SECRETS & LIES

LAURA CARMICHAEL and JESSICA DE GOUW on the return of their taut thriller

The second series of BBC1’s emotionally bruising Australia-set thriller The Secrets She Keeps is set to bring more agony and chaos for the two troubled women at its heart whose lives have been blighted by a horrifying kidnapping.

In the first series, which aired in 2020, manipulative Sydney-based supermarket worker Agatha Fyfle (Downton Abbey’s Laura Carmichael) was desperate to become a mother at any cost and faked a pregnancy before cruelly plotting the abduction of Ben Shaughnessy, the newborn baby of wealthy blogger Meghan (Pennyworth’s Jessica De Gouw).

As the six-part drama returns, it’s two years on, and Agatha and Meghan find it hard to cope with the dreadful fallout from what has happened, while they soon have more worrying secrets to hide.

Here, Laura, 36, and Jessica, 34, reveal what to expect…

BEHIND BARS

Agatha is languishing in a maximumsecurity prison and on tenterhooks as she awaits sentencing for the abduction of baby Ben and the manslaughter of two other infants she previously snatched. She also continues to be haunted by her tragic past, which saw her fall pregnant as a teenager when she was abused by an elder in her family’s church. After the infant was taken away from her for adoption, she later gave birth to a stillborn baby.

‘A lot of her behaviour is questionable, and she’s caused a lot of pain, but we understand why she does these things. As an actor, that’s what you want, to understand how a character got to where they are,’ explains