How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Adeel Akhtar - The importance of staying true to yourself

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

My guest today has a nickname in showbiz circles: he’s called ‘Ideal Actor’ because of his scene-stealing talent and his ability to get under the skin of what it is to be human. If you’ve watched Netflix’s monster hit, Fool Me Once,  or seen Sherwood or Back To Life or The Night Manager or if you’ve watched the movies Four Lions or Murder Mystery 2, the chances are you will remember his performances. He’s a brilliant actor, but he’s also, as it happens, a wonderful guest - funny, moving and a deep thinker. He joins me to talk about his acting failures, his failure to work hard at school, an upbringing where he was forced to question the nature of his own identity and his failure to keep things in perspective. Also: karaoke. As always, I’d LOVE to hear about your failures. Every week, my guest and I choose a selection to read out and answer on our special subscription offering, Failing with Friends. We’ll endeavour to give you advice, wisdom, some laughs and much, much more. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio Engineer: Gulli Lawrence-Tickle Mix Engineer: Josh Gibbs Senior Producer: Selina Ream Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. In my podcast, we look at and celebrate our unique individual failures, because ultimately, they're the stepping stones to success. Every week, I invite a guest to look at their failures and what has come afterwards that might have helped them grow and succeed. And before we get into my interview with Adeel Akhtar,

I'd love for you to join me afterwards at Failing with Friends, my subscriber series, where I will be continuing my conversation with him. It's our chance to hear from you and it's where we discuss your failures and any questions you might have. I really look forward to you joining us and I would love to hear from you. If you'd like to get in touch, follow the link in the podcast notes. Get Failing With Friends episodes every week and all episodes of How To Fail completely ad-free. Just visit the How To Fail show page on Apple Podcasts

and click Start Free at the top of the page to begin your free trial. Or you can visit howtofailpod.com if you're not an Apple user. If you've been blown away by a piece of television over the last few years, the chances are pretty high that it featured Adil Akhtar. Perhaps you watched his BAFTA-winning performance in Sherwood, playing a hapless accidental criminal who killed his son's wife, where Akhtar carried out the impossible trick of making you root for his character. Maybe you've seen him in Back to Life or The Night Manager, or perhaps you were one of the

90 million viewers of Netflix's Fool Me Once, and you saw Akhtar playing a rumpled detective experiencing unexplained blackouts. When I watch him, it's as though he reaches into the heart of what it is to be human and squeezes it. Now he's taking his talents to the stage, about to appear in the Donmar's new production of The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov's Russia is afar removed from Akhtar's own upbringing. Born to a Pakistani father and a Kenyan mother who met while working at Heathrow Airport, he grew up in a Buckinghamshire village where he recalls having stones thrown at him as a child. He went to boarding school in Cheltenham, then began a law degree before dropping out to retrain at the Akhtar Studio Drama School in New York.

His breakout role was as a bumbling Muslim extremist in Chris Morris' satirical movie Four Lions in 2002. Fifteen years later, Akhtar won the lead actor BAFTA for the one-off BBC drama Murdered by My Father. Astonishingly, he was the first non-white actor to take the gong. And although these days his career is clearly in the ascendant, he seems never to take that success for granted. When he was once asked about the most important lesson life had taught him, Akhtar replied that it's never completely amazing and never completely terrible. More often, it's all right. Adil Akhtar, welcome to How to Fail. Thanks.

Wow. Where are we on that spectrum today of amazing, terrible and all right? Yeah, all right, I think. It's just that's what we've got a gun for, really, isn't it? Yes. Do you know what I mean? And with that delivery. We're all right.

