Elizabeth Oldfield speaks with screenwriter Abi Morgan. 24/03/2023
Intro
Elizabeth
Hello and welcome to The Sacred! And welcome back to our new series. I am so delighted to be in conversation with you again. The start of series is always my favourite time when we can release all these conversations that we’ve been having, and especially after our wonderful Sacred Live that we had with Oliver Burkeman in the break, where I got to meet a bunch of you. You’ve been sending in your thoughts about that. So, I’m just delighted to be back. If you haven’t heard my voice before, my name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about our deepest values as individuals and as a society, and particularly about the people behind the positions that shape our common life. It is a project about practicing curiosity and empathy over tribalism, and seeking to understand the hinterlands, really, of a wide range of humans. In more than five years of production, I’ve spoken to communists and Conservative MPs, songwriters and scientists, atheist and archbishops, and asked them what is sacred to them. What are their deepest values that they are trying to live by. I hope these conversations are a tiny act of resistance to the forces which are always trying to sell us three dimensional images, three dimensional stereotypes of the people who are not like us, and thereby maybe deliberately, maybe accidentally, drive us further apart. And if you think this kind of work, this kind of conversation, this intention is an important thing, I’d love to ask you right at the start of this series, would you consider sharing the podcast on your social media, if you have social media, leaving us a review, if you haven’t already left us a review, and a huge thank you to the people that have. I’ve been reading them and they are so encouraging. Some of them have really helpful suggestions. We love reviews! And if neither of those are right for you, maybe just sending an episode to a friend who you’d like to have a deeper conversation with. The reason I keep asking – and I know it gets boring, and you skip over this bit, and podcast hosts are always asking you this – but it’s particularly in our case, because the kind of content that makes us angrier, and more scared, the kind of content that maybe appeals to the worst parts of ourselves spread like wildfire, spreads easily, is incredibly clickable, right, because of the problem the human heart, because of these human–made algorithms. And so content that forms us in healthier ways, as we hope this is, might need a bit of help. And you could be the person to give it some help today.
And I’m pretty sure this will be an easy episode to share because my guest is so wonderful. Abi Morgan OBE is a Welsh–born playwright and screenwriter who must now be a very useful Grand Dame of UK film and television. Her credits are too long to recite, but you might know her work from “The Iron Lady”, “The Split” or “The Hour”. She has recently written her first book, “This Is Not A Pity Memoir”, about the illness, coma and subsequent serious brain injury of her long–time partner Jacob, and her own breast cancer during that time, and the very unusual psychological syndrome that Jacob experienced in the aftermath and they had to deal with together. We spoke about her journey into writing. How stories give us a sense of self, and how do you make any kind of meaning out of the multiple tragic events that she has experienced. There are some reflections for me at the end, and I really hope you enjoy listening.
What is sacred to you? Abi Morgan’s answer
Elizabeth
Abi, you are a tender of words. And I have lobbed a very big and slightly less common word at you right at the start of an interview when it’s early in the morning, and we’re both waking up. So before I asked what is sacred to you, I wanted to ask how you got on with the word? How did it land with you? How did it feel?
Abi Morgan
What, the word ‘sacred’?
Elizabeth
The word ‘sacred’. People have a very big range of reactions to it.
Abi Morgan
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, because I lay in bed last night thinking about it. And I was realising it’s quite challenging to be asked what’s sacred to you. There are the obvious things, obviously: one’s children, people that we love. But when I try and focus on what’s sacred to me, you know, irrespective of anyone else, I find that much harder, actually, and it made me realise I have the most fundamental, basic, sacred things like my coffee every day is pretty damn sacred to me. But I don’t… it’s been an interesting word to mull over, because it has made me realise there are certain things that I try to keep sacred. It’s a battle for me. Keeping something sacred is quite a battle.
Elizabeth
Yeah, it is. And don’t worry, it’s a really mean, and difficult question. I hope it’s also a regenerative one, I don’t know that any of us really know. But it can just sort of strip off a few layers of the every day, to give us a chance to think: “what might be my vision of the good?” “What might be the things I’m using to orient my life?” And sometimes, it’s five years later, which it was with Helen Lewis. I asked her on this podcast, and then she went and made a BBC programme about it because it bugged her so much. But having had a bit of time, what did bubble up for you? What are your guesses?
