00:00The test I always said to myself was if they go back and watch it again,
00:04then they'll have a completely different perspective.
00:07Why didn't you question it?
00:13No, Mr. Ravenscroft, why didn't you?
00:19My character didn't know how to even process or explain
00:23to herself or to other people what had gone on all those years ago.
00:27It's important to know that the first six episodes we're going to hear everybody's voices.
00:31Yes.
00:32And now we're going to hear her voice.
00:34There's no one way, you know, there's signs, there's symptoms,
00:38there's certain ways of accessing the past that frequently occur with people
00:43who've gone through a traumatic experience.
00:45But there's no textbook to say this is the correct
00:48and accessible way to reveal that bit of information.
00:51Part of the challenge of Disclaimer, it was how not to reveal,
00:56but at the same time, how not to cheat by hiding information.
01:00Yes. No, I was reading a lot of books about people who had been sexually abused,
01:05people who have been physically or psychologically abused,
01:09and how that affects their memory of it.
01:13You remember these things in fragments.
01:16And that's why so often women's voices are not believed,
01:18because they seem to often contradict things they've said before,
01:23because memory doesn't work in a linear way.
01:25So you're watching her being reactivated,
01:27but yet we're expecting her to behave like a heroine.
01:30You know, and I think that's an enormous pressure to put on somebody
01:33who's been through what she's been through.
01:36It often takes people a really, really long time
01:38to even approach being able to talk about these things.
01:41Your wife couldn't fathom what I was feeling.
01:44Nancy.
01:44Shut up, I'm talking.
01:46I've heard enough from you.
01:47Finally, this is Catherine's point of view.
01:50The recollection is much more fragmentary,
01:53but she had to unpack it to understand her role within it
01:57and kind of eradicate that sense of shame.
02:01I mean, does that ever go away?
02:02I don't know.
02:07To make quick judgments is something that is ingrained in humanity
02:11for centuries and centuries.
02:13There is this encouragement of take a quick judgment.
02:17I mean, in social media, immediately you have the like or not like.
02:21A lot of these judgments come out of pure emotion
02:24without any stop to consider and contemplate for a moment.
02:30We're all looking for the truth, aren't we?
02:32Sometimes we think we've got a hold of it and nope.
02:36We were wrong about that.
02:38We're all subject to gullibility to varying degrees.
02:43I got halfway through and I kind of pushed the script away.
02:47I thought, I really don't like this woman.
02:50And of course, as the story unfolded, I found myself,
02:54I guess, being invited or forming judgments very quickly.
02:57Just struck me on the last episode,
02:59how susceptible we all are to stories and to ideas and beliefs and suggestions.
03:03It's quite shocking that moment.
03:05I had to kind of go and have a cup of tea and think,
03:08well, hang on, I've been working on an assumption
03:12that A and B equals C and they don't at all.
03:16How can you be so sure it was an accident?
03:18That's one of the overriding themes of the whole piece.
03:23Our inbuilt prejudice, our very uncomfortably easy ability to prejudge.
03:30Of course, within any story, we're never really not judging.
03:34And this kind of shows us the destructive nature of judgment.
03:39You don't deserve us.
03:42Now get out.
03:45If there is any lesson that I would take from it,
03:47it would be to give somebody the space to talk about something
03:50that might not be easy to talk about and to try and pick up on the signs.
03:54I don't think I've ever made something that step by step in performing it,
03:58I was acutely aware of where the audience might be at with the story.
04:03We wanted scenes coming out of the novel to have a heightened cinematic approach
04:10to frame that part of the story.
04:13The important part of it was about stating a big contrast between the novel
04:19with reality.
04:20It's radically different between one version and the other.
04:24You have in the book this seductive Catherine with this red swimming costume,
04:30while you have in the reality a more reserved Catherine with a one-piece swimming suit.
04:36You see in the hotel room, in the ceiling,
04:39you have this kind of erotic fresco of Greek gods,
04:43while in Catherine's memory is a reproduction of the dead of Saint Catherine.
04:48Kate and Alfonso really included me in the process of finding the differences
04:53between what we were calling fictional Catherine and real Catherine.
04:58It was a story of contrast.
04:59Jonathan, as we see him in the second half, he's a real ball of anger and hatred.
05:04I suppose if Jonathan number one is the deer in the headlights,
05:07Jonathan number two is a car coming at the deer.
05:10The test I always said to myself was, if they go back and watch it again,
05:14then they'll have a completely different view,
05:16or they'll be able to see maybe a very small,
05:19seemingly inconsequential gesture or moment or connection or avoidance,
05:25and then they might be confronted with the prejudice that they entered the story with,
05:30but not in a way that's manipulative.
05:34Oh, God.
05:35You think about it.
05:36One of the reasons she has a difficulty telling the truth to Stephen is out of compassion.
05:43The same reason she didn't tell the truth to Nancy.
05:46You know, it's because they already went through a trauma,
05:50and she doesn't want to make things more painful for them.
05:54You just have to know it's not easy.
05:56Mrs. Brigstocke, it's actually very, very complicated.
05:58Complicated?
05:59Complicated.
06:00No, no, no, no.
06:01No, it's not complicated.
06:02Oh, I'm dying.
06:06When you unearth these things, you re-experience them,
06:10and so the shock that you experience is as great as the moment in which it happened.
06:15And then when your nearest and dearest don't believe you,
06:19then that's almost another traumatic experience.
06:22I know I should forgive you, but the truth is I can't.
06:27Because you're managing the idea of me having been violated by someone
06:36far more easily than the idea that someone bringing me pleasure.
06:41Really at the center of this story is Nicholas,
06:44and what happens to the children of those people who've experienced trauma.
06:49What's painful about that is that they do deeply love one another.
06:52They just don't fully understand what has happened to them as a mother and a son.
06:56When he learns that his mother didn't do the terrible things that he thought,
07:00it's like another stage of grief.
07:02It's another stage of shame.
07:04But it's an overwhelming sense of love, and everything is okay.
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