A labour of love for Jodie Comer as she takes role as pregnant woman seriously

13 January 2024 , 19:22

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Jodie at the Olivier Awards last year (Image: PA)

Jodie Comer was so determined to portray a new mum accurately that she studied pregnancy and labour – and spent hours being fitted with prosthetic bellies.

The Killing Eve actress plays a woman called Mother who is trying to keep her baby, Zeb, safe in apocalyptic film The End We Start From. And as Jodie, 30, has not had kids she immersed herself in the role by watching birthing videos.

She shot the film for 30 days straight between her stage hit Prima Facie moving from London to Broadway. And director Mahalia Belo revealed that despite hearing the part involved braving sub-zero waters near Lochgilphead, in Argyll and Bute, while topless, Jodie dived right in.

Star in prosthetic baby bump (Alamy Stock Photo)

Mahalia said: “It was freezing. We spoke to Jodie and she wanted to do it. She’s a believer in truth and felt this is what the character would do. It was so beautiful and she just went for it. We felt like such renegades, Jodie naked going into the water.”

The film, also starring Benedict Cumberbatch, follows Mother as her waters break amid a climate change disaster – and applying the prosthetics neede took hours.

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Mother holds tot Zeb (Paramount Movies)

Mahalia said: “We wanted to tell the woman’s story from pregnancy to that first year as truthfully as we could. [Jodie wanted] to serve it properly. It looked so real! We also had make-up do stretch marks and prosthetics made a few-weeks-after belly.”

Jodie told Channel 4 of the birth scene: “Not being a mother, it was about getting to the bottom of the way you hold your body when you have a baby, the way you feel the pain, the stages of labour... to make that feel as real as possible.”

The film, based on Megan Hunter’s book and in cinemas from Friday, already has nine nominations for the British Independent Film Awards – including best lead performance for BAFTA and Tony-winner Jodie.

Nicola Fahey