Ruth Connell

Interview by Nolwen Cifuentes

Photography by Ben Cope

Styling by Becky Thompson @ The Rex Agency

Makeup by Kindra Mann @ Tomlinson Management Group

Hair by Nancilee Santos @ Tomlinson Management Group

First of all, congrats! I hear you’ve just become a mother.

Thank you!

She’s your first, right?

First and last! I'm really lucky to have her at all, especially being a mature person. I'm so delighted to have her. It's funny, somebody did ask, do you want to have more? We looked at them like, this is a miracle, I don’t think lightning is going to strike twice. I'm so excited to have her.

I'm curious about being a working mother. Have you gone back to work at all? Or what about during pregnancy? Were you shooting, working?

Well, Margaret was very clever. She timed it just during the strike. I still was doing Supernatural fan conventions right up to eight months. And then I was on a flight, you get to that point, it's around the eight months the cut-off point; It was a bumpy flight, and I thought, this doesn't feel fair on her. So I worked right up until then, and I was really glad to. I wasn't working five days a week, or anything like that, but I was still busy. And now with Dead Boy Detectives coming out and life starting up in the business again, things are starting to pick back up. Last week, I did my first fan convention. I did my first audition. I did a recording of a podcast and I'm starting to do publicity for Dead Boy Detectives. So all of a sudden, it's back again and I’m trying to figure out the timetable and washing my hair and stuff.

I have a 6-month-old, so I hear your struggles, balancing it all!

Oh my goodness, so you know.

Let’s chat about Dead Boy Detectives, I guess you shot this pre-strike?

Now you're asking for dates. Nothing means anything anymore like that [Laughs]. A rough timeline — Steve Yockey, who wrote some of my best episodes of Supernatural, mentioned this role to me over five years ago when we were at a screening of an episode of Supernatural that I always mispronounce, Ouroboros. He mentioned this character description he wrote of a small, angry Scottish woman with red hair to do with these dead boy detectives. And then we shot a backdoor pilot. I don't know if that was three years ago. Then we did the pilot two years ago, and then we did the rest of the show a year ago.

Ok wow, so it’s been quite a process.

Yes, especially because of lockdown and the strike and everything else. We're all so excited for it to finally come out, April 25th. It's been gestating almost as long as the baby! It’s taken a long time. It's a bit surreal that it’s actually finally coming out.

You play this Night Nurse character. Tell me more about her without spoiling anything.

So, yeah, the Night Nurse, she's Scottish. That's about the only correlation between Rowena [of Supernatural]. That's all about the only crossover. She's Scottish, or she has a Scottish accent, anyway. She appears immediately to be very strong and strident, she’s a boss of what she does. We find out more about her as she goes along. I do think she's slightly mysterious at the beginning, and then it becomes... She has a really interesting journey. We got all of the scripts beforehand, all of the eight scripts, which is really great and unusual. All of the characters, all of the arcs — there's a character and a story in this show for everyone. I'll be really interested to see how the Supernatural audience relate, how the comic book audience relate, and how people who are completely new to either of those things will relate. I do think there's something there for everyone, whatever your interests. 

It looks really fun.

It's fun, and it's fun, and serious, and edgy. And really, I think it's got a real vital spark.

Supernatural was such a long show, fifteen seasons, which is so rare for television. How does it feel to end such an epic journey of your life and come into this whole new show?

Dead Boy Detectives already has been quite a long journey. I really hope that continues. Especially with George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, the two boys in the show, we talked a lot about longevity and how things work the way they do in television nowadays. It does feel like something that could go on, that we all certainly would like to be part of our lives for a while longer. I come from a theater background, and theater in Scotland, you know the same people for your whole life. You go back to the same theater every year for a decade, and I love that continuity. It’s rare in television. I doubt it will do fifteen seasons, like Supernatural, that’s lightning in a bottle. Let's see how the first season goes down, and hopefully there'll be more.

What’s next for you? 

I had a film come out last year with Simon Pegg, Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose. There was a discussion with one of the producers about possibly something else that might film in Scotland, further down the line. But, really, I took this break. I took my coffee break with Margaret. But now, the industry is starting to get back to life again. It still hasn't come back all the way, but we're hoping to see what happens when the show comes out.

One thing I should probably mention is with the show coming out in April, maybe at that point, I might get a really great agent in America. I still haven’t had that.

Oh really? All your agents have been from Scotland?

