All posts tagged: Lady

Viewers binge-watch ITV drama The Lady after ‘brilliant’ 1st episode

Viewers binge-watch ITV drama The Lady after ‘brilliant’ 1st episode

Published by Daniella Wilson

Viewers who tuned into ITV’s new drama, The Lady, on Sunday night have hailed the premiere episode as “brilliant”, with some binge-watching all four episodes on ITVX.  The series, which stars Mia McKenna-Bruce, fictionalises the true story of Jane Andrews, Sarah Ferguson’s royal dresser who ended up in prison for murdering her boyfriend. © James Pardon/Left BankMia McKenna-Bruce stars as Jane Andrews in the drama   The series boasts an impressive production team. Left Bank Pictures, which has produced TV hits such as The Crown and Dept. Q, produces, while acclaimed writer Debbie O’Malley (Payback, Humans, Harlots) pens the script. Meanwhile, Lee Haven Jones, known for his work on the true story-inspired drama, Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, directs. Find out what viewers and critics have said about the series below. WATCH: Are you watching ITV’s The Lady? What is The Lady about? Inspired by a true story, the series follows the life of Jane Andrews, a working-class girl from Grimsby who answered an anonymous job advert in the women’s magazine, The Lady, seeking …

The Lady review – ITV drama about Sarah Ferguson’s dresser just feels uncomfortable

The Lady review – ITV drama about Sarah Ferguson’s dresser just feels uncomfortable

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter If there is one thing that the six seasons of Peter Morgan’s The Crown proved, it’s that television audiences have an almost insatiable appetite for the scandalous intrigues of the House of Windsor. It’s fitting, then, that at a time when our newspapers are filled with tawdry revelations about the royal family, a new ITV drama, The Lady, resurfaces yet another disturbing chapter from its recent history. Jane Andrews (Mia McKenna-Bruce) has grown up in a dead-end town in coastal Lincolnshire. These are the Thatcher years, and the centre of economic gravity is increasingly London. “You work in Marks and your boyfriend’s on benefits,” a snide friend remarks to Jane. “You’re going nowhere.” That’s when fate strikes: she gets a surprise interview for a job in the capital, as assistant dresser to Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York (Natalie Dormer). She might …

The Lady cast and their real-life counterparts: Who stars in ITV’s drama?

The Lady cast and their real-life counterparts: Who stars in ITV’s drama?

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Lady premieres on ITV1 and ITVX tonight, featuring BAFTA Rising Star winner Mia McKenna Bruce (Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials) as convicted murderer Jane Andrews. Andrews became the subject of great media interest in September 2000, when she killed her boyfriend, Thomas Cressman (played by Ed Speleers), before going on the run for several days. Besides the shocking nature of the crime itself, Andrews had previously been a staff member and close confidante to Sarah Ferguson (Natalie Dormer), then known as the Duchess of York (a title she has since stopped using). Andrews had parted ways with Ferguson a few years earlier, but her connection to the Royal Family was a prominent angle of news coverage – and according to Thomas’s brother, Rick, it’s the main reason why the case continues to be examined. This dramatisation of the true story was written and produced prior to the release of old emails from Ferguson to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which have been the source of outrage and criticism in recent weeks. The Lady co-star …

Exclusive: Lady Louise Windsor doing ‘extremely well’ in carriage driving, says insider

Exclusive: Lady Louise Windsor doing ‘extremely well’ in carriage driving, says insider

Published by Daniella Wilson

Like her grandfather before her, Lady Louise Windsor has taken up the reins in the world of carriage driving. At 22, she continues to follow, or rather drive, in the late Duke of Edinburgh’s footsteps, with one trainer telling HELLO! that Louise is “doing extremely well”.  Sara Howe, who owns and runs the Bradbourne Riding & Training Centre in Sevenoaks, sees Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth’s youngest granddaughter out at competitions. “I think she’s doing extremely well with the time and the commitment of everything else she has to do,” Sara exclusively told HELLO!. “She’s a pleasure to work with.” “She certainly tries. She gets frustrated when it goes wrong, like the rest of us do. So she still goes home and practises and comes back and there’s an improvement,” the trainer added of Louise. “She looks more than good.” Although Louise might not be winning the class she’s in, she’s certainly not at the bottom, as Sara pointed out. “If you look at the results, and if you’ve got ten in a class or 15 …

The Lady true story: How Sarah Ferguson’s dresser Jane Andrews became a killer

The Lady true story: How Sarah Ferguson’s dresser Jane Andrews became a killer

Published by Daniella Wilson

ITV is revisiting a shocking true crime case that caused a media frenzy at the turn of the millennium, when a former employee of Sarah Ferguson was convicted of murder. The Lady tells the life story of Jane Andrews (played by Mia McKenna-Bruce), who went from a relatively poor home in Grimsby to the opulence of Buckingham Palace after becoming a dresser to the then-Duchess of York (Natalie Dormer). Their friendship weathered Ferguson’s divorce from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, but fizzled out not long after, leaving Andrews bereft at losing access to the royal world. Just a few short years later, Ferguson would be contacted by police about the whereabouts of her earlier confidante, whose boyfriend had been found dead in his west London home. This is the true story that inspired ITV drama The Lady. The Lady true story: How Sarah Ferguson’s dresser Jane Andrews became a killer Natalie Dormer as Sarah Ferguson and Mia McKenna-Bruce as Jane Andrews in The Lady. Leftbank Pictures for ITV ITV drama The Lady tells the life story of Jane Andrews, …

