'Horrific' truth behind Madeleine McCann's mom's 11-hour interrogation - including police plea deal

A new UK TV film has depicted the ‘horrific’ interrogation of Madeleine McCann’s mother, Kate, three months after her three-year-old daughter went missing in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

The investigation of Madeleine McCann's disappearance in May 2007 made headlines worldwide, but after three months, the Portuguese police still had no evidence, leads or arrests.

It was then that the police brought in her mother, Kate McCann, for a gruelling 11 hours of questioning - depicted in new Channel 5 drama, Under Suspicion: Kate McCann.

During the interrogation, the mother-of-three was interrogated by officers, and grilled on the events of the night of May 3 - including why the children weren't placed into the Ocean Club nursery overnight while their parents and friends visited the Tapas Bar across the road, the new film states.

At the start of her first interview, the police made it clear she was being treated as a witness, and not an ‘arguida’ - the Portuguese word for a formal suspect. However, that all changed after the interrogation, as she was called in the next day as a suspect. Gerry was also given the same title roughly 12 hours after his wife.

She was also offered a deal by the police, who told her that they would give her a reduced sentence if she confessed to accidentally killing her daughter and hiding the body, which Kate denied.

"They tried to get her to confess to having accidentally killed Madeleine by offering her a deal through her lawyer — 'If you say you killed Madeleine by accident and then hid her and disposed of the body, then we can guarantee you a two-year jail sentence or even less,"' Gerry McCann's sister, Philomena, told ITV News at the time.

It's been almost two decades since Madeleine McCann went missing Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

The actor who plays Kate in Under Suspicion, Laura Bayston, said that scene in particular was 'horrific' to film. Kate declined this offer - and answered 'no comment' to 48 questions as per her lawyer’s advice.

"It was all emotional, but when Kate is presented with her offer by the police, which is to admit guilt, that was truly horrific and an absolute punch in the guts to film," she said, as per The Independent.

"It was hard to rein in the emotions for that one – a mix of utter despair to white rage and back again."

Kate and Gerry McCann were cleared of any suspicion in 2008 (Joe Giddens - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

It was previously reported that these questions included why she didn’t ask the twins what happened to their sister, and 'Is it true sometimes you despair at your children’s behavior and it left you feeling very uneasy?'

The mother was also asked: "Is it true that in England you even considered handing over Madeleine’s custody to a relative?" Which again, she answered 'no comment'.

Kate and Gerry McCann were cleared of any suspicion in 2008. Chief investigator Gonçalo Amaral was permanently removed from the case.

Madeline McCann is still missing to this day. As of today, the prime suspect in the investigation is German Christian Brueckner, who was released from jail last year following a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old woman in Portugal.