Chuck Chuck Baby is set in present-day industrial North Wales. Helen spends her nights packing chickens and her days caring for a dying mother figure, Gwen. Her world takes an unexpected turn when Joanne returns. Twenty years ago, each was the object of the other’s unspoken teenage passions.
One night, Helen encourages Joanne to start a playful wooing game that re-awakens their youthful feelings. As they fall in love and lust, Helen’s zest for life returns, but Joanne feels the walls closing in as she faces something much darker from her past.
QX had a quick chat with the writer and director of Chuck Chuck Baby, Janis Pugh, ahead of the films opening in cinemas across the UK from the 19 July 2024.
You were brought up in industrial North Wales in the 80s. You’ve said, “I benefited from a proud council house upbringing (7 of us squeezed into the slapping and shouting stage).” How has your upbringing influenced your creative output?
The 80’s was a deeply political time and there was such turmoil in my area as factories and pits closed. My mum was a union rep so the house was always the meeting place for heavy political debates.
Watching my siblings fight for a space to get ready in the morning was like witnessing a ballet set against woodchip wallpaper – it was a scramble but there was something uniquely beautiful about it as there was always music…A wide range from Roxy Music to the show tunes of Evita, but mostly there was always love.
“Heartwarming and charming”
4 Stars from rolling Stone
How did you come up with the idea for Chuck Chuck Baby, a comedy-drama with a lesbian storyline set in a chicken factory in Wales?
My work is always personal – I’d briefly worked in a Chicken factory many, many years ago but I still carry and hold dear the camaraderie I felt there in my heart. I wanted to write something that platform working class women’s voices and celebrated their love and friendship in all its forms.
It feels like 2024 is seeing a lesbian renaissance in terms of stage, screen and music. More space is being occupied by sapphic culture. We saw a vast crowd fill the streets for the opening of La Camionera bar in London recently, and more club nights for queer women are also opening. Why do you think we are seeing this now?
Because we want to celebrate who we are and who we love. That’s the wonderful thing about openness.
Chuck Chuck Baby has some fabulous musical scenes, like the ladies singing along to the radio. Do you see Chuck Chuck Baby as a musical on the stage?
Definitely. When I wrote the script I knew it would work as a stage musical too.
This film will undoubtedly bring your work to a broader audience. What are your career plans and aspirations for the future?
The audiences’ response to Chuck Chuck Baby has been incredibly, from Wales to Toronto to New York. It proves there is a hunger to for these stories, they are universal and they connect.
So the most important thing for me creatively is to continue making films about working class women, telling their stories and platforming their lives.
Chuck Chuck Baby is in UK cinemas from 19 July
Chuck Chuck Baby Social:
FB @ChuckChuckBaby
Credits
Written and directed by Janis Pugh (The Befuddled Box of Betty Buttifint, Blue Collars and Buttercups), starring Louise Brealey (Sherlock, Back, Lockwood & Co., Brian and Charles, A Discovery of Witches, Smack the Pony), Annabel Scholey (The Split, The Salisbury Poisoning, The Sixth Commandment, Being Human, Walking on Sunshine), Sorcha Cusack (Snatch, Father Brown, Jane Eyre), Celyn Jones (Set Fire to the Stars, Submergence, Six Minutes to Midnight), Emily Fairn (Black Mirror, The Responder) and produced by Anne Beresford, Adam Partridge, Andrew Gillman and Peggy Cafferty.
The film is executive produced by Lizzie Francke for the BFI, Kimberley Warner for Ffilm Cymru Wales, Max Fisher and Mary Fisher for MDF.
