Actress Pearl Mackie on her New One-Woman Play Baby

Pearl Mackie’s latest role is in Baby, a new one-woman play written by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti and directed by Milli Bhatia. She plays every character in a powerful story of a mother fighting to be reunited with her daughter after her life has been shaped by trauma and encounters with the criminal justice system. The production has premiered at Brixton House in Mackie’s hometown of Brixton to critical acclaim.

Best known for playing Bill Potts, the Doctor’s companion opposite Peter Capaldi in the BBC’s Doctor Who. Her screen work since then has included the first two seasons of Netflix’s The Diplomat and the role of DS Jen Rafferty in ITV’s The Long Call. On stage, her work reflects her beliefs in social advocacy, playing Natasha Elcock in Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors at the National Theatre.

Mackie is a long-standing supporter of Clean Break, a women’s theatre company that works with women affected by the criminal justice system. She spoke to us about playing every role in Baby and about why she believes the experiences of women in prison deserve better representation on stage and beyond.

Pearl Mackie. Image credits: Photographer: By Pip, Styling: Harriet Nicholson, Makeup: Alexis Day, Hair: Kieron Lavine.

You’ve been a big supporter of Clean Break. Could you explain what the company does and how it connects to Baby, and what was it about Baby, that made you want to take the play on?

Clean Break are an amazing company that have been going since the 1970s. They work with women who have lived experience of the criminal justice system, or who are at risk of entering it because of mental health or other issues. They run workshops in theatre, performance, creativity and wellbeing, and take plays and workshops into prisons. I’ve done some of the workshops myself during this rehearsal process, and they offer a real community space, somewhere to share your experiences and, importantly, somewhere not to be judged.

Baby is an incredible story, and it really spoke to me on a human level. It’s not something I have any personal experience of, but it’s important not to separate ourselves in that way. What struck me was Baby’s humanity: her resilience, her positivity in the face of so much trauma, and her drive to be reunited with her daughter. It’s a very real situation, and I’m sure many women are going through it right now. It felt really important to bring that story to audiences, and for us to understand that we have more in common than what divides us.

When performing the show, how do you move between all the characters that you have to play?

The way the story is constructed, we meet Baby in the present. She tells us that she’s done something terrible and that she needs the audience to support her, advocate for her, and help her write a character reference. Then she goes back through her life so she can give as much detail as possible about who she really is. She goes through her life chronologically, and I think what Gurpreet has done really cleverly is that the first character we meet is her mum, and we see the impact her mum has had on her life. That scene is a little longer than most of the others, so it really establishes the idea of me playing two different characters.

To play all these characters, what Millie Bartio, our director, and I did was establish some rules. How are we going to differentiate between the characters? Are we doing it vocally, physically, or both? Are we using a different eyeline? A lot of it is quite quick and back and forth, and you don’t want to lose any of the pace of the story when you’re switching between characters. With all of them, we’ve ended up with a different vocal quality and a different physical quality, but hopefully in a way that’s quite subtle, while still clear enough to delineate the characters. I don’t think it’s hugely interesting watching someone take a long time to change character. By the end of the play, Baby’s mind is becoming more scattered, because her urgency to finish telling her story before the people come for her becomes more desperate. The characters become more fragmented too, so we realised we didn’t necessarily need to keep to the rules we’d established.

I think it’s really important not to patronise your audiences. They’re smart. If you’re communicating the story properly, then the next time you play a different character, they think, “Oh yeah, we get it. We’ve seen this, we buy it.” Hopefully, anyway!

What’s it like being alone on stage, with no one to lean on during the performance? And has your relationship to any of the characters changed since the run began?

Firstly, it is kind of terrifying being on stage by yourself, but I think it would be strange if I wasn’t terrified. At the first show I was definitely like, “Wow, this is wild.” But once you realise that the audience are there, and are supportive and listening, you’re just like, “Okay, we’re in this together.” They become like a character themselves.

At first, I felt quite angry with some of the characters. A lot of them are catalysts in the experiences that lead Baby to go into prison and to be separated from her child. But in rehearsal, I realised that their scenes take us back to the moments where these realisations happen for Baby, so my own anger on her behalf coming through them wasn’t very useful. What we have to do is depict those characters and scenes as honestly as we can, so we tell the story most effectively. That said, I still feel very angry with most of them!

There’s one character at the end, though, and some of the things she says and the kindness she offers are really lovely. Without ruining the play, I think that’s maybe one of the first times we see Baby receive those feelings. When I first read Baby, I couldn’t get through the play without feeling quite emotional, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily changed. I think I’ve just been able to establish a bit of separation between those moments, but it is ongoing, so I don’t know, maybe next week I’ll feel differently.

Pearl Mackie in Baby at Brixton House. Image credit: Helen Murray.

Baby is quite a resilient play, with humour in the writing too. How do you find the light in such dark material, and how have audiences responded?

