Freida Pinto to play World War Two hero Noor Inayat Khan in new series

Freida Pinto's labour of love TV project about World War Two spy Noor Inayat Khan has been given the green light.

The actress will play the first female wireless operator in Spy Princess, and will also executive produce the adaptation of Shrabani Basu's 2006 novel, Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan.

"Noor was a fierce and amazing woman, the most unlikely heroine of World War Two," the Slumdog Millionaire star says. "Sending women to the front line is controversial even now. Then it was unthinkable. Sending a Sufi mystic, who won't use a gun, daughter of a long-haired Indian guru who preaches love and peace - ridiculous!

"But Noor thrives, not in spite of her differences, but because of them. Her struggle to reconcile her values with the desire to find her own path and with her complex sense of duty, is something I am so excited to explore and to recreate."

And Freida is very impressed with screenwriter Olivia Hetreed's adaptation, adding: "Olivia has crafted Noor’s story into something very powerful, thrilling and extremely relevant. Noor is unlike all the other female superheroes, warriors and bada** women I see in film and TV, who train so hard and are so great with all the physical stuff, almost leaving us mere mortals to believe that courage means being good at everything.

"Noor has a quiet strength that she’s not entirely aware of. Alone in Paris, she lives and loves more intensely in a few months than most of us do in a lifetime, helping establish the Secret Armies of the Resistance who will rise up on D-Day, astonishing the men who said she should never have been sent to the front line."