MYANNA’S MANY FACES
Swedish actress MYANNA BURING stars in THE SALIS-BURY POISONINGS, a three-part mini-series based on a horrifying true story.
In March 2018 Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found slumped and foaming at the mouth on a bench in Salisbury, England. They’d been poisoned with the deadly nerve agent Novichok in an assassination attempt by the GRU, the Russian intelligence service.
They survived, but the poison would later take the life of Dawn Sturgess.
Despite the cloak-anddagger backdrop, the series isn’t a spy thriller but focuses on the lives of the people of Salisbury in the aftermath of the poisonings.
In June that year, Dawn and her partner, Charlie Rowley, became ill after she sprayed a bottle of perfume containing Novichok on her wrists.
Charlie had given her the perfume as a gift he’d bought at a charity shop. He later said it had been disguised as a popular perfume brand and was in sealed packaging.
MyAnna (42) was reluctant to take the part of Dawn, she tells YOU.
“Initially, my first response was, ‘No I can’t do this, this is something that has to be done right’.
“It was an important story, but it felt like it was in the hands of people who were sensitive as to how they’d portray . . . [It was] gentle and inclusive of all the people who were affected.”
She was also determined to correct misconceptions about Dawn. “A lot of news outlets described her as homeless and a drug addict, and in doing so sort of dismissed her death as inevitable because of her life choices. And that wasn’t true.
“She wasn’t homeless, she wasn’t a drug addict, she was a woman who’d experienced mental-health issues and knocks in life, which I think all of us can relate to. She did struggle with alcohol, but she was working really hard to turn her life around. She had a loving family, partner, friends.”
MyAnna, who also stars in the Netflix fantasy series The Witcher, is a homebody when she’s not working.
She enjoys watching films, reading and spending time with her five-year-old son, whose name hasn’t been made public. “I hang out with my kid. That’s my big hobby and my work outside of acting. Bizarrely, my job is all about storytelling but my hobbies and everything outside of [acting] have all to do with storytelling.”
The actress is no stranger to South Africa, having shot the post-apocalyptic thriller Doomsday (2008) here, as well as Marple (2013).
“I’ve had the privilege of working in South Africa two times! I’ve always worked in Cape Town. In my first job there I got a week off and spent it going to places that had been recommended by locals. It was magic. [I was] profoundly changed by your country, the landscape – I’ve never known anything like it.” – SIYA NDLELA