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DARK ANGEL
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Contents Press Release .................................................................................................................... Pages 3-‐4
Introduction by writer Gwyneth Hughes ........................................................................... Page 5-‐6
Character Biographies ....................................................................................................... Pages 7-‐8
Interview with Joanne Froggatt (Mary Ann Cotton) ....................................................... Pages 9-‐14
Interview with Alun Armstrong (George Stott) ............................................................. Pages 15-‐18
Interview with Jonas Armstrong (Joe Nattrass) ............................................................ Pages 19-‐22
Interview with producer Jake Lushington ..................................................................... Pages 23-‐27
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DARK ANGEL
Dark Angel is a new two-‐part drama, from Line of Duty makers World Productions, based on the extraordinary true story of the Victorian poisoner Mary Ann Cotton, played by Golden Globe winner and Emmy award nominee Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey). Dark Angel also features Alun Armstrong (New Tricks, Penny Dreadful), Jonas Armstrong (Edge of Tomorrow, Robin Hood), Laura Morgan (Torchwood, Suspicions of Mr Whicher), Sam Hoare (Life in Squares) Emma Fielding (Arthur & George, DCI Banks) and Penny Layden (Call the Midwife). We meet Mary Ann as a loving wife and mother, newly returned to her native North East of England. But faced with abject poverty and an ailing husband, we see how ruthlessly determined she is to pursue her desires -‐ and a better life ... Mary Ann is a serial killer, a poisoner whose methods leave no visible scars, allowing her tally of victims to mount unsuspected by a Victorian society unable
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to conceive a woman capable of such terrible crimes. Travelling around the North East, she inveigles herself into the homes of unsuspecting families, marrying and creating new families of her own -‐ before killing them, taking their money and moving on. Through adultery, bigamy, fraud and murder, Mary Ann betters herself socially and financially. But the more she kills, the greater the risk her heinous crimes will finally be exposed … Dark Angel is produced by Jake Lushington (The Bletchley Circle, The Devil’s Whore) and executive produced by Kirstie Macdonald (The Fear) and Simon Heath (Line of Duty, Code of a Killer) and Gwyneth Hughes. Dark Angel is written by Gwyneth Hughes (The Girl, Five Days) and directed by Emmy and BAFTA award-‐winner Brian Percival (Downton Abbey). The drama is inspired by the book “Mary Ann Cotton: Britain’s First Female Serial Killer” by David Wilson, which is published by Waterside Press. Dark Angel was filmed in North Yorkshire and County Durham.
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INTRODUCTION BY WRITER GWYNETH HUGHES
Mary Ann Cotton, Dead and forgotten She lies in her bed,
With her eyes wide open Sing, sing, oh, what can I sing,
Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string Where, where? Up in the air
Sellin' black puddens a penny a pair. Mary Ann Cotton married four times, and collected on the life insurance of all four husbands. She killed her mother. She killed her natural children, and her stepchildren. All died painfully and miserably from arsenic poisoning. And she got away with murder for years. Or so we believe – for Mary Ann Cotton is indeed dead and long forgotten, except for that one County Durham skipping rhyme. The only certain facts in her story are that she was hanged in Durham on the 24th March 1873 for the murder of her seven year old stepson; that she proclaimed her innocence to the end; and that fatal amounts of arsenic were found in the exhumed bodies of another two children, and of the man who was the love of her life. I had never even heard her name before starting work on her story, and neither, it seems, had anyone else. While I was in the North East researching her life, I asked everyone I met, and I never met a soul who had heard of her! Mary Ann had disappeared from history. So for a writer with a passion for true crime, history, and strong female characters – well, the idea of bringing her extraordinary story to the screen was beyond irresistible. So many questions, from the start. Did she do it for money? For pleasure? For freedom? In a killing career lasting at least seven years, why did no-‐one ever suspect her? Mary Ann Cotton was born into poverty in 1832, in a County Durham pit village, where her father was killed in a mining accident when she was eight years old. As I read about her, and thought hard about her life, I began to enter the vanished world of Victorian female poverty – a world very far from the crinolines and bonnets of nostalgic imagination. This was a time when one in four working class children died in infancy, and when nobody fully understood how stomach bugs like typhoid were spread. It’s easy to see how arsenic poisoning could go undetected. And Mary Ann moved around, a lot, so that she rarely saw the same doctor twice.
