Ruth to play her own gran in bigamy drama
AS the star of US drama The Affair, Ruth Wilson played a fictional cheating wife. Now the British actress is to expose the real-life adultery in her own family.
In a BBC series Miss Wilson, 35, will play her grandmother Alice, who found out on her husband Alec’s death that he was a bigamist.
It later transpired that Alec, an MI6 agent and author, had four families over the course of 30 years.
In the three-part The Wilsons, Alice learns the truth when a woman turns up on her doorstep claiming to be the ‘real’ Mrs Wilson. Alice sets out to prove that her own marriage was genuine – only to unearth more disturbing secrets about Alec.
In real life, Alice discovered Alec’s first marriage while going through his papers shortly after his fatal heart attack. She was filled with shame but, in a magnanimous move, contacted his first wife and children and invited them to his funeral.
Ruth Wilson, who also starred in Luther, learned of the scandal at 18, when her grandmother let her read a memoir she had written.
After Alice’s death a journalist discovered that Alec had two further wives and a son with each. He had also been arrested for fraud, theft and falsely wearing a colonel’s uniform and medals. And he had written 18 spy novels as Alexander Wilson, drawing on his MI6 experiences.
Most of Alec’s descendants have welcomed the relatives they did not know they had, and in 2007, 28 of them met for a party in Hampshire. The BBC1 drama will air next year.