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- [00:00]
Hannah Murray
Now I can understand all of this as undiagnosed bipolar. And I remember thinking as I was experiencing it like, this is so amazing. Why have I ever taken drugs? This is so much better. And I just thought, this is it. This is the magic solution. This is the silver bullet. This is the thing that will fix me. And then everything fell apart when the word sectioned was used. I just remember kind of thinking that doesn't really make sense. It doesn't really fit in with what I understand is going on.
- [00:30]
Elizabeth Day
This episode of how to Fail is brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Hello and welcome to how to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast that believes every time we fail, we also learn something about how to succeed better. Before we get into this episode, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation.
- [00:55]
Hannah Murray
So good, so good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save on the brands you love like Vince, Sam, Edelman, Frame and Free People. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack, Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC and for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds.
- [01:32]
Elizabeth Day
Get the unreal college deal everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft
- [01:38]
Hannah Murray
365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer law supplies last ends June 30 terms at aka mscollegepc Hannah
- [01:52]
Elizabeth Day
Murray worked as an actor for over a decade and developed a reputation for tackling emotionally complex characters with great sensitivity from a young age. At 17, Murray starred as the self destructive Cassie in E4's Skins. Later, she juggled an English degree at Cambridge University alongside playing Gilly, an abused wilding who births her father's child in HBO's Game of THR. Her film roles include Detroit, directed by Catherine Bigelow, in which she played a survivor of police abuse, and Charlie says, where she portrayed a real life Manson family member. When the physical and mental stress required from these roles began to take its toll, Murray sought treatment from a Reiki healer. From there, her life began to spiral as she became heavily involved with a healing organisation who whose promises of real life magic and enlightenment were increasingly seductive to a highly vulnerable Murray. She ended up being sectioned after a psychotic break and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now she has written her first book. The Make Believe A Memoir of Magic and Madness is a deeply personal account of these events. Written with compulsive lyricism, it takes readers on a journey to the edges of reality, where magic seems possible and where the liminal space between what is real and what is imagined becomes ever more porous. It has already rightly been heaped with praise from, among others, Dolly alderton and Sophie McIntosh. The events the book details, says Murray, were intensely challenging to live through. But, she adds, the process of writing them down was powerfully rewarding. Hannah Morry, welcome to how to Fail.
- [03:52]
Hannah Murray
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
- [03:54]
Elizabeth Day
It's my honor having been lucky enough to read a proof copy of the Make Believe. I concur with all of the praise that you have had. It is an astonishing book and one of the best memoirs I've ever read. I couldn't put it down. I felt so compelled to read every page. I think the gift you have with language to explore some things that are so difficult to explain, astonishing. And I appreciate that. Today we're going to be talking about a lot of really difficult stuff, and I wanted to start by saying that I acknowledge that. And I also want to thank you for the gift of your communicating it.
- [04:32]
Hannah Murray
Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. That's all. It's all really wonderful to hear. And I think, yeah, I sort of felt like if you're going to go on how to Fail, you have to come with some real failures like you want. I wanted to respect the format. The book, in many ways, is about things that felt like failures that I've managed to transform into something else over time largely by writing about them.
- [04:56]
Elizabeth Day
Well, I notice in that quote that I ended on, you said rewarding but not healing.
- [05:04]
Hannah Murray
Yeah. There are certain words that I will use occasionally, but I find healing is a tricky one for me. I find gratitude is a tricky one for me because those words feel so strongly associated with that kind of spiritual wellness culture that I'm now pretty allergic to.
- [05:25]
Elizabeth Day
Yes, we'll get more into the meat of that. But I was so struck reading your book and doing the research this interview, how the acting roles that you had, I mean, they were never easy comic characters, were they?
- [05:41]
Hannah Murray
Not really. There was one I did a musical called God Help the Girl. That was, for me, my character. There are heavy parts of that film, too, but my character was just a sunny delight. And it was the only time I really remember being like getting to be happy all day at work and how fun that was and otherwise. Yeah, it was a lot of really difficult stuff to dig into, I guess. And also makes you, I think, question a bit like, why am I always being chosen for these kinds of roles and why am I only being offered these kinds of roles and what does that say about me? And then, you know, it was strange to start at quite a young age playing those very challenging characters.
- [06:23]
Elizabeth Day
Yes, that was going to be my question, actually. Do you think you were drawn to those roles or do you think that casting directors were drawn to you?
- [06:31]
Hannah Murray
A bit of both, but more the latter, because there was definitely a point in my career around the time I sort of. Around the time I did Detroit. Before that, I was sort of saying to my team, I would really love to do a comedy, because they sort of ask you, like, you know, what do you want to do next? And I was like, I would really love to do a comedy. And they're like, yep, brilliant, great. And then they'd be like, we've got this, and obviously it's Catherine Bigelow. And of course you're going to say yes. And I was always thrilled to get to play these roles and they were meaty and they were substantial and they were challenging. But I think I had, back to back, I did four films in a row. Detroit was the third of those four that were based on true events. And those true events were extremely harrowing. And I do think it had started to take its toll even before I did that movie. And then that movie, yeah, set me on this path. That really is what the book's about, but.
- [07:25]
Elizabeth Day
And I'm going to come on to filming Detroit in a second, because that's how you open the book. But just before we do. So many people have such personal relationships with your work with Cassie from Skins, with your role on Game of Thrones. What's that like for you now? Now that being an actor for you is a thing of the past.
- [07:45]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [07:46]
Elizabeth Day
Do you still get people having quite visceral reactions to you and how can you handle that?
