

According to Variety, Natalie Dormer (Rush, The Forest) has announced that she won’t be promoting ITV and Britbox‘s upcoming drama series The Lady. Dormer plays Sarah Ferguson on the series and after revelations over the Duchess of York’s connections to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, she decided to stop promoting the series. The actress has stated that she has donated her entire salary from the show to charities focused on child abuse.
As per Variety, Dormer’s decision to stop promoting the series comes after a leaked email from 2011 was recently published, appearing to show Ferguson, the former wife of Prince Andrew, apologizing to Epstein, having publicly rejected him years after he was jailed for sex offenses in 2008.
“You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family,” she wrote, via Variety, weeks after saying in an interview that her involvement with Epstein, including borrowing money from him, had been a “gigantic error of judgement” and that she would have “nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again.”
According to Variety, The Lady is produced by Left Bank Pictures and is a partially fictionalized drama chronicling the rise and fall of former royal dresser Jane Andrews. Jane Andrews worked for Ferguson before being convicted of the murder of her boyfriend Thomas Cressman in 2001.
“When I agreed to take the role in The Lady, I knew portraying the script’s Sarah Ferguson would require nuance. People are layered, their journeys are full of highs and lows, and as an actor, my job is to lean into those elements and bring them to life with honesty and empathy,” Dormer said in a statement to Variety. “Since completing the project, new information has come to light that makes it impossible for me to reconcile my values with Sarah Ferguson’s behavior, which I believe is inexcusable. For that reason, I will not be taking part in the promotion of the project.”
As per Variety, Dormer added, “In keeping with my commitment to the well-being of children, I have donated my entire salary from this project to the National Association for People Abused in Childhood and the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse.”
