Netflix’s Joy Filming Locations

Netflix’s Joy filmed entirely in England beginning in September 2023. The film follows three real figures who developed in vitro fertilisation during the 1960s and 1970s: nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie), physiologist Robert Edwards (James Norton), and obstetrician and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy). Its real-world story was anchored to two English locations above all others: the Physiological Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where Edwards and Purdy worked from 1968 onward, and Oldham in Greater Manchester, where Steptoe operated and where Louise Brown, the world’s first IVF baby, was born on 25 July 1978.

Where Was Joy Filmed?

Joy was produced by Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey for Wildgaze Films and Pathe, with filming confirmed in England from September 2023. Specific filming addresses, including which cities and buildings stood in for period-accurate settings, have not been confirmed in production notes, official press material, or primary cast and crew interviews accessible at the time of publication.

The film’s geographic logic follows the historical record. Edwards and Purdy worked in Cambridge; Steptoe worked in Oldham. The two teams commuted between their institutions for years. Jean Purdy, born and trained in Cambridge, regularly traveled to Oldham to manage laboratory operations there.

Cambridge: Where the Science Started

Cambridge is the city most thoroughly documented in connection with the real story. Jean Purdy was born there in 1945, trained as a nurse at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and joined Edwards as a research assistant in 1968 at the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. She was the first person to observe an embryonic cell dividing from a fertilised human egg, a milestone achieved in that Cambridge lab.

Edwards had been at Cambridge since 1963, appointed as a Ford Foundation Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology and later made Reader in physiology in 1969. He was a member of Churchill College throughout the IVF research period. Purdy, when she died in 1985, was buried in Grantchester, a village about two miles south of Cambridge, alongside her mother and grandmother.

Oldham and Greater Manchester: The Birth Site

The clinical breakthrough at the center of Joy happened in Oldham, a borough of Greater Manchester that sits about seven miles northeast of Manchester city center. Patrick Steptoe served as a gynaecologist at Oldham and District General Hospital from 1951 to 1979. Louise Joy Brown, the first baby conceived by in vitro fertilisation, was born there on 25 July 1978 by planned caesarean section, weighing 5 pounds 12 ounces. The hospital, now called Royal Oldham Hospital, continues operating in the Coldhurst area of Oldham, managed by the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust.

The distinction between Oldham and the city of Manchester matters to the historical record. The delivery happened in Oldham, and Steptoe’s clinical base was there, not in Manchester proper.

The Three People Behind the Story

The three people at the center of Joy are Jean Purdy, Robert Edwards, and Patrick Steptoe, whose collaboration produced the first successful human IVF birth in 1978. Purdy died of melanoma on 16 March 1985 at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, aged 39. She had co-authored 26 papers with Steptoe and Edwards, and helped establish Bourn Hall Clinic in Bourn, Cambridgeshire in 1980, where she held the formal title of technical director. Patrick Steptoe died in 1988. Robert Edwards received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010. Because the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously, Purdy and Steptoe were ineligible.

Purdy was excluded from an early commemorative plaque at Bourn Hall, a decision Edwards protested publicly. He stated at a 1998 lecture that there were three original pioneers in IVF, not two. A blue plaque acknowledging all three was unveiled in 2015, thirty years after her death.

Production and Release

Joy was written by Jack Thorne, who drew on his own experience of IVF treatment with his wife Rachel Mason to develop the script. The film was directed by Ben Taylor, with Steven Price composing the score and Jamie Cairney serving as director of photography. Running time is 115 minutes.

It premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on 15 October 2024 and received a limited UK theatrical release on 15 November 2024. Netflix streaming began globally on 22 November 2024. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 89 percent approval rating from 55 critics.