Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S5 Ep24: Bookshelfie: Ophelia Lovibond

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Actor Ophelia Lovibond shares the moment - aged 10 - when she knew she was going to be an actor, and which book inspired her to make the decision. Ophelia began honing her skills in a youth theatre club at the age of ten. Since then she has been working for over two decades, taking a variety of roles, including Apple’s Trying, BBC’s Roadkill, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, CBS’s Elementary, and recently This England - a series about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in which she plays his wife, Carrie Johnson. Her latest role Minx sees her front and centre as the exuberant young feminist Joyce Prigger, who seeks to dismantle the rigid gender norms of the 1970s by creating the first erotic magazine for women. Ophelia’s book choices are:  ** Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston  ** Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion ** To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf **  Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell   ** Song by Christina Rossetti 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.

You're walking along and there's a full moon and I think, oh, I should read some basho. And we know how you love the moon from your dissertation. I love the bloody moon, me. Can I get a laugh at the moon? I really do talk about moon a lot. I can't have stuck to a woman. Oh no, join the club. I do too.

With thanks to Bailey's, 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 and I guarantee you'll be taking away plenty of reading recommendations. I am very excited that this week our brilliant guest is actor Aphelia Lovie Bond. Aphelia began honing her skills in a youth theatre

Club at the age of 10. Since then, she's been working for over two decades, taking a variety of roles, including Apple's Trying, BBC's Roadkill, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, CBS's Elementary, and recently This England, a series about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in which she plays his wife, Carrie Johnson. Her latest role in Minks sees her front and centre as the exuberant young feminist Joyce Prigger, who seeks to dismantle the rigid gender norms of the 1970s by creating the first erotic magazine for women. Welcome to the podcast, Aphelia. Thank you for having me.

I know you studied English at university. So have you always been an avid reader? Yes, I mean, very much so. I mean, I know it's quite a cliche, but I was always reading. My mum, whenever she'd come to look for me, I would always be reading somewhere. It's just, it was something that was kind of cultivated that were always books in the house, that we all had kind of library card members. So it was just very much part of the fabric of my life.

to be reading. Like that you use the phrase, you could always find me, or I was always found reading because literally when we arrived today for a start, I'm going to say this on the podcast, you were early.

No one is ever early, so, I mean, incredible, an incredible stuff, but you have found reading. Yeah, it was just, I mean, I, it is an addiction, a happy addiction, but I am never without a book.

If, you know, I want to get a new bag or someone's giving me a present as a bag as a present, I always say just make sure it can carry a book. And often if I'm nearing the end of one, I will have another one ready to go. So that I'm never on a tube journey with nothing to read.

I mean, I find that unbearable. And he brought your books today. And I love that they are. Oh, God, you're going to imagine it. No, they're well-thumbed. They're well-thumbed and they've got little like note points. And yeah, I'm very bufferingy about my books. I'm exactly the same.

Good. I feel like anyone who sort of criticizes that treatment of a book is perhaps missing the fact that they're thumbed because they're loved. I've written in the pages and I've folded down the pages because I loved it so much and it meant so much to me. I don't think any author would mind that you love something so much, you circle it with pen or you fold down the corner of a page.

I mean, I just don't understand why they would love that. I mean, it also for me kind of crystallises a certain thought or an idea in my mind if I circle it because you spot it more immediately and you can sort of you memorize it or at least I do. Yeah. It's usually when I've seen the author

articulate something that I felt or I've thought but I've never been able to find the words for because I don't have good enough words and they do and I want to then carry that around with me I want to wear it round my neck like pearls. A great feeling. What sort of books did you gravitate towards when you were a child?

I was, I mean, anything that was put in front of me, I do remember my mum was brilliant at doing all the voices of, you know, Enid Blyton and A.M. Hill and all the kind of the classic children's stories. But on, I mean, of lots of, it was all fiction, obviously, but I mean, I read everything. And I kind of didn't understand until I was a little bit older, the things I was kind of gravitating more towards. So it would be less of, obviously, you read as you,

get older things like goosebumps and stuff, but I found them fun, but I found them, they weren't, I didn't find them as interesting. So they're, okay, I'm less interested in science fictiony things then. And then I read Rebecca by Daphne de Mory when I was about, I must have been an 11, a teacher called Mrs. Dandridge. My first year of secondary school just said to me, would you like to borrow my copy of Rebecca, I think you'd like it? And then I realized upon reading that, oh, I like, I like fiction. I like these big, big novels that you can dive in. It's quite a formative time, isn't it, working out what you like? In all aspects of our lives and literature is one of them.

What do you now find yourself gravitating towards? Because it can really change depending on our needs as we get older. It's still fiction, definitely. I mean, I read a wide range of things, but I'm always don't feel fully kind of satiated unless it's, unless it's, a novel. I mean, and you go through patches where you read, you know, you just don't quite find the right fit for you for a book. And I find that inordinately difficult. If you're, you're kind of read a slew of maybe four or five books, I'm just, I mean, I've finished

them unless I really, really don't respond to them. But I generally finish them so I can kind of have a comprehensive opinion of why it is I don't like it, because I do think that's as helpful as liking something. But, you know, when you, when you land on a novel, that fully engrosses you. I just find it the most enriching sensation. And I'll be talking to someone thinking, when will this conversation ends, I can go and make my book.

