Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Maternal mental health; Actors Laura Dern and Diane Ladd & Comedy drama Black Ops

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

An estimated one in five new and expectant mums develop perinatal mental illnesses such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. While every pregnant woman should be screened for mental health issues at their 10-week antenatal appointment, new data from NHS England shows one in six NHS Trusts are struggling to report if they are following the clinical guidelines. We hear from the Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist Dr Trudi Seneviratne and Hayley Johnson a mum of two who experienced debilitating anxiety after the birth of her second child.When Sheilagh Matheson and her husband offered to house a mother and her daughters fleeing from Ukraine little did she know that the girls were musical prodigies and that their music would stop passers-by in the street. Sheilagh and 17-year-old Khrystyna tell us their story. The book ‘Honey, Baby, Mine’ is a new joint project of mother/daughter actors Diane Ladd, and Laura Dern Working. It's based on a series of walks and talks taken when about four years ago Diane faced a serious threat to her health. Why does rejection hurt so much? The writer Kate Wills tells us about how her fear of rejection has held her back in life, and an experiment she did to try and cure it. Plus we hear from the Chartered psychologist Fiona Murden.The new BBC comedy drama Black Ops centres around Dom and Kay, two Police Community Support Officers in East London who join the Metropolitan police in the hope of cleaning up their neighbourhood. Instead they find themselves working undercover to infiltrate a criminal gang. We hear from its star, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Beverley Purcell

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 and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Anita Rani. The programme where we gather together the best bits of Woman's Hour from the week just gone, package them all together just for you. You're welcome. Coming up, the actor Diane Ladd talking about her new book where she shares personal and honest stories about her life with her daughter, Laura Dern. Parents don't always tell their children the truth. Be honest here, we lie. So then when the parent dies, you've heard so many people say, oh I wish I'd have asked my mother that. So what this book is about, stop just whooshing and make it so. Also why there are

gender differences when it comes to dealing with rejection, plus the story of what happens when two of your Ukrainian guests turn out to be musical prodigies. Sasha would be upstairs playing Sibelius in the top of the house in the attic and Christina would be downstairs playing Brahms and then I have been trying and failing to play the bagpipes for the last two years, and that's absolutely excruciating. The whole thing is utterly bizarre. And we'll have Bimasola Ikumelo, the star of the new BBC One comedy drama Black Ops,

a little later on. So grab a comfy spot and settle in. But first, an estimated one in five new and expectant mums develop perinatal mental illnesses such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Whilst every pregnant woman should be screened for mental health issues at their 10-week antenatal appointment, new data from NHS England shows one in six NHS trusts are struggling to report if they're doing so and therefore following the clinical guidelines. This is despite mental illness being the leading cause of maternal death in the first year after birth. Well, I spoke to Hayley Johnson, a mum of two who experienced debilitating anxiety after giving birth to her second child in late 2021, and Dr Trudy Senvaratna, consultant

perinatal psychiatrist and registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She told me why she thinks so many women are struggling with their mental health at this time. It's really complicated. I mean, first of all, you know, childbirth is a huge stress, even though it's, you know, potentially a joyous event for so many. Actually, it's not necessarily a planned event for many, many women. There are a number of, you know, enormous social factors happening. There may or may not be a partner. There may or may not be awful things like domestic violence and other terrible things like rape that, you know, is where the baby is coming from. But even if it's a happy planned pregnancy, it's a very, very stressful life event. There's a huge amount that changes

with a woman's own personal life, her job, whether she has a job or not, her social factors, whether there's money or not, worries about whether she'll be a good enough mother. If someone has a history of mental health problems, there's a vulnerability there again to, you know, the depression coming back,

anxiety coming back, lots of hormonal and biological factors that come into play. The physicality of what happens to the woman during pregnancy and afterwards. You know, there's physical trauma that can happen during the process of delivery. So it's really complicated. You know, what we call biological factors, social factors, the woman's own psychological makeup, social factors, and then, you know, actually stigma, people being frightened to come forward if something is starting to go wrong, which we might go into as we move on. How were you feeling after the birth of your second child, Hayley? Well, I had another home birth and that had all gone okay, but he went into the NICU

because they had some concerns about him and it just was I couldn't process it I my anxiety had been there all along and it just took over um and yeah I couldn't eat I couldn't sleep I didn't know how to help myself and it was a really scary scary time and so what did you do did you get help did you did you to anybody? It took me a few days as things progressively got worse because I just didn't know if there was any help out there. I think I felt convinced that they were going to take my children away because I was having these thoughts and these intrusive feelings and thoughts. So eventually I did ask for help, but it was a really hard decision to make not knowing what there was and if it was going to make me look like a bad parent.

Here's the thing, when you were suffering the anxiety, did you even realise what was happening, that you were suffering, you know, some kind of mental illness or some anxiety, that extreme anxiety? Yeah, I I mean in the beginning I thought it was just normal it was normal to feel worried and concerned about my baby but it got to the point where I realized I was I was having intrusive thoughts I wasn't in my right mind and yeah something had tipped and I really wasn't, I wasn't doing well. I wasn't coping. And you hadn't experienced that with your first child? No, I'd had the anxiety.

