Woman's Hour - Amanda Knox, HPV vaccine success, HRT prescriptions, Stockard Channing and 'Night, Mother

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

Fourteen years ago this week, 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher was sexually assaulted and killed in a brutal attack in her apartment in the Italian city of Perugia. Her death was a shocking and unimaginable loss to her family. But sadly her name did not become the most memorable in the murder investigation that followed. As the world's media descended, a narrative quickly emerged around Amanda Knox - Meredith’s American flatmate - and her then boyfriend Rafaele Sollecito. Dubbed 'Foxy Knoxy', the story became about a sexually voracious femme fatale and her accomplice, who it was said killed Meredith in a drug-fuelled sex game gone wrong. After being found guilty and serving four years in prison, Amanda was fully exonerated by the Italian Supreme Court on appeal in 2015. Amanda now lives back in Seattle, is married, and has just had a baby - having built a career as a writer, podcaster, and campaigner against wrongful conviction. In an exclusive interview with Woman’s Hour and Newsnight, Amanda Knox talks to Emma about trying to restore her reputation, losing control of her identity, and speaking out about the film Stillwater starring Matt Damon, which she says drew on and profited from her story without her consent.Since 2008, 12 and 13-year-old girls have been offered a vaccine against human papilloma-virus - or HPV - with a view to helping prevent cervical cancer. Now a new study published today in The Lancet has found that it doesn't just help, but has the potential to almost wipe the disease out completely. Cervical cancer rates in women who had HPV jabs as teenagers were found to be lowered by as much as 90% compared to those who hadn't. And as the vaccine is now also given to boys, it dramatically decreases the amount of virus circulating in the population to infect women who can't take the vaccine. Professor Dame Lesley Regan, Head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at St Mary's Imperial College and past president of the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists discusses what it means for women's health.The cost of repeat prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy in England is to be significantly reduced. The Labour MP for Swansea East, Carolyn Harris, had put forward a Bill to make HRT free, as it is currently in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where there are no charges for prescriptions. Although the Government didn’t support the change in full, it announced at the end of last week that women would only have to pay for one prescription charge a year – potentially saving over £200 annually. The Government also announced that they will be setting up a menopause taskforce, which will be co-chaired by Carolyn Harris, who says it is time to revolutionise menopause support.Though best known for playing Rizzo in the film Grease, First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the television series The West Wing, and Julianna Margulies’ mother Veronica in The Good Wife, multi-Emmy award-winning actor Stockard Channing is a Broadway veteran nominated for multiple Tonys. Currently on stage at the Hampstead Theatre in London in ‘Night Mother’ - a tense two-hander play that takes place over a single evening – she joins Emma to discuss her latest performance and first as a London resident.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the programme. Another exclusive interview today with Amanda Knox, a woman whose name became synonymous with a terrible tragedy and who's still trying to reclaim her identity and the truth. 14 years ago this week, British student Meredith Kircher was sexually assaulted and killed in a brutal attack in her apartment in Italy. She was just 21. Her death was shocking and horrendous for her family.

They've sent us a statement today, which I will read later. But sadly, Meredith Kircher did not become the most memorable name in the investigation that followed. But sadly, Meredith Kircher did not become the most memorable name in the investigation that followed. Amanda Knox was Meredith's American flatmate, and prosecutors under global pressure to solve the crime focused on Amanda and her boyfriend of a few days, Raffaele Solicito. As the world's media descended, a narrative quickly emerged of a sexually voracious femme fatale and her accomplice, who they said had killed Meredith in a drug-fuelled sex game gone wrong. Amanda was dubbed Foxy Noxy by the media.

Aged 20, thousands of miles from home, with only a basic grasp of Italian, Amanda was interrogated by police for hours and hours without a lawyer or interpreter, during which she implicated a man who was later released and signed a statement that placed her at the crime scene, which she then recanted. Despite the separate arrest, conviction and imprisonment of Rudy Gedde for the crime, his DNA was found all over the crime scene,

Amanda was also found guilty and sentenced to 26 years. She was freed on appeal in 2011 after four years in prison and after another trial reinstated her conviction, the Italian Supreme Court presided over an appeal which fully exonerated her in 2015 and pointed to glaring errors in the original investigation. Amanda now lives back in Seattle, is married and has just had a baby. She's built a career as a writer, podcaster and campaigner. However, a decade on from her prison release, she says she's not been able to restore her reputation or take back control of her story. She has a particularly complicated relationship with the British media and hasn't conducted a UK

interview for years, but has been compelled to speak out because of a new film, Stillwater, starring Matt Damon, which she says drew on and profited from her experience without her consent. As ever, if there's anything you wish to comment on or share while listening to our interview, you can text me here on Woman's Hour 84844, text charge your standard message rate, or on social media, get in touch with me at BBC Woman's Hour or email us through our website. In this exclusive Woman's Hour interview jointly with Newsnight, I spoke to Amanda Knox this week and began by asking about her problem with that Hollywood film. I wanted to take it as an opportunity to point out a few problems

with the way that my case and many other, like, based on a true story cases are treated in not just the courtroom and not just the media, but also in Hollywood. How the most traumatic experiences of people's lives are treated like grist for a content mill and are treated as entertainment products. So there are a number of problems that I had with Stillwater. First of all, they used my name and my face to publicize a film that they then said was fictionalized, so it shouldn't reflect upon who I

am or what the outcome of the case was. However, the Amanda Knox character in their film was treated as indirectly involved in the murder of her roommate who she had in a sexual affair with. And my pushback was Hollywood has for a long time hidden behind the safety of this like veil of fictionalization while at the same time being able to exploit real people's stories and point to those real people's stories in order to sell their product. But furthermore, there was this issue of how my whole case has always been treated as my case, right? Like it's always been a little bit about me and Amanda Knox when I absolutely had nothing to do with this crime. And I wanted to point out how the identities, like how we talk about real life tragedies and how we name them really matters. There was a real human being who was murdered, Meredith Kircher, and there was a real human being who murdered her,

