How chicken factory musical Chuck Chuck Baby became a love letter to working-class women

Chuck Chuck Baby is a love story musical set in and around a North Wales chicken factory. The indie film stars Louise Brealey – best known as monstrous Deb in this year’s Bafta-winning comedy Such Brave Girls and Molly Hooper in Sherlock – as Helen, who’s caught in a tangled web of relationships around the terrace where she lives. 

Made on a shoestring and shot in just 26 days by 50-year-old Janis Pugh – a writer-director making her debut feature – the film is a beautiful depiction of working-class lives and joy and community and love. It also features some of the real-life factory workers it depicts. 

Here, Brealey talks to Pugh about class, women and how music soundtracks our lives. 

Louise Brealey: You’re just back from Flintshire, where we filmed Chuck Chuck Baby about a hundred years ago now. Big night?

Janis Pugh: Yeah. I’m knackered! Fifty women in the pub after a hard week of working, all drinking and singing every word to Meat Loaf’s Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad. I looked around and thought, This is what it’s all about. It was the pub I took you to when you were prepping to play Helen.

• Spent star Michelle de Swarte: ‘Someone had to tell me I was homeless – I was in such denial’
• Back to Black actor Eddie Marsan: ‘There aren’t any no-go areas in Tower Hamlets’

LB: That place was amazing. How much is it a pint again?

JP: She keeps it at £2.50 because people can’t afford to pay more. And she puts on a bit of entertainment. Life is hard in a small town when there’s not a lot of money or prospects. So when they go out, there’s this real sense of an outlet with each other. They get dressed up, go for a real wash-up and use music to outpour pain and laughter.

LB: One reason I wanted to work with you was that the script felt like a celebration of working-class women like my mum and her mum. Before we met, I watched House, your short doc with your mum, who you lost in 2012, in it with her friends from the plastic bag factories. How important was that connection between women for you? 

JP: From the moment I started writing, I wanted to put these incredible women on a platform and celebrate them. This weekend I felt again the beauty of the support network in those communities. And we see it through the film, especially when Helen and her friends steal a trolley and walk up Mushroom Mountain singing Northern Lights by Renaissance. 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

LB: I get a proper heart-lift when I watch that scene; it’s full of pure joy. At the world premiere in Edinburgh I was on the same row as Vanessa, Amanda and Babs, the real chicken factory women who were supporting artists in the film. There’s a moment where they are seen in close-up on the big screen. They didn’t know it was coming, but I did. So I looked down the row to watch them see themselves – and see themselves being seen. Whenever I think about that moment I feel tearful. Because women like them, and like Helen, usually get overlooked. It was properly magical.

JP: In the edit I was asked to take them out. That was a big battle.

LB: Bloody hell, I didn’t know that! What?! I love that bit. There’s an almost documentary quality to it. You see the “real” women and understand that this is about, and for, all these women. We’ve seen the film through the prism of Helen’s journey, but in that moment, to me, the film becomes a love song to those women.

JP: It is. It is a love letter to them. Shall we talk about how the film responds to how working-class communities have been splintered by the closing down of factories, unemployment and Brexit? 

LB: When Annabel Scholey’s character Joanne comes back after 20 years to clear out her dad’s old council house, she can’t believe the high garden fences everywhere, separating neighbour from neighbour. The metaphor is really powerful.

JP: The fences make everyone become an island within their own garden, shutting people out and losing each other and the community. 

LB: Exactly. We shot on an estate near Flint station and in the amazing wild landscapes around there. Is the town a character in the film for you?

JP: My mum and dad used to live on that street. When we were filming, one of the neighbours came round with photos of them I’d never seen. I was wary of shooting in Flint because it’s not a film about the town, it’s broader than that. But the detail and people are specifically the town I know. Even walking around Flint this weekend, I could feel how I felt when I was 14 – freezing in a pair of bloody jelly beans in the snow because they were the only shoes I had. And it stays with me.

LB: Could you talk about the pressure you had to make the characters younger? We’re paying a lot of lip service in our industry to the idea of front-and-centering older women. But there is a gap between a perception of change and what is happening, which is a few high-profile actresses being allowed to tell interesting stories while the vast majority face a huge decline in their careers once they hit 40. I’m working much less, and that is down to maths: the parts are not there. Why did you want the characters in Chuck Chuck to be that age?

JP: The industry thinks an audience is not interested in older people and I think they’re very, very wrong. They think they’re not marketable. But we’ve seen how festival audiences across the world have responded to five women in their 40s. The industry is run by a bunch of people who believe in “big names, young women”. And it’s so boring.  

LB: For me it was a dream part. I don’t think I’ve directly said this to you before, but I felt an affinity with you. Like you, I feel I have a lot to give, creatively, and haven’t always been given the chance in the work I’ve been allowed to do. I look at you and your vision and I’m looking at someone who is 50 and this is your feature debut. I find that incredibly exciting. I’m thinking, Don’t write us off. Give us the chance to tell these stories, to show what we can do. Give us the chance to shine. 

Chuck Chuck Baby is in UK cinemas 19 July.Find your nearest screening here

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.