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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. For more than 60 years, the UK has been captivated by the case of Ruth Ellis, a nightclub hostess and manager who murdered her lover. He was a posh race car driver, David Blakely, and he abused her for years. The trial lasted only two weeks and the all-male jury deliberated only 14 minutes before finding her guilty of premeditated murder, a capital offense.

Her case was a media sensation. It had everything. Murder, sex, nightlife, class divides. It became a touchstone for England's approach to the punishment and led the way for the abolition of the death penalty. She was hanged on July 13th, 1955, and became the last woman ever to be given the death penalty. A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story is a new four-part series on BritBox that tells the story of Ruth and how her case exposed gender and class stereotypes, views on motherhood, and domestic abuse as a mitigating factor. It stars Lucy Boynton as Ruth, who joins us now. Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Boynton: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Kelly Jones is the writer. Hi Kelly.

Kelly Jones: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Premieres February 17th on BritBox. Lucy, how much did you know about Ruth Ellis before getting involved?

Lucy Boynton: To my shame, I knew nothing. I possibly knew her name and everyone who I brought this up to that was older than me, was more than familiar and immediately had a very emotional response. But I myself had never been informed about her, had never read about her, which I recognize immediately as a tremendous loss but not a huge surprise when women's stories are neglected.

Alison Stewart: When they told you about these elders, what did you think?

Lucy Boynton: I couldn't believe that I didn't know about it. She changed our judicial system in the UK but also was such an example of the context of that time of post-war London and of the the misogyny that was so rife, the political landscape that was so informed by that gender and class divide. I was surprised and not surprised that I didn't know about her.

Alison Stewart: Kelly, there've been documentaries done on Ruth before, maybe some feature films. What did you want to do differently?

Kelly Jones: Well, there was a very great and very famous movie made about this case, Dance with a Stranger. The thing about that movie, firstly, it was made more than 40 years ago and it stops at the moment that Ruth shoots her lover, David Blakely. For me, the really interesting part of the story is everything that comes after that. The story of Ruth meeting David is really fascinating.

That's why we wanted to really show these two timelines and cut them against each other, so you understand how the two parts of the story inform each other. The whole legal fight that she went through, which was an absolute travesty even by the standards of 1955, it's never been on screen before. It just seemed so incredible to me that that hadn't been done because it's disturbingly, I think, relevant for us now, even though it's 70 years ago.

Alison Stewart: Lucy, we gave the elevator pitch of what it's about. But can you tell our audience what Ruth was accused of on Easter Sunday in 1955?

Lucy Boynton: On Easter Sunday in 1955, Ruth shot David Blakely outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead and killed him. She was tried for murder. They didn't see it as appropriate during the trial to bring up the extent of David Blakely's abuse because he was of the upper class at the upper social echelon. Her trial was incredibly imbalanced. She was, I think, used as a political pawn to make a point of how a woman should not conduct herself.

Even at the time, we acknowledge now that she shouldn't have been hanged for this. Two years later, diminished responsibility due to provocation was recognized legally. Even at the time, there was mass outcries. Many people were writing passionate letters to their MPs stating that this was barbaric, that she shouldn't be punished in this way.

Alison Stewart: I want you to give us a picture of who is David Blakely.

Kelly Jones: David Blakely is a 25-year-old racing driver from a wealthy family, a very wealthy family, drifting around London in the early 1950s, trying to make a name for himself as a race car driver. Especially drifting around these nightclub haunts that became popular in the '50s, post-war London. This very Brit glamour that people were drawn into in what was otherwise a very gray and desolate place, London post the Blitz. David Blakely is drifting around looking for something in his somewhat vacuous, empty life really. He always is racing, driving, but he's looking for something and he meets Ruth. It's really a fateful moment for both of them. Everything starts when he meets her in the Little Club in 1953.

Alison Stewart: Why is Ruth attracted to David Blakely?

Lucy Boynton: This is a great question. I think for both of them, they signify something very novel. I think for him, she was a novelty. She was the antithesis of everything that everyone in his life expected him to end up with or be drawn to. For her, I think the huge part of it is that he was a part of society that was a closed door to her. She really wanted to elevate herself out of the economic circumstances she was born into.

Tried to change her voice, change her appearance, and everything to be let in and wasn't. His acceptance, I think, was significant. Also, I think Laurie Davidson does such a beautiful job. He plays David Blakely in the show of showing all sides of him, the light and the dark, so that the audience can really understand the magnetism that she feels towards him because he can be so charming. It is even more horrifying and cutting when you see the dark side of him.