It's just quite. I know the feeling. Sometimes a book can just not be giving at that time. There's been times when I've not felt it. I've not been feeling it. But then I've gone back, maybe even several years later, and I've been feeling it. Yeah, definitely.

I've definitely had that experience where I've just something's been recommended or a friend has suggested something and I've not responded and I thought I wonder why we're so close and I'm surprised I don't like it if this close friend likes it but then I've gone back to it and realised it was

I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to read it but it's definitely novels I mean I read short stories and non-fiction as well I read essays poetry of course but the kind of luxury of diving into an entire world is it can't really

it's unmatched for me you've been in LA up until quite recently and filming I know it's quite a rigorous schedule do you manage to find the time to dive into these worlds when you're already diving into several other worlds with your job I really do

that one of the other actors on the show Jessica Lowe she would joke that in between takes I would somewhere would have secreted a book about my person or on the set or in a draw and would just immediately start reading. I mean, that sounds quite antisocial, but sometimes sets can be quite boring

in between getting to do the acting. They can, it's a lot of time to kill. So, yeah, always reading. The job that I just did is set in the 1970s and playing a feminist writer. So I was tending to read books that she would have been reading at that time because I enjoy them

and it was also sort of two birds, one's day and kind of thing. So I was reading, well, Joan Didien, Eve? Babbitts, Kate Millett, Betty Friedan, people like that. On the subject of it feeling antisocial, I don't believe it is because I once took a book on a date and people, I told my friends and they were like, you did not. But in my defence, if someone goes to the bar to buy a drink, you have a look at your phone for a bit, don't you? They go to the bar to buy a drink. I just open my book, just carried on a little bit and then put it away.

I don't think it's crazy. It's the same as like spending a little bit of time in between scenes. on your phone. Yes, and I actually find that much more distracting. I don't take my phone to set with me because it's just something about the screen and I just find it it ruptures my concentration so much more. Other people would say, well, surely diving into a novel set in the 16th century is going to be more distracting.

But because it's so distinct, I don't find it's quite clean for me. And I have always been able to dive in, come in and out of a book. very easily. I don't kind of need silence. I don't need to, I grew up in quite a rowdy household and I can read anywhere. So a set for me that kind of the kind of comfort of the hubbub around me is actually quite soothing. So it's like white noise. Well, we're going to be diving in and out of five of your favourite books, starting with their eyes. We're watching God by Zora Neil Hurston. When 16-year-old Janie is caught kissing local do nothing, Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with 60 acres.

Janie survives two stifling marriages before she finally meets the man of her dreams, who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds. How much do you love this book? I mean, there's a lot of hyperbole is going to be involved now, but it's all accurate. I had never read anything like it. I discovered it because I had read Zadie Smith's white teeth, devoured that and then read that it was, she wrote that it was one of her favourite novels.

So I immediately bought it. And I had just read nothing like it. I just was so impressed by Janie and her kind of her fortitude and her tenacity to believe, like the kind of had, she had this ardent desire in the power of love and the kind of the kind of healing power of love. And there's, she says in it somewhere, there's, the dream is the truth.

And she kind of sticks by this adage. And she, and I just found that. It's just incredibly inspiring. I just thought she was such an impressive person to, to become friends with. You felt like you're becoming friends with her. When did you read it? I was probably, it was right after I read white teeth.

And that came out when I was maybe 14. so I must have been 14, 15. So as a coming of age tale, as it were, as a protagonist who you could probably relate to, did it resonate? Did she resonate? I tell you what resonated was she discovers who she is by hurling herself into life. She doesn't sit back and allow life to happen. She fearlessly allows these experiences.

and I had started acting when I was 10 and I knew immediately upon my first encounter with acting this is what I'm going to do and obviously that sounds incredibly precocious and you know people might humour you but I knew and when I read that and saw that she was just there's this wonderful passage where she's looking at she's sitting beneath the tree

and she sees a bumblebee and it's kind of wings are loaded down with pollen and she just finds the kind of the beauty and the strength and the kind of tenacity of this tiny creature and she finds and she kind of locks her sort of hopes onto, it felt to me like she was inspired by something that was so small that it kind of made her feel powerful and it was just, yeah, that was what I responded to the idea that if you believe in something

that that is enough, like the dream is the truth. And I remember thinking like, that this is, you know, people might be kind of belittling this idea that I want to be an actor, you know, girl off a housing estate, what do I know but it was no I'm I dream it so I'm going to do it and you did well Janie evolves from a voiceless teen to a woman in control of her own destiny um as he just said so do you feel like you've reached a point where you're in control of your destiny in control of the things that happen in your life um I don't know that I would say I'm in control of it I think I think

freedom comes from not trying to be in control. I think I felt more stressed when I've tried to control things. You know, that phrase control the controllables. I used to get so not anxious, but nervous when auditioning, for example. And then as soon as I just thought, this serves no purpose. Just enjoy it. Just if not trying to control it, I discovered there was much more freedom and I was more accurate version of myself

because I wasn't kind of aping what I thought people would want so I know I wouldn't say that I am in control of it and I mean especially with what I do I could be on a plane to South Africa tomorrow and filming there for seven months and you just don't know but that's