- [07:54]
Hannah Murray
It's something I do feel relatively disconnected from in that, like, people don't really come up to me in the street, recognise me anymore. And it happens occasionally. And when it does happen, it is clear that often that person has loved, whether it's Game of Thrones or Skins or both, for a really long time, and that it means an incredible amount to them. And I think for me, it's always just felt quite surreal that I was in these shows that were so popular and meant so much to so many people because my perception of myself is only that I am me and I can't possibly be in a huge. You know, it's like you can't hold the two truths at once that you're in a TV show and that that TV show happens to be a huge cultural phenomenon. So I think I'm kind of constantly surprised and quite moved by how much those characters still mean to people.
- [08:50]
Elizabeth Day
I said in the introduction that your book, the Make Believe is written with compulsive lyricism and it was the closest thing that I could reach for because it's sort of poetic, but.
- [08:57]
Hannah Murray
Pacey, thank you.
- [08:59]
Elizabeth Day
It's so good. How did you go about learning how to write? You did an English degree at Cambridge. But I don't know whether that's helpful or not. It could be intimidating.
- [09:09]
Hannah Murray
Yeah. I think I spent many years after doing my English degree desperately wanting to write and feeling so inhibited by the things I had learned about literature there. And I think whenever I did sit down to try and write something whether that, you know, I tried writing screenplays, I tried writing short stories and novels and nothing would ever get very far because I would immediately put on my kind of analytical Cambridge brain and tear whatever I had written to pieces. And I think I had to kind of get a bit of distance from. From that undergraduate degree to really be able to write in a less inhibited way.
- [09:51]
Elizabeth Day
How are you feeling about it being published?
- [09:54]
Hannah Murray
Mostly really, really excited. Like, a little dose of terrified as well. And I think that's quite healthy. But, I mean, yeah, I spent seven years writing it and to now be in this moment that it's a real book and it's about to be read by other people who I don't even know like, it feels phenomenally exciting.
- [10:15]
Elizabeth Day
Before we get onto your failures I wanted to go back to that scene that you opened the book with where you are filming Detroit.
- [10:25]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [10:26]
Elizabeth Day
And I think this displays the power of your writing because I have been lucky enough to interview a lot of actors but I suppose I'd never really thought about the physical and emotional cost of constantly having to replay a scene for filming purposes. And you write about this particular scene very powerfully and the impact it has on your body and then how it ends up with you and the events that we're about to explore. Do you mind just telling that story for us?
- [10:56]
Hannah Murray
The role I played in Detroit, you know, I was playing a real woman. And the biggest sort of moment that happens to that character in that film is that she is sexually assaulted by a police officer. Her dress is ripped off. This happened during the night of the Algiers motel murders during the Detroit uprising in 1967. And so to shoot the scene that you. My dress was ripped off me. But that doesn't just happen once you do it again and again for multiple takes from different angles. I really didn't want to be distressed by that. I really didn't want to be traumatized by that, because I was like, this isn't happening to me. It's not real. And the woman who I was playing was on set and it had really happened to her. And I was very conscious of the difference between doing something for pretend and as your job and actually having lived through that experience. But at the same time, your body doesn't necessarily know that it's fake. Your brain knows that it's fake. And then it just keeps happening. And you have to kind of get your makeup retouched, and then they put the dress back on you. And I remember it was kind of sewn with very loose thread so that it would rip off easily. And it was just. Yeah, I just remember having very physical reactions to that that I could not shake. And then I thought going to see an energy healer was a really good idea in response to that.
- [12:32]
Elizabeth Day
And I could so relate to that feeling like a good idea. As someone who also has dabbled in. I've had Reiki.
- [12:40]
Hannah Murray
It was great.
- [12:42]
Elizabeth Day
And I think you do such a good job of sort of describing each one of the steps, which in isolation, doesn't seem that big of a deal until suddenly you're in too deep. Let's get into it now.
- [12:57]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [12:58]
Elizabeth Day
Your first failure. And you preface this in such an eloquent email to me saying that you don't consider these failures. You wouldn't consider them failures in anyone else.
- [13:07]
Hannah Murray
No.
- [13:08]
Elizabeth Day
And you've reframed them, but they felt like failures at the time.
- [13:11]
Hannah Murray
Very much so. At the time. Yeah.
- [13:12]
Elizabeth Day
Your first failure is failing to be happy all the time.
- [13:16]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [13:18]
Elizabeth Day
Tell us about that. It's specifically to do with being in your 20s, isn't it?
- [13:21]
Hannah Murray
Yeah. On the surface, like, everything was great. And I had a very enviable successful life and career. I had this kind of quite glamorous, like, probably slightly too much partying kind of lifestyle, but I loved it. But a lot of the time I was really miserable, and I didn't feel like I had a right to be miserable ever. And I thought if I was unhappy, there was this constant sort of inner monologue of like, you're so Privileged. What do you have to be sad about? Why can't you just be happy? That made the sadness only more extreme because I was then sort of beating myself up for it. And I just think I sort of thought that happiness was something I had to figure out and achieve and arrive at, and then I would be permanently happy. And it was my fault that I couldn't find the kind of perfect recipe for that in my life. And so it was always like, well, I need to exercise more, or I need to get up earlier and do more of a morning routine, or I need to eat better, or I need to quit smoking, or I need to. It was always like there was some solution that I thought would give me this state of constant, perfect happiness, which really no one is ever going to be in all the time. But I thought it was my kind of duty to achieve that, and I thought it was fully my responsibility. Yeah. And then spirituality and meditation was something I kind of hadn't tried yet, and so started exploring that as maybe that's the thing that's missing, and then started to go down a bit of a rabbit hole that then quickly fell all the way down into a quite extreme obsession with that sort of world.
