Sienna Miller says her real-life expertise with infidelity impressed her efficiency Anatomy of a Scandal

Being cheated on is bad enough, but having you and your partner both in the public eye only adds to the pain. Just ask Sienna Miller.

When Miller was in her early 20s, she became engaged to her Alfie co-star Jude Law, who cheated on her in 2005 with the nanny who looked after his children with his ex, Sophie Frost. The whole thing played out on the front pages of British tabloids (the nanny gave lengthy interviews and even let the newspapers publish her diary entries), and Law issued a public apology, declaring, “I just want to say I’m very mortified and upset.” about hurting Sienna and the people closest to us. I want to publicly apologize to Sienna and our respective families for the pain I have caused. There is no defense for my actions, which I sincerely regret and ask that you respect our privacy at this very difficult time,” per People.

But enduring a cheating scandal in her youth gave her the basis for a role in the forthcoming Netflix adaptation of Anatomy of a Scandal, in which her character Sophie is betrayed by her politician husband (who may also be be guilty of worse crimes). “I wanted to look at why I wanted to play Sophie, to put myself in an ugly and familiar space, and I like being a tourist in someone else’s reactions,” she told The Cut in April 2022. “Her reaction to betrayal was so measured and different from mine. So on a psychological level, there’s a massive catharsis to empathizing with someone else’s experience.”

Dimitrios Kambouris, Getty

Miller didn’t go into detail about the differences between her and Sophie’s reactions, but we can read between the lines. In 2005, Miller was in such shock that she “doesn’t remember” many of the immediate aftermath, she told The Daily Beast. It didn’t help that a tabloid hacked her phone at the time.

“There were moments where I felt almost insane, and it was incredibly aggressive. The way I managed to get really argumentative was to sue. I secretly recorded paparazzi with a lighter that was a camera and took a privacy law to a High Court to have the law changed in England, which essentially means that when I’m somewhere or coming from somewhere, I have privacy can’t expect to be allowed to photograph me… There was so much noise that it was hard to think straight and concentrate on my work, which I always took very seriously. It ate everything else. I look back on it and wonder how I got through it — but I made it,” she previously said.