Woman fighting demons I’ll portray in novichok poison BBC drama, by star MyAnna
MEETING Salisbury novichok poison victim Dawn Sturgess’s family was “incredibly moving”, says the actress who plays her in a BBC One TV drama.
MyAnna Buring, star of The Salisbury Poisonings, said Dawn, 44, came from an “incredibly warm, beautiful, loving family” and people should not forget how she was killed by Russian agents.
MyAnna, 40, who played maid Edna Braithwaite in Downton Abbey, met Dawn’s parents, sister and daughter during filming of the series.
Dawn died in
2018 following the novichok poison attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.
Dawn fell ill after coming into contact with a perfume bottle believed to have been used by the Russian agents in the poisoning.
MyAnna said she would have understood if Dawn’s family had not wanted to meet her because it was so soon after her death.
But MyAnna, who has also been in Ripper Street and The Twilight Saga, believes that “as a nation it is not too early to bring the story back”.
MyAnna believes Dawn had not been portrayed accurately after the attack. She said she was down on her luck and “had real issues that a lot of people in this country face”.
MyAnna said: “She was struggling with demons. She was a real human being and we lost her.”
She added that it was incredibly emotional to consider what Dawn was going through at the time of the attack.
She said: “I mean goodness, we all know someone like that – if that is not ourselves at some points in our lives.”
MyAnna believed it would have been insensitive to try to impersonate Dawn in the three-part drama.
Instead she said she tried to “just portray a threedimensional human being”.
MyAnna said people should seek to understand why the attack took place to avoid similar horrors in future.
●