How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S6, Ep3 How to Fail: Cush Jumbo

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

[TW: suicide]If you're a fan of The Good Wife or The Good Fight (and if not, why not?) you will know Cush Jumbo as Lucca Quinn, the whip-smart, ambitious lawyer who speaks with a flawless American accent. But Cush was actually born in South London, the daughter of a British mother and a Nigerian father and the second of six children. She took dance classes from the age of three, and went on to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. An award-winning stage actress who wrote and starred in her own highly-acclaimed one-woman show, Josephine and I, she is returning to the theatre next year to play Hamlet at the Young Vic.Way back in the mists of time (well, ok, 2012), I interviewed Cush for the Observer. I was struck then by how impressive she was, as well as being nice and funny. We stayed in touch over the years as I proudly watched her ascent from afar, and now I'm delighted to get the chance to interview her again because she is unafraid to talk honestly and beautifully about her most vulnerable moments.She joins me to talk about her fears of letting her family down, the self-perceived failure to 'have it all' as a working mother, plus the rejection and sense of terrible failure she felt as an actress starting out and the spiral of depression that ensued, during which she thought 'obsessively' about suicide, before seeking medical help (and getting a dog). Thank you Cush, for being fearless in your honesty and generous with your talent. Also thank you for bringing me delicious cakes from Gail's when we recorded. You really are a gem.ALSO, TODAY SHE COLLECTS HER O.B.E. It's almost as if I'd planned the timing (I hadn't).I hope you enjoy listening, and if you do, I'd love it if you felt moved to rate, review and subscribe.*The How To Fail Live tour has now started! I will be at various venues around the UK and Ireland over the next two months, sharing my failure manifesto with the help of some very special guests. Limited tickets left! These events are not recorded as podcasts so the only way to be there is to book tickets via www.faneproductions.com/howtofail* The Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day, is out now and is available here.*This season of How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp and sponsored by Sweaty Betty. Sweaty Betty are offering listeners 20% off full-price items with the code HOWTOFAILTo contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayCush Jumbo @cushjumbo Sweaty Betty @sweatybetty    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 yamx. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist

Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Kush Jumbo is a British actress, although if you only know her from the hit series The Good Wife and its spin-off The Good Fight, you would be forgiven for thinking she was American. and its spin-off, The Good Fight, you would be forgiven for thinking she was American. Her portrayal of the sharp-talking lawyer, Luca Quinn, has won Jumbo a legion of fans and made her a star. But it all started in South London, where she grew up the second of six children, and was forever being told she was an excellent mimic. She took dance classes from the age of three.

Then, Jumbo heard about the Brit School for Performing Arts on Blue Peter and persuaded her parents to send her there. Later, she graduated with a first from the Central School of Speech and Drama, was nominated for an Olivier Award for her work on stage, and wrote and starred in a one-woman play about the jazz singer Josephine Baker to rave reviews. She took this play off Broadway in 2015. It was in this role that she was spotted for the part of Luca by the Good Wife creators. And the rest is history. That will give you some idea of both her tenacity and her talent.

These days, she splits her time between America, where she lives with her tech developer husband and their one-year-old son, and the UK, where next year she will be taking on one of the roles of her life, Hamlet at the Young Vic. I have to make myself heard, Jumbo said of acting in 2012. Not just the language, but the feeling has to reach the person all the way in the back seat. Kirsten Jumbo, welcome to How to Fail. Oh my goodness, that was the weirdest feeling, was it? People find it quite odd. Do you know, it's really lovely hearing somebody say lovely things about you that are true but even just saying that just now saying the word true I feel embarrassed that

I feel lovely about you saying lovely things about me we're so messed up. So messed up but you deserve it all and actually the quote that I used at the end of the introduction comes from the interview that I did with you. Oh my goodness. Way back in 2012 when you were just breaking out and I remember that interview so vividly because you were so brilliant. I have such a strong memory of you doing that interview with me. It was probably like the first time that I'd been part of a big newspaper feature and you were the first journalist that I remember meeting who didn't ask me black questions oh and I remember that so vividly and I've talked to people about it since that you were so interested in the process of Julius Caesar and what we were doing how we're making it and me as a person but I'd never not felt slightly uncomfortable in an interview

when somebody started talking about me and it was just so fun we had so much fun and when it came out everybody that like read it was so proud of me and it was so it felt like a really good representation of who I was like a true one so thanks for that because that was nice I'm so glad you said that no thank you for saying that and also it's given me a sense of possessiveness like a kind of auntly yes pride yes when I've seen you go on to do all these magnificent things and seen you in the when you popped up in the good wife I was like oh my god it's good I know her yeah you're one of my gate you're one of my gatekeepers oh well thank you I'd like to take credit for your yeah no I was talking to someone the other day and talking about how it's really strange how you know you can go through your life especially in the creative

industry or in your you know yours as well I think like really sometimes it's 50% what you do but the other half of the time it's the way that people behave that you come into contact with you know whether they're your mentor or they're somebody who gives you an opportunity or my whole career is made up of people taking a chance on me or listening to me and then me having the opportunity to do things because of that and so you're one of those people thank you it's such lovely thing to say what have you shown up in a really bad mood that day i know what if i've been a total bitch what do you mean anyway before this becomes a mutual love fest, tell us about, because I love this anecdote,

about how you were found by the Good Wife creators. What exactly happened? Oh my goodness. Okay, so I was in New York doing Josephine and I, which was this show that I wrote about Josephine Baker, which had transferred from the Bush Theatre in London to the Public Theatre, which is basically like the National of New York.

