‘The Lady’ Recounts a Murder Case Involving Buckingham Palace: Get the Backstory

Warning: The following post contains discussions of sexual assault, domestic abuse, and suicide.

Come Wednesday, March 18, American television viewers will see a slice of British royal life that The Crown didn’t touch. That’s when BritBox debuts The Lady, a story of Jane Andrews, a former dresser for ex-duchess Sarah Ferguson and a convicted murderer. Andrews made headlines in 2000 when she killed boyfriend Thomas Cressman, though she has said was acting in self-defense.

The Lady stars Natalie Dormer as Andrews, Mia McKenna-Bruce as Ferguson, Ed Speleers as Cressman, and Philip Glenister as DCI Douglas. The four-part series tells a complicated story, but the production itself has gotten complicated amid criticism from a solicitor in Andrews’ case and a disavowal from one of its stars.

Jane Andrews went from a glitzy position with a British duchess to a tumultuous relationship to the murder victim.

A 2003 profile of Andrews in The Guardian outlines her rise and fall: The woman who’d go from being an employee of Buckingham Palace to an inmate of Majesty’s Prison Service grew up in a working-class family in Grimsby, England, as the youngest child of an unhappy couple. She struggled with depression, panic attacks, degrading sexual experiences, an eating disorder, and a drug overdose in her teens.

But in 1988, Andrews got a life-changing job offer. Six months after answering an anonymous job listing in the now-defunct magazine The Lady, Andrews was called to interview with Ferguson, with whom she hit it off.

“Suddenly, I was at Balmoral mixing with the royals, having long chats with Princess Diana,” she said. “I was 21 years old, and, of course, I enjoyed it. … Fergie was headstrong, but she was good to me.”

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Andrews and Ferguson supported one another as Andrews divorced first husband Christopher Dunn-Butler, and the then-duchess split from the then-Prince Andrew. But in 1997, Buckingham Palace let Andrews go. Rumors abounded that an admirer of Ferguson took an interest in Andrews, but palace officials maintained it was only cost-cutting that led to Andrews’ exit.

Andrews was devastated, but her fortune seemed to change months later, in 1998, when she met Cressman, a successful businessman. Andrews was swept off her feet, but she told The Guardian that Cressman soon became abusive. She alleged he assaulted her and left her “covered in cuts and bruises” in one altercation months before his murder.

“Why didn’t I say anything to anybody? For the simple reason I didn’t think I’d be believed. I was ashamed. I felt a failure,” she said. “People at work would laugh and say, ‘Tommy picks Jane up from work every night, isn’t it sweet?’ No, it wasn’t. It was so I couldn’t go out with anyone else. … In front of other people, he was charming, but behind closed doors, he wasn’t.”

She added, “Why did I stay? There isn’t a short answer. I stayed with Tom for a thousand and one reasons because, every time he was violent or abusive, apologies came, and he said he would change. Because he made me feel I was the one that was causing him to do it.”

Andrews spent 14 years behind bars for the murder of Thomas Cressman.

Andrews murdered Cressman at his home in Fulham one night in September 2000, hitting him with a cricket bat and stabbing him with a knife. She told The Guardian that he had throttled her, raped her, and given her advice for killing herself earlier that day, and he had threatened to kill her that night. But her memories of her crime were fragmented, she said.

“I was responsible, and I have to live with that every second of my life. I just want people to understand what has happened and hopefully make some sense of it,” she told The Guardian from prison.

At Andrews’ 2001 trial, the jury convicted her of murder, voting 11 to one against her self-defense claim, and a judge sentenced her to life in prison, according to The Telegraph.

In 2015, a three-member panel of the Parole Board ordered Andrews’ release, per BBC News. In 2025, the Daily Mirror reported Andrews was working for a charity-funded animal hospital.

The Lady is “an exploration of female ambition and human frailty and a devastating chain of events,” the screenwriter says.

In December 2024, ITV and BritBox International co-commissioned The Lady as a partly-fictionalized four-part drama from Left Bank Pictures, the production company behind The Crown. Director Lee Haven Jones (Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story) helmed the project, and Debbie O’Malley (Payback) wrote the scripts.

“When Jane Andrews was tried for the murder of Thomas Cressman in 2001, it made headlines around the world. But behind those headlines lay a much more complex, painful, and thought-provoking story — an exploration of female ambition and human frailty and a devastating chain of events that ended in the taking of a man’s life,” O’Malley said in a statement. “And this story, tied up with our national preoccupation with class and our ongoing obsession with the Royal family, feels every bit as relevant now as it did twenty years ago.”

Added Helen Ziegler, ITV’s senior drama commissioner, “Debbie’s compelling and brilliant scripts re-evaluate what we think we know of Jane Andrews and the events that led to the tragic end of Thomas Cressman’s life. We are thrilled to be working with the Left Bank team to bring this complex exploration of class, celebrity, ambition, and identity.”

Andrews’ former lawyer calls The Lady a “one-sided view” that fails to explore the circumstances behind the crime.

Centre for Women’s Justice CEO Harriet Wistrich, a solicitor who represented Andrews during her 2003 appeal, spoke out about The Lady in February, calling it a “one-sided” depiction of the real-life saga.

“Jane has not contributed to The Lady despite it purportedly being about her life, nor has she contributed to any of the previous multiple TV documentaries made about her,” said. “The public are thus presented with a one-sided view that fails to explore why a vulnerable woman in her circumstances may have been driven to kill.”

Wistrich added that “in many such cases there is an underlying and sometimes hidden history of abuse and control, as there was in the case of Sally Challen,” citing a woman who was released from prison when her murder conviction was changed to manslaughter in light of evidence that her deceased husband was coercive and controlling, per The Guardian.

“In fact,” Wistrich said, “the precedent created in the case of Sally Challen and our greater understanding of coercive control and its impact on those with underlying mental health vulnerabilities could well assist Jane Andrews in a fresh appeal, should she wish now to explore one.”

Natalie Dormer distanced herself from The Lady amid a Sarah Ferguson scandal.

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In September 2025, Dormer opted out of promotion for The Lady and chose to donate her salary to charitable causes after a damning link between Ferguson and convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein came to light. Leaked emails at the time saw Ferguson as a “supreme friend” even after his imprisonment, according to Variety.

“When I agreed to take the role in The Lady, I knew portraying the script’s Sarah Ferguson would require nuance,” Dormer said in a statement to the magazine. “People are layered, their journeys are full of highs and lows, and as an actor, my job is to lean into those elements and bring them to life with honesty and empathy. Since completing the project, new information has come to light that makes it impossible for me to reconcile my values with Sarah Ferguson’s behavior, which I believe is inexcusable. In keeping with my commitment to the well-being of children, I have donated my entire salary from this project to the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) and the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse.”

The Lady, U.S. Premiere, Wednesday, March 18, BritBox

If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or a loved one is in immediate danger, call 911.