Believe Me is coming soon to ITV1, ITVX, STV & STV Player.
Did you feel a huge responsibility towards the victims in terms of getting their story right?
Yes. When you’re playing a real person in any drama, there’s always a huge responsibility that comes with it, but this was a whole other level. This isn’t a drama about the motives of John Worboys, and rightly so. This is told from the perspective of the victims, and for them to tell their truth, have their stories told – the ordeals that they went through and the fight they took on against the Metropolitan Police and the court systems. So, when you’re dealing with that, the onus was on me to get it absolutely 110% right. That was paramount to me.
Did it affect you to play someone who had committed such heinous crimes?
I actually underestimated how much it was going to affect me. I’ve been a professional actor for 26 years, so I’ve done a lot of true crime and played a lot of wrong ‘uns. When I got these scripts, it absolutely terrified me, because I’m a father myself. My head immediately went to my 13-year-old daughter Dixie. She’s venturing out, going on trains, and before long, no doubt she’ll be in the back of a taxi. So as a father, I found it an incredibly disturbing and terrifying read.
It was a difficult thing to have rolling around in my head before filming. It was a very isolating character to play, by its very nature. When I was announced to play him, I got this tirade from family and friends and work colleagues who can’t quite believe it, going, “Why would you want to play something like that?” So, the challenge was to humanise him, really, and that was a very difficult and unsettling thing to take on.
Show Synopsis:
Believe Me, stars Aimée-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses, Peaky Blinders, Dreamland, Mr Burton) as Sarah, Miriam Petche (Industry) as Carrie and Aasiya Shah (Raised by Wolves, Bloods, The Beast Must Die) as Laila.
Daniel Mays (Des, A Thousand Blows, The Long Shadow, Moonflower Murders) takes the role of John Worboys.
Believe Me tells the story of how the victims of one of the most prolific sex attackers in British history were failed by the system. John Worboys was dubbed the ‘black cab rapist’ after preying on women under the cover of being a ‘respectable’ licensed taxi-cab driver. He was convicted in 2009 for crimes including sexual assault and drugging with intent against twelve 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 on the lottery, then persistently offer them a drug-laced glass of champagne to help him ‘celebrate’ – which then rendered his victims unconscious.
The drama focuses on the ordeal of Sarah (Aimée-Ffion Edwards) and Laila (Aasiya Shah), who reported sexual assaults by Worboys (Daniel Mays), and how the Metropolitan Police failed to thoroughly investigate their allegations, leading them to feel that they were just not believed.
We see what countless women say they have to go through after reporting being raped, the indignity of multiple interviews and intimate evidence gathering, and how they can face skeptical lines of questioning from the police. For instance, Laila was even asked by an officer if her red nail varnish was indicative of her character.
Believe Me will relate how the Met’s failings effectively left Worboys free to commit assaults undetected for many years; following his trial came the realisation that he was linked to allegations of further sexual offences against over a hundred women.
Sarah and Laila then joined forces with solicitor Harriet Wistrich, played by Philippa Dunne and barrister Phillippa Kaufmann QC, played by Rachael Stirling, to sue the Metropolitan Police under the Human Rights Act for their failure to properly conduct investigations into their allegations of sexual assault, leading to their being subjected to degrading treatment and contributing to their distress. They won. And when the Met appealed that judgment all the way to the Supreme Court, they won again.
As these women fought against the odds to have their cases heard, looming in the background was Worboys’ first parole hearing. Unbelievably, only eight years after he was convicted for his crimes, his victims were made to fight again to keep him behind bars.
Sarah, Laila, Harriet and Phillippa were joined by Carrie Symonds (Miriam Petche), who was targeted by Worboys in her youth but had a narrow escape, and who was now a senior figure in the Conservative Party press team. She put her career on the line to spearhead a huge media and political campaign pushing for an unprecedented judicial review of the Parole Board’s decision. The campaign, with Sarah, Laila and Carrie at the forefront, was successful, and Worboys’ parole was quashed. The bravery and resilience of these women resulted in significant changes to the law.