And so it's a building with lots of theatres in it. Just to put it into perspective, when I was opening Josephine in one theatre in that building, the theatre opposite me was doing the first preview of Hamilton. Oh, wow. Which I went to. Yeah. And tickets were $20.

A chorus line started there and you know a whole bunch of it's a new writing building it's a really creative space and I was really proud to be there performing in that building so it was directed by Phyllida Lloyd and she had directed Mamma Mia the movie and part of her cast of the movie was Christine Baranski who I'm a huge fan of me too and Phyllida knew that I'd always been obsessed with The Good Wife as well like I'm a big Good Wife fan I've been watching it for years and I just love the show you know because you're when you're in New York and you do a show it's a very normal thing which is not the same here that very famous people come to congratulate you after

the show even when you don't know them whereas here you know unless you know somebody famous they would just be like it would be impolite for me to bother them now so every night someone incredibly famous would be coming to knock on little old my door and I'd have to kind of wipe sweat away and shake their hands and try not to behave like I was completely imploding with this what what is happening in my life and one night came this knock at the door and it was Christine Baranski and she came floating into my room I swear she was on wheels she glided across the floor like her feet didn't touch the floor and she was like darling that was a wonderful show and I just you're so talented and I just think you're fabulous and I just I thought she was

amazing and I said I love you I'm a big fan of I thought she was amazing and I said I love you I'm a big fan of yours of all your work your stage work I love you on The Good Wife and that was all I said then a few days later someone came to say that two people called Robert and Michelle King had been in that night and they wanted to come and meet me now I know who Robert and Michelle King are because I love The Good Wife and I knew they were this husband and wife team that had written that show and run that show so I was so thrilled that they'd come not because I thought it'd be on the show just because I thought you know it'd be really amazing and they came backstage they're the cutest most intelligent wonderful couple and they came back and they loved the show and they told me they loved the show and they told me all about The Good Wife and how they film in New York and

they had all these new parts coming up and I thought they were just giving me an inside track to the show. I thought they were just being like, you're a fan. You know, did you know that we're looking for some new... And I was like, thank you for coming. And it was just, if I died that night, I would have been happy. Like, it was just a great night. That was on Saturday night.

And then Monday morning, they offered me a job. Oh, my goodness. And I couldn't believe it. Within a couple of months, I was on that set doing all my scenes with Julianna Margulies and having a wonderful time, but also being terrified of somebody showing up and going, hey, you, you, you from Lewisham,

you're not meant to be here. Get back on the plane. And doing an American accent in front of all of those people and meeting incredibly famous actors get back on the plane and doing an American accent in front of all of those people and meeting incredibly famous actors and trying to like learn everything I could and cram everything in my mind and also I was only signed up for three episodes to start with of the 22 I was going to do three episodes and go home and I stayed for three and then they're like can you stay for longer and longer and longer and then before I knew it I'd done the whole season and

all of my stuff was with Jules. It was a mind blowing time. I couldn't believe what was happening to me. And I read somewhere that you compare, because a lot of the dialogue is very legal heavy. And you are so phenomenal at standing up in court and having this presence as a lawyer. But I read somewhere that you compared the sort of technical aspect of that language to learning Shakespeare oh my gosh absolutely which is one of the reasons why and they can do this because they have you know they shoot in New York they cost so many theatre actors on that show there a lot of them are Broadway

theatre trained actors because the jargon and the language is not only complicated but being a litigator is a performance in itself and I knew nothing about law when I started the show but we have law experts and we have people who advise us on how to behave physically in each court because we might be in federal court, supreme court, family court, civil court and you might be addressing the judge in this court you might be addressing the judge in this court you don't address the judge you address the jury in this court you don't worry about them you intimidate the others in this court and i love all of that stuff because that's all information i can put into my body to perform in court and court often is long hours long dialogue a lot to

remember long takes but i just fucking love it and I only really get that feeling doing Shakespeare and what's Christine like bloody amazing we call her Queen Baranski she's the best she's just the best and my experience I've been so lucky to be able to learn under and watch Christine and Juliana both two phenomenal not only women and actresses but business people and leaders I think a lot of the time now the way our industry works people believe that if they are the lead or number one it's mostly about being paid the most money and people forget how to be leaders. And sometimes being number one is about leading everybody else, showing everybody else what the bar is, how to behave, what's the etiquette. So polite, so on time, always know their stuff, know everybody's names, you know, from the bottom to the top. And I watch them and I have watched them and I think, yeah, that's how you that's how you lead.