Abi Morgan
Well, I guess what’s sacred to me are two things, truth and time. So, time is pretty sacred. And I don’t mean that necessarily in a kind of, every morning, I open my palms to the sun. I mean that I’m constantly working to a deadline. And what I realised is those deadlines filter into every element of my life, and certainly when my children were small. I think, as a mother, I was constantly creating deadlines. And my deadlines can be so frenzied that they can be in the context of conversation, where I’m thinking, “How is this conversation going to wind up rhythmically? How do we get through that?” And one of the things that I try to give myself now, and I’m aware that I erode, is time. Because the deadline is always about chasing, racing, against time. You’re always trying to get something in on a Friday, when really you need a couple more days. You’re always trying to split yourself. I think this is not unusual if you’re a mother, and a partner, and a friend, and someone who has a busy career and a busy life, then that happens. I guess time is central. And then the other thing is truth. And I say this tongue–in–cheek as someone who spends every day creating fiction. What I’m trying to do as a fiction writer is trying to find some universal truths. And those can be things that feel… I have to go back to my instinct and think: “this feels true to something that I’ve experienced”, but also true to something that is in the room, or within the context of something I’ve observed or something I have imagined. What’s pretty sacred is when I’m writing, I’m looking for that. That doesn’t mean I don’t create and have to write my way through endless kind of forests of rubbish and sort of things that aren’t genuine. But I suppose truth and authenticity is something that is quite sacred to me. And authenticity as a person. The people I like most, we’re all struggling to be authentic. You know, we’re all given so many messages every day, about how to be, how to appear. But actually, to be really authentic, to try and go back to that part of yourself – certainly, with some of the challenges that I’ve faced over the last few years – have been absolutely essential. But also as a writer, and an observer, and as someone who commentates on life. Trying to find the authentic and trying to find the truth in a situation, it’s the truffle that every truffle pig is trying to sniff out. You know, it’s sort of part of the daily thing I do each day.
Elizabeth
That’s beautiful. And I am giving myself a gold star because, as I’m getting to know a guest ahead to speaking with them, I often try and guess what their sacred value is. And yours was so clearly truth and honesty, coming through in your memoir – I loved the book, by the way – in an incredibly beautiful way. So I’m sure that we’ll circle back to what that means, particularly when you’re trying to talk your own story.
Childhood: creativity, home, and the spiritual power of theatre
But first, I want to get a sense of where you’ve come from. What’s the beginning of your story? And particularly, if you think back to your childhood, were there any big ideas in the air that felt particularly formative for you?
Abi Morgan
I suppose. If you grew up with creatives, which is what I did – I grew up with a mother who was an actress and a father who was a director. And I grew up in theatres and on TV studios, and constantly seeing plays from a very young age. And being in rehearsals and understanding the kind of metronome of the creator’s life, which is very ‘feast–and–famine’, and that plays, and first nights, and production has a rhythm to it. And I guess one of the things that really form such a strong blueprint within me is that natural life has a natural structure, and stories have natural shape. And I think a lot of that came from that very formative period when I was incredibly young, maybe even nonverbal, when I was constantly around that world, and constantly around storytelling. And my parents, not without being too pretentious, but I had a lot of references, I had a lot of play references, we knew a lot of playwrights, we knew a lot of actors, we knew a lot of directors. So I could see work being created. And so I realised very early on that, art and the creation of art wasn’t something other, it wasn’t something that happened somewhere else, it was something that happened around your kitchen table. It was something that occupied your day, it was how you paid your bills. And so for me, art at the centre and being a creator has always just felt like in the same way if your dad was a plumber. You’d hopefully know how to unblock a sink, just by observing. I think I gained a lot of value from growing up in that environment. And just understanding that art is a way to express and reflect, and should be absolutely central in everyone’s life. And I think I was very fortunate because at the time I came through state school education. But when I came through state education, I had two or three really key players within the arts that I came across through my education. So you know, drama, and the making of plays, and dance for me was incredibly important. And so I felt like art was a was a huge form of both escapism, and also expression, and a way to get to that truer place.
Elizabeth
Yeah. And because of your parents’ artistic careers, you ended up moving around a lot. How do you feel about that now, looking back?
