By chance, I happened to catch most of the Newsnight interview.
I know next to nothing about Amanda Abbington, I have never having seen her on telly, I do not watch Strictly, and I haven't been following this thread on MN.
I found her account of being sexually harassed in the workplace, and how she dealt with it, very convincing. I can't see how anyone could defend that behaviour, and I could understand that it was so shocking that she initially went into a 'WTF-just-get-through-this-unbelievable-behaviour' kind of shut-down. But I understand she did complain to the BBC at an early stage?
The interviewer had rather a stern affect, she was either going out of her way to appear not to give AA an easy ride in the interests of journalistic integrity, or she actually wanted to minimise AA's negative experience at the BBC. It was hard to tell, but she sprang Sarah Vine's article on AA without the 'I know this is hard but some people will say....' intro that's common when interviewing people recounting painful experiences.
It was odd when her follow-up question to AA talking about the death/rape threats she, and her daughter, had received was 'How many?' - a strange question, unless she wanted to establish that it was just one or two online cranks; or on the other hand wanted to give AA a chance to explain the huge scale of the online abuse she has received.
AA's weary reply o 'Oh, hundreds' was very telling, and I think I heard a surprised 'Really?' in the background from the interviewer.