Victoria Smurfit: ‘Postpartum depression had me manically sobbing in the middle of Ranelagh’

We all know that feeling of cringe, when you’re watching a movie or a series with your parents and a sex scene comes on. But what’s it like when your mother is actually in the sex scene? In this episode of Conversations with Parents, Hollywood actor Victoria Smurfit tells Jen Hogan how her children are coping with their mother’s steamy new role in the TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals. And she shares why she’s relieved none of her children seem likely to follow her into acting.

Victoria lives in London now, having for a time lived in LA. And while many of us have, from afar, and in horror, watched the terror of American school shootings on the television, she experienced that fear firsthand, when a text arrived from her daughter to say her school was on lockdown due to a shooter. She shares her experience, and her reaction to receiving the terrifying text, with Jen.

Plus, she talks how she felt when she learned her eldest daughter, Evie, had a degenerative eye disease, Stargardt macular dystrophy “When you find out that your kid has this condition, or any condition, as a parent you just go ‘wait. Okay so how do I fix it? What do I do?... And they say, nothing’. That is pretty extraordinary”. And she explains why hope is now a real part of their lives once again.

[ Victoria Smurfit: ‘Postnatal depression is very real. You feel crazy’Opens in new window ]

After the birth of her third child, Flynn, Victoria had postnatal depression. She discusses sobbing on the street in Ranelagh, and the realisation that something was very wrong. “I was aware something was very wrong when I was in the hallway staring at the back of the hall door going ‘I could just walk out. Someone would find them. They’d be okay. I could just leave’.”