Abi Morgan
I think it makes you very chameleon, and it makes you shape shift. I think it’s interesting that both my brother and my sister and I, we have all lived in houses now for probably 20 years, the same house. And I think that is an absolute reaction to moving around a lot. So it was a very peripatetic childhood. I mean, obviously, we had three/four year periods in houses and in places, but there was always a feeling that something was temporary, and that actually, this was not home. And weirdly, it was only till I came to London that I really felt I came home, because I think London is a city of strangers. It’s an ‘everywhere place’. People come from all over the world to London, and so there’s something very weirdly welcoming about it. And it allows you to be quite invisible, and yet absolutely part of it. So I think it encouraged me to kind of embrace change. Having said that, the stability I always wanted to give my children was I wanted them to grow up in the same house that they’d spent most of their childhood in.
Elizabeth
You said this beautiful thing about remembering being in theatres all your childhood, remembering the scratchiness of theatre seats on your cheek, which just really stayed with me as this image of a little child curled up in the stalls somewhere. And that will come back to kind of spirituality, religion, meaning–making, how that interacts with stories… but various guests from the theatre world have said to me that their experience of theatre is something akin to a religious experience. That there is something ritually powerful about sitting with strangers in the dark, and for various guests, it kind of is their religious life. Does that ring true for you? Does that feel like it echoes in your childhood, or was it something different for you?
Abi Morgan
I think creativity, and certainly from a very young age, I understood the power of words being spoken communally in a room, which I suppose you could see that in a church, you could see that in a temple, you could see that in a synagogue. So, I recognise the kind of metaphor of theatre as church. I suppose, for me, that faith – and the strength of faith is that it should not be proven, It’s a dedication to something that doesn’t absolute… – has always been a conversation. It’s always been a philosophical conversation for me. And so I always have an internal voice talking to someone. Now, I think for some people, that’s their God. I think for me, it’s the kind of internal conversation that I’ve had from a really early age, that was encouraged within my own family and my own household. Interestingly, I went to a Church of England school for a large period. And then, when it came for confirmation, we were about to move again. And my father just couldn’t understand why I’d want to be confirmed, because he was not religious. You know, my mother would consider herself a Christian, but, we rarely went to church. So, I understood very quickly that everybody had their own interpretation of religion and faith, where I always knew an audience was held, where I always knew a place where people listen. And sometimes and often didn’t listen, because we’ve all been in a theatre and looked at our watches and sort of thought, “Oh, my God, how long? How much longer is this going on for?” But I did recognise the power of theatre, and I do recognise the power of that space. So I think, what’s interesting is, I was a really shy performer. You know, my sister was an actor, I’m married to an actor. My father was originally an actor, my mother’s an actress. So, everybody around me – my brother–in–law’s an actor – there was always a sense that they were ready to perform. And so, I was actually very shy of that. So I think in a weird way, it kept me even more in this internal place. So, what I would love was structure and words. And I still, even now, I love the plays that allow me to escape, but the plays that don’t, they’ll often let me riff and I’ll start to think of a structure of something else. So it’s often a meditative space for me, which I think is what you want from a place of worship, you want from a place of togetherness, you want from a communal space, where you’re just being given time to listen and not react. That’s one of the big things. I think, as a writer, you’re always having to react to the world. And it’s one of the things that I understand about burnout. Part of why burnout happens is that, for a while, you just don’t want to react to anything. You just want to sit, and observe. and listen for a while.
Creativity, writing, and personal growth through storytelling
Elizabeth
But I’m right in thinking, for someone who’s had this completely stellar writing career, you didn’t really start writing till university. Why was that?
