The True Stories of the Women of the Aids Crisis | The Real Jill Nalder in It s a Sin esquire.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from esquire.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
"It s a Sin" character Jill Baxter has quickly become a fan favorite character, and that character is based on a real person who actually appears in the HBO Max and Channel 4 show.
BBC News
By Jared Lawthom
media captionJill Nalder s story is the inspiration behind hit TV show It s A Sin, penned by friend Russell T Davies
Jill Nalder, who lost three friends to Aids in the 1980s, inspired one of the characters in the Channel 4 hit It s A Sin. She remembers how young men who contracted the virus at the time would disappear .
In the 1980s, when Jill Nalder was studying in London, she noticed young men were leaving and not coming back.
They would go home and sort of disappear . Her friends were dying, often in secret, of Aids.
She was aware of HIV from the start because of rumours about this gay flu coming from the States . Nobody really knew anything but we heard it was killing young, fit, healthy gay men, the 60-year-old said.
Jill in It's A Sin is based on real life Jill Nalder, who also acts in the series. Jill Nalder speaks about helping her friends in the 1980s AIDS crisis.
Dursley McLinden in the 1988 film Just Ask For Diamond
Credit: Alamy
The fourth episode of It’s a Sin features an unexpected moment, as Ritchie Tozer (Olly Alexander) battles a trio of Daleks. It’s an unlikely transition, from the Eighties-set Aids drama – which began on Channel 4 last week and is available in its entirety on All 4 – to a space station laser battle with the Doctor Who monsters.
This isn’t a step back into the alternate reality of Doctor Who for writer Russell T Davies, or even just a reference for the fun of it (Davies’ own fandom has been materialising in his dramas since even before he relaunched Doctor Who in 2005 – Queer as Folk character Vince, for instance, was also a Whovian). Rather, Davies is paying homage to actor and singer, Dursley McLinden, who died of an Aids-related illness in 1995.