Superstar British actress fascinated by the culture of Cape Town in TV ‘whodunnit’

Natalie Dormer played Margaery Tyrell in the mega-hit American fantasy series, Game of Thrones, for five years and starred in The Hunger Games, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Tudors. Now the British actress is captivating viewers as investigative journalist Edie Hansen in White Lies, a psychological thriller about murder, power and privilege.

Speaking via Zoom from her UK home with book-laden blue shelves as her backdrop and a jumbo bottle of water at her side, Dormer, 42, discussed the complexities and highlights of filming the eight-episode whodunnit in South Africa.

What made you say yes to starring in White Lies?

I think I was just so taken with Darrel’s (Bristow-Bovey) script. The episodes are real page-turners, with cliffhanging elements. I was just so fascinated with the way he’d captured all the different communities, the different textures, the whole spectrum of what Cape Town has to offer.

It was just so interesting to me, and refreshing and important to explore those themes of identity politics of prejudice, of corruption, of inequality, but to do it through the microcosm of Cape Town. As a British actress we’re more used to experiencing UK or American drama. I found it refreshing to look at those themes in the context of Cape Town. And so it works on those two levels.

Hopefully for you guys it’s just a brilliant domestic national drama that feels very true, very real and very honest. But I think its themes are universal and will speak to an international audience.

And she’s just a great character. She’s so together professionally but such a mess personally, and I think as an actor it’s that friction in a character that gives you something to bite into immediately. A woman who is obsessed with truth and truth telling but she can’t face her own truth. It’s like there’s the hook and you’re away.

And South Africa is an incredible country. I visited when I was a child. I have memories from then and I just felt the call to go back and have this adventure.

Can you elaborate on your connection to South Africa?

I have family out there. There is a South African Dormer contingent. When I was 10 and 12 in the early ’90s and when you guys were going through your transition, I remember the vibrancy and the colour and the food and the music, and I remember being exposed to this incredible vibrancy that I hadn’t experienced before as a child. And the beauty of the Kruger National Park and so forth.

So on a personal level as well — the idea that I could slip away for a weekend and meet my South African family, who are Lanseria way, Joburg way. To get away for 24 hours and visit them.

And Edie had done this self-imposed exile to London. She’s renounced her South Africanship. She wants to reinvent, get away, the pain is too much, drop the accent, disown. And then to come back and even though it’s her country of birth, she is an outsider.

So life imitated art there and Darrel and the directors helped me very much bridge that gap of being able to seem authentic and understanding, but still wear that outsidership as a badge of pride almost. She likes being an outsider. It makes her feel safe if she’s just objectively pointing her finger, but obviously that’s not her journey for the eight hours (of the series). She’s forced to look within.

Darrel Bristow-Bovey said he had never come across a more prepared actor and said that you were more like him than anyone.

I saw him in Edie. A month before I came out to South Africa, he and I did a week of breaking down the full eight hours. We clicked basically. We clicked. I saw in Edie what was him. And then I was very respectful and moved by that.

And then it was my job as the actress to bring the other additional layers. A woman of a certain age returning and to breaking down that past history through the whodunnit mystery of the show. You slowly reveal the background story and the reason for running away.

What was it like working with Cape Town actor Brendon Daniels who plays veteran detective Forty Bells?

He was a great sparring partner and it was as much his show as it is mine. Those two protagonists Edie and Forty; their journey of finding forgiveness and redemption for themselves.

They started hating each other. They despised each other and everything the other represents, which is very interesting because he is representing this idea of justice in the South African police and if it’s possible, and she’s representing the media in the time of social media time and is truth possible? They’re both zealots for the same truth-telling. They are unified by trauma.

You had three stuntwomen on set. One also called Natalie. Did you do any of your own stunts?

I got in the Atlantic sea and Natalie got in as well, and I dunked my head in a number of times. Why they couldn’t have shot that in February I don’t know! It was shot in autumn. I’ve done some things in my time and so I’m not averse to wading through water or slime. I’ve done lots!

The jacket Edie wears seems to play a role of its own! Why was wearing it so important?

The jacket! That’s hilarious! When I came over to SA I had three jackets in my suitcase that we’d ordered for costume. Because obviously the character had spent so much time in Britain, so we had to have some authentic clothes.

She’s a journalist. She doesn’t go clothes shopping very often. So I brought over the jackets [one of which] was going to become Edie’s London existence jacket that she brought with her. These are the fun details of a shoot, of characterisation.

What was the highlight of shooting White Lies?

South Africans. I know that that sounds saccharine, but it’s actually true. It was experiencing the incredible crew and the cast, and just being completely welcomed by them.

What was the most challenging part of shooting White Lies?

It was the speed. This show is very ambitious in how it looks, in what it’s aiming to achieve. This is the greatest budget for a South African domestic TV show.

Yes, you guys are great at shooting international shows with American money coming in, but for you this is raising the game for South African domestic drama and I hope the audience sees that and loves it and recognises it, because it’s the beginning of a journey for what you can achieve now in South African drama.

It will hopefully be exported and beloved around the world.

Are you working on anything now?

I did two features in a row. I did a wonderful movie called Audrey’s Children, directly followed by a wonderful feature called The Wasp, directly followed by White Lies, so at the moment I’m busy promoting those three. And having a rest.

• White Lies is on M-Net on Thursdays at 8pm or stream it on DStv Stream or watch on DStv Catch Up.