Abi Morgan
No, I really wasn’t academic. I mean, I’ve got a… Seven years ago, like many people around the world, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which made a huge sense of my lack of academic achievement. I found school and the kind of classrooms incredibly hard, and I just wasn’t one of those kids who was… I didn’t sit and write poems. I think I wrote one truly terrible poem when I was 15, but I didn’t express myself in that way. But what I did do was, I was a storyteller – in terms of, I was a terrible liar. You know, I would always exaggerate, the story would always get bigger. And actually, the irony is that, one of the things that I realised when my kids were little was that I would come home at the end of the day, and I’d have nothing to reply to “What did you do today, mommy?” And all I could think was, “Well, I’ve actually sat in complete silence writing all day.” But I would often riff on what I’ve been writing with them, and I build the story of what I’d been writing, because I hadn’t done anything. I haven’t had any interaction with anyone, I hadn’t saved anyone’s life that day, or dug up a road, or farmed an amazing field. Most of the time, I sit in silence. So writing was not my natural space. But what I discovered when I was at university, was that I was sort of forced to write a monologue. And it was a kind of bad Alan Bennett rip off. But what it allowed me to experience was being listened to. And I guess the feeling I had observed when I was very young in the theatre was suddenly I was part of that experience in a very active way. And I guess that’s where I really discovered this kind of, not only just this passion, but just sort of kinship with it. It just felt like the right place to be for me.
Elizabeth
That that first monologue, it was then sort of off the blocks. This is such a hard question, but what is it about story and the process of making them and telling them that you found so addictive? Kind of, what are you mining when you’re working on a story?
Abi Morgan
Well, it’s the phrase, “Even chaos has a form”. And so often, I’m trying to work through the chaos of my mind. You know, I’m in a really interesting moment, actually, because I have lots of little bits of screenplays, and a few kinds of bits of TV that I’m just finishing up on. They’re sort of about to get to directors and actors, and I’m feeling this moment, which initially terrifies me, which is I just don’t quite know what I’m gonna write next. And it’s not because I don’t have ideas – it’s almost as if I’ve too many ideas, but I’m waiting to see which is the one that will fire, which is the one that I want to go forward with, which was the one that I want to occupy potentially for the next two three years of my life. Because the process of (certainly) screenwriting, it’s a real journey from the blank page to finally sitting in that screening room or in the cinema or on television and seeing it on screen. So you have to know where you’re racing with someone. But I guess for me, storytelling, on a kind of creative professional level, is a way to enhance and embrace, and try and capture experiences or thoughts, or thesises that I see in the world. And also to entertain through character, entertain through jeopardy, entertain through drama, and to entertain through comic moments. But then, I think on a kind of bigger level, I’ve had to think about ideas of mortality and lifelines, and how long we get on this planet, and how long will our stories be. And I find it kind of very interesting now to go right back to my childhood. I’m 54 now, and in many ways, that feels like a very early chapter of my life. Those are the early chapters. But now it’s… I’m thinking, “How many more chapters do I have?” And so, I think a lot about rhythm and where the balance of my life has been, and what the drivers have been. And no one tells you when you hit 50, that the drivers, the motivations, the kind of threads, that they’re harder to understand and find, because we’re so geared up till 50 to sort of tick all the boxes: walk, talk, all the basic things when we’re children. Connect, communicate, grow up, have an education, fall in love, or not, find happiness, family, children, or whatever other way you want to have your family. Career achievements, successes, ageing, our children growing up, our children leaving home. And now you’re 54, and you’re like, “Okay, well, what are my drivers now?” So, this bit of the narrative, this bit of the story, I’m thinking a lot about at the moment. Probably in the way that I would think about it on a sort of scriptorium point of view. And the way I look at it is, I look around for my models, I look around for other people’s stories and start to reflect on other people’s stories as a way to try and make sense of where I am myself at the moment.
Elizabeth
Yeah, you’ve expressed so beautifully. One of my favourite philosopher’s called Alistair McIntyre. And he had this kind of narrative conception of the self – “the storied self”, he calls it – and talks about restricting stories, particularly for children but for all of us, being almost a form of abuse, because they are the raw material by which we narrate ourselves to ourselves. When you look back at the stories that you have been interested in, the stories that you’ve told – so many different beautiful stories – can you see like common threads or common themes that always make you go, “Yes, that’s the story I want to tell.”
Abi Morgan
Well, it’s interesting, because I don’t often reflect back on my work, and I very rarely watch it again, or read it again, even. Certainly not my plays. But I think, loss is a big thing in my work, overcoming loss. There are always quests, always some kind of journey, someone is always trying to reconnect, re–find someone find an answer to something. I mean, these are the basics of stories, really. But I can see certain themes occupy me, and I know places where I’m comfortable. And that’s not always a good thing. You know, I just spent the last five years writing a show, which I loved writing, which was a whole group of women in an office, but part of why I’ve chosen not to keep writing that show is that it got really comfortable. And I’ve thought, actually, “I can’t keep repeating the same thing.” I need to find what’s the next thing I want to tell, because otherwise, I guess the stories that I’m choosing to tell, they always inherently feel like they move me on as well, as a person, or maybe they motivate me to move on. So I always try and find stories outside of myself, that will slightly push me forward, as well.
