A Very British Scandal: the new adventure of Claire Foy

From court scandals to high society scandals, the step is really short. He knows something about it Claire Foy, who, after having conquered audiences all over the world thanks to the role of an unripe and still inexperienced Queen Elizabeth in the first two seasons of The Crown, is preparing to return to TV with a miniseries, A Very British Scandal, which will air in England on BBC One and in America on Amazon Prime Video in 2022. In the series, consisting of three episodes, Foy plays the role of wealthy heiress Margaret Campbell, who ended up at the center of the scandal due to the controversial divorce from her second husband , the Duke of Argyll, played by Paul Bettany.

The fact dates back to the 1950s, when Argyll gave life to what is still considered the first case of revenge porn established in the history of the United Kingdom. After discovering some Polaroids in a locked cabinet of his wife in intimate attitudes with a man with his head cut out of the frame, the fury to discover the identity of the latter but, even more, the will to humiliate his wife placing it at the center of a scandal of national significance will almost completely cloud the Duke’s lucidity.

The divorce, which became very famous at home but also attracted the attention of the American public, earned Margaret a mud machine worthy of the worst sexism. Beyond the hypotheses of the press that was trying to identify the name of the lover – there was talk of the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., but also of the Minister of Defense Duncan Sandys -, A Very British Scandal, created by the same team behind A Very English Scandal with Hugh Grant, it strikes for having focused on the continuous violations suffered by the so-called «Dirty Duchess», branded as a “promiscuous woman” and reviled by her husband who, not satisfied, decided to publish her letters and diaries stealing them with the help of a blacksmith. “Writing the story of Margaret’s life and the events that led to her divorce from the Duke has been a project that has fascinated me since 1993, when I first heard her name and started researching her,” said the screenwriter Sarah Phelps. “I understood that she was punished for being a woman, for being a familiar face, for refusing to back down and being silent. This Serie A is my tribute to her ».

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