Sienna Miller says she has been “traumatized” by alleged phone hacking to the point where she has “blacked out”.
It was in 2005 that news broke that Miller’s partner at the time, Jude Law, was having an affair with his children’s nanny. The scandal dominated the headlines at the time.
In a new BBC documentary, Scandalous: Phone Hacking on Trial, the actor reveals she found out she was pregnant two days after the news broke. A short time later, she claims she received a call from British tabloid The Sun saying they were aware of the pregnancy and wanted to tell the story.
Miller’s publicist at the time, Ciara Parkes, who also appears in the document, claims the phone call about the pregnancy came from former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks. (According to the BBC, The Sun’s publisher News Group (NGN) denies this report and says Brooks was aware of any unlawful information gathering).
“I had to tell Sienna that [the story about the pregnancy] had come out,” Parkes says in the doc. “She broke down. She screamed very loudly. It was quite a gut cry. I heard her thump on the floor.”
Although The Sun agreed not to break the story, it eventually appeared in a US publication. The Sun then followed it up with their own article.
“I felt someone had to sell stories,” says Miller. “And I sat down with the five people in our lives who knew, and violently interrogated them. I was under such intense pressure. And said it must be one of you, so who is it? And lots of tears and denial.”
She adds that she became so paranoid that she started borrowing friends’ phones to make calls.
“I don’t think I can remember six weeks of my life. I can’t really remember,” Miller adds. “I think at that point I was in such a deep state of trauma that I passed out completely.”
Miller eventually settled a phone hacking claim using NGN in 2021 without any admission of liability from the publisher. The BBC reports that the pregnancy article is the “subject of pending litigation” and that NGN was therefore limited in its ability to respond.
The documentary also speaks to other alleged victims of “phone hacking,” a term that refers to the unauthorized interception of voicemails. Among them are Paul McCartney’s ex-wife Heather Mills and former ‘Coronation Street’ actress Shobna Gulati.