Justice for Julie
Sheridan Smith delivers a powerful and emotive performance as Ann Ming, a mother fighting to put her daughter’s murderer behind bars, in ITV four-parter I Fought The Law. She joins the real Ming and the show’s creative team to discuss bringing this true story to the screen.
Sheridan Smith has become known for playing real-life figures on screen, having starred in biopics such as Cilla and The C Word and true crime dramas including Four Lives, The Moorside and Mrs Biggs.
But she describes her leading role in I Fought the Law, a new true crime drama on ITV in the UK, as her toughest yet.
Smith stars as Ann Ming, a mother who finds strength to challenge the centuries-old double-jeopardy law as she seeks the conviction of her daughter’s murderer after a 15-year battle.
With the opening episode charting Julie Hogg’s disappearance and the initial police investigation, and concluding with Ann’s discovery of Julie’s body three months later, the series then follows the campaign led by Ann and her family as they take on the justice system – challenging the Crown Prosecution Service, the Law Commission, prominent defence barristers in television debates, the government, the chancellor, the attorney general and two home secretaries – to finally get Julie’s killer jailed.
“When I got the script, I didn’t know Ann’s story, so I got online and Googled – I’ve watched all the documentaries, read her book For the Love of Julie – and just thought, ‘How has this story not been told yet?’” Smith says. “Then I was really honoured that Ann OK’d me to play her. I jumped at the chance.
“What Ann came up against, it was one thing after another. It was relentless. I did nine weeks shooting it, and I was a mess by the end, so to have lived through that and to be here and to achieve what she did, I’m absolutely in awe of her. We’re friends for life now.”
Produced by Hera Pictures (What It Feels Like For A Girl), the show also stars Daniel York Loh as Ann’s husband Charlie and Enzo Cilenti as DS Mark Braithwaite, plus Marlowe Chan-Reeves, Olivia Ng, Jake Davies, Kent Riley, Jack James Ryan, Andrew Lancel and Rufus Jones. Victoria Wyant plays Julie.
The four-part series is written by Jamie Crichton (All Creatures Great & Small) and directed by Erik Richter Strand (The Crown). It launches on ITV and ITVX, and STV and STV Player, this Sunday.
Broadcasters including Polar+ (France), NPO (Netherlands), SVT (Sweden), Virgin Media (Ireland), VRT (Flemish Belgium) and TVNZ in New Zealand are among those to have picked up the show from distributor All3Media International.
Here, Smith joins Ming, Crichton, Strand and executive producers Liza Marshall and Charlotte Webber to reveal how the series was conceived and produced, how Smith got into character to play Ming and why the story is ultimately a hopeful and uplifting one.
Ming viewed the series ahead of its launch after executive producer Charlotte Webber travelled to her County Durham home to screen it for her. And while she describes I Fought the Law as “a difficult watch,” she is full of praise for Smith’s performance.
Ming: I cried all the way through it, but I said to Hera Pictures when they approached me about doing the drama and suggested Sheridan Smith, nobody could have played it better.
Ming remembers being “convinced” something had happened to Julie when she didn’t return home one evening, despite suggestions she’d left for London.
Ming: I knew that wasn’t right. When I found Julie after 80 days, it gave me the strength, because I’d been proven right. And the murder squad who took over, I can’t fault the way they treated us. I’ve got no animosity towards Cleveland Police whatsoever. I was annoyed with the people who didn’t find her [during a five-day search at Julie’s home], but at the end of the day, I suppose if they’d found Julie and we got a conviction straightaway, the killer might have been out of prison and killed somebody else, whereas, because of the other offences he’s done, he’s still in prison. So I’m glad I’ve got the opportunity to let everybody know the full story.
Smith tried to “embody” Ming and “feel the trauma for real.”
Smith: Obviously, I can only imagine and think if it was my child, but it was emotionally taxing. It was just nine weeks [filming] and, by the end of it, I was a shaking mess. So for Ann to have gone through all that is just remarkable. I wish I had her strength in real life. And the fact she changed this 800-year-old law and paved the way for all those other families [in similar positions], I just think she’s incredible.
Smith was on set every day and is in almost every scene, and director Strand describes her as “incredible.”