Alison Stewart: Was it hard to write David Blakely?

Kelly Jones: Do you know what? It wasn't. I actually feel an immense amount of sympathy, in a strange way, for David. It was really important to me that he was-- He's not really the villain of the piece. He does terrible things to Ruth, which are inexcusable, the violence that he uses towards her. But there's a part of him which I felt that my role as a writer, really, to observe his behavior and try and portray it truthfully rather than judge him by our standards.

It's hard because he is-- Laurie plays him with such tremendous, I think, sympathy and humanity that you can't help be charmed by him. He's a lost little boy in so many ways. I never ever would want to excuse what he does to Ruth, which is incredibly violent and brutal at times. He's not just the villain of the piece. He's a complex, very troubled, but also incredibly charming person who-- He's not a sociopath, and he's not a monster. He's someone who does terrible things but is also very human in this piece. It was a tricky one to write, but Laurie played him with such humanity, I guess.

Lucy Boynton: I don't know. I find that to be the more disturbing part of it, that he isn't a sociopath, he isn't a psychopath, and yet he is capable of the most abhorrent things to this woman who is 5 foot 2 and 90 pounds.

Kelly Jones: Exactly. It's so hard to understand why he behaves as he does to Ruth because by all accounts, he was kind to people in his life. He had good friends. He was kind to Ruth's children. Then you see this repeated violence, which was very well documented at the time, medical records, and in other places, friends saw him plenty of times being violent to her. It's an incredibly hard thing to reconcile. I think it's my job as a writer to try and show a whole human being rather than just a monster who's-- It's a hard job.

Lucy Boynton: That's what I loved about the script, that it's so well balanced that it shows you that it's not just these villains that are capable of such monstrosity. It is also your very kind seeming neighbor or the person. No one else in Blakely's life could believe that-- They could. Many could because of his temper, but so many would have been completely ignorant to his capabilities. You do hear that rhetoric quite a lot of. Surely not this person. I think this show does such a brilliant balanced job of showing that it could be anyone.

Kelly Jones: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: You see Ruth undergo a transformation in the series. Could you tell us a little bit about how her personality is before David Blakely?

Kelly Jones: She's very determined, very ambitious. She can be very charming when she wants to be. I'm talking about the real Ruth as well as Lucy's amazing portrayal of her. She is absolutely determined to make something of herself. She comes from a very difficult, quite impoverished background. She moves to London at age 14, determined to work, determined to pay her own way, and really make something of herself in this just post-war London.

I think that determination is really what drew me to the character because she's just so ballsy. She's so determined to get her place in this world. It's her downfall. I wouldn't call her a social climber at all because it's not that she's interested in making her way in society for the sake of appearances, for the sake of marrying some rich guy and becoming a member of that class. But she wants to prove herself and she wants to be somebody on her own terms.

When we meet her, she's full of this ambition and it's-- I wouldn't say it's stripped away from her, but it becomes much more complex and much more masked by this brittle exterior which she develops to protect herself and also to hide from the world what's really happening for her and to repel any sympathy. I think that's her defining characteristic. She does not want to be pitied by anyone. She refuses sympathy. She refuses a victim status. I would say she doesn't want to be a victim. There's a kind of prickliness that develops.

Alison Stewart: Where did you go as an actor to find that? [unintelligible 00:10:38] Oh, my gosh. Where did you go to find that confidence, that I'm not a victim?

Lucy Boynton: It was such a departure from everything as an external person seeing this from a contemporary lens and a contemporary young person. I was 29 when we filmed this. She was 28 when she was killed. It was so hard not to empathize with her so much and understand the context of her victimhood that she didn't know how much she did not deserve everything that she was on the receiving end of.

When she is that brittle and when she is denying help because she thinks she wants-- She takes full accountability of what she did and she thinks she should be punished for it. It's excruciating to sit there as a modern woman and sit through those trial scenes as a modern woman and hearing the extent of misogyny and miscarriage of justice. It was a real exercise as an actor is departing from yourself, your own instincts and, as Kelly said, your contemporary lens and really just identify it through the prism of 1955 and everything that therefore shaped her.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with actor Lucy Boynton and writer Kelly Jones for the upcoming BritBox series, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story. It's premiering on February 17th. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I am speaking with actor Lucy Boynton and writer Kelly Jones for the upcoming BritBox series, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story. It's premiering February 17th. She was hanged on July 13th, 1955. She became the last woman ever given the death penalty in the UK. Kelly, there was no doubt that she pulled the trigger. We learned that her lover had been incredibly abusive to her in their relationship. Why wasn't this considered a trial?

