The veteran actor Juliet Stevenson has said she is “haunted” by the death of Sarah Everard ahead of the release of her new BBC crime thriller, Wolf.
Based on the thriller novel by Mo Hayder, Wolf stars Stevenson as Matilda Anchor-Ferrers, an “intelligent yet neurotic housewife” whose comfortable life on the Welsh estate she shares with her husband and daughter is turned upside down when two men appear at their house.
“It’s pretty extreme,” Stevenson told the Radio Times. “There were moments which were really hard to take. I’m very haunted by the death of Sarah Everard and the amount of brutal violence there is towards women. I suppose drama is sometimes saying: this violence is very grotesque, but it does happen. I don’t know how that helps anybody, but it isn’t more outrageous than life is.”
Stevenson, 66, who has often spoken out about perceptions of, and opportunities for, older women in the industry, also said the drama centred a female character.
“Women my age often play roles fulfilling a supportive function to the man, but Matilda’s husband is very frail after a heart operation and their daughter is processing psychological trauma. She is fundamentally the victim, but she shows a lot of ingenuity, cunning and courage.”
Her character spends a lot of time chained to a radiator, when she isn’t being dangled upside down from the ceiling. The role played on a fear Stevenson has had since childhood – of people coming into her home. The actor, who is based in New York while she stars in Robert Icke’s play The Doctor, said she spent a lot of nights checking all her cupboards for intruders.
“Until my husband and family arrived here, every night when I came back from the theatre, I would check every cupboard, every door,” she said. “It’s my only real terror and I don’t know why. Wolf was the realisation of that fantasy so it was a very strange situation to find myself actually playing it.”
Other cast members in Wolf include Ukweli Roach, Doctor Who’s Sacha Dhawan, and Game of Thrones stars Owen Teale and Iwan Rheon.
The six-part drama also follows Roach’s character, DI Jack Caffrey, who in a parallel storyline believes his neighbour murdered his 10-year-old brother in the 1990s. At some point the two narratives collide, leading to an edge-of-your-seat race against time.
Meanwhile, The Doctor, a combative 2019 play about medical ethics, explores themes including identity politics, cancel culture and abortion – which Stevenson said had provoked strong reactions in audience members. Some stamp and cheer, others have walked out, she said. “That silent conversation with an audience in live theatre still fascinates me,” she added.
