‘Fightland’ Composer Paul Sanderson Talks Crafting a Gritty, Emotional Score for the Crime Drama and Working With Swindle (EXCLUSIVE)

With STARZ’s Fightland bringing a new crime story to screens, composer Paul Saunderson had the challenge of creating a sound that could match the series’ mix of action, tension, family conflict, and emotional drama.

Executive produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Fightland stars Nicholas Pinnock, Howard Charles, Deborah Ayorinde, Max Brown, and a large ensemble cast. The series follows characters caught in a world shaped by power, loyalty, revenge, and survival, giving Saunderson plenty of emotional ground to explore through the score.

Rather than relying on familiar crime-thriller sounds, Saunderson built a more distinctive musical identity for the series. He combined live strings and classical elements with electronic sounds, guitars, percussion, manipulated instruments, and modern UK hip-hop influences. He also collaborated with acclaimed UK artist Swindle, bringing elements of grime and contemporary British music into the score.

In this interview, Saunderson discusses how he developed the musical language of Fightland, worked with the show’s creative team and 50 Cent, and found the right balance between large-scale action and quieter character moments. He also talks about working with Swindle, drawing inspiration from the cast’s performances, and how his experience scoring projects such as Trying, Fight or Flight, Humans, and Three Identical Strangers shaped his approach to the series.

CB: ‘Fightland’ explores high-stakes themes of power, loyalty, and survival. How did you translate those intense emotional and narrative arcs into the musical identity of the series?

As you say, there’s a lot of raw emotion, power and survival at the heart of Fightland. We wanted the score to reflect that intensity without becoming overly complicated, so we centred it around one core thematic idea connected to the Marshal family. This gave us something we could continually return to throughout the series, adapting and reshaping it depending on what was happening on screen.

Duke is really the emotional heart of Fightland, so even in the bigger action sequences, there’s always this underlying feeling of revenge and betrayal. I wanted the music to carry that emotion underneath the action, so that even when things get intense, you’re still connected to what Duke is going through.

CB: Crime dramas often rely on specific sonic tropes to build tension. What was your approach to balancing standard crime-thriller tension with fresh, unexpected musical choices for this show?

In our early conversations with the filmmakers, the word “propulsive” came up a lot. We wanted the score to feel dynamic and fresh, while avoiding some of the more familiar crime-thriller tropes — particularly the overly droning sound you sometimes hear in the genre.

To support the action and build tension, we brought together a wide range of sounds: organic percussion, found objects, heavily manipulated synths and guitars, alongside a live string orchestra. This gave us a really cinematic sound, while also helping us create a distinctive sonic palette for the show.

We also experimented with unusual time signatures and polyrhythms, which helped keep the music feeling exciting and unpredictable. I think that sense of unpredictability is really important when you’re trying to sustain tension. You don’t always want the audience to know where the music is going next.

CB: You blended orchestral and contemporary elements to craft the series’ sound. What was the process like determining which instruments or textures represented the characters versus the overall atmosphere of the story?

The main story centres around the Marshall family. They’re well-dressed, powerful and manipulative, so we wanted their music to have a real sense of grandeur, legacy and power. We used a string orchestra and leaned into more classical harmonic progressions, but then combined that with synth basses, electronic drums, live drum kit, guitars and hard-hitting kicks. That combination gave it a kind of elegance and sophistication, but with something much more contemporary and aggressive underneath.

In contrast, we wanted a much grittier sonic palette for the drug cartel and for Duke’s revenge story. That side of the score relied more heavily on things like bowed metals, organic textures, manipulated acoustic guitar, aggressive synths, and pulsating string ostinatos. It helped create a feeling of tension and unease, and gave Duke’s story a very different musical identity from the Marshall family.

CB: Executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has a distinct visual and thematic style in his television projects. What were your initial creative conversations like with 50 Cent and the executive team regarding the direction of the score?

Working on a show associated with 50 Cent was always going to come with a certain level of expectation, and we wanted the music to live up to that. With the success of G-Unit’s Power series, it was a real honour to be involved in a project like this. From the outset, we felt a responsibility to create a score that felt worthy of the world he was helping to build.

From the early conversations, there was a real emphasis on making the music feel confident, energetic and authentic. It wasn’t about trying to imitate 50’s musical style, but more about capturing that same sense of confidence and authenticity that he brings to his projects.

That really encouraged us to be bold with the music and keep pushing for something distinctive, rather than taking the obvious route. We were constantly asking ourselves whether each cue felt like it had its own identity and whether it was matching the scale and ambition of the series. I think that mindset really helped shape the sound of Fightland.

CB: You wrote the score alongside acclaimed UK hip-hop artist Swindle. How did your two distinct musical backgrounds mesh in the studio, and what unique dynamic did Swindle bring to the project’s hip-hop and contemporary edge?

Fightland is set right in the heart of London, with UK hip-hop and grime being such a big part of the culture and the world of the show. Having someone like Swindle, who is so deeply involved in that scene, brought a really authentic perspective to the music.

It made us think about scoring some of the scenes in a different way and pushed us towards a much more diverse sonic palette. We used a lot of elements associated with grime — the right kick and bass sounds, for example. If you know, you know! We then started bringing those elements into chase and action sequences, rather than approaching them in a more traditional way.

