Call the Midwife star admits to apprehension ahead of Female Genital Mutilation episode

Charlotte Ritchie, who plays Nurse Barbara Gilbert, said that dealing with such a sensitive and taboo subject was “always nerve-wracking”.

Speaking at the National Television Awards last night, she told Expres.co.uk: “Every time a show deals with something sensitive such as this, it’s always nerve-wracking because you are inevitably going to affect people in ways that you can’t predict.

“But I think it’s important to open up a discourse on something that’s a mainstream TV show on Sunday nights, huge audience and then people are allowed to say what they think about it.”

The 27-year-old actress added: “It starts a conversation broadly across the world.”

Co-star Stephen McGann, who portrays Dr. Patrick Turner, went on to say: “Because I know the writer [Heidi Thomas] quite well and she uses the phrase ‘Female Genital Mutilation’.

“She doesn’t like acronyms because she thinks acronyms are beginning to soften or make anonymous of what it really is: it is Female Genital Mutilation.

“The way we cover it at the end is actually in a very balanced and historically relevant way.”

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Call the Midwife season 6 tackles some tough subjects

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Charlotte Ritchie in Call the Midwife

Every time a show deals with something sensitive such as this, it’s always nerve-wracking because you are inevitably going to affect people in ways that you can’t predict

Charlotte Ritchie

Female Genital Mutilation will be explored in an upcoming episode through a Somali community in the East End and the staff at Nonnatus House encounter a mother who has undergone the practice, which is also known as "female circumcision" or "cutting".

Call the Midwife, which returned for its sixth season last week, has never shied away from taking on hard-hitting issues and in the past have looked at the Thalidomide scandal and the introduction of the female contraceptive pill.

The opening episode of season six of the BBC show proved to be no less controversial after the first instalment shone the spotlight on domestic violence as a husband lashed out at his heavily pregnant wife.

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Call the Midwife season 6 started last week

The biggest storylines on Call the Midwife
Tue, January 17, 2017

Call the Midwife has never shied away from tacking big storylines. Here are some of the important issues the popular period drama has explored.

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The biggest storylines on Call the Midwife

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Call the Midwife season 6 looked at domestic violence

Last night the BBC drama picked up the gong for best period drama at the National Television Awards, which is voted for by the public.

Actress Helen George, who was also at the ceremony, promised fans that there would be some “exciting” changes in Poplar this year.

She said that there would be a range of a new characters featuring in the latest run from a number of other classes with London and Estuary accents.

“It is getting exciting now because it’s the early Sixties now and the whole landscape both culturally and diversity is really changing in Poplar. I’m hoping in this series you’ll enjoy,” she said.

Call the Midwife airs on BBC One on Sundays at 8pm.

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