Like, that's really how you become a great person. I love hearing that I could actually make this entire podcast just about the good wife and the good fight maybe we'll have to come back and we'll do that yeah. Your first failure you describe as a failure to be perfect and it comes from your family and your upbringing so tell us a bit about that yeah I'm the second of six children my parents and we we all grew up in South London I'm kind of completely London born and bred really we moved around a lot and my parents who are still together now and are the best love love me so much, really proud of what I've achieved. They, like a lot of people's parents, I think of my generation, were very young when they had us. When my mum was my age, I think she had five kids. Wow. And, you know, they both always worked

really hard. But with being a young parent, as many people will identify, where it comes some challenges in terms of what you know versus what your kids need and also maybe what you were taught as a kid they both had difficult upbringings themselves so as a family unit we were a big team and we were brought up to kind of look after each other and help with the running of the jumbo tribe as we used to call, because there really kind of was just us. We didn't really have any extended family. And being number two of six, what that means is that you also have to become a parent. You're a deputy. If one of the parents is always working and the other one's trying to run it all, myself and my big sister, we spent a large proportion of our childhood helping to raise the other kids, which you don't think anything of at the time because that's just what you know but we had that approach to everything we did. My dad is Nigerian

and loves education and loves school and wasn't given the opportunity to go to school past a very young age and brought up a lot of children himself so he was always fastidious about school about your approach to school and working the hard as you could he used to send us off every morning and say work hard ask questions always his two things that you would work the hard as you possibly could but you would even always question the teacher to make sure you know is there something I'm not learning and that's a really good work ethic to give to your children but I definitely have always felt a sense of fear that if I do not achieve to the highest level in everything everything will not be okay and there's a chance that life will disintegrate should I not achieve

and that could be at school but that could be to do with anything that might happen with my siblings that is a negative because they've all struggled in their own ways. But there's so many of you, you know, you're going to have a couple that struggle with life in general. And I have felt like those things have been my failings. What did I do wrong that sister four or brother three is struggling? What can I do to fix it and I've taken quite a lot of that on and I guess for quite a few years really until recently I think I I can only describe it as feeling like the world's gonna end if I don't succeed and so because of that this is probably the worst job I could have gone into. It sounds like so much stress to be under at such a young age.

Was part of it because I know your father was an asylum seeker, wasn't he? Well, actually, he came over illegally, I guess. He used someone else's passport and came over. He was very young. And when he met my mum, they actually went and handed themselves in and kind of said, look, we're in love. We want to be together. And he's not legal. What are we going to do? And eventually he got his British passport. And I

don't know, I guess he was really fixated upon the idea of us doing well and of us taking advantage of all the things that he didn't have. I think that is a classic immigrant parent mentality. And my mum's from a very working class background and she's from Yorkshire and the combination of the two of that it's just a lot but I think a lot of people would identify with that who have parents that are first generation because they come here and they're like wow your schools are free if I'd had a free school the things I could have done the things I could have achieved so yeah it might have come a bit from that the other thing that I find interesting is that your father chose to stay at home so at that time the gender roles were reversed and your mother

went out to work yeah do you think that that has had an impact on you and how you see the world yeah I definitely think that had an impact in positive ways although he was very strict and ran everything an almost army-like way and everybody helped out with everything and we had rotas for everything. My mum is a mental health nurse and she would work really long hours and often weekends as well and on her side that didn't take away from any of the time that she spent with us when she wasn't at work. I only have memories of my mum staying up with me till midnight to make a hat for the hat competition or to find the poem to enter into a poetry contest or helping me to stick bits of bath crystals onto an empty egg that we

blown the egg out of for the egg competition at school now thinking back and realizing that she just done a night and a day and was probably going back onto a night you know she never had time to have her nails done or her hair done that wasn wasn't like her thing. But she found time where there was no time and took me to my dance classes and would help me cut auditions out of the paper. And so she had all this time. And my dad was a really maternal person. He's very Nigerian alpha male, but he also was the washing and the cooking and the cleaning and the packed lunches and the organising and the definitely heart and soul of the party, big storyteller, big music person. And so I guess my perception of men, probably what I expect of them has always been quite high. And yet you also look for something

a little different because I probably also was hankering after something that was really traditional. Dad goes to work, mum stays stays at home why do we have to be such a weird family kind of thing but I think there are some positives in that in that I don't know a world where both your parents aren't contributing and I don't know a world where a man doesn't know how to do the washing up and I don't know a world where mum doesn't always have time but I guess all of that can be positive and negative because then you're basically expecting everything yeah and that can put you under a lot of pressure I guess and do you think because it does sound like a lot of responsibility at a very young age the second eldest of six and

expected to be as you put it a deputy in the family do you think that you were yearning after more play and is that why you think you got into acting and performing arts? Well Elizabeth my therapist recently told me definitely it's something that I've come to terms with a lot in the last five years. I am most definitely an actor because I get to be a child. I can pretend to be many people at work people are usually laying out my clothes for me, telling me what makeup I have to wear, making all these decisions that get taken out of my hands. And all I have to concentrate on is playing, which I'm really good at. I know for a fact that I had to put some of that away, quite a lot of that away when I was younger, because there wasn't time and that a lot was expected. But at the same time,

I channeled all of those feelings into being a performer at such a young age that I also think, gosh, would I be who I was if I hadn't have done that? Because it was my escape. I can't remember a time where I haven't felt more comfortable on stage looking out into the dark than being off stage. I still feel more comfortable on stage than I do off stage. And what do your other siblings do? Are any of them performers? No. So you're the unicorn.

I am the unicorn. It happens from time to time, I think. I was dropped off by Fred and Ginger on their doorstep and they do not know where I came from. I mean, we were a really fun, gregarious kind of loud family. But I'm the only one that decided to make it anything. And I was directing them all from a very young age. I was doing shows at the house, charging my mum and dad to come into the living room, charging them for food at the interval.

