Actor Laura Bayston, who plays Kate McCann in a new drama about the Madeleine McCann case, has said there was one scene that was “truly horrific” to shoot.
Channel 5’s upcoming one-off film focuses on the police investigation into the three-year-old’s disappearance during a family holiday to Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007 and starts three months into the worldwide search to find Madeleine.
Based on official statements and recorded testimony, the drama focuses on mother Kate’s 11 hours of interrogation, after which she was named as a formal suspect in her daughter’s disappearance. The GP refused a deal to confess to Madeleine’s murder and was later formally cleared of any involvement.
When asked when the hardest scene to film was, Killing Eve star Bayston said: “It was all emotional, but when Kate is presented with her offer by the police, which is to admit guilt, that was truly horrific and an absolute punch in the guts to film.
“It was hard to rein in the emotions for that one – a mix of utter despair to white rage and back again.”
Channel 5’s commissioning editor Dan Louw added that the scene is “so extraordinary that I struggle to watch it even now”.
“I hope Laura Bayston’s work in that scene is recognised, because I’ve genuinely never seen anything like it – it’s like an explosion of emotion,” he said.
Suspect: Kate McCann will air on Channel 5 next week and the broadcaster previously confirmed to The Independent that the McCann family were “not involved editorially” but “have been made aware of the film”.
Louw has now said “the only thing that we talked about more than the script was our responsibility to all of those involved”.
“We wanted to make sure that the family knew what we were doing, we offered them the chance to contribute, and we sought advice from people who were close to them,” he continued. “The first time I saw it, I knew that this would be something that would deeply affect people in a constructive way.”
The search for Madeleine remains ongoing and the drama is being released in the month of her 23rd birthday.
The main suspect in her disappearance is a German man named Christian Brueckner, who was last year released from prison after serving a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of a woman in Portugal’s Algarve region, in the area where Madeleine went missing.
