Is ‘Outrageous’ Based on a True Story? All About the Mitford Sisters

BritBox‘s new show Outrageous delves into the insane true story of the Mitford sisters. The six siblings, all born to a well-to-do aristocratic family, each defied expectations to place their mark on British history in unique, and sometimes disturbing, ways. Nancy (Bessie Carter) became a best-selling novelist, Diana (Joanna Vanderham) left her wealthy husband for the head of the British Fascists, Unity (Shannon Watson) charmed her way into Hitler’s inner circle, Jessica (Zoe Brough) went on to become a communist and celebrated investigative journalist, Deborah (Orla Hill) somehow found herself the Duchess of Devonshire, and Pamela (Isobel Jesper Jones) loved farming.

Based on Mary Lovell’s book, Outrageous plots these six separate stories while showing in real time how the sisters’ choices not only affected their family as a whole, but all of society.

“The producer [of Outrageous] described them to me as ‘They’re six Fleabags.’ And they kind of are,” BritBox Head of Programming Jon Farrar told DECIDER. “They’re all sort of idiosyncratic and have their own brilliance, but they just shoot off in all these directions. And then inevitably, those directions start to split the family apart.”

“I was like, holy smoke, this is not just a sweet little group of sisters who became famous,” Outrageous star Bessie Carter said over a video chat last week. “This is a really interesting story.”

It’s a really interesting story that many Americans might not be familiar with, outside of the bit of Harry Potter trivia. (J.K. Rowling based the Black sisters — Narcissa Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Andromeda Tonks — off of Diana, Unity, and Jessica, respectively.) It’s also a story that not all modern Brits necessarily know either.

“People fall into two different camps where they like either know loads about them or they don’t know anything and I embarrassingly fell into that camp,” Outrageous star Joanna Vanderham said when she and co-stars Shannon Watson and Zoe Brough visited our studio. “Getting to do the show meant like deep diving into the research.”

“I knew of Nancy Mitford because I had a weird amount of connections with her,” Bessie Carter said, revealing that she attended the same school as her character and even recently narrated her novel, The Pursuit of Love, for Audible. “Matthew Mosley, our producer, was listening to me as he was preparing, not knowing he’d cast me as Nancy.”

“There’s so much material,” Shannon Watson said.

“There is, because they’ve documented so much. I mean, the countless letters they wrote,” Zoe Brough said. “I found out actually recently that there are people that study degrees on the Mitfords because they’re so fascinating. I think there’s just like so much to know and learn about them that I think it’s just never-ending.”

The first season of Outrageous opens in 1931. Diana is married to the rich and handsome Bryan Guinness (Calam Lynch), but indicates to Nancy that she yearns for something more. Soon, Diana finds herself in the thrall of the charismatic politician Oswald Mosley (Joshua Sasse). The two embark on a scandalous affair that blows up Diana’s marriage and starts her — and her sisters — down a dangerous road. Oswald Mosley was the head of the British Fascist Party.

“I think on the surface, she was really attracted to Mosley,” Vanderham said. “She married Bryan Guinness and she had this dreamy life with all this money and the children. She’d done what a woman of that period was supposed to do.”

“And then she sort of blows it all up. And not only for her, but like for her siblings.”

Initially, Diana’s actions cause a scandal for her family. However, her close connections to fascism soon appeal to impressionable younger sister Unity.

“She grew up, obviously, with a mum and a dad that were fascist sympathizers. And I think that, combined with the fact that there was so much German propaganda and so much German things in the news, that’s what sparked her interest,” Watson said. “Then when she meets Mosley in the flesh, she sort of sees how charismatic and powerful and the way that he talks, she probably is just really attracted to that as well.” 

“I think there was a lot of looking up to Diana from Unity’s point of view,” Vanderham said.

“Massively,” Watson agreed.

Carter also believed that Unity’s initial interest in fascism came in part from family dynamics. “I think we show in the story is that she is repeatedly not listened to, not respected, and not given a voice,” she said. “So she goes somewhere where she is heard and seen, and she’s seen by one of the biggest leaders and powerful men in the world.“

Spoiler, but that man who eventually hears and sees Unity would be Adolf Hitler.

Vanderham added that she definitely thought Diana was increasingly attracted to the “power” she saw in fascism. “I think there’s a little bit of Lady Macbeth in her where she kind of uses Mosley and she sees the power that Hitler is having in Germany and she wants that for herself,” she said.

However, not all the Mitfords were fans of the Nazis. Unity’s own bestie in the family, roommate Jessica, was so (rightfully) repulsed by her sisters’ embrace of fascism that she swung hard in the opposite direction. She becomes enthralled with communism and daydreams about meeting a distant cousin making headlines for his political demonstrations.

“She sees what Diana does, she sees what Unity does — and Unity and her were extremely close for so long until Unity goes off and forges these really negative political values — and I think she goes, ‘I’m not having that,’” Brough said. “She gets enamored by this book called Out of Bounds and Esmond Romilly. She’s just a black sheep in my opinion.”

As a member of the hip London literary set, Nancy had many Jewish and queer friends, aka people the fascists literally wanted to exterminate. Outrageous created a new character, Joss, who is an amalgamation of several of the real Nancy Mitford’s Jewish and gay friends.

“We thought he would be really important to have a Jewish presence in the show, especially when we’re looking at sort of where the sisters end up going,” Carter said. “He is there as a sort of a support and a guiding light, but then also plays a really pivotal part in Nancy’s understanding of the severity of her sister’s decisions and choices.”

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Outrageous is that despite its darker moments, it’s still a breezy, addictive, and sometimes funny watch. Part of that is thanks to Nancy’s witty narration, part of it is the show’s grounded approach to the characters, and part of it is simply the fact that the Mitfords were a quirky bunch. They called their imperious father, “Favre,” their sophisticated mother, “Muv,” and each other a cavalcade of weird, childish nicknames.

“Well, my nickname is ‘Honks,’” Joanna Vanderham said, laughing. ” And I’m like, what did she do to get called Honks?” 

“I mean ours was ‘Boud,’ but it was because of Boudledidge, which was our secret language,” Zoe Brough said, while Shannon Watson echoed her words exactly, as if they really were Jessica and Unity.

“We could speak it in front of the adults and they wouldn’t know what we were saying and we were being very naughty, weren’t we?” Brough said. “But yeah, that stems from our secret language.” 

“My favorite’s probably Pam’s nickname,” Watson said. “‘Womb’” because she was just the stereotypical ‘woman’ of the time.” 

“I quite like ‘Woman,’” Bessie Carter said. “We call Pam, ‘Woman,’ because she loves to cook. So all the sisters think that that’s like a really traditional, like ‘trad-woman’ vibe.”

“I just love that we’re all just like, ‘Ugh, Woman.’ And I think that’s so progressive that they were like, “Oh, god!” They were so rejecting of her enjoying things that women were supposed to do.”

As Outrageous proves, none of the Mitfords wound up doing any of the things women were “supposed” to do.

The first two episodes of Outrageous premiere on BritBox tonight at 8 PM ET.