You know, and I was taking scripts to school, having written out Shakespeare from like a complete works of Shakespeare. I was trying to get my, why won't anybody concentrate in this rehearsal when I was seven and everyone just wants to play Kiss Chase but I want to do Romeo and Juliet I don't know I guess sometimes it just is there and are they very much keeping your feet on the ground because you're there you're basically effectively like a Hollywood star I mean I know that you film in New York but you haven't changed it from my perspective since I interviewed you all those years ago that's good and are your family good at reminding you of that perhaps you don't need it I actually would say that yes partly my family are actually I would say more my friends I have the same group of friends that have been my friends since the brit school so it's coming on 20 years and none of them have

gone into performing but they've all become really successful people and they remind me of who I am and where I came from and I would literally die without them even though I would say I'm pretty shit friend most of the time at the moment because I'm either away or I'm terrible at getting back to them on time and they never desert me they're always checking in making sure I'm okay because they know what the lifestyle is like. They're used to it now. And when we get back together, it's like nothing's ever changed. My family do that too.

But the thing about your family is they're this kind of like enforced thing that you can't escape. And sometimes that can feel like it's keeping your feet on the ground. And sometimes that can feel like it's holding you back. Because they come with a lot of baggage that you have to deal with whereas your friends you chose them they chose you you've grown together there's something really joyous in those relationships and I just every day I'm just so grateful to still have those friendships and I think if I had to lock a knob end they would tell me straight away so I don't I don't think I'd get away with it.

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After she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise Mother a mother to many Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Well, talking of your friends from the Brit school, none of whom is a performer, is interesting because it brings us on to your second failure, which you describe as your failure to launch. Because, as I said in the introduction, you graduated from drama school with a actor. And I guess I had gone to drama school from the Brit school with this like, I'm ready for drama school, I'm going to be a star.

And I found drama school really challenging. I was very young to go there. I was 17 when I started. And I found it to be a shock to my system. It was nothing like the Brit school. Wasn't warm, wasn't friendly. It was very judgmental. Lots of people there that

had lived more life than me and were a lot wealthier than me and so I didn't feel like I fit in there but I loved doing the work and I learned a lot so I was ready I was left I had my tools I was ready and I I didn't expect it to just happen but I expected something to happen and I began to work but I consistently did two or three years four years of work that were very low level theatre low level television jobbing stuff the stuff that you do in the beginning and I was getting next to no satisfaction from it and that was a combination of having an agent that couldn't get me in the right rooms to be seen to get the kind of more interesting stuff and also being in a world at the time that then which is not that long ago it's

only like coming up 15 years ago I graduated but people were still saying things to you in auditions like you're really urban and urban is really in right now and that seems bonkers that that could have been said but that's the kind of things people would say to me and I was consistently put up for girl from council estate single mother trainee nurse trainee receptionist it was consistently these weird parts that I didn't feel like were real parts and there was nobody that looked like me playing leads definitely on television maybe in a couple of soaps and it was a struggle on stage and if you were there it was like it was years and years and years away so I began to get super frustrated with the state of my existence because by then as a young jobbing actor living

in London where the rent is unbelievable and the minimum wage is nothing. Although I have a first in acting, and a degree, as a young actor, you can't take a full time job, because you need to be available for auditions. So the only jobs that you can do are temporary minimum wage jobs. So you're doing two or three of them just to make the rent. And then in between that you're auditioning. And you don't have enough money, if you're lucky enough, maybe of them just to make the rent. And then in between that, you're auditioning. And you don't have enough money. If you're lucky enough maybe to have parents to help you or someone to help you, then fine, good for you. But most people don't have excess cash to then go to the theatre to make themselves feel good on the weekend. Or even go out for a meal.

Because any extra bit of money they have is being channeled into for example spending 100 pounds to go to Manchester for an audition spending money to go to Scotland for an audition traveling into London from South London for the day to go to an audition is like 20 quid and you're so committed to what you're trying to do and yet you're not getting through any doors and then on top of that you're not living yeah so you start to get depressed and I know that I know now looking back how common this is and probably how much harder it is now because everything's gone up rent's gone up everything's gone up and so I for the first time in my life got super depressed and the magic that had existed for me since I was maybe three or four years old

about being in this business because this is all I'd ever wanted to do began to kind of disintegrate it was like this horrible reality check that actually what this business was about was do you have enough money to hang in there do you look like what we want we don't care about what you can do do you look like what we want you're not this you're not this mostly you're not this you're not this you're not this you're not this you're not this all the things that you cannot change about yourself and there's nothing you can do about it and I guess it was just this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness which was hard for me

because as I said before I guess my big joy in existing had come from being a performer and now someone was like taking it from me yeah someone was saying you weren't worthy of it yeah so I guess I started to slowly slowly it just began to become clear to me that then what was the point and how old were you when this was happening 23 24 I moved back home I had a big breakup with a terrible boyfriend and I moved back home and I mean there's nothing bloody worse I think you've ever done it but moving back home yeah when you divorce oh my yeah you know I'm talking about it just fucking intensifies your failure and you have to revisit who you were when you were with them and what you did wrong to kind of end up back there that

sounds really terrible because you're lucky to have a place to go but I was living in my parents attic room and I began to like visualize a lot every day what it would be like to kill myself in the attic room how I would do it what I would do not in a kind of it's hard to describe I guess because now having gone through it and talked to people about it and learned more about suicidal thoughts it's amazing what the brain does to give you warnings that it's requiring some assistance but depending on what kind of person you are and I'm a super visual person it will tell you in different ways and I remember talking to a counsellor a few years after which was a second or third counsellor that head was talking to me about your brain is amazing

your brain gives you visualizations as a kind of get out like a well you visualized it now so you don't have to do it you're visualizing it because you want it to be quiet you don't want to be gone you don't want to upset anybody it's just really noisy in there and that's exactly how I felt it was very loud in my head consistently every day all day and the only thing I had to look forward to was going to work and do jobs where people treated you like crap and then come home and go to sleep and then go to work. You don't think about how anybody's going to feel if you do it or how it will affect anyone, or you just think about it being quiet when you're not sleeping

and it's so noisy. And then one particular day I woke up and I thought, I'm going to go to the doctor today because I'm feeling very on the edge. So I did, went to the doctor and they were great. And I'd started the process of looking into it then. It feels crazy to talk to you about it now. And I've actually never talked about it out loud. I can't thank you enough for talking about it.

