The Wonderful Ms Wilson

Smart, self-assured, and immensely talented – after putting her name to a string of cult TV shows, Surrey born Ruth Wilson is gearing up for her biggest role to date in brand-new BBC spectacular His Dark Materials.

- Peter Wallace

Ruth Wilson may best be known in the UK as serial killer Alice Morgan in the long running TV series, Luther, which saw her star opposite now-bona fide Hollywood heavyweight Idris Elba. But arguably the most important and deeply personal role of her career to date came late last year in Mrs Wilson, the PBS Masterpiece Theatre three-part series in which she played her very own grandmother.

For those who haven’t yet caught the series, it turns out that her grannie’s husband Alec Wilson had been an MI-6 agent who wrote 23 spy novels and was married to as many as four women simultaneously, none of whom were aware of each other, and had children with all of them.

“My granny, Alison Wilson, was number three,” revealed Wilson. “[After his death in 1963], she discovered all this and wrote a beautiful memoir. The first part was all about meeting him, and then the second part was how she dealt with the betrayal when she found out after he died. She turned to God and became a bride of Christ. It’s a fascinating character.” It is hardly surprising, however, that playing her own ancestor was a daunting task: “Playing her was really tough. I mean, I’ll never do anything like that again. It was weird. And I think I was really in slight denial about it for a while building up to it, and the stress building up to it was quite strange,” she said. “[Certain scenes] made me really self-conscious, uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be seen by the camera.