It’s A Sin follows a group of friends in London during the rise of the AIDS epidemic, and though most of the characters are either fictional or loosely based on real people, Jill Baxter has a direct, real-life inspiration. The five-part miniseries, which has finally been released on HBO Max (it originated on British TV network Channel 4), chronicles the lives of a friend group mostly made of gay men as they broach adulthood and embrace their sexuality. The series was created and written by British screenwriter and TV producer Russell T. Davies (who’s known for works such as Queer As Folk and Casanova, as well as for being the showrunner for the long-running Doctor Who).
A good portion of Davies’ subject matter is drawn from his own life experience growing up as a gay person in 1960s/70s England and deals with themes surrounding religion and sexuality (which especially shine via the tongue-in-cheek show title It’s A Sin). His experience in the Manchester gay scene was a springboard for his 2015 TV miniseries Cucumber, which illustrates modern homosexual life in the area. And, of course, being a young gay man during the 1980s during the rise of HIV and AIDS has left Davies rife with memories about what that era was like, and watching Russell Davies’ It’s A Sin captures all of it with tragedy, beauty, and raw honesty. Within the series, breathing new life into some of those pieces of the past comes in the form of Jill Baxter.
Though different from her male pals, Jill’s character (Lydia West) also plays an integral part in the series, fighting on behalf of and emotionally supporting her friends during the harrowing ten-year stretch that the show covers. She seems to understand the deadliness of the epidemic from its initial onset. Her character is based on Davies’ childhood friend, Jill Nalder. Just like Jill Baxter, in the 1980s, Nalder was a young woman in London attending college and orbiting around her group of friends, many of whom were gay men. Now 60 years old, the real Nalder plays the character of Jill Baxter’s mother in It’s A Sin.
She’s done multiple interviews where she recounts this anxiety-laden time period and how the life-shattering effects of HIV and AIDS rocked the world. In an interview with BBC News, Nalder recalled how many of her friends died of the virus in shameful secrecy, many hiding their illness and sexuality from their family until they were on the verge of death. She also mentions the eerie days when people were starting to fall ill, but society didn’t understand what was happening, how the disease spread, and the gravity of what was to come. “Nobody really knew anything, but we heard it was killing young, fit, healthy gay men,” she said.
She recalls the fear and misinformation surrounding the stigmatized illness, remembering how people were talking about the spreading of a “gay flu” from the United States. Nalder said she can relate to painful aspects of her younger self’s character like absorbing vast amounts of information regarding the spreading AIDS epidemic and the countless devastating hospital visits, but there’s good that’s come out of her involvement with this insidious illness, too. She later helped spearhead an AIDS charity that’s still running today, and even acknowledges, “We’ve come so far since those days.” And now with It’s A Sin, she’s part of a show that’s giving this dismal time period the honest depiction it deserves.