I find that exhilarating if you lean into not knowing I think there's more joy and more peace in that you were saying just before we started recording that the shooting schedule most recently has been so intense but you love it

I really do I'm really annoying in the mornings because I'm genuinely eager to get to set I mean I'm sending there's an eight hour time difference between LA and London

I was sending responding to messages to my sister and it was about four in the morning with me and I was like look at the palm trees aren't they lovely and dancing in the van with my driver and just

came into one of the trailers and Jake Johnson who's another actor on the show he was he was still in the hair chair which is a chair you get your head and not a chair made of hair to clarify so i think i've seen a horror movie about one of them yeah yeah and any day now and he and i was kind of dancing around him to fleetwood mac or something we always have music going he was like are you always this lively this early i was like you betcha it's just i do i really i find you get very um you build a kind of momentum you get real stamina so it's almost like flexing a muscle, it just gets stronger.

And because filming minks was particularly fun, why would you, why would you find anything but exhilarated? So yeah, the schedule was full on, but, you know, when you're doing what you love, it's like a day at the spa. Well, minks, it tackles complex issues like female pleasure and race and power. when you were, I guess at the time that you would have been reading this book, when you were a teen and you were starting to form your opinions, your thoughts, your feelings about those topics,

do you feel that that's something that's evolved since doing this show? Yes, I do actually. I was struck when reading The Eyes Watching God that she explores kind of gender roles and, emancipation and female empowerment and they were and those who explored there's lots of kind of imagery

around her hair and around their tree and a mule and there's and I remember it was articulating ideas that I was becoming familiar with by that 14, 15 or becoming engaged with but it is interesting

all of these years later to be shooting a Charlotte Ninks and they're set in the 70s it's set 50 years ago but we're still now having the same conversations and there's a kind of contemporaneous aspect to the show which is depressing and we shouldn't still have in this conversations but there are certainly things about yeah female pleasure and women being active in their desire for example and even even the

way it's spoken about still today in quite a kind of ambiguous way that has made me engage with those issues kind of all over again and you kind of really you kind of really you're realize that you've they're not resolved they're not going to become resolved but it's their the show has made me re-examine them and have different conversations with my friends friends that I'm very close with

we're very all kind of liberal outspoken and widely read so you kind of you challenge you we don't always agree on everything of course and but this minks brought up topics that I realize I haven't spoken a great deal to my friends about like their pleasure and desire and the complexity of consent and things like that.

It's not actually something we've spoken about at great length explicitly. Well, long may we speak about these subjects, and I hope that conversation evolves, as it will have done from when you read this book to when you're filming this show and into the future. We move on now to your second book, Shelfy book, which is Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, by turns heartbreaking and disturbing,

this novel follows hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth as her life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. In her early 30s, divorced from her husband, dislocated from her friends, Maria is a woman who has run out of both desires and purpose. Did this resonate? I really get the impression it didn't, but we've been talking about it. I mean, no, no, Maria, they didn't resonate in that way, but. I mean, I was totally knocked sideways by this book.

I'd read The Year of Magical Thinking, and I had read slouching towards Bethlehem, the first of which is about dealing with her grief after the loss of her husband, the second collection of essays that she wrote in the 60s. This was the first novel of hers that I'd read. And what I found so arresting about it was the kind of deceptive simplicity of it.

For example, some of the chapters are a few sentences and that's it. And I would find that the thoughts between the words would sort of linger in my mind because of hang like vivid paintings that I would need to kind of close the book and allow those to sort of ruminate for a while before I moved on to the next chapter. And I hadn't really done that. I mean, these chapters would be tight, just a few sentences, and they were so powerful. I think what has she said?

Because often I find reading Didion, at least, you'd, you feel something before being able to identify what it is you feel. But like when you might walk into a room and there's a smell you recognize, but you can't pinpoint it, but you know, you know, you smell something that you, what is it, what is it, what is, ah, it's my mother's perfume, that's what it. But it's, her words are like that. there's such a kind of evocative power in them that that's what resonated.

And I just thought, I have never read anyone like this. I've never encountered a writer so searing, the way she can capture a personality with kind of skewers and identity to the page with just a single sentence. I mean, this is in another book. I think it's in democracy where she talks about a woman who like,

lights a cigarette with a match against her shoe, the soul of her shoe, and you just immediately understand, well, where she's been, how she learned to that, who showed her that, why is she doing that? Why doesn't she use the matchbox? You just have so many questions and answers about this woman immediately. And Joan Didan has this unique aptitude to do that. I guess there's a familiarity as well when her images are so searing, as you could it so evocative.

The book's set just outside of Hollywood. It's full of existential angst and alienation. Yeah, it's a laugh at a minute. Is it aside to Hollywood that you recognise that you've seen or you've heard about from your friends or colleagues? Yes, yeah. I started going to L.A. when I was, I think I was about 21 or 22.

And, I mean, it was a baptism of fire. I had, I was in all sorts of things. things happen they just thought oh wow it really it really is the beauty and the beast

this place because it was so full of hope and the dreams and people kind of come from all over the place but for that reason there's also a

there can be a sort of creeping dread to it there can be the kind of unrelenting blaze of the sun and everyone is in the industry

that there's this sort of a relentless energy to it that if you're not part of that current it can pull you under. People go there to kind of live out their dreams, but quite often die without achieving them, and there's just,

there can be a sense of that there. So you're so in order to, so you need to sort of find your own people, you need to find your own purpose. You need to, I found, when I was going there initially, it was just so soul crushing and you'd go to pilot season,

it was just, you're just 10 a penny. It was really, your sense of self-esteem and self-worth is, your sense of value is so married to the idea of success that it taught me very quickly you need to have another way of placing value on yourself

it cannot be tied up with this because if you don't work for two, three, four years then what are you worth? And reading this book you see how dangerous it is that it feels like her self-worth her self-worth is really dangerously entangled with her success as an actress.

What's been your process of finding that sense of self-worth, recognizing it and then working out how to achieve it without the external? I mean, it's not like I've arrived. I'm much better than I was, but honestly, reading, remembering that that is, it's always been a source of comfort and joy for me. always you're never you know like you're never alone with the book and knowing that as much as I love what I do it is what I do it is not who I am and there are so many other things that I am you know and my my friends obviously everyone values that my they're friends but they're such kind of

they're seeing seeing your friends it's that there's such a shot in the arm just remembering that there's so much more value to be had from being a good friend than that. I mean, it sounds so, I sound like I'm kind of in a ladybird book, but it's true. Just try not to think, right, well, I'm only worth something if I get this big part in this show with this person. That's just so temporary and fleeting and subjective. So I do find that furnishing myself with things that make me feel, happy really simple things like swimming in the sea and reading a good book and seeing my friends and being there for them makes me feel valued and valuable yeah and and grounded i guess as well

um and what is it like moving because i know your home is here in london but you're spending a lot of time in l.a what's it like going between continents how do you find it i love it i love it so much i've got my mum was a real travel bug so she kind of instilled that unless we you know you'd mention that you were doing reading a play set in Afghanistan she said oh yeah I really liked Afghanistan for the month that I was there when were you in Afghanistan she was like well you know this and that and or then you'd mentioned Germany she said oh yeah I remember throwing things over the

wall for people like what plastic bags they didn't have any plastic bags or jeans so when did you do that oh you know just you know and then she kind of would be quite ambiguous about it and you think okay I won't ask any more questions but she instilled the idea of the hunger for travel and the curiosity and you know we didn't go to typical places we'd kind of go to Thailand and explore those kinds of things or go camping. But so the idea of getting to travel with my job is a massive appeal to me.

I mean, I really am aware of how lucky I am that, I mean, I did one job where we got to go to Russia, Cambodia, Italy and South Africa. What job was this? It was called Houghton and the Lady. It was an action-adventure. Because, you know, I read the episodes and I saw where they were set and I thought, oh right okay great there's going to be some brilliant aircraft hangar and you know chipping soddery that will that would do that would do the job um and then you go oh no here's my

visa to go to Cambodia this is incredible so I love getting to tougher and the fact that minks was shot in L.A um god this is so I'm such a cornball sometimes that you I just never got tired of seeing the Hollywood sign I was staying in an apartment that looked directly on his Hollywood sign just going to think this is ridiculous This is so much fun and you just, it just never grew up. I mean, as I said, I grew up on a housing estate in White City. And it was, I still, at 36, it doesn't, it's not wasted on me that I do feel so grateful I actually get to do it. And then seeing the Hollywood sign out outside your windows, you're kind of getting up to go to work and be paid to try and make people laugh is just a bit.

They're real pinch me moments. I think practicing that gratitude every single moment of every single, even if it's for the rest of your life and you never get tired of seeing that. I think that's not a bad thing. Yeah, but it does lead people to think, oh my gosh, you're so annoying when I'm dancing around at 4 in the morning. I need to temper my excitement. Well, it comes from your mum, who sounds like an absolute legend.

Bayleys is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Look in for a treat to pair with your favourite book. Bailey's is the perfect accompaniment to enjoy either over ice or over coffee. Your third bookshoppy book is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Arguably one of Wolf's greatest works.

This short novella opens with Mr and Mrs. Ramsey and their eight children holidaying at their summer house in sky surrounded by family friends. But time passes, bringing with it war and death. And the summer home stands empty until one day, many years later, the family returned to make their long postponed visit. Can you tell us why you picked this book? Well, Virginia Woolf has been a big part of my life in many different ways. I first read this book when I was about 13 or 14, which was far too young.

But again, it was actually at the suggestion of the same teacher, Mrs. Dandridge. And I didn't quite respond to it. And then I read it again at the suggestion of another teacher named Mr. Chivers when I was about 16. And it was a completely different experience that we were saying before. I was too young to appreciate it for. And it was a revelation to me. I mean, that sounds, you know, quite rapturous, but it really was. Wolf has a way of articulating that she has such purpose scarcity in the way that she has such purpose scarcity in the way that she

kind of skew, again, captures an identity. And she was able to articulate ideas that I knew I had, but they were too murky to identify. And it was, and then upon reading Wolf, it was like a light was shone on those ideas, and I could see them clearly, and the kind of the satisfaction, the kind of the swell that you experience

when you see your thoughts articulated on a page and the recognition, you feel like that you're having a real communion with this person and it's quite magical really. And she and to The Lighthouse was that experience for me and it awoke in me in awareness of ideas, like I said, that I knew that I'd had but just wasn't quite able to articulate, you know, the idea of gender roles,

female emancipation, female empowerment, that it was, I knew, obviously, obviously by that age, the ideas of feminism and everything, but I wasn't, it really awoke in me a kind of fearsome alignment with feminism. And I went on to read everything she wrote. And I mean, so much so that I was 16 when I read that book and I was at sixth one college.

And I thought that I was going to just, after college, go straight into working as an actor. But big thanks to Mr. Chivers and that and him suggested, that I read that book and in fact he made me realise that I clearly loved modernist fiction so I went on to read so many modernist authors I decided actually no I want to go to university and study

English it completely changed the course of my life and I knew I wanted to be an actor I was already acting I was already working making money as an actor while continuing with my schooling but because of to the lighthouse I decided I want to go to university and luxuriate in studying books for three years and I want to write my dissertation on Virginia Woolf

and that's what I did. Did you? I won on Virginia Woolf, the other one I wrote on James Joyce. So, you know, both quite lighthearted. What was your dissertation on Virginia Woolf? What were you exploring? I wrote about her use of moon imagery across several of her books

and how she would use that to explore madness and badness and sadness in women. Wonderful. wonderful. I feel like, I mean, it's been a long time since doing a dissertation. But if anyone ever asked me, I'm like, oh, yeah, I've not talked about that for a while, but there was a time when it was my entire life. Oh, my gosh, my life.

Whole life. I mean, but just in a brilliant way, I mean, it was, but she did, it's funny. You just like when you encounter an author at the right time and that's truly what she was. And I'm so glad that I did have her around in the university days. And then going on to read a room of one's own and just feeling so fired up by that and to think when that was written, I mean, I think what The Lighthouse was written in 1927.

And to think I was reading it all of these years later and the kind of the passion that it evoked in me was, I mean, you can hear how passionate I've become about them. But yeah, she really did awaken it in me a realization that I was a feminist and I would fight for those ideals and that I was, if I could do anything to continue these ideas and talking about these things, and I would. So yeah, she really does loom large in my life still. I'm getting this image of you as a child, as a teenager, as a student, sort of growing up.

I know this book, it opens in a busy family household. You said yourself, you were used to your household being a loud one. And we've got a little glimpse of your mom as well. I know it was a single parent family. Tell us a little bit more about your mother, your family, your household that you grew up in and how it shaped the person that you are. Well, yeah, my parents divorced when I was six. My dad was still in picture, but we lived with my mum.

I've got older brother, younger sister. And we also fostered, we were fostered her family. We fostered children for 17. years so that was you know a rowdy house wow and it was a small it was a small house so we were all on top of each other kind of cheek by jow but it my mum is like just an absolute force of nature she's she's funny she's intelligent um she's naughty she's witty she's beautiful she's she's she's the best possible role model you could ask for and incredibly supportive without being you know meddling she when i tell you want to be an actor she was she didn't dismiss it

but she didn't kind of force me into it. She just let me do it. And I remember when I got my first paycheck at 12, she, I said, what do I do with it? She'll, it's not my money, it's your money, you do with what you want.

So classic 12 year old, I put it into a bond that I couldn't trust until I was 18. I don't know where I got that idea from, but that's why I did. 12 year olds and their bonds, what are we like? Really, really weird. But we, I mean, it was,

it was full of activity and, and, I mean, you know, you'd argue and you'd fight and you'd make up it. It was lots of books everywhere. And we, my sister was studying dance at that point. My brother was kind of into the drama but didn't like it in the way that I liked it. It was, it was really fun house old. I mean, I was very independent.

I suppose I was quite, from a really young age, like, precociously independent, wanted to kind of go off and do my own things. So I remember when I'd be working on the set and my mom, would have to be there because I needed to chaperin. I hated it. Not because I'd hate my mum. I adored my mum, but I just thought, I'm fine, I'm doing it.

