EXCLUSIVE: Long before Dan Reed was making BAFTA-winning documentaries about paedophiles, terror attacks, and problematic pop princes, he directed episodes of crime dramas Poirot and Inspector Lewis. It was on the latter, he got to know Laurence Fox, a dashing British actor, embraced by the establishment alongside his ex-wife, the Doctor Who star Billie Piper.
Flash forward nearly two decades, and Reed had cause to contact Fox for very different reasons. Fox has become a pariah in the entertainment industry because of his anti-immigration rhetoric, race-baiting, and misogyny. He is now a protagonist in the British manosphere, with views deemed so unpallatable, he was ejected from GB News, the UK network that embraces storytelling about populist ideals.
Reed wanted to interview Fox for a Channel 4 documentary about how this community’s online vitriol spilled onto British streets last year after the mindless murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport. Nearly 10 days of disorder gripped the UK, with attacks on mosques and asylum seeker hotels resulting in nearly 1,300 arrests.
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Over dinner, Fox ultimately rejected Reed’s advances (he was, in Reed’s words, “too nervous” about losing control of the narrative), but the radicalization he has experienced echoes through the film. One Day in Southport instead features other populist preachers like Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber who espouses the great replacement theory and once openly debated raping Labour lawmaker Jess Phillips.
Benjamin is not a fixture on mainstream British television networks, but Reed wanted to get inside the minds of those who stoked the thuggish violence of last summer. The film is a “full throttle journey into [the] mayhem,” unspooling how social media disinformation about Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, translated into real-world violence against immigrants and Muslims.
“I wanted it to be very visceral,” Reed tells Deadline. “My job as a documentary maker is to interview people with direct knowledge of what happened.” Speaking over Zoom, he adds: “I don’t give platforms to goodies, and I don’t give platforms to baddies … it’s the story that has the platform.”
The Leaving Neverland director admits to being a little sheepish about turning over the film to Channel 4 because of the nature of his interviewees, but says the broadcaster was fully supportive. Ironically, as Fox proved, it was harder to convince some contributors to overcome their reticence about the so-called “mainstream media,” but Reed says — with something of a glint in his eye — “we’re persuasive.”
Amos Pictures was nearly three-quarters of the way through the edit when Reed persuaded a Southport victim and her family to recount the events of July 29, 2024. The film opens with Rudakubana’s unthinkable atrocity, juxtaposing it with the powerful words of the survivor, who reads the victim statement she planned to make in court. The family, speaking on camera for the first time, has to be anonymized because of a court order, but instead of silhouetting them, Reed fills the screen with just their eyes. It makes for intense viewing.
The contribution of the victims serves to highlight the disconnect between their horror and the disorder. The rioters said they were demonstrating in the name of the dead children, but they were denounced by those who suffered tragedy. It’s this unwelcome legacy of the attack that is the real preoccupation of the film.
It makes the title, One Day in Southport, somewhat incongruous because the documentary dwells in the fallout, not the events of July 29. “I don’t choose the titles,” Reed says. If he had his way, the documentary would have been called Island of Strangers, a reference to a speech made by Keir Starmer in May, when the prime minister attempted to demonstrate grip on the immigration crisis. The “island of strangers” quote proved divisive and Starmer later admitted he regretted using the phrase.
Reed says it shows how Starmer has failed to connect with disillusioned voters. The film shows the PM being heckled as he laid flowers in Southport before leaving without speaking to mourners on the street. “At that time, people needed connection with a personality, which is why they were so vulnerable to [Nigel] Farage and [Tommy] Robinson, because they speak to you as though they understand you,” Reed reflects.
One Day in Southport splices in the social media posts of these men at the time. It also features Andrew Tate, who framed the Southport attack as an invader slaughtering the daughters of natives. “What he’s saying is utter nonsense, and it’s all based on disinformation, but it sounds epic, it stirs the blood,” Reed adds.
He thinks “darkness and chaos” await the country if these voices are censored or ignored. Recent unrest outside an asylum seeker hotel in Epping shows that the issues of last summer have not gone away. Paraphrasing Weyman Bennett, the Stand Up to Racism boss interviewed in One Day in Southport, Reed says: “We need to engage. We need to argue. We need to counter what they say, which speaks to a lot of people, with arguments about why they’re wrong.”
This is the reason why Reed made One Day. It’s also why he is willing to listen to his old friend Fox when the rest of the entertainment industry has turned its back on the actor.
One Day in Southport premieres on Channel 4 tonight at 9PM local time.