Ruth Wilson: ‘The only way I could protect her was to play her’

The star of The Affair portrays her real-life grandmother in Mrs Wilson, writes Laura Harding

Ruth Wilson was 15 when she learned her family had an incredible secret.

After she found a photo of her grandfather, whom she had never met, in a chest of drawers, she discovered he had been a serial bigamist.

After he died suddenly of a heart attack in the 1960s, her grandmother Alison found out that she was not the only Mrs Wilson, and her two sons were not his only children.

“My granny gave my dad and my uncle a memoir she had written,” Wilson, who is now 36, says.

“I think she invited them over and she asked them to read it there in front of her, in the same room, so they could all talk about it afterwards.

“They asked her a few questions, but it was just not done in those days and still lots of generations don’t really talk about these things, it’s just not asked.

“The only thing I knew about him was when I found the picture of him in my dad’s cabinet that was locked away.

“He was never on display, he wasn’t talked about, so we were encouraged not to ask questions about him.”

But now the actress, best known for her roles in Luther and The Affair, is exploring the full story in new drama Mrs Wilson, in which she plays her own grandmother.

“The only way I could protect her was to play her,” Wilson says with conviction.

“And protection not in the way of making her a nice woman, it was actually in a way of showing all her sides, all complexities of that woman, and not being afraid to show those.”

Alison’s husband Alec, played in the three-part series by Game Of Thrones actor Iain Glen, was also a novelist and a spy whom Alison met while working at MI6 during the Second World War.

“I found him fascinating, and I’m a curious person anyway, so I was just like, ‘Wow, great, our family’s not boring!’”

The biggest shock off all came when it turned out Alec actually had four wives, and with them a total of seven children.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if

0 Ruth Wilson as her grandmother, Alison Wilson

we had a few more come out after the show airs,” Wilson says with a laugh.

“It’s amazing to have this in my family, it really is. My grandmother definitely wanted her memoir to be read.

“Whether she wanted it to be dramatised, I don’t know, but I hope that she will be happy with it.”

Telling the story has been an emotional journey for her family to take, especially for her dad Nigel and his brother Gordon, Alec’s sons with Alison.

Both of them have already seen the first episode and Wilson admits she was terrified of what they would think.

“I wasn’t sure if my uncle was furious or really upset, but they were both incredibly moved by it.

“My uncle said he’d never quite understood it from his mother’s point of view before.

“A lot of the intrigue was always about my grandfather and actually, seeing what his mother had to deal with and had to cope with and how much she had to maintain the family despite all this going on was new for him.”

While her family were not involved in the casting, they read the scripts and made sure all the details were right.

“Most of their notes were more about what uniform he was wearing, or what kind of bomb would have been dropped in that period,” she says.

“They didn’t engage in the emotional stuff so much. So they were very supportive, and just trusted me really, which was amazing of them.”

Perhaps the most unexpected part of it all is how much the family has come together in the wake of the discoveries.

“That’s the best bit of the story and you’ll see that play out in the third episode,” she says.

“From all this betrayal and hurt and lies and secrets, it became this family that united, years later, and found each other.

“It was so long ago for so many of them, it feels like they’ve found or completed a mystery that they probably all knew about in some way, or were slightly conscious of but weren’t completely aware of.”

It has also given Wilson one of the most profound experiences of her life, particularly when it came to understanding her grandmother, who died when the actress was just 22.

“I think it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. I felt like something passed through me, and she passed through me.

“There were moments when I felt deeply for her, really was overcome with how hard it must have been for her.”

And what of the grandfather that she never knew?

“He had the capacity to love many, obviously. An extraordinary man, a major charmer. Fell in love with women, probably got them pregnant, then felt he had to marry them.

“He’s a fascinating individual but he’s a mystery.”

“I wasn’t sure if my uncle was furious or really upset, but they were both incredibly moved by it”

● Mrs Wilson begins on BBC1 today at 9pm.