A-Lister’s Husband Calls Their Journey to Parenthood ‘Brutal’
“It’s the most authentic feeling of failure ever.”
Karwai Tang/WireImage
Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson’s husband recalled their “brutal” journey to parenthood.
Actor and producer Greg Wise and Thompson met on the set of the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. On Nov. 4, Wise recalled their complicated journey to parenthood on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast.
Wise said he and Thompson had been together for around three years when they decided to start a family. When they “realized they couldn’t,” they flew to New York City to undergo in vitro fertilization treatment (IVF).
“I think almost exactly on her 40th birthday we found that she was pregnant,” Wise recalled.
Greg Wise wore a shirt with Gaia’s drawing at the Empire Magazine Film Awards in 2004. That night, Thompson won the Best Actress award for her role in “Love Actually.”
Toby Melville/Reuters
Thompson gave birth to the couple’s first child, actress Gaia Wise, in December 1999. After her birth, the couple turned to IVF again to grow their family.
“In Gaia’s second year of life, we tried again and failed and tried again and failed,” Wise said. This is one of the themes of his new book, Grief Talking, out on Nov. 5.
Emma Thompson and Greg Wise welcomed their first child, Gaia Wise, in 1999. Pictured here together in London, England, in 2025.
Hoda Davaine/WireImage
In 2010, Thompson told The Guardian that after giving birth to Gaia, she tried IVF for three more years.
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“It’s brutal anyway—IVF—and it brings so much baggage with it,” Wise said. “It’s the most authentic feeling of failure ever because this is why we’re here. We are here to procreate.”
Emma Thompson and Greg Wise (R) met on the set of "Sense and Sensibility." Pictured here at the 1995 premiere with director Ang Lee and star Hugh Grant.
Fred Prouser/Reuters
Wise said he was raised with the belief that he was “not a man” if he couldn’t become a father.
“It took us a very long time to dig ourselves out of that hole,” he said of the grief that followed their unsuccessful IVF treatment. “And we didn’t get help with it.”
Wise continued, “And at the same time, we had our gorgeous daughter. So the pull of the exquisite love we felt for her and then the jarring pain that we wouldn’t be able to provide her with a sibling and for us to have another child…”
Emma Thompson and Greg Wise at the 1998 Royal premiere of her film “Primary Colors.”
Peter Jordan - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images
Wise noted that the experience was taxing for Thompson, whose body was affected by the treatments.
“All I could do was to support and try and soothe her rather than myself,” he said.
Adding, “You get into this terrible spiral, this cycle. Luckily, we found our way through. But I know couples who were unable to remain couples after failed IVF.”
Greg Wise, Tindy Wise, Emma Thompson and Gaia Wise pictured leaving Buckingham Palace in London, England, after Thompson received her damehood in November 2018.
WPA Pool/Getty Images
Following the hardships, the couple expanded their family in a different way in December 2003, just months after they married in July.
Thompson met Tindyebwa “Tindy” Wise at a refugee event and invited the then-16-year-old for Christmas Eve dinner.
The couple unofficially adopted the Rwandan teenager that same year. He has since married and works at England’s Criminal Investigation Department.
“I couldn’t have more children, and that was hard; but perhaps if I had [had more], I’d have missed out on this extra act of mothering that I’ve had with Tindy,” Thompson told The Guardian in 2012.
Adding, “Because there was space in my life for him, and I don’t think there would have been space if I’d had another young child around.”
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