Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne: ‘Some women genuinely believed their career would be destroyed’
Investigative journalism is a dying art, you say? Not for Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne. By bringing to light a slew of sexual allegations against a Bafta winner, they pulled back the curtain on the dark side of the film industry and gave a voice to the previously silenced victims Hanna Flint The week before publishing their Guardian investigation into the multiple allegations of verbal abuse, bullying and sexual harassment against actor-filmmaker Noel Clarke, freelance journalists Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne were given a rather weird task: they needed to corroborate a "dick pic".
One of Clarke's 20 accusers had provided them with the NSFW image; he had allegedly sent it to the woman via Snapchat around four years earlier and Paul Lewis, the Guardian's head of investigations, needed confirmation that it was, in fact, what a Snapchat photo should have looked like. "It was so ridiculous," Kale tells GQ over a joint Zoom call with Osborne. "None of us use Snapchat because, you know, we're not teenagers." She downloaded the app anyway but quickly clocked that the interface and appearance had probably changed and updated since the "dick pic" in question was sent. So she asked herself: "Who do I know that probably used Snapchat back then?"
An unpleasant realisation came to Kale and soon she was giving her teenage cousin a call. "It was awful," she recalls, describing the image. "But I was like, 'Look, I'm really sorry, but can you just tell me if this is what a Snapchat DM looked like four years ago?'" Luckily, the cringe-inducing phone call paid off. After due consideration, the teen gave Kale the confirmation she needed and though future family gatherings might be a little awkward, that degree of resourcefulness was necessary. They couldn't afford to make any mistakes or risk the credibility of the entire investigation and the faith 20 women had put into them by sharing their stories. "Can you imagine if the story came out and they were like, 'That's not what Snapchat looks like'?" Kale says. "That's the level, right? We [had] to do it."
Over three-and-a-half weeks, Kale and Osborne went to heroic lengths to deliver a two-pronged exposé. The first report offered first-hand accounts from actor Jahannah James, producers Gina Powell and Synne Seltveit, as well as other female colleagues of Clarke who variously accused him of "sexual harassment, unwanted touching or groping, sexually inappropriate behaviour and comments on set, professional misconduct, taking and sharing sexually explicit pictures and videos without consent, and bullying between 2004 and 2019". Clarke vehemently denied all the claims. The second report detailed Bafta's handling of the Clarke allegations, after being alerted to the existence of sexual misconduct allegations, in the days before the ceremony, in a letter jointly authored by director Sally El Hosaini, talent development manager and former Bafta employee Pelumi Akindude and actor James Krishna Floyd.
But this was a sprint not a marathon; they had weeks not months to conduct their investigation and with serious opposition from Clarke's legal team and other news outlets hot on their heels, Kale and Osborne knew they couldn't be outpaced. So they spent 18 hours a day, and 12 hours at weekends, working tirelessly as they listened to distressing stories, transcribed hours of interviews with women and whistle-blowers, followed up dozens of leads, fact-checked numerous claims and spent an exorbitant amount of time with lawyers in order to get it over the finish line. "Right up until the last minute with that first piece, we were just trying to get all our quotes in and everything done as quickly as possible," Osborne says. "There's a reason these stories don't come out very often, but it did take that extra pressure. It was a race, but the newspaper needed to make sure we were on solid ground."
Just three days before Clarke, the creator of the Kidulthood film series, accepted the Bafta award for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema, Kale and Osborne received a phone call from Lewis. He wanted them to follow up on a tip that had come in via a Guardian feature editor who had once interviewed the source in the past. Kale was pretty busy: she had just moved house, was in the middle of finishing up her "Lost To The Virus" series for the paper and didn't really expect anything substantial to come from the lead. It took a Google search for her to recognise who he actually was, but she still wasn't convinced there was a story in what she was initially told. But after she and Osborne completed those first couple of days of calls, she realised it might just have legs. "I remember saying to Paul and to Lucy, 'I actually think this is quite big, because this is about the industry,'" Kale recalls. "'He has potentially left a long string of alleged victims behind him.'"
Osborne's prior experience working on cases concerning systemic abuses of power, such as a special investigation into rape and assault allegations against Elite Models boss Gérald Marie, recommended her well for the project. Yet even she was "taken aback by the scale of" the Clarke probe at such an early stage. "In a previous story about sexual abuse in the modelling industry, it took me two years to get enough women to go on the record," she says. "[In this case] there were just so many stories and it was pretty clear that this was something really important that needed to be looked into further."