Rudy Gaudet. And very often we don't hear those names associated with this tragedy, we hear about me. And, you know, the way that I would present this case to the world is one in which put me as a very peripheral character, because I was, I didn't have a lot of agency. I happened to be thrown into the middle of this story and treated like this central figure when I really wasn't. At the heart of that is about your name and if your name is your own and who you are. And I want to get to that. But did anyone ever approach you from Tom McCarthy's office,

the director, Matt Damon, who stars in it? Anyone ever been in touch? Have they been in touch since you said what you've said and written what you've written about this? No. And what I found interesting about that was, I did a little digging. I haven't seen the film, but I did a little digging. And they went through the trouble of going to Oklahoma and meeting with a number of men from that community in order to get a grasp of like who their personality is and what, you you know what is that tribe of people and how do they politically present themselves in america and in the broader world so they went through a lot of trouble to humanize the matt damon character but they didn't bother to even reach out to me to talk about the amanda knox character in their film and i think that was because a lot of people think of me not really as a human being, but as an idea of a person, as like and your image and you were talked about, what's your reaction to that, even if it's not the first time? Well, my reaction is to try not to live reacting, right?

Like I have my own life. I try to do a lot of good work in the world. And, you know, I have a podcast called Labyrinths. I have lot of good work in the world. And I have a podcast called Labyrinths. I have all of this work that I do. I do journalism. And I'm constantly trying to not feel like I am perpetually engaging with the content mill that's trying to treat me like a product that can just be consumed over and over and over again in various ways. That said, my first thought was, oh, no, yet again, another thing. Who knows how they're going to treat this story? Are they going to be thinking about it in a really nuanced way? Or are they going to be treating it once again in this black and white,

did she or didn't she, sexy, salacious narrative? And then lo and behold, I come to discover that they've basically taken the most salacious version of the case against me and turned it into yet another consumable product. So I was greatly disappointed. At the same time, my world does not revolve around reacting to how this is happening to me. It's more me thinking about how easy it is that human beings' identities are stolen for the entertainment industry and what it takes, what truly it takes for someone to define their own life despite the broader narrative that's around them. I have found it to be incredibly, incredibly difficult to be a definitive voice in my own life because I sort of started at a disadvantage. I was four years in prison with tons of people writing and authoring. Like the fact that I was convicted for a crime that I didn't commit truly, truly, truly imprinted upon me

the fact that sometimes the truth doesn't matter. Sometimes the story is the thing that matters and what people really grasp onto. And the consequences, real human lives are lost in the process. If you could say something to Matt Damon, what would you say? We should talk.

I'm surprisingly available, I suppose I could say. Like, I'm not, I don't make myself a difficult person to reach out to, in part because I know that a lot of people have opinions about this case, and I want them to know that I am someone who is approachable. And also, I'm not someone who's going to be very judgy. And so I wanted to say, hey, we can have a conversation. I'm not, I'm not who is approachable. And also, I'm not someone who's going to be very judgy. And so I wanted to say, hey, we can have a conversation. I'm not going to judge you. Like, let's just recognize something real is happening here that hasn't been addressed before.

But this is your life, and it's been 14 years since Meredith was murdered, 10 years since you were cleared of the crime. You're now 34, married, recently had a baby. But in some ways, you're still stuck back in 2007. And it's like you're not allowed to move on, not just by Hollywood, but by associations that people hold with your name. Yes, that is absolutely true.

And it's a very big challenge for me. It's the biggest challenge of my life, because it's still this sort of perpetually trying to prove my innocence, and also trying to prove that I'm not the human being that people have constantly taken me for. And I've struggled with this. I've struggled with whether or not this is a winning battle, like if there is a way to win in the sense of like I finally achieve the place where people are my own life, myself, that's going to define me as much as the accusation of something that I didn't do. Do you try when you meet people, because people will recognize you, you haven't changed the way you look, you could have done all sorts of things that you've chosen not to do.

And I think that's interesting in itself. And some would say admirable that you're trying to be yourself in the middle of what has been a seizure of your identity in many ways. But do people come up to you and say, hey, you're Amanda Knox, and then ask you about the case? Yeah. And I appreciate you framing it that way because I think a lot of people are confused about why I – like I haven't changed my name or I haven't gone out of my way to like do facial reconstruction or something like that in order to escape this narrative that was thrust upon me. But it's kind of the same reason why I never pled guilty to a crime that I didn't commit. I didn't do it. And it's not fair. And so I'm sort of, I'm a little bit stubborn in the sense of like, there's nothing wrong with my name, and there's nothing wrong with my face. And what happened is not my fault. So I'm not going to be the one to willingly bear the costs of this misinformation campaign. I do get approached quite often, and I do get recognized quite often. And it is a challenge because on the one hand, a lot of people followed my case, not just because it was salacious and crazy, but because they cared

