Silent Witness star Emilia Fox on new true crime series: 'It's left up to the listener to decide'

It opens with a 2019 case from a Florida town near Walt Disney World Resort where an "unimaginable nightmare" unfolded for one family, and concludes with the 1931 murder of a housewife in Anfield, Liverpool, which asks: is all really as it seems?

"With Silent Witness, there's the added element because it's not just detective stories and solving mysteries, there's the medical and scientific side of it, which I find personally fascinating," Fox told RadioTimes.com.

"But I'm very clear on the delineation between working on fictional crime series and working on documentaries. And obviously, the two things are defined by the fact that these are tragedies which have happened to people in real life, which is what this podcast series is.

"It's dealing with real lives and real tragedies so obviously, one feels differently about them. And I think in the portrayal of them, that is very important too."

Fox then went on to talk about ensuring that the victim or victims are front and centre in her true crime work, rather than the perpetrator.

"Explaining who the people were that it happened to, and that that is not forgotten or buried by an interest in who the person is who did it," she added.

"That should not be the focus of it. This is the difference for me with what happens in fiction, which very often, you follow the perpetrator.

"And people have an interest in why people have done these unthinkable things, but I think there is a massive awareness now of telling these stories and being victim-focused and victim-led in the right way, and being focused on the people who are left behind."

Fox also said that "in a couple of these stories, it's left up to the listener to decide what they feel about who did it and whether justice was served correctly".

"It's about hearing about what happened with the crime, but also following the investigation and the outcome," Fox continued.

"The listener is allowed to, I think, imagine the world where these cases exist and the locations in which they exist. You're not being shown it and told it. You're creating the picture of what happened in the case.

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"It was quite a different way of telling the story because it was using the archives and documentation and mixing that with the narrative voice, which I think gives a very realistic picture of what happened in these cases."

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