Is Black Doves a True Story and a Real Secret Organization? Is Helen Webb Based on a Real Spy?

Created by Joe Barton, Netflix’s spy thriller series, ‘Black Doves’ stars Keira Knightley as Helen Webb, who is married to a Conservative MP. On the outside, her marriage looks like a success story, but only a handful of people know that marriage is her job. She is a spy for an international intelligence service called the Black Doves and has been feeding them state secrets for a decade now. Things take an unexpected turn when a man that Helen has been having an affair with is killed. With the danger lurking on her, an old friend, Sam, is brought into the fold to keep her safe and help her figure out the people who killed her lover. The series offers many twists and turns as Helen discovers some shocking secrets. At the same time, she has to deal with realistic family problems that a lot of viewers can connect with, making her story even more compelling.

The Fictional Black Doves Has Interesting Connections to Reality

‘Black Doves’ is an entirely fictional story penned by Joe Barton over the course of the Christmas holidays in 2022. He had always been fascinated with the spy genre and wanted to write a story set in London. Around that time, one of his friends had worked on Guy Pearce and Damian Lewis-starrer, ‘A Spy Among Friends,’ and this encouraged Barton to explore the genre on his own. Parallel to this, he also read an article in the newspaper about a woman who was unable to share her grief with anyone after the sudden death of her secret lover.

The writer was motivated to pursue this line of clandestine affairs in his research, revealing that he read about a group of spies that had infiltrated a group by marrying into it. They ended up having children and stayed in their made-up roles for years, so when the truth came out, everyone around them was shocked. What really hit Barton about his narrative was the duplicity of a person who has to pretend to be in a happy relationship for all these years, even if they are extremely unhappy. This sowed the idea for Helen’s character and her placement as the wife of an MP while she has an affair with another man.

In reality, there is no secret organization called the Black Doves (that we know of!). Barton reportedly got the name from a local pub that he frequents. To make things more interesting, he wanted to set the story during Christmas time. He liked the idea of setting a dark story about murder, betrayal, and bloodshed during a time when everything was supposed to be cheery and hopeful. This contrast doesn’t just add to the background but also becomes more apparent in the lives of the characters and the lies they live over the course of the season.

Motherhood Helped Keira Knightley Relate with the Fictional Helen Webb

Keira Knightley had been looking for an interesting project that would challenge her when ‘Black Doves’ was brought to her. She instantly fell in love with Helen’s character and connected with the challenges that the fictional spy has to face as a mother. Relating to her own experience as a mother, Knightley talked about the different faces that people have in different parts of their lives. On the one hand, you are dealing with all the chaos of having children, but when you turn up to work, you have to pull up your “work face” and deal with the problems. Similarly, you could have had a bad day at work, but when you go home, you have to be a different person for your children and family.

This side of Helen’s character comes out in a scene where she is in the middle of a very dangerous situation and receives a phone call from her daughter, who wants to know where she is. Knightley leaned into this duplicity to bring out different facets of Helen’s character. The fact that she was also on board as an executive producer allowed her to bring her own perspective to the character as the series was being written. At the same time, she also had to work for the physicality of the character. She learned jiu-jitsu and knife fighting, along with how to handle guns, to prepare for the role. At the end of the day, the actress wants Helen to come across as a person who, with all her flaws and follies, is relatable to the audience, even though she remains a fictional character.

Read More: Black Doves Ending, Explained: Who Ordered the Hit on Jason?

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