Actress Julie Graham was pregnant when it came to starring as a midwife in a second series of ITV1's William and Mary, so the script was adapted to take in her condition.

Steve Pratt reports on Graham's thoughts about becoming a mum at 36 while pretending to be a mother-of-two for the TV cameras.

JULIE Graham didn't make it to the press launch of the second series of ITV1's drama William And Mary, thanks to the early arrival of her baby daughter. She was about to board the train from Brighton to the London event when she started having contractions.

The next day the actress best known for At Home With The Braithwaites and Between The Sheets gave birth to daughter Edie May. Six weeks premature, she weighed in at just four pounds and eight ounces.

As Mary is a midwife, Graham had done her research by talking to real midwives. They showed her the value of natural childbirth, causing her to alter her opinion on the subject.

"It has changed my view about being too posh to push," she says. "I used to think 'slice me open, wake me up when it's all finished, and put in a zip for the next baby'.

"But now I have completely changed my attitude after working with the midwives for this drama. What I've learned is that it has empowered me to make certain choices about the birth of my baby, the way I want it.

"Having midwives on set when we were filming has been fantastically helpful, and reassuring. The one thing all the midwives I spoke to have in common is that they are all really passionate about what they do. It's so inspiring to be around people who are passionate about their job."

As it happened, the circumstances of her daughter's birth put paid to Graham's aim of giving birth at home. "My priority was Edie May, so having her in hospital or at home wasn't really the issue," she says.

"If I had gone to full term and had her in hospital, I would have been far more upset."

There were no real problems with the birth, reports 36-year-old Graham, and Edie May was just over the threshold where she could breathe for herself.

"She's small, but perfectly formed. Because she's very little, she does get tired easily and has to be fed more regularly. She's fine, though, she's my little warrior."

Graham is pleased she had a natural birth. She found the whole experience invigorating and says she'd do it again tomorrow. "There's a lot of nonsense spoken about childbirth, a lot of myths around," she says.

"Joe, my husband, and I both had an amazing experience. Obviously, for some people it goes on and on, and there's a need for interventions. We were lucky. It was fantastic. There were no negatives about it."

MARY'S pregnancy was written into the second series after Graham told producers she was expecting a baby with actor husband Joseph Bennett.

The screen father of the baby is played by Martin Clunes. Undertaker William and midwife Mary get married in a series that was voted one of the top ten new dramas of last year.

Graham says everyone on the set was very protective of her while filming. The weird thing was being pregnant and pretending it was someone else's baby.

"It is such an intimate thing. You are in a highly vulnerable state when you're pregnant, and I would have found it difficult to act those scenes with anybody else but Martin," she says.

"We were already good friends before we did William And Mary. I found it very easy with him, not least because he's such a great dad himself.

"Everyone on the set treated me brilliantly, really spoiled me. Also, what's really lovely is that I have this record of my pregnancy on film."

Some aspects of the story were harder to do than others. "We cover a lot of emotional ground in the series. It was quite hard doing scenes about a stillbirth," she says. "I'm glad we did those scenes at the beginning of filming. I would have found it difficult to film that story towards the end of my pregnancy."

One bonus of her burgeoning bump was finding costumes for the character. Costume designer Giles Gale wanted her dressed in a colourful and sexy way, befitting feisty Mary. He found outfits in high street stores, vintage shops and stalls in London's Portobello Road, without once resorting to maternity wear.

The new series focuses on the relationships of the two families as they get used to living together under one roof. Mary is a single mum with two teenage boys, while William is the widowed father of two teenage girls.

William and Mary's church ceremony was very different to that of Graham and Bennett. They had a secret wedding at Brighton Register Office, with two witnesses off the street. The couple met while appearing in a play together, Sam Shepard's Fool For Love. Now she is putting her career on hold for a while, but reckons a third series of William And Mary is a possibility.

"I think there will be another series," she says. "What with Edie May and Martin's daughter, I'm sure it will be a very child-friendly set. For now, I want to take some time off from acting and concentrate on looking after Edie May."

* William And Mary returns to ITV1 at 9pm on Sunday.

Published: 04/03/2004