Suranne Jones: ‘My son cringed at one part of my new pressured Netflix thriller’

Let’s set the scene: it’s a sunny day on Downing Street and the press corps is waiting, cameras poised, for the Prime Minister, when out from Number 10 steps Suranne Jones.

Except, it isn’t Suranne Jones. This is our latest elected leader Abigail Dalton. (Albeit an unlikely name for a British PM.)

With a sharply cropped new hairdo – more on that later – and a plum power suit, Jones stars in Netflix’s new political thriller Hostage, across from Julie Delpy’s visiting French president. The two world leaders are locked in tense negotiations over Channel boat crossings and NHS medication supplies when disaster, right on cue, strikes.

Abigail’s do-gooder husband Alex (Bashy) is in French Guiana on a Doctors Without Borders project, when his entire cohort is kidnapped by a masked gang. Their ransom request? Abigail must resign, or they’ll start picking off doctors one by one.

Given that he’s been snatched in French territory and it turns out the kidnappers have dirt on the French pres too, what unfolds is a gripping, if somewhat unlikely, political thriller with two frenemy female leaders going head-to-head.

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Ahead of the five-part show’s release on Netflix this Thursday (August 21), Suranne spoke to Metro about working with writer Matt Charman on what type of ‘strong female character’ she had yet to tackle, when she noticed a politically-themed role was missing from her head count.