Posh, pampered and political – the true history of aristocratic rulebreakers the Mitford sisters is being dramatised for the first time in Outrageous, a lavish TV series that is set to fascinate and shock.
It promises to tell the “full, uncensored” story of society family siblings Nancy, Diana, Pamela, Unity, Jessica, Deborah and their brother Tom, who were darlings of the newspapers in the 1930s and each ended up following very different paths.
“I think they will come across as stranger than fiction,” says Isobel Jesper Jones, who plays Pamela, as she and two of her castmates, Toby Regbo and Orla Hill, pose for this exclusive photoshoot for HELLO!.
Isobel had never heard about the Mitfords before being cast and can understand their story is hard to believe.
“They are so unusual and fascinating that people will think that it is exaggerated for dramatic effect. We had to trim it down because there is so much about them.”
Pamela is the least well known of the sisters, which Isobel believes was deliberate. “I think there was a lot of competitiveness between the sisters and a desire to make a name for themselves.
Pamela didn’t really engage in that. But she was as unconventional as them and completely fearless. She was the first woman to drive solo across Europe in a sports car and one of the first people to take a transatlantic flight; she was always off on adventures.”
The sisters all had fascinating lives. Nancy was known for her sparkling novels, including The Pursuit of Love – which has already been made into a TV drama starring Dominic West and Lily James – while Deborah, also a successful writer, married Andrew Cavendish and, after the deaths of his elder brother and father, became the Duchess of Devonshire. While Jessica was a life-long communist, Diana married Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, while Unity was equally infamous for her controversial infatuation with Adolf Hitler.
Their brother Tom was also fascinated by fascism – he refused to fight the Germans and instead was sent to fight in Burma, where he died in action.
Bridgerton’s Bessie Carter stars as Nancy in the series, which is based on a biography by Mary S Lovell, while James Purefoy and Anna Chancellor play the family’s eccentric parents Lord and Lady Redesdale, who were known to their children as “Farve” and “Muv”.
On Outrageous, Isobel felt a close bond with Anna. “She reminds me of my own mum in a lot of ways and we spent a lot of time together. I think we managed to forge a kind of close relationship, which was lovely.”
‘NEVER MARRY A MITFORD…’
Toby, who plays Tom, was bemused when he first heard about the family. “A friend who is obsessed with them had a jumper which said ‘Never Marry A Mitford’. I asked her one day who they were and she explained some of the back story. I was very happy to tell her when I got the part.”
The Gucci jumper was based on one that had been created by Deborah’s husband, the Duke of Devonshire, as a joke.
It’s the kind of humour that is typical of the family’s refusal to take themselves seriously. They were famous for pranks and fooling about as well as having pet names for one another. “Despite their politics, they were funny,” says Toby. “That is the first thing people say about them – how funny they were and how great a sense of fun they had.”
The series paints a strong bond between the siblings when they are young and Toby says Tom was close to his sisters. “He was the wonderful only brother. He had a different childhood to them because as a boy he got to go to school, Farve didn’t believe in school for girls. He went to Eton and then to Oxford and became a lawyer and was much adored when he came home.”
Filming on Outrageous offered a taste of the Mitfords’ luxury lifestyle. “We went to a lot of stately homes and there was quite a lot of lounging around on lawns dressed in linen, drinking fake champagne,” says Toby, 33, who is best known for roles in The Last Kingdom and the latest series of Medici on Netflix. He also had a “dream” cameo as the young Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
He loved working with Sharpe’s Sword star James and Anna, who played Duckface in Four Weddings and a Funeral, in this series. “They were both fantastic,” he says. “James is hilarious, and Anna is a sort of magical creature – it’s wondrous to be in her presence.”
SIBLING RIVALRY
Meanwhile Orla, 23, plays Deborah, or Debo, the youngest of the Mitfords. And in real life, she is also the baby in a large family. “For me the biggest appeal was the focus on the sisterly dynamics and the family unit,” she tells HELLO!.
“I’ve got five older siblings – three brothers and two sisters – I think it is such an unbelievable gift because it gives you a great a perspective on life. I think when you are from a big family you learn to get on with it.”
As the Duchess of Devonshire, Debo was lady of Chatsworth House, one of Britain’s most famous and successful stately homes. While she was a well-known society figure, Orla was determined to focus on her as a teenager.
“They didn’t want any of the sisters to be an impersonation and it is interesting playing someone when they are a child. There is a temptation to look at what they did in the future, but obviously you are playing them before they knew what was going to happen.
“Debo is aged 14 to 16 in the series, and the big things were her hobbies. She was outdoorsy, she got on better with Farve – there was a kind of a favouritism. She was quite keen to just get on with it, which makes sense as the youngest sibling.
“What I got so obsessed about her is that she [as an adult] wrote lots of books about the chickens she kept, she found her interests and pursued it relentlessly. I think there’s something admirable about finding something that makes you feel that content.”
Orla grew up in East London and started going to drama classes in primary school as she was dyslexic. Her mother thought performing would help with her reading. She made her first red carpet appearance aged ten for her role in A Song Called Marion with Terence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave and appeared in Hetty Feather on CBBC and in the film Swallows and Amazons.
At school she excelled at maths and science, and this month graduates with an engineering degree from Emmanuel College Cambridge.
“It has been quite hard, it is a very intense environment academically,” she admits. “It is obviously a beautiful place to spend time and do something totally different. As an actor, there is a lot of waiting around [for work] so it is good to have something else.”
Isobel was inspired to become an actor by her mother Carolyn, who, when she was growing up in Birmingham, often took her to the theatre. “We’d see ballets and go to Stratford [upon Avon]. It was like a little slice of magic,” she says.
After studying English literature at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, she went to Rada. She’s played Mayfair Lipp in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and a rival monarch to Samantha Morton and Minnie Driver in The Serpent Queen.
For now, though, the young stars’ focus is on Outrageous. “It’s shocking – you could not make it up. If someone pitched it as a tale, you would say it is unbelievable, it wouldn’t really happen, but of course it did,” says Isobel. “That is the main reason for the title. It is not just supposed to be a history, it’s a drama, so there might be some other outrageous components to it.”
Interview by Jackie Brown
Photographer: Rhys Frampton
Stylist: Cassie Walker Graham
Makeup by: Anna Inglis Hall at Stella Creative Artists using Dior Forever Foundation and Dior Capture Le Sérum.
Hair by: Tarik Bennafla at Stella Creative Artists using ORIBE.