The true story of Sophie Turner’s Joan Hannington show

She is a smooth criminal.

“Game of Thrones” star Sophie Turner plays a jewel thief in her new series “Joan” – and it’s not just fiction.

Based on Joan Hannington’s memoir I Am What I Am: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief, the show first premiered on ITV in the UK in September. In America it premieres on October 2nd on CW (9 p.m.) and December 5th on BritBox.

Set in 1980s London, the series is a rags-to-riches story about Joan (Turner), a woman in her 20s who is the caring mother of a 6-year-old daughter, Kelly (Mia Millichamp-Long). but she is married to Gary (Nick Blood), a criminal. When he goes on the run, she takes the chance to build a new life for herself and her daughter by becoming a jewel thief.

Known as “the godmother” of diamond heisting, she famously stole uncut diamonds from a jewelry store where she worked and swallowed them.

“The best bank in the world is your stomach. The best locker invented,” Hannington wrote in her book.

Turner, 28, told Harper’s Bazaar that she initially viewed Joan as a co-mother since she recently gave birth to Delphine, her second child with ex-husband Joe Jonas, 35.

“I was incredibly hormonal at the time and really felt the strong protective spirit of the new mother,” she told the outlet.

Turner married the musician in 2019 and welcomed daughters Willa, 3, and Delphine, 2, before finalizing their divorce in September 2024 after a year-long battle.

“Joan is basically a mother who loves her child and would do anything for her,” Turner said.

“Mistakes are made along the way and it ends quite tragically for her, but she fights for her child. I think any mother who watches this will be able to relate to it.”

She added that she also liked the fact that the show was “a real story, and the most incredible one at that.” It’s about resilience and ambition – this woman is so infectious that you can’t help but love her. I couldn’t leave her to anyone else!”

The real Joan Hannington visited the set and she and Turner talked for hours.

“I was shaking with fear. And Joan came in and burst into tears and said, ‘You’re perfect, perfect.'”

Hannington, now 67 and a grandmother, has been retired for 40 years and lives a quiet small-town life.

“She’s crazy as a box of frogs in the best possible way,” Turner described her.

“She has this incredible energy – if she walked into a room with 300 of the best businessmen, women and entrepreneurs in the world, she would be the one telling them what to do with their lives. She’s so confident, she’s so confident, she’s so funny and she has the best laugh…”

According to Metro, Hannington said in a question-and-answer session on the show that she had never heard of Turner before, but she thinks, “You couldn’t have found anyone better.”

“I’ve never seen Sophie in anything, I’m in bed at seven every night of my life,” she continued. “I’m addicted to TikTok, so I don’t watch a lot of TV, which was good because I didn’t have anything to compare it to.”

In her book “Joan,” Hannington wrote, “Swallowing diamonds was my life, my passion, my drug.” It was the only thing I really enjoyed. I had a gift for myself.”

Hannington was the youngest of six children from a poor Irish family in London. She left home at the age of 13 to escape her abusive father, former boxing promoter Richard O’Leary. She ended up marrying the robber Ray Pavey and having her daughter Debbie with him. (Her name was changed to Kelly in the series.) After Debbie was placed in foster care, Joan lied about her past to get a job at a top jeweler in London.

“I was determined to get Debbie back but I needed money and a place to live,” she told The Sun.

“One day I was sent to the safe at the back of the store, where the security cameras weren’t working, to collect some loose diamonds. I opened the safe and trays of bright white stones glittered back at me. With my heart racing, I realized that the opportunity to make some immediate money and regain custody of Debbie was staring me in the face.”

She added: “I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were all these trays in there, and I’d never seen diamonds and emeralds that big – I just thought, ‘Fuck this.’ I’ve got to have some of it. I found the four trays they sent me and each one was full of loose stones.”

When she turned to carry the stones out, no one was watching her.

“I was sweating like a pig… I grabbed a handful of diamonds from each tray and swallowed them,” she recalls. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I had swallowed about £800,000 worth of stones.”

Hours later, after “nature had taken its course,” she sterilized the gems in “a bowl of gin.”

However, she did not escape unscathed as swallowing jewels gave her ulcers, she claimed.

After this job, she became a lover of Ronald Thomas Hannington, aka Benny Boisie (Frank Dillane in the series). He was 17 years older than her, an antique dealer and jewelry thief. He taught her more about this lifestyle and loan fraud.

According to the Manchester Evening News, Joan once told the Scottish Daily Record that Boisie had moved in with her “within weeks” of the pair meeting and that her council flat had become “filled with priceless antiques” “overnight”.

“Benny and I accumulated thousands of pounds of stolen gemstones every week which we hid in private letterboxes at a bank,” she claimed. “I had no idea of ​​the total value of our cash and assets, but it must have been in the millions.”

In 1987 she had their son Benny Jr. and began to lead a more straightforward life.

Hannington never spent any significant time behind bars and was only prosecuted twice.

She was on probation for two years after stealing a car to visit her daughter Debbie, and when she was 24 she was sentenced to 30 months in Holloway Prison for using a stolen checkbook.

Today, her son Benny is 37 and a rapper — and he even made a cameo in “Joan,” playing a bartender in the scene where his parents meet.

Turner told Harper’s Bazaar that she hopes this role shows “a completely different side” of her abilities.

“Because I think I’ve always played the victim, and the one thing about Joan is that she’s not a victim,” she said. “She has had terrible circumstances in her life but she is not a victim. Her life is hers.”