I do think there’s a lot of joy in the story. At the beginning, Baby is really positive and driven, with a real zest for life. I’ve noticed that audiences really respond to those moments of joy, which is lovely to see. The structure also draws you in, moving through her life chronologically while flashing forward to the present. By the end, I’ve seen people really leaning in, fully gripped by what’s happening.

When I read the play, I knew I had to do it. It made me happy, it made me sad, it made me feel all the emotions. If I can bring even an ounce of that to life for an audience, that will be an amazing achievement. But hopefully I’m also bringing an important story about people who don’t always have a voice to the stage, and giving that voice space to breathe.

It seems at the heart of Baby, is her desperation to hold on to her daughter. How did you approach that relationship?

The impact of being separated from a child is monumental. I don’t have any children yet, but many of my best friends are mothers, and I’m very close to their children and to my own nieces and nephews. During rehearsals, we were lucky enough to speak to two wonderful women who are members of Clean Break and of Lost Mothers, a charity that helps reunite mothers with their children, or helps them deal with the impact of separation, supporting them through probation and social workers.

Hearing their stories was invaluable, and it made me realise that this is happening all the time. So many women in prison are mothers, and when they go into the criminal justice system, they’re separated from their children. Some can stay with their babies on a mother and baby unit, but only if their prison has one, there’s space in it, and their sentence is short enough. Otherwise, they will inevitably be separated. And once you’re separated from your child, getting them back is much more difficult.

That’s what really drives Baby. She just wants to be with her daughter and to give her the best life she possibly can. I think she’s aware of her shortcomings, but the love is there, and it’s what keeps the play going and keeps Baby going until the end.

The play was inspired by Gurpreet, our writer, going into a prison with Lost Mothers to do a workshop. She saw a row of babies being wheeled out of the prison for a day out, and she said it had a huge impact on her. That really struck a chord with me, because I thought, what a privileged position I live in, where I’ve never really had to think about that. It feels so basic. We understand that women have children, and we understand that women go to prison, but I don’t know why I’d never put those two things together before, or thought about the fact that they can’t stay together.

Pearl Mackie in Baby at Brixton House. Image credit: Helen Murray.

Do you hope Baby changes the way audiences think about women in the justice system, particularly mothers separated from their children?

Definitely, and some of the statistics around women in prison really impacted me, with a notable one for me being that around 53% of women in prison report experiencing abuse as a child. More people need to know about this. I just don’t understand why these statistics aren’t everywhere. For example, pregnant women in prison are seven times more likely to suffer a stillbirth. An estimated 17,000 children are separated from their mothers by imprisonment every year, with women who’ve been separated from their children by imprisonment 14 times more likely to attempt suicide. That escalation just makes me so angry.

A couple of my friends have recently had babies, and I think about all the effort they put into looking after themselves and their bodies: taking vitamins, making sure they’re comfortable, going to antenatal classes. That kind of thing isn’t available to women in prison. And after that, you don’t have the freedom to take your baby to the park and show them the world. There should be better support systems in place for women. Lots of charities are doing amazing work, but they need more help.

You grew up in Brixton, and the play premiered at Brixton House. What has it meant to bring this play to your hometown?

Do you know what? It’s felt quite amazing. I feel very lucky with the serendipity of being able to tell such an important story in Brixton. Brixton House audiences are often much more diverse than the upper-middle-class white audiences a lot of theatres have, so it’s important that we’re telling these stories here. I definitely think those audiences need to hear it too though I’m not going to lie!

It’s just quite mad too. They put a big poster of my face on a wall in Brixton just by the theatre, and I didn’t know they were going to do that. I remember going past it and thinking, “Oh right, that’s literally my face in my hometown,”. It feels like quite an epic homecoming, and a real full-circle moment.

Finally, you were in Grenfell: in the words of survivors at the National Theatre, which also told urgent stories. Why is it so important to you to champion the stories of underrepresented and marginalised people?

I don’t think I initially realised how important these stories are to me, but I guess if you look at my CV, it doesn’t lie! As a Londoner, Grenfell had such a huge impact on me that when I read the play, I didn’t think the story should be told in any other way. It has been told in other ways, and that attention matters, but things are still moving too slowly. It will be ten years next year.

Maybe it comes from my mum, who was an activist. She brought me up with a strong sense of justice, and a belief that you should make noise about the things you think are important, even if no one else is making noise about them. That you should advocate for people who don’t always have the capacity to advocate for themselves, and advocate for yourself as well. I grew up on a council estate in Brixton, and the way the criminal justice system treats Black and brown people has always made me very, very angry.

For me, the truth of a story is something I really resonate with. Stories I haven’t heard before, stories told in a new way, and stories that give a voice to people who don’t necessarily have one are crucial. But who knows, maybe I’ll do a comedy next!

Pearl Mackie. Image credits: Photographer: By Pip, Styling: Harriet Nicholson, Makeup: Alexis Day, Hair: Kieron Lavine.

Baby starring Pearl Mackie, written by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, and directed by Milli Bhatia runs at Brixton House Theatre until the 31st of October. Tickets can be purchased on the Brixton House website.