‘Harry Potter’ Stars Paapa Essiedu and Siobhán Cullen Welcome ‘Babies’

BBC series ‘Babies’ about pregnancy loss – starring the new Severus Snape Paapa Essiedu – gambles on ‘glorious chaos and mess’ and love: ‘It’s all that matters.’

BBC series ‘Babies’, which premiered at Series Mania, features a loving couple – and their family and friends – dealing with the heartbreak of pregnancy loss.

“I have experienced what is discussed in the show, but it is not autobiographical,” says creator and director Stefan Golaszewski Variety prior to the festival.

“It started to feel like a story to tell, but tell it with hope. The ultimate goal of the show is to connect with people who have gone through that, or even just experienced loss. That’s nice for everyone, I think. I wanted to make them feel less alone.”

In ‘Babies’, Lisa (Siobhán Cullen, seen in ‘The Dry’ and ‘Obituary’) and Stephen (Paapa Essiedu) deal with their misfortunes differently. He tries to stay positive no matter what; she slowly disappears.

That marks yet another show for “Harry Potter” actor Paapa Essiedu, who recently made headlines after admitting he received death threats over his casting as Severus Snape in the upcoming HBO Max adaptation.

With the help of Cullen and Essiedu, Golaszewski wanted to portray the changes in a relationship going through its first real test.

“For example, with the flashback in Episode 3, I tried to show not only the basis of their relationship, but also the basis of their beliefs. The same beliefs that cause them problems in the present are the beliefs that attracted them to each other in the past,” he says.

“Lisa becomes enraged. Stephen avoids it as long as he can, until it becomes inevitable. These responses to grief are rooted in who they are and how they were raised.”

The show is produced by Snowed-In Productions, Money Men Studios and All3Media International, with the latter handling sales.

His actors may be on the brink of stardom, but Golaszewski kept things real: In “Babies,” people’s apartments look lived in and they’re constantly worried about money. He admits that he wanted to create an emotional connection with viewers and “talk to the audience in an honest way about what it’s like to be them.”

“A lot of writing is about ‘unwriting’ to achieve a greater sense of disposable truth about how people speak, what clothes they wear, or what their surroundings look like. People have asked me, ‘What’s the color palette here?’ We don’t normally color code our lives! If Lisa and Stephen were a little older and more middle class, they might have some interior design ambitions. But they don’t. There’s a kind of glorious chaos and mess that feels like a truer representation of the world.

While the first episodes, which portray their disappointment, are “the bleakest,” happiness comes later.

“You bounce between their first meeting and them in the present day, so you’re juxtaposing the joyful hope of the beginning of love with the first fire they step through. In one episode, Stephen’s whole positivity thing has just fallen apart. He’s in a hole and he has to climb out. You’re seeing people who have experienced the first terrible thing that happened to them as a couple, and possibly as individuals, and how they’ve grown from it.”

So, what does he want to say about love in the show?

“It’s really all there is. It’s the only thing that matters.”

“Love is what pulls them through. In some ways, this story is just a romance. You could have a romance where two people fall in love, and he moves to China while she lives in LA. This is a romance where people keep losing babies, and the security and excitement of their youth, which they thought would last forever, is gone. They have to figure out who they are and how to move on.”

Golaszewski doesn’t shy away from pain, but he wanted to provide the audience with a “safe experience.”

“There’s something in the nature of creating something that lands in the audience’s living room, in the heart of their home environment. If I were to present this story in a colder, darker way, I’m not sure what positivity that would bring to people. I want them to feel better about the world after watching it.”

However, there will not be a new season of ‘Babies’.

“It’s a one-off,” he emphasizes.

“I’ve done repeat series in the past, but this can affect the purity of the idea, the concept and the journey you wanted to take. Because of this, I feel like the best version of it is just this one journey. It’s about a couple who have grown from people who didn’t have trauma happen to people who did. There’s a coming-of-age element to that journey that feels like it only lasts six hours.”