After seven rounds of IVF, we ended up with not only a son – but a Netflix hit! Creators of test tube baby drama Joy reveal their OWN infertility struggle

Rachel Mason will never forget the agony of having to make that phone call over and over again.

A call she came to dread when, six times in two years, it delivered the same heart-breaking news: you are not pregnant.

‘Every time, I felt like I’d failed,’ she says. ‘I hate the word failure, but I wasn’t able to do the fundamental thing that we all presume we can do.’

Rachel, 52, and her husband Jack Thorne, 45, the Bafta award-winning writer behind TV’s His Dark Materials and the West End play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, had started trying for a family in 2013.

But by 2015 – after six increasingly desperate rounds of IVF – they were no closer to what they longed for.

‘When you start IVF, you just assume it will happen,’ she says. ‘I thought: ‘I’m not overweight, I’m healthy enough, surely it’s got to work?’

Rachel Mason, 52, and husband Jack Thorne, 45, the Bafta award-winning writer behind TV’s His Dark Materials and the West End play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, had started trying for a family in 2013

‘But then it didn’t happen, again and again. I kept failing. We kept failing.’

It was, she admits, a dark and lonely time for them both, fraught with rows and searing emotion.

At one point, Rachel even considered leaving Jack, fearing that she – who had the fertility issues that led them to IVF in the first place – was stopping him from having a family.

‘I felt like I was letting him down,’ she says. ‘He wanted a family, and if he was with someone else then they could be popping them out. But he was stuck, struggling, with me.’

Worst of all was the two-week period between the fertilised embryos being transferred and the pregnancy test, the results of which Rachel would discover by calling her consultant at the clinic, who would deliver the news.

‘That wait was appalling,’ recalls Rachel. ‘You’ve got so many things on hold. It was the only thing in sharp focus; everything else paled into the background.’

But then, one day in August 2015, Rachel and Jack finally got the news they’d imagined since the day they met.

This time their consultant delivered a different message: you are pregnant.

Their son, Elliott, a mere speck on a scan at the time, was born the following April at University College Hospital, London.

He is now eight-and-half and, says Rachel, ‘absolutely glorious’.

The Mail welcoming the first IVF baby in 1978

Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby, was born at Oldham General Hospital

‘He is a mini Jack. He’s got six or seven scripts on the go; he wants to be a writer. He is the joy of both our lives.’

Elliott is also the inspiration behind the aptly named Joy, a new film starring James Norton and Bill Nighy, which she and Jack co-created and which has soared to the top of the Netflix film charts after enthusiastic reviews.

It’s the remarkable tale of the trio who pioneered in-vitro fertilisation, and the untold story of Jean Purdy, the young nurse and embryologist whose ground-breaking role has gone largely unrecognised. Joy holds deep personal resonance for the couple – and marked their first time working together.

It was, says Rachel, a true labour of love.

As a comedy agent, Rachel usually works behind the scenes and the couple are very private, so it’s out of character for them to share such a personal experience. But both she and Jack felt compelled to tell the story of the procedure that changed their lives.

‘I feel strongly, having been through IVF, that I want to be there for other people, and push forth the message of what it’s like,’ Rachel explains. ‘I want people to understand the darkness of the experience, the isolation.

‘I shut down a bit, and I became obsessed. Everyone around us was pregnant or had children of their own.

‘There were days I could talk about it, and other days I’d be furious, and jealous of people with babies.’

She adds: ‘I couldn’t do anything without worrying about the implications. I remember running for a bus and thinking, ‘Well, that’s ruined it.’ I went down to working four days a week.’

Set in the late Sixties and Seventies, Joy traces the work of visionary physiologist Bob Edwards (played by Norton), top surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Nighy) and Jean Purdy (New Zealand-born actress Thomasin McKenzie), who, aged 23, applied for a job at an IVF research lab in Cambridge.

The team who pioneered in-vitro fertilisation. Left: Cambridge physiologist Dr Robert Edwards holds test tube baby Louise, alongside Joy Brown and embryologist Jean Purdy

IVF pioneer Professor Robert Edwards with Lesley Brown and her test tube daughter Louise, holding her son Cameron, in 2008

Over a decade, the trio worked tirelessly — in the face of scepticism from their peers, criticism from the Press and condemnation from the Church, who compared their work to that of Dr Frankenstein — towards what they dubbed ‘curing childlessness’.

In 1978, they finally achieved it. Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby, was born at Oldham General Hospital; by coincidence, the place Rachel was born.

Forty-six years later, 12 million babies worldwide owe their very existence to that team of British scientists, working against the odds.

Rachel and Jack got involved in the project during lockdown in 2020, alternating research for the film and digging through archives with home-schooling Elliott at their house in North London.

Finding out about Jean, who died from a malignant melanoma aged just 39, with no family of her own, was the toughest part. ‘She was so private, which intrigued me,’ Rachel explains. ‘None of her relatives are around to speak to. She was really difficult to crack.

‘I found some letters which gave an idea of her sense of humour. There were details in a book that Edwards and Steptoe wrote. And we chatted with Grace MacDonald, who gave birth to Alastair, the first IVF boy, in 1979. She felt we did Jean proud, which meant a lot.’

Rachel’s research also involved speaking to surviving members of ‘The Ovum Club’, the name given to the group of women who were involved in early treatment trials of egg harvesting and implantation – all desperate to have a baby, whatever it took.

