Disney+ Suspect boss reacts to 'controversial' backlash over recreating London bombings aftermath
Disney+ drama Suspect: The Shooting Of Jean Charles De Menezes has faced backlash for the recreation of tragic real-life scenes.
Disney+'s drama Suspect, which recreates tragic real-life events, is set to premiere this week amidst controversy.
The Shooting Of Jean Charles De Menezes, launches on Thursday, 30th April, and will first tackle the harrowing London bombings that claimed 52 lives twenty years ago before focusing on the shooting of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes.
During a screening, host Nina Hossain addressed the "backlash" over the dramatisation of the bombings.
Executive producer Kwadjo Dajan responded to the criticism, saying, "One of the criticisms that we had was that we hadn't consulted with victims, groups of people associated with the real events but the reality is we had.
"I actually have a personal connection. I knew one of the victims from 7/7 and we also spoke to various people and wrote letters."
He acknowledged the sensitivity of depicting such stories, noting, "When you make these types of stories, there are understandably a lot of people who were impacted by it, they have a sense of ownership.
"Their lives become defined by these events afterwards and so they feel it is for them to tell the story and nobody else."
Dajan voiced his belief that there's been some "mischief making in the press" over claims that their programme failed to caution about the reenactment of a blown-up bus or police storming into the station.
He stated: "We are responsible filmmakers. In reality, we spoke to lots of people over a number of weeks, contacted people, given people the opportunity to go into hotels while we were filming etc.
"And a big giveaway that it wasn't a real event was that we had lights everywhere and a guy shouting action and cut every two minutes.
"So just the way in which those things are reported, I get, if you write a story that they went about things really responsibly and everything was well managed, you're not going to really sell a lot of papers.
"We don't take for granted the responsibility and the pain and the hurt they've experienced and for us, that was at the forefront of every step of the way."
"Through our legal team, through Disney's legal team, and just morally, we felt an obligation to behave in a way that was fitting to this event."
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