Believe Me is a four-part true crime drama from Jeff Pope’s Etta Pictures that tells the story of black cab serial rapist John Worboys. Here, writer and executive producer Pope, who worked alongside co exec producer Saurabh Kakkar, talks about how the drama developed, its particular sensitivities and the efficiencies needed to pull the production together.
Pope started considering a dramatisation when, in 2018, victims of Worboys campaigned to send him back to jail after his parole ended. The development was interrupted by Covid, then resurfaced. Knowing how long it takes to get a drama onto the screen, Pope and his team needed the idea to pass the “are you still going to be interested in a year’s time” test. Which it did.
Being a sixty something male, Pope did pause to consider if the story was best told by himself. “My gut instinct was that although this story needed to understand what those women went through, it wasn’t a gender specific story. What it’s about is how the system failed them and how the Met failed them.”
Pope specialises in true crime dramatisation. Etta is behind The Confession, Appropriate Adult and Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, to name just three.
For the Believe Me script, he began by assembling the story universe. Before talking with any of the victims, he had an understanding from ITV about the commission. “I’d rather not dive into this incredibly painful part of their lives and then blow them out.”
The production is told from the victims’ point of view. “I never thought this was a story about Worboys,” says Pope. “What he does reveals something else….He allowed us to see how women are treated and not believed.” The audience sees only what each woman remembered as part of their experience. Where they were drugged and blacked out is not part of the screenplay.
Early on in his research, Pope met Sarah and Layla, who had both been attacked by Worboys and their stories not believed by the police. “They were incredibly open, incredibly forthcoming, and we talked a lot about the wider impact on their lives, and God bless them, I remember having detailed conversations about how it affected them, emotionally, sexually, the minute details of what they went through on the day.”
“Sarah was so good at giving us those little human details,” which helped in “the avoidance of cliché.” Details such as when, after the attack, she had to move offices at work so that no-one approached her from behind. And how she danced and played music with her toddler son, forcing herself to act happily and distract herself from crying.
The real Sarah came to watch some of the scenes in the drama and found them moving. “She completely understood why things have been condensed and why they’ve been conflated.”
Pope took on the frustration of the women at being disbelieved and themselves interrogated. “I did spend the process- both research and then into writing – being perpetually angry.” Police protocol in the case of sexual offences prioritises believing the victim in the first instance. “The opposite was true,” says Pope.
Pope likes to work with a small, collaborative, production team, “no one big gun. It’s just a three or four of us. We respect each other’s skills and just contribute.” Julia Ford directed and Catrin Lewis Defis produced.
Working with casting director Kate Rhodes James, they found Aimée-Ffion Edwards, Miriam Petche and Aasiya Shah to play the women that Worboys sexually assaulted. Daniel Mays took on the role of John Worboys.
Shooting a story of rape and sexual assault required great sensitivity. “What we try to do is create an incredibly empathetic environment,” says Pope. Having an intimacy coordinator, it’s not just a nice thing to do, it’s an absolute necessity, because it’s so important that everyone feels comfortable.” There were also wellbeing staff so that anyone on the production could talk to someone if they needed to. “Ultimately, it’s only telly, we’re trying to make sure we don’t screw people’s heads in trying to tell the story..”
Believe Me was filmed in Cardiff and is produced with the support of the Welsh Government via Creative Wales. “There were excellent facilities and infrastructure in Wales,” says Pope. Ford had filmed there before and knew of locations that could double for London. It helped for Welsh qualification that actress Aimee Ffion Edwards – playing Sarah – is a resident of Newport.
The last week of the shoot was taken up with using virtual production facilities to shoot scenes with Daniel Mays in the black cab. A cost effective solution given how much of the action takes place inside the cab. “In years gone by, that would have been low loaders, and you had cameras and a towing vehicle in front of the director and earphones and looking at a monitor and the car driving up and down,” says Pope. “You’ve just got to hope that at the moment a key piece of dialogue happens, what you’re looking at through the window is not Clinton’s cards or something when we’re supposed to be in the middle of Soho.”
Using vp for the scenes inside the cab was a revelation. It took a while to set up, but once they started turning over they raced through it. “When you look at it, I defy you to think that’s not real.”
With the well understood pressures on PBS drama production, budgets were inevitably tight. “It was very difficult financially. So it would have been easier financially to go for a streamer,” says Pope. But the story is particularly British.
Pope acknowledge that streamer budgets have distorted the cost of production and backs the need for government help for PBS to fund UK stories. “If I talk about Confession with Martin Freeman, that wasn’t a problem, that sold all over the world, because there was a universality to the policeman fighting the system. This is more UK-centric and therefore I imagine it’s going to struggle to attract money from all over the world. So, the answer is make every story attractive for investment from all over the world, or don’t do these UK centric stories. And both of those are unpalatable options, aren’t they? So we do need help.”
Pippa Considine
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