When Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taken into custody in Iran in 2016, the reasons were unclear what had happened – however after 100 days, the outlines emerged. Her partner Richard Ratcliffe, spoke publicly to the press. He gathered 780,000 signatures on a petition for her freedom, and presented a written appeal urging the same thing from ex- PM David Cameron. As later revealed, was after murky discussions with the Foreign Office in which government staff insisted that the safest approach, both for Nazanin’s return and the safety of her family members in Iran, was to lay low and let negotiations take its course.
“It was state hostage-taking,” says the actor Joseph Fiennes, who acts as Richard Ratcliffe in the four-episode BBC series the series Prisoner 951. “It clearly goes on, and blameless individuals and families are utterly upended and scarred permanently. After portraying this account, I view any individual facing accusations of something, and I don’t quite believe it.”
During that July in 2016, it was evident that a grave injustice had occurred. As a dual citizen, Nazanin was held in jail on accusations of spying, away from her little girl. She was accused of attempting to overthrow the government in Iran, of being employed by MI6, supporting female activism (in an interview) and obtaining funds unlawfully. The claims seemed far-fetched. Her job was with the news agency Reuters – however not within its news-gathering arm, instead its non-profit branch – and she had legitimate business in Iran, traveling with her daughter to meet her parents.
Were the allegations sounded dodgy to an general viewers, it raised greater concerns further in the Iranian diaspora, as Rashidi, who acts as Nazanin and was a native of Khorramabad in Iran (emigrating to Germany when she was seven) states. “It was widely understood that there was no basis to the fabricated justifications they said she was being held.”
Yet Britain was newly post-Brexit, and the day after the message was delivered to Cameron, Theresa May took over as PM. The news agenda only had eyes for governmental upheaval, and Johnson was appointed the foreign minister, leading to disastrous outcomes. Probably the most attention the family got in this period was when Johnson uttered his inaccurate statements the next year, that she’d been “training people in reporting, as I understand it”, which was false and lent weight to the Iranian state’s fabricated claims, worsening her situation.
Despite the available details and intermittent debate, which Richard Ratcliffe worked so hard to maintain while Nazanin fought to preserve her hope, the human reality of this imprisonment is deeply disturbing to see dramatized in the series. Rashidi, known for another drama, sounds so much like Zaghari-Ratcliffe it’s uncanny. She credits her language trainer: her actual English accent is mid-Atlantic and she lives in LA.
Rashidi viewed all materials: conversations featuring Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and the heartstopping but understated return to her daughter. Moreover, unexpected video exists: somehow the instant of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest at the airfield has appeared on the internet. “A brief clip; she had no idea that she was being filmed.”
Throughout the show, she is on a tightrope, suspended between the belief in her righteousness and the doubt that, if you can be arrested over baseless claims, what is the limit? Knowing what we know now, that she would be in prison for six years, it is profoundly upsetting to see the situation develop in the expressions she shows. Her fight not to lose control; her unsuccessful try to oppose the turmoil of official might. “From my perspective,” Rashidi says, “she appears unlike the Nazanin to the later period. I observed a person utterly terrified and quite vulnerable, not knowing what was occurring to her. I encountered her fortitude subsequently, following this entire experience.”
Fiennes “had the privilege of meeting with Richard”, he says. “Such access is rare with the individual you portray, and his profession is forensic accounting. The determination, where you reach the point of ‘Show me the {bloody receipt|actual proof|concrete evidence’, is in his DNA.” That makes it a painful watch too, as this somewhat conventional man slowly and then swiftly loses his faith in the institutions he believed in: specialists, bureaucrats, the state, other establishment guys. “He assumed the UK authorities would manage the situation, but this proved incorrect. He was just lied to, given untruths continuously.”
Ratcliffe dealt with five foreign ministers during the time his spouse was detained: a succession of officials. He and his wife would repeatedly become the lowest priority on the minister’s to-do list following their appointment, and once they examined the predicament, their time in office was over. Within the series, it takes Ratcliffe a while to see that “there’s a military industrial complex operating here,” Fiennes says, “and it lacks openness. It lives beneath the government, and these are individuals that became entangled in it.”
There’s a bit in which Ratcliffe enters angrily the office of Cleverly (he then held the position for the Middle East and North Africa), “and unleashes a tirade. He completely loses composure. His appearance is disheveled. He is undertaking the eighteenth day without food, he’s at rock bottom. However, considerable pressure for Richard to get to that place. {He’s not liberated|He isn
