One Night star addresses show's central mystery: 'Memory is malleable'
The six-part thriller stars Jodie Whittaker, Nicole da Silva and Yael Stone.
Australian thriller One Night, which is now available to watch in the UK on Paramount Plus, revolves around three female friends whose lives were forever changed following a traumatic event 20 years ago.
Tess (Jodie Whittaker), Simone (Nicole da Silva) and Hat (Yael Stone) were inseparable in their youth, their sisterhood unshakeable, until that fateful night saw them drift apart, pursuing lives away from one another.
But in the six-part series, they are forced to confront past wounds and old secrets when Simone announces that she's written a novel about what happened – which is on the cusp of being published.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com about the role that the women's individual memories of that destabilising event play in the narrative, Da Silva said: "One of the lines that did jump out at me from Hat was when she says [to my character Simone], 'Just because you wrote a book about it, doesn't mean your memories are truer.'
"And I just remember reading that line and then obviously doing it on the day with Yael and going, 'Absolutely.' Simone is taking this position where she's hard and fast in what she remembers is the truth and how it went down, but the other two have a completely different experience of it.
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"So it's really interesting that the show sits in that place where memory is malleable and it does mutate according to who the person is and what they need."
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Da Silva went on to discuss Simone's father, who is rapidly losing his memory due to dementia.
"This is why Emily Ballou, our writer, is so clever," she said. "She has this whole story about memory and whose memory it is to tell, whose stories to tell, and on the sidelines she's got this character who is quite physically losing their ability to remember and to know who they are and to know who their closest ones are.
"She does that beautiful mirroring that just creeps up on you."
As for how Da Silva hopes viewers will feel at end of the series, she said: "You want everyone to go on this journey and form their opinions, but of course, because I'm Simone's biggest advocate, I would hope that when they find the truth, they will allow that of her.
"And I also hope people walk away with a sense of, if not a deeper understanding, of what is the truth, what is memory, and how we as people and a society support or not support victims of sexual assault."
All six episodes of One Night are available to watch now on Paramount Plus – Get a seven-day free trial of Paramount Plus on Amazon Prime Video. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what else is on.
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