about it, because they saw that there was a real human person who died, and a real human person who was potentially facing an incredible injustice. And so they got, you know, emotionally impacted and intellectually engaged with a very, very difficult, complicated situation. And I don't want to, you know, not recognize that no one ever had to care about me. No one. Like, I could have just been disappeared into the criminal justice system, into the Italy's prison system, and no one needed to care. So the fact that anyone cared about what happened to me and whether or not there was an incredible injustice, I do want to acknowledge. At the same time, it's a little bit difficult when I'm just trying to like go grocery shopping. But I think that, I mean, that's a very charitable way of characterizing some of the people who

perhaps recognize you or want to talk to you. There will be people who you will be aware, will still think, you know, that you did it, that there's something to question. And I'm sorry to put that to you when you have been cleared, but I wonder why you still think people hold those views? Because I know you've thought a lot about how you were portrayed. Yeah, the why question has always plagued me. And I feel like you have to go deep into human psychology to understand it. So you know, there are there are certain biases that we have naturally that it's not to say that we're actively having prejudice against someone like me. But what happens is there's something called the anchoring bias, where the

first thing you ever hear about a person is the thing that sort of solidifies in your mind and defines that person to you. And you have trouble relinquishing that idea when it's the first idea. That's why first impressions are so important. There's also things like confirmation bias. You see what you want to see. I've often very much felt like I've not been a real human being to people. I've been an idea of a person that girl, an idea of a young woman accused of a violent sex crime, these are all things that we have like a deep sort of intuition about that we then, it actually will overwhelm even evidence to the contrary. So a false idea of me that is demonstrably false still remains in the public imagination because it speaks to these deep down things that we have primal instinctual intuitions about sex, violence, women, agency. So I don't engage with it because I feel like it's a losing battle. I do feel like I potentially have to be more open about myself and my life than I might normally otherwise be because I'm trying to say, here's who I really am. If you want to judge me, which you're totally entitled to do, just judge me on the actual

thing that's happening. Me right now, the facts of the case, who I am and what I do today. That's what's real. Let's engage on at least the level of reality. And if we can't engage on that front, then it's just not worth it. It's too much emotional pain for me, honestly. Let's come to the fact that you're talking to me, you're talking to us in the UK. This is your first interview in the UK for a number of years. And I know that your relationship, if I could call it that, with the UK media,

well, you tell me about it, because where a lot of people have got their information from are our newspapers and our tabloids at that. And, you know, phrases like, names like Foxy Noxy are forever more associated with you because of some of those early reports and leaks and bits of information, if I could call it that, that was posited as such. I think that my relationship, obviously, with the Italian media and the British media is

frustrating. If anyone should be held accountable for how this story spiraled out of control and became not about Meredith, but about a made up sex pot villain, it is the tabloids. It is these journalists who should have been holding the prosecution and the detectives in Italy accountable to the truth. And that didn't happen, and it still is an ongoing problem, which is why I still talk about this. Like, I could have stopped talking about this long ago if the people who were responsible for how this entire case spiraled out of control were accountable to the truth and were held accountable for how so much misinformation was spread. And that still hasn't happened. And the tabloids are still a very successful ongoing industry. And it's sort of become my mission to point out that like we as consumers are in part responsible for how we were misled. And we're the ones with the power to stop this consumption cycle.

We don't have to engage with misinformation. We can, in fact, want to come to, is when this, what was posited as information was put in the frame, as was your then boyfriend. And that in itself, regardless of how, I suppose, tabloids function and media operations, was a story so many people wanted anything they could get their hands on before perhaps it even moved on. I mean, I suppose in that way, I expect you accept that. Well, do I? Because I think that that even just like framing it that way, it's a story that anyone wants anything from. Well, if we want anything, then we want anything. And anything can also include misinformation. And I feel like in these cases, if it's truly in the public interest, it should be and especially if we consider like consider, like, who ultimately is it in the interest of? Like, above all else, who is it in the interest of? It is in the interest of Meredith's family. And if we just want a story so bad because it has all these elements that make it just, that we just can't help ourselves to treat it like, you know, guilty candy, this is at the expense of Meredith's family and my family and Raffaele's family and

the people who are most directly traumatized by the experience. So on the one hand, yeah, it's a great story. But what is the cost? That's the point that I want to make. What I meant by that, though, was not anything at any expense expense I meant more that the actual story at its barest really was of huge interest because of various elements to it and and you would you touched on this which is why it then of course spiraled in so many ways you talked about being a woman you talked about uh the sex side of it uh one of the things that has uh bothered you the most it seems about those trials and the way it was covered was the misdirected focus on your sexuality. And you say you keep talking about this because you don't think it has changed. Tell me more about that.

Yeah. So if we think about the way that this case ultimately was portrayed, it was never about the men. There were two men who were accused in this case, and they became irrelevant very quickly, despite the fact that one of them had an insane amount of evidence against him of having sexually assaulted and violently murdered Meredith. He disappeared. was it became a morality tale about female sexuality. Meredith was pitched as this virginous Madonna character, and I was portrayed as this sexually obsessed, like lustful, uninhibited whore. And ultimately, the reason why people so latched onto this case was because they were judging female sexuality through us. They were making sort of Meredith into this perfectly invisible ideal victim to never name again. And it's fascinating to me the number of times that Foxy Noxy was in the headline,

but Meredith's name was not. I think someone counted this like out of like hundreds of articles, maybe 30 to 50 actually named Meredith, but then there are hundreds that named Foxy Noxy. And just the idea of a sexually deviant, violent woman was enough to get people so riled up that they didn't care about the truth anymore. And that is an insane problem. And that is something that I don't think has really, really been addressed. How like justice was thwarted because of our obsession with female deviancy and female sexuality. Meredith and I were not these two figures on like opposite sides of a Madonna whore diagram. We were actually quite similar. We both had fun times and we both like to go and hang out with friends and we both went dancing and we both

