Linda Bassett and Georgie Glen on Call the Midwife (Image: Supplied)
As nurse Phyllis Crane and doctor’s receptionist Millicent Higgins, Linda Bassett and Georgie Glen inhabit their no-nonsense characters in Call The Midwife so completely you couldn’t imagine them playing anyone else.
However, the pair have worked together previously – although what they got up to would have had the prim and proper nuns of Nonnatus House reaching for the smelling salts.
They both bared all in the iconic 2003 hit film Calendar Girls, about real-life Women’s Institute members who stripped off for a nude calendar to raise funds for a leukaemia charity.
“I was a small element in the film whereas Linda was one of the six main women,” recalls Georgie, 68.
“We were both in the naked scenes, though, and had to take our clothes off on camera.
“I remember we were very supportive of each other. It certainly wasn’t what Linda nor I were used to doing in the course of our work.”
Linda, 74, remembers feeling especially apprehensive about disrobing.
“But Georgie was particularly kind to me,” she says. “I was very nervous – trembling, in fact. Georgie gave me a little bunch of flowers to let me know she was thinking of me on the morning I had to do my naked shot.
“I was so appreciative. I don’t recall Georgie being as petrified as I was.”
That was all down to some sage advice from Dame Helen Mirren, who played Chris Harper, the driving force behind the idea to strip off for a charity calendar.
“Helen gave me a great tip for the day of nudity,” Georgie smiles. “‘Wear a pair of high heels, Georgie! It’ll make you feel powerful’.
“And it worked! Me standing there next to my shrub – wearing nothing but gardening gloves, heels and a grin.”
Linda and Georgie with their Calendar Girls castmates (Image: Supplied)
The close friends were delighted to be reunited on Call The Midwife when Georgie joined the cast in 2018, three years after Linda. And in a case of art imitating life, a strong friendship has grown between their two characters which has become extremely popular with fans.
Their gentle banter, genuine mutual affection and sense of companionship whenever they’re on screen together leaves viewers wanting more.
After all, who doesn’t like having a close friend who totally has our back and whom we can laugh with as well as confide in? “Absolutely,” agrees Georgie. “Phyllis and Millicent have such a lovely relationship with each other. It has certainly resonated with the viewers – especially female viewers. This kind of friendship between older women isn’t represented that much on screen, yet it’s so important in real life.
“I value my close female friends, I think, almost more highly than anything else. Not above family, perhaps, but my friends are so important to me.
“I’m lucky enough to have a few really close friends. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”
Linda says she’s often told by viewers – both younger and older – how much they enjoy the Crane-Higgins friendship.
“There’s something very reassuring about Phyllis and Millicent, I think.
“They may be stiff and starchy by today’s standards, but they have hearts of gold.
“I think younger people like them because they give off a sense of safety. They’re good in a crisis.
“I don’t know if women like them exist anymore. Women who are quite formal and have that sense of decorum, I mean.
“Nurse Crane is actually a Victorian, having been born when Queen Victoria was still on the throne. She and Miss Higgins are part of the lost generation who lost a whole generation of men in the First World War. I had great aunts like this, and they were actually called ‘surplus women’ by society. That’s not necessarily how they saw themselves, but it just gives you an idea.
“I had teachers like Miss Higgins and Nurse Crane, too. Fantastic women who were dedicated to advancing girls’ education.
“They were inspiring, very adventurous, independent and funny. Women like them have always been my inspiration for Phyllis – and then when Georgie arrived there were two of us. Great!”
Georgie as Millicent Higgins and Linda as Nurse Crane (Image: Olly Courtney)
Nurse Crane and Miss Higgins didn’t have much to do with each other at first and, in fact, eyed each other rather warily but a strong friendship has evolved between the two fan favourites over the years.
“We’ve had the time and space on Call The Midwife to enable that to happen,” Linda says.
“You don’t really get that on TV any more. You did used to in the soaps, in the days of Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst.
“But now the soaps are so plot-driven and often sensationalist. All too often female characters on TV are portrayed as competing with each other and putting each other down.
“While manufacturing this friction does cause a kind of temporary excitement, it’s not what friendships between women are really like.
“As an actress and a woman, Call The Midwife is wonderful. There are quite a few of us more mature ones and, at 74, I’m not even the eldest!
“We support each other and look out for each other, and that’s what Call The Midwife is all about, too. Women supporting each other, being there for each other, having each other’s backs.
“Female friends are important all the way through your life. From being schoolgirls together to being young women, to being young married women or women with children and so on.
“Some of my friends I’ve known for 50 years. So very deep roots. As you get older and lose family, friendships become ever more important.
“When you’ve known someone a long time, when you look at each other you don’t see how old you really are, you look at each other and see a woman throughout all the years you’ve known each other. You keep the young ‘you’ alive and it’s lovely when your friends knew and remember your parents and understand your full history.”
Georgie and Linda on set (Image: Supplied)
Even speaking to Linda and Georgie on a video call, the easy rapport between them shines through – just as on screen with Nurse Crane and Miss Higgins. So would they say they resemble their characters, I wonder?
“I don’t think I do that much,” chuckles Linda. “I’m nowhere near as practical as Phyllis.
“I just don’t live the same kind of life and have had very different experiences to Nurse Crane.
“But I think I’ve probably become more like her over the years.”
Georgie adds: “I’m comfortable playing Millicent. I’m not sure why because I don’t think I’m like her in many ways. I’m quite a chaotic person and not at all formal. But – in the same way Linda alluded to her great aunts – I feel somewhere there’s women like Miss Higgins in my DNA.
“I’ve been playing her for quite a few years now but I really took to it like a duck to water.
“She’s softened a bit. Linda and I both feel quite protective about our characters and we decide how to make it work for us. We don’t want to be pigeon-holed. Our favourite scenes are when we are just doing what friends do – sitting and chatting and always being there for each other.”
It seems both women harbour dreams to extend their partnership beyond Call The Midwife. A spin-off in the form of a Nurse Crane and Miss Higgins’ road trip, for starters.
“We would love to do a show together as Phyllis and Millicent,” laughs Georgie.
“Perhaps them taking time out from Poplar and going on holiday together. We’d drive around in Phyllis’ Morris Minor! Their take on things would be so funny and interesting.
“The two of them on a tour of little tea rooms – with perhaps the odd cocktail bar thrown in. Just imagine if the service wasn’t up to scratch.”
● Call The Midwife is on at 8pm on Sundays One and on iPlayer.