Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for Anatomy of a Scandal.From show creators/executive producers/writers David E. Kelley & Melissa James Gibson and director S.J. Clarkson, the Netflix drama series Anatomy of a Scandal is based on the best-selling novel by Sarah Vaughan and tells the story of James Whitehouse (Rupert Friend), a Minister in Parliament whose privilege helped propel him to the position of power he’s in. When a scandalous secret comes to light, it tests his wife Sophie’s (Sienna Miller) loyalty to her family and husband and leaves it up to the court to decide the truth.
During this interview with Collider, co-stars Miller and Friend talked about what drew them to this project, the importance of the themes the series is exploring, the atmosphere on set, how they viewed their characters, the way they approached the sex scenes between Friend and Naomi Scott (who plays Olivia, an ambitious young woman that works for Whitehouse in the House of Commons), and their reaction to the story’s twist.
Collider: This show is a wild roller coaster, where you get very caught up in the twists and turns and surprises of the story. Because this is such challenging and difficult material, what made you guys want to do this project? Did you fully know what you were getting yourself into, taking on something like this?
SIENNA MILLER: We knew we were getting ourselves into a really entertaining show. I think it tackles themes that are prevalent and important. It analyzes privilege and what is consent. It’s so fascinating for me, as an actor, having worked for 20 years, to be starting to see those kinds of female experiences represented on screen. At the same time, if you’re an actor, and you get six scripts that are written by David E. Kelley and Melissa James Gibson, and seeing the success of the other shows that these people have created, it’s an enticing prospect, purely from an entertainment perspective.
RUPERT FRIEND: Yeah, and when the scripts are ripping along, as you read them, you can imagine that the show will have the same effect and cause the same kind of visceral bodily reactions that we had when we were reading these words. We felt them. I certainly felt disgust. I felt horror. I felt shock and awe. I actually gasped at times. And then, you think, “Well, that’s pretty great, considering we’re only at the script stage. And now, we’re gonna add in wonderful actors and the wonderful director and the music, and all the rest of it.” You’re right, it’s not the most heartwarming story. You can tell a heartwarming story, and it can be dull as dishwater, or you can tell something like this, and it can be electric.
What was the atmosphere like on set? When you do material like this, is there just more weight to it, in general, or do you intentionally try to lighten the mood when you’re not shooting a scene?
FRIEND: It was one of the silliest sets I’ve ever been on, mostly thanks to Sienna and S.J. Clarkson, our wonderful director, who has as good and twisted a sense of humor as we do. We made for a bit of a Three Musketeers on this.
MILLER: But only because the work that we were doing was intense. Of course, it was. And it was really moving and unpleasant to sit in those spaces often.
FRIEND: Yes. And then, we had to let the pressure out of the pressure valve.
Sienna, how did you find Sophie? What helped you understand her and the way she reacts and deals with what’s happening? You can connect to a character, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily connect to how she reacts in her situation.
MILLER: I have to psycho-analyze the people I’m playing. My knee-jerk reaction in episode one, when she’s instantaneously forgiving, seemingly, of his misconduct, was hard to love at first, until I spent time actually thinking about it. She’s invested her entire life and compromised all of the intelligence and wit that she clearly has, in service of this marriage, this man, these children, this life, these optics of perfection. She’s not gonna let that be dismantled by a mistake that she will deal with later. She takes herself out of that situation. Her first response is, “We need to protect our children, and I’m standing by him.”
She’s very English, in a way that I have seen growing up in England. There is a type of English woman that is contained and unemotive. However passionate they might be in intimate moments or whatever, they do not show that emotion. I thought that playing somebody who kept everything inside was interesting. I’ve never really done it. The more time I spent with her, the more I understood her reactions. I liked that she goes on a journey of self-analysis. She never asks for sympathy, really, but questions her own complicity in not only his behavior, but in what she’s enabled and what she’s compromised, and in what message that gives her children. She’s on a real existential path, and I think ends up as someone pretty different to who she is at the beginning, which trauma can often catapult you into.
It also helps that she doesn’t have all of the information upfront because she might have reacted differently if she’d known the full picture.
MILLER: You’d hope, yes. I think once the truth is clear to her, she makes the decision she makes for a very good reason.
Rupert, how did you view this guy? Did you see him as someone who is privileged and arrogant and just expected to get away with whatever he did, or do you think you really genuinely believed that he didn’t do anything wrong?
FRIEND: I think initially he genuinely believes he didn’t do anything wrong. It’s the tenacity of Sienna’s character, Sophie, feeling that this doesn’t quite add up that forces him to really forensically revisit these episodes from his past. Possibly for the first time in maybe 20 years, he asks himself those big questions. Could I have gotten it wrong? Could I have misread the situation? Could I have told myself what I wanted to hear, and then continued to believe that because it served my ends? You see that unfolding before your eyes in the show. It’s very much a penny drop moment for Whitehouse. It was very interesting to feel that happening within a scene. It wasn’t before the show started, or happens afterwards. That’s what we find in the show.
These sex scenes are often not pleasant, so how do you approach that? Were there a lot of conversations about how these scenes would be shot and the choreography of them? Did you have discussions with both Naomi Scott and S.J. Clarkson? How did the actual planning out of that work?
FRIEND: Yeah, we had a number of rehearsals with Naomi, myself, S.J., and Lizzy [Talbot], who was our intimacy coordinator. I always think these kinds of scenes are no different to dance scenes or fight scenes. We are not going to just jump in the air and hope someone catches us if they’ve never practiced it, and we’re not going to punch each other in the face. Sex scenes are entirely fabricated, and they are artificial, mechanical things. They’re made easier when you develop a trust with your colleague, your scene partner, which Naomi and I did, early on, so that we felt safe with each other. Every single moment was choreographed and supervised by the intimacy coordinator, which made S.J.’s job much easier because she could then focus on the way she wanted to shoot it, rather than worrying about whether anyone was uncomfortable because no one was, with someone there whose job was ensuring that everyone was fine. In the end, it was a very technical exercise. It was a very physical thing because it was a full day. Naomi and I were both completely exhausted by the end of it because, basically, she’s hanging off one arm, and I’m holding her up the whole time. Even though she’s a tiny little person, it was a long day.
What was it like for you guys to learn about the twist in this? What was your reaction, in that moment? Were you aware of that, going into all of this?
MILLER: We read it like you watched it. There it was in the script, at the end of Episode 4, and I hadn’t seen it coming. I think that was a real part of the draw and the pull to doing this. I love being surprised by something. I thought it was clever. And then, in reading the book, it’s a brilliantly written book by a novelist that I admire. That was probably the gasp moment that [Rupert] referred to earlier. Of course, I immediately reached for Episode 5.
Anatomy of a Scandal is now available to stream at Netflix.