- [15:06]
Elizabeth Day
Before we get onto that part, which is a major part, I want to ask you a bit about the tenor of your unhappiness.
- [15:15]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [15:16]
Elizabeth Day
You write very movingly in the book about knowing that your mother had five miscarriages before she had you.
- [15:24]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [15:25]
Elizabeth Day
How much do you think that informed how you were feeling?
- [15:29]
Hannah Murray
I think it was a huge factor. I mean, the reason why I've written about that in the book is because it felt to me, when I look back on my 20s, like that was hugely informing my understanding of my place in the world, I suppose. And it was something I wrestled with a bit about, including in the book, because I felt like maybe this is my mother's story, but it also impacted me and my understanding of myself from quite early childhood. And I had this feeling from quite a young age. I think I had a kind of existential wrestling with what that meant, that there were five pregnancies before me. And so potentially I sort of interpreted that as five people who could have lived lives and I was the one that got born. And so I felt this. I think I describe it in the book as survivor's guilt that I had to then sort of like, atone for, and that I had to live six lives worth of experience and I guess six lives worth of happiness, too, that it wasn't just enough to be alive. I Had to be wonderfully, gloriously alive all the time and be making the most of every day. And I did feel like I had to include it in the book as part of why I went down the path that I went down.
- [17:01]
Elizabeth Day
I'm glad you did. And you expressed that so well alongside this feeling of unhappiness, survivor's guilt, like having to live the life of six. You also describe moments of rapture. What were they like?
- [17:18]
Hannah Murray
Absolutely incredible. There were moments, so many moments, and they could be when I was working and my life was kind of obviously fabulous and incredible and creatively fulfilling to be on set with these incredible actors and having these kind of strange, glamorous experiences. But there were also. I could just be walking down the street and it would be raining and I'd be listening to music and I'd suddenly feel like being alive is the best thing in the world. And I'm having the most, like, the best possible version. You know, when you're walking down the street, you feel like you're in a movie. Yes, that sort of feeling. And what was so frustrating was that I didn't know I couldn't control when that feeling came and went, which now I can understand all of this as undiagnosed bipolar, but I didn't have that diagnosis. I didn't have that information about the way my emotional and mental landscape was operating. And so I felt like I should be able to feel like that all the time. That feeling is like what I want all the time. And again, that's not sustainable or realistic, but I was always chasing after that kind of. That kind of magic, I suppose. And then I remember a therapist saying to me, when I was really depressed, she was like, well, what happened before you got really depressed? And I was like, well, I felt incredible. Everything was amazing. I was on top of the world. And she said, it's like you float up into the sky when you're that happy. And so when you get knocked back down, you fall even further. And there was a very. Yeah, I'd say very kind of ungrounded, unrooted nature to how I moved through the world, I suppose.
- [18:59]
Elizabeth Day
Yes. You knew that these moments of rapture were available and that sense of wanting to make them consistent.
- [19:07]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [19:08]
Elizabeth Day
And the fact that they weren't consistent was somehow your fault.
- [19:11]
Hannah Murray
Yes. Yes.
- [19:12]
Elizabeth Day
So you're now filming Detroit. You have this re. Traumatizing, really, experience of filming this scene again and again and again, and someone recommends a Reiki healer.
- [19:22]
Hannah Murray
You.
- [19:22]
Elizabeth Day
You go along and you have a great experience.
- [19:25]
Hannah Murray
Oh, the best I Mean, I thought it was in a life that had been filled with a lot of really great experiences, I would have. I left that thinking, this is the best thing I've ever experienced, and this is the best day of my life. And I just wanted more and more of that feeling, which was a very literal, kind of magical, invisible force moving my body. Like a thing that I still can't quite comprehend how that could have felt so real. And I remember thinking as I was experiencing it, like, this is so amazing. Why have I ever taken drugs? This is so much better. And I just thought, this is it. This is the magic solution. This is a silver bullet. This is the thing that will fix me forever. And now I will be able to be happy always. And there were further courses to take, and there were more healings to get, and there was a wonderful kind of ever expanding path that I could follow through the organization this healer was part of. And so I started following very diligently the sort of the path and the instructions, and took another course and then took another course, and then everything fell apart.
- [20:42]
Elizabeth Day
And you were taking these courses back in the uk, in London, and you were paying for them.
- [20:47]
Hannah Murray
I was paying for them, yes. And the price increased, kind of each level you progressed through, it got more expensive.
- [20:56]
Elizabeth Day
Will you describe one of those courses?
- [20:59]
Hannah Murray
Yeah. So the first one I took was two days. It was in a basement room in a hotel, but very beautiful basement room that was all blue, like blue carpet, blue wallpaper, blue chairs. And everything was. Was kind of immersed in this very calm, gorgeous color. We meditated a lot. That was a big part of it. And I had been doing some meditation on my own or sort of through, like guided, like, you know, like meditation tracks and things like that. And I'd done a course in transcendental meditation. So I was kind of. I was like, oh, I know what meditation's like. And this was something else. It was like these deep kind of visionary journeys that took me into these. I saw fabulous things in my head. I meditated in a way I never could have imagined was really possible. You know, I think we'd meditate for sort of like. Like that for sort of 45 minutes to an hour. And you'd come out of it feeling like a completely altered person. And then we were also learning rituals which we were supposed to perform twice a day every day, which I did very diligently after I took that course. And then there was also information about the world and the universe and fun facts like dragons and unicorns are real. And didn't you know, that they are. And I remember kind of having a certain degree of skepticism about some of it, but it just felt so incredible. It just felt so good. And I thought, well, maybe. I mean, I can sort of, like. I thought. I think. I thought I could sort of take what I needed from it and maybe figure out the other stuff I wasn't sure about later. And then just got kind of deeper and deeper and more and more immersed.
