Get to know Investigative Journalist Edie Hansen

M-Net’s latest international co-production, White Lies is a twisty, riveting, utterly compelling murder mystery that will keep you guessing to the very end. Starring Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, Picnic at Hanging Rock) as Edie Hansen, and Brendon Daniels (Four Corners, Skemerdans, Trackers) as Detective Fortune “Forty” Bell. White Lies is at once a gripping whodunnit murder mystery, a uniquely intriguing family drama and a thrilling and unpredictable drama of a community coming face to face with its own secrets and lies.

Investigative journalist Edie Hansen is stunned by the murder of her estranged brother, Andrew McKenzie (Langley Kirkwood), in his Bishopscourt mansion. She is pulled into the nightmarish aftermath when she’s reunited with her teenage niece and nephew in the most awkward of circumstances, and sets out to find the killer, working with – and when necessary, against – the local police.

As she hunts the killer across the complicated, beautiful city of Cape Town, crossing from the leafy suburbs to the city centre, from the slopes of the mountain to the ganglands and back again, she uncovers a charismatic evil that knows no boundaries. She finds herself at loggerheads with Detective Forty BelI, a damaged twenty-year veteran of the force with a legitimate grudge against her, a man fighting his own demons, and losing his own battles within an incompetent and crumbling police force.

Q&A with Natalie Dormer (Edie Hansen):

What drew you to the role of Edie Hansen?

The thing I love about Edie as a protagonist is that I liked the dichotomy of playing someone who was very together professionally, but also an extreme mess in her personal life. As an actor, it’s fun to play those two dimensions within one character. I also fell in love with the odd couple,
unlikely friendship between her and Detective Forty Bell that I got to play with Brendon.

But the fascinating thing about Edie is that she’s an investigative journalist who’s spent most of her adult life uncovering the truth, while at the same time, carrying many of her own secrets. So she waves the flag of truth and justice, but she’s holding a lot of dark skeletons in her closet at the same time. So it’s that tension between the two intentions that is very fun to play.

How does your character change over the course of the series?

Over the course of 8 episodes, you go on this beautiful journey of two characters, Edie and Forty, facing their own demons, and having a redemptive curve. Their stories mirror each other, both facing the darkness in their past.

It’s been wonderful to play with Brendon, this sort of absolute hatred of each other at the beginning, but as the story progresses, it flips, and
they become allies, after a very harrowing experience together.

And it’s beautiful watching them both reconcile what it truly means to be a good journalist and a good cop, when they’re both fighting authority within their respective industries that is telling them to do the opposite to what their moral instincts are.

How did you prepare to play Edie?

In order to play Edie I had three wonderful conversations with three wonderful women, who have all been, or are investigative journalists. I have to do a massive shout-out to Mandy Weiner, Susan Comrie and Holly Watt. I spent over an hour with each of them individually and it was absolutely fascinating to get to know the temperament required to do the job, the personality type, the determination, the compulsion to find the truth and to believe in something. It was an absolute revelation to me.

What makes White Lies such a gripping drama?

I think because it handles these universal human themes that we all love and respond to. But for international audiences, it’s done in an exotic location with slightly different rules, traditions, cultures, that is going to feel familiar, but fresh as well. International audiences have seen race, privilege, sociopolitical “who-dunnits” done really well. But I don’t feel that anything has ever been quite done in this microcosm of Cape Town in the same way. So hopefully a worldwide audience will find it enlightening, fascinating and exciting to watch the drama play out in this particular context.

Discover the Truth Behind White Lies:

  • A brutal murder.
  • A Garden of Eden with its own original sin.
  • The soaring beauty of Cape Town and the ugly depths of the human heart.
  • And a woman who must fight for the truth, while battling to keep her own secrets…

White Lies is produced by Harriet Gavshon and Nimrod Geva for Quizzical Pictures, with Dormer and screenplay writer Darel Bristow-Bovey also serving as executive producers. The series’ lead director is The Wound’s John Trengove, alongside Thati Pele (Lerato), Catharine Cooke (Reyka) and Christiaan Olwagen (Poppie Nongena, Kanarie). The series is created by Sean Steinberg with UK casting by Matt Western. Julie Hodge is executive producing on behalf of Fremantle, who is also distributing the series internationally.

White Lies eight-part series premieres on M-Net (DStv Channel 101) on 7 March at 8pm and will be available on DStv Stream, and is also available on DStv Catch Up after broadcast.

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