The Peerage, Pearls, and Polaroids, Oh My! An Exclusive First Look at Claire Foy in A Very British Scandal

When the beautiful textile heiress Margaret Campbell married her first husband, American stockbroker and golfer Charles Sweeny, at the Brompton Oratory in 1933, the crowds that assembled to see her Norman Hartnell gown were so vast that traffic in southwest London came to a standstill for nearly three hours. It proved a fittingly grand start to life for the high-society darling, who immediately became so famous that Cole Porter allegedly referenced her in the lyrics for “You’re the Top”: “You’re the top; you’re an Arrow collar / You’re the top; you’re a Coolidge dollar / You’re the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire / You’re Mussolini, you’re Mrs. Sweeny…”

It’s Margaret’s infamous second marriage to the Duke of Argyll, however, that will be at the heart of A Very British Scandal, airing on BBC One in the U.K. and Amazon Prime Video in the U.S. in 2022. Created by the same team behind A Very English Scandal—which saw Hugh Grant bring to life Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe’s vilification following his relationship with model Norman Josiffe (Ben Whishaw)—it stars The Crown’s Claire Foy as the so-called “Dirty Duchess” and Paul Bettany as the irascible Duke.

In particular, the three-part drama will revisit the Argylls’s sensational divorce trial, initiated by the Duke after he broke open a locked cupboard and found dozens of nude Polaroids of his wife, including one of her having sex with a man whose head had been cropped out of the frame. Betraying her identity in the photos where her face is hidden? A three-string pearl necklace, which had become her fashion signature. Inevitably, the Duchess immediately became the center of a national scandal, damned by sexist headlines throughout the couple’s subsequent three-and-a-half-year legal battle, which soon enthralled America as well. (“Duke of Argyll Wins a Divorce— Duchess Excoriated,” ran the New York Times headline when proceedings finally drew to a close in 1963.)