Daisy Ridley overcame her fear to star in ‘Young Woman and the Sea’

“I had a fear of open water. I don’t go into the sea beyond where I can see the floor,” says Daisy Ridley, covering her anxiety with a smile.

“I knew there weren’t sharks in the Black Sea where we filmed, but I was worried. Am I going to be eaten by a shark?”

As a co-producer of Young Woman and the Sea, a film about the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926, Ridley, wife of British actor Tom Bateman, knew what the role would require so she overcame her fear to tell the true story of Gertrude (Trudy) Ederle.

The film, in which Ridley is also the star, is based on the book by Glenn Stout, Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World.

Ederle grew up the daughter of German immigrants during the Jazz Age when it was thought women were so delicate that extreme exertion might “burst their hearts”.

With humour and irony, the film covers the social, political, and physical hurdles Ederle had to overcome. Much of the huffing and puffing to ensure women’s decorum are asides rather than plot points, except for the wilful poisoning of Ederle by her coach when it seemed she might actually be able to accomplish the physical feat.

After overcoming a childhood illness that left her partially deaf, Ederle went on to become an Olympic champion and world record holder in five swimming events, breaking barriers for women in an era of extreme bias. She was determined, with strong opposition, to swim the channel, something only five men had accomplished.

Her story is told with heart, and while on-screen time is spent in the water, most of this inspirational film covers the shenanigans of people who would try to thwart her goal, merely because of the gender of the dreamer. Most sports for women didn’t exist at the turn of that century, so the feat was doubly daunting, and impressive given the adjunct hurdles.

Ederle’s hardiness proved an inspiration for Ridley.

“It was a mental hurdle for me to take on this role,” she said, showing her dimples.

“There were moments when I thought I really don’t want to get back in that water. We were out in the open ocean. There’s only so much you can prepare for. You don’t know what that environment is going to be like. You can’t prepare for the cold, for the shock.

I’d get in the water with director/executive producer Joachim Ronning and the boat would start moving. I’d have to keep pace with it for the camera. There was a lot to think about. I was like a duck — everything visible was fine, everything below the water made me panic.

“For the three months of training and then three months of shooting, overcoming the obstacle of my fear of open water was a real mental challenge. I’m proud of it, but I’m also really happy I’ve gone back to my ‘acquaintance’ relationship with the water.”

Given her fears, Ridley's admiration for Ederle grew.

“Trudy’s feat was magnified for me as it forced me to overcome my own mental and physical obstacles to play her. [My courage] was a tiny portion of what Trudy did. Each time I got in the water, I reminded myself Trudy was in the vast ocean for hours and hours. She was a lone swimmer in the 1920s. No woman had done anything like this before.”

Ridley identified with Ederle’s determination, partly because her mother, Louis Fawkner-Corbett, instilled the courage to pursue her dreams in her and her two older sisters, Poppy and Kika-Rose.

“I grew up in a household with a mother who balanced work and family. She had her own life going on and was a committed parent. She never deterred us from what we were doing. Everything was, ‘OK, if you want to try it, sure’. I wanted to be an actor but I didn’t know how to go about becoming one. My mom said, ‘Try’. There was so much I didn’t know. There’s so much Trudy doesn’t know but she knows what she wants to do. I drew comparisons with her determination even if she wasn’t sure what the journey was going to look like.”

The Londoner referenced the role that brought her international fame as Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.

“I’ve had the great privilege of playing a character who faces obstacles in a galaxy far away, but what makes Young Woman and the Sea so exciting is that this is real, it happened. This woman set out to do something people thought was impossible for women. She overcame huge obstacles to do that. She broke a psychological barrier for women of the time and gave them the realisation it was possible,” said Ridley.

“You need one person to think a challenge is possible and achieve it, and then everybody realises ‘we can do it’. Mostly the reason we haven’t done things is because we’re told we can’t.

“Everyone has to face obstacles. You have to figure a way to go through them, around them or over them. That’s what Trudy did. The film is about emotion and the triumph of will. The can-do attitude Trudy had to have to take on the enormous task. At every step they tried to stop her. Nothing deterred her. She had the conviction that she was going to do it, and she did.”