We're all right. Yeah. I also think there's something really profound about expectation wrapped up in that. Because if we simply expect things to be all right, rather than unadulterated bliss every second of the day, we actually end up being happier. Yes. It's a sort of pressure to sort of live from your joy. It's a sort of pressure to sort of live from your joy, especially now when we're sort of made to feel like there's not much that we should be complaining about. There's been lots of improvements in sort of the world and, you know,

mortality and all these sorts of things. But there's a lot more complications as well. And so we have to, I think we've just got to gun for all right because then when you do those moments of joyous bliss sort of catch you as opposed to it being this sort of continuum of feeling let's talk about imperfection okay because I was chatting to you before we started recording about how I watched Sherwood on a long-haul flight and how your performance, thinking of it even now, has the capacity to make me well up.

It was such a heartbreakingly astonishing performance, for me anyway. I don't know what it was like for you. And I think what you do so beautifully in all of your characters, whether you're making us weep with empathy or piss ourselves laughing, you manage to uncover something about the flawed nature of trying to do your best. Can you relate to that? Is that where it comes from?

I can relate to that because I think that really grabs my heart is people's reach for something and that sort of endeavor always either makes me really laugh because it's mismatched you know people in a particular state you know and they're sort of reaching for something that's beyond them. And sometimes that can be quite funny. And other times it can be heartbreakingly tragic. It's people's effort in trying to be better. It's the gap between the yearning and the getting. Yeah, and that liminal space that we're all in. I read this book and this author was sort of describing yearning and love.

And he used this analogy of like an open horizon. And yearning is travelling in a boat and going towards the horizon, but nothing orientating you. Just keep on going, keep on going. And love, oh, I feel like I'm going to win. Love being something that orientates you, something that you aim for. When you won your BAFTA for your performance in Sherwood, you said in your acceptance speech that it felt a little bit like a miracle. Yeah.

Why did it feel like that? I suppose I was sort of comparing myself to when I first started acting, when I first started looking at becoming an actor or when I was a kid watching TV for the first time, you know. looking at becoming an actor or when I was a kid watching TV for the first time, you know. And I just maybe a few days before come back from an event celebrating Mira, she won the sort of fellowship, not fellowship, but the big old award. Mira Sayal.

Mira Sayal. Yes. It was like an award just to be like. That was a BAFTA fellowship, I think. And I had just come back from that maybe like a few days before and I was in this wave of sort of being in a room full of lots of brown people who are just really high up and producing and channels and Netflix and all just across the board and so to for all of us to be in that room together and then as I was accepting that speech just seeing Mira in the front row there I mean it was it was very much um felt very miraculous yeah yeah

fool me once yeah massive stonking hit it's gone well it's gone well it's gone pretty well hasn't it oh yeah that sounds yeah where is your starting point when you get a script and you're asked to play a character? What's the first thing that you do after reading the script in order to prepare? Yeah. When I first started, I thought there was a lot of work involved in having to sort of characterise something. And not that there isn't a lot of work involved,

but I used to burden myself with a lot of stuff that I'm not sure was very necessary. But now it's something that's very sort of right-handed. I don't have to travel too far to find where the emotional truth is of that character because I just go, well, I'm just going to do my version of that and I hope that's all right. Right, so you find the emotional truth and then you tap into an experience of

that same emotion in your own life and bring that sure I went to a sort of very sort of methodist school and I think when I was young I thought there had to be an emotional equivalent to you know what I mean like sort of living the part of the character and now I realized that you know once I sort of step back from that a little bit there's ways of tapping into a character where you don't need that lived experience of that particular character I have an equivalent area of understanding that can still serve the character is Is Michelle Keegan really lovely? Oh, my good God. What a lovely woman. Lovely, beautiful. Such a lovely, beautiful.

Great coats. There was a whole TikTok thing about her coats. I know, I saw, I saw, yeah. She was the first person to arrive on set and last person to leave generally because she had so much to do. And not once did she not smile and was ready to chat and ready to be a bit silly. Just a wonderful person to work with.