Navigating life’s plot twists: Jacob’s coma and delusion, cancer, and controlling the narrative
Elizabeth
I was listening, in preparation for speaking to you, to the “Desert Island Discs” that you did. And you have this incredibly beautiful and heart–breaking kind of final statement about feeling like your life had all the jigsaw pieces in it, mainly, and jokingly not the Oscar – everyone always has a piece that they’re missing. But you sound very, very grateful and peaceful. And there is a sense of narrative conclusion to the end of that interview, but it was a few months before what you described (I would make clear, so that doesn’t sound too flippant) as a sort of giant unexpected plot twist. What happened with Jacob, could you just tell the beginning of that for us?
Abi Morgan
Yeah, so I think I did the Desert Island Discs maybe in either the April of 2017, or April 2018 even. But in June 2018, Jacob, my partner of nearly 18 years, collapsed with a brain seizure. We later realise it was a reaction to some medication he had been on. But what ensued after that, was that Jacob went into a total physical, cognitive, psychotic breakdown of the next two weeks and was placed in a medically induced coma for seven months. And he woke up again in January 2019. And it was very apparent that Jacob was very changed, and that actually, whilst he had survived, what we discovered was a rare form of encephalitis, Anti–NMDA receptor encephalitis. He himself now had to learn how to walk again, and connect again, and find agency, and language, and really find himself again. But what was very key and at the centre of that was that Jacob had also developed a really rare delusion called ‘Capgras delusion’, which is the belief in imposters and doubles, and it can often be focused on the person that they’re closest to, or it could be a house, or it could even be a pet. But with Jacob, it was focused on me. And so, when Jacob woke up in those early months of 2019, he believed that I was an imposter, and that, over time, he came to accept that I was someone who was working for the state, helping to look after him and his children. And so this kind of extraordinary period happened where Jacob had gone through this very, at times, truly critical medical experience. But actually, as we then evolved into his rehab and his recovery, and he came home, we also had to deal with, for the next 18 months to two years, Jacob was really gripped by this delusion that I was someone else. And so, that in itself, in terms of that big plot twist, was really shocking and kind of flipped Jacob and my life completely upside down, but also obviously the lives of our family, and in particular lives of our children, who at the time were 14 and 16. And so I subsequently…
Elizabeth
Forgive me for interrupting. You write about this so beautifully, and any part of that story would have been a very difficult experience to go through. Six months with your beloved in a coma is an extraordinarily formative time, and you write about the scene – and I’m thinking about scenes, because you think of it as scenes, and we think of life as scenes – in a cafe with a friend whilst he was still in the coma, who asked you, “What is your biggest fear?” Can you just recall that moment for me and how you think about it now looking back?