liked to, you know, cook or go go shopping like we weren't different. And yet when we were presented to the court, we were presented in starkly contrasting terms that were simply like the imagined ideas of two idealized versions of women that we could uphold and lionize and then vilify. If a case like this happened today, 14 years on, do you think it would be any different? Has it got any better? Has it got worse? I'm thinking of the fact that in the intervening years, the Me Too movement has happened and voices have been heard perhaps in slightly different ways. What do you think? It's interesting. I would hope, hope that people would be more skeptical about that portrayal of events today. That said, I do think that social media was already quite active at the time of my case and had a huge impact in how the case played out. And if anything, it has become even more about tribalism, which is also a big problem that happened in my case, where like people vehemently

stood for one side or the other. So like there is this interesting like confirmation bias happening, these echo chambers that are happening where people are unable to reason from an objective standpoint. There's a lot of motivated reasoning. And I feel like that has only become exacerbated today. You know, you've said throughout this conversation that your name has been disproportionately focused on. But for instance, that Netflix documentary that I talked about that you took part in was called Amanda Knox, for example. OK, I'm not saying I mean, you can tell me if you had any say over the name of it, not, for instance, the murder of Meredith Kircher. And, you know, also in that documentary, there is repeated

showings of police video footage of the murder scene, you know, Meredith's legs are clearly visible coming out of a sheet. And the Kircher family have said via the press, they won't ever watch it, they felt it crossed a line. What are your thoughts on that? Because of course, you took part in that. Yeah. So I can say that I didn't have any editorial control. I was not a producer on that film. I was just interviewed like everyone else. And I so I didn't have a say over whether or not it was named Amanda Knox. I think the thing that the filmmakers very intelligently did in that film is they pointed out how the case came to be about me in this very strange way. Like that was kind of the point of the film was like, they sort of

documented from the get go, how the prosecution and the media really fixated upon me, even though there wasn't actually any evidence there. That said, you know, it is a very important decision whether or not you're going to show brutal crime scene footage. And this was brutal crime scene footage that was made available long before their documentary, but they're perpetuating it. And that's a very important question. It's not one that I had a hand in. No one asked me about that. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's important. And it's, it's not one that i had a hand in um no one asked me about that but yeah i mean that's that's important and it's it's devastating i think they were trying like i think their their intention was probably to show like hey let's not there's no bones about this this was a bad thing

that happened but at the same time it's like do you need to do you need to see meredith's you know body like that's that's hard. I suppose the question also that came up at the time from Meredith's sister, Stephanie, who made a statement on behalf of the family, she wondered why you were still choosing to relive this nightmare. Yes, fair enough, you've kept your name.

You haven't had plastic surgery to change the way you look or anything else. But why still go there and associate yourself? Well, I think in part because I don't think the truth has honestly ever been acknowledged. For me, there's a sense of there not being closure in this case. I also know that for Meredith's family, or at least I've heard as much,

I don't want to assume anything. But I know that there is this sense of non- non closure. And what I've learned from this experience, I've seen the same kind of mistakes are perpetuated over and over and over again in other cases. So I do a lot of advocacy advocacy work for wrongfully convicted people, I try to raise awareness of these issues of cognitive bias in the courtroom. And I've found that like many, many people reach out to me to say, oh my gosh, I have been through the same thing, or I have my someone I love has been through the same problem. And no one's talking about the human consequences of the way that we portray trauma and traumatic events. So if anything, I feel like I'm trying to address what I feel is a void in the sort of cultural awareness about especially like true crime. I, you know, it's also a sort of way to honor the fact that like something very real happened to Meredith. Meredith was sexually assaulted and murdered. And in no way should that ever have happened. And there should be clarity about this. We should be focusing on the evidence, we should be focusing on the truth. And we should have a sense of as much closure as one can have when the murderer hasn't actually admitted to everything that happened. So when someone has been victimized,

what they want most of all is acknowledgement, acknowledgement of how they've been hurt by the person who's hurt them. And so far, Rudy Gaudet has never actually offered that kind of closure to Meredith's family and also to me, and also toaele, who has been entirely overlooked in this case. It's just I also wondered if there was a pragmatic thing from your point of view. You're obviously doing lots of advocacy work as well as the podcast and writing, but it must be quite hard to get a job if you're Amanda Knox. I mean, have you had to make a living essentially out of part of what's happened to you? Well, what I've tried to do is make the best of what I feel is a very difficult and unfortunate circumstance where I feel like there are a lot of bad choices that are in front of me and I'm

trying to like invent good choices out of whole cloth. Honestly, like, I came home and I wanted nothing more than to just go back to being me before any of this had ever happened. Because honestly, I felt like I had just been sort of thrown into a thing that I had nothing to do with that had nothing to do with me. And then I just wanted to go back to being me. And what I painfully discovered was that the world would not let me go back to being anonymous Amanda Knox, who was innocent and never had anything to do with this. The world very much informed me through pursuing me relentlessly to this day and invading my private life, that I must be in conversation with the worst experience of my life. And I now take that experience, not just

the worst experience of my life, but the fact that I am constantly, constantly made to be in conversation with it, a point of proactive advocacy and work. Like this is what I know best of all. This is the thing that the best thing that I can offer the world. But you must have days where you just think, I just don't want to talk about this anymore. You know, does this really have to be my life? I very much do. Very often I have like when I feel just like totally overwhelmed and exhausted. I imagine that there could be a life for me where I just get to disappear and make dresses or, you know, work on cuckoo clocks.

