Salisbury — the spy thriller next door
The novichok poisonings seemed like a Bond film, but a new drama brings home just how real they were for the people involved
The Salisbury poisonings are one of the most chilling events of recent times – an act of terrorism on British soil that had devastating consequences for those in its immediate path and made headlines around the world.
Two years ago, an innocuous looking perfume bottle was deployed as a weapon in the Wiltshire city. Inside it was the deadly nerve agent novichok – enough to potentially kill thousands of people. It was targeted at former Russian military intelligence officer and double agent Sergei Skripal. Yet while he and his daughter Yulia – who was visiting him at the time of the attack – ultimately survived, it left one woman dead and others grievously ill.
Local woman Dawn Sturgess was given the perfume bottle by her partner Charlie Rowley at his flat in nearby Amesbury after he found it discarded in a bin in Salisbury. She rubbed the liquid inside on her wrists, sealing her fate. Charlie also became critically ill, as did Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who had searched Sergei Skripal’s house.
The events sound like a spy thriller plot but now they and their aftermath have been brought to life in a sensitive threepart BBC drama, The Salisbury Poisonings, that focuses on what one of its stars, Anne-Marie Duff, calls the ‘human side’ of the unfolding crisis. ‘We knew we weren’t making
Spooks,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t, “Cut to 10 Downing Street”. It’s about the people on the ground who were having to deal with what was happening and get it solved before there were any more fatalities.’
It’s a sentiment echoed by MyAnna Buring, who plays Dawn Sturgess. ‘We’ve all seen Bond and read about the KGB, but it’s important not to forget that at the heart of these events are real human beings.’
When the drama was announced last year some critics suggested it was too soon to put the story on screen. But Anne-Marie says, ‘There’s something to be said for telling stories soon after an event. I remember that when the film United 93 came out five years after 9/11, I thought it was too soon. But a friend said to me it was exactly the right time because when we have these conversations you should be uncomfortable, that’s the point.’
MyAnna agrees. ‘I think for a lot of people involved, they probably feel they’d rather this story wasn’t being told now because it’s too raw. But if it was going to be told they felt they wanted to be involved. So that was incredibly brave of them all.’
Anne-Marie plays Tracy Daszkiewicz, the Director of Public Health for Wiltshire, who played a vital role in protecting the public as the emergency unfolded. ‘She’s a real compass point of the story, an amazing civil servant,’ says AnneMarie. ‘No one’s trained for a novichok attack, are they? Suddenly she found herself catapulted into a leading role and responding while everyone is trying to work out what it is and what it can do. It’s that kind of ordinary heroism, that sense of her rising to the challenge and how she deals with that emotionally when she has to go home to her husband and her son.’
Rafe Spall, who plays DS Nick Bailey, acknowledges it was the human elements of the story that drew him to the show. ‘I’ve played a few policemen and they can be portrayed as glamorous, but they’re just people doing a job,’ he says. ‘That’s what I wanted to get across, that he was an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances.’
Wearing a protective suit, Bailey searched Sergei Skripal’s house a few hours after he and Yulia collapsed in Salisbury city centre. A little later he began to feel unwell and, having first returned to his own house, was then hospitalised. While in there his home was emptied and all the possessions destroyed to avoid any further contamination – a huge price to pay for just doing your job.
‘For people like Nick who become policemen it’s a vocation,’ says Rafe, who met Nick before filming. ‘He’d never see himself as a hero, but he is a hero because he’s protecting people. It’s all very fresh, and he and his wife are still dealing with it. They had some trepidation about their story being told – they’re private people – and were quite wary. But they couldn’t have been nicer.’
For MyAnna, meeting Dawn Sturgess’s grief-stricken parents, sister Claire and daughter Gracie was crucial because she knew very little about Dawn beyond the initial headlines. ‘She was dismissed as being this homeless drug addict, but she was not that. She was a human being who had issues that a lot of people in this country face. She came from an incredibly warm, loving family; but, yes, she was struggling with demons. Dawn’s family must still be reeling. Can you imagine losing your eldest daughter in such a horrific way and having no clear answers?
‘It was incredibly emotional thinking about that, and what she was going through in her life. She was dealing with alcohol addiction, mental health issues, she was down on her luck and struggling with finances. We’ve all known someone like that.’
At the heart of MyAnna’s storyline is Dawn’s relationship with Charlie Rowley (played by Johnny Harris). ‘What a horrific thing for him to go through,’ she says. ‘If I found a perfume bottle I’d want to give it to a loved one, and then what happened must have been horrific for him. What a difficult thing to go through psychologically and emotionally. He’s an incredible human being who was on set with us and really open and willing to talk.’
Also on set was Tracy Daszkiewicz, who Anne-Marie had met prior to filming. ‘Because we’d had some time together before filming I thought it would be fine, but then when she turned up I was completely terrified,’ she laughs. ‘I felt really self-conscious. She was still in the same job, so I didn’t want to end up doing some kind of weird impersonation – you try to get a sense of someone, the spirit of someone.’
Anne-Marie also admits to being nervous about how the series will be received, that it could divide opinion. ‘There’s always that with anything based on real events,’ she says.
Either way, MyAnna feels it’s important the series is shown. ‘It’s so easy for a huge event like this to make headlines and then just disappear. It shouldn’t, because there hasn’t been any resolution and we should understand why it happened.’