Inside the True Story of 'Rogue Agent'—'Stranger Than Fiction'

McMafia star James Norton is unrecognizable as the chilling British fraudster and con man, Robert Freegard in Rogue Agent.

The highly anticipated film starring Norton opposite The King's Man star Gemma Arterton is out in theaters today (Friday, August 12) and is also available to stream on AMC+ in the U.S. and Netflix in the U.K.

Described as a "cat-and-mouse" story between two lovers, the movie follows one woman's determination to catch a man who is hiding a dark and dangerous secret, and she knows she is not the only victim.

After watching Rogue Agent, you may be shocked to learn it is based on a true story.

Speaking to Newsweek, star and producer Norton described the true story as "stranger than fiction."

When researching Freegard's story with his production team, Norton said he realized it was "the most extraordinary, bizarre true story, that's a Stranger Than Fiction type thing."

Freegard is a convicted British conman and impostor, who is also known by the aliases David Hendy and David Clifton. Much of the film's script is based on an article "Chasing Agent Freegard," by Michael Bronner, who went on to co-write Rogue Agent.

Speaking about bringing Freegard's story to the big screen, Norton reflected: "You need to be educated, you need to be informed. So by the end of it, I knew so much about Freegard. We also had Michael Bronner's original article, which is like this 11,000-word piece but actually never published. [It's] incredibly thorough and all backed up and verified by the original victims. So, we had a wealth of information.

"As far as delving into the sort of private inner workings of his man, you kind of have to address the why, the context, why is this man the way he is. And a lot of that comes from his childhood and what information we have about that. We didn't really want to make the movie about that. We really wanted to allow the audience to speculate on why he might be the way he is. But for us as the filmmakers and storytellers and me as the actor, we had a sense of who he was: the psychological struggles, illnesses, whether you want to call it that, what he was dealing with. And there's a certain kind of sociopath and sociopathic nature there which we sort of wanted to play with, but not ever condone. It was just a great, challenging, mysterious puzzle to tackle."

For years, the real Freegard posed as an MI5 agent, attracting his victims while working under the guise of a car salesman or bartender. He mainly targets women, but some men also fell victim. In most cases, victims would be forced to hand all of their money and sometimes their families over to Freegard, under the pretense their family was in danger from the IRA.

Reflecting on portraying Freegard, Norton told Newsweek: "The role for me is so compelling, it's so mysterious, and I've never seen or met anyone like him. There's never been a case where someone has been convicted for kidnapping by fraud. It just seems bizarre that this man kidnapped people for 10 years without ever constraining them, and doing it all through fear and manipulation. It was just such a sort of bizarre and compelling."

Rogue Agent is set primarily in the early 2000s and focuses on Norton's relationship with Alice Archer, a hot-shot lawyer who falls in love with Freegard, who claimed to be an MI5 agent, posing as a car salesman.

Despite getting some suspicious details about Freegard from a private investigator she hired, Archer only realized she had fallen under his spell when he stole thousands of pounds from her house and was nowhere to be found.

The character of Alice Archer, played by Arterton is not a real person, but she is heavily inspired by the real woman who brought Freegard to justice.

Adam Patterson, director and co-writer of Rogue Agent, explained: "We found the character of Alice Archer to be perfect and a representation of what a lot of these people went through. And then, of course, there is the character of Sophie, who has a very different journey in the film. She's under his belt for like 10 years. So we felt that those two characters, in particular, represent a lot of the other victims and hopefully does them justice."

Bronner has met with numerous of Freegard's victims in real life. Discussing the woman in particular who inspired the character of Alice, Bronner said, "The woman that inspired Alice Archer's character was, for me, the most fascinating, because she was so smart. So it was hardest to imagine that she would fall into this, but then she had this weakness. And she had this need for a thrill, and she saw it as a challenge and I think he saw it as a challenge. It really was a cat and mouse.

"She kind of fought, in the end, she fought the fight for all of them [the victims]. She's the one who decided, she told me straight up. She said, 'It was hard for me because I was deeply involved with him. But I was gonna f****** nail him.' It's those two things that she went back and forth, and back and forth.

"She'd make gains into investigating him, and then she'd fall back sleeping with him and then bounce back the other way. She described it as like being in a washing machine going 100 miles an hour. So she kind of was the one that really made me realize that this is not just a good magazine story, but potentially a film."

Rogue Agent also flashes back to the 1990s, when Freegard was able to convince three Harper Adams Agricultural College students John Atkinson, Sarah Smith and Maria Hendy that he was an MI5 undercover agent investigating an IRA cell in the college.

After gaining their trust, he convinced the trio his cover had been blown, and as a result, their lives and their families were at risk at the hands of the IRA. He managed to drain them of all of their money under the guise of protection.

In Rogue Agent, their names are changed to Sophie (Marisa Abela), Mae (Freya Mavor) and Phil (Julian Barratt), with Mae and Sophie's story featuring more prominently, crossing over with Archer's in the 2000s.

In reality, Atkinson eventually saw through Freegard's lies but Hendy went on to have two children with Freegard, and Smith remained on the run with him for 10 years. Smith's ordeal came to an end with Freegard's arrest in 2002.

In Rogue Agent, Freegard has been arrested thanks to the work of Archer, Sophie and Special Agent Sandy Harland (Edwina Finley).

In reality, Freegard was captured after months of surveillance along with the help of the parents of his American girlfriend Kim Adams, who worked with the FBI and Scotland Yard to secure his arrest at Heathrow Airport.

Freegard was arrested in 2002 and found guilty of two counts of kidnapping, 10 of theft and eight of deception. He denied all charges against him and was sentenced to life in prison on September 6, 2005.

As seen in Rogue Agent, Freegard was released from prison in 2009. His original two life sentences for kidnap by fraud were revoked by the Court of Appeal, which ruled Freegard's victims had not been physically held against their will.

Today, his whereabouts are unknown, but as seen at the end of Rogue Agent, there are believed to be a lot more victims of Freegard.

Reflecting on Freegard's whereabouts today, Norton said, "I'm deeply saddened that someone of that nature is able to be out in the world and continue to cause such harm and in such an insidious way, because, he's always on just on the right side of the law, you know, he doesn't he's not going out, beating people up. Well, he is, but he's not, overtly breaking the law. So he's able to get away with it. And yet the pain is caused, and it's horrific to witness.

"So I think it's the sad fact that he's still out there. And, you know, like a lot of these shows about con men, I hope [Rogue Agent] makes their life a little less peaceful."

Rogue Agent is in theaters and streaming on AMC+ and Netflix now.