This wasn’t Jodie’s first encounter with the ruthlessness of on-line bigotry. Her flip as Henry VIII’s second spouse within the 2021 Channel 5 mini-series Anne Boleyn turned fodder for remark sections throughout the web, with some enraged {that a} Black lady may and would play historic royalty – earlier than anybody had even seen a second of footage. (As soon as the collection was out on this planet, regardless of constructive critiques calling the collection “a showcase of Jodie Turner-Smith’s resilience as a performer”, the present was nonetheless mercilessly review-bombed on neighborhood websites.) However Jodie remembers the collection otherwise. There was the fixed concern and nervousness, the uncertainty in herself. She had solely given start to Juno months earlier than the winter shoot in Yorkshire. “You have to understand – after you have a baby, so much of you is different,” she explains. “There’s so much telling you that you can’t do anything anymore. Being a woman is so hard. And if they can, they’ll take everything from you. Just know that you’re capable, no matter what.”
It was the primary time that Jodie was first on the decision sheet, and shouldering the stress of being the lead was solely compounded by her obligations as a brand new mom. The schedule of the present’s six-week manufacturing was relentless. She was on set from first mild, then up all evening by her daughter’s aspect.
“I was breastfeeding her every three hours, and then [Juno] got sick, getting these respiratory infections,” Jodie remembers, her voice shaking on the reminiscence. “We were shooting in these cold, damp castles, and I was in fucking back rooms pumping. My daughter started getting used to the bottle. She was refusing my breast on the weekends. I was devastated the whole time, thinking my milk was drying up.”
Interviews like this could usually really feel round, however this has been a uncommon, life-affirming dialog. Such is the impact of Jodie’s resilience; she has taken no matter life has thrown at her, hammered away at it, and turned it into armour. A lady actually, to make use of her personal phrases, descended from warriors.
“I got this,” she says. “I got this because the only thing I know how to do is not break. I don’t know what the path to success looks like, but I know that I will not, I shall not, I cannot break.”
As Jodie and I put together to depart, our dialog briefly turns to the artwork of manifestation. “I said I wanted a brilliant, intelligent, sassy daughter, and here she is,” she says of Juno, beaming. “When I met my husband, I told him that I wanted to be a movie star, and three months later I got Queen & Slim.” Nobody however Jodie Turner-Smith writes her future. All it takes is difficult work, dedication and just a bit little bit of magic – and I, for one, can’t wait to see what Jodie wills into existence subsequent.