I think a lot of parents, a lot of people have just anxiety in their day to day, but it had never come to this head before. And how did you eventually get help? I called my midwives. So I called the midwife and they got me back into the maternity hospital. And then they got mental health professionals in and I had assessments and lots of support once I was there. So you got the support, Hayley. But Trudy, what we're finding is that that's not the case for everybody although we've moved forward in the

services and the availability of these services so specialist perinatal services across the uk particularly in england but also across scotland wales and northern ireland things are moving and we are so much further ahead than say back in 2015-16 it's still postcode lottery unfortunately so we know that um across the country and across the uk that there are problems to access to services um and there are delays to getting screening appointments and some areas um where women don't seem to be we're hearing anecdotally that some women are not being screened in the antenatal period when they have that first booking appointment, which is a perfect opportunity to... At 10 weeks?

At 10 weeks, it's a perfect opportunity when someone is pregnant at that first antenatal booking appointment to screen for... So what's your reaction to that? What's your reaction to the fact that they're not? Again, very, very concerning, because on the one hand, it's great that we're moving forwards in expanding the services.

And I know that actually maternity services are embedding the NICE guidance and the clinical guidance to make this routine. But what we're hearing is that it's not routine and we just need to see the data and the evidence from NHS England, for example, to work out why this is not happening routinely. Because if we don't know this, we can't really change services and we can't reach out to women who are not coming forward for help. And what can happen to mothers if these mental health issues aren't addressed? Well, if they're not addressed, we know that actually I say that the impact is devastating. It's absolutely devastating. So the maternal suicide data tells us actually at the worst end of the spectrum you have terrible things happening like mothers taking their lives both in pregnancy and afterwards. But in between there are all levels of things happening. So a woman can be struggling and suffering in silence, which is

absolutely terrible. We know that there is both a short and a long-term impact for herself. The mental health and mental illness can rumble on, get worse, deteriorate. It can also, unfortunately, impact on the relationship with the baby and indeed that developing baby or child as a child gets bigger and can also impact on the partner and the family when there is a partner and family so the impact is is devastating and on on the entire family network as things go forward and we know it's really critical to intervene early as early as possible to prevent things deteriorating and we have some wonderful treatments uh now available which uh you know can span you know not only medication which is safe in pregnancy and in breastfeeding but a whole suite of psychological therapies for the mother the

mother-baby relationship for the partner and a whole suite of social, I call them treatments, but more holistic ways of looking after women. Yeah, I guess it's what you said, Hayley, you know, did you speak to someone in your family before you spoke to the midwives? Yeah, my husband was really supportive. But again, he didn't really know what we should do. And I did go into a mother and baby unit and I didn't know that they existed. I didn't know that that was a means of support that I could reach out for. And it saved my life because it had got to a point where if I hadn't reached for help,

I'm not sure if I would still have been around to carry on caring for my children. And it's a life changing thing to be able to access that support or it was for me anyway and how are you now much better yeah and I credit that to the midwives and the mental health professionals and the psychiatrists in the in the unit and I was so fortunate to have been offered a place there because there aren't enough and there isn't enough awareness of them and I don't think there's enough funding for them and they're fantastic really an amazing resource. Trudy what are you calling on NHS England to do? I want to say that NHS England have already done an amazing job in supporting the transformation of services

across England by the funding that's been available. But at this point in time, we really want to see that data so that we have a very strong idea about where the screening is happening, where it's not happening, and then we can tease out, actually, why are some women not being screened or why are some women not coming forward when they do indeed have current mental health problems or a history of mental health problems or even a family history. So data is really powerful. We've got the data.

And by looking at the data, we can, you know, make the world even better for pregnant women. So you've got the data. It just needs to be analysed. Absolutely. And then that can influence sort of ongoing transformation of our already, you know, the amazing story that we have in the UK for transforming perinatal mental health services. It's something that actually we should be really proud of.

But we need to keep improving. There is work to do. And we need to, you know, and not shy away from the terrifying data around maternal suicide being a leading cause of death for women. I was speaking to Dr Trudy Senavaratna and Hayley Johnson. While your emails came in, we had a huge response to this. Here's one from Kat. She says, with extreme postnatal anxiety after a traumatic labour and emergency C-section, I struggled hugely to bond with my first baby.

It took several weeks before I felt any love for my daughter. She's now 11, at high school, has a younger sister and is the most amazing girl who I adore. I just want to reassure you if you are struggling not to beat yourself up if you don't feel like the other mothers. It will come and you will get out the other side. And an anonymous listener got in touch to say, I don't believe we look after women properly in terms of medical care around pregnancy and delivery. We just expect them to get on with it. A close friend of mine found childbirth traumatic and lost herself. She's bright, beautiful and a lovely woman who is now a lot better, but she has been through hell and back. The NHS have done their best. She has helped now and is in a good place, but it is a devastating reality to see how she's been. It's terrifying.

Thank you for talking about this. We will talk about subjects like that. And actually, anything you would like us to talk about on Woman's Hour, all you need to do is get in touch with us. You can send me an email via our website. Now, when Sheila Matheson and her husband, Chris Roberts, offered to take in a Ukrainian family last year, they'd not banked on sharing the house with two musical prodigies.

