Jodie Turner-Smith prepares for the film’s release Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, where she will star opposite Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell. And while most of the blunt action is done by her castmates, Turner-Smith is making sure that people don’t discard the effort she exerted in filming during pregnancy.
“Men think they are tough,” said the 34-year-old actress Elle for the January 2021 digital cover, “but they could never do what they do while generating a baby. They just couldn’t. “
Turner-Smith was in the second trimester of her pregnancy with daughter Janie Jackson, now 8 months old, which the actress shares with actor Joshua Jackson. The couple kept their relationship quiet for some time before they appeared together on the red carpet in November 2019 and married in secret the following month. In April, Turner-Smith and Jackson welcomed their first child together, opting for home birth because of concerns about higher mortality rates for black mothers.
“We had already decided on home birth because of concerns about negative birth outcomes for black women in America,” Turner-Smith shared in an essay for British Vogue In September. “According [CDC], the risk of pregnancy-related deaths is more than three times higher for black women than for white women, pointing, it seems to me, to systemic racism. “
Turner-Smith shared with Elle what else had she learned from the experience of childbirth. “Patriarchal society really exists, forcing women to think that they are not extremely powerful beings,” she said. “Because, damn it, it’s some goddess-level shit.”
And while Turner-Smith continued to act and drive during pregnancy, she opened up about the difficult journey that lies in parenting, especially during a global pandemic.
“Navigating parenthood at any time is difficult and even more difficult without support, when everything is closed and you can’t really see other people or go anywhere,” she said, further praising the parents of schoolchildren. “I’m not having to sit at Zoom with [Janie] and suddenly become your educator, as well as your caretaker. “
In addition to his responsibilities at work and at home, Turner-Smith is finding peace through nature and clothing. “If we can mix fashion with me by putting my situations outdoors, it’s a beautiful marriage of two things,” she says, as a Gucci ambassador, who launched a collaboration with The North Face. “We all need a little carefree energy now.”
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