Abi Morgan
Yeah, I mean, actually, funnily enough, I think in the book, the friend says, “What if he doesn’t remember who you are?”, and I don’t think I believed that was possible. That felt like such a trope, such a cliché, and I think that was one of the things, when it happened, it just felt slightly ridiculous. I’d watch movies where it happened. And I hadn’t realised that… In a way, I hadn’t realised that, of course, as someone who makes life and creates that intersection, that has to come from somewhere. So, I think my initial reaction was when Jacob did first wake up and he was a little bit like a kind of bear coming out of hibernation. And so, I kind of put down his grumpiness and his slightly kind of strange, kind of dark–eyed stare to me as just, he just couldn’t orientate himself. But there was very one clear moment where Jacob was finally off his ventilator, had been off the ventilator, and he was brought out in a wheelchair and all of Jake’s family and his young nephews and nieces had come to see him, and our children were there, and he was reunited with our dog… And it was an incredibly moving moment as we wheeled him around the square – Queen Square, if you’ve ever been. Jake was at the National Hospital and there’s this square which, I think if anyone’s ever been there, they know it’s a very strange, sort of, almost like ‘Richard Curtis–esque’ kind of rom–com square, because there’s so many kinds of changes of seasons that go on there. And there’s always extraordinary families with obviously very sick children, and lovers, and builders, and it’s a sort of strange place, but I took huge comfort from it. And we were walking Jacob around the square and I’m filming him, and there are two things I find really unsettling about it. One is that I’m talking to Jacob like he’s a child. I’m saying “Look, Jake, look! Isn’t it amazing? Smile!” And the other is that Jacob is increasingly irritated by this person behind the screen. And it was around that time that I started to truly suspect Jacob didn’t know who I was. And it was Valentine’s Day where it was really distilled when I came in with this cheesy red hot balloon, and the nurse encouraged him to give me a Valentine’s gift, which was a sort of one of those cheap garage roses, plastic. And Jake looks so horrified, and embarrassed me that, when she said “You didn’t give your wife the rose”, he went, “That’s not my wife.” At the time, you talk about the screenplay writer in me, there was always that voice bartering. I was always bartering with drama. You know, it was all these real terrifying, tragic moments, I was always at the time going, “Is this good drama? Is this a good moment? Is this a good scene?” But also I was always sort of playing around with things people said. So, Jacob just saying “She’s not my wife” at the time, I was like, “No, I’m not his wife. In fact, I’m his girlfriend”. And in fact, that was quite an issue for Jacob that we’ve never got married. So, even those little things I would grasp and try and shake and change and reshape and make them work for my story, my version of the story. But that sort of form of interrogation, and that form of storytelling, became absolutely essential to survive the experience, I think.
Elizabeth
One of the things that Jacob said to you throughout your marriage was “Be present”, or “Stay here in the moment.” How much do you think that…
Abi Morgan
He said, “Be careful, you’re going to miss your life”. And I think about that, and the awful thing is, I still think about that. Because it’s amazing how you think you learn from these experiences, and then old habits kick back in and you get busy again and you forget again. And you said about me seeming at peace. Well, I refer to in the book as… I questioned whether I was too smug, I got too comfortable. Because I think if you come from… My parents had a very acrimonious divorce. And I think if you come from divorce, that’s something that you always know is in the wheelhouse of experience. So I had always never really trusted my relationship, trusted that something could survive. And I think around about the time I did “Desert Island Discs”… Obviously, you get seduced by the narrative of that show, anyway. You’re trying to sum up your life in seven records or something, which is pretty damn impossible. But I did question whether the gods above had sort of slightly tried to yank my chain, and pride comes before a fall for me. So, there are a lot of quite destructive self–flagellating elements to that, and I have had to – and I still have to – work on the kind of idea that we don’t always draw these bad things to us, that unfortunately, they just happen, which is what happened with Jake.
Elizabeth
I’ll be honest with you. When I read that, I had a little cry. I wanted to give you such a big hug, which is very impertinent, because we’ve never met, but you are so hard on yourself! You didn’t sound smug at all!
Abi Morgan
Well, that’s good. I mean, I don’t know if I’m hard on myself. I think I am searching to be truthful. I mean, that sounds very earnest because of course, we’re all creations, we’re all manufactured. You know, I’ve told the story of this book several times. I’m constantly capturing my phrases that I’ve used and checking my authenticity, but I guess I’m always challenging myself. You could never see the back of your head. The only way you can see the back of your head, is if you put a mirror up to it, and I’m constantly trying to put a mirror up and going, “What are you doing here? Why are you doing that?” You know, and I think part of it is hyper vigilance. You know, I think if you, if you grew up in a very creative, very busy, very often chaotic, often wonderful, but often difficult household, you stay very vigilant, and you try and keep ahead of yourself. I think what was humbling about the experience that happened to Jacob, and actually subsequently also happened to me when I had my own health scare, in the middle of it all, was that I realised I didn’t have the ability to control the narrative. I didn’t have the ability to take control of everything. And this is where I develop this new thing, which has been really powerful for me, which is I give my…. I can’t even believe I’m saying this on air, but I now do this thing, which is I open my arms up literally at the most difficult moments and I say, “Universe, it’s in your arms”. And I literally go “Help me!” sometimes now, because I realise I cannot control everything about what’s happened to us, and what will happen in the future, and what is happening in the world. That doesn’t mean I don’t think that I can affect change, and that doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to be hard on myself, but what you may see as ‘hard’, I see as ‘vigilant’. And also, I see as important to check yourself, important to interrogate yourself. I mean, I don’t think it makes you the funniest person at the party, if I’m honest, but I do think it’s just part of my mechanism, of how I live.