Jean oversaw these trials, but never took part herself. Nor did she marry, nor allow herself to dream of having children.

For she had severe endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside it, causing pelvic pain and making it difficult to fall pregnant.

In one particularly poignant moment in the film, while sitting in a car with another woman trying to conceive, both of them watching an expectant mother receive happy news, Jean admits: ‘I’m jealous of her, too.’

Like Jean, Rachel has endometriosis, something she only discovered after undergoing tests when she and Jack were unable to conceive naturally.

‘I’ve also only got one ovary,’ she says. ‘So there were several complications, which all lay with me, but I didn’t know about them beforehand.’

Rachel had never really thought about having children until she met Jack. Then in a long-term relationship with someone else, she entered her 40s without a family – and was perfectly happy.

It was only seeing her sister Cath, whose partner is comedian Frank Skinner, become a mother to their son, Buzz, now 12, that changed her mind. ‘I fell in love with him, and with their relationship. And then I met Jack and suddenly it all made sense.’

The pair met on a train from London to Cornwall in 2011 and, like a scene from one of Jack’s scripts, kept bumping into one another at parties and events.

Once, Rachel watched Jack leading a blind woman across a crowd at the Baftas – and knew she had started falling for him.

It was a whirlwind romance: they had their first date later that year; Jack proposed in 2012 (using a treasure hunt comprising boxes of clues and, eventually, a ring); and they were married a year later.

Rachel started trying for a baby straight away. When it wasn’t working naturally and tests revealed it was unlikely to do so, they didn’t hesitate in seeking out IVF.

Netflix film Joy tells the remarkable tale of the trio who pioneered in-vitro fertilisation, and the untold story of Jean Purdy, the young nurse and embryologist whose ground-breaking role has gone largely unrecognised

‘In light of my age, I wanted to get on with it quickly,’ she explains. ‘We were in the fortunate position to have the choice to go privately.’

The couple never dreamed it would take seven rounds – entailing months of back-to-back hormone injections, egg collection, fertilisation, transfer and that dreaded pregnancy test – for it to work.

During that time, Rachel admits, she became ‘hell-bent’ on having a child. While Jack focused on the statistics to keep her spirits up, she found herself weighed down by the emotion of it all, often lashing out in anger.

‘At one point we had an amazing holiday to Ireland booked, and we ended up having a huge row because I said we had to cancel it. I wanted to go straight into another round,’ she says.

‘But Jack said: ‘I think we need a break. We, as a couple, need some time away from this.’

‘I was furious. I thought, what could be more important? I was rabid about it. So we didn’t go.’

Round number seven in the summer of 2015, she suspects, may well have been their last attempt at IVF.

‘I feel like I couldn’t have taken much more. But who knows? Maybe I could have gone further.

‘Financially, you can only do so much, although I’d have lived in a tent to keep going.’

After that longed-for positive result, Rachel had a worrying bleed at five weeks, after which she was prescribed bed rest for a fortnight. ‘They told me the bleed was bigger than the pregnancy, so it wasn’t looking good,’ she recalls. ‘I just lay there, frantically hoping it would be OK.’

To their great relief, it was. Doctors found a healthy heartbeat and the rest of her pregnancy went smoothly.

Elliott was due on April Fool’s Day 2016, and came six days later, born by Caesarean section to the strains of the Stereophonics.

Rachel and Jack named him after the main character in ET, a film they both love – and testament to the other-worldly marvel of his conception.

Being an IVF mother, Rachel believes, impacted her parenting.

‘Subconsciously, when you’ve fought for it, I think you enjoy it more,’ she says.

‘Sure, you have the 2am wake-ups and the relentlessness of having a tiny baby, but you think: ‘I’m knackered, but this was what I wanted all along.’

‘I suppose the negative side is that if you are super-tired, you don’t feel you can moan too much. You think of all the women who haven’t been so lucky.’

After Elliott was born, Rachel and Jack didn’t try again.

‘I don’t know if we could have gone back there, really,’ she admits. ‘There was a sense of, we’ve got one beautiful child and we might never have had him. Let’s be happy with that.’

As Elliott has grown up, his parents haven’t shied away from the subject of IVF, an indelible part of all their lives.

Today, Rachel volunteers for the national charity Fertility Network UK and runs a monthly support group, and they’ve been open with Elliott about how he came into the world.

Joy’s release, and the celebration of this milestone in reproductive health, is certainly a timely one.

In America, Donald Trump’s predicted clamp-down on abortion services is expected to have far-reaching repercussions for women’s rights, including issues around fertility treatments, while in Britain the NHS is funding fewer IVF cycles than ever – as waiting lists continue to grow.

Despite going privately for her treatment, Rachel believes all couples struggling with fertility should be able to access IVF as a ‘fundamental right’.

‘The NHS is so stretched, and I don’t know the solution, but it is not fair that it’s based on where you live or how much money you have.

‘I know so many couples who can’t afford it, who have to crowd-fund or sell their houses to do it.

‘I think Bob, Jean and Patrick – who opened the first IVF clinic at Bourn Hall in Cambridge, and tried so hard to get NHS funding for it – would be utterly disappointed with the fact that it’s not more accessible today.’

To them, this extraordinary trio who made history by engineering the wonder of life, Rachel feels a profound sense of gratitude.

‘What they did was miraculous,’ she says.

‘They made that baby, all those babies – and my baby – possible. I can’t put my thanks into words.’

Joy is streaming on Netflix and in select UK cinemas now.