Natalie Dormer has pledged to donate the salary she received from playing Sarah Ferguson after emails between the Duchess of York and Jeffrey Epstein resurfaced earlier this month.
The Hunger Games actress portrays Ferguson, the former wife of Prince Andrew, in the new TV series The Lady, but said she has refused to promote the series because “it [is] impossible for me to reconcile my values with Sarah Ferguson’s behaviour”.
“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,” Dormer said in a statement to Variety.
“For that reason, I will not be taking part in the promotion of the project,” she added.
Dormer went on say that she was donating her “entire salary” from her work on The Lady to the two charities based in the UK; the National Association for People Abused in Childhood and the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse.
It comes after reports of an email leak in which Ferguson allegedly apologised to Epstein — a disgraced financier and convicted child sex offender — for disowning him and saying their relationship was a “gigantic error of judgement” during a 2011 interview.
Per The Guardian, Ferguson sent an apologetic email to Epstein a few weeks after that interview. “I know you feel hellaciously let down by me from what you were either told or read and I must humbly apologise to you and your heart for that,” the email read.
The Duchess went on to explain that she had disavowed Epstein in order to “[hold] on to my career as a children’s book author”, saying she was “instructed to act with the utmost speed” in having “nothing to do with you”.
She also reportedly referred to Epstein as “a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and family”.
Elsewhere in her statement, Dormer said she knew taking on the role of 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.
She said her decision to distance herself from the series was “not a reflection” of her experience with production company Left Bank, which she described as “an extraordinary company to collaborate with”.
The Lady is a miniseries about Jane Andrews, a former royal dresser who was convicted of murder in 2001.
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