I'm here to interview Leonie Elliott, the actor behind Call the Midwife’s sensible, kindly nurse Lucille Anderson – but I hardly recognise the woman in front of me. At Stella’s photo shoot in a gilded ballroom in west London, Leonie is posing and twirling in a glitterball Christopher Kane dress, sparkling with crystals; she is the epitome of glamour and sex appeal. No offence to Lucille, who carries off her nurse’s uniform and cardigan with aplomb, but this is a far cry from life with the nuns at Nonnatus House.
When we chat after the shoot, with Leonie now back in her casual clothes, she insists that she rarely gets recognised in normal life, either. ‘No, I’m anonymous,’ she says with a smile. Her hair is different – natural curls rather than Lucille’s neat bun – and perhaps viewers expect her to have the character’s lilting Jamaican accent (familiar to Leonie from her own family, but honed with the help of voice coach Carmen Harris, mother of the actor Naomie Harris). Leonie, however, was born and bred in Brent, northwest London. She is warm and gracious as a model, charming everyone on the shoot, and low-key and thoughtful as an interviewee.
Sadly, we haven’t seen her on our screens much this year; in March, the filming of season 10 of Call the Midwife was postponed due to Covid. But fans of the show will be relieved that work was able to start again in August, and so there will be a special festive episode on Christmas Day as usual – we’ve had one every year since 2012. I get to watch it the night before our interview: it reduces me to tears twice, and ultimately leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy.
Call the Midwife, a BBC period drama set so brilliantly that every storyline is touching. But as much as it does make people cry, there is always hope at the end of every episode, and I think we have to have that, don’t we? We have to keep going, and we always find a way – we’ll find a way to cope through Covid, even.’
After this most difficult of years, it seems poised to provide the comfort viewing that we all yearn for right now. Lucille arrived on the show in early 2018, and viewers have watched as she’s tried to find her place in the not-always-friendly world of 1960s London; in 1950s and ’60s east London, first aired in January 2012, and has won awards every year since. Now a staple of Sunday-night television, its viewing figures have remained impressive – last year’s storyline on backstreet abortion attracted 6.9 million viewers. Vanessa Redgrave, Miranda Hart, Miriam Margolyes and Emerald Fennell (now playing Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown) are among the starry cast members who have passed through Nonnatus House.
Its enduring appeal lies in the way that it pulls at the heartstrings. ‘I think it has such primal themes, which everyone can relate to – birth, new life, love, loss,’ says Leonie. ‘It’s about humans connecting, and it’s written the Christmas episode, which centres on a circus visiting the area (complete with a pregnant performer, of course), shows her blossoming relationship with her boyfriend Cyril, played by Zephryn Taitte, as they continue to adjust to the UK having recently moved here from Jamaica. ‘You’ll see how they’re still fitting into London life, being immigrants, and maintaining their religion and culture while embracing British culture too,’ says Leonie.
When she took on the role in 2018, she became the show’s first West Indian midwife; Lucille, like Leonie’s own grandparents, is part of the Windrush generation who moved from the Caribbean to Britain following the Second World War. Leonie’s aunt also came over in the 1960s to become a nurse. ‘Although Lucille is just one character, I felt I was representing a generation of courageous men and women who made so much impact on the UK,’ she says. ‘They worked in industries that are the backbone of Britain – the NHS, British transport. I definitely felt a huge responsibility to represent these people in the right way, and shine a light on them, because they’ve done so much for the country and they’re often ignored.’
Both sets of her grandparents came from St Elizabeth in the south-west of Jamaica; Lucille is supposed to be from neighbouring Manchester, and at the time, the two areas would have been part of the same parish. Leonie had therefore done plenty of research for the role before she was even offered it. ‘I’ve been to Jamaica quite a few times to stay with family; I know what the air smells like, I know what the food tastes like, I know exactly where Lucille grew up. It was said that Lucille came from a middle-class background, and my grandad’s sister had a very good job and a very large house – so I know what middle-class life in that parish of Jamaica looks like.’
Her paternal grandparents have passed away, but her mum’s parents are still in London. How did it feel to play a character who could have been one of their peers? ‘So special. And I got to learn so much about my grandparents’ experience. I felt proud, really, to be able to do that, and I just hope I’ve done the part justice.’ They watch the show, of course: ‘I think they really like it. It’s representing their generation, so they probably enjoy speaking about it with their friends.’
Call the Midwife is a triumph for female-led television, with its largely female cast, and women in key crew positions including screenwriter Heidi Thomas, executive producer Pippa Harris and producer Ann Tricklebank. ‘That really doesn’t happen often in the industry, so I feel privileged to be in a show that champions women in front of and behind the camera,’ says Leonie. ‘Also, it celebrates women of all ages, and again, we don’t see that much on screen.’
It may not be considered ‘gritty’ television, but the show certainly doesn’t shy away from serious subject matter. The latest episode features a woman who has lost several pregnancies, and has been discouraged from speaking about it; with plots like this, the show unpacks all kinds of difficult and often hidden experiences endured by women. ‘We don’t often talk about miscarriages and losing children, and it happens more often than we realise,’ says Leonie. ‘I think it’s really good that the show opens up these sorts of conversations – as women, we go through a lot.’
She particularly admired the illegal abortion storyline in 2019, featuring her then costar Jennifer Kirby, who played Valerie Dyer. ‘I think it was handled so brilliantly. It opened people’s eyes to what went on then, and how far we’ve come. There was a brilliant scene between Valerie and her grandmother debating back and forth – it showed both sides, but ultimately I’m sure everyone came away with the feeling that we are pro-choice.’
