Harry Potter star Paapa Essiedu took a break last year from filming HBO’s reboot of the iconic franchise to make an intimate series for the BBC about baby loss.
Following a difficult week during which Essiedu said he had received death threats over his Severus Snape casting, he told Deadline that Stefan Golaszewski’s Babies has had a lasting impact on him.
“When we had the physical manifestations of baby loss within the home, well there are still days where I think about some of the things I saw and heard in those scenes,” said Essiedu. “More because they were so real and so authentic.”
In Babies, Essiedu is Stephen, navigating baby loss with his wife Lisa, played by Bodkin star Siobhán Cullen. Charlotte Riley and Jack Bannon also star as a nascent couple.
As with Golaszewski’s previous BBC work like Him & Her and Mum, Babies, which is produced by Mrs Wilson maker Snowed-In Productions, is an intimate portrait of a relationship, with plenty humor, and much of it was set in the protagonists’ flat.
Essiedu described these “intense” scenes filmed over a month as “a bit of a head f**k in terms of charting a character arc.”
“There were also days that were incredibly joyful and hilarious, and also days that were very mundane,” said Essiedu. “Stefan has that incredible knack for being able to isolate domesticity and allow domesticity to be a connection of manifestion and truth. So I had all different types of experiences.”
Essiedu, an Emmy-nominated star behind I May Destroy You and Gangs of London, has been in the spotlight due to his Snape casting (Reps for Babies said he would not answer questions about Harry Potter at Series Mania) due to JK Rowling’s frequent anti-trans tirades. In an interview with The Times of London this week, he also said he has received race-fuelled death threats over his casting as Snape.
On Babies, Essiedu said he felt safe.
“Because we were helmed by someone who had such clarity of vision available at all times it wasn’t challenging,” he said. “I find often that challenge comes from not feeling safe on the ground that you are building on. There were such strong foundations and a sense of clarity in the working environment.”
“I asked all my closest friends to send me their voicenotes”
Cullen used Golaszewski’s scripts as a “blueprint” for the role but also drew on the people close to her for advice.
“I have lots of people in my life that were kind enough and generous enough with their stories that I was able to speak with, and not just in terms of pregnancy loss,” she added. “To have people in my life that I can ask to give me their full birth story, warts and all, was great. Because I think a lot of women sometimes after they have a baby just say it all went well. So I asked all my closest friends to send me their voicenotes and videos and spent a whole afternoon just listening to them.”
Golaszewski said the show is not autobiographical but that he has “been through a lot of the issues dealt within it, so that meant I was aware of the positivity that could come from that kind of story.”
He said this taps into what he loves to do with his TV shows, “creating things that give people an emotional response.”
“I try and get a core human connection because that is the most useful thing that a piece of art can do,” he added. “Maybe that finds its expression most usefully in relationships. I don’t really have a message and think when things have a message the writer is just talking about himself. Everything I do is at the service of the person who puts the TV on and wants to feel something.”
Babies launches on the BBC next week and is in the international panorama section at Series Mania.