- [22:49]
Elizabeth Day
Looking back on it now, and we're going to come on to what happened and how harmful it was for you. Looking back on it now, do you think it was cult like?
- [23:01]
Hannah Murray
Yes, I think so. I think I'm very. I'm very wary of that word in that I think, you know, when people say in a film, if you take your top off, you have to be very careful what you say for like, three minutes afterwards, because no one's gonna be listening to you. They're just going to be looking at your tits.
- [23:22]
Elizabeth Day
I did not know that. That's really interesting.
- [23:24]
Hannah Murray
Yeah. It's like if you're gonna do a topless scene, no one will hear anything that comes out of your mouth kind of thing. And I slightly think that C word can be similarly distracting in that I think it carries such weight and such power, and I feel like it can slightly erase nuance. I chose to call them the organization in the book. And that feels better to me to use that term because it allows for gray areas, I suppose. And I still can see why I was so seduced by it. I suppose there was a time when I really judged myself for falling for it, for want of a better word. And now I'm like, no, you. You thought it was wonderful. It felt wonderful. Of course. You were, like, all in. It felt like everything I'd ever wanted was suddenly being handed to me.
- [24:21]
Elizabeth Day
I can totally understand, by the way. And that's a testament to the quality of your writing and your explanation of it, that there were some great things that came out of it. Like meditating for 45 minutes is probably a great thing. Not that I've ever done it, but it's a great thing to do. I hear. And then I can understand how the allure of that and that feeling and the connections you're making and the community you're forming, other people leads you somewhere where suddenly you've got a wand and you're chanting and you're believing in dragons and unicorns. Yeah, it makes complete sense.
- [24:53]
Hannah Murray
I'm glad it makes sense.
- [24:54]
Elizabeth Day
It does.
- [24:54]
Hannah Murray
That was the big thing. I wanted this book to be able to do was make sense of it both for myself and then also for people that read it, that people could see why I took the steps that I did. And as you said earlier, I think that it is incremental, that each decision along the way doesn't seem that major and definitely doesn't seem like it's gonna take you where I ended up.
- [25:19]
Elizabeth Day
There is a character in the book called Steve who is the most senior person in this organization.
- [25:26]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [25:27]
Elizabeth Day
And you develop a fixation on him. Would that be fair to say? Which he.
- [25:34]
Hannah Murray
Very intense fixation. There was a kind of incremental thing and then there were certain moments where it was like a huge leap in my devotion and belief. And meeting him, which happened once I took this two day course. Then about five or six months later, I took a week long course. And on the penultimate day of that course, I met Steve. He came to give a talk to the students and then it was like a whole different ball game because I already believed that magic was real. And then I met him and I was like, oh, this is what someone who is a magician is like. And I still. It's weird to think about that there was that encounter with him because it was so. It almost sounds cliche. It was hard to write about without it sounding overblown because I just was like, I've never met anyone this confident or this magnetic in my entire life. And that was the first time. And this is in the book that I thought, oh, maybe this is a cult. Because I thought they have charismatic leaders. This man is incredibly charismatic. He's surrounded by all these women who. He was something else. And I definitely developed very quickly a kind of intense. Yeah, fixation or obsession with him. Really wanted his approval, his attention, and then quite quickly decided I was completely in love with him. And we must be soulmates before we
- [27:15]
Elizabeth Day
get onto your second quote, unquote failure.
- [27:19]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [27:19]
Elizabeth Day
I wonder if you could talk to me a bit about your 20s more broadly because I wonder if part of you was also looking for a community of like minded people because you were already separate from your peers because of the life that you were living and the acting jobs that you got since you were a teenager. Was it difficult sometimes to connect with your contemporaries?
- [27:45]
Hannah Murray
Yes, it was. I mean, I think I have like, I have some really close friends from university who are still my friends and I have really good friends from the acting world. But a lot of friends you make in film and TV can be quite fleeting, transitory friendships. And so I think that sense of community was something I was struggling to find. And then I think also, yeah, there was a way in which my life was very unusual to a lot of my friends from university who would, like doctors and lawyers and management consultants and various differently, and worked in marketing and whatever, and they would kind of be quite baffled by my life. And. And I was often. I was unemployed for long periods of time, kind of waiting for the next job. And I think they found that very hard to wrap their head around. And they always kind of be like, but what do you do? I don't understand. What do you do all day? And I was. I don't really know. There's that interesting feeling that happened to me very much when I got the part in Skins of, you have been chosen and you are special and that we have seen something in you that means we are picking you over everyone else. And that's an incredible feeling. But it can also be kind of isolating. You know, it's exciting to be special and chosen, and it's isolating to be special and chosen. And then also you want to keep being chosen, and then a lot of the time you're not. And so it was again, I mean, the highs and lows I was experiencing anyway, in terms of my mental health, in terms of my kind of search for happiness, I think was definitely exacerbated by working in that industry, which is all highs and lows all the time.
- [29:32]
Elizabeth Day
Fascinating, this sense of specialness being attractive, but also crushing that you had the specialness of being the child that your mother so desperately wanted, the specialness of getting that part and Skins, the specialness of a Cambridge interview allotting you the position of chosen one to study that degree.
- [29:51]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [29:52]
Elizabeth Day
And now in this wellness organization, the specialness you hope of being chosen by Steve.
- [29:59]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [30:01]
Elizabeth Day
So can I just ask you final question on this?
- [30:03]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [30:04]
Elizabeth Day
About addiction.