Like, that would be a really cool life to live. I was going to say, have you been thinking a bit more about that since having your daughter? You only recently became a mom. And I wondered if thinking about the future where you don't have to deal with this or talk about that has come more into focus or has it made you go the other way do you think um it's very much made me think about how worried i am that my own daughter is like if i feel like i'm totally sort of overwhelmed by the spotlight of accusation and that my life has sort of been taken over by this horrible experience that happened to me that didn't really come from me, I especially worry that my daughter is going to

feel like she is living in that shadow as well, which is why I've made sort of particular choices to speak about my experience as a mother, but to try to protect her and her agency and her identity as much as possible. I'm not sharing photos of her on social media. I just wanted to ask if I could that I am very aware this week is the anniversary 14 years since Meredith Kircher was murdered. How do you think of her? I don't know if you do anything to mark it or what do you think about when you think of Meredith? Oh my. I mean, this year, it's funny, all of the years leading up to this, whenever I've thought about this day and this like remembrance, I've always put myself in Meredith's shoes. And I like, I'm sort of haunted by this survivor's guilt kind of thing, where like,

if maybe if I had been there, we would have been able to fight him off together, or maybe we both be dead. I don't know. Those those sort of thoughts go through my mind. But this year, this year, I've been thinking about Meredith's mom. It's the it's the first year that I've put myself in Meredith's mom's shoes and how it is not fair. It's not fair and nothing will ever bring Meredith back and nothing will ever take away the painful last moments of her life. And I know from my own mom how much she wished that she could take away the pain for me, that she could take my place. And I know deep down that Meredith's mom would also have wanted to save Meredith from that fate and would have sacrificed herself willingly in her stead. And I am thinking about that for my own daughter, how I want the world to be a better place for her than it was for me

and that it was for Meredith. Amanda Knox. The Kircher family gave us this message. There's not a day that goes by where Meredith isn't in our thoughts and after all these years, her loss and the manner of it still cuts deeply and always will. It's something we will never truly get over. We should say that we approached Focus Features and Netflix for comment on their films that we discussed in that interview but we

haven't heard back from those companies and you can watch that interview with myself and Amanda Knox on Newsnight this evening at 10.30 on BBC Two. Now, since 2008, 12 and 13-year-old girls have been offered a vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, with a view to helping prevent cervical cancer. Well, now, a new study published today in The Lancet has found that it doesn't just help, but has the potential to almost wipe the disease out completely. Cervical cancer rates in women who had HPV jabs as teenagers were found to be lowered by as much as 90% compared to those who hadn't. And as the vaccine is now also given to boys, it dramatically decreases the amount of virus circulating in the population to infect women who can't take the vaccine. To put this into some context, we are joined now by Professor Dame Lesley Regan,

Head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at St Mary's Imperial College, and of course, the past President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Good morning. Good morning, Emma. When it first came out, and to cast people's minds back, there was quite a lot of pushback, wasn't there, from people who felt it was wrong to perhaps talk to young women about sex, that the vaccine may encourage unsafe sex or promiscuity. Do you think these quite landmark results will help bring those people around of the proof of concept, isn't it? And the pilot study over a long period of time demonstrating that there's a dramatic reduction in the incidence of cervical abnormalities that would then go on to progress to cervical cancers. So I'm very much hoping that people will understand that this is an incredibly common virus.

And yes, it's not usually present until people um into you know into the early teens but if you can vaccinate girls and we're now vaccinating boys as well at 12 to 13 as this wonderful study in the lancet has shown emma you can prevent 87 percent of cancers i mean that is extraordinary and we need to remember that cervical cancer is preventable and so to not take measures that prevent women dying, the most horrible deaths would be really, really criminal. And remember as well that although we have a cervical screening program in the UK and have had for some years, since 1988,

when we talk about the death rate globally, we're talking about the fact that every two minutes that passes during your program today today another woman will have died somewhere in the world of cervical cancer which is preventable yeah and i was going to say it's not just the cancer side of things that helps prevent is it genital warts there's other benefits exactly so when it first started and the screening program first came out it was a particular um vaccine which was called cervix and that vaccinated against two HPV virus strains. And then the one that superseded it vaccinated against four.

And that was quickly adopted because, as you say, it additionally prevented women and men getting genital warts, which is also very unpleasant. So all of this is preventable. And we've got a fantastic opportunity now. The WHO launched their elimination of cervical cancer programme last year. And this is really, really heartening that we could make a big difference, particularly in the global south, where in the last couple of years, deaths from cervical cancer, a preventable disease, have actually overtaken women dying during pregnancy, maternal mortality. And that's really shocking, isn't it? Yes, I had no idea of that and a very important reality to bring to light. Another reality, which I know you'll be at pains to stress, the researchers said the success of this means that those who were vaccinated may need fewer smear tests.

