Call yourself scandalous, Naomi?
Star of steamy new drama is Bible-reading pastor’s daughter married to her childhood sweetheart
SHE plays an MP’s young lover caught in a dark tale of betrayal in Netflix’s newest political thriller, but in real life, pastor’s daughter Naomi Scott would rather read Bible verses with her footballer husband.
The devout Christian made her debut on Friday in Anatomy Of A Scandal, an adaptation of Sarah Vaughan’s novel about a wealthy politician accused of raping his researcher lover.
Better known for her role as Jasmine in Disney’s musical fantasy Aladdin, Naomi has won praise for her portrayal of researcher Olivia Lytton in the provocative six-part series.
The thriller, which is liberally sprinkled with steamy bedroom scenes, follows the star-studded cast including Sienna Miller, Michelle Dockery and Rupert Friend from the House of Commons to the Old Bailey as a sex scandal turns into a tense courtroom battle.
But the drama is a world away from Naomi’s own background.
The 28-year-old, whose parents are pastors at a church in East London,
‘I don’t know how I would do life without my faith’
originally dreamed of being a singer before landing first her Aladdin role in 2019, and later that year a part in Hollywood’s reboot of the action comedy Charlie’s Angels.
In 2014, she married her childhood sweetheart Jordan Spence, now 31, a former West Ham and Ipswich footballer who today plays as a defender for Dutch side Den Haag.
They met when she was just 16, and they remain parishioners at her parents’ church, where the couple have been known to give Bible readings and offer daily devotions.
Speaking in 2019 as UK ambassador for Compassion International, the Christian child sponsorship programme, Naomi said faith was central to her life and work.
‘Sometimes we get asked the question, “How do you juggle your faith and what you do?” But for me, I don’t know how I would do life without my faith,’ she said.
‘That peace that you know you’re loved and valued is something that keeps me incredibly grounded, incredibly focused… My faith is just a part of who I am and what I do.’
For Naomi, the darkness at the heart of Anatomy Of A Scandal reverberates in real life. ‘You don’t have to look too far within your own world for people who have gone through something similar,’ she said recently.
Anatomy Of A Scandal is the latest show from David E. Kelley, who gave us Big Little Lies and also The Undoing and, as schlocky as they were, we could not tear our eyes away. Here, though, the challenge is to keep them open. I needed a constant supply of Red Bulls to make it through to the end. It’s the sort of series you want to thrash with a broom, hoping it will leap into some kind of life. (Leap into life, damn you, leap into life!)
It’s adapted from Sarah Vaughan’s novel and stars Rupert Friend as James Whitehouse, a high-flying Conservative MP, and Sienna Miller as Sophie, his shiny wife. Her wardrobe is fantastic, even if the palette never veers from beige in what is, in essence, a remarkably beige show. (It made me want to thrash it into some kind of colour. Give us red! Give us purple! Give us one of Nicole Kidman’s teal coats!)
James and Sophie are fantastically rich, judging from their house, where the furnishings are not just beige but expensively beige. Yet they wear their privilege and entitlement lightly. I’m joshing you. ‘What’s the thing about the Whitehouses?’ James likes to ask their two children. ‘We come out on top!’ they always chorus.
Please God make their world come crashing down, you’ll be praying and, thank God, it does. She’s at a shiny party for shiny people when he summons her home to confess he had an affair with a researcher – ‘I f***ed up big time’ – and it’s about to break in the press.
There are odd omissions throughout. We don’t see Sophie reeling from this news. Instead, the action immediately cuts to a later conversation on one of their (expensively beige) sofas when she’s asking what the researcher’s name is. This isn’t the only peculiar directorial choice. Hit by some new revelation, a character might fall through the air, or act as if they’ve been literally punched in the stomach, or the frame may spin. This occurs randomly, and it’s plain bizarre. I nearly spluttered on my Red Bull on more than one occasion.
Next the news goes from bad to worse. The researcher, Olivia Lytton – a thankless role for Naomi Scott as we’re not asked to be interested in her character – says their last sexual encounter was not consensual and she is now accusing him of rape.
The matter comes to court almost immediately. No backlog there. And the prosecuting barrister is Kate Woodcroft (Michelle Dockery) who, it turns out, has her own secret. If only she’d said as much at the outset and had divulged what she already knew about James, she’d have saved everyone a great deal of trouble, but there you are. I was also baffled that she received the court documents before he’d even been accused.
Although billed as a ‘courtroom drama’ the courtroom scenes are repetitive and often inert. (Where’s my broom?) And you do wonder why Sophie, who somehow remains emotionless and bland throughout, is only wising up to her husband’s true nature now.
From the flashbacks – they met at the University of Oxford – we are shown that he was a member of the ‘Libertines’ (based on the Bullingdon Club, presumably), where groping waitresses was par for the course along with far, far worse, and she was always aware of all that. But then she copied her tutorial partner’s notes, so maybe they were made for each other? The point is: you couldn’t sympathise with anyone here.
Throughout I had a vague memory of this being done better elsewhere, and then it came to me: The Politician’s Wife. This was written by Paula Milne and starred Juliet Stevenson and Trevor Eve. It was aired in 1995 (gulp) and, miraculously, it’s all available now on All4. This is the show Anatomy Of A Scandal could have been but isn’t.
The latest celebrity challenge show is Freeze The Fear With Wim Hof, the Dutch fella noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures and for promoting the therapeutic properties thereof. Some of the celebrities you’ve actually heard of – Alfie Boe, Tamzin Outhwaite – while Lee Mack and Holly Willoughby present (where does she find the time?).
The celebrities all want to ‘test themselves’ and ‘become a stronger etc, etc’, and Hof is on hand to tell them how ‘healing’ ice is. The first challenge is jumping into a hole in a frozen lake.
Holy moly. I wouldn’t do it. I don’t even think our postman, Pete, would do it, and he wears shorts all year round. But they all do it and are then ‘exhilarated’ and really ‘proud’ of themselves.
The trouble is that once you’ve seen the first one jump, you then have to sit through the others doing it, so that’s seven more times. Next, they have to abseil down a rock face, with no sign of Hof, which is weird, given the show’s title.
For its genre, it is one of the better ones, and what are the chances, come the end, that they’ll have been on a ‘journey’? Quite high, I think.