Dear England is more than just a sports drama. As those of you familiar with writer James Graham's work might expect, it sets the fortunes of England's men's football team firmly into the wider social and political landscape – the good, the bad and the extremely ugly elements of it all – and asks some difficult but urgent questions about national identity along the way.
It's also something of a love letter to Gareth Southgate's culture change during his tenure as head coach of the England men's football team, and the people who made it happen on and off the pitch. In the drama, one of those people was Jodie Whittaker's character Dr Pippa Grange, a sports psychologist who is appointed as the FA's Head of People and Team Development.
Dear England shows Grange fully embedded into Southgate's team of coaches, analysing their past penalty shootout performance and embedding a more emotionally open culture that changes the team's fortunes. She encourages the players to journal throughout training, noting and observing their feelings about representing their country on such a high-profile stage.
But is Pippa Grange based on a real person, and what happened to her?
Is Pippa Grange based on a real person?
While some of Southgate's coaching team in Dear England, such as Mike Webster and Physio Phil, are fictional or composite characters, others such as Steve Holland (now assistant manager at Manchester United men's first team) and Pippa Grange are real.
Born in Harrogate, Grange studied sports science at Loughborough University. Speaking on the Dare to Lead with Brené Brown podcast in 2021, she recalled "family difficulties" which led to her leaving home aged 16 – something which is briefly alluded to in Dear England.
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"My love of curiosity and learning was a pathway for me and a teacher convinced me that I had maybe what it took to go to university, which had never even crossed my mind as a young person," she told Brown. "Nobody in my family had done anything like that, or nobody I knew had done anything like that."
Later, Grange moved to Australia to complete her doctorate on the topic of stress and sports performance at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia (all 217 pages are available to read online if you so wish).
Prior to joining The FA as its Head of People and Team Development in November 2017, Grange had worked at the Australian Football League Players Association (a counterpart to the PFA for Aussie Rules footballers).
Before joining its staff in a senior role, Grange told Brené Brown that she was an on-call psychologist for players and was responsible for what she described as the 'bat phone', which any player experiencing psychological difficulty could use to call her.
In 2010, she founded the sports psychology consultancy Bluestone Edge, and went on to work with rugby clubs across New Zealand, including its national rugby league team. She also worked with the Australian national swimming team after their disappointing performance at the London 2012 Olympics.
Speaking on Dare to Lead with Brené Brown, Grange said that she was at first reluctant to accept the FA role, describing the media culture around the men's national team as "a circus of shame" and fearing it was "an undoable job".
However, she changed her mind upon continuing her conversations with executives, saying: "The more that I understood how far they'd actually come already, and how much great work had been done on building systems for humans, systems to win as well, I got more interested in it and I decided to give it a go."
Grange's remit was wider than seen on Dear England. While she played a pivotal role in building the England men's football team's resilience ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, she was hired to create psychological resilience across 16 men's and women's national teams at all levels of the game.
Her impact was acknowledged in the build-up to the tournament, with Southgate saying in May 2018 that Grange was "a strong and important addition" to the England team.
Eric Dier and Dele Alli both credited Grange with a mental transformation within the squad when speaking to media including The Guardian prior to the 2018 World Cup semi-final against Croatia.
Despite Dear England showing the press dubbing Grange 'the penalty whisperer' after the team's unexpected shootout success against Colombia at the 2018 World Cup, it's a label she's reluctant to take sole credit for.
Speaking to The Times in April 2026, she acknowledged it was "very flattering" but wanted to "separate [herself] out from 'penalty guru'. It wasn't a single thing and it wasn't a single person… it really took a lot of teamwork."
Why did Pippa Grange leave the England team?
Dear England takes some dramatic licence with Grange's departure. In episode two, she tells Southgate of her decision to leave the team as they start to prepare for Euro 2021 post-Covid. She's clearly uncomfortable with the media's increasing focus on her, and also tells Southgate (played, as on stage, by Joseph Fiennes) that she's unhappy about proposed changes to her remit and role within The FA.
In real life, The FA announced Grange's exit in July 2019, and in leaving she said that she felt "the time is right for others to build on the foundations that have been put in place". "It has been very rewarding to see the creation of such a positive environment for players to express themselves with freedom on and off the pitch, and the impact this has had internally and externally," she said.
Grange added in her departure statement: "Culture coaching is now firmly embedded in the England experience and I am certain that the more work that is done in this vital area, the more we will see that reflected in performance. Personally, moving on from The FA will allow me to focus my attention on the broadening definition of success and winning in sport, especially for women and girls, and I hope to stay close to the organisation in the years to come."
As for why Grange left The FA in her own words, she told The Times in April 2026: "It was an intense period. I like being out the back, not in the front. And so that adds a layer of fatigue."
Prior to that, she had revealed on Dare to Lead with Brené Brown that a restructure at the organisation meant the work was "going to become more technical and less cultural... and I decided that maybe I wasn't going to be where I really found my tribe".
Where is Pippa Grange now?
After leaving The FA, Grange followed up her 2014 book Ethical Leadership in Sport: What's Your Endgame? with 2020's Fear Less: How to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself.
Based in the Peak District with her husband and their dogs, Grange has continued to work in sports psychology and as a culture coach with organisations around the globe including Right to Dream, where she was its chief culture officer.
Speaking to The Times in April 2026, Grange said that around three years after her time working with The FA, she found herself in burnout, which she described as a gradual process over a long period of time rather than a sudden shock. Grange has recently published a book titled Life. Reclaimed: Find Freedom from Chronic Overperformance, reflecting on her experiences of burnout.
She also spoke positively of Southgate, confirming that they are still in touch after all these years. "He's a really decent human being," she said. "Anybody could see the level of care and affection for his players and staff. That was not the regular tone that was shown so often."
As for the criticism that he was 'too nice' as England coach, she dismissed that very firmly, saying: "What does that actually mean; you care too much? I think the more freedom you can give a person [the better]."
What does Pippa Grange think of Dear England?
Grange told The Times that she's seen the stage version of Dear England twice, and met writer James Graham for lunch while he was working on it.
"The first time I didn't know what to do with myself," she said of her theatre trip. "I felt very exposed [even though] nobody knew I was there other than James Graham. I was cringing. But I did see it a second time and I found it really fun."
Dear England is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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