ITV Drama 'Believe Me': Aimée-Ffion Edwards Interview on Police
Aimée-Ffion Edwards in 'Believe Me'
Courtesy of ITV
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If you wonder where the title of new ITV drama Believe Me comes from, you just need to know this: the four-part drama, written and executive produced by Jeff Pope (Philomena, Stan & Ollie, Cilla) and premiering on Sunday, May 10, tells the harrowing story of two women, portrayed by Aimée-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses, Peaky Blinders, Mr Burton) and Aasiya Shah (Raised by Wolves, Bloods, The Beast Must Die), who reported assaults by a taxi driver. That driver turned out to be “one of the most prolific sex attackers in British history,” but the women “were failed by the system,” specifically London’s Metropolitan Police, or Scotland Yard.
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The women suffered the indignity of multiple interviews, intimate evidence gathering and skeptical lines of questioning from the police, among other things. Miriam Petche (Industry) also features in the series as a woman who got away, but is also struggling with the aftermath of an encounter with the driver.
Daniel Mays (Line of Duty, Des, A Thousand Blows, Moonflower Murders) plays the attacker, John Worboys, who became known in the U.K. as the “Black Cab Rapist.” His modus operandi was to pick up women in his cab after they had been on a night out, claim that he had won at a casino or in the lottery, and persistently offer them a drug-laced glass of champagne to help him “celebrate” – which rendered his victims unconscious.
Julia Ford directed Believe Me, produced by Pope’s Etta Pictures, part of ITV Studios. The drama, filmed in Cardiff with the support of the Welsh government via Creative Wales, was produced in association with, and is distributed by, ITV Studios.
The female stars of the series shared, in a chat with THR, what it was like to portray two victims, Sarah (Edwards) and Laila (Shah), whose real names aren’t used, with the show instead using pseudonyms and changing elements of their stories to protect their anonymity.
“What’s so amazing about Jeff’s writing is that the layers are already there, and he’s so brilliant at writing scenes that feel really relatable and really human,” Edwards told THR. “I feel every scene in this script is really important. It doesn’t matter how simple it feels, but it provides the opportunity to give a little bit more of a character.”
The actress also shared that “we were really lucky to get to talk to the real Sarah and hear her side and listen to her talk about her experience, which helped with layering up all that stuff. But a lot of the acting is instinct.” Edwards explained that the role gave her a chance to dive into the complexity of all sorts of intense emotions overlapping. “We can feel anger and despair and vulnerability and all those things at the same time,” she explained. “And I think that having the opportunity to show that nuanced experience is really important.”
Shah also recalled having “a long Zoom with the real Sarah, and I just said from the beginning, ‘Just talk, I’ll let you lead this. Share whatever you want to share.’ And she was so generous. She shared so much and went into so much detail, and I was able to track her experience over time, and that was such a gift.”
Shah told THR that the exchange took place “quite early on in my prep process, and I felt like it just set me off on the right path and grounded me in the real experience of not only a survivor, but one of the key people that our story is based around.”
Petche discussed how she got into her character, who had a different experience with Worboys. “You want to tell the story to the best of your ability with what’s given in the script and with no what was presented,” she said.
“It was about her having a narrow escape, believing that her drink was spiked, but that she wasn’t assaulted,” Petche told THR. “And I feel very lucky that in the writing, there were all these layers and complexities of figuring out this huge behemoth of a thing at such a young age, which a lot of these women had to go through. That’s a very complex thing that takes time.”
How did Pope make sure to do justice to the female characters in Believe Me? “I was very aware [that I was] a man telling the story of essentially these three women,