Features: Bodyguard withdrawal? Here’s the next heart-stopping BBC drama
The star of Victoria is treading new ground as a struggling new mother who has her life turned upside down in psychological thriller, The Cry, writes Gemma Dunn
Having withdrawal symptoms from the explosive Bodyguard? Fear not, for the BBC’S next heart-stopping drama is within touching distance.
The Cry, an intense, four-part psychological thriller, follows Joanna (Jenna Coleman) and Alistair (Ewen Leslie), who are faced with the unthinkable when their newborn baby is abducted from a small coastal town in Australia.
Dealing with the white light of public scrutiny, the young couple, who had travelled Down Under from Scotland due to a separate custody battle, suddenly find their lives and relationship changed forever.
Gripped? Here’s what else you need to know...
It’s a book-to-screen adaptation
The Cry, based on Helen Fitzgerald’s acclaimed novel of the same name, was adapted for the small screen by Jacquelin Perske, and called on the talents of director Glendyn Ivin and executive producer Claire Mundell.
It was all-encompassing narrative that drew them to a reworking, Mundell says. “The story of a couple and in particular, a young woman like Joanna, caught in a situation such as she finds herself,” she says.
“I’ve never seen a lead protagonist in a domestic-set thriller that was so accessible and captured so many things at once.
“Issues about what it’s like to be a young mother and all the stuff people don’t speak about,” she elaborates.
“But that this was all wrapped up in the most incredible page turner of a thriller.”
She follows: “These are very relatable people who find themselves in a circumstance that could happen to anybody, really. It’s not a world of other or external crime. This is just ordinary life. Domestic life.” Coleman read the script in transit
For former Doctor Who star Coleman, the emotionallycharged series, filmed in both Scotland and Australia, not only marks a return to the broadcaster, but also a wild departure from her reign in ITV’S Victoria.
It was a part she ironically read up on whilst on a plane (which is where we find Joanna in the first episode, on an intense journey from Glasgow to Melbourne).
“I was on a long-haul flight on the way back from LA,” explains the Lancashire-born star, 32.
“It was as I was landing and the tension of the episode was building and building. It’s a good way to read a script!
“It felt like walking a tightrope, racing page to page, unsettling, unknowable, uncomfortable, and thrilling,” she says.
Of the psychological aspect, she explains: “I kind of felt like I knew everybody but didn’t know anybody and I didn’t know who to trust and I genuinely didn’t know where the arc was going at all.
“So I thought if you can bring that to screen and again, really cleverly pitch it and balance it, and keep that taut, it would make really good drama.”
It tackles the judgement of new mothers
As well as turning the protagonists’ world upside down, the harrowing turn of events proves a catalyst for a journey into the disintegrating psychology of a young woman, exposing the myths and truths of motherhood.
“Joanna, as we meet her, is a new mum and has a baby, Noah, of about three months,” Coleman says.
“We find her struggling with the change. Struggling, I suppose, with new motherhood. She feels exhausted. She feels like she’s lost her identity and she’s struggling to connect with Noah.
“It’s post-natal depression but I don’t think she knows that yet,” she says. “That’s where we begin.”
“When it comes to the judgement of women in situations like this, we felt it was important to convey what that would feel like for a young woman, like Joanna, to be instantly judged because she cries or doesn’t cry or the way she behaves,” says Mundell, who had Coleman in mind for the “complex” role from the off.
“We wanted to find a modern and dramatic way to bring that to life.”
Preparation was key to nailing the part
Reading Fitzgerald’s novel is one thing.
But delving into the world of motherhood was quite another, as Coleman found out.
“I’ve got some amazing friends who have recently had babies,” she says. “[They] were on an email chain with me and were very open about their experiences.
“But Glendyn also sent me on a trip with a stroller,” she recalls with a laugh. “I went out in Melbourne with a pram.
“It was really good, except for a couple of people came up for some photos and looked in the pram, in which there was just an empty bottle of water!
“I had to explain and I got myself in a hole,” she says.
“But then I went into a store and they prescribed me postnatal face cream, to which I didn’t have the heart to explain... so I just bought it and left!
“So that was the whole experience,” she says. “But it’s
“These are very relatable people who find themselves in a circumstance that could happen to anybody, really”
interesting because people do treat you so differently. It made you see the world from a different perspective.”
Left holding the baby
Casting such young babies was no easy feat – but the tiny stars certainly left a lasting impression on set.
“It’s tricky working with actors, as well as newborns,” Ivin says.
“The real babies, twins Noah and Oliver, were six weeks old and it’s pretty real. You put them down, they cry, everyone gets very alert and you film.
“Then you take them off and they’re not crying anymore.”
“But we’ve been unbelievably lucky,” Coleman adds. “The babies were like these magic, genius actor babies who seemed to know what the word ‘action’ means and what the scene required. They’ve made my job very easy!”
As for holding them? “Weirdly, maybe I’m used to working with children now,” she says, having previously filmed with a little one to play true-to-life monarch, Victoria. “I don’t know, but it felt quite natural.”
It hasn’t put her off motherhood, then?
“No it hasn’t, but it’s opened my eyes up to the realities of motherhood, and to a lot of what my friends are experiencing, perhaps,” says the actress, who is in a longterm relationship with her Victoria co-star Tom Hughes.
Adding that she has also realised people don’t really talk about it that much, she says: “But it’s not put me off forever or scarred me forever.”
● The Cry starts on Sunday, BBC1, 9pm.