Yeah. It's so important. And I think the way you've explained it just there, because so many people don't understand suicide and the way that you've explained it as stopping the noise makes so much sense. I'm so sorry you went through that. Yeah, no, thank you.

I'm really one of the lucky ones I had at the time. You know, the NHS were great and I talked to my family I talked to my friends and gradually gradually you know things moved in a different direction and here's the weird thing is that that's the state I was in and I kind of went home and I began the processes of the things I was being encouraged to do one of which was to get a pet and that's how I got my miniature poodle Henry who I adopted from another actress and that was the first thing I did which was designed to get me out of my own head and have a purpose first and best thing I ever did Henry the poodle who's living his best life in New York right now.

And then from there, that was around the time that I was like, OK, right, I can be a more useful person. I'm not going to kill myself because I can't be an actress. Cush, jumbo, don't be so ridiculous. This is ridiculous. There are other things you have to give. You can do other things. So I applied to do a PGCE course at Greenwich University to start in the September primary school teaching course. I thought I'm going to be the best damn primary school teacher there is. Yes, I'll live vicariously through my students and they will

have to put up with my stories of drama school, but that's what I'll do and it'll be great. And that summer I write Josephine. But I feel like I know that I was only able to write Josephine because it needed to be written and it was just coming out of me and it just, I was just writing it. I just wrote it and put it on at the Camden Fringe for like three nights for nobody, for 15 people. Because I thought, why not do something nice to end this chapter on? You're going to finish acting and this is going to be it. End nice and then go into teaching. And of course, and this is going to be it end nice and then go into teaching and of course I never went to that PGCE course I guess in a way to put that darkness into creating something so it's the antidote you're creating life is literally the antidote to what you're feeling oh sometimes making things

a lot of people have stories of making things and saying, I don't know how this got made. It just came out. And I wonder whether going into such a dark place gave access to something that I hadn't, I'd wanted to write this show for years. And every time I sat down to do it, I felt blocked, like I couldn't do it. And this particular time I sat down, I don't know whether it was because I had nothing to lose or nobody was going to judge me. I don't know what it was, but she had all this stuff to say and I had all this stuff to say. And it just, it just came out so easy. You've got to be revealed in that way. It's difficult to make things if you're hiding. And I guess I had nothing to hide behind at that point.

Gosh, I just thought that is what Oprah would call a teachable moment. Oh, there you go. It's difficult to make things if you're hiding, you have to mentally unclothe yourself. Yeah. You mentioned there that you went through a number of processes to get out of that place. You said the NHS are great. On a practical level, what were those processes?

Did you start therapy? I started talking therapy, which you only get a short course of with the NHS and then you kind of have to find somebody yourself. And that is, I think, really difficult for a lot of people because that's where you kind of have to go into finding someone private or you might not get the same therapist and it can be an up and down experience but I did a bit of CBT, I did a bit of talking therapy, I didn't use medication in the end, it wasn't for me but it is for some people and I think it's brilliant for some people.

In the end, it wasn't for me, but it is for some people. And I think it's brilliant for some people. A lot of it was connected to my first failure in terms of one of my biggest issues was I didn't want to admit that I was struggling because I felt like I'd failed everybody. I thought if I admitted that I was feeling the way I was, I don't know what I thought was going to happen but what I had to get rid of was the feeling that my parents and my friends and everyone around me was going to say oh that's because you failed. Well we knew you couldn't do it because they'd never said that to me. Why I thought they were going to say that to me I don't know but it was me. You begin a process of getting to know this additional person that we all have that is probably eight or nine years old

and is in all of us that is your absolute worst critic and you're not very nice to them and they're not very nice to you and it's like rewiring what those conversations are I started meditation and mindfulness around that time which was so helpful for like panicking and thoughts moving in a direction that I didn't want them to and just accepting that thoughts are there they're just not me I'm not that's not who I am but I have a very healthy relationship with my own voices now that sounds mental but no it doesn't at all a lot of us don't and we ignore them and we only listen to them when they're being negative and they can really be mean and you can really be mean back so yeah it's a long process and it seems to be based on that idea as you put it of existing separately

from your thoughts you are you and your thoughts can be your worst projections of something that isn't really real that That may not even happen. Yeah. And actors can do that a lot because our lives consist of being out of control. You get the call that you're going to have an audition. They tell you when it's going to be. You go. You don't know who you're going to see.

