Where Do They Get the Babies on Call the Midwife

3. When temperatures soar, Helen George, who plays Trixie, hires an ice cream van to serve the bandage and crew frozen treats.

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4. Information technology takes several days to prepare the backdrop for winter scenes, with wooden frames, fabric, fake snow and plastic icicles hanging from lampposts.

v. Nonnatus House was named after St Raymond Nonnatus, who was born by caesarean section and is the patron saint of childbirth and meaning women. Non natus is Latin for "not born".

6. The nuns are based on sisters from the Anglican Community of St John the Divine. The order is even so active, though the remaining sisters left the Eastward Finish in 1976 and now work with the homeless in Birmingham. Earlier she died, Jennifer Worth, whose memoirs inspired the series, set up a trust for the order so they receive an income from the profits of the books and the show.

7 .Jennifer Worth's books only provided one-and-a-one-half serial worth of material. Afterward series one, the team hired a researcher to interview people who'd written into the show with their own stories. Heidi Thomas (the series' creator and author) calls it oral testimony, and it has provided her with roughly half the stories for the drama.

8. Heidi was inspired to bring Call the Midwife to the screen after she suffered a serious disease 14 months after her son Dominic was born, to accolade the care and kindness she received from the nurses.

nine. For serial one and ii, St Joseph's Higher in Mill Colina, north London — built past Father Herbert Vaughan in 1866 as Britain's first Catholic missionary college — was used as the setting for Nonnatus Firm. In 2013, the building was sold to a developer, so the squad decamped to the Manor House at Longcross Film Studios in Surrey, formerly the site of an Modern tank test rail.

ten. During filming in spring 2016, Telephone call the Midwife shared the studio with the Millennium Falcon, with filming for Star Wars: The Concluding Jedi taking place on an outdoor lot.

11. Theed Street almost Waterloo station in London is the location for outside shots of terraced houses that open up directly on to a street.

12. Manor House was an officers' mess hall subsequently the 2d World War — and the start flooring is reputed to be haunted.

13. Most street scenes are shot in the Historic Dockyard Chatham in Kent. Staff have renamed i street Chummy's Hill, subsequently the scene when Camilla "Chummy" Browne (Miranda Hart) tried to ride a bicycle and crashed into PC Noakes.

fourteen. Information technology takes effectually seven hours to film every birth — real infants can only film for fifteen minutes at a time and then the team has worked with thousands of children.

15. All of the on-set food is real, with cakes brought in from an artisan bakery to give the right look to a Victoria sponge.

16 Mary Berry offered to broil the cakes for the show when the electric current producer, Ann Tricklebank, ran into her at the National Television Awards concluding year.

17. The nuns' Royal Doulton Cascade tea set has a bigger post purse than some of the actors. Viewers either share memories or complain they've broken their saccharide bowl. Members of the squad'south fine art department buy a lot on eBay, and if they find a spare carbohydrate basin they pass it on.

18. Heidi Thomas is a stickler for flow accuracy. In series 2, while the show's usual fix dresser was off sick, there was a scene with a family unit eating Sunday luncheon and the stand up-in dresser put broccoli on the table. Because nobody ate broccoli in 1959 they used an editing tool and decolourised the broccoli then that it looked like cauliflower.

Call The Midwife author Heidi Thomas

19. Directors who are new to the show receive a mood board, which always includes pictures taken past Nick Hedges in the late 1960s as part of a housing campaign run by Shelter, the homelessness clemency.

xx. The character of Reggie Jackson, who has Downwards'southward syndrome, was inspired by Heidi Thomas's tardily brother David, who also had the status.

21. For the Thalidomide storyline, two silicone babies were made to play baby Susan, one of whom is animatronic. Both the silicone babies have now been donated to the Thalidomide Order.

22. About on-screen births involve both a real and a prosthetic baby. The evidence has three prosthetic babies, which toll £five,000 each to make from the same medical-grade silicone used in bogus limbs. It feels similar human peel to the affect.

23.There's a drawer full of umbilical cords on set — different sizes of baby crave different sizes of umbilical string.

24. Minced beefiness was once used every bit a broken-up placenta. Afterwards, the show's midwifery adviser, Terri Coates, insisted the room and the crew exist sterilised before the baby came in for filming.

25. When waters break during a delivery, either Terri or the actress punctures a condom total of h2o to squirt out fake amniotic fluid.

26. With a couple of rare exceptions — how-do-you-do, Anita Dobson! — the bear witness isn't dandy on big-name cameos. That doesn't stop celebrities' agents writing in to ask for their clients to exist in it, although this arroyo has all the same to piece of work.

27. Cliff Parisi, who plays Fred Buckle, qualified for his private airplane pilot's licence while working on the show.

28. Max Macmillan, who plays young Timothy Turner, is an proficient pianist and often plays the on-fix piano for the bandage between scenes.

29. Jenny Agutter's son is a real-life dr., working full-fourth dimension for the NHS.

30. Stephen McGann is left-handed and that makes some procedures difficult for him to replicate as medical tools are made for right-handed people, and then he practises once again and again using his "incorrect" paw. For really circuitous procedures, Terri Coates'southward paediatrician husband puts on a mask and plays Dr Turner to get the details right for the camera.

31. Stephen McGann is an skillful at the fine art of origami — he folds all the paper animals that Dr Turner makes.

32. Despite the fact that Heidi Thomas and Stephen McGann are married and Heidi works from home, Stephen doesn't read a word of the scripts until they get in in the post.

33. The Phone call the Midwife soundtrack album, which featured the cast singing their version of Elevator Rock originally sung by Tommy Steele, was a hitting in 2013, shifting more 60,000 copies.