Talking of that feeling of a sense of miraculous occurrence when you got your BAFTA and you looked at Mira Sayal and you saw it reflected back to you, reminds me of a story from your life that seems like it would be scripted yeah which is when you were flying to New York and you were mistaken for an extremist yeah and shortly afterwards that's when you got the role in Chris Morris's Four Lions yeah can you tell us that story yeah sure my girlfriend at the time was auditioning for drama school in New York and she said do you want to be my scene study partner just to help her out for the audition?

So basically when you're a scene study partner, you have your back to the audience, but you're sort of making that person shine. But as I was flying over to do that, in Heathrow they took my passport and they said I'd get it returned back to me when I arrived at JFK. When I arrived at JFK, it was like sort of convoys of vans, FBI sort of people coming out and then handcuffed and then questioned

and then later released and then did the audition. Came back and was going to start my LPC, my legal practice certificate sort of thing. And then the drama school phoned me up and said, would you like to take a place at this drama school? And I went with my girlfriend. We just ran away. We just were like, this is, we went back to New York and I took a place at that drama school. But that was my sort of introduction to New York and that sort of quite harrowing part of it. They thought I was somebody that I wasn't.

I have quite a profound understanding on that now because, you know, my job is to enact lots of different types of people. And on those characters that I've had to play there's always the tension between somebody who's trying to limit that person in some way it takes a lot of self-reflection and sort of self sort of analysis to really be in tune with the person who you are in the world and to present that to the world and to stand by it, even when you're under duress, you know. There's something about that story that is so chilling

and I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for you at the centre of it because it's about lack of agency and lack of control. And you've done such a profound job of expressing what that means to you as a person. But I also imagine that it's so difficult being in a situation where there's just no recourse. It must have been horrible. Yeah, it was horrible because you're trying to express an actual truth about yourself and that truth is being not believed but there's no higher

stakes situation because if that person doesn't believe that truth that you're trying to say then I mean we're talking about times of katanuma and stuff like this. Looking back on it, the States couldn't have really been higher. What it taught me was to draw parallels between that and how people are in the world anyway. And it makes the thing that you experienced, which was, like you said, really difficult and painful and scary, makes it less difficult and less painful less scary because we've all got our own versions of that you know you hold that space for someone and go that's a

really intense complicated painful situation to be in when all you're trying to do is be yourself but you're okay you know it does explain so much about how you get audiences on side in spite of a character acting in ways that are not immediately sympathetic or that seem outright horrifying in other contexts because you manage to convey on some level that the character is in conflict with the truth of who they are and and there's something so beautiful about being drawn back like a tide because of your flaws and imperfections and you're constantly trying to be better and yet you're denying what makes you you at the same time which is absolutely the premise of this podcast sure that is so much better to be honest about our flaws with the little bit of writing I'm doing at the moment, this thing is just always coming into my brain. It's like creating space and holding space.

And so often we're sort of told to fill that space with ideas and words and our opinions, our opinions, you know. And sometimes it's cool just to write down your opinion fold it up put it in your back pocket sit on it for a bit and just create space for yourself to work out whether that opinion is worth sharing in that moment or not let's get on to your first failure yeah which is failure at school what was your upbringing like in that buckinghamshire village where you had stones thrown at you yeah so we i was initially born i was born in hounslow and then mum and dad moved to the suburbs because it was just a sort of nicer home with a garden and things so that's

what we did when i was young and then my mum and dad wanted the sort of best education they could get for me. And they worked really hard and saved a lot of money to send me to sort of private school and eventually went to a boarding school in Cheltenham. This sort of common thread through all that was just being sort of minority. And yeah, the sort of stone throwing thing was looking on it and it charitably could have just been kids messing around being kids looking at my experience back then at the very least I go oh that's strange you know what I mean without having to sort of draw up a massive draw you know write a massive essay on it or anything that's it's a bit weird, you know? Yeah, I totally understand that in certain respects in that when the Me Too movement happened for women,

I definitely looked back at my life and thought, well, I'm lucky because I've never been the victim of any form of sexual harassment and definitely not assault. So I'm fine. And then actually I looked at what other people were saying me too about, and I was like, oh no, I have, I mean, I've experienced that. But so much of it was an expectation that there was a price to be paid for admission into this world that didn't belong to me,

that was run by the men. And I can only imagine how much more acute that might feel as a visible minority in your buckingham village and your private school that it that actually it's the institution that gaslights you it's the society that gaslights you and it takes a really long time to unpack yes yes yeah yeah yeah i suppose so and if you're up for unpacking it as well i sort of understood that I was a minority and I understood that there's a world, an institution that works in a particular way.