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Fascinatingly, it began to become clear to me that one reason nobody suspected her was because she was a woman, and a mother. Today we have the hideous models of killers like Myra Hindley and Rose West to puncture any soppy notions about women’s natural virtue. To the Victorian mindset, it just didn’t compute. Women were simply incapable of such wickedness. Her biographer, David Wilson, puts Mary Ann’s final tally at sixteen or seventeen victims. Eagle-‐eyed viewers will spot that our film indicts her for only nine murders. (Only!) As a dramatist, and as a viewer, I have a personal problem with dramas where violence and brutal death are depicted casually and without feeling. Everyone Mary Ann killed was very close to her – close enough to expect love and care – and for me, every death had to count, morally and dramatically. The nine deaths I have chosen to depict are the ones I felt I could get inside and see from her point of view. That’s not a comfortable place to be! But I soon found that I couldn’t see Mary Ann Cotton as some kind of cold and calculating killing machine. Drama is all about character, isn’t it? and the woman who began to appear as I wrote was complex, needy, yearning, and much more desperate than evil. I make no excuse for her truly appalling crimes. But in my story, and in Joanne Froggatt’s luminous portrayal, the Victorian serial killer emerges as an ambitious and disappointed woman, trapped by low horizons and constant childbearing. When she was hanged, she had just given birth to a daughter who may have been her 14th child. Her sins were driven by her longing to escape that very female form of slavery – and which of us today could bear her life? If a modern British woman were to ask Mary Ann what she wanted, I believe she would reply: “Contraception. Independence. Hot and cold running water. And a washing machine.” She wanted my life. And yours.
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CHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES
JOANNE FROGGATT PLAYS MARY ANN COTTON
Mary Ann Cotton was determined to avoid her destiny of marrying a coal miner. Her mother was left a widow when Mary Ann’s father was killed in a mining accident, plunging the family into poverty and hardship. From then on Mary Ann’s life was a series of births, marriages and deaths. Desperate to improve her situation and cash in on the new fashion of life insurance, she married four times (the last time committing bigamy) killing three of her husbands, as well as at least six other close friends and family members. Unrepentant to the last, she was hanged at age 40.
ALUN ARMSTRONG PLAYS GEORGE STOTT
George Stott was a publican, who married Mary Ann’s mother following the death of her father. He adored Mary Ann and her children, taking great responsibility for her and her offspring. Always looking for the good in his step-‐daughter, he helped her whenever he was able but struggled at the end to reconcile his version of Mary Ann with that of the public and the law.
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JONAS ARMSTRONG IS JOE NATTRASS
Joe Nattrass was a hard working coal miner with a twinkle in his eye. His attraction to Mary Ann was instant but at least in the beginning of their long affair, he dictated the rules of their relationship. After some time apart and the death of his wife, Joe matured, and it looked as though he and Mary Ann might have found the stability they both craved, but it was ultimately not to be.
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JOANNE FROGGATT IS MARY ANN COTTON
Q: Were you still filming Downton Abbey when this role came up? “Yes, I was still doing Downton Abbey. They sent the script for the first episode and asked if I was interested in playing Mary Ann. The script was so good and I was hooked straight away. Gwyneth Hughes has done an amazing job of writing the scripts and depicting Mary Ann and her life. “I’m trying not to play her as a psychopath, because the story spans over 15 years where we see where she starts and then what she becomes.” Q: Why did you want to play another period role straight after Anna Bates?
“I was really excited about this role. Although Dark Angel is a period drama, Mary Ann could not be more different from Anna Bates. This is totally different to Downton. It’s a different time period as well.
“Even though it’s all in Gwyneth’s scripts, Mary Ann is such a complex character to make sense of that I felt I needed to do some of my own research as well. I read a book about her which is a factual account, as far as we know, of what happened.
“Then I did some research on female serial killers in general and the differences between male and female serial killers. Because to play somebody you have to make sense of what they’re doing in their head. Not only to make sense of it for you, but
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you have to make sense of their thought processes and their feelings. It’s very challenging with such serious subject matter.
“Interestingly, according to the research I did, most female serial killers don’t start killing until their early thirties and nobody really knows the reason for that. Also, they will usually kill by poisoning or smothering or overdose or something quite clean and tidy.
“While for men it’s often more of a sexual thing, for women it’s usually for financial or social gain. It was fascinating to find out about these things.”
Q: Is it important not to depict Mary Ann as a monster? “It’s not the story we’re telling and it’s not what anyone really believes was her story. We first meet her at the age of 25 when she has suffered the natural loss of four of her children. I guess she almost goes mad with grief at some points.
“She is a working class woman in the Victorian era and there’s no opportunity, no choice. There’s no going out and having a career. Everything was simply marriage and babies. Washing, cleaning, cooking and rats. It was a horrendous life and she always felt that it was a life that wasn’t right. She always wanted more than that.
“Mary Ann was quite modern thinking in feeling she deserved more, when a lot of people would have just accepted that life because there was no other choice. Today, thank goodness, we have lots of choices and women can achieve things. She can’t accept her lot but goes about seeking a better life in ways none of us would choose.
“I was fascinated by the psychology behind it. She doesn’t feel emotions in the same way other people do. Mary Ann knew what she was doing was wrong but didn’t have any feelings of guilt about it.
“She’s not mentally ill in the sense she sees or hears things. She doesn’t hallucinate. Mary Ann can manipulate people very easily and is very good at that. But it’s never a conscious decision. It’s something that comes naturally to her, is developed over the years and becomes a very honed skill.
“But then in other ways she seems quite naive. In certain situations she doesn’t understand people’s emotions because she doesn’t feel them in the same way. I’ve loved playing all of those complications.”
Q: Female killers of children always appear to attract added notoriety, given that women and mothers are supposed to protect them?
