A Birth Scene So Taxing, Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh Needed to Rest

You wouldn’t expect the romantic drama “We Live in Time” to have an action scene, but it does — at least that’s how Andrew Garfield sees it.

In the middle of the time-hopping story of a young couple battling a cancer diagnosis, there’s a hilarious yet touching sequence when Almut, played by Florence Pugh, gives birth on all fours in a gas station bathroom as her partner, Tobias (Garfield), nervously coaches her through the delivery with the aid of two shockingly helpful employees.

“It’s the big action event,” Garfield said. “It’s the Indiana Jones sequence.’”

The birth scene is a showcase for both the acting skills of Pugh and Garfield and the unique tone of the film, which mashes up humor and tragedy. It was also a logistical challenge for the director John Crowley and the actors who had to deal with the intensity of the material as well as an actual weeks-old baby who arrived for the grand finale.

For Crowley the birth was the reason he wanted to make the movie in the first place. A number of elements potentially swirling around each other meant “we could create a scene that was thrilling and refusing to be one thing at one time,” he said in a video interview, noting that the “absurdity of the situation” lives alongside the “genuine sort of jeopardy of it.”

The idea for Almut’s chaotic labor was inspired, in part, by the screenwriter Nick Payne’s own experience when his wife was giving birth to their first child. The hospital where she was supposed to deliver was extremely busy at the time, and the couple was told they might have to go to another facility in a different part of London.

“I just spent a long time very nervously worrying about that,” he said in an interview. The trip to a Croydon hospital would take him by a gas station, and “I would drive past that thing and think, ‘This is where we’re going to end up.’ It was basically my own anxiety.”

In the film it’s New Year’s Eve and traffic is at a standstill. In search of snacks, Almut abandons the car and heads toward the station. Thinking she needs to use the bathroom, she goes to the lavatory. Turns out she’s actually deep in labor, and the key to open the locked door breaks, requiring Tobias and the station workers (Nikhil Parmar and Kerry Godliman) to kick it down and then serve as makeshift nurses.

Beyond mining his own worries, Payne wanted the scene to serve a structural function in his story, which is told out of order. The film begins with the news that Almut’s aggressive cancer has returned before flashing back to the couple’s initial meeting. With the birth, the aim was to suggest time stopping, Payne said, adding, “It should almost feel like the final moment of labor is happening in real time and we’re sort of bearing witness.”

While Crowley did find an actual petrol station for the location, the bathroom was recreated on a soundstage in part to fit the actors and crew required for the filming and in part for sanitary reasons.

“There’s limits to what health and safety would allow and — without it being like the loo in ‘Trainspotting’ — it just needed to have a bit of life and the patina of much use, should we say,” Crowley said.

Before filming the actors rehearsed with a midwife consultant, Penny Taylor, who used a doll as she walked them through the blocking. Still, Garfield, who had no personal experience with childbirth, didn’t want to know too much ahead of time. Tobias is an overplanner and is completely thrown for a loop by the unconventional setting and the fact that the medical professional is on the phone rather than in the room.

“I wanted to feel very overwhelmed and confused and I wanted to find out what I needed to do within the moments of the scene,” he said in an interview at the New York offices of the studio A24.

Still, he knew he needed to be well-prepared for one key moment: holding the actual baby. He was particularly nervous about carrying the baby in one hand and passing her through Pugh’s legs.

“When I am on set during a take I usually try to let go of everything, forget everything and then just be really present in the moment and I’m like, that does not fly here,” he said. “This is actually much more important than anything I’ve ever done.”

The baby, Crowley said, “performed beautifully and magnificently.” She did poop on Garfield’s hand, but he was fine with that. “Honestly, those moments were the most beautiful because you’re just like, ‘Oh God, this is life, what a privilege,’” he said.

As for Pugh, Crowley said she wanted to work with Taylor to make sure she was not falling into clichés of moaning and groaning. In an email, Pugh explained that her own mother had emphasized to her the importance of getting birth scenes right. In addition to figuring out with Taylor where specifically the pain would be coming from, the actress recruited her own sister to record voice notes to demonstrate how she breathed during her experience with labor.

“I would listen to them in lunch breaks and toilet breaks to get my mind and body focused into tuning in what sound meant and how my body responded to it,” Pugh wrote.

An intimacy coordinator was also on set given that Pugh was naked except for a bra and a heavy prosthetic belly, which gave her knee and back pain almost “instantly.”

“I was mostly acting with Florence’s bum,” Garfield said, and was acutely aware he was in a position of trust. “So I really wanted to make sure that she felt safe and felt tended to and cared for.”

In between takes, Pugh said, they would rarely leave the set. “We would apply each other’s ‘scene sweat’ so no one from the makeup department had to enter our safe space,” she wrote.

The shoot for the scene lasted over two days and the actors ran it through about eight times. Crowley called it “arduous” but ultimately rewarding.

“By the end of it both actors felt they had been through something genuinely very special and moving and wanted to sit in that set quietly for 10, 15 minutes,” he said. “I’ll never forget it. They just wanted to sit there and be quiet and just kind of hold hands.”

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