Jodie Comer admits that looking like the perfect mum in her latest movie is only part of the story
WORDS: ADAM TANSWELL PHOTOS: HOLLIE FERNANDO/ GUARDIAN/EYEVINE, ALAMY, HELEN MURRAY/AP
BABY TALK
Is there anything Jodie Comer can’t do? We’re beginning to doubt it after seeing the actress’s emotionally charged performance in her latest film The End We Start From.
In an apocalyptic story of survival, Jodie plays a mother fleeing a flooded London with her newborn baby. And as we have come to expect from the Liverpool-born star, she steals every scene she’s in (which is all of them) with her gripping performance.
This latest role may be a million miles away from Villanelle, the character she played in Killing Eve, but Jodie, 30, plays a panic-stricken mother just as convincingly as she does a Russian assassin.
When we chat to her over Zoom, Jodie – who split from her American lacrosse player boyfriend James Burke last year – admits she relied heavily on parenting insights from friends who have recently had babies.
The down-to-earth star tells us why a bout of Covid threw the production of her new movie – which also stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Fry and Gina McKee – into chaos, and how she’s not sure she would survive an apocalypse in real life…
Your new film is all about a mother’s fight for survival. Do you feel like a survivor in real life?
I think so. I think there are little moments within my life, on a very personal level, where I feel like I’ve survived things, but nothing of this magnitude. I think there are definitely little things within my personal life where I would think, “Well, I got through that.” Maybe the word “survivor” is a little extreme, but there are definitely moments to be proud of, where I’ve pushed through something that I didn’t think I could prior to the fact. So, yeah… a little bit.
You play a new mum and had to film a scene where your character is in labour. Did you have to explore anything as an actor that you hadn’t done before?
I don’t know if it’s necessarily something I hadn’t explored before, but I knew I wanted to portray motherhood in a way that felt very real. I think that was the most daunting thing for me. When you receive feedback from someone watching something you’ve done, you want them to think, “That is me. That is what I went through” or, “I recognise myself within that.” I feel like giving birth, as an experience, you either know what i
