Introduction to the Story
The actor Juliet Stevenson expressed her annoyance with Nicole Kidman for claiming that she had brought attention to Rosalind Franklin’s story when she played the scientist in 2015. Stevenson, who is best known for her role as Nina in the romantic comedy Truly Madly Deeply, had portrayed Franklin’s history almost three decades earlier in the BBC TV drama Life Story.
The Story Behind Rosalind Franklin
Stevenson played in the drama alongside Jeff Goldblum and Tim Pigott-Smith, who played the scientists James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 and later won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962. Franklin, an expert in X-ray imaging who died in 1958 at the age of 37, studied DNA at King’s College in London with a scientist named Maurice Wilkins, while Watson and Crick worked on modeling the molecule’s form at Cambridge University.
The Discovery and Its Aftermath
During a visit to Franklin’s laboratory, Watson was able to look at Photo 51, an X-ray that she had recorded, which showed the molecule’s double helix structure. Although Franklin remained largely unrecognized for her findings, Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick, evidence of their influence on their work. Kidman played Franklin in Anna Ziegler’s play Photo 51 in 2015.
The Dispute Between Juliet Stevenson and Nicole Kidman
Stevenson admitted that it "made her a little cross" that Kidman said, "I’m the person who brought Rosalind Franklin into the world, nobody knows this story." Stevenson spoke at the Hay Festival, saying, "I thought, ‘Wait, we told this story all those years ago.’" She added that she might be "petty" to complain about the remark.
The Significance of Rosalind Franklin’s Work
Stevenson said Franklin made "a huge amount of groundwork" for discovering the double helix structure, but when the discovery was announced, Watson and Crick received most of the credit. "Watson came and listened to her lectures at King’s, wrote everything down, and then whipped back to Cambridge and used this work to make her extraordinary imaginative jumps," she told the festival. "This shouldn’t undermine their achievement in order to make this jump and put together the solution, but they owe it a lot." Representatives for Nicole Kidman have been contacted for a comment.
