Director of new Kate Winslet film Ammonite defends lesbian plot line

The director of a film about 19th Century palaeontologist Mary Anning has denied ‘sensationalizing’ her story by making her a lesbian. 

Francis Lee, the director of Ammonite, said he wanted to give Anning something ‘to elevate her’ because her work was overlooked by men. 

Ammonite, which will be released next month, stars Kate Winslet as Anning and Saoirse Ronan as her friend Charlotte Murchison. 

There is no evidence Anning and Murchison were intimate, and distant relatives blasted the lesbian storyline when news of the film broke in 2019. 

Barbara Anning said: ‘Do the film-makers have to resort to using unconfirmed aspects to make an already remarkable story sensational?’ 

Mr Lee admitted there was ‘no documentation to suggest’ Anning had sexual relationship with either men or women. 

He told Deadline magazine: ‘I wanted to give her a relationship that felt worthy of her, that felt equal. In this society where men overlooked and reappropriated her work, I didn’t feel that that could be with a man.’ 

Anning was the daughter of a cabinet-maker, had little formal education, never married and died aged 47 in 1847.

But her finds along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset changed history.    

Many of her finds were bought by men who put their name to the fossils – meaning much of her success went undocumented. 

Mr Lee gained success from his debut film God’s Own Country, which told the story of a gay relationship between a Yorkshire sheep farmer and a migrant worker. 

Films depicting stories from history have come under fire recently for altering facts and timelines. 

Real-life inspired dramas including Netflix’s The Dig and The Crown have been criticised, with the culture secretary Oliver Dowden even demanding the streaming service make clear The Crown was a work of ‘fiction’. 

The Dig, starring Lily James, Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, dramatised the find of an Anglo-Saxon burial ship at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.

Historical inaccuracies included the dramatisation of a Spitfire crashing while the excavation was ongoing. In reality this happened towards the end of the war – years after the 1939 dig. 

The film showed the pilot’s death, but the two airmen inside actually survived.

In another scene The Dig hints that Peggy Piggott’s (Lily James) husband, fellow archaeologist Stuart Piggott, is more interested in fellow male excavator John Brailsford (Eamon Farren) than he is in his wife.

Although Peggy and Stuart did divorce in 1954, his sexuality has never been documented and there is no record of any romantic relationship between him and another excavator besides his wife. 

In the case of The Crown, invented scenes included the false suggestion the affair between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles continued throughout his marriage to Diana. 

Emma Corrin, who plays Princess Diana, has admitted that the controversial fourth series is ‘fictionalised to a great extent’.

During a series of interviews, the 24-year-old said the storylines were invented and the members of the Royal Family depicted in the new series were ‘characters’ created by screenwriter Peter Morgan.

US chat show host Tamron Hall asked Ms Corrin about reports that MPs and Royals were upset by The Crown’s depiction of Charles, Diana and Camilla.

‘It’s a difficult one,’ she replied. ‘I think for everyone in The Crown we always try and remind everyone that… the series we are in is fictionalised to a great extent.

‘Obviously it has its roots in reality and in some fact but Peter Morgan’s scripts are works of fiction.’

Allies of Mrs Thatcher spoke of their fury at scenes suggesting that she sought to avoid being deposed in 1990 by urging the Queen to act in the ‘national interest’ by dissolving Parliament and allowing her to call a General Election.

Lord (Charles) Moore, Mrs Thatcher’s biographer, dismissed the account as ‘dotty’ and ‘a very bad mistake by The Crown’.