When Call The Midwife started filming back in 2011, few imagined a BBC drama about women having babies in the East End during the 1950s and 60s would become a worldwide television phenomenon, adored by millions. Not least Helen George, then an unknown 26-year-old, plucked from working in the Harrods perfume department to play Nurse Trixie Franklin. ‘I assumed only mothers and midwives would watch it, I never imagined any of its success,’ says George. ‘And I never dreamed how I would grow up with it.’
The show’s first episode attracted ten million viewers. Since then, 14 series of Midwife have been shown all over the world. It is especially popular in the US – Whoopi Goldberg wrote the producers a fan letter. Over those years, Nurse Trixie (now Lady Aylward) has metamorphosed from a single, jazz-loving young nurse to a married mother and ultra-competent ward sister, who has faced everything from sexual assault to alcoholism.
‘Trixie’s not me, but she’s very dear to me,’ George says. ‘For so long, she was seen as the posh, glamorous one, but then as you saw her vulnerabilities and pain she became fully formed and relatable, rather than the lipsticked, affected character she’d been putting out to the world, and people took to her much more.’
Much the same could be said of George, now 41, who during the show’s long run has split from her husband, actor Oliver Boot, fallen in love with her co-star Jack Ashton and given birth to their daughters Wren, eight, and Lark, four. Two years ago, she and Ashton broke up. It has been tough, but through adversity George has developed a confidence that in the early days was lacking. ‘I used to be very shy,’ she says. ‘Now I’m far more comfortable in myself. It’s definitely one of the good things about getting older, you give less of a s**t about anything. You don’t care.’
She and her day-one co-stars, Jenny Agutter, Laura Main and Judy Parfitt (George is the only OG non-religious midwife, the other actresses play the nuns at Poplar convent Nonnatus House) have formed ‘a really strong bond. We’ve been through so much together. This week, we’ve really been reminiscing over the past 14 years and what’s happened in our personal lives: the marriages, the divorces, the deaths, everything that life throws at you,’ George says, her huge blue eyes brimming with tears.
‘There’s a history and a shorthand that you can only have with people you’ve known so long. People are drawn to the show because of its ability to celebrate community, which is so often lacking in our lives, and what it has given me as well is community.’
Midwife has also featured numerous guest stars, including Miranda Hart (a regular from series one to four), Harriet Walter, Anita Dobson, Sinéad Cusack and Miriam Margolyes. ‘But we tend to know those actors by the ailment they came on with, so we say, “Oh, he was the guy who lost his leg,”’ says George. ‘We were at an awards ceremony and [Lorraine Stanley] from EastEnders, who had been in the pilot episode, came over to our table. We couldn’t remember her character, until she said, “I was shocking discharge.” We were all like, “Oh yeah! Good old shocking discharge!”’
George is sitting in a private members’ club near her home in West London, where she lives with her daughters (custody is shared 50/50 with Ashton) and their rescue Jack Russell, Charlie. She sips first a latte, then a green smoothie. She is slender, dressed in slinky black jeans and top – with Trixie’s trademark platinum hair.
Filming has just wrapped on Midwife’s 15th season, to be broadcast early next year. It is preceded by a two-part Christmas special, by now as much a part of the season as crackers and mince pies. So popular, in fact, that the first part of last year’s Christmas special drew 8.9 million viewers, making it the festive period’s most-watched drama episode. It features the usual joys of snow, carols and tearjerking nativities, with Trixie – back in Poplar after a spell in New York – snapping on her surgical gloves to lead her juniors (the senior nuns are absent on a mercy mission to Hong Kong) through yet another tricky delivery, with her usual cheerful aplomb.
Next year, production is starting on – hooray! – a Midwife film. ‘It’s very exciting,’ says George, beaming. Also in the pipeline is a prequel series, focusing on the nuns’ work during the Blitz. ‘Though you won’t be seeing Trixie as she would have been about eight at the time,’ George says in her cut-glass tones, which give no hint she is from Birmingham, the daughter of a political-science professor father and social-worker mother.
She estimates the show has seen around 250 babies ‘born’ – ‘though I don’t think that number includes twins and triplets, and we’ve seen a lot of those,’ she says. Having ‘never really’ looked after an infant before playing Trixie, by the time she had her own children she was an old hand at changing nappies ‘and being peed on, all that sort of stuff. And I definitely learned how to interact with children – for adults it can be hard to know how to communicate with them!’
Although a midwifery advisor is always on hand, George insists she couldn’t deliver a real baby. ‘No way!’ Nonetheless, she has learned one invaluable tip she shares with her pregnant friends. ‘The only thing you can plan about birth is knowing it can’t be planned. The idea you have any control is a delusion.’
That’s fascinating to hear because when we last met – nine years ago – George was adamant that, if she ever gave birth, it would be by elective C-section. ‘I don’t like the idea of [natural] childbirth… a C-section you know what to expect. I’m just a control freak,’ she told me. Yet, sure enough, neither of George’s two deliveries went exactly to plan. She booked her Caesarean for Wren, only to end up having the operation far earlier than planned, having been diagnosed with the serious liver disorder intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), the symptoms of which include a near-unbearable itchiness that made her ‘black and blue from constant scratching’. ICP can also result in stillbirths. ‘So at 37 weeks, I went to the doctor and he said, “We’ve got to deliver her now.”’
