The families of Stephen Port’s victims were invaluable to the making of the upcoming BBC drama Four Lives, which is set to launch tonight.
Port, played by Stephen Merchant, drugged and raped four men before dumping their bodies near his home in Barking, east London. Known as the Grindr Killer, he used the gay dating app to target young men.
Written by Neil McKay and produced by Jeff Pope, Four Lives was based on extensive research from Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth, and Jack Taylor’s loved ones and their fight to uncover the truth about what happened to them.
‘It’s an enormous privilege to talk to them and to hear their stories,’ McKay exclusively told . ‘I have to pay tribute to the courage they showed in telling their stories so openly and frankly.’
All four victims were – as McKay puts it – in the middle of ‘slightly complicated events’ at the time of their deaths.
‘You meet them at moments in their lives where difficult things were going on. Part of the tragedy is that those secrets become exposed.
‘What was so brilliant about the families was that they didn’t try to censor us. They wanted us to tell the stories truthfully and accurately because, in the end, there was nothing to hide.’
Port’s first victim Walgate, a fashion student from Hull, occasionally did escort work, with his parents discovering this after his murder. Meanwhile, Taylor was questioning his sexuality, unbeknownst to his family.
‘All this was normal stuff we go through in our lives; figuring out who we are and what we want to be,’ McKay continued. ‘There was no shame in any of it.
‘I can’t recall anything they didn’t want to be included, but what I do recall is they would say “put that in, we have nothing to hide”.’
Besides sharing their stories so that the script could be written, the families and loved ones also visited the set and met with the cast.
‘Sheridan met Sarah Sak [Walgate’s mother], Donna and Jenna Taylor [Taylor’s sisters] met Jamie Winstone, and all the way through the cast they would meet with their real-life counterparts.
‘It was enormously helpful.’
Understandably though, there comes great pressure when creating a dramatized version of real-life events – especially when dealing with such harrowing events.
‘It’s a great privilege but it’s a great responsibility,’ McKay admitted. ‘The pressure for this won’t end until Thursday evening when the drama finishes going out.
‘But these projects are precious and require courage. They just want their story to be told and what drama can do is put you inside the emotion and experience in a way that brings it home to an audience.’
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