PBS brings the story of ‘Mrs. Wilson’ to Masterpiece
Married after meeting in the secret service during World War II, Alec and Alison Wilson live devotedly for two decades. Then he dies, and his real story starts to emerge. Alison tracks down Dorothy, Alec’s partner in espionage years earlier in India. Like Alison, she too was deceived by this charming author turned spy. Alison (played by Ruth Wilson) and Alec (Iain Glen) star in the show.
On Sunday and April 7, PBS’ Masterpiece presents the incredible true story of “Mrs. Wilson.”
This is the story of a woman whose husband led a completely different life than what she knew. His secrets lasted his entire marriage until his death, when Mrs. Wilson (played by her real granddaughter Ruth Wilson) put the pieces together to discover the truth about the husband she loved and with whom she had two sons.
Iain Glen plays her husband, Alec Wilson, and the two recently spoke with the media about this fascinating story and the show that will astonish and intrigue viewers.
Alison (Ruth Wilson) met Alexander Wilson (Glen) during the war when they were both working for MI5. She knew he was married, but then one day, while their relationship was growing, he produced divorce papers and she felt free to follow her heart. They had two sons, then one afternoon Alec died of a heart attack. Alison soon learned Alec had never been divorced and had a son by his “first” marriage who showed up to collect his father’s body. What a shock. But that wasn’t the only shock. Alison eventually learned that Alec had several families and was supposedly undercover for MI5 or MI6.
But to this day, Ruth says MI6 won’t tell them the entire story of her grandfather so she says there could be more wives and children out there who are unaware of this situation.
“Well, my grandmother wrote a memoir in two parts, and she gave the first part to us to read probably about 15 years ago. And that was about her growing up, meeting Alec, falling in love with him, and then finding out about his betrayal,” Wilson explained to the media.
“And she didn’t give us the second part of her memoir until after she died, and that was all about her finding God, which is the second part of the film,” she explained to an astonished group of reporters. “But weirdly, a year after she died, we then had correspondence from two other people saying, ‘I think we’ve got the same dad.’ “
She said eventually there were a lot of people getting together to discuss this mysterious grandfather and father. And to make this even more interesting, the entire family gets together for reunions even though the patriarch was a deceitful man. After all, they are all related.
“It’s been an amazing, profound experience and a very difficult, in many ways, experience and something very hard to play, but an amazing privilege to step inside my grandmother’s shoes and tell this story and to tell it for the family. And we had a family screening. We had all 55 members there. And that’s from age 6 months to 96, 97. And there was a four-minute silence, and everyone was in tears, and it was an amazing bonding experience. So if anything, that’s the best thing that’s come from this. But, yeah, it’s been amazing.”
As Wilson said about the story, “It’s generational, and it’s also British, but it’s people as well. We keep our secrets close to us. And I think what this show has done has really made people talk about those things that have happened in their own family and given them license to talk about it, because this is so mad. ‘Oh, wow, ours was mad, but not as mad as that,’ or whatever.'”
Most families have secrets, but this one is a whopper!
“We don’t know half the story. MI6 still won’t release records. It’s case sensitive, apparently. So we’re still digging and asking what his involvement was with them and what he really got up to. We have sort of certain facts that we’ve laced into the drama.”