And the thing that can undercut all that is to find the thing that you love, work out the thing that was always there which is like oh i've got this desire to communicate with people and want to find connections with people but you felt you failed at school oh yeah so talk me through the elements of that failure because you must have felt a sense of responsibility as well your parents had worked so hard to earn this money to send you to this prestigious private school. Yeah. What happened? Like, these are the people who I always gravitate to anyway.

It's like the people who sort of outliers. So I was just not very good. Just not very clever at school. But you're very, very clever. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So why did it, was it just not the right kind of environment? Maybe not the right kind of clever, which is fine, really.

And so then from a young age, I had this sort of tension of going, well, that will keep my mum and dad very happy. And actually they've worked really hard. So there's a lot of guilt involved in pissing around. And, but I couldn't help not pissing around. I couldn't help, do you know what I mean? I just kept on what were you doing were you smoking cigarettes and stuff like that what was the naughtiest

I was very good at not getting caught smoking cigarettes and I was very good at when I did get caught my face looked really sorry for itself that's your early training isn't it I wasn't even trying i wasn't even trying to train i was just scared of my dad so as soon as like anybody was like do you want me to tell your dad i would just be like i would just revert back to like the way my face would sit which is like oh fuck that's the worst thing in the world yeah i remember there was a bunch of us that we sort of we found harold pinto i was 16 17 We found the homecoming, Harold Pinter,

the homecoming. And we had this tiny little space, about as big as this. And we had like a light on and we put some chairs down. We put a production of the homecoming on. And I was listening to Arab Strap at the time, this band Arab Strap. And I remember this,

when I first heard this song, first big weekend of the summer, it's like music is just like something when you sort of get turned on to music for the first time and I realized back then it was like oh yeah this is music is happening I'm really enjoying Harold Pinton I don't really understand it fully but it's great again like searching for those moments of going oh what was that i mean the other stuff in the way of that you know being a minority and like having to sort of battle against lots of things to be heard and stuff like that's you know then and important things to reckon with but that stuff can sort of break through a lot of the problems and complications. Did you fail your exams? How did you do?

I was just really, I was that annoying person in school who was really mediocre. So I would have got like Cs, maybe like a few Bs at GCSEs. But they made me a monitor or something. And like I got a little monitors badge. And not even a prefect, a monitor. And if somebody put a monitor, I took that very seriously to the point where it was almost laughable.

Do you know what I mean? I sort of knew how seriously I was taking it, but it was the first time somebody was like, here's a badge, it's like, well, guys, you know, there's no running in the corridors. So if we can... Do you think you were trying to be a bit like your dad? A little bit, a little bit, yeah.

Maybe just a tiny civil servant. Not that he's a civil servant, he's a it's a lawyer but you know that kind of like my wife jokes down that even when I go to a beach it looks like a civil servant from the 60s just like they have their sort of trousers rolled up and like why didn't you bring your shorts you mentioned that your dad's a lawyer yeah and you went to do law at university. This is still wrapped up in your first failure. Yeah, oh. And you mentioned at the beginning that you dropped out of that law degree in order to become an actor.

Yeah. How difficult was it for you wrestling with what your dad's expectation of what you should be doing might have been? My dad, his dad was a lawyer. So it's almost like a blacksmith, you know, within the Asian world. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But not the Smith part.