Then you get there and they tell you whether you're good enough to come back. And then you wait for a phone call and then they call you and tell you you're good enough to come back. You go back. Then they tell you you've got the job. Then they tell you you're going to start. And then you you're going to start and then when you're there they tell you whether you're doing it right or wrong and then you try stuff but they tell you whether it's you know good or bad and then you you're waiting for a critic to come and tell you whether you're good or bad no part there's a lot of parts of that that you're waiting to be told

whether you're good enough okay right and eventually that can have a knock-on effect on you and you start to panic about things that haven't even happened yet, including will I ever work again? Which no actor ever loses. Any actor will tell you that no matter how successful they are. How do I know this is my last job?

You said to me that part of the reason you wanted to talk about this is because it isn't discussed in drama school and it's very important for young actors to know yeah so what piece of advice would you give someone who is experiencing what you experience age 23 i think whether you go to drama school or you're somebody that doesn't go to train and you begin in this career there needs to be a much bigger conversation about how much of this job revolves around your mental health it would be just kind of stupid to not address the fact that quite honestly what

we're doing is dressing up and pretending to be other people and pretending that it's real that just in a sentence sounds nuts that's a whole nother level of weird and then on top of that you're running this double life of until I can act full time I've also got to do all the other things everyone else does just to survive alongside this other thing and you can spend a lot of time running around trying to keep your head above water but not spending a lot of time kind of checking if your flippers are working and I think it's just having a check-in with yourself how are you feeling and if you do feel like you've left school and it's not happening for you there's many more ways I now know that I could have got out and looked after myself some of those would have included just going outside of the house more instead of drinking wine indoors or being

with my friends like laughing with my friends in a park going to a gallery and like looking at art going anywhere free that's artistic and just feeding yourself reading books by the river like taking advantage of where you are and being around people with good energy oh my god that's so important I feel like that's something I've only just learned oh me too in the last year me too I had no idea there were toxic people in existence that wanted to be your friend until I started kind of realizing they were there and you have to break up with them yes like you would with a boyfriend how do you do a friendship breakup oh my god I think it's a nightmare I'm extremely conflict avoidant and so therefore you end up just sort of letting things slide but that's really I'm really confrontational

coming from a big family but I get massive guilt I feel like I should be servicing the friendship perfectly and so I feel terrible about breaking up a friendship because you think I have all this history with this person I'm just throwing it all away but actually if you met that person today in a pub and you didn't like them they wouldn't be your friend and it's who they are now not who they were in the past I think that once you clearly state with a toxic friend what the issues are between you they either rise to that and say do you know what i have been not helpful to you in this way and i'm going to look at that as that's to do with me that's not to do with you and i'm going to change it or they get confrontational and if

they get confrontational then i think you just let it go like you just gradually stop texting them it was probably you texting them more in the first place you're probably that friend most of us are usually that friend you know the friend who gives the better birthday presents who has thought about things in advance who doesn't show up late that's us and people take advantage of us and you need you need people around you who are a bonus who are like the cherries on your cake of life like not people who are sticking their fingers in your cream yes yes i love that so i'm bet i'm much better at that now i was having a conversation recently with my friend dolly alderton and she was talking about brené brown who i love her i noticed that she liked one of your instagram posts i was like oh my god okay we're not gonna say we're friends

oh please say but we've definitely messaged a little bit i met her so when i was doing this show on broadway i'm sorry to go on a tangent no please i was doing this show on broadway with hugh jackman and it was called the river and it's by jez butterworth and it was all about memory and what you remember is real memory and not memory and vulnerability and she came to talk to us and there were only three of us in the cast and she came in to talk to us and i got the biggest crush on us in the cast. And she came in to talk to us. And I got the biggest crush on her. And she just was sat there talking about vulnerability and people. And I learned so much.

And she's a big fan of The Good Fight. So, yeah, we have this, like, slightly online, slight friendship. I'm sure she wouldn't mind if I said that. No, she probably has a crush on you. She's probably doing a podcast somewhere else in the alternate universe being like, I'm almost friends with Kush Jumba. But she says amazing things doesn't she she does toxic friendship yeah and she said this thing recently in a podcast about how she's done lots of research into hyper compassionate people so monks people like that who've spent their entire lives devoted to being compassionate to others and she was really interested in the one thing that connected all these disparate groups of people and she found out that it was boundaries having a hyper

aware sense of boundaries and what you knew you would do and the extents that you would go to and what you wouldn't and the people that you would do it for yeah and it made me feel so much better because I realized then that I can only be a really good friend and a great partner to the people that I really value and cherish if I put those boundaries in place for the others who are toxic and draining. Yeah. And your life, honestly, when you do it, you feel like a massive weight, but you think you're going to feel guilty. But when you do it, it feels so good. I'm 34 now. I have an amazing husband. He's like my best friend i have a one year old i don't have time for somebody who like drags me down you know i want to eat chocolate

croissants and go have fun like i don't have time for people who only want to tell me the bad things and she talked because brené talks about that too she talks about people who it's a pretend compassion but really they're wanting to just drag you into their negativity and you've got to be careful of those ones too because they take what you have yeah and they kind of make it into something for them which is really unhealthy but one of my favorite things that she says sorry to make this a brunette podcast one of my favorite things that she says is about our obsession with being busy to the point of breaking down being programmed to think that's something to be proud of how are you i'm just so exhausted i've got so much on i'm just kind of i'm literally

just holding it together and and being like brackets very successful you know what i mean and that and breaking that and going that's not a good thing sometimes that's being so busy that you can't think straight it's the feeling of being empty is giving me good feelings yes like okay I've been empty for a bit longer and empty for a bit longer and I thought that was really interesting because I feel like I do that a lot yeah and actually the most quote-unquote successful thing you can do is to put those boundaries in place in your own diary and to choose to spend the time doing what you want to do and what you get most from and what's most fulfilling for other people yeah and and not worrying so much about what's going on over there like you spend a lot of time going okay this is

all fine but like when's the bit when i become more successful by doing what she's doing and what she's doing and when i was doing josephine i'm gonna name drop now but merrill streep came to see it stop mezza and i you know again like renee not i wouldn't i don't want to say i'm her friend but she definitely knows who i am and we've had a few conversations and she's so amazing and she told me this amazing thing which was about the fact that each of us is the center of our own universe. And that by going, well, what's next? What's next?

