The original cast of the BBC’s Narnia series have said they were warned about Jimmy Savile as children.
Broadcast over six weeks in 1988, The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe was the first of four Narnia books written by CS Lewis to be adapted over three series for the BBC.
The show cast relative newcomers as the Pevensie children who discover a magical portal to a new world inside the wardrobe of a country home. Sophie Wilcox starred as Lucy, Richard Dempsey as Peter, Sophie Cook as Susan, and Jonathan R Scott as Edmund.
Nearly 40 years after the show aired, the original cast have reunited for a two-hour documentary Return to Narnia.
In a new interview in The Times, the actors spoke about the sudden scrutiny they faced in the spotlight – as well as being warned about serial sex offender Jimmy Savile.
“It was a very strange time,” said Cook, who was 13 years old when she began playing Susan.
“I don’t know if anyone’s told you the story of Jimmy Savile being in the next studio when we were filming in TV Centre [in White City, west London]? And one of the floor managers came up to us and said, ‘Don’t go near him, he’s a kiddie fiddler.’”
Cook continued: “It was just known … [I’m] not picking holes in the BBC. I think that [it] was just … culturally accepted. This level of knowledge of stuff going on, you know, of a darkness, only just a studio away.”
Although allegations against Savile surfaced in the Eighties, it wasn’t until a year after his death, in 2012, that the police launched an inquiry into his abuse. Over six decades, Savile had sexually abused hundreds of children and women – using his position as a prominent celebrity and his connections in the church, the NHS, the royal family and the government to facilitate and conceal his crimes.
In response to Cook’s claim, the BBC said: “Following the revelations about Savile, the BBC commissioned former Court of Appeal judge Dame Janet Smith DBE to conduct a thorough, independent review of the culture and practices of the BBC during the years he worked here, which was published in 2016. We accepted the conclusions and recommendations in full and since then have implemented a number of changes to help prevent anything like this happening again.”
The cast told The Times that they felt looked after by the show’s production team.
Elsewhere in the interview, the actors recalled being pointed at in restaurants and being followed after the show aired. They also found some of the negative reviews particularly hurtful.
Wilcox, who played Lucy, said she had seen the press say she was “‘bursting out of my cardigan’ or something like that. Literally fat-shaming. And I was a chubby child”.
The Chronicles of Narnia remastered Blu-ray edition boxset including Return to Narnia is released on 24 November.
If you are a child and you need help because something has happened to you, you can call the NSPCC free of charge on 0800 1111. You can also call the NSPCC if you are an adult and you are worried about a child, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adults on 0808 801 0331
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