sassıest My life as the midwife
She’s been lighting up the BBC’s most popular drama since it began eight years ago. Now, as Call The Midwife gets a rerun, Helen George tells of the show’s huge impact on her
At the moment Helen George should have been filming the tenth series of Call The Midwife, but she has been at home playing a waiting game. She’s getting tetchy, though. Ongoing dramas can be rescheduled, but every year one of the highlights of the TV schedules is the Call The Midwife Christmas special. That it hasn’t yet been filmed is a concern. ‘There is a slight pressure, because Christmas isn’t going anywhere,’ she admits.
For up to 10 million fans of the drama, which follows the fortunes of the midwives and nuns delivering babies in the East End of London in the 50s and 60s, the show is a tonic.
Helen, 36, who plays the only nurse to have appeared in every series, agrees that the show’s unique charm made it ideal lockdown viewing. ‘I think it’s the sort of TV people want at the moment. It embraces what lockdown has become, highlighting that sense of community and warmth, but without it being a show about a pandemic.’
The show has certainly changed her life. She met her partner, actor Jack Ashton (who played Rev Tom Hereward), on the set; their relationship kicked off during filming in South Africa for the 2016 Christmas Special. They now have a daughter, Wren Ivy, who was born in 2017.
The part of blonde bombshell Trixie Franklin was Helen’s first major acting role, and when she signed up she thought it would be for one series. Instead, the show has become an institution. Almost a decade on, while the cast has seen many comings and goings, she remains in situ, lipstick very much intact. She has always been very grateful for her big break, having grown up in Birmingham in an unshowbizzy family. Her mother was a social worker, her father a professor of political science. Her sister is a vet. ‘So no actors there, but my family were supportive. They were glad I had found my passion.’
She thought her future would lie in the theatre but landed an audition for a lowkey new TV drama about midwives. She knew little about it, although when her agent read her the names of her co-stars – legends like Jenny Agutter, Judy Parfitt, Pam Ferris and Miranda Hart – she remembers reeling. ‘I was terrified and excited in equal measure,’ she says.
As she grew in confidence, so her role expanded. Glamorous and worldly, Trixie soon became the show’s siren, playing matchmaker to her friends and attracting no shortage of men herself – not least the Rev Tom who she became engaged to and the dapper dentist Christopher Dockerill.
And she was always the sexiest midwife who got to wear the most fabulous clothes, channelling Doris Day one week and Marilyn the next. Helen giggles about lucking out in the wardrobe department. ‘We midwives get the most fantastic costumes. The nuns get a different cardie every series – if they’re lucky.’ By the time motherhood beckoned in real life she was a safe pair of hands, or so she thought. She was pregnant while filming the seventh series of Midwife (it wasn’t in the storyline; and she credits copious winter capes with letting her keep her secret). In pregnancy, Helen suffered from ICP, a liver disorder that causes a build-up of acid, and her baby daughter was delivered three weeks early.
Did her midwife role prepare her at all for real-life motherhood?
‘Not a bit,’ she says. ‘Nothing prepares you for all the feeding, the lack of sleep, the endless washing and sterilising.’
Nor did she look as glossy at home as she does on set. ‘On the show, a lot of people work hard to make me look that glamorous. Unfortunately they don’t live with me,’ she laughs.
This win-win arrangement worked swimmingly until Wren came along, and it’s been tough to juggle since. Helen has missed key moments, such as Wren’s first steps, because she was away working.
‘Acting is a tough profession. If you get offered a job, you panic and take it because you think, “I might not work for another two years.” You end up saying yes to most things, but having a child makes you consider every decision, maybe make wiser ones.’
Things are returning to normal too. After we speak she’s going to collect Wren from nursery, which has just reopened. She’s now waiting for the call to say filming for Call The Midwife will resume.
Will there still be convincing stories to tell? When a longrunning show is heading into its tenth series, there must be a fear that the storylines will dry up. Never, she says, when the programme is all about new beginnings, life and love. ‘There will never be a shortage of material,’ she says.
Jenny Johnston