After studying dramatic art in South Africa, Richard E. Grant went to London, where he made his stage debut in 1984. After his first film appearance in Bruce Robinson's Withnail and I in 1986, he worked in television, theatre, and films in the UK and U.S.A. In 1992, Robert Altman cast him in the Hollywood satire The Player. He went on to become an Altman regular, appearing in Prêt-à-Porter and Gosford Park. Grant has also worked with Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence. He then returned to the stage as Algernon Moncrieff in a revival of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. His other film credits include The Portrait of a Lady, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and Spice World. His first novel, By Design, was published in 1997 and was followed by a memoir, With Nails. Wah-Wah is Grant's first film as director and screenwriter.

Five years ago, producer Hilary Heath commissioned me to write a screenplay on the strength of my best-selling film diaries With Nails. I had been toying with the idea of a semi-autobiographical film set in Swaziland where I grew up for some time and this was the catalyst. Sticking to the dictum of always write about what you know, I focused on the public/private drama of a disintegrating family. Set against the background of a British Colonial outpost in the run-up to Independence at the tail end of the 1960s, Wah-Wah is a coming-of-age at the end-of-an-age story.

Having grown up on a diet of pre-blockbuster films in the early 1970s, my heroes were Coppola, Scorsese and Altman, all of whom I have had the privilege to work with as an actor. Human stories, that do not rely on computer-generated, concept-driven special effects is what interests me most. Families and what happens behind closed doors is something that is common to everyone, and it is the driving focus of both the comedy and drama in Wah-Wah. The underlying theme of the film is love: love lost, regained, unrequited, forgotten, longed for, and discovered.

After three years of development, 20 drafts, location scouting, and tentative castings, Loma Nasha Films based in Paris took over the project. in coproduction with Scion Films in London and IMG Films in South Africa. Securing the cast was vital to raising the finances, and Julie Walters committed to the project within a day of reading the script four years ago. Her loyalty and belief in the film kept me going through months when it seemed as if it would never get off the ground. Everything turned around once Gabriel Byrne committed to playing the lead role alongside Emily Watson and Miranda Richardson. Finding two teenage actors to play the same role at different ages was a real challenge and Celestia Fox, the casting director proved to be my greatest ally. Nicholas Hoult and Zachary Fox got the one part.

Everyone coming on board knew that it was a low-budget, independent film with a first time writer/director and no promise of megabucks. As a result, the communal spirit and commitment to the film is something for which I will always be indebted to everyone who worked on it.

This was a genuine labour of love. I had never written or directed a film before, and likewise, it was the first film ever made in the Kingdom of Swaziland. I was personally given permission by King Mswati III to film in the country. The opportunity to revisit and recreate your past, albeit in fictionalised form, in the actual locations where it all happened is something that imparted a tangible authenticity to the experience. I think this aspect profoundly informed and affected the actors. A film also requires a bucket load of luck and we certainly had that; perfect weather, government co-operation, great chemistry amongst the cast, and a real willingness to recreate and explore the lives of people living out the last days of the Empire. I loved being asked two thousand questions a day about anything and everything. Without a doubt, it has been the most intense and creative experience of my life.