Joy true story: Cast and creatives on the Netflix IVF film

An impressive cast of James Norton, Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie play the lead roles in the film, which was written by Jack Thorne and Rachel Mason, who have their own personal experience with IVF.

We spoke to the stars and the writers about the true story depicted in the film and the huge amount of research done to ensure its accuracy – read on for everything you need to know.

Is Joy based on a true story?

Yes: Joy very much tells the true story of Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy – and is based on a huge amount of painstaking research into the work they accomplished in the 1960s and '70s to make IVF a reality.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, co-writer Rachel Mason explained about some of the digging she and Jack Thorne did to ensure the story was told accurately, such as talking to the families, including "two of Bob's daughters and Patrick's son".

She added: "[There was] lots of going through archives, research-heavy during COVID. We would deal with our son, put him to bed, and then do these Zoom calls with all these people!"

One person who was especially valuable to them was a woman named Grace MacDonald, who was the mother of the first IVF boy and was able to give them lots of crucial background information about Purdy that allowed them to see her in a different light.

"When we had our Zoom with her, she just changed everything about how we felt about Jean," Thorne explained. "Because her relationship with Jean was so profoundly different to everyone else we spoke to and it really, really helped us, and it helped position Jean in the story."

While Purdy is in many ways placed at the centre of the story, the film also shines a light on the members of the Ovum Club – the name given to the real women who served as the first test subjects of the IVF procedure during its trial period.

Mason said it was "so important" to honour their significance to the project as well as the scientists, and her and Thorne's own personal experiences with IVF allowed them to appreciate even more how crucial they were to the breakthrough.

"Those women... they went into the program knowing they were very unlikely to get a pregnancy, a good result," Mason said. "They were essentially guinea pigs. So one woman went through the process 10 times, which is incredible. So the bravery and the courage of those women to step forward is amazing."

Thorne added: "And I think that is to do with our experience. I think that's the reason why the Ovum club feature the way they do.

"I don't think I would have written that, and I don't think we'd have written that without what we'd gone through – that process of failing, failing, failing, and knowing the psychological damage that does to you as a person and to us as a couple, it was awful. And so celebrate the bravery of that was really, really crucial to us."

Of course, it wasn't only the writers who undertook lots of research in the film, and the actors were also keen to dig into the material available to them – especially McKenzie and Norton.

In addition to spending time shadowing embryologists at Guys hospital in London to better understand the science, an experience McKenzie described as "mind boggling", they tried to find out as much as possible about who Purdy and Edwards were as people.

Given there is less material out there about Purdy, this was "more of a challenge" for McKenzie, but she was very grateful for the immense amount of research carried out by Thorne and Mason.

"They did so much research into Bob and Jean and Patrick, and into all that they did, into the impact that they've left, and what went into it," she said. "So I was able to, like, use the knowledge, or draw from the knowledge that they had gathered. And then basically I was just trying to find out as much as I possibly could.

"I found out where Jean had grown up. So I went to the house she grew up in, in Cambridge, and I went to Oldham, where the film is set, which is the birthplace of IVF, I went there and went to the hospital and went to Guys and yeah, did as much as I possibly could to get an idea of the world that they lived in, and to get an idea of who Jean was."

McKenzie also spoke of "some really beautiful anecdotes" from the aforementioned Grace MacDonald, and said she was determined to do her justice given "one of the main points of this film is to get Jean's name out there and to acknowledge the fact that she IVF wouldn't have happened, at least not then, without her".

Norton was also keen to learn as much as possible about Edwards, and said he heard a lot of fun anecdotes, some of which were "actually inappropriate, because they were so eccentric".
But, he did find that Edwards was "just loved" and that "the people who worked with him fed off his enthusiasm and his energy", while one resource in particular was vital to getting a handle on who he was.
"He wrote a book with Patrick called A Matter of Life, and Patrick's contributions are really dry and kind of, you know, quite specific science," he explained.

"Bob's are like... just so sort of flamboyant, and you can feel this Labrador energy bouncing off the page in a complete antithetical tone to Patrick. So that was quite helpful [for] finding a voice for me!"

Speaking of Patrick Steptoe, Nighy explained that doing loads of research was less important for his own process – with the actor preferring to go with the material that was in the script itself.

"It's not necessary for me to do that," he said. when asked about further research. "The script is pretty hot, and I have all the information I need there. I don't want to... I'm not a mimic, and I'm not required to mimic him in any way.

"I don't have to look or sound like him, and I don't need to know where he's been. I just need to know what's happening in the moment. And I'm content with that!"

What happened to Jean Purdy?

Sadly, Jean Purdy died at the age of just 39 in 1985 – and until relatively recently her vital work in the development of IVF was often overlooked.

As post-script in the film explains, Robert Edward campaigned tirelessly for her name to be included on a plaque outside Kershaw's Hospital, where the bulk of their work had been carried out, and this wish finally coming true in 2015, two years after his death and three decades after Purdy's.

However, her legacy speaks for itself: since the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978, an estimated 12 million children have been born through the IVF procedure, a number that's only going to continue rising.

"Obviously, we wouldn't be making this film if Bob, Patrick and Jean hadn't done what they did in the 1960s and '70s in terms of IVF," Norton said. "[But] I wonder if we would be making it at all if it hadn't been for Bob's campaign to get Jean recognised, because that was actually the way in that the film needed, the story needed."

He added: 'The biggest takeaway from this film is the cost that it had on not just Bob and Patrick, but particularly Jean – she died at 39 and she didn't have children of her own.

"She dedicated her life to this. She died in Bourne Hall. They put a room aside for her, and she died surrounded by mothers or women who had gone through the IVF process, surrounding her – that was her family.

"She gave everything to this, but also the women who were in the Ovum Club, those women who didn't get children and who went through multiple rounds, put their bodies through that... the huge cost paid by these people for the future generations."

Nighy added that "as much as anything" the film "does restore Jean Purdy to her rightful place in the whole development of IVF".

He said: "And that's one of the things that drew me to the film, because that phenomenon of men dismissing women's work because they don't have a penis – which is basically all they lack – is bewildering and bizarre, and we've only really just started to kind of try and redress the balance."

Joy is now showing in select UK cinemas and on Netflix – sign up from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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