34. In November that year, on-screen hubby and married woman Stephen McGann and Laura Main followed up the anthology with a single, When I Fall in Love, released for Children in Demand. Laura also won a Children in Demand Call the Midwife Strictly special.

35. The children pictured on the front of the start DVD cover and in lots of publicity shots, running behind the midwives on their bikes, are executive producer Pippa Harris's daughter Ella McBrien and her friends, Mae, Sam, Laurence and Henry Topley.

36. Hayley Squires, who made her screen debut equally Conchita Warren's daughter Maureen in the very first episode, went on to get a Bafta nomination and win a British Independent Moving picture Laurels for her role as Katie in I, Daniel Blake.

37. Now anile four, Alice Chocolate-brown has played Angela Turner since she was a few months quondam. Producers in one case hired a body double so that she could attend a friend's birthday party.

38. The location for the Hope Clinic in Due south Africa was actually a children's school — the Telephone call the Midwife squad gave the kids enough repast vouchers to become them through the wintertime, also as warm coats and shoes.

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39. While filming in South Africa, cast members were surprised to find people living without electricity in the townships knew who they were. Township shabeens (illicit bars) often show the drama on communal televisions.

40. Call the Midwife has been sold to over 100 countries. The 2017 Christmas Special besides aired on Christmas night beyond the USA, and on Battle Day in Australia.

41. The show has a global cast. Actors from Red china, Pakistan, Somalia, Japan, India, Bangladesh, Russia, Ireland, Sweden, Nigeria, Norway, St Lucia, Jamaica and South Africa have all appeared.

42. Victoria Yeates who plays Sis Winifred, became engaged to musician Paul Housden while filming the 2016 Christmas special in Southward Africa.

43. In the UK, the show is often described as comforting and cornball, but in the The states it's seen equally a radical statement for gratis medical care. An LA Times reviewer described the evidence as "a timely valentine to socialised medicine".

44. When serial one director Philippa Lowthorpe won the Bafta best director award for her piece of work on the evidence in 2013, she was the starting time adult female to be awarded the fiction directing prize by the University. In total, 11 women have directed episodes of CTM.

45. Heidi Thomas, Pippa Harris and Ann Tricklebank commencement worked together some 25 years ago on ITV'southward Soldier Soldier.

46. The Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Cornwall are both said to be fans, and a DVD of the festive episode is sent to Sandringham at Christmas.

47. When Trixie became engaged to Tom Hereward the vicar, the prove'southward costume section struggled to find the right 1920s band, so Heidi lent Helen George a band from her own jewellery box. Awkwardly, in the story, Trixie hated the ring.

48. Most of the prove's invitee female characters — who appear in i or two episodes — arrive on set with highlights of some kind in their hair. The team take them to a salon for a colour wash, then pay to have the highlights put back in again after shooting. This accounts for the largest part of the hair and make-up budget.

49. Information technology takes two hours to do each of the midwives' hair with backcombing and lacquer. It's all their own hair, with a couple of judicious extensions hither and there.

50. In the 1960s the midwives would accept worn masks when they were with the newborn babies merely the production team decided to overlook this, every bit information technology was felt viewers would struggle to tell who was who in a lot of scenes.

51. Celebrated events are rarely referenced, with 1 big exception — the Space Race, starting with Yuri Gagarin in series five. In serial vii, the get-go woman in infinite, Valentina Tereshkova, gets a namecheck in episode four. She went into orbit in the summer of 1963.

52. The producers are fanatical about secrecy and spoilers. They often put out false call sheets and then the public won't know where they're filming, as hundreds of fans turn upward to lookout man outdoor location scenes.

53. Production on the bear witness centres around a full script read through the twenty-four hour period earlier shooting, which is always themed. When sexual activity education classes were function of the story, the room was busy with birds and bees; for Lucy Chen'south Chinese community storyline there were Chinese snacks and everyone got a fan.

54. Helen George's dog Charlie comes to every read through and loves the sound of applause. When the read through wraps and everyone claps he leaps into the centre of the room.

55. Judy Parfitt, who plays Sister Monica Joan, has a white poodle called Freddie who appeared in episode v of series six. Unfortunately, Freddie hates Stephen McGann….

56. The best-legs-on-set contest was won by Judy Parfitt, who hitched up her habit and trounced the youngsters.

57. Celebrity fans include Lena Dunham, Whoopi Goldberg and Paul McCartney, whose mother was a midwife.

58. Heidi Thomas used to assist the Akela of her local Cub pack — hence the many storylines involving Cub Scouts.

59.For the kickoff series, the team asked midwives at a maternity unit of measurement if they knew any women who would be happy to bring babies to the fix. By series two, regulations had tightened so all babies are now recruited through licensed agencies.

60. The show'due south first breech birth, with Chummy helping the delivery, took a whole day to film, and is at present used for didactics purposes past trainee obstetricians.

61. All costumes are made in triplicate to cater for blood, clay or rips that might occur in scenes that are filmed out of chronological order.

62. Costume designer Amy Roberts met the nuns of the Order of St John the Divine to bank check menstruum details before designing outfits. The original habit for the series was bright blue but had to be toned down for the cameras.

63. Over the offset six series — a total of 51 episodes — of Call the Midwife, Terri Coates estimates that there accept been 91 on-screen births filmed (including two nevertheless births), which means that the 100th birth should fall in series seven!

This article was originally published in Feb 2018

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Source: https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/call-the-midwife-behind-the-scenes-facts-trivia-filming-secrets/

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