Had things played out differently, Natalie Dormer’s face would be splashed across magazine covers right now. The actor would be sitting on chat shows, chummily sharing anecdotes about her time on Game of Thrones and charming the pants off Graham Norton. She would be giving interview after interview about her glossy new ITV series The Lady, which concerns Jane Andrews, the royal dresser to Sarah Ferguson, who went on to murder her businessman boyfriend, Thomas Cressman, at their London home in 2000. Dormer, in a bouncy red blowout and shoulder pads, plays the then-Duchess of York.
But as luck would have it, Dormer is doing none of these things. You’d hardly know she was in the show if you were not tuning in yourself. The publicity circuit in general for The Lady has been very hush-hush if not totally non-existent after Dormer pulled out of promoting the series back in September.
She did so following a fresh revelation about Ferguson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire sex offender who died in prison in 2019. In an email sent in 2011, Ferguson apologised to the American financier for publicly disavowing him after he’d been jailed years earlier for soliciting prostitution from a minor. “I know you feel hellaciously let down by me from what you were either told or read and I must humbly apologise to you and your heart for that,” Ferguson wrote. (A spokesperson for the then-duchess said she had sent the email in response to a threat Epstein had made to sue her for defamation.)
In a statement issued last year, Dormer said: “When I agreed to take the role in The Lady, I knew portraying the script’s Sarah Ferguson would require nuance. People are layered, their journeys are full of highs and lows, and as an actor, my job is to lean into those elements and bring them to life with honesty and empathy.
“Since completing the project, new information has come to light that makes it impossible for me to reconcile my values with Sarah Ferguson’s behaviour, which I believe is inexcusable. For that reason, I will not be taking part in the promotion of the project.”
Dormer went one step further and donated her full salary from The Lady to the National Association for People Abused in Childhood and the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse – a move “in keeping with my commitment to the well-being of children”, she said.
It’s true that the series arrives at an awkward (to put it mildly) time for Ferguson, whose ex-husband, ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has just been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office this week over allegations that he sent confidential government documents to Epstein. An unflattering photo of him slunk down in the backseat of a car has been plastered on every newspaper in the world – and the Louvre. The arrest follows, of course, months and months of disgrace for Andrew. And Fergie too.
Just days ago, accusations emerged that she had taken her daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, to meet Epstein only days after he was released from prison for child sex crimes. She also stands accused of introducing her then 22-year-old goddaughter to Epstein months later. “Over to you!” she wrote in an email, released in the Epstein files, providing the contact details for the daughter of her former lady-in-waiting. Epstein appeared to consider employing her and making a $100,000 donation in her name to a health charity.
All this to say, a series focused on Ferguson and her circle is a tough sell these days. While The Lady’s star, the Bafta-nominated Mia McKenna Bruce who plays the working-class, Grimsby-born Andrews, has not made any statement, things have been noticeably quiet from her camp too. Seemingly zero interviews were completed or published in the lead-up to the show’s release – an anomaly for a primetime drama.
Of course, disowning a project is nothing new for an actor – whether over creative differences or ethical concerns. The past decade, for example, has seen a spate of stars disavow their work with Woody Allen. Greta Gerwig, Colin Firth, Elliot Page, Kate Winslet, and Rachel Brosnahan among them. Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Hall donated their salaries from their films with the director, A Rainy Day in New York and Victoria Cristina Barcelona, respectively, to charitable causes.
In the case of Dormer, her foresight turns out to have been fortuitous – not only because more continues to come out about Ferguson in the Epstein files – but because the series is not very good anyway. In a two-star review, The Independent’s TV critic Nick Hilton points out that beyond the sensationalist interest in Andrews’ royal links, the case feels oddly “flat” and would be of no interest to TV crime writers sans Fergie.
He also notes that Andrews is still alive, as are the family and friends of her victim, Thomas Cressman. “And so, the prurience of the case – including allegations, depicted here in the courtroom scenes, of rape and domestic abuse against Cressman, and sex abuse in Andrews’ childhood, all of which remains unproven – feels uncomfortable,” he writes. Cressman’s brother has also objected to the project, which depicts the late businessman as unlikeable and “faintly seedy”, notes The Telegraph.
Despite some superb performances, The Lady tells an ugly royal story that anyone living in the UK in the 2000s will remember – all the while an even uglier one unfolds in real time. For Dormer, getting distance from that can surely only be a good thing.
Coronation Street star criticises soap’s ‘crime-heavy’ storylines after quiet exit
Industry star says their character is ‘loosely inspired’ by Ghislaine Maxwell
The real-life murder case behind Fergie dresser drama ‘The Lady’
Why the TV industry keeps falling in love with the Kennedy family
Eric Dane: How the late Grey’s Anatomy star brought heroic ALS fight to the screen
‘She’s the queen of Ireland’: Inside the first ever Marian Keyes TV show
