“Downton Abbey” alum Joanne Froggatt returns to PBS in a role that will shock and surprise fans of her lovable “Downton” character Anna Bates. Froggatt’s “Dark Angel” airs Sunday, May 21 on PBS.
In “Dark Angel,” Froggatt plays real-life serial killer Mary Ann Cotton who in the Victorian age was responsible for killing 20 people.
Cotton was said to have poisonedher victims, many which were family members, including her mother and some of her children. Cotton’s weapon of choice was arsenic, a hard-to-detect poison during the Victorian era, most often mistaken for an illness in its victims.
“I got this script sent to me and I said, ‘I don’t know. I quite foresee going to the States for a bit.’,” Froggatt told Deadlineafter her casting was announced. “As soon as I read it I just went, ‘oh my goodness, it’s amazing.’ It’s such a fantastic script. It’s kind of exactly what I’ve been saying I wanted to do. It’s written by Gwyneth Hughes who’s a fantastic writer. We see the character at 25 and she suffered the loss of, through natural causes, four of her own children. Then through the course of her life you see her sort of slip away bit by bit and become this murderer and this sort of psychopath. It’s just a fascinating character, and really very different from Anna–I just couldn’t resist it.”
Check out a sneak peek below:
