Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S5 Ep10: Bookshelfie: Minnie Driver

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

For this very special episode, Minnie Driver talks to Vick in front of a live audience in Bedford Square Gardens, London. The actor, author and singer opens up about her yearning for freedom and the pieces of herself that were sacrificed for fame. Minnie became known for her lead roles in Good Will Hunting and Circle of Friends. She broke into Hollywood where she performed in some incredible films, like The Governess and Hard Rain, alongside some equally incredible actors. She now has three studio albums, hosts her own podcast (Minnie Questions with Minnie Driver) and has her own production company. You may have also seen her star in Amazon’s adaptation of Cinderella and seen her new and evocative memoir, Managing Expectations, in shops which she has recently published.  Minnie’s book choices are:  ** The House Of The Spirits by Isabel Allende ** Wise Children by Angela Carter  ** The Cost Of Living by Deborah Levy ** Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen ** The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season five of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women.   Don’t want to miss the rest of Season Five? Listen and subscribe now!   This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Of rebellion. I'm tired of losing. Wouldn't you rather give it all up to something real? Star Wars Andor, original series streaming September 21st, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's Apply. It's a beautiful day.

It's not a day for a woolen coat and leather shorts, it turns out. But it's so nice to see you all. This is a live recording. It's how gendered it is. We're one chap right there. Where is he? Oh, hi. But all like the tech people are blokes, and all of the listeners are women.

And you. Well done, sir. Thank you all so much for being here. And Minnie, I'm going to just get started. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. With thanks to Bayleys, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives,

all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Vic Hope and I'm your host for Season 5 of the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast. The podcasts that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. We have a phenomenal lineup of guests for 2022, and I guarantee you'll be taking away plenty of reading recommendations. Hello, and welcome to today's live episode of Bookshelfy. For this very special episode, we're in Bedford Square Gardens in London,

with our lovely audience, who I think, if I say, can you give me a whoop, they will? That is them. Thank you very much. And I am joined by actor, author and sing. singer, Minnie Driver. Hey! Minnie is best known for her lead roles

in Circle of Friends and Goodwill Hunting for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She's also played roles in many TV series, including Will & Grace, Speechless and Modern Love. More recently, she played Queen Beatrice in Amazon's adaptation of Cinderella. Minnie has not won, not two,

but three studio albums and hosts her own. podcast series, Mini Questions. She has her own production company and has just published a poignant new memoir called Managing Expectations. How she fits it all in, I have no idea, but I really, really appreciate you being here with us today. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much for having me. Minnie, are you a big reader? Do you manage to fit the time in to get lost in books? I do. Yeah, I do. I always have, actually. I mean, there was a big chunk of my life where all I was really reading the scripts

and there was no time to read books. But, you know, it's funny, it's seasonal, it's an ongoing, it's a lifetime romance with books, and sometimes you break up. Which books have you broken up with? Which genres? Well, I've mostly broken up with authors. Right. And I'm just, how dare you?

I hate this. But then you end up forgiving the ones. with another book. I'm not going to name any names, but I think it's quite funny to be... You know what I hate more than anything in the whole world that I will call out

are pregnancy books. Right. I actually broke a window with what to expect when you're expecting. With the physical book? I threw it out the window and the window was shut.

And it is such nonsense. You just need to talk to women who've had children. Yeah. Yeah, I think... So I broke up and stayed broken up with pregnancy books. And I'm glad that you've told me that. I'm not going to even pick it up. Don't even bother.

Not going into a relationship with one. So which genres do you gravitate towards? What do they bring you? I mean, I love fiction. I really, I really, I have always been, I think when I was very young and I used to, you know, I started out reading Julie Cooper. Yes. And thought that was the most saucy, romantic, amazing thing.

And then my mother saw me reading it. And she was like, oh, if you like Julie Kouffer, you will like Jane Austen. And I was like, I do not see the equivalency. But she was completely right. Love has always sucked me into its centrifuge. And I love female voices in literature. I really do. I remember taking a George Elliott book up to my teacher and going,

this is a woman, you know. And having a whole, I've had a romance, I think my whole life with the voices of female writers. I actually remember having a very similar experience with Harper Lee. And I think I read to Kill a Mockingbird when I was very young, about eight years old. well before it was on the GCSE syllabus, but being absolutely mind-blown that Harper was a woman, because I actually thought it was a man's name,

and then telling my teacher, this is a woman. Do you believe it? And she was like, why are you reading it? And then my mum's giving it to me. But you said before that you didn't necessarily have the time to read when you were reading scripts, but is there a sensation still,

although your job is to bring that character alive, to bring that writing alive, do you still enjoy the reading of, a script? Oh yeah I do but only if the writing's good. It really is appalling reading a bad script

there are so many but it's also when you already know that there's huge amounts of money attached to it and that this thing is actually going to get made and it is galling sometimes at how lazy writing can be in script writing

and then when you read something that is beautifully crafted where the stage directions that will never be, they'll never be, they'll be seen, but they will have been metabolized by a director. When those, the process is as beautiful in the stage direction as the dialogue, you know it's really good. Well, we're going to talk about the writing that you do love, that you do think is beautiful, that you do think is impactful and has been on you for many reasons. And we'll start with your first book, Shelfy book, which is the House of Spirits by Isabel Alende. This book follows three generations of a family living in an unnamed Latin American country

and focuses on Clara del Vagé, who as a girl, when she was young, discovers she can read fortunes and make objects move. Following the mysterious death of his sister, Rosa, the beautiful, Clara is mute for nine years. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon to the volatile landowner Esteban. It's an epic novel of secret loves and violent revolution And Minnie, you read this when you're about 15, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it blew my mind. Yeah, Isabella Aende, like her whole, you know, there was this,

I was super sort of revolutionary political, you know. I had a poster of Che Guevara up on my wall and fancied him. That's the first person I fancied alongside Bart Simpson. Yeah. That's weird. It is. It is. You know, whatever.

But I, honestly, and when I knew, you know, like, her father was the president of Chile, right? Yeah. And he, and you read about what she experienced. And then this woman who drew magic,

like the magic, the deep, that deep female magic, that is, well, I mean, I, I felt that as strongly as I felt all these sort of political revolutionary leanings.

I felt that deep magic, that whatever that ancient female connection is. And there it was reflected in this incredible writing that was also soap opera. So it kind of spoke to the EastEnders part of my 15-year-old brain. It was this beautiful generational soap opera. but with, you know, I mean, Estabon is like a dreadful rapist. Yes. And yet there is, the way that she writes him, it's not that you forgive him or you feel that she's an apologist,

but she contextualizes like male aggression in a way that I sort of, I felt like she understood how we as women have to expand to accommodate these really difficult things and how we have to do it generationally and how there's this weirdly, like, epigenetic passing down of trauma that women then turn into, like alchemists, into other things. I love her. Like, it blew my mind. Like, these are the writers that maybe want to be an actor as well.

There is something so evocative about the way she writes, and it's vivid and it fizzes off the page in a way that at 15, you just want to devour, you just want to devour, You just want to capture everything. And if she was speaking to you with this sort of revolutionary spirit, were you a revolutionary child? Were you at 15 immobilized? Were you seeing injustice and wanting to do something about it?

I was definitely seeing injustice. I was definitely doing, I went to a very socially active, I mean, a school that had a lot of activism around it. I was in the book that I wrote about this protest musical that we wrote because they were going to build a road through our school. And so the teachers thought the best response would be a protest musical. Great. I love that. They're going to cut down this tree and I sang the solo in the musical, which is called They Said It Was My Tree, About Trying to Save This Tree.

I mean, yes. I mean, while I'm not really, I'm trying to. to create equivalency between me and, you know, the fall of the Chilean government, but up a tree, but there isn't any really. But suffice it to say that, yes, I spoke out about injustice and learnt really early on that you get hammered for doing that, particularly when you're young. And maybe even more specifically if you're a woman, because I also had seen that, that women speaking up was really seemed to piss men on.

Yeah. And it's baffling because I think at that age, your moral compass is far clearer. Definitely. You don't think, well, there are reasons we have to do certain things just to get back. You think, well, that's wrong and that's right. Yeah. That's not okay. I think there's, yeah, I've really resisted the kind of binary notion of right and wrong and men and women whilst also really wanting to kind of have a side and fight for it. I mean, it was quite conflicted, but that's also being 15.

and books I think it was so satisfying and particularly with house the spirits it's satisfying because the female spirit is triumphant in that book and I felt like

I yeah I don't I don't like books that are a bummer at the end is that really bad to say no not at all sometimes we need that uplifting because we have the actual world as well to deal with Or at least just that ends with an aperture

through which you could sort of find a way but the kind of sort of closed loop of... I don't like closed loops. Although it's not strictly autobiographical, the events in this novel, they are an exaggerated representation of real events that are part of Alende's personal history. Is this something that inspired you

when it came to writing your own memoir? Well, not this book actually not this book particularly but but the spirit of because I suppose that really that's what I'm thinking about now

is what does autobiographical fiction look like because I think my book was far more like this actually happened like I write about sitting up this tree and a four seven gale singing a song on Nationwide trying to save the squirrels

that's just the thing that's a truth that actually has to spitting straight facts yeah so it was but but to write with but to write connected to to your version of truth or the truth that you want to share yeah that for sure is something that

I explored alongside Isabel Iande in my head the exploration of generations of a family, I find absolutely fascinating. Are you ever curious to know what your family was like generations down? Which, you know, it's funny. I did this genealogy show called Who Do You Think You Are?

And I, you give them, like, a bunch of your information. And then the producers are, like, really strict. And they're like, most people's lives are incredibly boring. And we probably won't be making a show out of all of your stories just to manage your own expectations. And I was like, all right, fine. And they were like, we will furnish you with whatever we find, even if it is boring. And I was like, great.

So three months later, they come back and they're like, oh, it turns out there is a show. And then you go, well, what is it? And they go, no, no, you're going to find it all out on camera. So then they literally send you a thing going, can you just show up at Waterloo Station at 5pm on Thursday? And then from then on, everything is sort of revealed on camera. And I was so annoyed by the whole thing. I was like, God, this is so ridiculous. And I'm not going to cry.

And this is absurd. But it's so legitimate because you're sitting down with historians and you're going through these stories. And I did find out everything I never knew about my father and my family and where I'm from. And it turns out, I am the Anglo in Anglo-Saxon. There ain't, no, are my people never left? and they never had sex with anybody else. They just, I'm literally from Tyne side.

Every single part of my body, I did that 23 and me, and it was like, yeah, you're an angle. Whereabouts in Timeside? I don't know, the side of the time. I don't know. No, all like Durham, Tyneside, that's Newcastle. That is where I am from. Oh, me too.

Well, you don't sound like you are, so I couldn't have known that. And that's what this is awful. I actually did one of those tests as well, but it came back and they said, have you been eating chicken? And it turned out I'd eaten some chicken just before the swab, and that's all they got on the test. Was chicken? That's fantastic.

Did you get the printout where it just said chicken? Descendant. That's right. Just quickly, what was it like? I know you grew up between Barbados and London in your early life. How was that? It was amazing. It was really amazing.

I mean, my father had gone to Barbados to basically recover from the Second World War. You know, he flew in the first terrifying air battle of the Second World War in 1939 when he was 18 and survived and had crazy PTSD his whole life, which I didn't realize until I did this documentary. And Barbados was this place of, it was where he was calmest and most together in a way. But in the book, I do tell a pretty, it's a pretty, well, it's very accurate about my dad. And he had a very big temper. But it was still better in the sunshine than it was in London. They barely know each other, but they all know Jamie Lawrence.

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offering surprises and freebies, plus unmissable reading recommendations and book chat from my founder friends, including me, Vic Hope. Search for Women's Prize friend to become a friend today. We cannot wait to meet you. Let's move on to your second bookshelfy book now, Minnie, which is Wise Children by Angela Carter. This magical realist novel was deemed the most bewitching and imaginative work of her career by critics. It follows the lives of two identical twin sisters

who claim to be Shakespearean actor, Zemalqar Hazards, and acknowledged children, not his twin brother, Perry, who everyone thinks is that. dad. Donna, age 75, narrates the story in the form of a memoir and reflects on their childhood, gradually revealing all of the family secrets

and drama. Now, I've heard that when you read this book, you felt like Angela Carter had written it just for you. What was it about it that resonated so deeply? You know that it's like a showbiz autobiography, basically, that like, Dora Chance

was this voice of a of, like this beautiful, alive voice of someone who had made it through the gamut of what it is to be an actor. But so much more than that, you know, Angela Carter, it was Angela Carter's voice. Like, that, again, I mean, I was very into the whole, I was very into magic realism.

You know, that was something I really believed in magic, like actual magic, not like magicians. I really believed that there was, and it was so connected to, to women. And I remember when she died, which was so devastating to me, because I feel like she wrote this in,

this was the last book that was published before she died, I believe. And I remember coming into the kitchen and going to my mum, Angela Carter's dead. And my mom said, of course she is. She was far too good for her. And it turned out that they'd known each other and they'd been friends

and used to go for walks on Hampstead Heath together. Then I read everything she'd written. But wise children, this, she kind of, she decoded Shakespeare for me in a way. Or help me find a way in. And her prose was just so full. of light and life.

It was never, it was never muscular and kind of hard to wade through. She just had this lightness that was so, so beautiful in these characters that I mean, I feel like I, you know how characters just kind of sit right here on the periphery

from all different books. I mean, maybe that sounds mad. Maybe none of you are haunted by the characters from both. No, no, no, they stay with you. Certain characters really do. They sit right there. I like, you know, I visit. them and when I think about them.

On the subject of showbiz and Hollywood and acting, I've seen you say that you didn't have the appetite to be a big movie star. What did you mean by this? I mean, it sucks being really, really famous. It's not good for you. It's not good for your soul. there is a very specific exchange you know and to withstand it

you have to cull bits of yourself that I just wasn't willing to give up or you know I went pretty far down that past because I got pretty famous at one point but it's like a beast that requires fuel that you just don't realize that it's it's part of yourself

that you have to feed the beast with and the kind of scrutiny and also the fact that you stop you stop kind of personal interrogation because you're so busy trying to keep the mantle that people, the thing that they see alive that you, I don't know, I don't know where you go but you disappear.

I think that's a really good way of putting it, not knowing where you go but you do disappear and upholding something that doesn't even exist. It's like it's not real and yet so many people worship it. But acting and being famous are not the same thing.

So why did you want to pursue acting and music as well? Because I love it because it's the... It was everything, it taught me to put all my difficult stuff somewhere useful. You know, that was my own alchemy of the emotion that was unchecked and impossible and seemed to piss off my parents and people around me. But it could be pushed into this,

it could be put into this crucible and become something else. In wise children, Donna and Nora, their relationship with their father is virtually non-existent for many years. And you mentioned your dad just before, you're talking about your memoir, you do explore your parents' divorce in your book,

what was your relationship like with your dad after your parents split up? It was hard. It was really hard, you know. It was weird. We really oscillated between this weird. Like my mother had absolutely no money and we, you know,

we barely had an indoor loo in the tiny cottage we lived in. And my dad was very, very wealthy and we went from these. But we'd arrive sort of, slightly unwashed and ripe into his world and then in a way be punished for it

and I used to think that was absolutely ridiculous you know our shoes were scuffed and it was really strange so it was like it was hard and it wasn't so much my dad it was more it was more his wife or his girlfriend and the people around him.

I don't think he really cared that we were a bit smelly. I mean, you know, it was the 70s and we were smelly, weird hippies. Your third book, Middy, is The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy. In the second of her living autobiography series, two-time Book of Prize finalist, Deborah Levy, draws on her own personal experiences, including the end of her marriage

and the death of her mother to explore the subtle erasure of women and reflect on what is involved in breaking away from expected gender roles. Why did you choose this book? So my best friend is a writer called Emma Forrest and Emma gave me, she gave me this book

at a moment where I think I didn't, I couldn't articulate how free I wanted to be because I couldn't really articulate the things that I wanted to be free from. And what I think Deborah Levy does in this book just so exquisitely is explore how you disengage from these things that, like in a fairy tale,

are like the thorny vines that are holding you in some kind of fairy tale cell, how you disengage from those whilst also just living your life while doing the shopping, whilst raising your children. whilst leaving your husband and moving into a flat, dealing with the mortality of your parent dying, and that bulwark between you and your own mortality being removed. And I just felt so comforted by the sort of the poetry that she found in her own life

without it being self-referential. And also Hot Milk, which she is one of my favorite books of all time, even though it's not on this list. And she was writing that. It was about her writing Hot Milk, that she was writing the Hot Milk when she was writing the Cost of Living. It's about that process, and I thought that was interesting. It's about things falling apart and also being remade.

And what you've described is finding a book at the perfect time when you needed that book. There's nothing more special than those words, bringing you solace, And it sounds like bringing you freedom. You mentioned freedom a few times you say that you identified the search for freedom in Levy's book. Do you feel like you found freedom from the pressures of Hollywood? Yeah. I mean, yes and no.

Yes and no. Like there's part of me that doesn't want to be free from all of it. But that also seems to be part of our whole, the mercy business of being alive. is that you want to disengage, but you can't really. Because to disengage would be to have no conflict. And if there was no conflict, there wouldn't be anything creative. So it's a, you know, it's a battle I'm prepared to be in forever. Yeah.

It's also a book about the constraints of womanhood in our society, on a societal level. Are you someone who pushes against traditional gender roles? I think everyone should do whatever they want. Yeah. I mean, really, genuinely. I definitely have suffered from the massive resistance to any kind of a renaissance idea about women. You know, that you, the stay-in-your-lane tribe have always had it infamy. Because I don't understand why you wouldn't do everything. Do as many things as you possibly can.

If you're a creative being, you make stuff. I make music and films and television and all kinds of stuff but there's definitely resistance to that but again that is for sure a battle I'm prepared to keep on fighting. Levy also as we mentioned there talks about the loss of her mother and you sadly lost your own mother not that long ago

was there solace to be found on the pages of this book for you in dealing with that? Yeah I mean it is weird like there's she kind of intimates it in the book but it's something that I really have explored and I found it really comforting to go back and read what she'd written what deborra livia had written because there's this strange resentment that you have for people who still have mothers that no one tells you about when you're grief-stricken in the first year and and she allows for all of these hard edges of grief.

And I, even though mum was still alive when I first read The Cost of Living, it was really interesting going back and reading it after she died, because I just, I got it. It's so much about this figurehead being removed from your life and suddenly you're weightless, weirdly. There's a quote that I read that apparently your mum said to you. when you're trying to deal with hard times. I've got it here. And it just really like resonated with me.

And I just like saying it. So I'm going to say it. It's just weather. Wait a minute. It will pass. Don't jump off the cliff, you fucking idiot. Just wait. And she's always right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She never wanted me to jump off the cliff. I would literally jump off the cliff and go, I jumped off the cliff. And she'd be like, you fucking idiot. When did she tell you that?

When did she tell you that? When did she say that to you? She said it all. I mean, she probably said it like on her deathbed. Like she said it all through my life. It was the lesson I think she tried to impart the most along with, don't have any expectations of anyone ever. But she did, she knew she'd created a child who can pull,

when a small thing goes awry, can pull everything else. that is not working into that small thing and then say, you see, everything sucks. She would always be like, no, it's just that one thing. It's fine. Everything else seems insurmountable when you catastrophize it. But moms, it turns out, they really know.

They really did know. Is that advice that you've now been able to internalize and use in your every day? I mean, you'd think, wouldn't you? I wish I could That's my biggest That's my I'm maybe inappropriately say this to my 13 year old son

Well I'm like I just like I wrote a book about these things And I still don't know them And he was like well maybe that's why he wrote the book So you can go and read it And remind yourself I'm like maybe that's right And he was like but it'd be super weird

If I come home and you're like reading your own book on the couch, that would be really embarrassing. Has it ever happens? No. I don't know. Like you, what is it? You know, I think it's so much easier to sort of talk about stuff. Yeah.

But internalizing and learning it, like, I don't know how you do that. I would have thought I would have learned a shitload more by now. But I know, I mean, I think the sort of the best you can do is go, I know the stuff that I have a hard time. I'm learning and just be okay with that. Yeah. Have you found Bisciteers yet? Bisciteers are the original hand-iced biscuit gifting company

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And Biscateers are offering our lovely listeners 15% off your first order with the code love fiction. So for the very best present ideas, head to Biscateers.com now. Your fourth book, Shelby Book, is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Arguably Austin's most famous novel. It was published anonymously in three volumes. The first edition of this classic romance novel sold out in its first year and has never been out of print since brimming with unforgettable characters,

playfulness and wit. The book centres around the courtship of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy, which begins on rocky ground. Tell us about this book. Why did it make it onto your list? Well, I think, like I said before, it really was, it went, you know, Enid Blyton, Enid Blighton, Mallory Towers, Mallory Towers, Julie Cooper, Julie Cooper, Jane Austen. Yes.

Like, that's how it went. I couldn't you know what I couldn't believe when I read it when I was 12 or 13 I couldn't believe that nothing had fucking changed I just was like poor Jane Austen

if only she knew that there has just frankly been really not that much evolution in the whole dynamics between heteronormative relationships between men and women. Austin knows that things aren't great

but she uses wit to great effects in this novel often to comment on very difficult social truths and this is something that you do so brilliantly in managing expectations

did you set out to use humour in this way or was it a coping mechanism that you just have to use? I think that I think that's true in life you know and it's also So it's in a way how you earn the deeper, harder, more dramatic moments of trauma in your life

is you have to answer them with humour because it is funny. It is funny and terrible. Like my mother dying was funny and terrible and we talked about that. She was a great proponent of things being able to be both. and I think what Jane Austen does as well is she shows you how it is always both like it's not I don't think that

Darcy and Elizabeth went off and had like a super easy, happy, wonderful and I got that when I was a kid it was like you know it should definitely be hot if it possibly can but it doesn't mean it's never going to be easy and I think that's pretty much every relationship I've been in um

there is a little lot to be taken about motherhood as well in this novel. What did you, I mean, you read it so young, so there's probably not something you were focusing on or was it? No, really, but I mean, I think it was, because my mother was much more focused on her relationship with my stepfather when I read it. So I longed to have a mother who was sort of in her daughter's lives, who was as, I loved, I loved that character.

I think it was slightly more fantastical to me. My mother was, I had a lot to learn about mothers, had a lot to learn about how they are people and how they are really just navigating their own shit and dealing with that because I had an expectation as a child. And conversely, what has motherhood taught you? Well, you know,

My son, my son is just the best person I've ever met. Yeah. Like, he really is. Like, I would, I'd just be sitting in the back of his class right now if I possibly could, like in a really inappropriate way. It, we figured out parenting together. And all I knew is that I wanted to be really present with him in a way that, and I don't, I'd say this if mum was sitting right here,

or I have said it to her. Like, she came from a generation. where it was far more kind of the kids have to get on with it. Our relationship came much later. Our friendship came much later. But Henry and I have a shorthand and a complicity, and we laugh about things so much together that I feel like I've definitely had the childhood

that I didn't have with him. So it's terrible, isn't it? To say I've sort of co-opted my child's childhood, that's proper narcissism, by their way. It's okay, he'll never hear this. But yeah, that. Women alive at the time that this book has written and set would often have been forced to marry someone that they didn't want,

often forced into situations that they did not choose. And that's not to say that things are different now, as you've said, exactly as you've said. There are so many ways in which we find ourselves compromised. We find ourselves settling when perhaps we prefer not to settle, whether in relationships, also in jobs that you don't necessarily want but for financial stability.

Have you ever felt pressured to settle or to do something that you just don't want to do but you have done it? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it sounds terrible because it's like it was settling but it also wasn't but I stopped making films which I really love.

There isn't a huge difference between making television and making films but there is. And when Henry was born, and I, you know, I didn't have a husband. I didn't have any kind of financial partner. I've never had that, ever. And I knew I didn't want him to grow up in, like, a caravan of tutors and trailers and in different countries around the world.

I just wanted him to be home playing football and having a nice life. So I started doing television, and I started doing sitcoms specifically because they were the highest paid jobs in America, unless you're one of like five actors getting paid 20 million quid a movie. It was the smartest, you know, it was a smart thing to do. And it's not that it wasn't creative,

but it wasn't creative. It was just a really great job that I was incredibly grateful for and it created the protection that I needed to give my son and I definitely gave away, you know, a decade of really exploring stuff creatively. But that's okay because I'm,

I'm getting to do that now. Did you ever feel any resentment at the time? Only when I'd go and see films of, you know, I'd go and see a Jane Campion film or an Agnes Varder or something and I'd go, Christ, I wish I was making films like this. Or friends of mine were in movies and I'd be like, this is so amazing. But I knew why I was doing it. And I think women are really good at making choices that they know are for the greater good.

And then, yeah, you have your moments of self-pity and sadness, but you get on with it. And there was so much good and it was so wonderful. And like I said, like Henry had, has had the best childhood. And that is so satisfying to me. Yeah. Yeah. And when you say that I can do this now, though, so what I was. What is the future looking like?

Well, I mean, you know, I've started making movies again. Like I've got four films coming out this year and next that I really love and are amazing. And I'm writing and I know I'll write things that I'll probably then dramatize and direct. Like that's the plan. It's just to keep doing stuff, right? You keep trying. You keep, not even trying, it's really exploring.

And if you don't get too attached to what a barometer of success is, but you can carry on paying the mortgage, then I think you're sort of up. Your fifth and final bookshelfy book this week, which is The Wallcreeper by Nelsink. A wild and unusual book, The plot follows the disconnected relationship between Tiffany and her husband, Stephen, who is a passionate birdwatcher. when Stephen, in Tiffany's words, swerved, hit the rock and occasioned the miscarriage,

Stephen is more concerned about the bird, a wallcreeper that he hits. They take the bird home, they nurse it back to health, and it awakens an obsession with environmental activism in them both, perhaps the only thing holding their uneasy marriage together. Tell us about when you read this and why you picked it today. I just can't recommend Nelsink in. enough to everybody. She's one of my friends now

because I read her book. It was given to me, you know, by someone I came to not love, but it was really interesting that he gave me this book and I thought it was code and it was. And I reached out to Now on social media and we got in touch and we've become friends

and she's one of the wildest, most brilliant minds and people. But this book, it sort of spoke to what I always was terrified was true that relationships with men are so fragile and that we are constantly being the emotional grout to keep things together and how also we distract ourselves from what is fractured and difficult in relationships by kind of shared obsessions. And in this book, it is so beautiful. It is so much, again, about freedom and like the symbolism of the bird, the wall creeper. But Nell has this incredible knowledge about biodiversity on the planet, and she's utterly

brilliant as an environmentalist, but also how she uses all of that so delicately, symbolically in her prose about relationships. and is deeply funny and deeply, deeply, I think that's what is common in all of these books how brilliantly humorous all these women are because they have to be and that humour is ultimately what saves them from the desolation of certain aspects of life and relationships. Yeah, it's dry, it's dry and also beautiful and poetic at the same time in this exploration of nature and also of being human, are essentially one and the same.

And it's wild this book, literally and figuratively and makes you pay attention to life. How do you stay awake to the joys of life and nature as well? Is there anything specific that you do? Well, it's very, it's so nice sitting here in these beautiful gardens.

I find it very, very difficult being in cities. They are not the place that I'm most comfortable in. I'm constantly not understanding how they work with so much concrete. I live, I mean, I actually do live here now. I keep saying I live in California as well where I live for 26 years, and the Pacific Ocean is like my lover, you know, really specifically, and I surf and I swim a lot. So nature is always what brings me back.

It's interesting being in a city going, well, how do you do that here? I go to Hyde Park a lot and I go to Hampstead Heaths and I go and swim in the ponds and, you know, sort of swim. It's really interesting swimming in the ponds in Hampstead Heath. I love it. I do love it too. I love how everybody just strips off

and then jumps in, but there's this, it's also very, it's very different swimming in, in unsalted water. Like you swim low in the water. And I always want to swim quite, fast and I get quite crossed looks from the ladies who I splash. I try and go early, but they always show up early as well. Yeah, they do. They absolutely do. You splash away, it's fine. It's in your right. It's a splash

away. Why did you move to London if, yes, there are these parks and there are these ponds, but it's a big city. Yeah, it was because during COVID, the schools never opened again in 2020 and my son by July had just lost his mind with Zoom school and he came and said is there any way that we can go to London I can just go to the local school with my cousins I think because so many people had moved out of London during COVID there were spaces in these schools so we came and then when my mum died we stayed and I went and showed him the school that I went to really as a function of my grief to try and find something of her there and I showed him around in a very informal way

and at the end of it he was like please can I go here this book explores the restlessness of life which I feel your your son is sort of tapped into if it's not working out doing this on Zoom doing this virtually I'm going to need to get out

I'm going to need to spread my wings and that metaphor proliferates throughout this book birds and humans have a propensity for flight or lack thereof it deals with that as well. How do you spread your wings? Do you feel like your wings are spread?

No, I feel like they're a bit clipped, as a matter of fact, right now. What's so interesting is that having been someone for whom freedom was the, it was everything, like it was only ever me in charge, I never got married. I was, my job was my relationship. I was always free and flying from here and there. And then when I had Henry and it became this choice to be, unfree, but it was wonderful. And now Henry's the free one,

and Henry is sort of describing his flight, and I'm underwriting that, which I really do think is, again, what mothers do, you know, you let go, and you keep letting go, and you sort of switch places in the way. So I'm trying to figure out how this clipped feeling, how I can turn that into freedom, because I know there's a way.

And I think maybe I just have to find a place. It's just a long drive. I think I've just got to start driving to Dorset and surfing, which is what I just said to my publisher. I think I've just got to start doing it in a different way and start thinking, like, it's not on your doorstep. You have to go and create it. But there's no one I would swap freedom with more than my kid.

He's allowed to fly. And he will, and he is. I will be the wind beneath his wings. Christ. Look, you're all thinking it. Tiffany is someone who is very matter of fact and distant as well which often means she doesn't speak out

when she should for instance when her husband is more concerned about the birds than his wife who has lost a child you're known for being outspoken you don't mince your words as we've very gratefully heard today how important

has this been throughout your career and also throughout your life more generally. Well, I tell you what, I really, really don't like the word outspoken. Because I think it gets applied to women. I have never heard a man be called Outspoken. And it also begs the question of what is inspoken? What is the obverse of that? When women speak up, it is sort of, it's underlined and it's in italics

as opposed to it being part of a larger conversation. And there are no such, you know, font vagaries attached to dudes. They just aren't. I've always just spoken about life the way I saw it. And I've definitely paid the price for that. But I've always been, I've never understood it. And maybe now in this kind of, you know, the Crohn stage of life. Maybe just I give a shit less.

