Coming in cold to the city
Leonie Elliott tells Jim Maloney how her aunt’s story is eerily being told through the character she plays.
The ‘‘Big Freeze’’ of Christmas shows little sign of thawing as the midwives and nuns continue to battle with the icy conditions as they go about their business in a new series of Call The Midwife.
It’s far from the warm welcome that new arrival at Nonnatus House, Nurse Lucille Anderson, was hoping for. She’s used to much warmer climes back home in Jamaica.
‘‘Nurse Lucille Anderson is a 23-year-old midwife who came to Britain, like many other Caribbean nurses did in the 1960s, to support a growing National Health Service,’’ says Leonie Elliott, who plays her.
‘‘She has done her training in Somerset and has been looking forward to moving to London for a bit more excitement and ends up at Nonnatus House where she shares a room with Phyllis.
‘‘Lucille is witty, charming and resilient and fits in well, making friends with Valerie and Trixie in particular. She has a great sense of fun.’’
Elliott, 29, was touched by how the character had a resonance with herself and her family.
‘‘My parents are Jamaican so I am familiar with the place. I would visit there from England every year for my summer holidays. And the parish that Lucille is from is actually where my parents are from. That was already written so that was a huge coincidence. My family, particularly my grandparents, are really excited because I am playing a Jamaican woman.
‘‘My aunt had come over to England at a similar time to train as a nurse. She told me about her experiences and when I asked her about her first impressions of England she just said, ‘Cold!’ And it was nice as my first scene is me arriving in a snow storm!
‘‘My aunt is excited because she feels like her story is being told through Lucille, which is lovely.’’
Elliott had watched some of the show before auditioning but once she had got the role she stopped watching it.
‘‘I decided not to watch any more because I didn’t want to have an opinion on the characters and so it would be like Lucille meeting them for the first time,’’ she explains.
The series will show how women like Anderson did come up against racism from some quarters.
‘‘It does play a part,’’ says Elliott. ‘‘Not with the women at Nonnatus
''You see cultural differences throughout the show... People are apprehensive of Lucille..." Leonie Elliott
House but with the guest characters. You see cultural differences throughout the show and she experiences some racism in episode two. People are apprehensive of Lucille in that episode. That’s all I can say without spoiling it!’’
But we can disclose some detail about what the new series has in store. We are promised that the nuns and nurses will be tested both personally and professionally as never before because big changes are taking place. All around them they see the old East End of London vanishing, as slum clearances make way for bold new tower blocks to accommodate expanding communities.
As ever, their work brings them into contact with a wide range of challenging issues. This series sees them trying to cope with cataracts, leprosy, strokes, Huntington’s chorea (an inherited disease that damages nerve cells in the brain) and tokophobia (a fear of pregnancy).
Personal issues see Trixie’s (Helen George) romance with dentist Christopher (Jack Hawkins) continuing to develop, while vicar Tom (Jack Ashton) and Barbara (Charlotte Ritchie) enjoy life as a married couple. Nurse Phyllis Crane (Linda Bassett) finds her authority questioned from an unexpected quarter, Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) is forced to accept her failing faculties, and life for the Turners is turned upside down when Shelagh (Laura Main) decides to employ an au pair.
Putting on the midwife’s uniform for the first time helped Elliott get into her character.
‘‘It’s very helpful having a costume,’’ she says. ‘‘What’s nice is that Lucille is quite conservative and religious so her dress is a little bit longer than the others wear. I’m sure she will change because she had only seen rural Jamaica and rural England, but to come to a big city like London is bound to have an effect.’’
Having pretended to have lived in the era, would the actuality of living in the 1960s hold any appeal or would she miss modern-day technology?
‘‘I would find the absence of computers and mobile phones quite refreshing,’’ she says. ‘‘Being without them would suit me down to the ground. Also, I’m a bit of a social media ‘phobe’. I kind of feel like I was born in the wrong era anyway. The music was better in the 60s too!’’
❚ Call the Midwife
April 20, TVNZ1. 8pm, Fridays from