“It’s extremely rare for a woman to carry a child for nine months and go through all those hormones and emotions of living and caring for that child and then want to harm them. But unfortunately there are people out there that do harm their children in lots of different ways.
“It is shocking and unthinkable that she could harm her own child. But it’s her state of mind you have to look at. It’s hard to believe a woman was capable of that.”
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Q: Mary Ann has intimate relations with Joe Nattrass, played by Jonas Armstrong. Did it help that you had worked with him before on Robin Hood?
“Yes, it’s always easier when you’ve worked with somebody before. We got on so that was fine. Jonas and I have some intimate scenes together and it’s less awkward if you already know someone. You can have a shorthand about a scene.
Q: Joe awakens the sexual desire in Mary Ann?
“He was the love of her life. They had a 15-‐year affair on and off through the moving around to different towns and places. She first meets Joe when her life is really awful and she is miserable. Mary Ann’s husband is away at sea a lot of the time and the romance is long gone from that relationship. She has lost so many children and is more or less constantly pregnant and can barely feed her family. It’s a monotonous hell.
“Then she meets this man from out of nowhere and he brings her joy. It’s as simple as that. Yes, it is a sexual awakening she’s never experienced before and a physical joy for the first time. But that is the key to her wanting more in life. Something she didn’t know about before.
“She is always chasing the dream in her head. Chasing a fairy tale throughout her whole life. Mary Ann is capable of lust, sensation and caring but not of falling completely in love. Not after what she’s been through. But she wants that fairy tale, she wants status and wants to be respected. And Joe is the start of her wanting all of those things.”
Q: So that sexual desire is a very important part of who she is?
“Apparently, again from researching this role, another trait of psychopathy is being promiscuous because they don’t have an emotional attachment to sex in the same way as other people do. There’s no right or wrong or guilt in that mind set. That is part of who Mary Ann is. You can’t tell the story without that.
“Certainly I was a little nervous about those scenes. But the sexual content is not there to titillate the audience in any way, shape or form. There’s no nudity or anything like that. It simply helps to tell the story and makes perfect sense in the context. To that degree there are many stolen moments and affairs.
“I think people who know me as Anna from Downton Abbey will be more shocked at other parts of this story, to be honest.
“I was also nervous about having to sing. And having to deal with cockroaches. Plus I found out I don’t like being in the back of an old fashioned horse and cart because that feels very unstable. There are lots of things I found challenging. Lots of challenges to overcome.
“But as long as I know they are there for the right reason, it’s not a problem. This was a role I couldn’t say no to and I totally believe every one of those moments needs to be included.”
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Q: Tell us more about the singing?
“Singing is the worst thing ever. I literally want to cry if I have to sing in public. I find it really hard. I have a real thing about it. I’ve never sung solo on screen before. I was dubbed doing it in a drama called Nature Boy and I’ve sung in a group. But never on my own.
“I had two singing lessons just to manage to do this little ditty that Mary Ann can barely sing in tune. I was terrified of doing it but I think it actually turned out all right.”
Q: What accent have you used for Mary Ann?
“It’s a general north east accent because she moved around. It’s not specific to any town. I made it quite a soft accent because they didn’t want her to be harsh or too difficult to understand. The actual accent of a working class woman of that time would probably be quite hard for our modern ears. I loved doing the accent.”
Q: A modern day audience may be surprised to learn arsenic was readily available to buy in general stores in Mary Ann’s time?
“Women used it for all sorts of things then, including cleaning. It was everywhere in the Victorian era. Much more common than we would think. And apparently there were general social references and jokes about using arsenic on your husband or very sadly even your baby. Because with no birth control there were lots of unwanted babies. Some desperate women may well have resorted to getting rid of unwanted husbands, because they were able to get away with it.
“That’s how Mary Ann starts out. When she has lost another child. She believes in God but wonders why he is doing this to her. Her husband can’t work and they have no way of paying the rent or feeding the family. While his life is insured. She does a terrible thing. And once she’s done that she’s not able to stop…
“She thinks she’s going to Hell anyway so has nothing left to lose. But there are moments where she could have chosen to make a fresh start. It’s heartbreaking because this is a woman who is mentally ill. She’s not well.
“People didn’t talk about things in the same way they do now. Nobody knew anything about mental health back then. If somebody was depressed, for example, and didn’t manage to cope with life they were just locked up in some terrible place. There was no education.
“So Mary Ann doesn’t understand what’s happening to her and why she’s different. But then she has moments of clarity where she knows she’s different, she knows she’s done wrong and she’s devastated by it.”
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Q: Life insurance was a new concept at that time?
“It was very new. It wasn’t her idea to insure her first husband’s life. It was her step-‐father’s idea, because they had lost children they wanted to make sure she would be protected in some way. She didn’t want him to be insured because she thought it was tempting fate.”
Q: How did Mary Ann get away with these murders for so long?
“It was a mixture of things. She finally gets caught because of forensic science which previously hadn’t existed but it’s the early days of using basic technologies. Mary Ann lived during the Industrial Revolution so people were moving around a lot to find work. Moving from town to town.