Kelly Jones: There's so many really disturbing reasons for that. Lucy's already talked about, there was a squeamishness for sure, from her own defense barrister, sad to say, who was visibly embarrassed at having to talk about a miscarriage and all the rest of it in court, moved on as quickly as he could, really didn't want to go there. The jury, as a result, it was glossed over.

That side of things, the abuse that she'd suffered, it certainly wasn't an accepted defense at the time. This idea of a slow-burn provocation leading to what we would now call diminished responsibility. It didn't exist legally at the time. It was introduced just after Ruth's death as a result of what happened to her. There certainly was an argument that could have been made more powerfully that could easily have affected the jury had it been tried. Her defense solicitor wanted to use that defense and was overruled by the barrister.

Then the second half of it, which was fascinating to me because it's certainly not well known even in the UK, it's hardly known at all. in fact, lots of the research has only just been done by Carol Ann Lee, who wrote the fantastic book A Fine Day For a Hanging that this is based on. She did lots of research into what had really gone on. The machinations of the British establishment had protected certain individuals.

You'll see it's in the show but had protected certain individuals who I certainly think should have stood trial next to Ruth for murder and for conspiracy to murder. There was a, I would say, partly conscious, partly unconscious cover-up by the establishment to protect certain people and to pin it all on Ruth who, as far as they were concerned, deserved everything that she had coming to her. She was the girl who was bound for not a good end. That is exactly what they gave her.

Alison Stewart: Ruth confesses. She plays down her abuse. She does protect the person who gave her the gun. Why did she do this?

Lucy Boynton: Complex. She had lived so much life. She'd been put through so much at this point that I don't know that she had in complete context for the extent that she had been put through and was subjected to. Through all of that, she was incredibly hardened by it and through all of that, had this mantra that she could handle anything and handle it on her own.

I think there was a resistance to opening herself up to hope and asking for help. To pull that thread is too painful and it makes yourself vulnerable to an establishment that you're very familiar with that sees you based on your gender and your class and has consistently let her down. I think she felt that she was familiar enough with society as it was and knew how this was going to play out anyway.

Alison Stewart: It suggested in the show, Kelly, that Ruth may have been an escort, a sex worker in some ways. Do we know if that's true?

Kelly Jones: It was true. She certainly had worked informally, entertaining, basically sex work for clients at the various clubs that she'd worked at. She was a hostess mainly, so she was working in the club, managing the club, but this was informal part of her job occasionally. That was absolutely held against her in every possible way, during the trial. Plus the fact that she'd had two boyfriends at the same time.

She represented pretty much everything that was just wrong by the standards of the time. She was unmarried, she'd been divorced, she was a working woman who'd done sex work. She had, as they saw it, abandoned her two kids. Although I suggest in the show, and this is pretty much my reading of it, but it's very much supported by the fact that one of the reasons she'd protected the person who by rights should have been standing conspiracy to murder was because he'd promised to look after her son financially, to care for him and send him to school.

None of which sadly happened. A lot of it was about her protecting her kids in her own way because she by no means was a perfect mother. I think ultimately that was one of the reasons that she protected this guy, was because he'd promised to look after her son Andre, and that never happened.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip from A Cruel Love. As the case started garnering attention in the media, many people were campaigning for her execution to be stayed. Here's a clip describing this moment and how Ruth reacts. This is from A Cruel Love.

Ruth: Is it true that you have all been campaigning for me? I told you, no begging, no pleading.

Speaker 4: You've seen what they've written about you?

Ruth: I don't care what they write. I want my sentence to take its course. You will not go to the Home Office. I will not die with this world thinking I am some beaten little fool.

Speaker 4: Well, that's it then.

Ruth: That is justice. An eye for an eye. As I have said from the start.

Speaker 4: An eye for an eye.

Alison Stewart: Why did she reject the campaign, Lucy?

Lucy Boynton: Part of it is exactly what Kelly just said, where she was trying to protect someone else, so was taking full responsibility. I think that was also how she processed what she had done and what happened. As long as she took full responsibility for it, then she could, I don't know, digest that. That was the correct course of events. She was being held responsible. For herself, to accept there is diminished responsibility, I think, is to open up everything that comes with understanding that you have been the victim of abuse. She wasn't going to do that. She could handle it and she was hardened to that. We can understand how heartbreaking that is now.

Alison Stewart: We've discussed what a complex woman this was. Why did you want to take this part?