I don't need you here. Obviously you think you're such a grown-up at that age, but it was a really fun household. And it shapes the person that you become. How much of yourself do you now put into your roles? I mean, obviously with someone like, say, Carrie Johnson, there's a lot of research that would need doing. and it's someone who has been

portrayed by the media a lot as well but can you bring yourself to these roles? I mean I think there varies of course with He will play I mean with Joyce Prigger in Minx there's a lot of I mean

all of my friends when I told them I was playing that role they just said this feels like it has literally been written for you I mean I mean I myself sound so uncool a lot of the books that she would be talking about and kind of, oh, you should read this and I had read all of them

and the creator of the show at Emrappard which is like, of course you have. And I had copies of them and they were thumbed and they were underlined and I just, I kind of brought my copies of the books that the character talks about with me. Such a loser. But with Carrie Johnson,

you know, we actually grew up in similar areas-ish both kind of West London. She's only a couple of years younger than us. I am, we actually, I realized that I knew some people she'd gone to school with, so I was able to speak to them. I mean, there was that kind of proximity. But we grew up worlds apart in terms of our socioeconomic, she was much wealthy than I was.

But the, but you still bring yourself to it in terms of, you can't play what you've read about. I find that really irresponsible. There was, the director, Michael Winterbottoms have said you were playing a woman who is pregnant and whose husband is in the public eye that's who you're playing

so you weren't playing Carrie Antoinette or all of these kind of other headlines kind of unkind nicknames whether whether they were fair or not is irrelevant the point is you can't use a newspaper article to kind of build

your characterisation you go off primarily the the script that's in front of you and it's you know you I realized that lots of people had very kind of entrenched opinions about her and and I would ask but what so what's that based on what oh well we've heard this and I thought you just you've not met her you don't know I mean and I didn't speak to her either but um because again I thought that would not that I doubt she would agree but um not like I've got context her and ask her um I just thought that would color my impression of her. So you do, I brought myself to it in terms of thinking, well, how would I feel if my

husband was in a great position of power? And I felt like he was making mistakes. And I, you know, carries, by all accounts, is very intelligent. She's well educated. We know that. She's, she knows what she's talking about in this instance. So it's, of course, he must have asked her opinion on things. What partner doesn't ask their partner for an opinion? She happened to know what she was talking about. the problem lies in the fact that she's not, you know, she's not an elected official and she may have been giving him detail. She shouldn't have been. But in terms of bringing myself to that, I thought, well, I've certainly done that. I've given my opinion on things, often unsolicited.

So you, I think you can't help but do that. But the fun part in what I do, though, is that often you don't understand the motivations of someone immediately. You do kind of think, oh, I wouldn't do that. So then you can start exploring, well, I wonder why they did. Let's think of some backstory. Let's furnish this with a kind of emotional world that you can then understand why they would behave that way. Often it's fun to play someone who's unlike yourself.

Well, on the subject of furnishing a story with the parts that we don't always get to hear, we move on to your fourth book, which is Hamlet by Maggi O'Farrell. Oh, gosh. Yes. Take a big, deep breath. Yeah.

This women's brief. winning novel explores the short life of Hamlet Shakespeare. This is a tenderly written and emotionally devastating account of the Bard's only son, whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written. Tell me why it's solicited such a deep breath, such a sigh. I was completely spellbound by this book. It was just, it's devastated. It's almost unbearable and kind of the aching beauty.

in its pages. I'd read it fortuitously by the sea in Cornwall which was the ideal setting because it felt

so elemental the way Farrell builds a kind of sense of place I still think about the characters in that book

they still occupy space in my mind and I know that sounds absurd but they really do and I think that That is magical to kind of, I think it's so exciting.

I discovered Margot Farrell with Hamlet, so quite late in the day. But it was just thrilling to fall so hopelessly in love with a writer and then realize there's so much other things that I can now devour. It was just so exciting. And to realize it's kind of emphasized that there are so many authors out there yet to discover. I mean, you know, there's no excuse to be bored because there's so much to be read. and she I do I oh gosh I'm almost at a lot of words to describe there's there aren't enough superlatives to describe how breathtaking her writing is

especially in this book the sheer creativity of how she articulates the world it's it's the fact that she gives you such a sensory experience before she's even I mean before you've even met the characters you know you're you can kind of smell the sawdust and feel its crunch beneath your feet against the flagstones that have been, you know, become shiny from centuries of footfall. You can see the kind of pleasing blaze of the fire and the earth. You can hear it's crackling in your ears and all of that to build the room in which you are soon to hear these voices. It kind of you have such a sense of place before you've even met someone, before you've, it's just, it's, it's, it's truly remarkable.

I mean, I get so fired up when I think about that and just think, these are, these are black marks on a page. This is, these are just words on a page and I feel like I lose all sense of where and when I am when I'm reading her. And as I say, I was reading this in Cornwall by the sea. And this actually was the one book that I have not been able to just dip in and dip out of the way I was saying, before I'm good at doing. that I, once I was in this world, I was in it and I couldn't be taken away from it. And it really did feel like sticking my head underwater. It was just a completely different world. And the power of a writer to be able to wholly absorb you and you're kind of within its clutches is just kind of bliss.

I feel like if any of our listeners haven't read it yet, then that will ensure that they do. they will be going straight out and getting a copy. I hope so. It truly is. I mean, I haven't read it yet because I just can't. Well, it sounds like that experience was so visceral of reading it. You almost don't want to ruin your memory of it. And the impact of it then it was not just in space but also in time. That was your experience of this boot.

Definitely. And it's still, it's still. it still moves around. I mean, I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I'm really, I think about them. I think about those people and their lives. They're still in my head. They continue to live with you.

She's made it all up. I mean, yes, of course, these people did exist in reality, but we don't, we don't, one of the reasons why I love this book as well is that O'Farrell gave Shakespeare's wife an actual life. She watched, you know, there was so much erroneous things. written about her. We didn't know anything about her. So she's created this narrative that's so much more satisfying. But I don't feel like I want to read it again yet because they're all still in there. They're all still there so vividly that I'm kind of still thinking about things will

remind me of stuff that I've read in the book. It's remarkable. I read that in 2020s and it's still doing that. Did reading how many it affect how you, um, read or view or think about Shakespeare's work now because presumably you know you've you must have read a lot of Shakespeare studying English at uni um yes actually which um is curious because of course it's she just O'Fowah was made it all up so I mean of course she was researched it heavily of course all of those sorts things but the specificities of what Agnes goes through you don't you it's from O'Fowah's imagination but yes it did you know the fact that he sent all of his money back to Stratford,

Pramovian, to support his wife and his children, the fact that, I mean, reading my namesake, my name is from Hamlet, that I kind of thought about that play in a very different way after reading this book. I mean, to think that it's a writer, you know, a contemporary writer would affect how I think about someone from centuries ago is that as well. well it exposes how magical writing can be that it can reframe something with which you feel so familiar and opens up whole other sort of ante chambers of thought that you simply not engage with but you realise were there dormant all along in your mind and you think well how much more is there to be

discovered what other dust sheets will be whipped off from covered up rooms that thanks to a writer's imagination it's i find that endlessly exciting well as he just said as well the the book is largely told from the perspective of Agnes, Shakespeare's wife, a figure largely lost from history. When you pick your roles and all these wonderful roles that you have taken on, are you drawn to fleshing out women's stories, particularly untold women's stories in your work? I mean, yes, definitely. That was one of the appeals actually of playing Carrie Dunson's. I did think we don't know much about her actually she's despite being a public figure she's very carefully curated her public image um and you can see why you can see how she's been regardless of how you vote regardless of how

you feel i do think we can agree that the way she was kind of portrayed in the press is is really dangerous and to me it does smack of misogyny and i find that obviously problematic um so the opportunity to play her and kind of just play her as an indigent as a person without applying my politics to it I felt was needed I mean there is there are lots of characters that you know you read about

and that I'd love to have the opportunity to play I mean obviously it's a fictional character but Joyce Prigrin, minks that it's by playing how we're able to kind of flesh out the idea of an imperfect feminist the fact that she's got all of these ideals and thinks that she knows what she's doing and then she encounters people that are different from her and she realizes oh actually there's

there's so much I've not understood me she's not an intersectional feminist at that point she doesn't she's completely lived in her little kind of white middle class bubble she doesn't she hasn't encountered people who've lived of different life to her so through the show and yes it's essentially a workplace comedy but we are able to to flesh out people that aren't often represented. And because we're shooting it in, you know, 2023, we were able to apply a greater understanding of those oversights, which wouldn't have occurred in the 70s,

but, you know, that's the benefit of hindsight. In Minsk there is this increased focus on female agency and honouring the female rather than the male gaze. In what ways do you create that feminist lens on set? Well, there are lots of Willie. which is wonderful love for my job. Oh this is why. This is why I was up jolly at five in the morning.

Because it is the female gays. You don't get to see women's pleasure depicted on screen often. It's kind of, and all spoken about in a way that's, I mean it sounds absurd but not hypersexualized, just speaking, you know, acknowledging the women's that it exists even. We're able to, it's all very much, I mean, yes, it's heteronautive,

but the female gaze there, the fact that women are active in their desire, this kind of fallacy that it's kind of, you know, something passive that happens to you is just not mine and my female friends experience at all. And what's so satisfying about the show is that it explores that and kind of debunks just myths that seem to kind of,

still have a lot of traction. Yeah. And of course, you know, the lovely, I don't know what my, you know, friends will say about this, but it's just, it's just a different show. The set feels very different. I mean, there's a lot of female energy. There's the storylines focus on, yeah, on female agency and kind of, and but also acknowledging when that,

When you make mistakes in that way and it not being the end of the world, you can make a mistake and learn. What I often feel like men are afforded the space to make mistakes and not have to be kind of totally vilified for it. I feel like there's a lot less margin for error for women. And I like that Joyce, she's a flawed person and you see the people around her telling her as such, but still embracing her into the fold.

So I think that's an important message as well that we can just allow women to have opinions without calling them opinionated. We move on to your fifth and final book this week, which is in fact a poem. It is Song by Christina Rossetti. Christina Rossetti was one of the leading female poets of the Victorian era.

