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Ruth Wilson and Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) have signed up for The Woman in the Wall, a thriller series rooted in one of Ireland's most horrific scandals.
According to a BBC press release, Wilson will also executive produce the six-part series, which is a co-production with Showtime. It's been created by Joe Murtagh, who previously wrote the acclaimed Irish indie film Calm with Horses.
Wilson will play Lorna Brady, a woman from a small Irish town who wakes up one morning to find a dead body in her house. She has no idea how the body got there, but because she is a frequent sleepwalker, she can't rule out her own involvement. McCormack will co-star as Detective Colman Akande, a rising star officer who is pursuing Brady for a seemingly unrelated crime. According to the press release, McCormack's character is harboring a few secrets of his own.
As for the major scandal, it lies in the troubled past of Wilson's character. Her sleepwalking is said to stem from her time in one of Ireland's widely criticized "Magdalene Laundries." For around two hundred years until the 1990s, these church-run institutions took in so-called "fallen women," but often treated them cruelly and used them for forced labor.
As The Guardian reported, Ireland's then-Taoiseach Enda Kenny apologized in 2013 for the way that 10,000 women were treated in these institutions over the decades. He said the plight of the so-called "Magdalene women" had "cast a long shadow over Irish life, over our sense of who we are."
Wilson said of her role in the new series: "Lorna Brady is a complex and fascinating character and I’m thrilled to help bring her to life. In The Woman in the Wall, Joe has created both an enthralling gothic thriller and a moving examination of the legacy of The Magdalene Laundries. It’s a privilege to bring this story to screens."
Are you intrigued by The Woman in the Wall?