(slow music) - Mrs.
Wilson is based on my grandmother's memoir.
It's an adaptation of that memoir but then also a dramatization of the events we've since found out.
Who was he?
Who was my husband?
So it's a combination of one woman's journey through discovery of who her husband is but it's in hindsight of more information than she ever had so it's slight embellishment of her story, it brings in my grandfather's story and the other women that were involved.
It's about one woman discovering who this man is and how it then affects her life and how she deals with that and it's about secrets and lies, what you decide to tell your family members.
- I have genuinely no idea who Dad was.
How do I know you're not lying as well?
- It's all based in truth.
Every moment on this job, you know, you're constantly having to remind yourself that the truth is much stranger than fiction in this case.
Stories like this about families and secrets, they're very enjoyable 'cause we all have them, all families have, you know, their stories.
- They did divorce in 1914, not according to our records.
- Well then, your records are wrong.
- Ruth Wilson who plays the main lady, it's her family, it's her grandmother who she plays and I play her grandfather who was a complete mystery to the family.
Everything that unfolded after he died.
- You were married to a pathological liar, accept it.
- It's really from her perspective and it's looking at this quite extraordinary hidden personality.
- It's a story of survival in that way of a woman pushed to the absolute limit.
(glass shattering) And ultimately surviving and transforming herself.
At the same time it's a very universal story.
It's a story about how much do we really know who our partners are, what do we know about the people we live with, how far would we go to protect our children from uncomfortable truths about ourselves and our partners.
(slow music)