Lucy Boynton: Exactly for that reason. These scripts were so, like I said, brilliantly balanced in their portrayal of her. That it is such a humanization of someone who has been at the mercy of the media portrayal and there was such a narrow portrayal, so decided and skewed by misogyny and classism, as we've discussed. The case itself is so fascinating, especially the new information that's come to light since the last time it was really explored in mainstream media and through the last film.

The case itself, the context of the '50s post-war London is such a fascinating time to explore. Then at the center of all of this is this fire of a woman who is so inherently rebellious of everything that is expected of a woman at that time, that it was just every new piece of information I understood about her and researched about her, especially from Carol Anne's book, was just this new brightly colored piece of a increasingly wild puzzle. It was a privilege to get to investigate someone like that.

Alison Stewart: As you were writing the script, how did you-- I don't want to say she self-sabotaged, but she didn't help her own case.

Kelly Jones: I would totally say that.

Alison Stewart: Okay, so she self-sabotage.

Kelly Jones: She is her own worst enemy. At every step of the way, she's her own worst enemy. She really is. I think that's why I found her so interesting and why I really wanted to write it is because, oh my goodness, she is the one person who could help herself, really. She doesn't because of this willful, stubborn, perverse determination to accept the consequences of what she's done, which is really the whole story and the whole journey of the character is you do get this moment finally that she realizes well, "Oh my God, maybe I should have actually-- Maybe I don't deserve to die. Maybe I should have let somebody help me without giving too much away."

That's really what leads it into this final race where she does suddenly decide, "Oh my goodness, I don't want to die." That's the final run in the final episode. She absolutely was perversely determined not to help herself. it makes her such an interesting character because she's such a knot of contradictions and such a mess of these complex, quite contradictory notions. It's just the dignity that she has as well.

One of the details that I found so fascinating is that she refused any sedative drug on the morning of the execution. Oh, my goodness me. If it was me, I would-- To have the strength of mind to say, I want to go into this clear-headed. I don't. I'm not going to be drugged or have my senses dulled. I'm going to face this. It just really spoke to me as an action which is just so-- there's a dignity or a bravery.

Albert Pierrepoint, who's the famous British hangman who hanged so many of 20th-century criminals, said that she was the bravest person he ever hanged. Of all of these his long and storied career as a hangman, she was the bravest person. That really struck me, that little detail.

Alison Stewart: Lucy, how did you take care of yourself during the filming of this?

Lucy Boynton: It took me a year to stop grinding my teeth. I'll have to get back to you on that. It affected me more deeply than I could have anticipated or prepared for. As I mentioned, I didn't think that I had to because so frequently with this job you're dealing with such dark and heavy material and I thought that I had got quite good at leaving it at work and being able to-- Especially doing a period piece, there is this ritual of stepping into the character costume and it's always so different to the way you dress. It's always so structured so differently. Then when you take that off and exit it, you're back in yourself and you're safe at a safe distance.

With this, because it's a true story, it was so hard to let go of. Recreating these scenes of domestic violence and psychological abuse and all of that tangle with Blakely, that's still such a contemporary issue. It's still such a contemporary reality. There was no putting it down. It was only an increasing education for myself. That was in a very safe, contained environment. Honestly, it was credit to our intimacy coordinator, Sophie Cooch, who picked up on a lot of body language I was displaying where she knew it was cue for a conversation.

Alison Stewart: That's a really good answer. Thank you for sharing that.

Lucy Boynton: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Why was she the last woman hanged?

Kelly Jones: There was such an outcry across the world. It was a global thing. People were writing letters. There was a huge campaign. The UK government of the day, I'm sorry to say, were absolutely determined that she would hang for various political reasons. They were determined that they would go through with it. That was one of the reasons why there was no question of reprieve.

Let me just add that it was 22 days between the day of her conviction and the day of her hanging, which if you think you think people stay on death row for months, years, 22 days, and that was it. That was done. Very soon after that, things started to change because I think there had been such a sense of outcry and by the standards of the time because I never want this story to play by our standards of 2025, which is so different.

By the standards of 1955, this was an absolute outrage to so many people. Very quickly, things started to change. The introduction of diminished responsibility as a legal defense came in a year after Ruth died. very soon after that, in the mid-60s, it was the abolition of capital punishment altogether. Her case really changed history. I think that's what I found really moving is that even though it's a difficult story in lots of ways, she really did change our legal landscape forever.

Alison Stewart: The name of the series is A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story. It's premiering February 17th on BritBox. My guests have been actor Lucy Boynton and writer Kelly Jones. Thank you for taking the time and for being here.

Kelly Jones: Thanks so much.

Lucy Boynton: Thank you so much. Thank you.