Maybe I should be over there. Like, what's next for me? What's next is what's happening right now where you are in this moment. And everyone else is at the centre of this. There's no point looking. It's like your universe will just keep moving the way it moves. You're not going to be moving from where you are and jumping into somebody else's i love that it ties in with something else that i've been thinking that there is no such thing as a future you there is your projected notion of what

you might be but when you get there in fact every single time i've got there i've got sort of five years hence i've never been the person i thought i was going to be right which makes you think about the fact that there's a Hollywood actor somewhere who's an Oscar winner sitting in a trailer thinking what we're thinking. There's no like, oh, I'm there now. You don't suddenly wake up and go, oh, because people are always now bumping in. People bumping into me I haven't seen in years going, well, you did all right, didn't you?

Like I'm dying. Like, well, you did all right. Well, you made it. Didn't you? Right place, right time. People like I'm dying like well you did all right well you made it didn't you right place right time people like to say that people who aren't actors love to say right place right time and you've got to have a bit of luck haven't you that's so annoying because it so diminishes the hard work and talent you've put in to get there if you're not an actor don't say that to an actor it's so annoying and you realize that there's no I've made it now and so instead of keeping that feeling going in yourself why not kind of be where you are and enjoy that

that it's not the five years before or the five years before that gosh I just want to I really want to talk to a whole series I know my podcast co-hosts forever more we do have one more failure which is also it sort of ties into so much of what we've been talking about. Because your final failure is your failure to quote unquote have it all. So that idea that you had got somewhere, you'd got, you ticked all the boxes. Tell us what that's about because it's connected to the birth of your son. Okay, so there I was in New York doing my thing on the good fight. There with my husband, husband Sean who's literally

after Henry the dog he won't mind me saying second best thing that ever happened to me because he's my best buddy like I'd never been with a person who made me feel as great in myself as Sean does he's also super hot but that aside I've seen the photos you've known him for years he's like a childhood friend because I thought when I read Sean tech've known him for years he's like a childhood friend because i thought when i read sean tech developer i was like oh he's clearly like some like silicon valley and he'll probably get mad at me because i always get the name of his job wrong like if i say tech something or tech something else he gets upset so and he'll listen to this so he comes up with brilliant ideas for tech products and he puts teams of people together to make it he doesn't make the things but babe I can't remember what the name of the thing is that you

do all I know is he can open pdfs anytime I want and he can always show me like if something's broken where to find it on my phone can you do an excel spreadsheet he can do all that stuff oh my gosh he just he knows things that I just can't even he's amazing but yeah he where he's my best friend I feel boring when I when he's not there I hope he feels boring when I'm not around so we got pregnant and I was whatever 33 and I'm an actor so you're at that bit where you're like you can't I didn't even know if I wanted kids when I first got together with Sean and we got married because I'd spent a lot of my life bringing up kids and I love kids but I didn't have I wanted one and then I was like oh he's just too cool not to replicate

so we ought to try but just to make you aware even if you've been on the pill for 15 years when you come off of it be so careful because we tried once between shows in the dressing room at the National and we got pregnant straight away wait the national theatre yeah i know so the baby you were doing common yes how did i do that i know there you go so it could happen that quick and of course my son then didn't stand a chance because like his whole life was going to be showbiz he just had no choice bless him so he got pregnant and it was all very quick and they wrote it into the show which is amazing you had a birth scene where you gave birth on the show and it was a week before I gave birth in the show and it was a week before having him and all of that experience like being able to be pregnant as the character and work with the writers and the

producers and everyone was super helpful but I was away in New York while being pregnant and I'm somebody as you know who just is like I'm't worry about it, I don't need a chair, that was me, I don't need a chair or a snack, let's just go for the 15th take, like, because you've been on your feet for 14 hours, I'm fine, put the heels back on, like, because without realising it, I'd also been programmed with this whole kind of, don't moan, you're lucky you're pregnant, you know, it's, some people can't have children, you're lucky you've got this healthy baby, you've got a good job, you have have a happy relationship and so you better just make this work and of course in the meantime you're completely exhausted and panicking about whether this thing will come out

of your vagina or not it's like there's no two ways about it it's not going to come out your mouth anybody that says they're not worried about that and worried about whether they can parent is just a liar but of course we're living in a time with this complete obsession with many people women telling other women how bad they are being mothers just by virtue of showing them a photo on instagram look at how perfectly i'm being pregnant look at how perfectly i'm existing so subconsciously even if i don't really even look at that stuff but subconsciously I was worrying already about whether I was doing it all right even though I tried to do it all right and a really straightforward birth super lucky I had him in New York so you get a plethora

of drugs offered to you darling it's so great and I did hypnobirthing and I tried to learn what I could and meditate and do all that stuff but I went back to work when he was four months old and I had him a week after we wrapped and I'd been in the gym till a week before I had him because I was trying to get ahead of myself knowing what what gap I had before I went back to work, I was exhausted. And I was trying to keep a million balls in the air. And then on top of that, when you're a person who makes things, and you have a baby, you now realise it's just tiredness. But you sit down and try to do something in those first few weeks, and your brain is just like, sorry, this door doesn't exist in your creative

mind anymore and you have this horrible panic that maybe it's gone like did it come out with the placenta like my talent is gone and I'm not the same person and it takes a while for all of that to kind of come back together and you realize you're a newer, stronger, more fearless person with better ideas. But when you're in it, it's kind of scary. I'm not good at having it all. I am not an Instagram mum. Like, I'm not good. If he does something cute, you know, I'll post it.