They'd been told that their house guests, sister Kristina, Sasha and their mother Natalia, were musical, but that turned out to have been something of an understatement. What the couple didn't know was that 17-year-old Kristina Mihalychenko and her 12-year-old sister Sasha were very musically gifted, which has now resulted in them being accepted in two of the most prestigious music schools in the UK. Well Nuala spoke to Sheila and Christina and started off by asking Sheila why she decided to become a host. We had seen the need for you know the need for helping refugees in Syria and then in Afghanistan and each time we just thought oh you know like everybody who watches it on television, you think, oh, God, I wish I could do something to help. But there doesn't seem to be

any channel to do it. So when the government announced the Homes for Ukrainians scheme, we signed up immediately. That proved to be an absolute waste of time. And it was pretty useless. But through a friend in Poland, we wrote to him and we said well if you come across any Ukrainians anyone at all who wants to come to England and needs a home we'd be glad to put them up and I think two or three weeks passed and then he got back to us and he said are you still up for this there's a I found out about a musical family and he said, are you still up for this? I found out about a musical family. And we said, yeah, yeah, sure, no problem. And it was as simple as that. And then it wasn't until a few days before they arrived that they sent me a video of Christina playing Tchaikovsky's first piano

concerto when she was only 14. And that was a and I thought oh my god we're going to have to up our game here and that's that's how it happened well thanks be to goodness it was a good shock right that was wonderful how do you um begin to start preparing then for somebody who is so talented to come to your home? Well, we'd already sorted the accommodation out, which that was a shock as well, having to do a bit of housework and clean the house up a bit. But then I thought, well, what they're obviously going to need is a grand piano. So I just contacted anyone I could think of that might know someone who had a grand piano and in fact quite a

lot of people came forward the best piano at the time was one at a private school I had no contact with his private school until then and they were incredibly helpful Macford Hall but that was quite difficult to get to um and now Christina um practices on a grand piano that belongs to a piano teacher. So that's how it worked out. Shall we meet Christina? Hello, Christina. Good to have you with us. I loved watching you. I have you on video and I could see you as that piece was playing. What do you think when you think back to that time that you were making your way to be with Sheila? It was very excited and a bit stressful at the same time

because we were going to live also with people who we don't know at all. But the man whom we met in Poland, who is a friend of phil and chris if he said that they are incredibly beautiful family we thought okay these people are great so um yeah we were very excited and we are incredibly happy and grateful now for the whole this year that we've been living here. Yeah, and I know you've had quite a journey, even from 2014, from when Crimea was annexed,

you moved and then obviously had to move again when the most recent part of the war broke out. Did you worry about not being able to play piano? I didn't worry because I knew that i would not stop playing piano uh i would find any possibilities to find an instrument and play music but i stopped going on stage for a few months when the full-scale war began because of the just psychological state I couldn't do it. But I probably was more stressed and afraid of losing my own piano, my own instrument at home.

Because when Russians occupied Irpin, the little town near Kiev where we were living, our apartment building was also under attack. So I was not sure at all if it would be safe or not. But thanks God it's safe. So only the windows of our flat were broken. But yeah. Because your brother is still there, right? Yes, he is still there. He's living now there. How is he doing? It must be a worry. It is.

It is a constant worry. Yeah, but he's doing great. He's volunteering a lot. And he's doing everything for the country to help and support as much as he can. How has your playing changed, if it has, from when you were playing in Ukraine to now playing in the UK? After the war began, I started playing pieces that I played before and I realised that I feel them absolutely different. The stories that go in my mind while I'm playing were completely different and they were all connected to the war stories,

to the relationship between mothers and soldiers, between wives, children, soldiers and all the things. So, yeah, it is a big part of my personality as a person, as a human being and as a musician now. So I think it changes my interpretations and performances a lot. And playing now, I'm just wondering, you know, how you see it going, because you have been accepted, as I was telling our listeners there, to one of many years to enter one of English conservatoires. So when I was doing auditions, I still couldn't believe that I'm doing it. And before Christmas,

when I got all the official results from all the conservatoires, and especially the Royal Academy of Music, which I'll start in September. It's just amazing it was a big shock and it was a big relief and yeah it was a big happiness. But let's talk about bringing Sheila back in Christina because what was it like to all of a sudden be like a conservatoire in Northumberland your house I believe that people would come by and kind of stop and be entranced by the music coming through the open windows. Yeah, it was it was just incredible.

We're lucky we've got we've got a spacious house here. And so, well, Sasha would be upstairs playing Sibelius in the top of the house in the attic. And Christina would be downstairs playing Brahms. And then we're not a musical family at all, but I have been trying and failing to play the bagpipes for the last two years. And that's absolutely excruciating. And it's so bad I have to wear earplugs. So the whole thing is utterly bizarre. But it's just been the most extraordinary turn in my life. I would never have dreamt that this was going to happen. And I just, I'm so grateful. I mean, I know it's in terrible, terrible circumstances, but I'm so grateful that this Ukrainian family came to live here. And I've learned so much. Were there any difficulties? I mean, living with another family can be tough.

