Sienna Miller says playing a wife dealing with her husband's cheating scandal is 'familiar terrain' and called it 'cathartic'

• Sienna Miller stars in the upcoming Netflix series "Anatomy of a Scandal."
• She portrays the wife of a parliament member who has an affair.

Sienna Miller plays Sophie Whitehouse in "Anatomy of a Scandal," a new Netflix series that follows the aftermath of a sex scandal erupting in the UK parliament. Whitehouse is the wife of a member of parliament who's outed for having an affair with a colleague and later accused of rape by that colleague.

The actress described how she was in a unique position to understand the story in a new interview with ELLE UK published Monday.

"It was familiar terrain, because I've experienced some of the things that she experienced. And the feelings were familiar," she said.

Miller endured a public breakup with Jude Law in the early 2000s. The two were engaged to be married, but they broke up in 2006 after Law's affair with his children's nanny, Daisy Wright, became public. Law issued a public apology to Miller when reports of his cheating broke, resulting in a whirlwind of public drama and even a joke on "Gilmore Girls."

The aftermath of the cheating scandal becoming public was so difficult for Miller that she told The Daily Beast in 2020 she still cannot remember "a whole six weeks of that experience."

"I have no recollection of it. People who came to see me said we had dinner, and I don't remember," she said. "I was in so much shock over it all. And I'd really just begun. I was only 23. But if you get through that, you feel like you can get through anything."

The two briefly reunited in 2009, but broke up once again in 2011.

Miller told ELLE UK that she handles things differently than her "Anatomy of a Scandal" character. "Her way of dealing with what's thrown at her is the absolute antithesis of what my way is," she said.

"In a kind of twisted, tourism sense, I just wanted to see how it would feel to react differently. I know that sounds weird, because you'd think it would be deeply unpleasant to sit in that space," she continued.

Miller said the experience during filming was so intense, the microphone captured the audio of her rapidly beating heart.

"I had a mic on my chest and there's a heartbeat that comes in. It was my actual heartbeat being picked up by the monitor, getting faster and faster," she said. "It made me think, remember, and put myself back in that position."

She referred to the experience of "reclaiming" an "ugly space" as "cathartic."

Miller said she feels far removed from the paparazzi-filled whirlwind today, noting her experience "feels like somebody else's existence."

"I can go and visit it and look at it, but it doesn't feel like my life," she added.

"Anatomy of a Scandal" premieres on Netflix on April 15.