With Lark, the itching kicked in even earlier, although that didn’t stop George filming a police drama in Birmingham when she was 37 weeks pregnant. ‘I started getting hot flushes, which were contractions – but I didn’t recognise them because I’d never had contractions before, though I’ve seen plenty of actresses playing them.’ When filming finished around 8pm, she decided not to stay at her parents’ but to catch a late train to London. ‘It’s so lucky I didn’t give birth on board because by then my contractions weren’t that far apart.’
She (just) made it home for the night, but was in hospital first thing next morning for an emergency C-section. ‘This time I pushed myself too hard after the birth. I didn’t look after myself and so I had to go back into hospital for a bit.’
Motherhood has transformed George’s life. ‘I’m always sweaty, I’m always such a mess,’ she says, although she comes across as nothing of the sort. ‘I’m always having to be on top of the washing, remembering games bags – I’ve found myself couriering a hockey stick somewhere because Midwife’s filmed in Surrey and I can’t go and drop it off. But that’s just being a working parent, it’s what we’re all doing.’
Intensely private by nature, George won’t speak about her 2023 split from Ashton. The two got together in 2016 (his character, the Rev Tom Hereward, was written out of the show in 2019). She has previously spoken about how, during their separation, she found ‘therapy’ by having to go on stage every night to play governess Anna Leonowens in the West End and touring production of the musical The King And I, explaining the discipline meant ‘you can’t break down’.
She’s equally tight-lipped about how she met her current partner Dan Innes, a real-estate consultant 11 years her senior, who is also divorced with two children. ‘It’s a very happy relationship,’ she says. ‘It’s lovely to be with someone outside the industry. I’m not defined by my job and I’m really interested in meeting the people he works with.’
George studied musical theatre at the Royal Academy Of Music, where she was among a group selected to be backing singers to Sir Elton John at the Royal Albert Hall and Wembley Arena. ‘He was so generous to us [students], in no way the diva I thought he would be.’ After graduating, she landed a handful of roles but then a dry patch followed when she found herself on the Harrods shop floor. ‘I was probably the most depressed I had ever been in my life.’
Life changed forever after she was cast as Trixie, with fame reaching the next level in 2015, when she was partnered with Aljaz Skorjanec in Strictly Come Dancing. She came sixth but found the experience ‘quite traumatic. I definitely struggle with being myself on TV so it was hard.’ Now that’s changing: earlier this year, she appeared in ITV’s Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters, alongside the likes of Lenny Henry and Rachel Riley, swimming with sharks in the Bahamas. ‘It was completely terrifying, but I had to be myself because how can you not be, faced with something that might eat you?’
Her growing self-belief manifested itself in 2018 when a stranger claimed on Twitter (now X) she had been ‘massive’ when pregnant with Wren. George punched back: ‘Sorry if my chins offended you. I chose to feed my baby healthily and not starve myself in a selfish act to look good on TV’, a retort that attracted 25,000 likes.
‘There have always been so many comments around my weight: you can’t be too skinny or too fat – you can’t win,’ she says sadly. ‘When I was pregnant, someone said to me, “Are you having an elective C-section because you’re so thin?” Every time I queued up for food someone would say, “Ooh, eating for two!” It really was outrageous. So, when I saw that comment something just snapped. I’d had it for months and I was hormonal and I thought, “F**k off!”’
George is equally outspoken about the ‘snobbery’ Midwife attracts. Despite its enduring popularity, it has never won a Bafta. George suspects many too-cool-for-school television executives who dismiss it as fluffy fare have never actually watched it. ‘And if I had £1 for all the men who said “It’s not my bag…”’ she sighs. ‘It’s just lazy. Obviously it’s not [Netflix drama about East End drug gangs] Top Boy, but it’s covering a lot of the same topics.’ Those have included abortion, NHS funding, homosexuality, mental illness and racism.
Every series takes us into a new era, with the Christmas special set in 1971, during the Women’s Lib movement. ‘Women still couldn’t get mortgages or a credit card if they weren’t married!’ George exclaims. ‘It’s crazy!’
Even though George takes part in other TV and stage shows around Midwife (this Christmas, she’s the fairy godmother in Cinderella at London’s Richmond Theatre), she has no desire to quit the show. The real-life Nonnatus House, St Frideswide’s Mission House, on which the original books by Jennifer Worth are based, closed as a mission in 1978, but women still have babies in East London, and the politics of childbirth are a hotter potato than ever.
‘The morning-after pill has only recently been made free on the NHS,’ George points out. ‘Think about the amount of issues that could have been solved if that had happened earlier. There’s a new contraceptive gel for men, although we hardly hear about it. In some states in America they’re getting rid of abortion – who would have predicted that ten years ago?’
With so much drama to address, I don’t see why Nurse Trixie – and George – can’t keep going for decades to come. ‘I hope so,’ sighs the actress. ‘I’m not ready to say goodbye to Trixie. She’s a really good mate.’
The Call The Midwife two-part Christmas special is on BBC One on 25 and 26 December
NURSE! through the years with Trixie Franklin
Stylist: Joanne M Kennedy.
Hair: Paul Jones using Hair By Sam Mcknight.
Make-up: Sam Cooper at Carol Hayes using Tatcha and Haus Labs.
Stylist’s assistant: Naomi Begarin.