We've all got our own ways, right? Even if they're the nicest people in the world. I'll start with you, Sheila, and then ask Christina. Well, for me, it hasn't been a problem. I can't, you know, offhand, I can't think of anything really. But I have to say that Chris and I are both, I would say we are both pretty laid back people. And we have had other people living in the house before. You know, people for whatever reason, they've needed somewhere to shack up for a few weeks, you know, or actually a year.

But so that wasn't a problem. Nothing has been as difficult as the situation now, which is one I think a lot of Ukrainian families find themselves in, which is what do you do when you want to move on? So now that both girls are moving down to London and near Leatherhead, obviously Natalia wants to be close to them and they want to be close to her because the last thing they want is to be split up now.

And trying to find somewhere to live, you know, preferably independent accommodation, is just about impossible. So we're constantly, that's our preoccupation at the moment. That's the difficulty at the moment. But also, I mean, it's not exactly empty nest, Sheila, but you're going to miss them. I'm going to really miss them. But they're not going to get rid of me that easily because I will be getting on that train and going down south to listen to them playing in concerts and things like that. I really do feel as if

we have made lifelong friends here. Let me turn to you, Christina. What was it like? I mean, I know you have adapted to change before, as I mentioned, you left Crimea and then Irpin in this latest iteration of the battle. But did you find it hard to adjust to living with another family? I think the biggest change and difference was that when we were living in Crimea in 2014, we were moving to Ukraine, to a different part of Ukraine, to people who we know, to people who we belong to. So it was a different kind of change um so now uh of course it's a completely different culture and a completely different people place food and everything so during this year we were learning a lot uh learning about people's habits um about just way of life, how people live here, which rules do they have, laws and everything. What was the biggest surprise, Christina, do you think,

about the UK that you didn't expect? I don't want to sound silly, but the biggest surprise for me was the railway system here. In a good or a bad way? Unfortunately, in a bad way. Because the trains in Ukraine run

much better than here in England. Christina Mihailichenko and Sheila Matheson speaking to Nuala there. Still to come on the programme, why women and men experience rejection so differently and Bimasola Ikumelo, the star of the new BBC One comedy drama Black Ops.

And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10am during the week. Put that in your diary though. All you need to do is subscribe to our daily podcast. It's free via the Woman's Hour website. Now, the book Honey, Baby, Mine is a joint project of mother-daughter actors Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. And on Monday, in an exclusive interview, Nuala got to speak to them. Working together is not unusual for these two.

Over the decades, they've taken their connection onto our screens as fictional parent and child, now 87 and 56, they've both had and continue to have critically acclaimed careers with many character roles gaining them numerous awards and nominations. One of Diane's most memorable and Oscar-nominated performances was as Flo, the sharp-tongued waitress in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore in 1974. More recently, Laura won an Oscar for her portrayal of a divorce lawyer in Marriage Story. But about four years ago, after Diane faced a serious threat to her health, the two embarked on a series of walks and talks that Laura recorded for posterity, which then unexpectedly, as they put it, became a book. Here, Diane Ladd responds to Nuala's

question about the title of the book, Honey, Baby, Mine. Well, it's an English folk song, actually, that I'm from Mississippi and the people who built the dams in Louisiana, Mississippi, they sang the song. It's just a little old country song. And my father sang it to me and he sang it to Laura. It goes, You get a line and I'll get a pole, honey. You get a line and I'll get a pole, babe. You get a line and I'll get a pole. We'll go down to the crawdad hole, honey, baby, mine. And so we called it Honey, Baby, Mine. Of course, this book came about because of a diagnosis that was given to you. And it was basically that your life was in danger. I think I'm not over-exaggerating, Laura, when I say that. Also, maybe strangely, that the doctor gave the

news to Laura, not to you, Diane, about this diagnosis. What about that moment, Laura? I just remember him being rather reserved with my mom, who had at that point gone to the hospital with double pneumonia and ended up sending her to the hospital. And when they discovered this lung illness, he kind of took me to the side, sort of smiling to my mom and then said, be gentle with your mother. She won't be here in three to six months. And I remember mom looking so afraid and also seeing my face, you know, and saying, what is he saying to you? And that was I wasn't afraid of death. I was afraid of Laura's pain in her face.

That was me reaching my heart like a mother. I knew something was wrong. That was worse than any news about death was the expression on my child's face. That was pretty scary. That was the expression on my child's face. And that was pretty scary. That was the beginning of the journey. But most importantly, the only thing they said I could do for her is to get her walking, to expand her lungs with oxygen. And that was almost impossible at that time. She was on a breathing machine. She could barely walk a few steps. And so I knew I had to, frankly, distract her by hopefully getting her to share stories and that each day we would walk a little further and talk a little bit more. And what a gift it is. Go ahead, Diane.

Forcing me to walk because I hate walking. Well, this is it. I do. It comes across in the book like Laura how much you have to push Diane. I mean it is such a window into I suppose that inner sanctum of family life and I should also just let our listeners know with the book there's photographs also recipes so we begin to get a feel for what it was to grow up being Laura and indeed having Diane as a mum. But just before I go back to Laura on her persuasive skills, how bad were you feeling, Diane, when those walks started?

