She was a Grimsby girl who ended up mixing in Palace circles before killing her lover in a jealous rage. Now a new drama about Jane Andrews has stirred up a storm. Here the team behind it – and the victim’s family – reveal why…

Life can often be stranger than fiction, and this is the rags-to-royals-to-murder story that proves it. 

Jane Andrews, a young woman who grew up in the Lincolnshire port of Grimsby, found herself at the heart of the Royal Family in the opulent 80s as a dresser to Sarah Ferguson, who was then Duchess of York. 

But after almost ten years as the duchess’s employee and confidante, she was cast out of the royal circle as Fergie’s own life and finances disintegrated.

Lost and depressed, Jane found love with a millionaire businessman – and that should have been her happy ending. 

But instead, two years into their romance and just three years after she’d left the Palace, she hit her boyfriend with a cricket bat as he slept before stabbing him to death with a kitchen knife. 

Mia McKenna-Bruce stars as Jane Andrews in The Lady, which is based upon a grisly true story

Jane, a real-life royal dresser, worked for Sarah Ferguson (pictured left, played in The Lady by Natalie Dormer)

Jane was in a relationship with Tommy Cressman – but this ultimately ended under tragic circumstances

With its lurid plot involving royalty, wealthy excess and cold-blooded murder, it’s a story that has been the subject of several true-crime documentaries, and now it has been dramatised in a new four-part ITV series, The Lady, which explores what pushed her to murder her lover, Thomas ‘Tommy’ Cressman.

Before the show is even screened it has attracted controversy, after it emerged last September just how close Fergie and her former husband were to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 

Andrew was stripped of his Prince and Duke of York titles, while Sarah lost the duchess title she had clung onto since her divorce. 

Game Of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer, who plays Fergie, has since refused to publicise the series as a mark of respect for Epstein’s victims and donated her fee to charities focused on child abuse.

Meanwhile, Tommy’s brother, hotelier Rick Cressman, has said that while he did collaborate with the show’s producers on the script, he did so reluctantly and he doesn’t think his brother’s death should be offered up as entertainment. 

‘We felt we had no choice but to co-operate,’ Rick told the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden last month. ‘

 It was presented to us as a fait accompli and all we could do was give some advice to the actor playing Tommy so he could try to understand my brother… I feel emotionally and mentally distressed.’

Producer Florence Haddon-Cave insists they have acted with sensitivity. 

‘We contacted the Cressman family before filming began to ensure they were aware, and we have kept them informed throughout production,’ she says. 

‘Our aim has always been to approach the story with great care and responsibility, and to respect the people involved.

‘We wanted to make sure we captured Thomas as accurately as we possibly could. He was everyone’s best friend, the most popular guy in the room. He was magnetic, and we wanted to capture that. 

‘It’s a tragic story about a woman who wanted more from life but was ill-equipped to cope. 

‘It’s also a story about a man who had his life cut short by a terrible and tragic act. More than anything, we’re trying to find a way to understand what happened.’

The series presents Jane as a complicated character. While humanising her as someone who experiences joy and heartache like anyone else, it also portrays her as an inherently dangerous person, prone to violent outbursts, someone both desperate and unhinged enough to make the decision to murder.

Played by rising star Mia McKenna-Bruce – recently seen as Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent in Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials on Netflix – Jane was born in 1967 to a joiner who was frequently out of work and his social worker wife. 

Their marriage was an unhappy one. Jane’s childhood home had an outside toilet, and she once described having to rummage through the settee cushions to find enough loose change to buy a loaf of bread.

At her trial she claimed she was sexually abused when she was eight years old, and as she hit puberty she developed an eating disorder and depression; she first attempted suicide by taking an overdose at the age of 15. 

In a scene in the show, her brother interrupts her while she’s watching Charles and Diana’s wedding on TV and she attacks him, prompting him to yell, ‘Bloody psycho!’ 

Her schooling suffered and she left with just three O-levels before enrolling at a fashion college and going on to work for M&S.

Ambitious and keen to leave Grimsby, she replied to an advert in The Lady magazine looking for a personal dresser. 

She was invited for an interview and was shocked when the address she was given was Buckingham Palace. 

But she got on well with Fergie and, aged 21, moved to London and started work for the duchess. 

In the show we see her struggling when she overhears fellow servants laughing at her dress sense and accent.

It was Sarah Ferguson’s own vulnerability that drew the two together – as if they sensed each other’s emotional weaknesses – and as Jane gradually lost her accent and began to dress more like her boss, Fergie nicknamed her ‘Lady Jane’. 

She was soon living the kind of life she could never have imagined, travelling on private jets and staying in palaces.

In 1990, Jane married Christopher Dunn-Butler, an IBM executive 20 years her senior, and finally had the sort of stability she had craved: a good job, a luxury flat, her own car and someone who would take care of her. 

But it was not to last; the marriage ended after five years because Jane had, as she later admitted in court, ‘a couple of flings’ and appeared more devoted to Fergie than to her husband.

As Jane was divorcing, Fergie’s marriage to Andrew collapsed, and the women found solace in each other. In one of her travel books, Fergie thanked Jane, ‘whose loyalty and kindness knows no bounds’.

As Jane gradually lost her accent and began to dress more like her boss, Fergie nicknamed her ‘Lady Jane’

Jane moved into a flat Fergie had rented for her and met Dimitri Horne, a Greek shipping heir, at a charity event. They embarked on a tempestuous romance, but when he ended things Jane went to his home and smashed some of his personal items. 

Afterwards she fell into depression and attempted suicide again. In the series Dimitri is called Luis, and Jane’s obsessive behaviour is again portrayed in their relationship.

