Charlotte Riley: ‘If You Want Films Lit, Written Or Directed By Women, You Have To Support Them’

You'll know Charlotte Riley from a host of films and big-budget TV productions like Wuthering Heights, one of the UK's biggest actresses.

And when you look at her IMDB page, you'll also notice there are few gaps - that, throughout becoming a mother twice (she's also stepmother to husband Tom Hardy's son from a previous relationship) she has continued to work at the highest levels.

But, she says, when she stepped onto set as a mother, she realised that wasn't the case for most of her colleagues throughout the production. It was that realisation that led her down an unlikely second career, as a childcare provider and campaigner.

Charlotte is the co-founder of theWonderWorks - a company that runs a full-time educational facility at the Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden. They also run mobile facilities for on-location shoots and are involved in trying to change the face of the industry.

As part of our campaign for Childcare Change Now, we spoke to Charlotte about why she is so motivated to make a difference - and why it matters to everyone, not just parents.

Tell us why you decided to start The WonderWorks…

Well, it basically was born out of my and the other co founder, Mark Radcliffe’s personal experience, that of me being a mum returning to work on set. Obviously, being an actor who was further up to the call sheet, my caring needs were listened to and met, in terms of me being able to bring my child along to work - there was no other way of me doing it without my child being with me.

But then I was on set seeing that loads of other people, mainly the crew, weren't able to have their children there. I was able to eat lunch with my child, and I just knew that there was this need for it.

We have a huge amount of investment in grassroots diversity, inclusion and accessibility in the industry, but then when people hit the parental years, all of that disappears. Raising Films, with their survey showed that 79% of parents said that their career was negatively affected by becoming a parent. For me, there's a huge push at the moment for equality in our industry and, and people wanting 50/50 representation on screen, but I just don't feel that we're going to have that in society or our little boys and girls watching that on screen, if we don't have it in the workplace. It’s about supporting parents at the hardest point in their life.

Do you feel the film industry does that?

We don't have this nuclear family anymore - everybody's disparate. And so when you do become a parent, it's all higgledy piggledy and you lose yourself confidence, your life gets turned upside down. And so being in an industry that's hard enough to get into anyway, being supported in the hardest time of your life is so important for retaining talented people.

Otherwise, you just end up with a smaller pool of talent to choose from. Right now our industry is absolutely booming. And we need as many people in the pot as possible for productions to choose from. And if we do want that representation on screen, we've got to have it when the films are being made. So you want films being lit by women directed by women, written by women. But if you want that, you're going to have to support them when they're going through one of the biggest changes of their life.

What’s the reaction been like where you’ve brought some change about?

It's taken people, particularly women, years and years to build a career and get noticed in quite a male-dominated industry. Now like the sparks department and the electricals department for instance, we are on there as the childcare department, which is huge. And for some women, they might be only 25, but they're ringing me saying, “I can't tell you how amazing this is. Because seeing that on the call sheet means that my employers are starting to take seriously the future of my career”.

You’ve got generations of women, that I speak to in the 60s who were like, “I had to make a choice. It was the film industry or a family. And I chose film because I had to do it for the women who come after me.” And it was a shit choice. But they did it and they made it and they made it for the rest of us coming up. And now they're advocating for those women to be able to have more choice than they had.

I hear parents around the nursery all the time. And they're like, “Oh, my God, if I'd known that this was going to exist, I would have had more than one child.” When you're hearing that there's a lot of change that still needs to happen.

Is it important for the industry though, as well as parents?

It's about recognizing that childcare helps industry…you need good childcare for industries to thrive, because then you can get women back to work who want to be in work and making those industries good.

One thing that we as a company advocate for is job share. Having a child for me, it made me make very clear concise decisions about my job. I'm like, right I don't have time all day to mess about and think about this. It's made me a better, more efficient employee being apparent. You put that drive that efficiency, for example, in a job-sharing role with somebody in their 60s… I mean, that's absolute gold, right there.

What other examples would you like the industry to follow?

Have you ever seen what Patagonia have done? They're amazing. They've had a nursery there for 30 years. And they now have people who went to the nursery, who now work for them. And their CEO is quoted as saying, “I really wish it was 98% of our women come back to work after having a child, because more people will believe me, but it's actually 100%”. And that's because they provide this amazing service.

It's just valuing what those people can bring. It's like why bother training them? Why bother investing all of that money and time and effort into training those people if you're going to abandon them at the point when they really, really need the investment. People forget that there is, there is a human being on the other side of their career, it's like, my career is only 20% of who I am.

What's your ultimate mission?

I think what I want to see is people dedicating time, energy and a budget to keeping families in film. So right from the top people going, “How do we retain talent?” You know, we've got sustainability officers on almost every film now, looking at resources, recycling, upcycling - what do we do about sustainability of crew? And so I think it's about people dedicating time energy and finances into keeping families in film.

What does that look like? Well, it’ll look completely different for different budgets, but you know, any line in the budget for childcare is fantastic. It might be to provide a space where women can lie down if she's pregnant and feels sick. Or where woman can breast feed or administer fertility treatment. Or even just where a menopausal woman can go and take a beat. But there's things in that room that support them through those tricky times.

Or it can be dedication to sort of retraining heads of department in order to be able to recruit and allow the team to be able to assess accessibility needs. We've got father recently who told us that despite his child being in our nursery, he bizarrely found himself in a situation where he was asked if he had children, and lied, because he felt that the question was asked in such a way that he thought that the answer needed to be enough for him to get the job. So you know, it’s training people to use TED questions (tell, explain, describe). “Tell me about your family” is a much better way of asking somebody about their childcare needs and how they might be able to support them.

I really feel very passionate that the onus should be on the employer, to normalize it, to raise questions, ask pertinent questions - rather than somehow managing to get employees to go, “I need this”.

I want people to bear a kite mark that says we're family friendly so that people know that they can, in job interviews, ask about job sharing, ask about flexible hours, ask about breastfeeding spaces, ask about childcare opportunities.

If in years to come we want our children to be watching more balanced things happening on screen, then you're going to need a more diverse and inclusive crew of people making it.

To find out more about The WonderWorks, go to https://www.thewonderworks.co.uk/ and @wonderworksnursery

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