I was feeling pretty bad. I thought I was going to just go hit the ground in front of everybody in the park any minute and go blah, blah, blah. And the only thing, I wasn't afraid of death, but the book wouldn't have gotten written had this not happened to me. I am a member of the Writers Guild. I've done a movie and two other books. But the thing was, this was not any intended book. That's the odd thing. It was because parents don't always tell their children the truth. Be honest here. We lie. We lie because we want respect and love from our children. And then the children want the same thing for us. So they lie. So then when the parent dies,

you've heard so many people say, oh, I wish I'd asked my mother that or I wish I'd asked my father. So what this book is about, stop just whooshing and make it so. I said to Laura, if one person really talks to somebody, they're not talking to a loved one or a friend, we will have done something good on this planet. And Laura recorded this so she'd have it for posterity's sake. And then her agent said, this is a book. And we said, it's not a book. And she went to five publishers who fought for the right to publish it. And then we spent a year and a half editing all our walks. We'd written 420 pages. And it was a lot of work. Right, Laura? We truly only shared it because, and I appreciate you saying, you know, that it has that feeling

like you're cracking open a scrapbook of a family's life. Because we wanted to be any mother, daughter, father, son, sister, brother, who finds themselves in a position to be able to ask life's questions because we don't do it enough. And we saw how it was creating bonds we never had. And it's not just because we talked about the hard stuff that was in fact healing. It's because we laughed harder than we've ever laughed together over just fights. We told each other the truth because we thought I was dying. I'm going, hey. So we spill the beans. So everybody should spill the beans.

The mother-daughter relationship, of course, is a thread that goes throughout the book. But it's also, you're an actor. Both of you are actors. You have had so many similar experiences. I think it was one of, I was reading it, like parenting is a mess or the torture of being away from your kids. And I think a somewhat different attitude maybe

came across to me from both of you. Is that fair, Laura? Yeah. What was great was I even discovered things that I'm doing as a parent that I was completely unconscious of based on my mom's responses. You know, when I finally admitted to my mom how much it hurt when she would leave for work. I'm an actor. I know that that's a sacrifice that happens with working moms that, you know, have to leave their kids when they're traveling. But yet, I still know as a daughter what that felt like. And the minute I shared it, mom had to protect and defend not only her point of view, but mine by saying, oh, no, good for you because you had ballet and you did this and you went horseback. And I realized in

that moment that that's what I'd been doing with my children. When they would start to bring up their fear of me leaving town for extended time, I would kind of justify instead of really listening to the hurt that I well know. And so my mom and I not only healed a fracture for a shared experience, we both are parenting and grandparenting differently because of it. What about that, Diane? I'm just thinking how, you know, you can't be a good actor if you can't listen. Laura's godmother was the actress Shelley Winters. And the one thing she always came down on was to tell young actors, you have to listen.

But it's true for every human being. You have to listen, not just with the ear, but with the ear of your heart to really listen. And we aren't talking to each other in this world right now. And I think Laura and i were forced to do that even about things that we didn't agree and there's another lesson you don't because you don't agree with somebody that's okay you don't have to fight because of it have a different opinion you might learn something step back and let it go with god just listen it's okay to not agree Laura and I have a couple things that we don't we don't talk about because we don't agree and so we both listened to each other and that was what was so

great let's talk about what an incredible life you have both had just looking at I suppose these backdrops of old Hollywood and new Hollywood as well as these stories come to light. I'm wondering, Diane, how did you feel when Laura said she wanted to be an actor? I said no, no. She didn't listen. No. Thank God she didn't listen to her mother. I just knew that there was a lot of rejection. At the time I came in, it was about almost a decade and a half following Shelley and Marlon Brando and all those great actresses.

There were great parts for women. They used to make 35 movies a week in Hollywood. And when I came into the business, they were hardly making 35 a year. And it was very hard for women's parts. When I did that film, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, we thought for sure that that would change things. And then when Laura and I did Rambling Rose, Doesn't Live Here Anymore. We thought for sure that that would change things. And then when Laura and I did Rambling Rose, we thought that might change things. It slowly has changed for the better again, but it's still very difficult for women. And I said, Laura, be a lawyer, be a doctor.

I said, if you're saving somebody's life, nobody cares if you have put on too much weight or your chin points when you cry. But they care if you're an actor. You're judged every which way every day. But you know, Ramlin Rose, by the way, your late princess Diana chose our film that we both got a nomination for in America. Kind of made show business history there by both being nominated for the same movie same year. She chose it as one of her all-time favorites and she flew us to london and had a royal premiere and a party in our honor and we

got not only to meet her but she sat between laura and i holding each our hand while watching our film and she was crying and laughing i was pouring sweat oh my God, the Princess Diana's watching our film. She was a magnificent, real human being. There was nothing phony about this great lady, wise and beautiful and gracious. And that was a great honour in my life. Let me turn to you, Laura. I mean, when your mum said no, what was it in you? Was it the life that you had seen growing up around actors that you wanted to be part of? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I had such an opposite journey of mom who came from this small town knowing she was meant to be an actor. I discovered it because one, it was all I knew. I saw it everywhere with both my parents and my godmother