It's just like you sort of do what you're told and you don't question it. So I remember coming back with my UCAS form. My dad essentially sort of filled it out for me. He was just like, no, you're doing this sort of thing and then this opportunity came to just run away to New York and do this drama school stuff and he wasn't angry just shouting at me or whatever he did initially and then after a while he just kind of emotionally became absent and um for my dad that was me presenting him with something that wasn't very easily understandable and something he couldn't help me with because help was it was an expression of his love so he couldn't

yeah I know so he couldn't uh I don't know where we're both going now. I don't know. It's because when I watch you. We've got the pink microphones. We've got to have a bit of a laugh. Come on. I promise we'll get into the jokey section next. Yeah, sure.

Is your dad still in love? Yeah, he is. He is, okay. But all that to say, his expression of love was to help. And then he just didn't know how to love me in the right way, basically. I know now. And now we're just going to land this emotional plane we're a lot better we have this sort of easy understanding with each other now and maybe it's because I'm a dad now and because he looks at his grandchildren in a way that he realizes all he had to do was just hold that again like hold that space just be there was nothing to do

really he just had to sort of be there with with them and they're gonna love him like you know like i do so it's just he didn't have to do much you know so beautiful oh thank you adil is your mom great yeah she's brilliant okay okay moving on. Moving on. I can talk more about her. Just quickly, the thing about my mum is just, again, the life that I was living wasn't very easily understandable to her, not very, but she's been to see from New York, tiny little black box avant-garde theatre-y world to all the things. She's just been there throughout, seen every performance. You know, there's something performance you know there's something

again there's something deeper going on there which is like you have to work beyond your understanding of what it is that it's just always been a support you actually said something in a past interview about cultural assimilation at the level that your parents did being the ultimate act of creative expression which i've never read before and I thought it was so profound and even if they couldn't understand the choice you were making career-wise maybe actually you get your talent for creativity from them in a very beautiful way that they perhaps don't see themselves but that's maybe where it's from I think so so. I think it's from them. But it also allowed me to see that in other people. I recently finished this book by this woman called Elif Ataman. She wrote this book called The Idiot.

Yes. And it was a funny book because she's like, in this book, she's sort of 19. And she's disassembling the idea of like high art and literature whatever because she's because the idiot was written by dosiewski and that's like freaking brilliant you know but she talks about this thing where um and it's really interesting that the presentation of the well-made novel to a person denies them and steals that person's receiving the well-made novel of their artistic process because in the presentation of the well-made novel what they're not allowing you to do in your process or our process is to write a shitty diary or something or write a

auto fiction or you know screw up the margins And there's an appetite for people now just to smash it all together. You know, what's good and bad and what's high art and low art, you know, just to put it and present it and go, that's the most crystalline piece of truth I can present. There's truth in the messiness. Sure. Payton, it's happening. We're finally being recognised for being very online. We'll see you next time. first, and a lover of pop culture, second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This.

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Just trying to present all of me, but it was as if the industry and my desired sort of career path didn't really want it. I felt a little bit like a rejection. What were you being told at auditions that you failed? I mean, I just wasn't getting anything. So that just went on and on and on. But again, like looking back on that,

and I'm doing a spot of writing now, I think it is kind of a really beautiful metaphor for sitting with creativity in a way. You know, the obstacles that you sort of find. And we can sit with that discomfort because eventually we know we're going to settle in a place where the thing that we're doing is going to have an artistic expression of sorts. In your life, you don't know that. In your life, you are on that sort of, that big horizon of yearning. I was in that spot.

