Until I Kill You’s Anna Maxwell Martin explains why she didn’t meet Delia Balmer
Anna Maxwell Martin has blown audiences away with her raw portrayal of attack survivor Delia Balmer in the new ITV drama Until I Kill You. The drama tells the story of how Delia survived a near-lethal relationship with her serial killer partner John Sweeney.
And opening up on how she got into character for the series, Anna has now revealed why she chose not to meet the real life Delia to help with the role. "I’ve played quite a few real people and I have never met them before. I don’t choose to do that, that’s how I work," began Anna.
She continued: "Our writer, Nick, filmed a lot of footage of his meetings with Delia, which I had access to. I did meet her very briefly during filming, but only because she wanted to visit the set and of course I was respectful of that.
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"I didn’t do lots of research into abusive relationships either, instead I just focused on the character, on who she was, how she responded to things, and what I could gauge about how she interacted with people. Then you go from there and you try to be as accurate as you can in terms of how that person would behave and respond."
Former nurse Delia escaped death when John attempted to murder her in 1994, with the series depicting how Delia was in a relationship with him from 1991 that became frightening, with him holding her captive and later attacking her with an axe and a knife, leaving her with life-changing injuries.
Anna also explained that it was the character of Delia which drew her to the drama. "She’s unlike anyone I’ve ever played before, she’s an incredibly fascinating person and her responses to things are very particular to her. It was really interesting and liberating to play someone like Delia, who is unapologetically herself and gives herself licence to express everything she’s thinking and feeling. That is an amazing quality and very few people are like that. I don’t want to speak for her at all, but I think it absolutely informs just how resilient she is. That was thrilling for me to play."
Now in prison, John - played by Shaun Evans in the series - is currently serving multiple life sentences for the attempted murder of Delia as well as the murders of two other women; Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields.
John, who is now in his 60s, was born in Kirkdale in Liverpool in the 1950s. During the mid-1980s, John, who trained as a carpenter and joiner, moved to London where he met Melissa before following her to Vienna and Amsterdam.
Tragically, in 1990, 33 year old Melissa’s remains were found in Westersingel canal near Rotterdam. However, it wasn’t until 2008 that she was formally identified when her family in Ohio supplied matching DNA.
John’s next known victim was Paula, whose dismembered remains were found in Regent's Canal in 2001. When her body was found, it had been cut up into 10 pieces and dumped in the canal in a series of holdalls. Her feet were missing from the discovered remains.
