Tilda Cobham-Hervey on Young Woman and the Sea

Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s parents found it funny when she booked a role in Young Woman and the Sea, a film about Gertrude Ederle, who became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926.

The film stars Daisy Ridley as Ederle and Cobham-Hervey plays her sister Meg, who was also a swimmer. The performance required Cobham-Hervey to do much more than just a quick paddle. Like Ridley, she too had to jump into the Black Sea and swim for the film’s pivotal moments.

“I was the sort of kid that, when we went to the beach or the pool, I was reading a book in the shade,” Cobham-Hervey told The Nightly. “So my parents found it hilarious when I was cast in this movie.”

It’s not that the Adelaide-born Cobham-Hervey couldn’t swim, she could breaststroke and be in the water. Like most Australians, primary school years were spent in lessons, but the common assumption from everyone else in the world that all Australians were very strong swimmers is never quite right.

When she was offered the role, the producers of Young Woman and the Sea said to her, “You’re Australian, so you’re a great swimmer” and she had to correct them.

What followed was months of training for her and Ridley with an Olympic swimmer. She recalled, with a laugh, “It was a little bit humiliating at the beginning, having to go into the kids’ pool with your paddle board and your floaties to try and learn. But now I feel very grateful for it.”

All that time in the pool with Ridley also bonded them, which was essential to creating the Ederle sisters’ close relationship on screen. It’s one of the key emotional anchors of the film and in order for the story to have gravity, you had to believe that Ederle had that backing.

Cobham-Hervey, who broke out as a teen actor in the Australian indie film 52 Tuesdays, directed by Sophie Hyde, and has also been in I Am Woman and Hotel Mumbai, doesn’t have a sister to draw from but she has a younger brother she said she feels very protective of, and as the onscreen big sister, she understood that instinct.

“Daisy has two sisters, so we talked a lot about her family and we just spent heaps of time together and learning how to swim is a very good bonding exercise,” she said. “Every morning, we’re in the pool and she’s so silly and so grounded, and we just laughed a lot.

“I’m actually surprised that there are serious moments in the movie because we were pretty much hysterical the whole time.”

Being on location in Bulgaria allowed the cast to create a de facto family when they were so far from their own. Not just Cobham-Hervey and Ridley, but also German actor Jeanette Hain, who plays the Ederle mother, and Fleabag star Sian Clifford, who portrays Ederle’s first coach.

Ederle’s story has been largely forgotten in the century since her incredible feat. People are aware there must have been a person who was the first woman to swim the English Channel, but would be hard-pressed to name her. When Ederle completed her feat, she did it with a time that broke by two hours the records set by the four men before her.

She faced discrimination and ridicule. But the thing about the film that feels contemporary is that even now, while the specificities have shifted, there are still aspects to the fight for recognition and equality that remain.

Cobham-Hervey said that was something they talked a lot about on set, hearing the stories from their Olympic trainer about the difference in the way men and women are still treated in swimming, particularly when it came to funding.

“There’s still such a big problem of equality in the sports industry, but obviously we’ve come so far, the idea of not being able to swim as a woman a hundred years ago feels crazy to me,” she said. “Women weren’t allowed in the water and when they were, they were dressed in full wool outfits with shoes on.

“Do you know how hard it is to swim in that? It feels like you’re being pulled underwater.”

The movie’s release is timed to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. It’s a spotlight on a female athlete who broke not just records but shifted attitudes.

Cobham-Hervey added, “Her swimming the Channel, it was a lot more than just that. It represented such a bigger idea of what women were capable of”.

Young Woman and the Sea is streaming on Disney+