Actor Bill Nighy says starring in new Netflix IVF film Joy was 'very special'
"You can't get a bigger story than this": Bill Nighy talks about his new film, Joy.
Actor Bill Nighy says starring in his upcoming film, which tells the remarkable true story of the world's first IVF baby, was "very special".
Joy focuses on the birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first "test-tube baby" born in Oldham General Hospital in 1978, and the tireless 10-year journey to make it possible.
Nighy plays scientist Patrick Steptoe, who created the technology, which is used to treat infertility, alongside nurse Jean Purdy and physiologist Sir Robert Edwards.
Speaking about his role in the film at premiere in London, the actor said: "It's very special. It's such a big story.
"You can't get a bigger story given that now 16 million women have children who wouldn't have had children if these three obsessives had not persevered.
"Over a 10-year period they failed and failed and failed, attacked by the newspapers, the church, their families, and the medical association - no one supported them.
"They had no funding. They did it out of temporary buildings out the back of Oldham hospital because nobody in London would touch them.
"But they persevered. Louise Brown was born 47 years ago and everybody shut up."
Nighy, 74, best known for Love Actually and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, said the subject of the film was close to the heart of everyone involved.
He said: “The producer has an IVF family, the director has an IVF family, and the writer has IVF children, so there was that element which informed the atmosphere to some degree."
The film shines a light on Jean Purdy, the female scientist whose involvement in the story was "airbrushed out of the whole affair because she didn't have a penis", Nighy said.
“One of the millions of occasions where women have been dismissed as part of the story, because they were considered sub-humans."
Louise Brown, 46, was present at the premiere and said it was “surreal but amazing” that the film about her life was giving the creators of IVF the “recognition that they deserve”.
She said: “It’s very surreal but amazing that the three pioneers (of IVF) are finally getting the recognition that they deserve.
“It wasn’t easy for them, but they kept at it and thank you that they did because without them, me and 12 million others wouldn’t be here.”
Joy will be released in the UK on 15 November and will arrive on Netflix on 22 November.
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