MRS WILSON will continue on the BBC this evening as the mystery surrounding Alec Wilson deepens. But who is Alex Wilson?

  

BBC drama Mrs Wilson kicked off last week with the three-part drama telling the true-life story of a woman who discovers her husband’s double life after his death. Ruth Wilson takes the lead in the series portraying her own grandmother. The Luther and The Affair actress became intrigued by her grandmother’s extraordinary story and sought to bring it to the small screen. Viewers have now been asking about Mrs Wilson’s husband Alec Wilson, here’s everything you need to know.

Alexander Joseph Patrick Wilson – better known as Alec – was a former MI6 agent, who was also a serial bigamist with four wives.

The story of his wives only came out after his death from a heart attack at the age of 69 in 1963.

In the BBC drama, the character of the spy is portrayed by Game of Thrones and Delicious actor Iain Glen whose relationships with his various wives are depicted.

The real Alec was not only a spy but an author as well having published a total of 24 novels and three academic books.

Some of the files about Alec are still classified under the Official Secrets Act, so his motives for his multiple marriages remains unknown – was he a narcissist or all part of his cover as a spy?

His only legal marriage was to his first wife Gladys, whom he wed in 1916 and had three children with.

While posted in India with his family, Alec met his second wife Dorothy Wick whom went onto marry and have one son.

Alison was his third wife whom he met while working in MI6 after the young secretary caught his eye. The couple went on to tie the knot and have two sons.

But Alec did not seem satisfied and found wife number four in the form of nurse Elizabeth and had another child, bringing his total number of children to seven.

He managed to marry by simply changing his middle name on the marriage certificate, something that would be unlikely to remain undected in this day and age.

Just like in the TV show, Alec gave Alison a phone number which he told her to call only after he died, thus the tale of his lies and deception unfolded.

Speaking about the series, Mrs Wilson writer Anna Symon said that it was only after Alex’s death that his wife Alison really discovered who he was.

She told the BBC: “It was only after this event, in real life, that Alison learnt how much her husband had lied to her throughout her life.

“So, in Mrs Wilson, the audience goes on a sort of quest to discover who Alexander was, with Alison as the emotionally invested detective.

“We are with her every step of the way as she tries to find out whom she was married to. This meant using a lot of flashbacks to their early years together in wartime London, as well as following her in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death.”

Following Alec’s death, Alison went on to write two memoirs in which she tried to unpack her husband’s deception and try to understand his complex web of lies.

Actress Ruth said that she found it easier to dramatise the events from her family’s history rather than making a documentary.

She told media including the Daily Express: “It would actually be more exposing to make a documentary because it would be me, Ruth, and you would have to give answers.

“But I have never judged them and neither has the rest of the family. I find them both curious and complex. So it is safer to dramatise it, get underneath the characters more, and fully serve the story.”

Source: The Express

 

HE’S starred in Game Of Thrones and Delicious, but actor Iain Glen hasn’t forgotten his roots.”

As one of the longest-serving (and surviving) cast members of Game Of Thrones, it must have come as something of an ego blow for Iain Glen to discover he was to be bumped off in the very first episode of his next drama, Delicious.

Luckily for Iain, the writers decided they wanted to keep his character in the show from beyond the grave.

And now he’s back for a second series of Delicious, which was Sky One’s highest rating original drama of last year.

Iain plays Leo, a celebrity chef who has an affair with his ex-wife, played by Dawn French, behind the back of his second wife (Emilia Fox).

A heart attack swiftly kills him in episode one, but Leo remains as a narrator, finally stepping back on screen in the last episode.

“My daughter had attempted suicide and came into ‘God’s waiting room’, where she had this imagined conversation with me,” says Iain, 56.

“The writers took that and have continued it into the new season. It feels like a quite unique conceit.”

Iain certainly isn’t used to being killed off so quickly. He has played Ser Jorah Mormont in Game Of Thrones for seven seasons without succumbing to deadly disease or bloodthirsty battle.

He says both shows have been great fun to film, so it wasn’t a difficult decision to rejoin the cast of Delicious for a second spin.

“It was hugely enjoyable filming in Cornwall and I’m very fond of Dawn and Emilia. It’s a lovely sensation as an actor to return to something that has gone down well, and to meet up with people and have that shared experience. I feel it on Thrones very acutely, but I definitely felt it on this, too.”

The food required for filming made life on set particularly enjoyable.

“There’s lots of nibbling going on at Delicious as they give us fantastic dishes to work with,” he says, although playing a chef hasn’t improved his skills in the kitchen.

“I’m a foodie in the sense that I love food and can eat enormous amounts of it and get away with it – much to the irritation of my wife. But I’m really moronic when it comes to creating meals. I don’t trust myself or have any instinct for it, so I laboriously follow a recipe to within an inch of its life and get very nervous about it,” he says.

“If I were asked to do one of those celebrity cooking shows it would be a clear, resounding no.”

It’s unlikely Iain will need to do any reality TV any time soon, though, having been on the receiving end of the ever-escalating salaries enjoyed by the Thrones cast.

The main stars are reportedly on up to seven figures per episode in the final season, though Iain would never be so vulgar as to entertain a conversation about pay packets.

“For me, success has never been about visibility or a recognition but the ability to have done enough to choose the parts you take,” he says.

“When I get into my sixties and seventies, it would be nice not to need to work – I know too many actors for whom life is very hard.”

So what was the secret to avoiding being brutally wiped out? “I’ve been sucking up to the writers when I’ve met them,” he jokes.

“Those of us who have survived – and Ser Jorah has teetered close to demise for quite a few seasons – do feel very lucky to have staggered to the final act.”

It probably helps that Iain hasn’t annoyed anyone by giving away any big plot twists over the years.