Song famously beginning, When I am dead, my dearest, remains one of her best loved, poems. Why did you pick it? Well, I chose this because I've long enjoyed Rosetta's poetry, as many people have. This poem in particular was a lifeline of sorts for me. My friend Caroline took her own life a few years ago and it happened right as we went into lockdown. And it was the most painful experience I have had the misfortune of experiencing. And we were completely alone and it was so difficult to kind of understand what had happened and

and accept what had happened. And I just was reading, trying to kind of keep myself afloat and I read this poem and it was like someone had just reached in and just pulled me out of something. dangerous. It was and I and the the power of I mean that poem to keep me afloat is extraordinary really because there was you know obviously you're speaking to your friends and everything but um this poem in particular felt like it was almost Carrie herself saying it there's a particular line when I feel myself getting drawn into the kind of the agony of the grief, like it feels so physical,

that it just, as soon as it comes to my mind, I feel pulled back from the brink and it's be the green grass above me. It's the most beautiful notion that she's, it feels like Carrie saying, don't be silly, don't sit there, what's the point in sitting there moping? Live life and live it well. Live it, live it because I no longer am. Live it for me. Don't sit there and mope.

Be the green grass. above me. Don't, this serves no purpose to sit and mope. Obviously, grieve for her, but don't allow that to overwhelm all of the other feelings about her. And I'm telling you, that poem is the power of that to just kind of go, right, come on, up you get. I cannot put a value on that.

It is invaluable. And I think people can often, some people can often find that poetry is, you know, inaccessible or it's oh you know you need a degree to be able to understand it it's just simply not the case and it's like people saying that about joyce I wish Joyce would hate that um but it's it's like a short sharp shock a big like a shot in the arm poetry when you read at just the right moment and it can truly lift you from yourself and it can it can articulate something that you're feeling and it almost gives you a guiding light for that moment and it lifts you out of it and that poem never fails to lift me up and make me feel like

I'm going to do her proud what does living life well mean to you what does doing Caroline proud in the way that you live your life mean to you it means to not let the fuckers get you down you know gosh I mean that's a hard question to answer but it means to just go to I mean going back to Janie to kind of discover who you are

by hurling yourself into life and not hiding away from it and Carrie was such a dynamo she was such a force for joy that I'm going to continue in that vein for her and for myself to not just surrender your power to someone because of fear, but just to kind of step into it

and do things that are unfamiliar and challenge yourself and all of those kind of clichés but you just think we're so often kind of wings clipped, curtailed and told to be one thing. There's no reason. I'm learning to get, my pilot's license at the moment.

I'm doing what. Because I was like, I want to be a pilot. I want to be a pilot. So I was like, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get my pilot's license. So that's what I'm doing. Just why not? I might, you know, then I can be the new Tom Cruise.

She's, yeah, it's she, it just means to just go out and and do all of the things. You don't have to be one thing. It can be many things. And that is, I'm just so grateful to poetry like that. That's a piece of poetry that you know it. You can know something intellectually, but to feel it emotionally. Actually, Joan Didion, in The Year of Magical Thinking,

she writes about knowing that her husband is dead, but not being able to throw away his shoes in case he needs them. And those two thoughts existing, co-existing, that sounds so contradictory, and yet they are both both perfectly valid, because you can understand something intellectually but not quite yet have grasped it emotionally. And oftentimes that happens with Carrie.

Like I'll still think to text her or I'll see a meme and want to send it to her and I'll say, a meme and want to send it to her and I can't. But then I remember be the green grass above me and I can still enjoy knowing that she would have found it funny. It doesn't need to kind of, my conversation with her continues, but just in a different way now.

So I think that's living life well. Poetry is so powerful. It is that short shot shot that you just described. Do you find time to read poetry in your day to day? Or is it something that you maybe reach for when you need it or something that takes you by surprise like this one did when it turns out you needed it? But you don't necessarily know you need it. Well, I tend to have poetry books dotted around the house.

so don't have them kind of all on the shelf like the novels are for that purpose. Ali Asiri has done beautiful collections of poetry, you know, poem for every day of the year or a poem for every spring day and things like that. So it's quite nice to have them just around so that you, while you're waiting for the kettle to boil, just flick open a page and read it. I think it's quite nice to have poetry around so you can dip into it as easily as that. And then there are also there are, there's, there are some poets that I reach for,

specifically when I don't know you're walking along and there's a full moon and I think oh I should read some basho it's and we know how you love the moon I'd from your dissertation I love the bloody moon me can't get enough of the moon I really do talk about moon a lot I've got him stuck a woman oh no join the club I do too between the pieces of poetry dotted around for when you need them the books that are sitting here in front of me, Hamnet that you, that you devoured by the sea, all the books on your shelves. It's been amazing to get to talk to you about the words that have shaped you, that have impacted you. If you had to choose just one book from your list that you brought

today as a favourite, which one would it be and why? Have a little, yeah, shuffle through. I think it would be Hamlet. I think it would be Hamlet. I think it would be Hamlet. yeah because it's just um well look for someone so loquacious i'm rendered speechless so i think that kind of says it all right yeah um i just think it's a truly extraordinary transportive piece of piece of writing and um i'll never tire of diving into it and once again to anyone who hasn't read it who's listening i think you should be sold by now yeah i want a commission on that piece I found. Sophia,

thank you so much. You're very much. We said we're going to dive into these bits. We really well and truly dove into them. Honestly, it's been an absolute pleasure to chat to you. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. I'm Vic Hope, and you've been listening

to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.