‘Be made to think, be made to feel’: Actress Ruth Wilson on new gothic thriller
From Luther and The Affair, through to His Dark Materials, actress Ruth Wilson has become the go-to actress when it comes to playing some of modern TV and film’s most complex characters.
Rather than play it safe, the actress says she likes the idea that viewers who watch her work will be “triggered”.
“It wouldn’t be as interesting for me to just take on pure entertainment,” she told Sky News.
“I kind of want people to be triggered. I mean, everyone is like ‘don’t trigger people’. No, no, no, just let them be triggered. That’s the point of art to me, you know, feel something, be made to think, be made to feel.”
Her latest TV venture, The Woman In The Wall, certainly packs that emotional punch, but it also goes to great lengths to ensure it is a story told with authenticity and sensitivity.
Unconventional and unsettling, the gothic thriller is set against the backdrop of one of the most traumatic and formative scandals in the modern Irish state, the Magdalene Laundries.
Exploring the psychological effects of the horrific abuse suffered by many thousands of Irish women and girls in state-funded, church-run homes, Wilson plays Lorna Brady – still haunted by her time in one – who wakes one morning to find a corpse in her house.
Suffering from extreme bouts of sleepwalking, she then has to work out who the body is and whether she might be responsible for the apparent murder.
“This character is so brilliantly unusual but deeply human,” Wilson explains. “She is someone that is a survivor but she has these deep repressed memories that come out in sleepwalking.
“It was a great device… a way of dealing with trauma in a creative, unusual way. She’s treated as an outsider by the community because of what she’s gone through… but that gives her power in some ways.”
Pic: BBC/Motive Pictures/Chris Barr
Daryl McCormack as Detective Colman Akande. Pic: BBC/Motive Pictures/Chris Barr
Survivors talk openly about suffering trauma
While the genre-mixing drama is surreal, strange and, at times, even funny, writer Joe Murtagh says he went to great lengths “to make sure we were never ever veering towards exploitation”.
“Paramount was authenticity and sensitivity… when we felt confident enough, we began speaking to survivors.”
Survivors of the homes talk openly about suffering trauma to this day.
From at least 1922 through to 1996, about 10,000 so-called “troubled” women – including unmarried mothers and abuse victims – were imprisoned against their will in what were essentially religious workhouses, any children taken away from them.
“The first Mission Impossible was released when the last mother and baby home was closed, that’s how recent it is,” Wilson explains.
“More people [outside of Ireland] need to know about it… and drama is the best way of getting stories out there.”
Pic: BBC/Motive Pictures/Chris Barr
‘I left because I missed boys!’
Around the same time in England, Wilson herself was being educated at a Catholic school for girls.
“It was a great education,” Wilson admits, before joking: “I left because I missed boys!
“While for some women in Ireland it was a different story…”
Wilson hopes the drama is a means to help people understand the horrific abuse many thousands of women are still processing.
“Hopefully it never happens again. That’s the only way you stop it from happening again, telling these stories in the first place.”
The Woman In The Wall is on BBC One and iPlayer at 9:05pm on Sunday 27 August.
Kanye West’s Yeezy online shopping platform has been taken down after selling T-shirts featuring a swastika.
The rapper, also known as Ye, used a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday to send people to his website to buy the clothing emblazoned with the Nazi symbol – an image often used by the extreme-right.
The ecommerce platform Shopify, which hosts many online shops and businesses, has deactivated his site and his domain name yeez.com is being sold for $98,999 (£79,692).
Shopify said in an emailed statement to Sky News’ sister channel NBC News: “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”
West’s representative is yet to respond to a request from NBC for comment.
The white T-shirts featured a black swastika on the front and were the only items for sale on the front page of yeezy.com.
No text or explanation accompanied the item, just the letters “HH-01.” They were available for $20 (£16).
Initially, West’s site showed a notice from Shopify which said the store was “unavailable”.
yeez.com was taken offline by Shopify, the e-commerce platform which was hosting his shop
But the site now redirects to the registrar GoDaddy, the platform which manages yeez.com, where a page shows the domain name is for sale.
GoDaddy has not yet responded to questions about the sale and whether it was enforced by the company or initiated by West.
The domain name yeez.com can be bought for $98,999 (£79,692)
The decision to sell the T-shirt triggered widespread criticism, including from the Anti-Defamation League (ADF) which posted a statement on X on Monday, describing the shirt sales as further proof of West’s antisemitism.
The organisation, formed to combat anti-Jewish bigotry and discrimination, explained that the swastika was adopted by Hitler and “continues to threaten and instil fear in those targeted by antisemitism and white supremacy”.
The ADF also said the T-shirt was labelled on Kanye’s website as ‘HH-01’ – suggesting this was code for “Heil Hitler”.
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West has in recent days been posting antisemitic messages on X, as well as writing “I love Hitler” and “I’m a Nazi”. His account then had a “sensitive content warning” added to it before he posted a final message.
“I’m logging out of Twitter,” he wrote. “I appreciate [X owner] Elon [Musk] for allowing me to vent.”
After his account was deactivated on Monday, his spokesperson Milo Yiannopoulos issued an explanation.
“Ye is an intergenerational artist and icon who continues to redefine the limits of creativity and free expression. He has deactivated his X account for the time being,” he said in a statement.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism was joined by Friends star David Schwimmer in calling for Elon Musk to remove West from X over a string of offensive posts.
One of the most successful figures in hop-hip, West built up a fashion brand called Yeezy which began as a collaboration with Adidas. But the German sportswear giant cut ties with him in 2022 over his antisemitic remarks and eventually reached a settlement in October.
A pilot has died after a private jet owned by Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil crashed into another plane at an airport in Arizona.
Neil was not on board at the time of the collision, which happened off the runway at Scottsdale Airport on Monday afternoon.
Neil’s girlfriend Rain Andreani and her friend suffered injuries which are not thought to be life-threatening.
They were taken to hospital with the jet’s co-pilot, who was also injured.
Emergency responders work on Vince Neil’s plane after the collision. Pic: AP
“While details are still emerging, our hearts go out to the families of both the pilot who lost his life and the passengers who suffered injuries,” Motley Crue said in a statement.
“Motley Crue will announce a way to help support the family of the deceased pilot – stand by for an announcement very soon”.
Rain Andreani broke five ribs in the crash and the dogs the women were travelling with survived, TMZ reports.
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Pic: AP
Neil’s jet was arriving from Austin, Texas, when one of its two sets of landing gears failed.
The Learjet veered off the runway after landing and crashed into a Gulfstream 200 business jet.
Neil’s lawyer said the singer is “grateful for the critical aid of all first responders assisting today”.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the incident was under investigation.
Motley Crue enjoyed major success throughout the 1980s, selling more than 100 million records.
Vince Neil fronted the rock band from their formation in 1981 until he left in 1992.
He later reunited with the band in 1996 and fronted them until they retired in 2015, and again from the band’s 2018 reunion onwards.
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