Before the televised Bafta ceremony on 11 April, the pair had contacted dozens of people via phone and email who might have information about, or connections to, those affected by his alleged behaviour, but after Clarke gave his acceptance speech it galvanised more women to come out of the woodwork. "Seeing Noel get that really high honour was just too much for them," Kale says, "giving this person this award when it's fairly widely known in the industry that possibly his behaviour is not the best."
The next few weeks were critical for collating as much evidence as possible, including texts, phone recordings, emails, videos and images, as well as first, second and third-hand allegations from victims, whistle-blowers and witnesses. They mostly corresponded with people over the phone or via Zoom; lockdown restrictions were still in force but when communicating with one another, or their editor, they would do so via Signal, the encrypted messaging app, where notes would self-destruct. It was a pretty secure operation, albeit with a few hiccups. "You'd often get quite paranoid, delete something and then realise you actually need it," Kale says. "One day, I accidentally set my Signal to disappear in 30 seconds and Lucy was like, 'I cannot read that fast!'"
They were right to be careful. Noel's business partner, Jason Maza, had also allegedly begun to contact people who might know about the accusations, telling one woman, "As far as we're concerned, the thing has now gone away as much as Noel can do in his power." Clarke's lawyers told the Guardian such calls were not made at the request of their client, while Maza's lawyers said his calls were approaches to "friends in the industry" after hearing "untrue" allegations about Clarke.
Osborne and Kale were concerned these calls were going to scare the women into silence. "It was extremely intimidating for them to have these two men calling," Osborne says. "In one case, Jason sent a Facebook message to one of the women and they hadn't spoken in years."
"I was speaking to some women who were physically shaking on the Zoom call," adds Kale. "They genuinely believed their career would be destroyed. I don't think people understand how influential he was behind the scenes."
Clarke was born in Notting Hill to Trinidadian parents and had often used his influence to support diversity and people of colour in the industry. It's why some accusers, a lot of whom were black or mixed race, were conflicted about speaking up. With that knowledge, Kale, who is of Turkish-Cypriot and Iranian heritage, believes it's one of the reasons she was asked to co-lead the investigation. "One thing that did come up quite a lot was [the accusers'] fears around race and the idea of speaking out publicly about a black man from a working-class background," she says. "Those are really valid concerns and me being a woman of colour meant I was able to sort of empathise with that on a level."
It didn't make asking the women to speak on the record any easier. By week three, Kale and Osborne had gathered enough confidential testimonies and evidence about Clarke's alleged behaviour and Bafta's handling of the allegations to be sure there was a story that needed to be told. But their editors suggested they would need accusers to speak publicly to get their stories published. "I think that was the worst moment for me," Kale says. "Those phone calls are stomach-churning. After the story came out, people were doorstepped by the tabloids. Their names will be forever linked to his. It's not a fun thing, so it is very important to balance that pressure with also being ethical."
"We had to be really honest with them that we didn't know how Noel was going to react or how the public was going to react," Osborne adds. "So it was really sort of asking them to hold hands and jump at once."
The next days were nonstop. Neither journalist felt they could leave their flats, as they spent days upon days substantiating every single bit of evidence and story, from several perspectives where possible. One example was corroborating an incident in a South London pub in the winter of 2017, when Gina Powell revealed to Jahannah James that Clarke had said he had secretly recorded an audition that the actress felt pressured to perform naked. "We never took anyone's testimony as gospel," Kale remembers. "Lucy spoke to people's boyfriends, mums, housemates, people who were at the pub when that thing happened. It was very time-consuming."
Kale cancelled her birthday dinner and was ordering takeaway twice a day because she didn't have time to walk to the supermarket ten minutes away. One day, while working from her boyfriend's home, Osborne survived on a head of lettuce. "I didn't even have time to eat the entire thing," she says, laughing. The single guilty pleasure they allowed themselves was a haircut when the salons reopened.
They split the work between them. Osborne had the daunting task of phoning Clarke to officially inform him of their investigation, as they didn't have a legal contact for him yet. "He said something like, 'Speak to my lawyers,' and then he hung up," she remembers. His lawyers soon got in touch and an invitation to comment was sent to them, as well as to Bafta's and Maza's legal reps. "Noel came back at least twice before we published," she adds. "One of those times he came back with quite specific rebuttals that we had to put to the women we'd spoken to. That was quite brutal."
Concurrently, the bones of the articles were being carefully constructed by Kale, with every single word considered from a legal perspective. Gill Phillips, director of editorial legal services, was their Guardian angel. "Gill would notice the smallest detail that might be wrong and she'd immediately pick up on it," Kale says. "The worst thing in the world is for someone to put their trust in us, to tell you their story and then you mess up by getting the date wrong and the whole thing's discredited."