I was just going, what's happening? Where am I going? What's happening here? You know. What was the worst audition you ever had I mean it's not funny now and it is sort of funny but it's also a little bit like oh great now I'm thinking about it was what in New York so I had like one job where I had to put on an Indian accent and I had to sit so that was like a really shit one now looking back on it was a shit one but times have changed now i don't think anybody's gonna have asked you to do that ever again but there was like a sort of a few of them you know where like before when

you turn around you go oh that's that was weird that was that wasn't one that you'd say that was weird that was just like oh that's shit do you know what i mean yes less weird and more like shit but thankfully it feels like those are less and less now we're sort of entering a time where people can have got the appetite for seeing you in a sort of different way than how they once so the sort of casting or the the idea of you playing a particular type of role used to be very narrow and maybe that's the miracle thing that we were talking about when we were seeing Mira, we sort of raised, widened our aperture of what we can see and what we are able to accept from people

who we thought could only do one particular type of thing or one particular type of role. Is it true that you ended up living in a van? Yeah. So basically I had a little bit of money and I thought I could just make that last a lot longer if I just lived in my van for a bit yeah what kind of van it was an LT VW but it's not like one of those sexy VWs 90s it was like a really boxy 1980s I mean if you saw me in it, it would have been funny

because it was so massive and I'm not the biggest guy in the world. So it looked like I was driving like a heavy long goods vehicle or something. And it was all converted on the inside. And it was great. I mean, again, it was fun until it wasn't fun. I used to go to a lot of festivals. A mate of mine did this thing called Folk in a Box. We used to set up this little box in different festivals

and then you'd sit down and you'd have this one-on-one sort of folk song with this person and I was living with the box. Were you hiding that from your parents? They kind of knew. Again, like, they had this... OK, so I've just described my mum. So my mum's the sort of woman who's sort of gone to like Worcester Street in New York

and seen me do some really avant-garde theatre and try and, you know, that's more mime, but you know what I mean. And she's seen like, so I think she sort of got it. She understood what was happening, but there was a deeper wisdom of sorts in her, which was just like, is he all right? Just on a basic, is he all right? Fine. My dad was just like, just couldn't understand what was happening.

It was like, and then because it was so overwhelming for him, he sort of distanced a little bit more going, I just don't get what's going on here. Because I was just, like most of us are, just searching and trying to find what I was supposed to do. Before we get on to your final failure, how did Four Lions come about then? Was it just another one of these auditions that you thought, oh, I've got myself through?

Yeah, good question. I can't remember now. All I can remember is doing it and the time going by so quickly because I love Christmas I loved everything that he did it at that time it was kind of arguable whether there was any satire before him maybe that's pushing it maybe I don't know but it felt like that because he was just like had such as he was just super sharp focus on the types of stories he wanted to tell. And I just remember wanting to please him and just be, just to get this thing right. I put a lot of effort into just trying to get it right.

And now looking back on it, the moments of realisation where that film really worked was just the really silly bits. was just the really silly bits right it was like i mean the introduction of it obviously is like you know young men being radicalized and on the fringes of society and disenfranchisement of young british asian men and that list is sort of like but really they were just being fucking silly do you know what i mean it was just like really low to the ground, holding bags and like trying to understand the reach. Just these people who are trying to understand themselves and the world. And that's sort of funny and tragic, you know, all at the same time. They're just trying to find themselves. Your final failure is your failure to put things in perspective.

Oh, yeah. Yes. I suppose in the sense that there's some things that take a lot of thought and there's other things that you don't need to think about that much. I suppose that's what I mean. And the benefit of age maybe means that you can be a bit discerning as to what those things are. Like, definitely with my career, I go, OK, there's a character, I can see it and I understand where

that lies with me and how I'm going to play it my failing perspective but when I was a lot younger would be like right all the research how does he walk what's his shoes does he like prawn sandwiches which is a real thing people sort of like what sandwich does he so to be with age you could sort of be a bit bit more economic with your energy and how you invest in things and stuff. Do you think you have a tendency to depression? Oh, very good question. I think I did when I was in that sort of chunk of time, maybe in my late 20s, early 30s. I definitely looking back on that now, I would say I wasn't totally happy.