If he does something embarrassing or he shits on me, I'll talk about it. But, like, I'm a firm believer that that's a lie. It is just a lie that we should stop perpetuating because it's unhelpful sometimes you have to give them frozen chips so that you can spend time with them and sometimes you'll cook dinner from scratch because you can't spend time with them and doing one or the other is fine but as Christine said to me when I was pregnant and I said you know I've got any advice when I come back to work and I've had Max and she said she has two daughters and she had them when she was doing the TV show Sybil. And she was flying to L.A. from Connecticut, working there all week and then flying back and being mum all weekend and then flying back on the Monday to make a living. And she said I had horrible guilt and I had

people helping me bring them up, but I wanted them in Connecticut, not in LA, so they would have a proper existence and a good upbringing. And she said to me, when you leave the house in the morning, it would be better for you to say to yourself, I do not have children. Now I'm Kush, the actress. Come to work and do your best work. And when you get home, shut the door and you go, now I'm mum. I'm going to be the best mum. I'm not checking my phone. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that. For these two hours, I'm doing this. And when you break it up like that and go, everything costs something. As long as you make peace with what it costs. I took a job this summer. I did a movie in Norway and Sweden, which I only took because I

said I have to bring the baby and Sean with me. And if they'd said no, I wouldn't have taken the job because that's too long to be away from Max. I would have been upset to lose the movie, but that's what it's going to cost me if I want to spend time with Max. And I've been here filming in Scotland and I brought them with me up there and they're having a great time up there in Scotland and there'll be other things as he gets older that I'll have to let go if I don't want to be like I feel really you can't take the job and then go I feel really guilty I'm not seeing him well don't take the job or you say I'm gonna take this job and mummy's gonna explain to you this is mummy's job this is what she really loves to do and when she does this it makes her really happy so that when she's here with you she's a really happy mummy she's a really good mummy and that's why i'm taking this job i'm still he's one so i'm

very much at the beginning of this process and i'm sure people you know out there would be able to give me better advice but i found in this first year that the quicker I was able to let that lie go the happier I was as a person was there a bit of you before you had Max where you were anxious because of your previous experiences that we chatted about of being the second eldest child and having to parent your siblings like were you worried that about the kind of parent you would be given that you had a specific yeah yeah I just thought I'd mess him up I really like being around children I'm full of play like I I want to do all the imaginative stuff and I want to build the castles and I want to be the dragon and I do the funny voices and I love being around kids I was like

but my parents mess me up so how do I know how to parent like what do I know about the right kind of emotional structure or what a child should hear and what a child shouldn't but I guess you just realize don't you you're just like I wouldn't say that in front of my child I wouldn't have that kind of argument in front of my child and you just make different decisions whole bunch of other new mistakes as well i mean you know poor kid but you just do things differently because you you know what you would have liked and do you think you'll have more children don't think so this is the bit in the conversation where not you but this is the bit where if i was at lunch people go you'll change your mind oh he's only one you'll change your mind i won't change my mind because again i brought up so many

children and it's two things actually one it's that i admire anybody who could have more than one child do i feel sorry for him not having siblings no because at the moment he has something like seven cousins all born in the same two years of him. So he's got lots of people to fight with. He also can go to school and make friends. If his worst gripe in life is going to be that I didn't give him a sibling, then he'll be one spoiled child who needs to go and talk to somebody because I don't think that's fair. But two, I think the bigger question is,

there's a lot of people out there start having their second child while their first child is still quite young in a kind of effort to, I guess, get it out of the way. As some people would describe it, get it out of the way, as if it just slides out. It really doesn't. But I think there's a question here about if you love your vocation like I do, I love my job so much and I have so many ideas and plans and so many things I want to do. Is it fair to assume that you can just shrink yourself into boxes and be what a child and a person needs completely if the things that you're doing for yourself and your dreams and your aspirations is going to get bigger and bigger? Or is it more honest to say, what can I cope with? I know know in myself now having got to know myself better what I can cope with is giving all that I can to max and doing all that I can in my job but I can't do a whole

nother max and that if I do do a whole nother max what it will cost me is some of what I want to do and at least right now I have no interest in shrinking what I want to do which may make me sound selfish but I think it's just honest and I think not enough people are honest about what they can do I totally agree with you and thank you for being honest and you know what that sounds like not selfish boundary oh there you go it all comes back to Brené Brown because Jumbo I have loved talking to you i interviewed you seven years ago can we do this again in another seven years let's do it let's see how fat we both are by then we just eat more cake have more tea be really lovely kush came here with cakes from gail's i don't so delicious you can come back anytime kush jumbo thank you so so much thank you If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day,

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