and their friends. But I had the privilege of falling in love with the team sport of making a movie. I remember being seven on the set of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and seeing 150 people come together to achieve a goal of art, of storytelling, all with different crafts. And that was really moving. How it's changed is as a seven-year-old, I saw mostly men come together to make one piece of art. And now there's more gender and diversity equity in storytelling and storytellers, thank God. But in terms of roles, when mom was coming up and even at the very beginning of my career, I would say that unlike an actor, but like an athlete, an actress

was told there was sort of a time window. A small window. Which is disgusting. I mean, my God, imagine the world without performances of, what, women over 40? We have, including my incredible mother, my heroes, our greatest actresses alive, are most of them in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and we need their stories desperately. Those are the stories that are going to teach us the lessons of life. I remember when I was with my dad on an airplane, I was a teenager saying, you know, I'm really serious about being an actor. And he said, you're never going to have the fun you deserve until you're in your 50s.

And I was like, oh my God, that was the most horrible advice. And it took me a while to ask him what he meant. And he said, because you will love playing characters and you will want to go to the deepest of places. And as a woman, I don't think they'll let you do that as an ingenue. And I have and continue to, as mom has. it's not only the mess of life, it's the fun of life. It's the comedy in brokenness that you get to explore in ways that you don't know as a girl. And I don't follow the rules, right, Laura? Because instead of dying, I've done three movies, a TV series and written two books. So just believe in yourself and follow what you know and ask questions. Always ask the questions.

Great advice, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. Now, rejection never feels good, does it? Studies have shown that the same regions of the brain get activated when we experience rejection as when we encounter physical pain. There's also a gender difference in the way men and women react to it. So why does rejection hurt so much? And what are some of the coping mechanisms people can use to help themselves? Well, Kate Wills has written an article about her fear of rejection, how it has held her back in life and an experiment she undertook to try and cure it. On Wednesday, Nuala spoke to Kate and to the chartered psychologist Fiona Murden. So why did Kate write a book all about rejection? As you say, no one loves hearing no,

but I found it particularly excruciating. And as a result, I just never really put myself out there for things. You know, I'd never apply for jobs I'd never I've never asked for a pay rise or a promotion you're not alone there was just looking at the figures for that the other day exactly and and even in my friendships and relationships you know I was really scared of putting myself out there and getting a knock back and I started to wonder if maybe it was kind of holding me back or affecting my life. And I decided that it really was. And I'd be in awe of these people who could just ask for what they wanted. And if they got a no,

you know, no big deal. And they'd brush themselves off and ask again. And so I kind of started to look online really for kind of tips on overcoming it. And, you know, I got all the usual things, you know, like, oh, don't take it personally. Or, you know, what's the worst that can happen? No. But for me, it was just so difficult. Even getting a very polite, you know, thanks but no thanks email say, I would immediately delete it. And, you know, I'd wake up in the night thinking, oh oh God, that's so embarrassing that they didn't like that idea. I was just filled with shame, basically, every time I got turned down.

Well, let me bat that over to Fiona then. Why does it hurt so much and in some of the ways that Kate is describing? From an evolutionary perspective, I think people are becoming more and more aware that we are deeply dependent on other people and our connections are massively important. And if you think about tribes, thousands of years ago, if someone was excluded from the group, they would die. It's as simple as that. But then also being part of the

group enabled cooperation around being able to kill food, being able to protect one another, looking after children. And so what some scientists believe is that the rejection, like you said, triggers the same areas of the brain as pain. And what some have said is the social attachment system basically piggybacks the physical pain system in order to make us motivated to move away from it. To not be rejected. So we're kind of fighting against everything if we're to put on a brave face when rejected. We are, but there are different levels of sensitivity depending on the experiences we've had in life. Oh, and then, you know, mentioning the gender differences, how does that play out?

So gender differences are influenced, again, by male, female, hormonal, genetic, but also environmental, cultural aspects will influence the way women will experience the sensitivity to rejection, and women are more sensitive to rejection, whether that's social rejection, romantic rejection, or job rejection. Because of social conditioning, along with hormones, for example? Yeah, I mean, it's really, really complex. The research does show that women respond more sensitively than men. Thinking back to my own childhood, you know, I was definitely told like, you know, as a girl, it's polite to wait to be offered, don't ask for things. And, you know, traditionally, you know, I was definitely told like, you know, as a girl, it's polite to wait to be offered, don't ask for things. And, you know, traditionally, you know, it's men who are doing

the asking out, they're doing the proposing. Women just aren't kind of told to put themselves out there in that way. And I think as a result, we don't build up any tolerance to it. But you came across, Kate, a TED Talk that gave some advice that you took to it. But you came across Kate, a TED talk that gave some advice that you took to heart. Yeah, I actually came across a website that's called rejection therapy.com. And the idea is it's almost kind of like a game in that you kind of have to try and get rejected every single day. And you're kind of building up your tolerance to it like a like a muscle and, and lots of people kind of posting videos about the kind of funny rejections that they got. But there was this one guy called George Yang who, he got rejected every day for

