Jenna Coleman has just been on an “emotional marathon”. The star of The Cry (4 x 60 mins) confessed that making the BBC’s hit psychological thriller was, at times, “an incredibly gruelling” experience.
Coleman (Victoria; Doctor Who) plays new mother Joanna, who finds herself caught up in every parent’s worst nightmare when her baby son disappears during a visit to Australia. Joanna and her husband Alistair (Ewen Leslie) are thrown into a web of secrets and lies, played out in the glare of a media frenzy. But is Joanna just a grieving mother — or is there something darker going on?
“It’s a tense, claustrophobic story,” said Coleman, who is in Cannes to help distributor DRG to promote The Cry. “At the beginning, Joanna is clearly on the edge of disintegration, battling with post-natal depression, isolation and loss of identity. But it’s a drama that keeps redefining your expectations. As soon as you think you know what’s going on, there’s a curve ball. Everybody’s got theories, but nobody I’ve spoken to has managed to wholly work out the ending.”
That ending will be revealed to UK viewers next week, when the fourth and final episode of The Cry airs on BBC One. “It seems to be going down really well,” Coleman said — and not just with audiences. DRG confirmed this week that the series, which ranks as the UK’s second-biggest drama launch of 2018 with consolidated ratings of 7.3 million, was presold to France’s M6, Norway’s TV2, Sweden’s C More (TV4), Canal+ in Poland, New Zealand’s TVNZ, NPO in the Netherlands and BBC Worldwide for its channels in the Benelux, the Middle East and Africa. These deals followed a co-production pact with ABC in Australia and an exclusive US rights deal with Sundance Now.
Based on Helen FitzGerald’s best-selling book of the same name, The Cry is produced by Synchronicity Films for the BBC, in association with ABC, Creative Scotland, December Media, Film Victoria and Sunbird Media. It was written by Jacquelin Perske (The Secret Life Of Us), directed by Glendyn Ivin (Gallipoli) and produced by Brian Kaczynski (Peaky Blinders).
This and more in the MIPCOM News Issue three, read it in full here…
This article was written by Jo Stephens and edited for MIPBlog.