But as of late, like I wouldn't, I've never ever felt that level of despair. And I think it's because of this ability to just be myself, you know? I think the through line with all this, now I'm thinking about it, is the moments that you feel that anxiety, the moments you feel the depression, the moments you feel those really intense feelings of whatever emotions they are, there's a sort of incongruity between how you see yourself and how you're trying to present yourself to the world and now I'm just sort of caught up with the

fact of not having to perform any other part of myself that isn't weird and complicated, you know. Given your experiences of your childhood and your quest to embody the truth of yourself, that essential truth, how has having your own children changed your perspective? Has it made you more or less anxious, do you think? Somebody told me this sort of child development stage from naught to five and it's called emperor narcissism have you heard of it yes it's wicked isn't it my best friend's a therapist that's the

reason i've heard of it yeah i love it because it suddenly makes sense as a parent where this like little emperor is running around and you're like, I'm so sorry. You're apologising way more than you... Like, he's really, really terrified. I'm fucking honest, you're in a good mood today. I love that. And if I didn't have kids,

I wouldn't be able to conceptualise what that is and basically what that is is we need to feel the center of somebody's world but then when I look in the world and I see that not happening and there's an incongruity with people there was something there you know something happened where you weren't you didn't feel like you were the center of things whether it's through our writing whether it's through doing this or whether it's through our acting or whatever whatever else you just want to go oh I hope I'm making a little bit of a step in that direction for people who never did there's a play again like that thing I'm saying like a placeholder for really complicated feelings my kids have just taught me to sort of go further and deeper in that journey, really.

Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. It's Kathy Burke here.

Can I ask you something? How do you want to die? Is that a bit forward? Well, you clearly haven't been listening to our podcast. Where there's a will there's a wake. Every week I have a natter to some of our favourite people about their fantasy funeral. And my God, we've had some fabulous

guests through my deathly doors including Danny Dyer, Dawn French, and Sir Steve McQueen from Sony Music Entertainment. Where there's a will, there's a wake. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Final question. Yeah. I've heard from a little bird. Yes i've heard two things i've heard that

your nickname in showbiz circles oh yeah people you work with oh yeah is ideal actor oh i've heard this yes that's really good helpful talk about nominative determinism yes exactly yeah yeah yeah um the other thing that i've heard from a mutual friend of ours is that you love karaoke so obviously i'm gonna ask you what your go-to karaoke track is i would say whole of the moon by the water boys if i'm feeling confident the other day i'd had a rap party in belfast and rap party with a w or just rap because I like to karaoke rap so... I'm gonna I'm gonna ask okay yes yes it was a rap party it was a rap party and they made me do Frank Sinatra and I was really worried about it because my makeup artist said you have to be you're the

first person because if you do it it's gonna let everyone else off the hook and everybody was a bit nervous and after I sang Frank Sinatra, everybody was just like fighting for the mic. It gets very sort of nervous. Can I perform? And then two hours in, it's like a zoo. Yes. It's like people are like, you weren't in line.

And I sort of all start with Frank. And how about yourself? Which Frank Sinatra did you do? My Way. My goodness. Yeah, but not very well. Not very well. And what's...

Well, so glad you asked me. Yes. I love karaoke with a wild passion. I can't sing, but I find it so... What is it about it? It's so joyful. Joyful. My husband and I will book a karaoke box, just the two of us,

and go on a Saturday afternoon and spend two hours. That's so amazing. That is so amazing. Do you know what I've just done? What? I've just booked, weirdly, I've booked a karaoke booth with loads of spaces in it. And I've just sent a shout out to people,

going, do you want to have a little sing song? Yes. Because I was just thinking, because I'd just done some time in Belfast, singing in Irish culture, it's like it doesn't take, after like 10, 11 o'clock at night, it doesn't take much for somebody just to stand up with a beautiful voice and knock you sideways, you know. And I was like, in London, we don't really, after about 10, 30, we're just closing time, closing time soon.

You know what I mean? Nobody really gets up and has a sing song. So I was like, all right, I'm going to get a massive booth. It's hard being a parent, isn't it? So some parents are just like, just have a sing, I don't know, just a real sort of mixed match of people. You haven't even asked me what my favourite track is. I haven't even answered that.