“I haven’t ever let anything slip,” he says.

“It’s quite fun because people ask so much that you start toying with them and then play along as if you’ve given something away, but deep down people don’t really want to know. They ask but it would just spoil it for them.”

Iain grew up in Edinburgh but didn’t discover acting until he was at the University Of Aberdeen, quickly dropping out to study at RADA – thankfully with the support of his mother and father.

“They’ve enjoyed a lot of theatre, TV and films I’ve made over the years,” he says. His career has included stints with the RSC, starring alongside Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room in London’s West End, plus roles in Downton Abbey, Ripper Street and the Resident Evil trilogy.

“My parents are still in Scotland, though they’re more fragile and less mobile than they were, so we tend to go to them more often than we did 10 years ago,” he says.

“I love returning to Edinburgh as it’s a great, quality life up there and I’m bombarded with memories from childhood.”

He even wonders if growing up north of the border may have given his career a boost.

“I feel fortunate in that I’m not associated with a particular class, which is massive in the UK,” he says.

“I’ve portrayed a range of good souls and bad souls and feel lucky not to be perceived too strongly as one or another. I don’t know if that’s to do with being a Scot working down here, although I don’t have a very pronounced accent. People love to pigeonhole actors in the UK, so it’s good I’ve managed to avoid that.”

Does he ever see himself moving back? “Well, I’ve married an English lady and we have built a life down here,” he

“We’ll see, but I think it feels unlikely right now. We’re very rooted where we are.”

The “English lady” in question is the actress Charlotte Emmerson, who Iain married this summer after 12 years together.

“I’m rather enjoying saying ‘my wife’,” he admits.

“I used to use it and [Charlotte] would say, ‘I’m not your wife.’ It was just shorthand really, but she told me not to, so it’s nice that now I can and not get corrected.”

The pair celebrated their nuptials with an intimate meal in a Georgian house near their home in London’s Dulwich Village.

“It was just as we wanted it, with only our immediate family, about 30 of us. The courses just kept coming and it was the most perfect realisation of what we hoped it would be.Then we took stock, waited a month or two and threw a big party for about 200 friends.

“It made sense to us to separate the two. Sometimes, when you put it all together it can be overwhelming and you lose the personal, small-scale intimacy of a marriage the way you want it, but you don’t want to not share it with friends.

It worked well and we managed to pick two of the hottest days of last summer.”

The couple already have two children together, Mary, 10, and Juliet, four. Iain also has a son, Finlay, 22, from a previous marriage.

The three still find their father being recognised in the street “kind of odd”.

“My 10 year old rather loved it when people asked for selfies, although she has started to become a little blasé. My littlest one doesn’t quite understand yet, while my eldest has ignored me as an actor in quite a healthy way and rarely watches stuff I’m in.”

It might make more sense once his girls are old enough to watch his most famous roles. “I did a voiceover for [Nick Jr cartoon series] Nella The Princess Knight, providing the voice of Santa, and a few years ago I did Kidnapped, the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, when Finlay was the right age to watch that.

It’s nice when you can do stuff they are able to enjoy.”

Source: The Express

   

Iain Glen has played Jorah Mormont on Game of Thrones for eight years. He knows how it all ends, and while he didn’t spill the beans while speaking to Metro, he did tease a final season that will test what fans think they know about the show. “For viewers who have fallen in love with the show over the course of 70 plus hours, you get very strong affiliations and [are] possessive as an audience,” he said. “I find that with things that transport me, you feel like it’s yours.”

Without really thinking it through too clearly, you do have aspirations, you’ve got desires for what or may not happen. The bottom line is I’m sure we’ll not please everyone across the board, but when we gathered for reading the scripts right at the beginning, there was a huge sense the writers had done a fantastic job, and a fantastic job for the series as a whole. It’s the same concoction which has always worked, full of surprises and tension. For my money, it will satiate. My hunch is it will go down incredibly well because they’re brilliant scripts.

Well, that’s reassuring…we think. Parts of it also echoes comments made not long ago by Kit Harington (Jon Snow). “I think a TV series that’s spanned eight, nine years is an incredibly difficult thing to end,” Harington said. “I think not everyone’s going to be happy, you know, and you can’t please everyone.”

And what of Jorah Mormont specifically? Was Glen happy with where his character ended up? “Absolutely. I was very, very satisfied.”

Even if Jorah dies in the first scene of season 8, he’s accomplished something few other characters have: survived to appear in every season of the show. After being on Game of Thrones that long, letting go was weird for Glen, and came in stages:

 It filtered through at different times really. During the course of shooting, there was some really, really mega moments where you thought, “Fuck”, this is the last time that’s going to happen, that’s the last time I’ll be acting with her, and that’s the last scene with that director.  So there were lots of stepping stones and weirdly, you’ve finished. There was moving farewells and then you get a call about a week later saying, “Sorry we just need to, can you come back and sit in front of the green screen?” There was a fair amount of that for a lot of us. That helped with the sensation of letting go I suppose. There’s goodbye and goodbye – it doesn’t feel like a cold cut off point and it’s still very much in our lives. One would be naïve to think it won’t be for some time by association if nothing else.

Those greenscreen shots may not be over, by the way. According, to Harington, that’s why he still hasn’t cut his Jon Snow hair.

But even if there are a few pickup shots left to do here and there, some things are over for good.“The one thing we won’t be doing anymore which I’ll miss profoundly is turning up on set and doing the work and reading the new scripts,” he said. “I have mixed feelings.”

Well, now we do too. Thanks, Glen.

Source: Winter is coming.net

.@Dawn_French and Iain Glen on their #Delicious new series and industry sexism pic.twitter.com/leNF5Rrk4T

— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 28, 2017