporting fellow artists is evident in her collaborations and advocacy. She credits the support of other working-class artists, including comedian jack Rooke, whom Franks calls “a guardian angel of this industry.”
Despite its success at the Fringe, Eat the Rich didn’t immediately turn a profit. Franks emphasizes the importance of fair compensation for her team, rejecting the “brainwashed mentality” of unpaid work and substandard conditions often prevalent in the theatre world. This commitment to ethical production, she argues, highlights the systemic barriers preventing artists from marginalized backgrounds from creating work without sacrificing their well-being or relying on family wealth. “Fringe should be a place where people can fail,” she says, “but you can’t afford to.I couldn’t afford to.”
Beyond Eat the Rich, franks is working as a freelance creative consultant, advocating for greater diversity and accessibility in theatre. She envisions a future where dynamic pricing doesn’t exclude lower-income audiences and is persistent to leverage any potential earnings from the Netflix series to support emerging artists. “At the moment, my outreach stuff on the West End is just me with my massive spreadsheet,” she says, outlining her ambition to establish a formal scheme guaranteeing affordable tickets.
Having navigated the often-exclusive landscapes of Cambridge and UK theatre, Franks is driven by a desire to dismantle the structures that perpetuate inequality. “I can’t change the system by doing a silly little one woman show,” she acknowledges. But she’s determined to try.
Eat the Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates x) is currently playing at the Soho Theatre in london (January 12th to 31st), with upcoming performances at the Liverpool Everyman (April 16th to 18th) and the Bristol Old vic (April 28th to May 2nd).