What is your track? Ski Lows I Wish. How is that? How does Ski Lows? I don't know. I wish I was a little bit taller. That's great. And then the other one that I've recently discovered is In My Range, which is a very specific thing in my can't sing.

Crowded House, Fall At Your Feet, which is one of my favourite. I don't know that one. Oh, my goodness. I know the weather one. Yes. But this is not that one. It's not that one. No.

It's so beautiful do a bit no just so I know I'm terrible at lyrics whenever I fall at your feet I know that one

it's such a beautiful song it's a beautiful song there's not that many notes in it so I can just about manage it not much but the thing about Carrie yes I'm coming to wherever that is It's a beautiful song. There's not that many notes in it. So I can just about manage it. Not much. But the thing about karaoke, yes, I'm coming to wherever that is. And the thing about karaoke, it's communion without judgment.

Yes. And in this world of constant judgment, it is just a place where you can let loose and sing a tone-deaf rendition of Crowded House. Sure, true. Although, to build on your point, after a few drinks and people try and help me with my karaoke song, something happens and I'm like, I don't need your help, this is mine. And everyone sings along and I'm like, shh, shh, please, you're putting me off. I think you're secretly a really good singer. No, I'm not.

Because you're an actor and actors always can sing. I do that for a laugh though though, because everyone's just like... Because, again, it was a make-up lady that I was in Belfast with and she was... Maria was her name. She's got a beautiful voice. But whenever anybody would try and help her sing, she's like, you're putting me off. Stop it, you're putting me...

It's just so funny, isn't it, when somebody is just singing their heart out and they're like no this is mine it's my a deal actor yeah sure it has been a joy it's been funny it's been profound oh good i'm glad we had a few jokes in there because we both were like i know we were both on the verge of tears the entire time in order to end yes so whole of the The Water Boys, why is that your favourite track? Because I heard that... What's so funny? Why are you laughing at that? I haven't even got to the punchline yet.

I heard that The Water Boys were in the crowd and they saw Prince performing. And when they saw Prince performing, because they heard his lyricism and his ability to be Prince, and they thought to themselves, well, we could never attain that level of pop grandeur. So some of the lyrics, is it all right if I read some of the lyrics? Please, go on. She goes, imagine if you're a young water boys band looking at Prince. So that's your exercise. Okay.

You don't have to close your eyes. I'm reaching into the emotional truth of that. Yeah. I pictured a rainbow. You held it in your hands. I had flashes, but you saw the plan. I wandered out in the world for years while you, you just stayed in your room.

I saw the crescent. You saw the whole of the moon. Cheers, Prince. Amazing. And it goes right to the heart of everything that you've been talking about, about seeing the whole of the moon of yourself, the whole of the moon of the truth of yourself. Yes, yes.

Yeah, I suppose the takeaway could be something like we are our biggest artistic expression in the world. So you're in the crowd looking at yourself, you know. It's just, that's the sort of communion that you want to have in your life. Going, okay, you don't have it all now. You might not have all the answers now. But there's a part of you that does and always aspiring to that and always looking up to that sort of thing. Maybe that's the end.

Is that a good analogy or is that? It's a perfect one. Perfectly imperfect. Adele Akhtar, you might be an ideal actor, but you're also an ideal How to Feel guest. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks. Thanks for having me, everyone.

Thank you. for coming on. Thanks. Thanks for having me, everyone. Thank you. I just wanted to remind you that we continue our conversation with the fantastic Adil Akhtar over at Failing With Friends. It's a wonderful community of subscribers where we chat through your failures and questions. Start being inquisitive about what that is for yourself. You might be in the neighbourhood, but you haven't got the right postcode yet. And that's still all right to have a little walk around and figure it out, you know. If you're not yet a subscriber, why on earth not? I would love for you to join us. You just visit the How To Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial and start listening today.

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