"Stealing diamonds was my drug"
Joan Hannington was one of the UK’s most notorious jewel thieves. Anna Symon brings her powerful story to the screen and describes meeting her
ITV
- Rosie Millard
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Ah, the glamorous 1980s. Shoulder pads, high heels, big hair, Madonna, Princess Diana. A time of opportunity, if you were a woman who wanted to make it – and Joan Hannington knew all about opportunity.
Stealing cars, faking passports, swallowing loose diamonds to sell on the black market, in and out of prison; nothing, it seems, was off limits for Joan Hannington. Now in her late 60s, she lives quietly on the English south coast with her dogs, but her considerably unquiet story has been turned into a beguiling six-part series for ITV, starring Sophie Turner.
Writer Anna Symon was given the task of transforming Hannington’s memoir, I Am What I Am: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief, for the screen. “I was so intrigued by her as a character,” says Symon. “Strong, fierce, but a vulnerable woman with a terrible back story that scarred her deeply. She was very glamorous and beautiful, and used her feminine wiles, shall we say, to achieve her crimes.”
This once-dangerous woman needed to agree to Symon’s script. “I met her in a café in north London,” explains the writer, who also adapted The Essex Serpent starring Tom Hiddleston and actor Ruth Wilson’s real-life family drama, Mrs Wilson.
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“It was terrifying. Although she was charming, it was clear she knew how to look after herself. You knew she was someone not to mess with. And she said, quite clearly, ‘I don’t want you to tell my story unless you include what I went through as
a child.’ She was very severely beaten by her father. Amid all the glamour of fur coats and diamonds, there was this vulnerable person underneath.”
Hannington gave Symon a unique chance to re-create London’s dangerous, gangland world of fake identities and stolen jewels – but with a woman, for once, at the helm. Quite a different proposition. “We hold female characters on TV to a higher standard; we have to decide whether we root for Joan, in a way that I don’t think would be asked of a male character,” observes Symon. “We have never seen the inside story of a female criminal unless it’s Myra Hindley or an invention, like Villanelle in Killing Eve. Joan grew up with nothing and was constantly let down by men. At the same time, she didn’t want to be seen as a victim.”
Beneath the fur coats and diamonds was a vulnerable person
Indeed, from the first episode, when we see Hannington speeding down the motorway in a stolen Triumph TR7, this is clearly a woman with agency. “She took responsibility. She got a buzz from being good at stealing,” explains Symon. “As she says, ‘Stealing diamonds was my crack cocaine.’ ”
Did Symon ever worry that the series, with what Hannington describes as the “victimless” offence of stealing jewels, might glamorise crime? “Of course, we talked about this during the process. We’re not inviting mimics because things have changed, you can’t switch rings in jewellery shops now. Shoplifting was a lot easier then. No cameras in stores, no mobile phones. It was an easier time to be a thief.
Joan Hannington in 2004. Getty
“I also think as viewers carry on with the series and see how the story develops, it becomes less glamorous. Reality catches up with Joan. It doesn’t encourage people to go down a criminal path.” Although, Symon admits, there is an unavoidable shimmer to the world in which Joan Hannington thrived. “The glamour was an attraction for her. She loved having lovely clothes and wearing jewels.”
Joan came on set and has watched the series. She sobbed through a lot of it
Sophie Turner is easily as glamorous as Hannington was, but plays the role with sensitivity under the lashings of make-up. You believe that Hannington loves her daughter Kelly; you believe that she wants a better life for her child. “Sophie is extraordinary,” says Symon of her leading lady, who got her first television role at the age of 14, when she was cast as Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark. For the past few years Turner has rarely been out of the papers, thanks to a messy divorce and custody wrangle for her two small children with singer Joe Jonas.
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“When I wrote the series, we didn’t have anyone in mind,” Symon continues. “She sent us a self-recorded tape; when the director and I saw it, it blew our socks off! We were so confident in her right from the start.” As, it seems, was Hannington herself. “They [Hannington and Turner] met before we started filming,” says Symon. “Joan then came on set and she’s now watched all the episodes. She sobbed through quite a lot of it. But she’s proud. I felt a real responsibility to ensure she was truthfully represented.”
Authors
Rosie Millard
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