- [30:05]
Hannah Murray
Yes. You.
- [30:06]
Elizabeth Day
You mentioned earlier that you liked to party.
- [30:08]
Hannah Murray
I did, yes.
- [30:10]
Elizabeth Day
Do you feel in some respects that the wellness experiences you were having, and I put that in quotation marks because it's not real wellness.
- [30:18]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [30:19]
Elizabeth Day
But were they a substitute for the partying and the drugs?
- [30:24]
Hannah Murray
Yeah, I mean, a thousand percent. You know, I had a very addictive relationship with various substances, with, you know, alcohol, cigarettes, recreational drugs. And then. And I kind. And I sometimes was like, that's fine. That's just who I am. And I'm in my 20s and loads of my friends do all the same things. And sometimes I was like, desperate to give those things up. And I just found that meditation, spirituality, and then particularly this organization was something else to get addicted to. Yes, I thought it was a healthy addiction, you know, I thought it could only bring good things into my life. But I think it was exactly the same kind of piece of me that was being activated, that just wanted kind of more and more and more of a rush, of a high, of a good feeling that was kind of made me very vulnerable to that.
- [31:23]
Elizabeth Day
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- [32:39]
Hannah Murray
Everything's on the table. This is what champions come to take. This is what everyone came to see. No do overs, no second chance. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
- [32:54]
Elizabeth Day
This is winner take all.
- [32:57]
Hannah Murray
And it's all happening now on the home of the NBA Finals. Don't miss it. June 3rd on ABC and the ESPN app good sleep is everything.
- [33:07]
Elizabeth Day
That's why Ollie's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L theanine for both kiddos and grown ups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance.
- [33:20]
Hannah Murray
Find Ollie Sleep solutions for the whole
- [33:22]
Elizabeth Day
family@ollie.com that's O L L Y dot com. This search for that high leads us onto the second thing that we're going to talk about, which is being sectioned.
- [33:38]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [33:39]
Elizabeth Day
Do you mind describing, as you did in the book, the breakdown that you had in the cubicle in the hotel?
- [33:48]
Hannah Murray
I can try. I can try and give a reasonably short account of that. So on the final day of the course we were all going to be initiated at the sort of next level of the organization's structure, and we were sort of getting ready for that, and we were performing these healings on each other. And I just. Something was starting to really, really not be right in my head. And I was hearing voices. I had this kind of darkness closing in at the corners of my vision. I was really struggling to kind of feel present. And because of the context, it all felt, you know, like kind of a magical spiritual experience. But it was very, very scary. And I ended up going to the toilets in this basement of this hotel, I think, just to kind of get away from other people and kind of have a moment. And then I didn't leave the cubicle for many hours. My sense of time was really not clear by that point. And I thought while I was in the cubicle that I was basically kind of like giving birth out of the top of my skull. And I thought I was giving birth to a sort of new universe that would be completely a sort of paradise utopia. Various people tried to kind of talk to me through the door. And then I asked for Steve to come and talk to me, and he did. He persuaded me to come out of the cubicle. And then him and the teachers from the course performed an exorcism on me, which at the time, I remember thinking was really hilarious. And I couldn't quite. There were lots of layers to my understanding. It's quite a difficult story to tell because of the state I was in. But I kind of thought, oh, you know, me and Steve are soulmates. We've saved the world. No one else can know. And so he has to pretend that I've been possessed and they're going to perform the exorcism to kind of COVID up what's really happening. And then some paramedics came and took me to hospital, but I thought I was being taken to a palace where Steve was awaiting me, and we would get married and become kind of, you know, king and queen of this new utopia. Now, when I look at it, that doesn't add up, but it felt so utterly real to me in those moments.
- [36:29]
Elizabeth Day
When was your first understanding of the fact that you had been sectioned?
- [36:34]
Hannah Murray
There was a moment where I remember being told I was being sectioned, and I was in a place that, you know, looked like a hospital, smelled like a hospital. Everyone had NHS lanyards around their neck. I kind of. I could kind of get these pieces of information, but it was all in a. I used all that information to support my own narrative. And so when they said, when the word sectioned was used, I just remember kind of thinking, that doesn't really make sense. That doesn't really fit in with what I understand is going on. So it sort of. I sort of put it to one side. I was in hospital for three weeks, and I'd say maybe, maybe about a week in, I kind of understood, oh, I'm actually in a psychiatric ward and I can't leave. But it wasn't until months later, really, that those delusions finally left me. It was just there was an understanding of this is the reality. I don't understand why this is happening, but this must all be part of the plan to save the universe and for me to end up with Steve, if that makes sense.
- [37:49]
Elizabeth Day
It does. You were 27.
- [37:51]
Hannah Murray
I was 27, yes.
- [37:54]
Elizabeth Day
Were you scared?
- [37:56]
Hannah Murray
There were moments of these experiences that were absolutely terrifying, and there were moments of these experiences that were the most euphoric I have ever been in my entire life. It's hard to describe to people how good it felt to feel that. That euphoric, that powerful, that purposeful, that kind of destined.
- [38:21]
Elizabeth Day
What was your experience of medication during these three weeks?
- [38:26]
Hannah Murray
So I was very resistant to it early on. In the first few days, I think there was a lot of spitting out pills and thinking people were trying to poison me. And I think I was probably quite heavily sedated at various points, but my memories are quite fragmented around that time one day, and I don't know why, there was a voice in my head which I thought was Steve's voice, which told me, it's fine, you can take the pills. It's safe to take the pills. And so I started taking them. And so gradually, once, you know, once I started taking quite a powerful antipsychotic, did start to regain some connection to reality, but it took a long time. Yeah. To fully come back.
