Why Jill Halfpenny's role in BBC One's Dark Money could be her darkest yet
BBC1's thought-provoking new series Dark Money tells the story of an ordinary working-class family whose lives are torn apart when they find out a Hollywood filmmaker has sexually abused their 13-year-old son.
Jill Halfpenny plays the young boy's mother Sam, who, along with her husband Manny (played by Babou Cesay) are offered a substantial pay-off for the family's silence about the molestation of their child by this powerful and seemingly untouchable industry figure.
The couple are left to deal with the fallout of accepting the life-changing amount of money which relinquishes any hope of redemption or justice, while coping with the aftermath of the guilt, the shame and the trauma of the unimaginable happening to their child.
"You put yourself in the shoes of the family," the Three Girls actress told Prima and others at a screening for the new series. "I was really intrigued by how shameful the whole experience would be for the family, and how when something like this happens – it's traumatising and steeped in shame, and the family's reaction has been to shutdown and not talk about it.
"You see with their daughter Sabrina, that hasn't been dealt with at all – and I thought it was really interesting to go inside the lives of these ordinary people where something extraordinary has happened to them. We want to feel like we would do everything possible to protect our child, but in some ways that [not telling family or friends] suits them because then they can put it in that box, and see if they can survive doing it that way.
"Obviously we all know that's not going to work out for them – especially when it's something that traumatic and shameful, there's always going to be an explosion with that toxic secretiveness. Not being able to share it with your immediate family – let alone the rest of the world – to live with that, that made it feel really exciting to explore."
The moment where Sam and Manny are offered the hush money by team of rabid US lawyers and representatives – who cooly pass off their son's claims despite having sound footage of the abuse taking place which Isaac recorded on his phone – was as intense to watch as it was to film, Halfpenny reflected.
"I had to really think about how there was a feeling of powerlessness, and the feeling of being completely railroaded," she said. "We came to the conclusion that it was almost like an outer-body experience.
"This thing has happened and we're trying to do the best that we can, and now we're sat in a room and a man keeps talking at us and now he's giving us the £3million it's like an overwhelm. The brain can't take in the severity and the weirdness of what happened so I think thats how I approached she just complete disassociated and watching herself watching it happen."
Just as harrowing was the moment when Isaac shows his parents the footage which depicts the abuse for the first time, which Halfpenny and Ceesay revealed that they too watched for the first time while shooting the scene. The footage is played three times throughout the first episode.
"We saw that for the first time right then and there," National Treasure star Ceesay explained. "I think it was the right thing to do in the end. In that way, you're kind of reacting to your imagination and – horribly – what you think what it would be."
Halfpenny added: "It's a bit of both isn't it... [reacting to it in character and as yourself]. Not to sound too cheesy, but very quickly when you're dealing with these kind of subject matters, you get really close really quickly by the time we got to that scene, Max was our Isaac. We felt immensely protective over him."
The four-part series is from the writer of the award-winning Damilola Our Loved Boy Levi David Addai.
BBC One's Dark Money airs on Monday, 8 July.
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