Richard grew up in a small village about fifty miles south of London. He was a sickly child, allergic to everything from dairy and apples to dust and pollen. School was rarely a place of ease. Dyslexia made reading aloud and writing feel like public acts of risk, and he learned early to second-guess himself on the page. He was, at best, a C student. Most of the time, he felt he was falling short of a world that seemed built for other kinds of minds.

 

His parents ran their own catering company and sandwich shop in Wimbledon, just a few miles from the manicured lawns, strawberries and cream, and polished glamour of the world-famous tennis championships. But the Janes family lived in a strange in-between. They were neither blue-collar nor comfortably white-collar. They were tradespeople who had worked their way up through grit, instinct, and long hours, yet still lived with financial uncertainty and without the cushion of generational wealth.

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They were close enough to the world of privilege to serve it, but never fully belong to it.

 

Whether that distance was imposed from the outside or simply absorbed over time hardly mattered. Invitations often came with a hidden transaction attached. There was always the unspoken question: Would you do the food?

Still, Richard’s parents worked fiercely to give their children more than they themselves had known. His mother had left school at fifteen. His father, who also had dyslexia, only found his true path once he began working in kitchens. From there he traveled across Europe, learning in old culinary houses, absorbing the kind of inherited craft and discipline that would later shape his own menus and way of life.

 

Then, when Richard was thirteen, his father landed the contract that would change everything — just not in the way anyone expected.

 

The Wimbledon Theatre, a beautiful Grade II listed Edwardian theatre that had once premiered the very first production of Oliver!, was looking for a local caterer to run the bar for its summer open-air theatre season in the Italian Walled Garden at Cannizaro Park in Wimbledon Village.

 

For Richard’s parents, this was more than a job. Their business had been battered after the 1992 sterling crisis. Catering work had thinned. The once-steady stream of customers buying sandwiches rather than making them at home had slowed to a trickle. The theatre contract felt like a lifeline — a way to begin climbing out of debt and back toward solid ground.

 

Richard wanted to help however he could.

 

So in the mornings, he’d be dropped off at the Italian Walled Garden while his father went off to run the café. Richard would spend the early hours cleaning, stocking the bar, and getting everything ready. Then, with the work done, he’d buy himself a can of Coke and wander down to the stage to watch rehearsals before front of house opened at six.

 

There, in that garden, his life tilted on its axis.

 

Romeo and Juliet.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Don Giovanni.
The Marriage of Figaro.

 

These became the soundtrack of his summers. He fell, hard and completely, for the act of play. For make-believe. For the sheer miracle of taking an audience somewhere else. He became obsessed — not only with the stories, but with the machinery of enchantment itself. Set design. Lighting. Power distribution in an open park. Why an audience laughed when it did. How two actors could look into each other’s eyes and convince 1,200 people that they were meeting for the first time and falling in love, night after night after night.

 

It consumed him.

 

He knew, with the kind of certainty that only comes once or twice in a life: this was where he was meant to be.

From thirteen to seventeen, the open-air theatre became Richard’s summer heaven.

 

In his second year as the unofficial keeper of the bar, a chance encounter with an agent changed the course of things again. Richard, never short on questions, had spent night after night asking the actors and grown-ups around him how it all worked. Those questions eventually led to an introduction to a children’s agency.

 

Without telling his parents, he arranged himself an audition.

 

When he came home with an offer of representation, his parents were horrified. They had seen too much of an actor’s life — the instability, the struggle, the constant uncertainty. It was exactly the kind of life they were working so hard to help their children avoid.

 

But Richard, being Richard, made a deal.

 

If his grades improved, he’d be allowed to audition.

 

It is amazing what a little purpose can do.

 

His grades rose quickly, and the acting work began to come in. CBBC series. ITV children’s dramas. The obligatory turns in British staples like The Bill and Kavanagh QC with John Thaw. Then came the commercials — dozens of them — for everything from aspirin tablets to dubious new energy drinks.

 

By eighteen, he had booked two jobs back to back. One was playing Professor Aronnax in a test for a children’s version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with Keira Knightley playing his sister. The other was Longitude, alongside Jeremy Irons, where Richard played a young government assistant in the years before the Second World War.

 

And somewhere in the middle of all that, he realized something important.

 

He looked around and understood that he was now competing with graduates from the best drama schools in the world. But he also realized something even deeper: the actor’s chair off to the side — the one with the bottle of water and the PA hovering nearby — wasn’t the chair he really wanted.

 

He wanted the other one.

 

The one that read: Director.

 

With guidance from Giles Ridge, a young BBC associate producer who had taken him under his wing and introduced him to the workings of production, Richard enrolled in a two-year accelerated bachelor’s program at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication.

 

Officially, he was a student.

 

Unofficially, he spent as much time as possible in Soho, picking up PA jobs at commercial production houses like @Radical and working around extraordinary directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tarsem Singh. He haunted the edges of the industry, learning by proximity, by observation, by hunger. He’d also slip into the BBC’s Broadcasting House to watch friends in the Radio Repertory Company perform their vocal alchemy.

 

At the end of those two years, Richard brought together the worlds he had been quietly stitching into one another: friends from commercial production, actors from radio drama, collaborators from the creative margins. Together they made his graduation film, Representative Radio, which went on to be nominated for a Student Royal

Television Society Award.

 

After that, things moved quickly.

 

He directed a play off-West End. He raised the money for his first feature film, Fakers, starring Matthew Rhys and Art Malik. And it was that film that took him halfway across the world to screen at the Writers Guild of America theatre, courtesy of BAFTA LA.

 

It was also there that he met a young woman with sparkling eyes, a brilliant smile, and a newly acquired motorbike licence.