- [39:15]
Elizabeth Day
The reason you told me that you have chosen to talk about this, or part of the reason is because you felt so much shame over having been sectioned.
- [39:26]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [39:27]
Elizabeth Day
Could you explore that a little bit more with me?
- [39:30]
Hannah Murray
Yeah, for sure. When I, you know, was coming to terms with it later, when I was kind of much more back in my sense of reality, it felt like I had sort of failed at being an adult, failed at being independent, failed at. I guess it felt like the mental health equivalent of going bankrupt or something, if that makes sense. Like this idea that you had sort of gone the furthest, you could go to the most, the biggest extreme, and you had been told, you know, you don't you're not functional, that we have to. We have to take extreme measures because you are so not functional. And that was really, really difficult to come to terms with, that I had gotten to that place, and now I have so much more compassion for myself having gone through that and for. And I think I'm really. I said at the beginning, I don't like the word gratitude, but I am. I am grateful for that experience because I think. I think of myself at 25, 26, and I was so obsessed with my career. I was so obsessed with my body and going to the gym and how I looked in the mirror and who wanted to fuck me or didn't want to fuck me. And whether I was smoking five cigarettes a day or 10 cigarettes a day, you know, it was like. I felt like all my obsessions were quite trivial and superficial, really, in my mid-20s. And then this thing happened that completely ripped me open, completely brought me to my knees and brought me into contact with other people who were having their lives ripped open and being brought to their knees. And I just. I feel like I'm a much more empathetic person because of it and a much more real person because of it. And I also found, like, it was interesting when people came to visit me because my parents visited me a lot, my friends, a lot of friends came to visit me in hospital. And I could see their fear when they arrived, usually. And then I could see them over the course of their visit, sort of relax and realize that other patients are just people. They would sometimes have conversations with the other patients. There was a kind of, like. I could see everyone kind of go like, oh, this is. This is not some kind of nightmare community of people that aren't sort of safe to be around. It was just like, these are just people going through a really difficult time. And looking back on that shift that I saw in the people closest to me, their perception as well as my own perception, shifting. I find that quite beautiful, really.
- [42:17]
Elizabeth Day
I find it staggeringly beautiful. And also because of what you were talking about, about being chosen and birthing this utopia, in a way, perhaps part of your purpose is to have made that so clear, that there is so much othering of things that we can't understand or feel fearful of. And actually, you've reminded these people of their own humanity and how we all exist on this spectrum. Yeah, that's the power of. That's the magic of what you're doing.
- [42:49]
Hannah Murray
Thank you. That's a really lovely perspective on it. And I do. It's something I think about sometimes because the very first healing I was given was I was told it would strip away everything that wasn't authentic to who I was. And I was told it would connect me with my true purpose in life. And I no longer believe in any of the magic of the organization or their beliefs. But sometimes I look at what that healing set in motion and where I have ended up now because of it, and I think, well, maybe it did connect me with a purpose and maybe it did strip away things that were not really authentic to who I was meant to be.
- [43:29]
Elizabeth Day
The other ring is interesting as well because we live in a culture. I mean here we are on my podcast how to Spell which Talks, which has a lot of sort therapy adjacent language to it and how great that we can live in a culture where we are encouraged to talk about anxiety and things like that. However, I do think that if there is a negative to the overwhelm of that conversation, it is that things that exist on a more extreme end of the spectrum get overlooked othered and underfunded. And I just wondered what your take was on that, on the kind of mental health language that is so current right now and in some instances quite adjacent to the wellness industry of it all and like real serious clinical mental health issues, whether it be bipolar disorder, living with schizophrenia, the impact that has on families, whether you think there's enough attention pay to that.
- [44:28]
Hannah Murray
I completely. I think there isn't enough attention put on the more extreme end of the spectrum. I think there has been, if I'm honest, I can get quite angry a lot of the time about this. I hear so much, oh, we all need to talk about mental health more and everyone has mental health problems and it's okay if you like, you know, need a mental health day because you're feeling anxious or you're feeling sad and it's sort of like okay, but what if I want to talk about when I was drinking my own urine on a psychiatric ward and you can't really say that at a dinner party. And I think it's. I just feel like there is still a big taboo around psychosis, bipolar, schizophrenia, other conditions that are less palatable and less kind of cozy and less solved by a hot bath or some mindfulness or some crystals or whatever your kind of solution or like talking therapies. I had a friend say to me once when I was struggling with a kind of minor manic episode and then going into a depression and he was like, well, we all have ups and downs, we do. But you know, I think it's just. Yeah, I just. I think there can be an erasure basically of these types of experiences that people still don't want to talk about, still don't want to look at and that again, that are more common than we like to acknowledge, I think a lot of the time.
- [45:58]
Elizabeth Day
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- [47:11]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [47:11]
Elizabeth Day
And I'm going to do something that you might find embarrassing. But there was just such an extraordinary description of it in your book.
- [47:18]
Hannah Murray
Okay.
- [47:18]
Elizabeth Day
That I would love, with your permission, to read.
