Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
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JESSICA RAINE, 39 Nurse Jenny Lee, series 1-3
The birth scenes were exhausting
– not least for the actress performing the labour. I watched a lot of One Born Every Minute but
I also genuinely think growing up on a farm, watching animals giving birth and my dad helping deliver them, prepared me for the pragmatic nature of portraying a midwife. There’s no room for squeamishness, only the practical. The first scene we ever shot was the Conchita Warren storyline, about a woman who’d had 24 children.
I was boiling “urine” in a test tube, holding said test tube with a metal scissor contraption over a naked flame. It could not have been more 40“proppy” and there was absolutely no room for nerves or shaky hands.
LAURA MAIN, Sister Bernadette, later Shelagh Turner, series 1-present
Being cast as a nun in the first series alongside three such incredible actresses [Jenny Agutter, Judy Parfitt and Pam Ferris] was almost unbelievable for me.
They were and are extraordinarily generous and I’ve learnt so much from them. At the start, I had no clue that I would stop being a nun. There was just one moment, when the girls had all gone off to a dance and Sister
Bernadette looks at herself in the mirror, removes her wimple, loosens her hair and finally takes her glasses off.
It wasn’t until the beginning of series two I got a rough idea what her future was going to be and I thought, “But I’m one of the nuns!” It was quite a shock.
MIRANDA HART, 48 Nurse Camilla Fortescue-cholmeley-browne “Chummy”, series 1-4
Now I won’t lie, I am not a massive baby person, but seeing the babies through Chummy’s eyes really gave me a perspective on the miracle of life and birth and I began to see a newborn child in a new way.
Delivering a baby, however (it may shock people to hear), I had never done that…
So yes, it was a relief that Chummy was nervous handling a breech birth on her own.
I remember the room would spin after they called cut because I was hyperventilating, acting Chummy’s nerves and then kind of holding my breath as myself, acting with a tiny baby covered in oil that I REALLY did not want to drop!