Jane Andrews: The real-life murder case behind Fergie dresser drama ‘The Lady’

Jane Andrews: The real-life murder case behind Fergie dresser drama ‘The Lady’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter From a terrace in Grimsby to Buckingham Palace – then on to the Old Bailey and Her Majesty’s Prison. It is hardly a surprise that the story of Jane Andrews, the former dresser and right-hand woman to Sarah Ferguson who was later jailed for the murder of her boyfriend Thomas Cressman, became something of a grim cause célèbre in the early Noughties. After all, it had all the components of a very British tabloid scandal: class anxiety, mingled with royalty and shocking violence. Headlines branded Andrews, the Lincolnshire woman who had ascended from humble beginnings to earn the nickname “Lady Jane” from her employer, a “bunny boiler” or the “Fatal Attraction” killer. She was portrayed as a callous and jealous social climber, fixated upon securing a place among the upper classes. Andrews, however, contended that she had been a victim of …

Liza Minnelli claims she was ‘inexplicably ordered’ to be in a wheelchair for 2022 Oscars appearance with Lady Gaga

Liza Minnelli claims she was ‘inexplicably ordered’ to be in a wheelchair for 2022 Oscars appearance with Lady Gaga

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Liza Minnelli is shedding light on her 2022 Oscars appearance alongside Lady Gaga, insisting that she was forced into using a wheelchair as a co-presenter, in her new memoir. Years after the appearance — and following similar claims about the event from her friend, pianist Michael Feinstein — Minnelli, 79, claimed that she was originally supposed to sit in a director’s chair to present the award, but the plan changed without much explanation. “I was inexplicably ordered — not even asked — to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all. I was told it was because of my age, and for safety reasons, because I might slip out of the director’s chair, which was bullshit,” read the excerpt of her forthcoming memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, obtained by People. “I will not be treated this way, I …

Dylan Mulvaney Is Finally a Broadway Leading Lady, Haters Be Damned

Dylan Mulvaney Is Finally a Broadway Leading Lady, Haters Be Damned

Published by Sam Flores

Mulvaney weathered that storm—and gained more notoriety and followers in the process. But when it was announced that she was stepping into the role of Anne Boleyn in December of 2025, she experienced deja vu, with conservatives criticizing her casting, calling it “woke” and lamenting on social media that they “made Anne Boleyn trans.” There were so many negative comments that the Six social media team made its X account private. “The protection, safety, and support of the Six cast has always been, and remains, our highest priority,” said Six producers in a joint statement. “While we welcome passionate engagement with the show, aggressive, threatening, or abusive behaviour is never acceptable.” “All of a sudden, the far right started attacking me and the show,” Mulvaney says, sipping her cocktail. “And I’m like, since when have you ever cared about Broadway? They don’t care. They would have never gone to see this, and if they had, they would hate it even if I wasn’t in it.” While it’s arguably more ridiculous than Beergate, this go round, …

Who Was Lady Anne Spencer, Princess Diana’s Aunt Who Evacuated Nazi-Occupied Austria?

Who Was Lady Anne Spencer, Princess Diana’s Aunt Who Evacuated Nazi-Occupied Austria?

Published by Sam Flores

Born in London on August 4, 1920, Lady Anne was the eldest child and only daughter of Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer, and his wife, Cynthia Hamilton. Lady Anne’s younger brother, John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, inherited their father’s title and the family seat of Althorp House, upon his death in 1975. Lady Anne grew up between Spencer House in London and at the family seat of Althorp House, in Northamptonshire. The Spencers have a relationship with the House of Windsor dating back generations, and Lady Anne enjoyed a close relationship with the royal family, thanks to her four aunts being Ladies-in-Waiting to the Queen Mother and her own mother serving as a Lady-to-the-Bedchamber. Like many young women of her generation, Lady Anne was educated at home by a governess and reportedly excelled at music and languages. Indeed, the young British society swan was living in Austria to perfect her German when Adolf Hitler and his entourage drove past her apartment in Vienna, marking the start of the Anschluss, or annexation of Austria, in March 1938. …

The Lady writer explains how Sarah Ferguson TV drama handles Andrew

The Lady writer explains how Sarah Ferguson TV drama handles Andrew

Published by Daniella Wilson

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. “Andrew does not feature,” writer Debbie O’Malley says emphatically of the royal formerly known as Prince and his presence, or lack thereof, in ITV1’s four-parter The Lady. The drama tells the story of Jane Andrews (former dresser to the once Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson), who killed her partner Thomas Cressman in 2000. O’Malley says The Lady isn’t “interested in the royal world because it’s very much about the female, domestic world of Sarah [Natalie Dormer] and Jane’s part in it. We only ever see the Sarah that Jane got to see.” The Lady’s attention to Andrews’s relationship with Ferguson — “a fascinating dynamic as close as friends but with a difference in status that will never go away” — forms part of what O’Malley calls Andrews’s “toxic fairy tale”. “You’ve got this girl who comes from ordinary beginnings and ends up mixing with the greatest in the land at Buckingham Palace – before things take a sad and upsetting turn. It’s an interesting way to explore …