Jodie Turner-Smith Thinks Motherhood Is “Goddess-Level Shit” and That Sounds About Right

In a January 11th interview with ELLE magazine, actress and director Jodie Turner-Smith opened up about her latest projects and navigating motherhood amid a global pandemic—something all parents have been thrown into haphazardly. Being able to parent, teach, and shield children from the current crisis, Turner-Smith acknowledges that mothers are on some “goddess-level shit” from first labor push to everyday mom life.

“Navigating parenthood at any time is difficult,” Turner-Smith, who welcomed her daughter in May 2020 with Joshua Jackson of Dawson’s Creek and Little Fires Everywhere fame, told ELLE, “and it’s even more difficult without support, when everything is shut down and you can’t really see other people or go anywhere.”

However, the Queen & Slim actress realizes that she has it easy compared to moms of school-age kids. I’m not having to sit on Zoom with her and suddenly become her educator as well as her caretaker, she said.

Turner-Smith was in her second trimester while filming the upcoming action flick Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, costarring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell, who could not fathom the idea of multitasking in such a monumental way. “The men think they’re hard-core,” Turner-Smith said, “but they could never do what they do while also making a baby. They just couldn’t.” True, and that amazement didn’t even include the miracle of child birth.

Patriarchal society really is out here, scamming women into thinking that they’re not supremely powerful beings, she continued, talking about giving birth to her daughter last year. Because damn, it’s some goddess-level shit. 

In August, Turner-Smith opened up about her home-birth experience, which she and Jackson decided on before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic picked up steam. “We had already decided on a home birth, because of concerns about negative birth outcomes for Black women in America,” she told British Vogue last August. She ultimately was in labor for four days, but she wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

A photo Jackson snapped of her that was shared with the magazine on her third day in labor when she was convincing her body and daughter they could work together shows “an honest moment of family and togetherness,” Turner-Smith said, “a husband supporting a wife, our baby still inside me, the sacred process of creating a family.”

Not only is the process sacred, but the ability to give birth (in exhaustion after four days of labor) is truly “goddess-level shit.”