Eventually, the first story about Clarke went live 18 days after he was awarded his Bafta and several months after another paper, according to Kale, had tried and failed to publish a report about the allegations last year. "Paul definitely had to push for this to get over the line and get it published," says Osborne.
Even after the long, exhaustive process of fact-checking, they were still verifying some details right up until the piece was published online. "I drank, like, half a bottle of wine from the sheer stress," Kale remembers of that night. "I worked until midnight, woke up at 4am and started writing the Bafta story. I was literally writing that story until it went out."
And what an impact it made. ITV pulled the final episode of the Clarke-led drama Viewpoint from its schedule, while Sky scrapped production of Bulletproof series four. The BBC cut ties, too, he quit his production company and Bafta, finally, stripped him of his award and suspended his membership. Clarke issued a statement saying, "I vehemently deny any sexual misconduct or criminal wrongdoing," but added he was "deeply sorry" for some of his actions and would "be seeking professional help". Osborne and Kale are reluctant to speak too candidly about their feelings about Clarke's response, but did point out he did not send this statement directly to them.
Still, his apology did little to quell the raised voices of industry figures who promoted their report and stood with the accusers, including Michaela Coel, who had used her own experience of sexual assault to pen the award-winning series I May Destroy You. "These behaviours are unprofessional, violent and can destroy a person's perception of themselves, their place in the world and their career irreparably," she tweeted with a link to the report. "I have shared to show solidarity, to express my belief in them and to stand with them in their indignation."
Kale felt reassured by her support. "When Michaela Coel tweeted it the night that the story came out…" she remembers, "someone of her stature putting her weight behind the investigation, seeing other people retweet it and seeing the conversations showing just how deep the rot had set in, that made it all incredibly worthwhile."
It also inspired more people to come forward. The Guardian was flooded with more testimonies about Clarke and others, so, a week later, Kale and Osborne reported on further accusations of Clarke's alleged inappropriate behaviour on the set of Doctor Who, which included claims against the actor John Barrowman that he repeatedly exposed himself to coworkers. Barrowman described his actions as "tomfoolery", saying, "With the benefit of hindsight, I understand that upset may have been caused by my exuberant behaviour and I have apologised for this previously." The Times would later publish its own investigation into multiple accusations of sexual assault levelled against the producer Charlie Hanson, who denies any wrongdoing. "It was great to see the stories about others coming out afterwards and if we had any part in that, that's amazing," says Osborne. "There are still many stories that haven't come out that need investigating."
Unfortunately, not every tip they would later receive could be converted into a story of public interest. "It was difficult having to explain to people that the Guardian is not an HR tribunal," adds Kale. "It's not a mechanism for swift and righteous justice. We cannot do that; we are just two journalists trying to do our job."
For just over a month, Kale and Osborne spoke to each other more than anyone else in their lives. But all they had seen of each other had been completely two-dimensional. "I remember talking to Lucy on the phone the night we published the Noel story and thinking, 'I don't know how tall you are,'" Kale says, chuckling. (Osborne is taller, by the way.) They discovered this after meeting IRL for the first time, over pizza at a pub in New Cross. It was a special, celebratory moment that marked the end of a relentless journalistic labour that pushed them to their limits. "I don't know [if] I've worked that hard since doing my finals at uni," Kale says.
The hard work certainly paid off: Clarke's career has been irreparably damaged and the fallout has forced a reckoning within the UK film and TV industry to address the blind spots that breed toxic workplace behaviour. Osborne feels "encouraged" by the public commitment to change made by individuals and organisations. "There seems to be a move in that direction, more than there has been before," she suggests. "But it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a lot more to see that kind of industry-wide change."
Kale is not as optimistic: the worst behaviour happens on indie film and TV sets, she asserts, that are less regulated than big studio productions, plus most people are freelancers, scared to speak out in fear of being blacklisted. "Women were scared of getting a reputation for being difficult and that can be the kiss of death," says Kale. "So do I think things are getting better? Yes. Do I still think that the conditions that enable someone like Noel continue to exist now? One hundred per cent."
For now, these freelancers have other journalistic commitments to meet. Osborne has joined an all-female team to produce a three-part documentary that continues her focus on sexual exploitation in the modelling industry. Kale is working on another "Lost To The Virus" miniseries about unvaccinated people. They no longer need to be calling each other every day, but they wouldn't ignore another call to action if it meant they could work together again.
"I think we made a great team," Kale says, smiling. "Watch this space."
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