Call the Midwife star Stephen McGann reveals his biggest complaint about BBC storylines

British actor Stephen McGann, who plays Dr Patrick Turner in Call the Midwife, has voiced his biggest complaint with the series’ recent storylines.

Stephen, 59 recently opened up about his biggest complaint with the BBC drama’s storylines, which he told to his wife Heidi Thomas, who is the writer and creator of Call the Midwife. 

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BBC

The actor told Heidi, also 59, that he didn’t like acting with fake babies during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The pandemic meant it wasn’t safe to have real babies on set, so all the children who were born on the show during that time were actually fake babies or dolls, which were disguised using blankets or by the actors. 

However, Stephen told the BFI and Radio Times Television Festival how he missed having real babies on set.

“They know I am soppy because I love a baby, I am one of those blokes, I couldn’t pick a baby up in the early years of my life,” he said.

“And then I had a child, and sometimes nurses and the midwifery nurses are like ‘Oh just give him the baby’ with the mums are eyeing me up still.”

Responding to her husband’s comment, Heidi said: “When I created the series, obviously we are married, and we have been for years, but he never ever in all this time commented on his storyline.

“That he didn’t like it or want more. The only thing he has ever said to me is ‘I haven’t held a baby in ages’.”

Steven added: “I held a baby last week, and I was like ‘Yay’. One of my favourite ones just before the pandemic started.”

He continued: “Babies … do very unpredictable things, and a baby will come out of a mummy’s tummy in many ways but very rarely asleep.

“Sometimes the babies are so comfortable they are fast asleep, they are babies so you can’t wake them, and then everyone is around them like men around a motor engine, and they won’t wake up.

“My favourite one is, just as they wind down to tape, just as they count down, the baby just lets his bowels loose, just as I was meant to do a really long speech, and then smiles up at me.”

Laura Main, 41, who plays Stephen’s on-screen wife Shelagh Turner, also teased what it felt like filming with real babies, and shared how excited she was for viewers to see those scenes in the Christmas special later this year.

“I don’t want to give anything away about Christmas … but basically, I saw my hands on the monitor the other day, and I said, ‘I can’t believe that is me’.

“It was just my hands, but it was because it was a real baby again! Before, somebody would have been dressed as me, but this time it was me, and it took me by surprise,” she revealed.

Viewers can look forward to seeing Stephen, Laura and the rest of the Call the Midwife cast again soon in the show’s upcoming Christmas special. The special is sure to be an emotional one, following the events of the devastating train crash at the end of Season 11. 

Season 12 will follow shortly after the Christmas special, arriving on screens in 2023.