 

Amy.

 

Richard and Amy always knew, on some level, that they would work together. But at first, their careers rose along separate tracks. Richard landed his first major studio commission co-writing a superhero movie for Walt Disney.

Amy was building momentum at the International Documentary Association.

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Then the industry lurched.

 

The 2008 writers’ strike froze Hollywood. And suddenly the fragile scaffolding beneath so many creative careers gave way at once.

 

Now they had two young children, a one-bedroom apartment, and the crushing mathematics of trying to survive in Los Angeles. They had endured one too many “almosts.” Independent films that nearly went into production before financing vanished. Jobs that nearly materialized until a bigger name stepped in at the last minute. Opportunities always close enough to taste, but never quite close enough to hold.

 

Hollywood is littered with the wreckage of talented people who almost made it.

 

With two children and no real financial stability, Richard and Amy began to suspect they were becoming part of that landscape.

 

Then came an unexpected turn.

 

Amy’s producing partner from UCLA, A.J. Lewis, invited them to work on a music documentary television series. A.J. led production. Richard directed. Amy supported with editing. Together, they won a Los Angeles Area Emmy.

And in that moment, something shifted.

 

Maybe there was another path. Not a compromise, but a new frontier.

 

Hulu had just launched — not yet as the original-content giant it would become, but as a new platform carrying studio content from Disney, Fox, and NBC. Richard and a team at a newly formed short-form studio persuaded Hulu to distribute its first exclusive series, backed by Carl’s Jr., called Dorm Life.

 

To promote the show, they did something simple and novel: they created online profiles for the cast on a growing social platform called Facebook.

 

The response was immediate.

 

The traction, the attention, the sense of direct connection between audience and talent — all of it pointed toward something much bigger. Richard and Amy began to see that these new digital platforms weren’t just promotional tools. They were engines of audience-building. They could create loyalty, attention, and community at scale. They

could drive tune-in, ticket sales, cultural momentum.

 

Within months, they raised venture capital and launched Fanology — a new form of talent representation built around online fan management and the social media presence of actors, musicians, and athletes.

 

They were early. Very early.

 

Through Fanology, they pioneered online chat and engagement strategies around television, driving same-day tune-in for shows like Glee, The Vampire Diaries, and Pretty Little Liars. They led campaigns for studios like Relativity Media. They grew tens of millions of followers for artists, actors, and athletes.

 

Then brands came calling.

 

Fanology launched a brand division, applying the same principles of audience-building to companies like Toyota and Life Time. These brands needed a new kind of storytelling — social-first commercials made for a fraction of the cost of traditional broadcast production. And Fanology quickly became the team shooting them.

 

Suddenly Richard was back in the director’s chair.

 

Not yet with features, but with thirty-second spots. And because it was social media — still wild, still undefined — there was freedom. Real freedom. Freedom to tell stories designed not for passive viewers, but for people mid-scroll. Stories that had to interrupt, connect, entertain, and earn attention instantly.

 

Hundreds of commercials and a shelf of awards later, a small but formidable team had emerged, flying around the United States to capture content around the Olympics, extreme sports, product reveals, and live events. They specialized in authentic storytelling — work rooted more in impact and emotional resonance than hard sell.

 

But beneath that momentum, tectonic plates were already shifting.

 

The heart of the business had begun with celebrities, yet as social media companies raced toward monetization and public-market expectations, the rules started changing. One month, platforms would court Fanology for advice on celebrity-focused apps and digital initiatives. The next, they would restrict access, tighten policies, and make the business increasingly difficult. Eventually Twitter cut off data access for its largest partners and demanded millions of dollars for renewed access.

 

Fanology had been built on a digital landscape that suddenly no longer existed in the same form.

 

Richard and Amy found themselves at a crossroads.

 

They had built something important, something pioneering — but it had not yet created the financial outcome they had hoped for. They felt enormous responsibility for a team they cared deeply about, many of whom now faced redundancy because of decisions made far above them. And Richard had the sinking realization that, almost without noticing, he had drifted further and further from the original dream: creating narrative films and documentaries that might genuinely change the world.

 

Then, just as the business was straining, his body began to fail.

 

Richard had lived with ulcerative colitis since he was seventeen, an autoimmune disease that attacks the large intestine. In the past, steroids could usually calm the flare and get him back on his feet.

 

This time was different.

 

The stress of the business had stretched the illness beyond its usual limits. Treatment after treatment failed. His body weakened. At 110 pounds, he had no choice but to step away, leaving Amy to carry the business while he focused on survival and recovery.

 

And in that enforced stillness, bigger questions began to surface.

 

Why were they still doing what they were doing?
What dream were they actually serving now?
What if they needed not just a pivot, but an entirely new life?

 

Amy refocused Fanology around major brands. Richard focused on getting well.

 

At night, they talked.

 

Those conversations turned into two years of weekend trips to some of the coolest, fastest-growing, most supposedly livable cities in America. They were looking for a new place to land. Better quality of life. Distance from the machinery of Hollywood. Maybe even a way to begin again.

 

Austin.
Portland.
Atlanta.
Boulder.

 

They visited them all.

 

None of them felt right.

 

And then, almost by accident, they visited Oklahoma City.

 

Something about it was different. The openness. The scale. The possibility. The sense that perhaps this was not a retreat from the dream, but the place where it could finally become real in a new form.

 

And suddenly, Filmmakers Ranch was on the horizon.

 

Not just a business. Not just a studio.
A new chapter.
A home for story.

 

A place where everything Richard had lived through — the theatre garden, the false starts, the Hollywood almosts, the digital frontier, the illness, the reinvention — could converge into something larger than ambition.

Something built not only to make films, but to make a life.