“Had she stayed in one place people may have become suspicious that all these people around her had died. But she made new starts in new places and she was good at building a new life for herself where people didn’t know her past.
“There’s a picture of her looking very hard and haggard. You think, ‘How did she manage to get four husbands looking like that?’ But it shows her just before she went to the gallows. Apparently, they also doctored it in the newspapers to make her look even more evil.”
Q: Do you think she carried a terror of discovery through her life?
“She appears to have that fear at one stage and knows she’s done a terrible thing and almost confesses to her step-‐father. But in later years she’s too deluded and past that point. Mary Ann feels like she’s on this island and it’s all too late for her to come to terms with what she has done.”
Q: Was there any question of her escaping the hangman’s noose?
“She didn’t think she’d hang because she gave birth in prison and was nursing a child. But by that point she was so deluded by her own self-‐importance. I don’t know whether she was fully aware of her guilt but she certainly wasn’t letting anyone else know.”
Q: Coming from Whitby, was it a bonus that the Dark Angel locations were in Yorkshire and County Durham?
“It’s been lovely to film here. Although Downton Abbey was set in Yorkshire it was filmed down south at Highclere Castle and Ealing Studios. We’ve been based in York a lot of the time and I’d forgotten how beautiful it is. We also had a couple of days at Saltburn, which is very close to home. So I got to stay with my parents for a few nights. And then filming at Beamish Museum in County Durham was good.”
Q: Mary Ann’s “poisoned” tea pot plays an important role in her story. At the outset she tells her mother it reminds her of home. What reminds you of home?
“What says home for me? The people I love. My husband says home to me. Wherever he is, that’s home.”
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Q: You were reunited on Dark Angel with Downton Abbey director Brian Percival. What is it like working with him?
“Brian is an amazing and talented director. I knew if Brian took the job I would be in safe hands. I totally believed he could make Dark Angel something spectacular.
“When he was working out his dates and whether he would be free to do it, his wife went to the local garden centre and came back with some plants. And when he went to plant one of them its name was ‘Dark Angel’. So he said that was a sign.
“Again, it’s like working with an actor you’ve worked with before. Brian makes it so much easier. You have that shorthand where you know and understand each other. Everything is quicker. You have faith and trust in them so you throw yourself into it straight away in what is always a tight filming schedule.
“Brian can bring out the best in me and I love his naturalistic style. The way he will take a great script and make it into something even better. I was excited to see what he did with Dark Angel.”
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ALUN ARMSTRONG IS GEORGE STOTT
Q: What appealed to you about Dark Angel? “Mary Ann came from my home county. I was brought up in County Durham and I never really get a chance to do the accent. I didn’t know her story. When they said there was a nursery rhyme kids used to recite it rang a bell. But that was about it. I thought George was a particularly interesting character. He was sympathetic and yet troubled. So it was a nice area for an actor to visit. “When I started off as an actor there were hardly any Geordie parts. Get Carter was my first film and that started the ball rolling. They reckoned people couldn’t understand the accent. Certainly actors couldn’t do it. Whereas now it’s all changed. “So I spent all of my early career hardly ever being able to do my natural accent. I was always working in other people’s accents. Necessity is the mother of invention. You just do what you do and hope it turns out all right. “Joanne Froggatt, who plays Mary Ann, had the accent down to a T. All the young actors did. I went to the readthrough and I was amazed. I couldn’t really tell whether two thirds of them were real Geordies or not. “And Penny Layden, who plays George’s wife Margaret, is a wonderful actress. She not only had a north east accent, she had an accent from that village, South Hetton in County Durham. She had it absolutely spot on. It was remarkable.
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“Joanne was also fantastic. Incredibly professional and at ease. Very detailed in her work and just a joy to work with.” Q: Who was George Stott? “George was Mary Ann’s stepfather and a publican. Her real father fell down the pit shaft at Murton Colliery. I’ve got a mate who worked at Murton Colliery who I’ve been seeing a bit of recently and he knew the whole story very well. I met up with him while we were filming. He had worked most of his life at the colliery. So it was obviously very well known around there. “In our story he treats her as if she were his own daughter but there were times when they fell out. He asked her for the truth but she protested her innocence right until the end.” Q: What was it like filming back in the north east and Yorkshire? “It was great because I hadn’t worked there for a long time. I still go up there. My two best friends are guys I went to school with. I’ve known them since I was 11-‐years-‐old and we’re still very close. So I do go up and socialise with them and I’ve got a couple of cousins up there still.” Q: Did George and Mary Ann live in hard times? “Indeed they were very tough times. Even though I’m the son of a pitman myself, I went to Beamish Museum in County Durham recently when I was on holiday there. My wife and I go walking with a big bunch of people every year and this time we stayed in Stanhope and walked around Weardale -‐ and had a week of fantastic weather. “I took them all to the museum at Beamish and we went down the drift mine there. A young man gave us a commentary describing the kind of working conditions and showed us all of the implements they used. “There were three or four of us who were from mining families and we were all shocked at just how tough it was. It was very moving. And we all said, ‘Aren’t we lucky? We’re probably the first generation able to escape that life.’ We were born just at the right time after the Education Act, after the Second World War, and we benefited from huge social and political change in this country. We were so lucky. “Strangely enough I had never been to Beamish before. That was my first visit. And they’ve got our Co-‐op there. The Annfield Plain Co-‐op building. The one I went to, day in and day out, all through my childhood. Although my character wasn’t involved in the scene it was also used as the location for the general store in Dark Angel where Mary Ann buys her arsenic.