But do you have a concern that there's a risk that women will stop going for their smear tests if they think they're safe? No, I don't think so, because all of my experience of working with women is that if you explain to them what the issues are that they need to undertake to remain safe and maintain their health, that they usually follow them. I think what we've got to focus on much more is the worry of access, firstly to the vaccine and getting that really widespread and then um the the screening program the smears won't completely go away but they'll have to be done much less frequently as more and more of womanhood if you like are vaccinated but for women who are listening who haven't had the jab because they're they they're too old they were it wasn't around when they were younger they can't get get it now, can they? No, because we know that there's no point administering the jab after the age of about

16 or 17. But what they do need to do, and I must emphasise, is go for your regular cervical smears. And also then, as you know, I think, because we've talked about it before on your programme, there are now HPV swabs that women can do at home and send in. So if you're someone who's had a nasty experience at the gynaecologist or you don't want to have that speculum examination, you don't have to do that. You can get enrolled in one of those programs too. So effectively, you know, when I first had my cervical smear, they literally took a scraping of the neck of the woman,

put it on a slide, and then we moved to liquid-based cytology. And what they're doing there is they're looking for the HPV virus. And if they don't find any in my sample, they'll say, well, okay, Leslie, you can go off. And if they find some, they'll say, well, okay, we need to look at this more closely and then bring you back just to make sure it hasn't progressed. Because having an abnormality of the cervix on your smear test doesn't mean you've got cancer. It usually means that you've got a very, very early change in the cells. And if that's monitored well and treated,

if it goes any further, that you won't get cervical cancer. Well, keep going for smears if you haven't had the jab. And if you have had the jab, you'll be told when to go to, but it will be far less frequently. Thank you very much for talking to us there.

As you say and alluded to there, lots changed in your lifetime and is continuing to change. And this is a very important study to shine a light on today. Professor Dame Leslie Regan there. Well, keeping with women's health, taking it seriously and perhaps responding to the needs of women, getting in touch with those in the power and with the powers to do things and to make change. Let's talk about the menopause. The cost of repeat prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy in England is to be significantly reduced. Obviously, HRT isn't right for everyone or even wanted or needed by all women. But for those who do take it, the price reduction could save up to £200 a year. The Labour MP Carolyn Harris set the ball rolling with a bill to make HRT free,

bringing England in line with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And of course, this development happened last week. Carolyn, you've had some time perhaps to reflect on that, but I think also in light of what we were just talking about, and it's another sign about women's health and it being listened to, I suppose, the concerns around it and the needs of women? Well, it's taken us a long time, hasn't it?

It's only now in 2021 that women's health has been put at the top of the medical agenda. But I'm comfortable that menopause is certainly right up there and so it should be. When is that reduced prescription price going to come into place? Well, I'm hopeful that we know the women will see the effect sort of early next year um but the the cost of the prescription was only ever um hand a hook if you like to actually draw attention to the fact that we are not doing

enough for menopause in this country or anywhere else and we needed to be putting this really at the top of everyone's agenda. And that was the whole point of the bill was to draw attention to it. And I think we succeeded there, Emma. And now everyone's talking about the menopause. There is a much greater focus, but I know you also feel there's more to do.

What's top of the agenda next? I know you'll have a much bigger agenda when we have more time. Let's definitely go into that. But tell me what's top there. A top, I think I want everyone, workplaces, far, far more doctors training. I want young people educated.

And I want all policy going forward to take into account that the menopause is an issue that they need not to ignore, but to work around. It's funny you say about young people being educated. We recently had Jennifer Saunders on, of course, the comic and actor and writer. And she said she had no idea until she was in the foothills of what it meant. I did suggest she should make a comedy about it with Dawn French.

They're looking for new material. Perhaps you won't be finding it so comic if you're in a very bad place with it. But, you know, there are also lots of gaps in people's knowledge for a long time. Well, I had a massive gap in mind in that I went on antidepressants in 2010 and I'm only now weaning myself off them having gone on HRT. And I consider myself to be reasonably well-educated, but it's not about formal education.

It's about the fact that we've never spoke about it. It's been a taboo. And this is what this whole campaign's about. The revolution is about lifting that taboo so that everybody talks about it and the women get women are wonderful and we need to stay wonderful and we need to do that we need to talk about it and act on it did you did you have a celebration i suppose last week if everyone was talking about menopause there were some images of you standing with lots of different women

yeah yeah we certainly celebrated i'm actually exhausted now but this is a long way to go and that was just the start and there's some wonderful women out there who have braved this conversation and are now making huge changes for all women. And I know you also worked with women across the aisle in terms of it being also a cross-party effort. There can be no politics in women's health, Emma. Labour MP Carolyn Harris, thank you very much for your time. Well, my next guest certainly has experience of busting taboos. She's probably best known for playing Rizzo in the film Grease,

which I didn't confess to her that I've never seen in full, but I have told you. Or known for playing First Lady Abby Bartlett in the epic TV series The West Wing. Multi-Emmy award-winning actor Stockard Channing, that's who I'm talking about, a Broadway veteran nominated for multiple Tonys, who's also won so many other awards as well.

She's currently on stage at the Hampstead Theatre in North London in a play called Night Mother, which is a tense two-hander that takes place over the course of a single evening between a daughter, Jessie, played by Rebecca Knight, and Thelma, her mother, played by Stockard. In this clip from the play, they reflect on the man that was her husband and Jesse's father. I remember this one day, he's standing on the porch

and I told him to go in and get a shirt on and he went in and got one and then he said, real peaceful, but to the point, you're right Thelma, if God had meant for people to go around without any clothes on, they'd have been born that way. He didn't mean anything by it, Mama. He never said a word he didn't have to, Jesse. That was probably all he said to me all day, Jesse. So if he said it, there was something to it. But I never did figure that one out. What did that mean? I don't know, Mama. I liked him better than you did, but I didn't know him any better.

How could I love him, Jesse? I didn't have a thing he wanted. He got a share, though. You loved him enough for both of us. You followed him around like some... Oh, Jesse, all the man ever did was farm and sit and try to think of somebody to sell the farm to.