Meanwhile, money was increasingly becoming an issue for the now-divorced duchess. 

Jane later claimed Fergie made her redundant in November 1997 because Italian aristocrat Count Gaddo della Gherardesca – a new friend of the duchess – had flirted with Jane, but Palace officials have always insisted Jane’s redundancy was a cost-cutting exercise. 

Although she was to continue exchanging birthday and Christmas cards with Fergie, Jane later said she never got over being fired.

By the time she met businessman Tommy Cressman (played by Downton Abbey’s Ed Speleers) through friends in 1998, she was working for society jeweller Theo Fennell. 

Tommy, a former stockbroker, was the son of millionaire Harry Cressman, a former director of Aston Villa, and he lived a charmed life running a car accessory business.

She moved in with him after just a couple of months, and told friends she was hoping to marry him. 

But when she found emails between him and another woman she was crushed.

In September 2000, Jane and Tommy went on holiday to Italy and then on to his family’s place on the French Riviera. 

But instead of the marriage proposal Jane was hoping for, Tommy told her he would never marry her during a blazing row as they headed home. 

The row continued in the flat the next day, and Tommy called the police and told them to come because ‘somebody is going to get hurt’. They didn’t come, and Jane left the flat. 

She returned later that evening and things appeared calmer, but while Tommy was sleeping she bludgeoned him with a cricket bat and stabbed him.

The police were called when he did not appear at work the next day, by which time Jane had gone missing. 

The police asked Fergie to help as they tried to track her down and she left two voice messages for Jane saying, ‘You must come forward and help the police.’ 

After four days Jane was found by police in Cornwall, having overdosed in her car. She was arrested and charged with murder.

During her 2001 trial at the Old Bailey, Jane alleged that she had killed her lover in self-defence, but she was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In 2009 she absconded from an open prison and was found two days later at a Premier Inn six miles away with her parents. 

She was released on licence in 2015 but recalled to prison in 2018 after being accused of harassing an ex-lover. 

She was released again in August 2019 after a police investigation found no evidence of the alleged harassment. Now 58, she works at an animal hospital.

The four-part series has been made by Left Bank Pictures, makers of The Crown, which itself ran into controversy over factual accuracy, but resisted calls to add a disclaimer explaining that many of the scenes were made up. 

In contrast, The Lady informs viewers that the show has been ‘inspired’ by true events and that ‘some characters, events and scenes have been created and merged for dramatic purposes’.

Ed Speleers says that meeting Rick helped with his depiction of the victim. 

‘I looked at a few documentaries to try to understand the story, and then I spoke to Tommy’s brother and some of his friends,’ he says. 

‘I was shaking with trepidation, but Rick was incredibly warm and open, and that allowed us to have a take on how the family felt, and that was woven into the script.’

The drama, which features a brief glimpse of Princess Diana but nothing of Andrew, evokes the era with power suits and shoulder pads and a soundtrack featuring the likes of A-ha, Depeche Mode and Tears For Fears. 

But it also has to tread a difficult line between entertainment and fact because it depicts events that were experienced only by Tommy and Jane. 

‘We knew we had to tread with great sensitivity,’ says Ed. ‘But I think it’s also important to say that our Tommy is a depiction we have created. This is a snapshot, a reimagining.’

Playing the complicated Jane, Mia McKenna-Bruce says she tried to ignore the real story and focus solely on the script in front of her. 

‘I wanted to go into filming totally unbiased, as if I was in her mindset. When we first meet Jane she’s full of hope and lives in a palace. It’s like a fairy tale. Her time with Sarah becomes her whole life and she gets completely wrapped up in that world, so it’s devastating when she loses it all. 

‘I felt Jane genuinely did love Tommy. She opened up to him in a way she hadn’t really opened up to anyone before.’

It isn’t easy playing a murderess, especially as filming wasn’t chronological. ‘A lot of my brain space was taken up with where Jane might be at that moment,’ says Mia. ‘Her accent changes a lot, and I also had three different wigs. Logistically it was about remembering where she might be and what she might be feeling at that point.’

As well as speaking to Tommy’s friends and family, writer Debbie O’Malley watched the many documentaries about Jane, and read the court transcripts. The producers also spoke to the investigating police officers and Jane’s solicitors.

‘Somebody said that this was a relationship that could easily have ended in a marriage rather than murder,’ says Debbie. ‘So it felt really important to show all sides of the affair. I was interested in the arc of Jane’s life, where she goes from these lower-middle-class beginnings to Sarah Ferguson’s right-hand woman. And then it takes a very dark turn with the loss of somebody’s life.

‘I felt there was a real depth to the story behind the headlines. It was a doomed love story. The headlines referred to Jane as “the fatal attraction killer” or “the bunny boiler” or “gold digger”, who, when she was thwarted, turned on him. 

But actually, this was a real relationship between two people who had been together for two years and were planning to build a life together.’

In prison, Jane was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which Debbie knows a lot about because somebody close to her has it. 

‘Suddenly a lot of things about her patterns of behaviour, her attachment style and various other things made a huge amount of sense,’ she says.

Critics may argue that murder should not be presented as entertainment, but for Debbie it’s important to bring to life a real, complex woman who killed. 

‘It poses thought-provoking questions about class and entitlement while exploring issues around mental health that have never been more relevant than today,’ she says. 

‘If this drama can make viewers think a bit more about the people behind the headlines and the actual struggles people are going through, and the fact that you never really know the whole story, that would be great.’

The Lady starts 22 February on ITV1, all four episodes on ITVX.