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“It was remarkable to walk back into that Co-‐op after all that time. Beamish is a wonderful museum and I shall definitely be going back again.” Q: Was death, including infant mortality, common at the time of Dark Angel? “Death was an everyday thing and they were prepared for it. That’s what you get from the story. There was so much of it about. Although it’s heartbreaking for the people involved, nevertheless it’s almost to be expected. I suppose it’s a bit like living in the Middle East now. George was a religious believer, so he had that comfort and certainty.” Q: Was life insurance a new concept then? “George told his son-‐in-‐law Billy that he did the right thing getting life insurance. Little knowing what a double-‐edged sword that was. It was a very new thing then.” Q: Did you come to any conclusions as to why Mary Ann killed so many people? “Who knows? She was obviously a very troubled character. And the fact she lost her father when she was a child may well have had a terrible effect on her. She was a bit of a fantasist as well. Mary Ann had this unrealistic idea of what her life could be, without having a real understanding of how to go about making it happen. It all had to happen quickly and without too much difficulty or hard work. “There is some doubt about how many people she did or didn’t kill. But anybody who is a serial murderer has psychological issues. Like psychopaths, she obviously had a very winning way and could convince people. She could hide it and talk her way into situations and out of trouble. Also, she kept moving and her name kept changing. Even small distances were pretty huge in those horse and cart days. So that helped her evade detection.” Q: Jonas Armstrong plays Joe Nattrass in Dark Angel. Do people confuse him with your actor son Joe Armstrong? “With names like that they do get mixed up. They worked together in Robin Hood. A lot of people think Jonas is my son.” Q: You recently turned 70. Did you have a big celebration? “I had a little party at my house with a few friends. But as I said to them all, ‘I’ve left it to the last minute because I didn’t really believe wholeheartedly I’d actually make it to the milestone.’ People have been telling me all my life, ‘If you carry on like this you’ll be lucky to see 50.’ Then 60 and 70. I always burned the candle at both ends. But I’ve made it. So far.”
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Q: You have enjoyed a long and varied career. How do you reflect on that? “I look back and I always say, ‘I’ve been very, very lucky.’ It’s difficult to assess your own abilities and your own work. But so many wonderful actors I know struggle, and have always struggled, to work. So I’ve just been bloody lucky and I don’t know why that is. Whether I’ve got the right sort of face that fits some roles along the line. But I have been lucky.” Q: Do actors ever retire? “No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t see myself as retiring. Although I am slowing down. I’m getting picky. Particularly since the majority of jobs one does these days film-‐wise are chaotic. Decisions are made at the last minute and it’s all chaos. And scripts aren’t finished properly. “Dark Angel was a joy because it was properly prepped and you could just do your job. It was great. It was like it was in the old days. Q: What’s next? “I’ve been filming Tennison for ITV. Then I’m expecting to go back to Canada to do season two of a Netflix historical costume drama called Frontier. It’s about the fur trade in Canada in the late 18th century. Where I play the most psychopathic, evil person ever written for the small screen. So it’s great fun. A joy.”
