Call The Midwife star Emerald Fennell says there’s one thing the cast can’t wait for as the Swinging Sixties arrive.
“We’re all really girlie girls and every single one of us is angling for a mini skirt,” Emerald tells The Sunday Post. “We’ve been telling the head of costume to get us a PVC mini skirt but she says it’s five years before Mary Quant comes along.
“We’re desperate for one. Trixie (Helen George) will be the first and I know she’d look sensational. I’ll be very jealous.”
We’ve caught up to have a chat about the eagerly-awaited Christmas special and it sounds like fashion isn’t the only thing on the agenda on the mostly-female set.
“It is very girlie,” admits Emerald. “We’re obsessed with the same things, like the Great British Bake Off and when that’s on we come in full of chat about what happened and who went home.”
Emerald’s Nurse Patsy Mount joined full-time during the last series, but the character’s background is far removed from the 28-year-old actress’s posh upbringing.
She went to the same college, Marlborough, as the Duchess of Cambridge, studied at Oxford and her parents’ party for her 18th birthday made the society pages of Tatler. “I do have a bit of a silly voice,” giggles Emerald. “But I haven’t found it’s made things difficult.
“You’re always doing different accents when you audition and even Patsy’s voice isn’t my own. So I haven’t noticed it being a problem.”
Emerald says being blonde while Patsy has red hair means she doesn’t get noticed much, even though up to 10 million people watch her each week.
“I’m quite grungy in real life. I always look fairly shoddy I’m a permanent disappointment to my mother.”
The Christmas special sees Patsy and Miranda Hart’s Chummy go to help at a home for unmarried pregnant young women. The fact that such things happened so relatively recently was a real eye-opener for self-confessed Call The Midwife fan Emerald.
“It’s coming to the end of that era of girls being forced to go to these places to live out their pregnancies and then give their babies away. So much of what happened then is astonishing.”
Babies are, of course, at the heart of the show and Emerald, who lives in London, says they’ve been a pleasant surprise.
“I always thought they’d be crying a lot but when I had my first ‘delivery’ the baby was super-sleepy.
“It can be quite a noisy set but the babies we have are so sweet and we always have a midwife to make sure they’re happy and don’t get stressed.”
Call the Midwife, BBC1, 7.50pm, Christmas Day
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