“Script-wise,narrative-wise,technology-wise,the industry I’m in now bears no resemblance whatsoever to the one I started in 18 years ago in the presentation of female characters,and even male characters,” Dormer says. “I think we’ll look back in a couple of generations’ time and see this as a very fluctuating time in how people consume entertainment,what stories mean to them,and how paradigms have changed. We’re right in the middle of that.”
Natalie Dormer,best known previously as Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones.Stan
The 42-year-old,who graduated from London’s Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in 2005 and within 18 months was capturing Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall in the royal period dramaThe Tudors,is well aware that television is going through a time of reappraisal,both commercially and creatively. But as an artist who has astutely positioned her own production company,Dog Rose,Dormer understands that there are still many promising paths to blaze.
Her new show is one of them.White Lies is a fast-paced crime thriller where the killer’s identity is bound up in a community,city,and culture we rarely see on our screens. The limited series is a South African production,set in the country’s capital of Cape Town. The outline of creator Sean Steinberg’s plot is readily recognisable:Dormer plays Edie Hansen,an investigative journalist newly returned to South Africa who is forced to confront her complicated family history when her estranged brother and his wife are murdered and the authorities suspect the slain couple’s two teenage children are responsible.
“For Brits,Americans,Australians watching the show there are huge universal themes of identity,the chasm between the haves and the have nots,and social commentary,corruption commentary,” Dormer says. “We know all that from our own countries,but seen through South African eyes it’s different.”
From the first establishing shot,where surveillance cameras and private security guards dot a wealthy white enclave,White Lies captures the many strata of life in Cape Town. While the striking natural beauty of Table Mountain looms above the city,the show homes in on the friction of a complicated,imperfect metropolis where old and new systems are at odds. In trying to exonerate a niece and nephew who don’t remember her,Edie is up against a Black police detective,Forty Bell (Brendon Daniels),she has previously condemned in print.
She doesn’t belong to the privileged white tribe,she doesn’t belong to the many other communities.
Natalie Dormer
“I was coming in as an outsider,which was life imitating art,” Dormer says. “Edie was born in South Africa,but for reasons that become apparent she ran away from her demons and exiled herself in her late teens. She dropped the accent on purpose,disowned her identity as a South African by going to Britain for 15 years. The character wears that outsider status as a badge of honour,she believes it gives her objectivity. She doesn’t belong to the privileged white tribe,she doesn’t belong to the many other communities.”
Brendon Daniels as police officer Forty Bells in White Lies.Supplied
The genesis ofWhite Lies goes back to Dormer’s starring role as headmistress Hester Appleyard in Foxtel’s 2018 remake ofPicnic at Hanging Rock. That production connected her to the global production house Fremantle. They would subsequently help Dormer nurture Dog Rose,and she came back to Fremantle when the script appeared forWhite Lies. The South African producers were searching for an international star and a budget to allow for production values that would sell the series into key markets. Dormer and Fremantle,in an alliance,were the solution.
“I was intrigued by the idea of a South African show setting the stakes on an international prestige level,” Dormer says. “Their production company is aiming to be ambitious in aTop of the Lake kind of way,it wants to up the game. I went to Fremantle and we said to each other,‘I’m in if you’re in’.”
“The show really does some heavy lifting,especially with Brendon Daniels’ character. It doesn’t shy away from police corruption and the social divide,” Dormer adds. “Both Forty and Edie are hypocrites when you first meet them. They’re obsessed with the truth and justice,but neither of them quite has the strength to look within themselves. They’re hiding from their own truths and their own weaknesses.”
Dormer’s performance has a vivid,fractious energy. Edie refuses to take a step backwards,for better or worse. It’s a mindset that is informed in part by Dormer’s research into playing an investigative journalist. She spent time with the likes of Holly Watt,the reporter turned crime novelist who helped break the British MPs expenses scandal in 2009,and her present-day South African equivalents.
“You don’t see Edie at work very much,because this case is too personal for her,but it was important for me to understand the psyche of investigative journalists,” Dormer says. “They have this ability to talk to people and gain their trust and get information out of them,while being blinkered about their own personal issues. They chase the story and truth at all costs.”
White Lies streams on Stan.
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