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JONAS ARMSTRONG IS JOE NATTRASS
Q: Did you know about this story before Dark Angel came along? “I’d never heard about Mary Ann’s story before. People in the north east definitely know of her and the history. But it’s not that well known elsewhere.” Q: Who is Joe Nattrass? “Joe Nattrass is a bit of a jack-‐the-‐lad type of character. I hate using that term, but that’s what he is. He’s a very confident young man who sees himself as a ladies’ man. He knows how to charm them. He tries his luck with Mary and she brushes him off. But he still has that confidence and because he’s covered in coal dust, Joe tells her, ‘I scrub up well, me.’ So he’s a bit full of himself in that respect. “Because she dismisses him, and even though he is married, he sees her as a bit of a conquest and chases after her. A relationship begins behind closed doors with stolen moments when they can. It’s always in secret. As the story progresses and time passes, Joe is a constant. He moves away, a number of years go by, and then they see each other again. “There’s an animalistic attraction between Mary Ann and Joe. They’re soulmates in a way because they’re always drawn towards each other. There are times when he doesn’t want to be with her and times when she dismisses him and wants to get on in the world. He’s a workman, a miner, and Mary is of the opinion she doesn’t want
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to be a miner’s lass. But they’re always drawn back to each other. She says he is all she ever wanted. “Joe is a likeable character. Although he deceives his wife, which is obviously wrong. Essentially he falls for Mary Ann. He does feel remorse and guilt. But he can’t help himself because there is that attraction there. “I know one or two Joes. I am a Joe, really, because my mates call me Joe.” Q: Joe is described in the script as ‘sex on a stick’? “That’s what they’ve described him to look as. So God knows why they’ve employed me? Mary is in the shop buying arsenic when he first spots her. That’s the introduction. Their relationship is very sexual. That’s what it’s based on. It’s a very base relationship they have. Joe is very confident in that respect.” Q: How was it filming the sex scenes? “Myself and Joanne worked together years ago on Robin Hood in the summer of 2008 and played boyfriend and girlfriend then. You’re still a little bit nervy going into scenes like the one we filmed at Saltburn but because we know each other you laugh it off. “The scene was set underneath a pier and the weather was against us. We had covers coming down from the pier with big boards to protect us so the public would not be able to see the filming. Then the tide came in and destroyed the covers and boards. “After that we had crowds gathering, people with cameras and all the rest of it. The producer was concerned about the privacy and said it may not happen. We couldn’t then film in our original choice of location because of the people there and the nature of the scene. But we ended up right underneath the pier where it was private and the public couldn’t see. It becomes laughable sometimes. You’ve just got to go with it.” Q: What was it like working with Joanne again? “Joanne is great, fantastic. When we met again for the first time in London for the rehearsals, prior to the readthrough and filming, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Thank God it’s you. Somebody I know.’ Because of the nature and the physicality of the scenes and the relationship they have. Joanne has just been brilliant. We’re friends and we’ve had a real laugh. Our scenes together work so naturally.” Q: And the director Brian Percival? “I would say he is probably the best director I’ve worked with. And that’s no disrespect to all of the others I’ve worked with. Brian puts you in a place where you
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feel completely secure on set. You feel entrusted. He makes you feel as though you’re doing a good job which eases the pressure on you. The notes he makes are very small but very specific. He keeps the set calm. There’s never any sense of tension on set. He’s a fantastic director.” Q: Life was hard for people like Joe and Mary Ann at this time? “The job Joe was doing was dangerous. If they were working and they earned enough money for the month, then they would have days where they would go off and try and have a bit of enjoyment in life, mainly involving drinking and dancing. It was a very tough life. And a barren life. “Mary Ann wants to get on and be above her status in a higher echelon of society. While Joe can’t read. A man with no learning who can’t advance himself.” Q: In one scene Joe skims pebbles across a pond. Is that one of your skills? “We filmed that near York Museum Gardens. Everyone was astounded at my technical ability to skim stones across a pond. Although I almost hit one of the crew, twice. Joe is also supposed to be amazing at playing quoits. I will readily admit that I wasn’t so good at doing that. But you won’t be able to tell on screen.” Q: Joe has a scene in a tin bath. How was that? “I’m in the tin bath with skin-‐coloured boxers on and the fire is lit to make it atmospheric. Then the guy comes in to put more fuel on the fire, using a torch with some sort of flammable liquid in it. But he pressed the wrong button and little bits of fire started flying all over the set. “So I’m sat in this little tin bath thinking, ‘Well if I get out of this bath now and start jumping around I’m going to look ridiculous. So I’m going to stay put in a bath covered in water.’ It was the safest place to be. In the water. It was all going on around me until the first assistant director put out the fire.” Q: Tell us about the locations you’ve visited for filming? “We’ve been to York, Saltburn-‐by-‐the-‐Sea and South Dalton in Yorkshire. We also filmed various scenes at Beamish Museum in Country Durham, including when Joe is first seen on screen when he meets Mary Ann in the local shop and then some pit scenes. “We’ve been really luck with both the locations and some great weather. We were filming scenes in an old graveyard and in the morning it was dense fog all over the graves, which was perfect. Then the sun came out for other scenes outside the church. It’s been amazing.”
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Q: How did Mary Ann get away with it for so long? “It was because she moved around. Also people felt sorry for her because of all her losses. We didn’t have the forensic and scientific knowledge we have today after someone dies. Nobody imagined such a thing would be possible. She got away with it for so long because she was moving around a lot, meeting new people in different circles. And you could buy arsenic almost anywhere.” Q: Alun Armstrong plays Mary Ann’s father George -‐ how many times have you been mistaken for his son? “It happens a lot. I’m friends with his son because he was also on Robin Hood. There have been times on jobs where lads on the crew come up to me and said, ‘Oh, I was working with your dad the other month.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah. What was that?’ Not realising until later they mean Alun Armstrong. My dad is a trader. He does events like the Ideal Home Exhibition at the NEC and things like that. “I’ll then tell Alun’s son Joe and we’ll have a laugh about it. When I was cast in Dark Angel, with Alun again I sent his son a text and said, ‘It’s going to confuse you even more.’”
