Thinkbox
Such is the extraordinary story of notorious jewel thief Joan Hannington, nicknamed ‘The Godmother’ in the criminal underworld of 1980s London, that Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna once competed to play her in a movie.
Now Hannington’s story is finally being brought to the screen by a star rather closer to home, Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner, in ITV’s gripping new six-part drama, Joan.
Reuniting the team behind acclaimed Ruth Wilson historical drama serial Mrs Wilson, Joan is a real-life story that is truly stranger than fiction, the story of a young mother who escapes a relationship with an abusive partner to become a criminal mastermind.
‘It was amazing, the thrill of my career, to be able to play someone like Joan who is so multifaceted,’ Turner said at the launch of the new series.
‘It’s the most exciting thing to be able to play a woman who has this unabashed confidence, and yet underneath [there is] so much pain and so much trauma. That gave me so much to work with. It’s a really special role.’
Anna Symon (The Essex Serpent, Mrs Wilson) based the drama on Hannington’s own memoirs and in close consultation with Hannington herself, now 68 and keen to point out that she is long since retired.
‘I was instantly captivated by the character of Joan. She is such a complex and extraordinary woman - both vulnerable and strong - and she made some terrible choices unfortunately, which a lot of people can relate to,’ said Symon, who is creator, writer and executive producer.
‘I just wanted to read more and more about her. There’s a line very early in the book when she says diamonds were ‘my life, my buzz, my art’ and I just thought, who is this woman? Why haven’t I heard her story and why hasn't it been told on television?’
Symon was sent the book by producer and executive producer Ruth Kenley-Letts (Stonehouse, The Midwich Cuckoos, Strike) and with Hollywood options on the memoirs long since lapsed, they snapped it up.
Hannington was closely consulted on early drafts of the scripts - she insisted on it being ‘warts and all’ - so much so that she played herself in early read throughs (and makes a cameo appearance in the drama itself).
‘I would go round to her flat every time there was a new script and Joan would always play Joan, I got to play all the other parts and Lucy her agent would read the stage directions,’ said Kenley-Letts.
‘If you are doing somebody’s story, it’s their story, and I would be devastated if at the end of it Joan didn’t feel we had been true to her memoirs.’
The series lovingly recreates the look and fashions of the 1980s with an epic period soundtrack which is basically a whole long list of bangers.
But it’s not just an ‘80s-set crime caper, at its heart it’s a story of a mother trying to take care of her daughter.
‘I felt you could tell the story in a very kind of bubblegum way and rip out all the trauma, and you could also do a kind of kitchen sink drama of the all the worst things that happen to Joan,’ said writer Symon.
‘But truly she had both of those things going on at at the same time. So we went to where the story took us.’
Turner met with Hannington for the first time a few weeks before filming, and director and executive producer Richard Laxton (Rain Dogs, The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, Mrs Wilson) said her casting was ‘an aligning of the stars’.
‘I cannot imagine anybody else playing that part,’ he said. ‘That is because there is an emotional truth from the core of her being, there is comedy and there is glamour. Those three things existing in one performer are a rarity.’
ITV’s head of drama Polly Hill said: ‘We couldn’t have made this without an incredible Joan and Sophie is amazing in this show. It is utterly brilliant and I couldn’t be more proud to have this on ITV.’
Much of Hannington’s story is based in north London but filming took place in Birmingham, partly because it is cheaper but also because it is so much easier to recreate the requisite period detail.
Turner immersed herself in the era up to and during the filming, surrounded by 1980s magazines with pictures of Debbie Harry on the wall. The hits of the era were also on constant rotation - the drama opens with the entirely apposite Brass In Pocket by The Pretenders.
The cast also had to learn a couple of ‘80s tunes with Bucks Fizz not a favourite, apparently (Turner: ‘Oh my god. Hell on earth’) while a choreographer was brought in to ensure they danced like we used to back in the day when Wham! were top of the pops.
The adaptation moves away from Hannington’s chronological memoirs to ‘cherry pick some of the most incredible bits that you wouldn’t believe if you wrote it in a fictional script,’ said Symon.
And chief among those is the moment early on in the drama when Joan swallows diamonds inside Bernard Jones’ jewellery shop where she works, the beginning of her path to becoming a master jewel thief.
Although the recreation also proved, initially at least, a little bit problematic.
‘We were going to use gummy diamonds to swallow but they were so sticky they didn’t come off the paper,’ said Turner. ‘So I ended up just putting the real ones in. But they were cubic zirconia so I didn’t swallow them.’
It’s a pivotal scene in the entire drama. ‘It’s kind of that gateway into the life that she leads, that fascination with sparkly things that had been so unobtainable her whole life, and it’s right there in front of her right now,’ said Turner. ‘What would you do in that moment?’
* Joan launches on ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday 29th September at 9pm, with the second episode airing on Monday 30th September at 9pm. The six part series will all be available to watch on ITVX after episode one has aired.