Stockard Channing on stage, a clip from her play. She joined me in the Woman's Hour studio yesterday, actually yesterday afternoon, and started by talking about the mother-daughter relationship in the play. The mother is a coper. She says that, I like it here, you know, They have to drag me kicking and screaming into my grave. Whereas the daughter, as she says, she's like on a bus

and this is my stop and I want to get off. And so they have very different energies and very different attitudes towards existence. And it takes place in real time, about an hour and 20 minutes to be exact. It's a single night where an ageing mother is confronted with the realisation that her daughter wants to take her own life, which is an extraordinary premise. And also, as you say, happening in real time as if it is that evening.

What drew you to this? Because it's not for the faint-hearted. No, it was a challenge, I'll be honest with you. I mean, I hadn't worked on stage in a bunch of years. And when they came to me and asked me to do it, I had a very candid conversation with Roxanna Silber, who runs the theater and also directed it. And I said, wow, this is a very big task. And anyone who came in to audition for the daughter,

I read with them. I didn't decide. I said, look, I'll just so you can see how we interact. It's not like I chose. But anyway, it was very daunting. And I think, well, that's what life's about. Just go on to that next chapter. And were you drawn to the debate in there about... I was drawn to the quality of the piece. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 83 and rightly so. It's an extraordinary... One of the New York Times critics said it's like a sonata, because it's a spiral

kind of thing, because they reset their relationship in the course of this hour and 20 minutes. You go from two people who coexisted because the daughter has epilepsy, which in those days was very much treated almost as if it was a mental health issue, even at the beginning of the 20th century, was literally people were put in asylums. So the mother is very protective. They're very much on their own. But, you know, it's quality of the writing is really what's curious. It's deceptively simple because it's very realistic. But in working on it, I found it's really almost more like Beckett or UNESCO or something

because language is sort of deceptively realistic and simple, but what they're trying to communicate to each other is extremely difficult. I think what you were saying there about in the course of the night, they reset their relationship, it's fascinating. Because what sort of conversations would people have if they knew that was the last night? And obviously in some scenarios, people do know that. Yeah, well, obviously the mother's completely panicked and resisting this event that, you know, the daughter has decided on. But there is that argument that's her life, she can end it, you know.

Of course, at the resets, you know, their own pasts, their own past relationships, their relationships with each of their husbands, you know, and the daughter's relationship with her father and the disappointments of their life, which they've both had, but they dealt with differently. Did it change your view on whether that is a right that we have to take our own lives? No, I myself think we do have a right. That's just my personal view. But as the mother said, something might happen.

And that's what we have as human beings, is that trunk in the attic. You open it up and something new will happen. Somebody could change everything. It might get better. Yeah, it might get better, but it might at least be interesting. You know, that mother has that position, even when she's in panicked extremis. And the daughters just said, no, I'm done. I'm done.

And I think that's definitely how many times we wake up in the morning and say oh I think I'm done but you know by the afternoon we go oh this is interesting this might go somewhere so that is sort of the nature of existence you know I also think and I'm going to get the quote wrong you'll you'll correct me because you know the lines um but right at the end she says something like I thought you were mine yeah I found that so moving and interesting about belonging to each other and who belongs to who and never owning your children. fabulous up to now. They're very, very different people. So I think of it sort of a love story, because that's the poignancy to me, is that they sort of fall in love with each other at like one moment just before the inevitable is going to happen. And so you take this trip with them. It's like a spiral, you know, like a spiral staircase. You go round and round, but inevitably you're keeping moving in this direction. And you see that moments of tenderness between them.

That is the poignancy. When she said, I thought you were mine, I would imagine there's that feeling of, you know, you mold a child. I don't know if you created them, but you mold them through life. You teach them. And also somebody like the woman I play is very much aware of her own limitations. She's uneducated. She had a bad relationship with her late husband.

She's isolated. She's about her husband. He felt sorry for me. He wanted a plain country woman. And that's what he married. And he held it against me for the rest of my life. You are brilliantly droll at times. And you are known for that.

You know, the way that you deliver those lines. You've also talked about the fact you usually play character roles and you're a character actor. I also read that you've moved to the UK, which I didn't know. Yes, I have acquired a domicile here at WSBC. I never get it finished. Yeah, it's a bit of a process, right? Yeah, yeah. Because you're performing in North London, in Hampstead, And I wonder how you're finding the UK. I know you know it well. Well, I've been working here on and off for many, many years. And I've spent time over the years.

So it's not like I've been airlifted in from another planet. I came here, actually, when all the COVID bits started. I mean, I expected to be back four months to sort of do a bit of a recce if I wanted to shift my life to another chapter. But it ended up being here for two years. So, you know, even accepting this part, I said, OK, you're going to get in for a penny, in for a pound. You know, here's a big role and you're going to go back on the stage and you're going to be around people and the COVID things.

You know, we sit in rehearsal, you know, and the director was wearing a mask. I guess the rule is in the Hampstead Theatre is that if you're sitting down, you can take your mask off. I know you knew this country well, but you definitely moved or ended up moving at an interesting time. Yes, absolutely. How important is it for you to keep working and keep challenging yourself? You're in your late 70s now. I know you won't mind me saying that. But doing this sort of thing and challenging yourself I think it is important I didn't expect this sort of came out of the blue at me and I was a bit terrified of it I have to say because it's as I said it's an hour and 20 minutes of the two of us

having a conversation but I think that's what keeps you going the writing is obviously very important to you when you pick a project I mean mean, of course, Grease through to The West Wing, The Good Wife, I was a big fan. You know, there's those roles that you are always associated with, but there's a huge amount that you have done and the theatre has been very important to you. Yes, absolutely. And when you've made those choices, has it been about the writing? How have you made those decisions? Well, that's the beginning, middle and end. That's it.