100 days. How? All kinds of different things, you know, crazy things. He asked a Santa to sit in his lap and he asked to give a lecture at a university and he tried to interview Barack Obama, you know, all these different kinds of things ranging from like the small to quite big. And he made these videos and some of them actually ended up going viral. And he did this TED talk about getting rejected and went on to write a book about it. And I just thought it was a really, really interesting idea. And so I set myself the challenge of getting rejected for a month. I didn't do a hundred days. But what did you do? Well all kinds of things and it was actually really difficult to get no's because I discovered that people actually really really want to help you you know they

don't. Give me an example. Oh I did all kinds of things. I asked a stranger to borrow a hundred pounds. And what did he or she say? Well, amazingly, they kind of considered it, which I felt really bad about. Did you just go up to a stranger in the street? Yeah, just a man. That's amazing. It probably helps that you're good looking. It was terrifying.

I felt like I was going to do a skydive or something. I had like pounding chest, sweaty palms. I pushed to the front of a queue, which just obviously went against every fibre of my being, being British. I was about to say being British, that's particularly difficult. Cultural conditioning again. And what happened when you asked to go ahead? Yes, I got so many yeses. And in fact, it was infuriating because the aim of the game, obviously, is to get rejected. So it was really difficult. But did it help?

So at the beginning, it was awful. awful and I was like I'm not going to be able to do 30 days of this how am I going to get out of it and in fact if I hadn't agreed to write an article about it I probably would have given up but by the end of the month I was like actually it's no big deal it's fine I was like loving getting rejected and now I find it much easier to deal with it's no big thing let me throw this back to you Fiona so can we exercise that muscle like what Kate has decided to do well there's something called exposure therapy actually which does what you've done but I would say with caution it depends what experiences you've had as a child because if someone's had severe sort of emotional abuse as a child what

happens is that rejection gets generalized so initially it's about the person that abused them and the context they were abused in but over time that becomes generalized to be anything so that a rejection sensitivity is heightened and if you throw someone in who's got real problems in terms of their attachment capabilities and how they've grown up, it could be quite a bad idea. So I think it's if you feel like it's something that's quite acute for you, it might be worth speaking to a therapist about it and potentially doing what you did, but doing it with the guidance of someone who can help. Nuala talking to Fiona Murden and Kate Wills. Victoria emailed in to say, when I was at university doing the milk round, one firm I really quite desperately wanted to work for, I just didn't apply to because I was too scared. They would say, no, ridiculous. And I regretted it for years. Now I have children. I drum into them how you only regret the things you don't do and that you miss 100% of the chances that you don't go for. Great advice, Victoria.

Now, a new BBC six-part comedy thriller, Black Ops, centres around Dom and Kay, two police community support officers in East London who join the Metropolitan Police in the hope of cleaning up their neighbourhood, then find themselves working undercover to infiltrate a criminal gang. Well, Bimasola Ikemelo, perhaps best known for the comedy sketch show Famalam, is the co-creator and she joined me in the studio on Thursday and I started by asking her if she'd always wanted to be in a cop show. Yeah, I think that's sort of in a cop show. Yeah I think sort of the buddy cop show of it all and just sort of being reared on sitcom comedy and that

sort of world and I love the idea of sort of subverting what that could look like as well, what we expect a cop show to be and who those stars would be and so there's just something a little sort of subversive and a little bit kind of cheeky about the idea it is definitely cheeky subversive it's very funny and uh the script is on point uh you will hear for yourselves because here's a clip i need two officers to infiltrate a gang dealing drugs on Brightmarsh Estate. We'll do it. Hang on. You need two drug dealers, so get the black people. The Brightmarsh gang is black. The Met keeps sending me middle-aged white guys.

I need two young black officers to go places where they can't. I hate to break it to you, Clinton, but we ain't street. Yeah, I'm gathering that. My dad's a paediatrician and this woman's a prayer group. Wednesday nights, all welcome. Look, I'll guide you through the whole thing. We'll do it. Kate, will you stop just saying we'll do it? This sounds dangerous.

It is. So what's in it for us? Yeah, let's talk terms, Clinton. You both get service med, we'll do it. Kate. You get to do real police work. Shh, not interested, sir. What?

Look, Clinton, I'm in this game for the free tube travel, parking in disabled bays, and 10% off at Cineworld. I've got 30 years to retirement. That can go by like that. It's very good. You can only write like that if you are black, right? That's your experience? To be able to get that?