But I kind of feel like I always felt like this. I still feel like I did when I was 15, which is it really hurts to be taken to task for speaking up about stuff, but it's never really seemed to stop me. And I think everyone has their particular hillam, which they have to become comfortable with dying on. And if you don't, I don't know what to tell you,

because we're not here for very long and keeping quiet just doesn't seem to be something that we should do. We shouldn't. And I feel like we're getting to a place where the word outspoken, hopefully we can use it less. I'm not saying it ever again.

Great. I'm not saying it ever again. Yeah. And you've got all your life as well and you're a lot younger, so how amazing. now freed from the shackles of that fucking word. Of the words. And that's it, because the truth is, I've been speaking for a long time. Exactly.

I've been saying the things. And you're not going to stop. And I'm not going to stop. And none of us are going to stop. If you had to, this is hard, if you had to choose one book from your list as a favourite, Minnie, which one would it be and why? Oh, that's so mean. Do you know, because she was exactly.

my age when she died. And I felt her when I was a child and I still feel her now. It would be wise children. I'm going to open the floor to anyone who has any questions for Minnie. Hi. Hello there.

I just want to ask Mimi if she was able to give three bits of advice to a younger version of herself based on what she's been through already. What would they be? they would be, it doesn't all have to happen so fast. And it's actually fine if none of it happens the way you think it's supposed to happen with your young brain.

Like, let the vessel be different that your life arrives in. Like, don't get so attached to how everything has to show up. And then, I would give her a list of men to avoid. Like, you're not going to learn anything except what a fucking waste of time that was. Here's a list. I would love to give her that.

Thank you so much. Have a question, Min. With the stories in your book, how did you choose which ones to keep? Because after reading it, I felt, well I listened to the audiobook which is incredible but how did you decide which stories to keep and put in

because I had a feeling there were probably lots and lots more that you could have put in. Yeah, there were, there were lots more. It was really, the book was actually meant to be longer but mum died in the middle of it and it just derailed the whole process like for almost three months like all I could write about was her dying

like the actual 14 days from beginning to end. And it was just like this terrible meditation that I just had to get up every day and keep doing. And I felt the stories fall by the wayside but I just was nothing else I could do. And when I came out of that, I was so desperate to meet the deadline that was Mother's Day, that had always been Mother's Day,

which was set by the American. American publisher and it was really weird. I was just obsessed with it then, the book coming out then. I knew the only thing I could do was to make the book shorter. So that did part of the job. But it was the other way of choosing the stories, it was really, like I've told parts of those stories since they happened. And I've, you know, as an actor, you know what stories connect with people.

like I've seen just at dinners or whenever or around the campfire or whatever of what have made people laugh and what people like and what is interesting and maybe was up for interrogating further so I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to tell

there were lots of stories that I started telling and then realised that I absolutely loathe the people I was writing about and just didn't want to give them any airtime you know it's like not immortalising you for you fucker so I really threw a lot of things out based on beginning to write. Any more questions?

Yes. Time of one more. Hi. Yes, hello. Hi. It's Shelley. Hi. I just wanted to ask, we've talked about your favorite books, but music is obviously

a big passion as well. Do you have an artist or an album or a few of them that feel like they've kind of formed a bit of a soundtrack to your life as well? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, probably like, like hotter than July the Stevie Wonder record Harvest by Neil Young

Blood on the tracks Dylan Blue Jony Mitchell and then I can't remember the name of the record but that everything but the girl record I was a massive Tracy Thorne

fan growing up like that was she was really I don't know why that was so I can't remember the name of that record but and then massive attacks, first record was really huge as well. Thank you so much. And Minnie, just from myself and the whole podcast team

and everyone at the Women's Prize, thank you. This has been a really, really wonderful way to spend an afternoon by Minnie. Thank you. Yay. Thanks, Vic. Thanks, ladies, gentlemen. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening

to a very special live episode of the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast. Please rate and review this podcast, it is the easiest way to help spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today. The Women's Prize for Fiction podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Bird Lime Media. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time. They barely know each other, but they all know Jamie Lawrence. They know what he's guilty of and that something must be done. Payday, the top 10 best-selling debut novel by Celia Walden,

Clever, compelling and chillingly plausible, says the Daily Mail. A runaway train ride of a thriller, says the sun. A fast-paced psychological thriller. I adored it. Jillian McAllister, author of That Night. Pay Day by Celia Walden. Out now in paperback.