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JAKE LUSHINGTON -‐ PRODUCER
Q: Dark Angel is a fascinating story. Why hasn’t it been told before in a TV drama? “It’s an amazing story about British history and probably one of the most infamous people within it that very few people know about these days. Unlike the endlessly told stories of Jack the Ripper. Mary Ann Cotton is an extraordinary character, an extraordinary part of our social history as well as somebody who did something quite unthinkable, both at the time and now. “Female murderers tend to carry out more ‘invisible’ killings, such as poisoning and suffocating. It was the end of public hangings at this time and there was a big debate about Mary Ann. Some people thought it was barbaric that she was hanged. And even though the forensic science was pretty incontrovertible, people didn’t want to believe she had done it. “Why hasn’t the story been told in a TV drama before? There are lots of factors. Mary Ann was a woman from the north east, not London. Often what you find is the reason these stories become famous is because of their re-‐telling.” Q: How did Dark Angel come to the screen? “I remember when our executive producer Kirstie Macdonald, who is also the Head of Development for World Productions, first found the story. We had been working with David Wilson on a couple of other things in relation to his work as a criminologist and an expert on serial killers. He had this book coming out and asked if we wanted to look at it. So we did. “Kirstie comes from South Shields and said, ‘How come I don’t know about Mary Ann Cotton?’ She was very excited about the story. We had been trying for a while to find a project to bring to the writer Gwyneth Hughes because we’re a great admirer of her work. I’ve also worked on one of her projects before -‐ Mysterious Creatures for ITV in 2006. “This one lit up Gwyneth’s world in terms of a new story she could tell about a woman of a certain period making her way, albeit it in a very destructive way. Trying to get to the bottom of that and find out how and why it happened. “Then we took it to ITV. It was definitely on the dark side of their radar but they could immediately see how extraordinary this story was, the quality of the writer attached and they said yes.”
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Q: Why was Joanne Froggatt perfect for the role of Mary Ann? “If Downton Abbey had still been going she might not have been available. Once we knew Downton was coming to an end, both we and ITV were very keen on Joanne for this role. We knew we needed an actress of her quality. And somebody ready to do a different kind of role. “We’d read an interview with Joanne where she said, ‘I want to play somebody really dark and evil and very different next time.’ So that led us to her. You don’t want to get your hopes up about an actress because until they’ve read it and seen if they like it, you never know. But having worked with Joanne on this I cannot think of anybody else in the world doing it.” Q: Jonas Armstrong as Joe is a pivotal character in this story? “Jonas was somebody who had acted in Line Of Duty with our company World Productions. We knew of his work and our Creative Director Simon Heath said, ‘He’s very good, you should have a look at him.’ So our casting director got him in and our director Brian Percival met him. Again, he was perfect for the role of Joe. “It’s clear Mary Ann has this love of Joe Nattrass throughout, who she kept going back to. Despite all of these husbands there was an incredible connection to this man. This is a time of sex, no contraception, childbirth, death in childbirth, harsh working class conditions. “It’s a visceral world. We’re not in a demure Victorian world here. People are having sex and affairs and all of that, in a way that’s probably more recognisable to a modern audience than some of the more buttoned-‐up Austen-‐esque versions of this period.” Q: How did you balance the needs of a TV drama with the historical accuracy of the story? “There’s a huge amount of drama in Mary Ann’s story. Part of the challenge is the extent and the length of her ‘reign’ and what she did. In so many different places. She moved a lot in order to avoid too many questions. But in a drama you don’t want too many locations because you have to travel all over the place. “We did compress a couple of things. Her own step family and mother were in a place called South Hetton and then moved to Seaham. In the end we realised it was a move that didn’t mean much for the audience. So we based it in the second place. “But the major moves of her life from where she lived to Sunderland, where she moved from the lowest to the highest and down again, and then eventually to West Auckland are depicted. “Conflating time is the big thing. The story takes place over 15 years. We’re not always telling everybody it’s six months later or two years later. We’re trying to
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show a varied and extraordinary life. I hope we have balanced the changes in her life well. Gwyneth can tell a story that ranges over a long time period because she has an energy and a through line that’s so true.” Q: We don’t actually know exactly how many people Mary Ann killed? “Mary Ann was convicted of one murder, and three more charges of murder were left on file. On post mortem examination, all four of those dead people had arsenic in their systems. “When she starts claiming the life insurance money and that becomes a regular thing, you start to think of the intention behind that. Which is what Gwyneth really does. “We’ve kept it very close to the facts as we know them. But, of course, there are a lot of facts not known and there is a lot of speculation when it comes to Mary Ann Cotton.” Q: It seems surprising that arsenic was generally on sale in local shops at this time? “It was used for bed bugs. They were virulent so people needed strong things to deal with them. Arsenic was regulated, you did need to go to the shop and it was taken down in writing. But the forensic detection of it within the stomach was relatively new. And the fact that people were killing people with it was relatively new. In 20 or 30 years’ time, arsenic murder became much more well known and, therefore, the availability of arsenic was much more restricted.” Q: Were all of Mary Ann’s murders motivated by the life insurance money? “I don’t think it’s as simple as that. That’s certainly the way she survived and moved on. She denied it all. What’s clear is it was connected to those marriages. She did kill husbands but she also killed children and step-‐children in order to become more part of households. “What Gwyneth has found is it was the mechanics of a better life that advanced her. It was about what she felt she needed and was owed. She was a woman on a flight with a lot of ambition who found a very deadly mechanism of achieving that. “It was about status and to be a certain person. That’s partly about wealth and money but it’s also about other things. That’s what Gwyneth has investigated very well within her script.”