- [47:22]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [47:22]
Elizabeth Day
Okay. It was easy to mention the bad things first, to talk about times I had been depressed or obviously fucked up. I told him about my drug use, my heavy drinking, my self harm. The periods of lying in bed for days or weeks at a time when I'd wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. The stronger desire to actively commit suicide. But there was something else that felt both trickier and more important to describe. It was the sense of magic I had always known, long before the organisation had come into my life. Moments of euphoria. Flashes of something infinite and sublime. I described a time in my teenage years walking around an art gallery in a state of rapture. Rapture at the paintings, yes. But it was more than that. It was the experience of simply being in a room. Every cell in my body burning with life and every tiny sensation feeling like a miracle. I described how this feeling had appeared sporadically from adolescence onwards, how I had never been able to control how it came and went, how I had always wanted more, more, more of it, but how it had been punctuated with deep dives into darkness and misery. I told him how my emotional and mental landscape had always been one of extremes. I understood, I think, on some level, that my experiences on the course and in the hospital were an extension of something I had known and felt before, exaggerated and amplified, but not entirely unfamiliar. I think that is one of the best descriptions of something that probably lies beyond words. So many people that I've ever read, and so many people are going to feel seen and understood in those words, and I just want to salute you for it.
- [49:07]
Hannah Murray
Thank you.
- [49:08]
Elizabeth Day
No, easy question.
- [49:09]
Hannah Murray
Thank you. It's really strange to hear someone else read it out loud. It's quite nice. It's something, I think, with bipolar, I think the fact that half of it is so seductively wonderful to experience until it's not makes it such a tricky condition to manage because you can feel a bit manic and think, well, this is great. I'm like, I've got this energy. I'm so creative. I'm getting stuff done. I feel amazing. I'm talking more and telling all these great stories. I'm so funny. You feel like you're firing on all cylinders and you think, well, just. I just want, like, 10% more of this. And then you just want another 10% more. And actually, you have to be really careful and cautious of your own positive feelings as much as your negative ones. And I also had moments in the lead up to my episode where people were saying to me, you know, what's your secret? Like, you seem so well at the moment. And I was like, yeah, no, I'm meditating and everything's amazing. And it's harder to know when someone's in a danger zone if it looks like joy and it looks like energy and it looks like productivity as well. I remember talking to a psychiatrist once and saying and referring to mania as the good side of bipolar. And he was like, they're not. There's no good. Like, it's not. They're equally dangerous. And in fact, mania is probably more dangerous. And it took me a long time to kind of acknowledge that that was true, that the mania wasn't this kind of superpower, and if only I could get rid of the depression, then everything would be amazing, that they're equally destructive and damaging. That's really hard to describe and really hard to understand. Maybe Unless you've experienced it.
- [51:05]
Elizabeth Day
Yeah.
- [51:06]
Hannah Murray
Like there's a sadness for me about not always being able to trust in one's own happiness, which I think I'm getting better now also at distinguishing the difference between happiness and mania. But for a long time I think I had only really experienced happiness when I was manic. So I have to now kind of be like, are you happy because something good has happened or are you just randomly ecstatically happy?
- [51:35]
Elizabeth Day
That must be so difficult. And I wonder as well, I mean, maybe this is a really sort of trite question, but do you or did you worry that those moments of mania or rapture were wrapped up in your creativity?
- [51:50]
Hannah Murray
I did, yeah, I did. And I think. I mean, I. So I want to be very clear that I take medication now and I'm very. And I plan to take it for the rest of my life. And I understand that a lot of people don't feel that way and they're very keen to come off medication. And I do think there can be a little bit of a. An over glamorization of the relationship between mania and creativity. And I'd like it to be clear that I wrote most of this book while on medication. What I've actually found is that the more stable I am, the better creative work I can do. But it's very appealing to do it all in a rush and stay up all night and write thousands of words. But you can't really turn that into anything real, I don't think. But I think it's quite a dangerous road to go down. If you think your creativity is entirely rooted in your mental health being quite unstable.
- [52:54]
Elizabeth Day
Yes. Your final failure is giving up acting.
- [52:59]
Hannah Murray
Yes.
- [53:01]
Elizabeth Day
So was this all related to your experience being sectioned in the diagnosis? Do you think it came after that?
- [53:11]
Hannah Murray
It came after it, but it was definitely related to it. There's lots of different factors that led me to walk away from acting. My life was very difficult to rebuild in the aftermath of what happened to me. And I was also, I mean, from being that high. The crash down into depression was so extreme and so severe. And I mean, I write in the book about, you know, kind of being on a press tour and being so depressed I can barely hold my head up. Like it was re. It was really, really hard to get back to work. Well, I think if your job is in any way public facing. I mean, it's hard to do any job when you're depressed, of course, but it was this idea of being visible when I was that sad and all I wanted to do was hide away. And I couldn't because I had contractual obligations to fulfill. It was really. Yeah, it was really hard to sort of sell myself, I suppose, and sell the projects that I was promoting. And then it was even harder to audition and try and make myself look like an appealing prospect to work with. And some of the medication I'd been put on had made me gain a lot of weight, which made me feel very self conscious about being in an industry that has a lot of focus on what one's body looks like. I did. Charlie says after a year to the day, I flew to LA to do that movie after I'd been hospitalized to play Leslie Van Houten, who was a member of the Manson family. And I was really, really scared to play that role given what had happened with Detroit. I was quite superstitious about it and I felt like I wanted to hold something of myself back. Whereas when I had done acting jobs before, I was willing to give everything. Yeah, there was a reckless giving of the self to everything. And I didn't care if I came home from set covered in bruises. I didn't care if I, you know, if I was using very dark memories to. I didn't. I was willing to just give everything to it, throw everything at it. And Aunt Charlie says I was a bit more wary of doing that. And I don't know if this sounds strange, but it was much less interesting that way. It wasn't fun, probably isn't the right word, but it wasn't fulfilling to me in the same way when I thought. And there are lots of actors who are very sensible and boundaried and do incredible work, but I guess, I guess I didn't know how to be one of them. I'd moved to LA and it's quite hard to be. It's a very industry dominated town. And I just had, you know, about a year of kind of really, really depressing auditions which I didn't really want to get even. I used to always be like flawless at remembering lines. I would, I was like forgetting lines and auditions, doing really bad auditions over and over again. And I just hated every second of it. And it didn't feel, it didn't feel fun anymore, it didn't feel creative anymore, it didn't feel good anymore. But I had this real feeling of like, well, everyone wants this, this is like such a desirable job, you can't walk away from that. And it took a long time to acknowledge that it was making me really unhappy and I probably should at least take a break. And so In. I think it was in 2019, after the final series of Game of Thrones had come out, and I'd done the press tour for that. And then Charlie says, came out and I did a press tour for that, and I was really exhausted, and I said, I'm going to take a break. And my team said, okay, yeah, you know, even if you wanted to take, like, three or four months, we would be okay with that. And I remember thinking, three or four months doesn't sound that long, given how I was feeling. And that break has never stopped her. Basically, that was it. But I had to frame it, I think, as a break rather than I'm done.
