There’s a photo on Jolene Anderson’s Instagram feed which tells you a lot about the actress’ dedication to both her job in ABC drama, Harrow and the role of a lifetime – that of being a new mum to her daughter, Alice.
In the shot, Jolene is going over her lines while her then newborn sleeps peacefully beside her.
Jolene filmed two episodes of season three of Harrow, her pregnant belly cleverly hidden behind bodies and a handbag, before she left to give birth to Alice.
Then, in January last year, just three-and-a-half weeks after Alice was born, Jolene made the choice to go back to work to shoot the rest of the season.
And she brought her newborn to the Harrow set every day.
“We’d just got made up and then we were shooting in a restaurant,” Jolene, 40, tells TV WEEK of the photo.
“I thought, ‘I’ll just have Alice in my lap.’
“So, here I am about to do a scene with a new baby. I don’t know how I did it. I look at that photo and I just think, ‘Wow, the things you do.'”
Jolene as Erica Templeton in All Saints.
(Credit: Channel Seven)It wasn’t easy. Not by a long shot.
There were “crazy” days where Jolene admits she was running on adrenalin as she dashed back and forth to shoot scenes as Dr Grace Molyneux and feed Alice.
She’d be up extra early to feed and pump and do what she needed to do to get the baby to set.
Together with her mum, she’d carry five bags to the set, and her baby, and set up in a trailer, while Jolene went into hair and make-up. Then she’d put the baby to sleep. Later, her mum would bring Alice in for a feed before Jolene would high-tail it back to the set to shoot her scenes. Phew.
“It was full on,” Jolene admits.
“As I said to my partner (Dan Stephens), I had to become the CEO of our little family unit to get everything organised. There was a sense of having to be calm about everything. Mum was very calm. You can’t sweat the small stuff.”
“You’re learning how to be a new mum in front of 50 people.”
And there is a sense of satisfaction that the former All Saints star made it through in one piece.
“I didn’t crumble,” Jolene says, laughing.
“Something knew me in that I could go back as a working mum and as a new mum and it did work.”
When she first told producers she was pregnant, they gave Jolene the choice of whether she wanted to return after giving birth. Because she’d made a commitment to the show and the character, Jolene was always going to say yes.
“As my mum said, this is my career,” she says.
“This is the time allocation I had to work and I chose to do it. I wanted to play the role and I love the show. And I think the show with Grace is good, and the whole Grace and Harrow (Ioan Gruffudd) and Fairley (Darren Gilshenan) is such a great combination on screen. It would have been such a shame for producers and writers, who worked so hard to get that right, if I’d then stepped aside.”
Life as a mother is very different to that of Jolene’s character, Grace.
When she took the role Jolene says Grace was a breath of fresh air because she was a doctor who wasn’t a mother.
“She doesn’t talk about kids,” Jolene says.
“Maybe she does want kids, but she’s married to her job. And she gives as good as Harrow gives. I just thought she was a nice juicy role to play.”
But what about those autopsy scenes? While we know they’re not real bodies they’re carving up, does she ever baulk at the sight of all the blood?
“I was more squeamish during a scene in All Saints when they brought in real maggots,” she laughs.
“I was 26 and they smelled like a sandwich I left in my schoolbag for two weeks over the holidays.”
In Harrow, they sometimes use animal hearts or livers which, when you pick them up, Jolene admits can be a bit on the nose. Still, a real autopsy, she says, “is a lot messier” than what we do.
With Jolene waits to see whether Harrow will go into production for season four, she admits the downtime since she finished shooting last year has allowed her to bond with her family.
Her daughter, Alice is now 13 months and is “walking and chatting away”.
“She’s the happiest little thing I’ve ever met,” Jolene beams. “It’s been really nice for the family because it’s so simple. It’s just us. We’re very present.”
It hasn’t been an easy path to motherhood for Jolene who, after a serious illness, chose to freeze her eggs, but then fell pregnant naturally with her partner.
“Every day I look at her is such a gift,” she says.
“As you get older, you think maybe motherhood is not for me, that maybe that time has passed. But it’s amazing. It’s a blessing every day and I just love it.”
Would she like another?
“Yeah, I would. I love her.”
Away from Harrow, Jolene is best known for playing nurse Erica Templeton on All Saints from 2006 to 2008.
And with borders relaxing, Jolene can’t wait to take the opportunity visit family and friends in NSW – with Alice, of course.
“I’m about to introduce Alice to my food friend (former All Saints star) Tammy MacIntosh, who hasn’t met her yet,” she says.