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Q: How did she manage to get away with it for so long? “A lot of people couldn’t believe Mary Ann did it. She was a nurse for a long time. And she was a woman. Some of those dying around her were miners. Her first two husbands worked at the seam. Men often died young. Infant mortality was also huge in this period. So the amount of death in one area wasn’t that unusual compared to today. While it was usual for people to move locations to follow the work. “This period also saw the beginnings of life insurance. Not even Mary Ann understood at first that she would get this money. So the cliche of killing for the life insurance didn’t exist then. People hadn’t thought about it because it was all so new. “All of those things at that time meant she could hide in plain sight. With none of the communications and records we have today. But eventually, of course, it all caught up with her.” Q: Was finding the right period locations a challenge? “I would say it’s one of the more challenging location projects I’ve worked on and I’ve worked on a lot of period dramas. Partly because it’s a real story and we need to tell so many different parts of it. “It’s very easy to film in a big country house, because most of them still exist. A lot of working class and middle class locations don’t exist. They’ve been re-‐developed, done up. Go to the real West Auckland, it’s a rather shiny Farrow and Ball town. Which you would have to dirt and dampen down. “We filmed at Beamish Museum in County Durham for the general store in Sunderland. And it has a real pithead which we needed to show. Mining is part of this story about a miner’s wife who wanted better. “For Seaham we filmed at Saltburn-‐by-‐the-‐Sea, just above Whitby, which is an amazing place to film. We have The Butcher’s Arms pub there and a row of period mining, fishing cottages against the cliff and sea. An extraordinary location which we turned into a period set. “For the other mining village we went to a place called South Dalton, near Beverley in Yorkshire, where we turned farm buildings into a miners’ village. Because actually it was easier to turn old agricultural buildings that hadn’t been changed for 150 years into a mining town. That gave us a 360 degree set with a lot of dressing. “We used some of the period streets of Hull for Sunderland, because Sunderland doesn’t have any. And then we’ve used various internal buildings in York. The York Museum for the jail. And a very posh street in York to depict a posh bit of Sunderland.”
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Q: How would you sum up the appeal of Dark Angel? “On one level it’s a gruesome Victorian story of a terrible female serial killer you may never have heard of. But what’s really interesting is the drama tells that story but it also really looks at what it was like to be a woman then, why would she make these choices, and how could that progress for so long? “That gives you an eye on a whole section of working class Victorian Britain you very rarely see in the novels of the time we normally adapt. Certainly not with a female protagonist who is the polar opposite of Lizzie Bennett. Obviously there’s North and South and other things. But what is exciting about pieces like this written now by living writers, rather than just adaptations, is we can investigate lives, like this extraordinary female life, in a way you have never seen before in television. “We’re very lucky to have a very good production team and to have achieved a balance between something true of this time, the reality of the lives…often people revel in the grit and the horror, or they revel in the beauty and the frocks. We’ve tried to do something more realistic here. That has the light and the shade. Both in her character, if possible, and in the world we see. “That’s something I feel quite proud of. It shows the contrasts of Victorian Britain, rather than just the grandeur or the misery.”
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EPISODE ONE
It’s 1857 and 24-‐year-‐old Mary Ann Cotton has come home to Seaham, County Durham after four years away, having eloped to Cornwall with Billy Mowbray. Her mother, Margaret, and kindly step father George Stott, welcome them with open arms. Mary Ann lost four babies in as many years while she was away, and they have come back home to make a clean start. She has one baby girl left, Margaret Jane, her fifth child. George, determined to make Billy do right by his step daughter, persuades him to take out life insurance. Mary Ann reveals to her mother that she’s pregnant again – her sixth baby. The child is born and christened Isabella, but her elder sister, Margaret Jane, falls ill soon after and dies in the night. As Mary Ann stands by the grave of her fifth dead child, we see that she is once again pregnant.
Dark Angel Cast
Mary Ann Cotton ...................................................................................... Joanne Froggatt George Stott .............................................................................................. Alun Armstrong Joe Nattrass .............................................................................................. Jonas Armstrong Margaret Stott ............................................................................................... Penny Layden Maggie Cotton .............................................................................................. Laura Morgan George Ward .............................................................................................. Thomas Howes Helen Robinson ........................................................................................... Emma Fielding James Robinson ................................................................................................. Sam Hoare Fred Cotton ............................................................................................ Mark Underwood
Production Credits
Executive Producer ........................................................................................ Simon Heath Executive Producer ................................................................................ Kirstie Macdonald Producer .................................................................................................... Jake Lushington Director ......................................................................................................... Brian Percival Writer ...................................................................................................... Gwyneth Hughes Production Designer ...................................................................................... Claire Kenney Costume Designer ...................................................................................... Caroline McCall Hair and Make-‐up Designer .......................................................................... Angie Mudge
