Natalie Dormer has announced that she will not participate in the promotion of The Lady — the upcoming ITV and BritBox miniseries in which she plays Sarah Ferguson — following the release of a 2011 email in which the Duchess of York apologized to Jeffrey Epstein, calling him her “supreme friend.”

In a statement, Dormer said the new revelations are “irreconcilable” with her values and revealed that she has donated her entire salary from the project to organizations supporting survivors of child abuse, including NAPAC and the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse.

Dormer stressed that her decision was not a criticism of Left Bank Pictures (The Crown), which produced the series, but a personal choice based on principle. “As an actor, I sought to bring nuance and humanity to the character. But after these revelations, I cannot support Sarah Ferguson’s narrative without reservations,” she said.

The series dramatizes the life of Jane Andrews — Ferguson’s former personal assistant, who was convicted of murdering her boyfriend in 2001 — and was already reviving one of the York family’s most controversial chapters, as I wrote in this post about the true story of Jane Andrews. Now, with the email leak bringing Sarah Ferguson’s past back into the spotlight, the project feels even more charged, as I analyzed in this article about the fallout of the leaked email and its impact on the Yorks.

Dormer’s stance is more than a personal refusal — it’s a signal of how The Lady might be received by the public when it premieres. What began as a character-driven drama could now be viewed as a referendum on Sarah Ferguson’s image and choices, particularly in light of the renewed scrutiny over her ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Rather than simply revisiting the tragedy of Jane Andrews, the show risks being interpreted as part of a larger cultural conversation about accountability, privilege, and redemption — and whether the public is willing to separate the dramatization from the real person behind it.