Nadia Parkes to Star in UK Indie Dark Comedy 'The
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- Nadia Parkes (BBC's Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story, Netflix's The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself) has been cast as Jess, a stripper and dominatrix whose life unravels after a client turns up dead and leaves her with a mysterious metal puzzle box.
- Sophie Cohen and Michael Lindsay are co-writing and co-directing the film, produced by 16oz Films in association with House of Vixens, with a working title of The Ketamine Detective and filming set to begin in London later this month.
- Sophie Cohen brings more than two decades of experience inside the sex industry, where she remains active, and is the creator of the Strippers in the Attic podcast, which has logged more than 250,000 downloads.
- The production is set to include sex performers, workers and community members in front of and behind the camera, a deliberate choice the filmmakers cited as essential to portraying the world honestly.
- Parkes said Jess is "not there to be saved, punished, tidied up or understood in one easy way," and Cohen and Lindsay said they "weren't interested in treating sex workers as symbols, victims or scandals."
Why it matters: With a director who has spent 20-plus years working as a stripper and dominatrix and a production crediting House of Vixens, the film is positioning itself as an insider account of sex work rather than a sensationalized one — and the explicit plan to hire sex workers on both sides of the camera sets a concrete production standard that contrasts with how the industry has typically been depicted on screen.
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