The upcoming ITV drama Believe Me options established and rising British stars coming collectively to inform a harrowing British story. Aimée-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses, Peaky Blinders, Mr Burton), Aasiya Shah (Raised by Wolves, Bloods, The Beast Must Die) and Miriam Petche (Industry) characteristic within the four-episode collection reverse Daniel Mays (Line of Duty, Des, A Thousand Blows, Moonflower Murders) as John Worboys, who is understood within the U.Ok. by a extra sinister moniker: the “Black Cab Rapist.”
He has drawn many a headline, so now it’s time for girls who suffered due to him to see their tales and their experiences advised. From the indignity of a number of police interviews and intimate proof gathering to skeptical traces of questioning from law enforcement officials, Believe Me takes audiences by means of many a painful, irritating and anger-inducing expertise.
Indeed, Believe Me, written and government produced by Jeff Pope (Philomena, Stan & Ollie, Cilla), produced by his Etta Pictures, a part of ITV Studios, and directed by actress (Happy Valley) and director (Showtrial) Julia Ford, tells the story of the victims of “one of the most prolific sex attackers in British history” and the way they “were failed by the system,” a present description reads. “Worboys was convicted in 2009 for crimes, including sexual assault and drugging with intent, against 12 women between 2006 and 2008, with their cases selected from a large number of suspected further victims. His modus operandi was to pick up women in his cab after they’d been on a night out, claim that he’d had a win at a casino or in the lottery, then persistently offer them a drug-laced glass of champagne to help him ‘celebrate’ – which then rendered his victims unconscious.”
Believe Me focuses on the ordeals of two girls (whose actual names aren’t used, with the present as an alternative utilizing pseudonyms, with components of their tales modified to guard their anonymity), portrayed by Edwards and Shah. They reported sexual assaults by Worboys, solely to see London’s Metropolitan Police, aka Scotland Yard, failing to completely examine their circumstances, successfully leaving Worboys free to commit assaults undetected for years. Following his trial got here the belief that he was linked to allegations of additional sexual offenses towards greater than 100 girls.
Believe Me is anticipated to premiere on ITV and ITVX in May, with a particular launch date but to be unveiled. The drama was produced in affiliation with, and is distributed by, ITV Studios. It was filmed in Cardiff with the help of the Welsh authorities through Creative Wales.
As a author and/or producer, Pope has explored true-crime tales in such collection as The Widower, about convicted assassin Malcolm Webster, and The Reckoning, concerning the sexual crimes of British media persona Jimmy Savile. But he prefers to discover the human fallout of crimes somewhat than glorify their perpetrators. “That’s really been my process for a long time now,” Pope shared throughout a web based dialogue about Believe Me with members of the press. “I’m not really interested in trying to get inside the mind of psychopaths.”
In truth, he shared that the artistic workforce, together with director Ford, knew fairly shortly the place the story’s focus would lie. “We really settled very early in the creative process on making this very much about the experience of the victims,” Pope defined. “These women were drugged and they could tell something had happened, but they didn’t know exactly what had happened.”
Daniel Mays in ITV drama ‘Believe Me’
Courtesy of ITV
The artistic workforce is displaying us not the crimes themselves, however what led as much as them and the emotional fallout. “We take the audience along the journey with [these women] on the day they report being assaulted, hours and hours and hours of interviews, intimate examinations, more interviews, samples are being taken, intimate swabs,” highlighted Pope. “These women just went through the most horrendous process of all, ultimately to be told we don’t believe a crime has happened. Essentially: ‘We don’t believe you’.” That can also be the place the title of the collection comes from.
Mays had up to now already collaborated with Pope on Mrs Biggs and Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, so he was assured that Believe Me could be a robust present. “If Jeff’s going to come at you with a script, you know it’s going to be heartfelt, it’s going to be engaging, it’s going to be thoroughly researched,” the actor shared with the press. “He’s absolutely meticulous with his storytelling. He comes from a journalistic background, and so, in as much as it was a huge character to take on, with all the challenges that it threw at me, Jeff, as a writer, seems to get the best out of me as an actor.”
Mays stored highlighting the challenges of portraying a convicted prison like Worboys, additionally describing the position as “a huge thing to take on” and an “acting challenge.”
The star shared: “You’re being asked to sort of humanize someone who is evil, essentially. It’s about delving beneath those headlines and trying to play him in as three-dimensional a way as possible.”
Pope mentioned that he knew Mays would be capable to pull off this problem. But how concerning the emotional toll of slipping into the position of Worboys? “I underestimated how difficult that was going to be,” Mays advised journalists. “I’ve got 26 years of experience as a professional actor, but I’m not going to lie to you. It did, at times, take its toll. It was a difficult thing and an unsettling thing to portray, and very isolating by its very nature.”
Director Ford was requested about her description of the present as a good and balanced portrayal of what occurred to Worboys’ victims. “It’s just that this felt like the best way to tell the story,” she defined.
“Undeniably, these women were treated very, very poorly by the police, … and we tell the story from their point of view,” she continued. “But I suppose what I meant by that was that we don’t point the finger at one individual, one police man or police woman. It’s not about one particular individual, it’s about the whole system.”