The collaboration itself was really organic. Sometimes Swindle would start on a scene if it naturally fell more into his musical world, and I would then take it further, and other times it would work the other way around. We were constantly building on each other’s ideas, so throughout the process we could really make the most of our different strengths. I think that’s what gave the score its contemporary edge while still allowing it to feel cinematic.

CB: With a star-studded cast featuring Nicholas Pinnock, Howard Charles, and Deborah Ayorinde, performance dynamics play a huge role. Did specific actors’ performances or character chemistries directly alter or inspire how you scored certain scenes?

100 percent, especially with Nicholas Pinnock and Howard Charles. Nicholas has such a great presence in the show, and from the moment we created the main theme for the Marshall family, it just seemed to work on so many different levels. It could carry tension, emotion and power, depending on what was happening in the scene.

The theme is essentially built around a classical chord progression, but it became really malleable. It can sit quite neutrally when it needs to, but in the right context it can really amplify what’s happening on screen. That gave us a lot of freedom to shape the music around the performances rather than forcing the same emotional response every time.

Duke, in particular, is such a passionate character. There’s this constant sense of inner anger and emotion underneath his performance, and that really influenced how we approached his music. Sometimes we’d hold the music back and let that tension build, and then at other moments it would become much more explosive to match what Duke ‘Howard Charles’ was bringing to the scene. That relationship between the performance and the music was really important to us.

CB: Your career spans lighthearted comedies like Apple TV’s ‘Trying’, intense documentaries like ‘Three Identical Strangers’, and gritty thrillers like ‘Fight or Flight’. How does transitioning into a modern crime drama like ‘Fightland’ challenge or refresh your process?

For me, whatever the project is, the story is always the most important thing. But working across such a wide range of genres definitely helps me see scenes in different ways and try ideas that I might not have considered if I was only working in one genre.

Comedy, for example, has taught me a lot about timing — knowing when to come in, when to pull back, and how a really small musical moment can completely change a scene. Then with something like Three Identical Strangers, there were so many complex and conflicting emotions at play. Working on documentaries like that gives you a really good understanding of how to score those emotional moments, which then carries across into fictional projects as well.

I actually think documentaries are some of the hardest projects to score, because you’re dealing with real people and real situations. You have to be very specific about the emotion you’re supporting. With fiction, you can sometimes push things a little further and allow the audience to suspend their disbelief, whereas with a documentary you have to be much more sensitive to what’s actually happening on screen.

So, moving between genres, sometimes quite quickly, definitely keeps me creatively refreshed. It stops me feeling like I’m repeating myself and means I’m constantly bringing different experiences and approaches into whatever I’m working on next.

CB: Documentaries often require a delicate, narrative-supporting score, while action dramas require high-energy thematic driving. Did your experience on critically acclaimed docs influence how you approached the emotional groundedness in ‘Fightland’?

Definitely. I think working on documentaries has made me very aware of how important it is for the music to feel emotionally honest. When you’re dealing with real people and real experiences, you can’t always manipulate the emotion in the same way you might in a fictional story. You have to be much more sensitive to what’s already happening on screen.

I think that carried over into Fightland, particularly with the more emotional scenes. Even though these are fictional characters, the performances still need to feel believable, and the music has to support that rather than make the emotion feel bigger than it actually is.

At the same time, fiction gives you a bit more freedom to push things when the story calls for it. There are moments in Fightland where the score needs to take more of a lead and help drive the audience through a scene. I think having worked across both documentary and fiction has made me quite instinctive about when to do one or the other.

When scoring action-heavy sequences versus intimate, emotional character moments in ‘Fightland,’ how do you ensure the music heightens the scene without overpowering the dialogue or action?

I think a big part of it is knowing when to be bold and when to get out of the way. With action scenes, there’s often not much dialogue, but there’s a huge amount of sound design and effects for the music to compete with. Some scenes are naturally more musically led, which gives us the freedom to be quite bold and dynamic, but finding the right tempo is really important. You want the music to hit all the beats and turns in the scene without feeling like it’s fighting against what’s happening on screen.

With the more intimate scenes, I’m actually a big fan of leaving space and letting the performances do the work. The score can become much more held back and minimal, just subtly supporting what’s already there rather than trying to tell the audience how to feel.

There’s a great scene in Episode 5 where Duke and Jay have an emotional confrontation. The performances are so strong that the music really didn’t need to do very much. We just used it to gently support the emotion and give the scene a little extra weight. Sometimes knowing when not to add too much is just as important as knowing when to go big.

CB: What is one specific scene, motif, or track in the series that you are particularly excited for audiences to hear for the first time?

One of my favourite pieces of music in the show comes at the end of Episode 7. The track is called “Looking for Duke” on the soundtrack, and it’s a four-minute, emotionally driven action cue that runs across three scenes.

What’s interesting is that it was actually the second time we had scored the sequence. Originally, we treated the three scenes separately, but the showrunners had the idea to connect them with one continuous piece of music. We hadn’t initially seen it that way, but once they suggested it, we loved the idea and reworked the score to carry the audience through all three scenes.

I think it works really well because the music creates a sense of momentum and connection between the scenes, while still evolving with the story. It’s definitely one of the cues we’re most excited for people to hear, as it really captures a lot of what we were trying to do with the score — combining emotion, tension, and forward movement in a way that feels very cinematic.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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