I mean, I can't speak for everyone, but I have to write from my experience. I have to write from what I know. And I will say there were moments where I was like, I'm a little bit out of my depth I don't know enough about this sort of police world but you realize that alongside with your actual experience and starting with your experience is a really great place to start so how did you do the research for the police but I mean there were were a lot of sort of unofficial conversations that were had with people, you know, in the Met and, you know, looking up things and articles and just experiences and all of the things that sort of happen are kind of coming from a place that is feasible and realistic. You know, even though we do height

and things, there's a lot of silly and a lot of fun, but it's all real. There's a lot of silly, there's a lot of fun, but there's a lot of, ooh, intake of breath, wow, moments. I'm thinking of the scene in the first episode where Dom and Kay are stopped by a white officer in the station and asked what they're doing there. Dom has to say she's worked there for four years and there's a poster. And there's a poster of her right next. That has happened to me a few times. So that kind of stuff, you sort of turn the things that are frustrating into funny. And the laugh kind, I don't know, there's something about comedy that I love

that is able to sort of deconstruct pain in a way that makes it just, we can laugh about it and sort of find some respite in that, you know? How easy was it to write those scenes quite easy finally really easy oh yeah i'll have them um i've walked into spaces where it's like are you supposed to be here or are you the cleaner and i sort of turn that stuff into comedy because it seems ridiculous when you write it down. But that stuff is real, you know? Also, there's an army of us nodding along. Yes, exactly. While watching it. So let's talk about the character.

You play PCSO Dominique in the series, as we heard. She's very cynical. Yes. Jaded by police work after being passed for promotion. Is that fair? Oh, yeah. When we see her first, she's got this kind of defence mechanism, which is like, no.

Instead of sort of being vulnerable and being open to the yeses of life she's kind of like no no because she's had so many doors slammed in her face and so many no's herself so it's almost like she's gonna say no first you know to sort of protect her and I think as this horrible stuff starts to unfold in the show we get to see her be a bit more vulnerable and a little bit more trusting and trust her instincts and realise that she's actually really good at this. She's really good. And also just something as simple as being a middle class black woman on screen. Which Akemji and me were really keen on exploring because there is not just one experience of blackness you know and it's really lovely to just be like yeah she lives in de Beauvoir and that to be just the thing that we just throw into

the to the mix of this show but it's actually a really strong statement we're saying that there's a black middle class and she doesn't connect with this sort of street, urban sort of life. And she's thrust into it. And that's quite scary and isn't her experience. And you learned to ride a bike for the series. You know, you could have just not had that scene, innit? I know, but like... It's excellent. It's also my cheeky way of going,

how can I learn to ride a bike on someone else's dime? I also learned to ride a low rider bike, which is not like riding a normal bike. It's so much more difficult. And Hamid, who plays Kay in the show, is just like, yeah, it's so hard. And then he's like whizzing down the road and sort of one hand doing wheelies. I can feel the patience of people sort of looming after like take three and I'm still wobbling. It was worth it because it's a very cool scene

and it made me think, I just want a low rider bike. Yeah. I'm having that. That's where I see myself this summer. I did want one. Let's get them. Let's go cruising around East London together on them this summer. I did inquire about keeping mine

and then I just thought I live in a tiny flat, where am I? Where is this going to go? And you're never going to ride it again, stop lying to yourself. Let's talk about how brilliant you are generally. You've been BAFTA nominated twice

for your comedy performance in the BBC sketch show, Famalam. All black comedians, you also wrote for it. What was that experience like? That was insane because I loved the idea, loved the show and OKMG sort of said yeah come on

you know we'd love you to act in it and that I that I got and then it was I'd like you to write on the show as well and I was like I don't write comedy I I've written plays and it's always coming from a very dark thespian sort of space and I and maybe I might write some laughter just to break the tension but not actual jokes I never thought of myself as a comedy writer and Kemji was just like yeah no I think you can do it comedy found me I did not sort of go looking for comedy where did you see yourself going to be honest a lot of actors were just like can can we get a job, please? Can we work? Can we pay our bills? And I think I was in that space. I was just like job, jobbing actor. But I think if you'd asked me what my dreams would have been, I would have been like, I want to sort of do like sort of tread more balls and to do the RSC and more stuff at the National and nothing wrong with those things i've worked at the national great comedy it just wasn't something that entered my frame of reference until i did a a comedy uh by dame baptiste called sunny d and i played his twin sister i love dame and oh my god it was the most fun i'd had in so long and people kept saying you're really funny and i I was like, am I? Am I really? And I met Akemji on that because he played my cousin.

And Akemji then was like going into making Famalam and he said, I'd like you to come on board. And Bemi, from a jobbing actor who's going, can I just get a job, please? To being in, you know, BBC big boardroom meeting rooms with people saying, let's create a show around you. Tell us what you want to do that's happened in your life that's happened and as well as being in america in a league of

their own the amazon series um all of this is stuff exciting stuff is happening how how are you do you have pinch me moments i i have so many pinch me moments there are bruises like from all the pinch me's but also i think I've in some way I've been sort of preparing for it for a while you know I before I always say that I was waiting for them to sort of find me so when I was in those rooms and they were asking me questions I was I already had ideas I knew the things I wanted to create and so it was waiting for them to catch up with me really and very funny it is to the brilliant bimisola icamello and black ops is on iplayer now that's it for me on monday's woman's

hour all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well comes from julian of norwich's book revelations of divine love it was embroidered at the bottom of the screen which was used at the coronation ceremony this morning to shield Charles III during his anointment. We'll speak about the enduring power of Julian's words and actions on Monday's programme with women who've been inspired by her life. Join Nuala at two minutes past ten. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, 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.