EXCLUSIVE: John Worboys, who was dubbed the “Black Cab Rapist” by the British press, is to be performed by Daniel Mays in Jeff Pope’s newest factual drama collection for ITV.
Mays (A Thousand Blows) will star reverse Aimée Ffion-Edwards (Peaky Blinders), Aasiya Shah (Raised by Wolves) and Trade breakout Miriam Petche, who will play three of his victims.
Worboys is among the most infamous serial rapists in British historical past. His modus operandi was to inform girls in his cab that he’d received some cash after which persistently provide them a glass of champagne, which he’d laced with medication, and which rendered his victims unconscious. He was convicted in 2009 for sexually assaulting 12 girls between 2006 and 2008, with their circumstances chosen from a lot of suspected additional victims.
Imagine Me will concentrate on how the Metropolitan Police did not totally examine two girls’s allegations, which left Worboys free to commit assaults undetected for a few years. The drama highlights how these girls fought in opposition to all odds to have their circumstances heard, while looming within the background was Worboys’ first parole listening to. Unbelievably, eight years after he was convicted for his crimes, his victims have been made to battle once more to maintain him behind bars. Police have mentioned he could have had greater than 100 victims.
Worboys’ crimes have been charted in a 2018 ITV doc hosted by Susanna Reid however Imagine Me is the primary drama to take up the mantle. Oscar-nominee Pope (Philomena) isn’t any stranger to factual drama, having most just lately made Suspect: The Capturing of Jean Charles de Menezes for ITV and with previous credit together with The Reckoning, Acceptable Grownup and Hatton Backyard.
Pope mentioned Imagine Me “goes on an emotional journey with the victims of Worboys’ assaults, displaying what occurred to them after they reported being raped and assaulted, the ache and indignity of the method and the way this de-humanised them.” “However most stunning of all is how they felt that not being believed by the police and having the assaults recorded, primarily, as non-crimes, was as traumatising for them because the precise assaults,” he added.
Produced in affiliation with, and distributed by, ITV Studios, Imagine Me comes from Pope’s Etta Footage. Polly Hill is commissioner. Pope will EP alongside Saurabh Kakkar on behalf of Etta. Julia Ford (Till I Kill You) will direct the collection. Catrin Lewis Defis (The Winter King) will produce. The drama might be filmed in Cardiff and is produced with the assist of the Welsh Authorities through Artistic Wales.