The show has also explored the overt racism that Lucille would have encountered in 1960s London; she would have been one of as many as 5,000 Jamaican nurses in the NHS at that time, following a government recruitment drive. ‘There was a massive wave of Caribbean people arriving, which England hadn’t really seen before, so it wasn’t very welcoming,’ she says. It’s not emotionally easy acting out those upsetting encounters. ‘They are difficult to film; for me, this could be my family’s experience. They’re handled really well, though, and luckily the actors that I’ve worked with have been so lovely, and keep apologising.’
On occasion, Leonie has been able to offer input into the plot – including in one storyline about Lucille being made to feel unwelcome as a black woman attending church. ‘That was something that my grandad had mentioned to me: at that time, he would be politely asked to leave mainstream British churches. What that meant was that Caribbean people started to worship in somebody’s living room, and christenings also would be held there.’ Many of her mother’s cousins could not be christened in church, she adds. ‘It was always “fully booked”. So that storyline was influenced heavily by my grandfather – he was very passionate about it.’ For Leonie, this is a time of year that holds happy memories of family. ‘When I was younger I spent some lovely Christmases in Jamaica, because my paternal grandparents had moved back there by that point.’
This year, she hopes to spend Christmas with as many of her family as Government regulations allow. She politely declines to reveal anything about who she’s dating (‘I’d tell you, but then you’ll put it in, won’t you?’), but it has been reported previously that she lives with her partner, an entrepreneur. With filming halted in the spring, she had a lot of time on her hands in lockdown at her home in east London: ‘I was doing a lot of workouts and a bit of yoga, just for my mental health. And I had the time to make really delicious meals. It’s gone very basic again for me now, but at the time, I was eating like a queen!’ She cackles. ‘Three courses with dessert! And then I’d run it off the next day.’
It was a worrying time for her industry, however. ‘To be honest, I’m really grateful to be working again,’ she says. The show is filmed with precautions in place; it helps that the midwives often wear masks anyway, and real couples, or real mums and babies, have been cast as guest characters so that social distancing isn’t required. When I ask about a scene that shows Lucille and Cyril on a bench together, she reveals that it was shot in splitscreen. ‘I’m in a really fortunate position that I can work and we’re not in front of an audience, but our industry’s been hit really, really hard. I just hope that the people in charge realise how important the arts are, not just for the performers but also for the public and their mental health. You want to be entertained, and people want to entertain you.’
Leonie has been doing her bit to entertain since age six. She doesn’t come from a family of actors; her mother works in a nursery and her father is an account manager. But her sister, who is seven years older, was keen on drama, and Leonie followed suit – then stuck with it when her sister gave up. She appeared in several TV dramas as a child, including Holby City and The Bill. ‘I look back at it really fondly – I had such a positive experience and I knew early on that I could see myself doing this as an adult.’ She took a break to do A levels and her degree (sociology, at the London School of Economics), but returned to acting, and had appeared in Black Mirror and the Lenny Henry film Danny and the Human Zoo when the part of Lucille came along. ‘This is my breakout role,’ she says.
Her normal life, she jokes, is not so different to the one she lived in lockdown: ‘I suppose I’ve become a bit of a homebody.’ Her friends tend not to be actors, and while she describes them as supportive, they’re not star-struck by her career. ‘Fundamentally, because I’ve known them for so long, it really is just, “This is Leonie, and this is what she happens to do.”’
She keeps a low profile on social media, rarely revealing much about herself or her views, but she did take to Instagram earlier this year to re-post a rousing speech by Rihanna about the need for white people to fight racism. I ask whether, as a woman of colour in the public eye, there are challenges around deciding when to speak out on racism and when not to. ‘Yes, to a certain extent,’ she says, ‘because just because you’re in the public eye doesn’t necessarily mean you are the right activist to speak at that time.
‘But if a black or Indian actor’s experiences have led them to a moment of speaking out, then I think they should. If they feel they would like to do the work quietly, behind the scenes, again I respect that. Ultimately it’s about everyone doing the work, and not always putting the pressure on entertainers of colour. We’re all living together, we’ve all recognised that things need to change, not only in America but also here.’
Has she experienced racism in her industry? ‘If the question is have I experienced racism as a black woman in England, then yes, I have. But I wouldn’t say it’s particular to the industry – it’s just life as a black woman.’
She’s now filming series 10 of Call the Midwife, which will air next year. ‘That will take me up until March, and then I know another series has been commissioned after that, which Lucille may or may not appear in,’ she says. Every actress on the show is aware that when characters get boyfriends, it can signal the beginning of the end of their time at Nonnatus House. But Leonie is philosophical about this, and more immediately concerned with the continuing impact of the pandemic: ‘With Covid, I’m just not really sure what our industry’s going to look like in March.’
It seems likely, however, that there will be other juicy parts ahead for her. ‘Sometimes people say, “What’s the dream gig?”, and there isn’t one,’ she says. ‘Every role is the dream role, if you feel that you can do it justice. I just want to be a chameleon and have a long career that’s respected.’
With that, she thanks me warmly, pulls on a black vinyl coat, and heads off into a taxi – happily anonymous again.
Call the Midwife’s 10th-anniversary series begins with a Christmas special at 7.40pm on Christmas Day on BBC One.
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