I mean, that's the beginning, middle and end. That's it. I mean, that's the foundation. And I've been really lucky through my life to work on these incredible plays over time, you know, like Sixth Grade Separation and La La La and a kid, since I was 19. I started acting and maybe not professionally in high profile situations, but, you know, it's really what I've done for my entire life. And I was surprised to be given this opportunity to, you know, flex those muscles again. Do you think it's got better for older women in your sector? Well, as my dear friend Eileen Atkins said in an interview recently. Who she was here very recently in the studio. And I love what she said in an interview recently. Who she was here very recently in the studio. And I love what she said. There was an interview with a paper.

She said, there's plenty of roles for older women as long as you're prepared to look lousy. And so say I with my first grey wig. And it's actually rather nice. Only my hair was as in good shape as the wig is. But, you know, there is that. There is that about it. So, look, this is it.

I'm doing eight shows a week. I can confirm the wig is very good. I didn't know if you dyed your own hair, in fact. Well, I do, but I don't dye a grey. You don't dye... Well, of course. I mean, what would be the point of that? No, but I think that's interesting

around what roles there are, what you're expected to do, how you feel about it. And also there is, at the other end of it, a pressure still to look a certain way. Have you felt that? Do you feel that still? Well, I think I've felt that all my life. You know, I've been able to look pretty attractive and I've been also in a situation which, I don't know if men have the same thing, but women definitely have,

of whether she's not, how should I put this, not enticing in a sexual way. But that's certainly, I've encountered it through my life. You know, I'm not conventionally gorgeous. I'm not bad looking, but that has always been there for a woman. And I've been able to negotiate those waters over time. But it's still a big pressure. Yes. And whether it's got better or not, I suppose, is hard to gauge. Yeah. It's still, you know, whether whatever gender you are or how you define yourself, it's still people look at other people and say, oh, do I fancy him or them? Whatever. It's still there.

Yes. And people make certain decisions based on that. With so many roles, have you got favourites yourself? Because what people have as their favourite as you and what they know you for would be, I imagine, different. Or each time you do a job, you move on. I think I do move on to the next. I don't, you know, sit there with a chronicle of my CVs that have written the front of my brain. I have to say that. But I do know that I've been really lucky to have such interesting, I bet a very interesting life.

You don't wander around your house pretending to be the first lady? No, I definitely don't. I was just imagining. I mean, you know, we have these women very much still all over the papers and we look at them and people do confuse people for the roles that they've played. Yes, definitely. I mean, I suppose you could also say you're the world's oldest living teenager, but that happens as well. But I think that's fascinating. It's life. It's life.

Stockard Channing there. And Night Mother, the play that she's in, continues at the Hampstead Theatre until December the 4th. And I should say, of course, if you've been affected by any of our conversation there, certainly about what the play's around, there are support links on the Woman's Hour website. You've also been getting in touch throughout the programme

after hearing that exclusive interview with Amanda Knox, talking about trying to still reclaim her identity and the truth since she was exonerated of the death of the murderer of Meredith Kircher. She was exonerated in 2015. Many messages come in off the back of the murderer of Meredith Kircher. She was exonerated in 2015. Many messages come in off the back of this. A text here saying, what an incredibly brave and intelligent woman with regards to Amanda Knox.

Thank you for speaking out. You are an inspiration. Another one here giving some advice around looking up a particular legal case of Yusupov versus MGM in 1934. A very similar case to hers where MGM made a movie which was supposedly a fictional one, but everyone could see that the character

was based on a real person. Ms. Yusupov sued them successfully for libel and Amanda should follow suit, so to speak, reads one of these messages. Another one here, though, is from Janet saying, nothing about today's interview with Amanda Knox is improving my opinion of her.

The fact she told proven lies that could have landed an innocent person in jail tells against her. The best way for her to salvage her reputation is to stay quietly at home in Seattle and not keep scratching the media scab for no good reason like she's done many times in the past and is doing again today. As I say that from Janet. But this from Nicolette, who's emailed into the programme. I'm not a great one for following tabloid or social media stories, today, as I say that from Janet, but this from Nicolette, who's emailed into the programme.

I'm not a great one for following tabloid or social media stories, but was, of course, aware of this case when it was going on. I'm rather ashamed to say that I too was casually taken up with the Foxy-Knoxy angle, quote unquote, as much as I thought about it at all. Listening to the eloquent and clearly thoughtful and intelligent Amanda Knox this morning on the programme made me reflect more on why this story had engaged the media and the public to the extent it had. Looking back, Knox's analysis of societal need for the female Madonna slash harlot scenarios seems entirely credible. I will watch this evening's broadcast with a much more open, questioning and engaged mind. Yes, indeed. In terms of that broadcast. Thank you for that message, though, Nicolette. That interview will be broadcast this evening on Newsnight at 10.30 on BBC Two.

So if you wish to see it, you can see some of that. And already part of that is published on the BBC News website. Thank you so much for your company today. We'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. From the makers of the Battersea Poltergeist, a new podcast series for BBC Radio 4, Uncanny. Do you believe in ghosts? No. Have you seen one? Yes. Real-life stories that are supernatural, told by the people they happen to. Presented by me, Danny Robbins. There is a very strong sense of pure evil. Subscribe to Uncanny on BBC Sounds. the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.