- [57:22]
Elizabeth Day
Yeah.
- [57:23]
Hannah Murray
Because it felt really scary to say because I'd only ever been an actor as an. I started when I was still at school, so that was. My entire identity, particularly as an adult, was wrapped up in that. And it had been my dream as a child, and I'd got my wish and all these things and so felt. I mean, I remember having, again, like, therapy sessions where I just cried for the whole hour about what my future could possibly look like. And the thing I find really interesting now is that when I was acting, I never really thought of my career as very successful because I always wanted more, and I always wanted the next thing and bigger jobs and more challenging roles. And so I always would have told you in my 20s that, oh, you know, I'm doing terribly. Like, everything's awful, and I haven't worked in months or whatever. And now I look back on my body of work, it was really amazing. Like, I'm really proud of it, and I'm really proud of that chapter of my life. And I can just see it with much more perspective of, like, you did really incredible things. You did great work. And I wish I'd been able to appreciate that more at the time instead of always been focusing on bigger, better, more, you know.
- [58:36]
Elizabeth Day
But you have found something that feels much more aligned with your authentic self.
- [58:42]
Hannah Murray
It does, yes.
- [58:43]
Elizabeth Day
And do you. Are you going to write more books? Is this what you're going to do now?
- [58:47]
Hannah Murray
Oh, 100. That's the plan. If I. If I can manage it, I want to write loads and loads more books.
- [58:52]
Elizabeth Day
Well, we want loads more Hannah Murray books.
- [58:56]
Hannah Murray
Okay, great.
- [58:57]
Elizabeth Day
I think you're an amazing, talented writer.
- [59:00]
Hannah Murray
Thank you.
- [59:01]
Elizabeth Day
Do you want to write novels as well?
- [59:02]
Hannah Murray
Yeah.
- [59:02]
Elizabeth Day
Okay, just checking. And there are so many thanks I want to give you and so many things I'm grateful for, but I'm not going to say gratitude. Why do you dislike the word Gratitude, I think it's.
- [59:15]
Hannah Murray
Vaupai is just really overused, I feel. I think it's just a bit. It's a bit like hashtag blessed kind of corny kind of. Maybe thankful is a better word. I don't know.
- [59:25]
Elizabeth Day
Yeah, it's probably. It's become associated with journals, hasn't it?
- [59:28]
Hannah Murray
Gratitude and lists. Yes. Yes.
- [59:30]
Elizabeth Day
I suppose I'd like to draw this to a close because. Because we have spoken about your experience of this particular organization, and I wonder if someone's listening to this, thinking, oh, well, I like exploring Reiki and meditation and various sort of spiritual things. What would you say to them? Would you sound a note of caution or would you just ask someone to ask more questions? Or what do you think of sort of wellness in aggregate?
- [59:57]
Hannah Murray
Yeah, it's difficult. I definitely don't want to kind of preach from a high horse and say everything associated with wellness in the spiritual world is bad or evil or you should stay away from all of it. I personally want to stay away from all of it for myself. For me, it's a world and also an industry. It's a very, very lucrative industry. A lot of this stuff, from my perspective, doesn't critique itself very much. I see this idea that everything associated with meditation is positive, everything associated with wellness is positive, everything spiritual is good. And I just, I would just. Yeah, I would just encourage a certain level of skepticism, a level of, what am I getting out of this? Am I connected with what I really want? Or am I following someone else's advice on how to live my life? I just. I just think it should be approached with a degree of caution because I think at the moment it's kind of being. People are kind of being flooded with a lot of this stuff. It's this whole umbrella of, you know, it was a personal trainer who recommended the healer to me, and I don't think she really had any idea what she was. What organization she was ultimately referring me to. She just kind of thought, oh, yeah, it's great. Reiki's great. Like, it's all wellness, it's all good. And I wish I hadn't spent so much time letting other people tell me what was good for me, I guess. And I think it would be nice if we could all trust ourselves a bit more.
- [61:33]
Elizabeth Day
Trust our instincts.
- [61:34]
Hannah Murray
Trust our instincts, yeah.
- [61:36]
Elizabeth Day
Hannah Murray, thank you so much for coming on how to Fail. And I want everyone to go out and buy your book, the Make Believe, because we've talked about a lot today, but there's so much more in the book and I just know that any reader will get an enormous amount from it. And I can't thank you enough for sharing your experience and for coming how
- [61:56]
Hannah Murray
to Fail thank you so much. This has been a really, really wonderful conversation to have.
- [62:04]
Elizabeth Day
Thank you so much for listening and watching. This episode has been brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Please do follow how to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends this is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening. This Father's Day when you ship UPS Air at the UPS Store, your items
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Hannah Murray
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