Mr Bates vs The Post Office star Will Mellor on apology to victims: ‘Talk is cheap’

1 February 2024

Will Mellor has bashed the Post Office over their apology to victims of the Post Office Scandal.

Will Mellor has bashed the Post Office over their apology to victims of the Post Office Scandal

The 47-year-old actor, who appeared in the Toby Jones-led ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’, has dismissed the company’s apology to the victims of the scandal, which saw postmasters get wrongly accused of theft and fraud due to the faulty IT system, Horizon.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Will said: “Talk is cheap.

"All these people wanted to be was heard for so long, and no one wanted to listen, because they were skint little people, as Alan Bates said in the drama.

“And now we've [seen] what we can do in this country, when we come together and go, 'No, this is wrong, get something done, make people accountable for what they did.' And remember the money they took off these people - that's not compensation, that was their money.

"What price do you find people losing their life, going to prison or not be able to remember their childhood because of the treatment they had to have for depression?”

The former 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' star also admitted the cast and crew of the ITV1 drama did not expect the reception and response to the show, which has seen intense scrutiny placed onto the public inquiry into the scandal.

He said: “We all said on set, 'Can you believe they did this to these people?' And we were saying after we were filming [that] it was powerful, and we knew people would talk about it.”

Writer Gwyneth Hughes also revealed she did not expect the show to make such a big impact, and was preparing for it to be a flop.

In an interview with Sky News, she said: “We’ve all been blown away by it [the reception].

“On the eve of transmission, our boss sent us all a comforting email warning us that it probably wouldn’t do that well, and probably not many would watch it.

“So we woke up [the] next morning and he literally thought he had misheard the ratings, and it just has got bigger and bigger.

“The whole thing is unbelievable, the story of the postmasters, and what happened to them was completely unbelievable from beginning to end and this is just the latest unbelievable chapter in the unfolding, ongoing story.”