Strand: It took a lot of courage and a lot of stamina and a lot of trust, and I really appreciate Sheridan trusting me with that. Working with Sheridan was a lovely challenge. It was challenging for her. It was challenging for all of us. The emotions in this first episode are just a glimpse of what’s about to come, as Ann goes through the long struggle of overturning the law.
[Smith’s] process is also very much that she embodies these scenes. Her process is different from many other actors I have worked with. She goes into a scene completely immersed – naked, in a way – and just lives the emotion every time. I’m very impressed with that. I have not worked with anyone who’s done that sort of work before.
Likening Ming’s efforts to a superhero story, writer Crichton had the task of condensing her 15-year battle into four hours of commercial television.
Crichton: I am drawn to superhero stories, but not the superhero stories you see on the big screen. For me, a true crime story, which is just about the true crime, is not really the sort of story I like to tell. What appealed was the fact that this is a story about an incredible woman whose courage and tenacity and spirit… it’s an inspiring story.
It doesn’t really feel like it when you just watch one episode [ending in the discovery of Julie’s body], but that’s the element that really appealed to me, and that’s the story I really wanted to tell. The vast majority of the story is Ann’s courage and her strength. If you watch the other episodes, you will come out of it uplifted. That sounds incredible, but that’s what appealed to me most about it. It’s a story of triumph over adversity. I hope we’ve stayed true to the emotional truth of it, and to have Ann’s blessing is everything to me.
During filming, Ming came to the set several times. She was also involved in the development of the scripts.
Strand: Ann was involved in the whole process, and gave feedback, mostly making sure everything was correct. Then we had a very open conversation about how making a fiction drama needs to take some shortcuts, or invent dialogue that maybe wasn’t exactly how the dialogue was, just in order for Jamie to dramatise it, and for Sheridan to be able to play it. She was just a huge support and very crucial to the production the whole way through.
For executive producer Marshall, adapting Ming’s story was a “huge responsibility.” She ensured it was handled with care and attention at every stage.
Marshall: Ann was absolutely at the heart of the process all the way through, and we just wanted to tell the story faithfully and accurately. When Jamie first brought it to me, it was the most inspiring story that I’d never heard before – this absolutely incredible woman going up against ultimately man after man after man and all the doors slamming in her face. She just kept going. It was an extraordinary story that we’re so honoured to have been a part of.
Webber: We wanted Ann to be as happy as can be. Making the drama was a huge emotional undertaking. Sheridan’s commitment to the role, and Ann’s commitment to us to help us get it right, was everything to us.
Smith was supported by the costume and hair & make-up teams to transform her appearance. But for the actor, it’s more about channeling the right emotions than recreating someone’s exact appearance.
Smith: I get mad at myself if I don’t feel the actual pain or the trauma. I just constantly had Ann in my ears, and wanted to make her proud and give her story the justice it deserves. I kept thinking about Ann, and kept watching her and thinking how she must have felt. It was important to me.
This is the first role I’ve taken on as a mum that’s a true story as well. But it was an experience, and the team have been incredible. Daniel, who plays my husband, is incredible. It was an amazing experience. Now I’m on the other side, I’m like, ‘Oh, we did it.’ I just wanted Ann to be happy.
Ming hopes the series will inspire other people to try to right any wrongs.
Ming: When I look back, it didn’t look like a massive thing to me, because to me it was the difference between getting justice for our daughter and not getting justice. Any victim’s family will tell you, when you get an acquittal, the family are left in the state of limbo because you’ve got no conviction, so no closure. When I watched the drama, when I watched all the episodes and watched the emotion Sheridan was showing, she’s really got inside me because she lived nine weeks like that. I’ve lived 35 years like that. It is a horrible story, but the outcome at the end is we’ve got the justice and the law’s changed.
Crichton: Anger is actually a good emotion to have when you’re writing something like this. If you’re not furious about it, I don’t think you get good results. I genuinely think you come out of it feeling stronger, feeling like there’s hope. Reading Ann’s book, the overriding emotion, as well as the anger, was, ‘Holy shit, if this woman can do this, anyone can do anything,’ because the obstacles she had to face were unbelievable. That’s what I want people to feel, a sense of empowerment, of courage; that if Ann can do that, we can do anything.
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tagged in: All3Media International, Ann Ming, Hera Pictures, I Fought The Law, ITV, Sheridan Smith, STV