About Niall Leonard

Niall Leonard grew up in Newry, Northern Ireland. He attended the University of York to study English, and from there went on to The UK National Film and Television School where he trained as a screenwriter and director.

After graduating from the NFTS in 1986 Niall’s worked as director on ITV’s long-running cop show The Bill while pursuing his own projects, such as the one-off black comedy Rotten Apples and Over The Wild Frontier, a six-part comedy drama set on the Irish border, both for Channel Four.

Niall’s first broadcast TV script was an episode of cop show Spender, closely followed by Pie In The Sky with Richard Griffiths.

In 1994 Niall took up a year-long contract as a Script Editor at BBC Northern Ireland, where he made the acquaintance of Belfast’s Hole In The Wall Gang. His work as script associate on their pilot for Give My Head Peace led to a partnership that continued for ten years

In 1995 he returned to full-time writing with a script for the groundbreaking Irish comedy drama Ballykissangel and went on to create episodes of Silent Witness, Hornblower, Sea of Souls, Second Sight, Monarch of The Glen, Wire In The Blood and Wild At Heart.

As part of the 2011 Nanowrimo novel-writing event Niall wrote Crusher, a gritty YA crime thriller, which was published by Random House in 2012 and was nominated for Best Young Adult novel by the Mystery Writers of America. He followed it with two sequels, Incinerator and Crusher.

in 2015 Niall adapted two novels by his wife, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, into feature films for Universal Pictures.

2021 will see the US publication of 'M: King's Bodyguard', by Penguin Random House, an historical thriller set in Edwardian London and based on real events. Niall is currently working on its sequel.

Niall has led seminars and workshops on screenwriting and script editing for the BBC, the Northern Ireland Film Council and the Irish Screenwriters’ Guild, and led seminars on on the creative process at UCLA.

He is married with two kids and a rather smelly dog and lives in West London.