Well, I have a terrific agent in London (Jonathan Hall at IAG). I've always loved their ethos as a company. They've always had huge inclusivity and diversity before it was industry standard. They always were like that. They've been fantastic, but it has not been easy to convince agents in America that a woman of a certain age might have a lot more to offer. I'm on a show. I've always been on a show here. I've never not worked. I can't give 10% away!

Wow. That's a really important conversation, too. I feel like there's starting to be more roles for women of different ages, older ages. I’m thinking of Nyad, for example. What's your experience been with that? You've been in the industry for a long time, do you feel like there's a change there happening?

My experience is that it was never easy. It's not an easy business. We know that, right? When I first booked Supernatural, I had read this statistic in SAG that for every one job for a woman, there were nine jobs for men. That was in 2013 or 2014. I read that statistic, and I remember being at a convention, and behind me, there's these panels with all their faces on them, and there were nine men, and I was the one woman. This was a show that started a long time ago, and it was based around two men, it's not Sex and the City, right? But since then, there's at least three, four, five women now in the conventions around the show. My character in Supernatural was given longevity. She was brought back. I was really fortunate that things were changing. And now, I think the statistics are different. It's been really important that the diversity, the inclusion has happened. And I'm by no means in the worst position as a white woman, but still as a woman over a certain age, it does feel like you've got to really make it count.

And you now have… I don’t want to call it an obstacle, but this new challenge of being a working mother as well. I saw a graph on Instagram that showed how women’s careers are affected by motherhood compared to men’s affected by fatherhood, and it’s pretty different.

I mean, it is a tough one. Ultimately, if Margaret cries, I’m the one to pick her up. You know what I mean? And it's what I want to do more than anything. It takes a lot of support. It takes, for example, my partner Rob Benedict, he's away working at the end of April. I have this chance to do something in New York at the end of April, and we have to figure it out. I'm lucky that we're on the same page with making that happen. But even so, there's just no way that I have the same capacity to think about my career. I also do think that with women, we are really good at multitasking, right?

Oh yeah, especially mothers.

I think things are changing for the better. I’m seeing, for example, at the conventions, anyone I've asked, “Could I have an extra room? I might need to nurse.” People have been very cooperative. I know I'm in, again, a position of privilege, but I do think there's an awareness now that you can't just be rude to women. 

There’s a lot more openness to adapting in the industry. The actress from Loki, Sophia Di Martino, in the first season, she was nursing, and the costume designer added concealed zippers to the chest area of her bodysuit so she could easily pump and nurse between takes. 

That’s amazing, absolutely. I actually had met with Steve [Yockey, the showrunner for Dead Boy Detectives] for a coffee and I had told him “I don't want you to write any less for me.” He was like, “You're starting a family! If you were nine months pregnant, we'd find a way to shoot around you.” I feel really fortunate to have landed in a company where the baseline is we will make it work. It will not be an impediment to your character development. I think people used to get written out of things subtly when it was found out they were pregnant. 

That’s awful and so unnecessary. I worked throughout my pregnancy too, but I was afraid to be too open about it because I didn’t want to lose out on work. Other women had told me to not announce publicly that I was pregnant for that reason.

I'm quite a private person anyway. So, when I was pregnant, I didn't make any big announcements. It felt private. And I certainly shot my self tapes from the chest-up. But in the audition slate I showed my bump and said I can't film in February or however it was. So it's finding your own personal way through all of that. 

I think the more people tell the truth and the more we're open and the more we tell reality how it is, the less weird those things should be or should be against us.

Absolutely.

I don't know if you feel the same, but I feel like I have more of a drive now. Being a mom, I want to do well and I want to earn well, and keep building on what's been happening so far. 

I definitely feel that way. I want my kid to feel proud of me, to be an inspiration to her, and to provide for her. Do you see yourself bringing Margaret on set with you or into your world in the future?

One of my friends (Emma Willis) is a really successful makeup artist, and I always saw her with her daughter with her. She’d have her on her hip. I don’t think we’d want to make Margaret be in our business, but I think it'd be great if she's open to it, for a child to be social in that way. But honestly, we joke about it because I had said I was hoping for a banker or a doctor. She came out and she was twirling her hands like a Spanish dancer.

She’s following in mom’s footsteps already.

We’ll see. There's no pressure. Whatever she wants to do. But we hope to integrate her into our lives. Bring us to her, but also bring her to us.

✦