Love and loss
Vanessa Kirby reveals the heartbreaking scenes behind her emotional Netflix drama…
Vanessa Kirby and Shia Labeouf play Boston couple Martha and Sean, who are on the verge of welcoming their first child into the world when their lives change in the worst way imaginable after a home birth ends in tragedy.
The trauma exposes cracks in the couple’s marriage, as Martha’s forced to navigate the grief of losing her newborn baby girl, while also working through her fractious relationship with her domineering mother, Elizabeth, played by Ellen Burstyn.
But as she grapples with the fallout of the heartbreak and becomes increasingly isolated from her family, she also has to deal with the added pain of facing the midwife responsible for her daughter’s death in court. The publicly vilified midwife (Molly Parker) faces a case of criminal negligence. But win or lose, all Martha really wants back is her marriage and her daughter.
Challenging role
‘The film felt so much bigger than any of us,’ says Vanessa, who played Princess Margaret in the first two series of The Crown on Netflix. ‘This is a subject that’s really hard to talk about.’ Vanessa says the harrowing birth scene, which is a heart-wrenching 23 minutes long, was a real challenge because it was all
filmed in one take. ‘The idea of doing a long take with no cuts was really exhilarating, but it required all of us to free fall together,’ she says. ‘We all felt like there was a responsibility here for anyone who’s gone through this as a woman, but as a partner, as a man, too.
‘The best moments of my working life were doing that birth scene. It’s hard to articulate. It’s my first lead role, too, but I knew I was ready.’