This is an excerpt from an article in a London newspaper about a BBC movie that begins filming soon. It is called “A Short Stay in Switzerland.” The movie is about Dr. Anne Turner who went to Switzerland to die with dignity. Dr. Turner had progressive supranuclear palsy. Her husband died with multiple system atrophy. Actress Julie Walters plays Dr. Turner.
Robin
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Julie honours a woman who died with dignity
Daily Mail (London), July 19, 2008
Julie Walters, in the groove with hit film musical Mamma Mia!, is taking on a real-life role that will be the subject of passionate debate.
Walters will portray Dr Anne Turner, the former medical practitioner from Bath who hit the headlines in early 2006 when she gave notice of her intention to end her life by means of an assisted suicide.
Rehearsals begin next month in London on the BBC1 TV film called A Short Stay In Switzerland, a factually-inspired drama written by playwright Frank McGuinness.
Simon Curtis, the director, said McGuinness’s screenplay sensitively explores the final 18 months of Dr Turner’s life until she and her three children travel to a clinic in Zurich where arrangements had been made for her to die with dignity, which she argued ‘should be everybody’s right’.
It’s a highly emotive topic but, Curtis noted, the combination of McGuinness’s script and Julie Walters’s acting should be able to make it palatable for TV audiences.
Dr Turner died on January 26, 2006, a day before her 67th birthday. She had been diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a neurological degenerative disease.
Her husband had died in 2002 of Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). Sufferers lose their sense of balance and are unable to talk, swallow or blink.
Curtis, who directed the acclaimed Cranford serial with Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins, will meet Dr Turner’s family next week.
Her son and daughters have already collaborated with McGuinness and producers Liz Trubridge and Ruth Caleb on the screenplay.
‘The family has been very supportive, which is important in a drama of this nature,’ Curtis observed.
‘They’re a loving family and in difficult times you find glimpses of warmth, happiness, love and humour.’
He added that Walters has what he called ‘that extra ingredient the public responds to; Dame Judi has that, too.
‘The audience love to go on the journey she takes them on’.
A Short Stay In Switzerland will shoot in London for four weeks, with a brief location in Zurich.