An authentic memoir: characterisation, therapy, and storytelling
Elizabeth
And honestly, you trying to write honestly about yourself is part of what makes this book so compelling and watching in real time someone… I had this picture of you with a Rubik’s cube trying to make meaning out of the chaos: “Is it because I was smug? Is it because I relaxed into my life?” The seemingly real foreshadowing of something coming, which we sort of think only happening in fiction. I just can imagine it being completely head–scrambling. But as far as I can tell, it’s the first time you’ve tried to write about yourself. What was that process? Because you’re a character, but you’re also trying to be true; how much did you have to force yourself to be that honest and raw in such a beautiful way?
Abi Morgan
Well, that’s very nice of you. Well, actually, I always remember reading about JK Rowling, writing in cafés, and then it would just pour out of her. And I was always so… I mean, I’ve never had a thing. I’ve not really ever had writer’s block, and I don’t think writer’s block is always a bad thing. I think writer’s block is sometimes a moment where we just keep ourselves in a holding pattern to just try and work out where we’re going forward. But I’ve always been able to keep writing. The problem is, often it’s junk. So what was interesting for me with sitting down… It’s often junk, when I write, but then the structure and the mathematics and the shaping comes in. And that’s where the work also really begins. What was interesting when I wrote this book is that I wrote it during the second lockdown. I think we all experienced that period during second lockdown when we’d kind of made our bread, and we’ve done a bit of gardening, and we’ve done Endless Space Time drinks with our girlfriends, and bingo and quizzes with our family. But the October lockdown felt very dark, and it was one of the hardest periods as well, in terms of Jake’s recovery, because he was home and still didn’t know who I was at that point. And that was proving more and more challenging to be in a house with someone who you love dearly, but who thinks you’re a stranger. And also with two teenagers who wanted to go out and have life, and were suddenly not able to do their A levels and their GCSEs and all of those things. And so, it really did pour out of me. I really did have that thing where I just sat at the kitchen table when the kids were in bed, when Jake was in bed, and I started kind of at 10 o’clock at night. And then I would just write, and it was so therapeutic. And yet, I also knew it couldn’t be therapy. And I think this is where the probably 20 odd years’ experience as a screenwriter – which is always an doing battle, always, “Is this a screenplay? Is this a play? Is this a memoir?” Well, in truth, I think I would have made it into a play originally, because I had this idea I was going to use it as part of Jake’s rehab to get him back on stage, and I tell him the story of what had happened to him. But of course lockdown happened, theatres closed. So that’s why, suddenly, writing it down, it became this way that I could communicate with the world, but also communicate with Jacob at a point where he couldn’t see me and I couldn’t hear him. You know, at this point, Jacob was about 25%… Well, no, at that point was probably about 10% of himself, and he had no agency or initiation in anything. So, most of the time, he just stared into the middle distance or watched endless episodes of ‘Friends’. And so, this kind of very alive, very… Jake and I are really big communicators. You know, he’s – God knows how he’s put up with my chatter for the last 20 odd years. So to have that companion go silent on you, I think the writing became this place and this work to carry on the conversation. And so the memoir really is about, I’m constantly talking to Jacob, I’m not unconsciously going “You did this today.” “This happened to you today.” But also, I’m talking all the time. I’m stepping back, and thinking “How do I take control of this? How does this work? What if this was a film? Would I cut this? I definitely cut this bit…” So, I think there was so many things going on during that period that were kind of sanguine and gave me time to reflect.
The power of memoirs: vulnerability, and human connection
Elizabeth
You’ve answered one of my questions, which was about the second person, because it’s this beautiful book entirely written to you, which is such an unusual form. I can very much see it as a play. I hope it eventually is a play as well, maybe. I wanted to just drill a bit more into that ‘honesty’ thing. And the line that’s always stayed with me is, it’s quite early on and you say, “We’re not married, and I’m a bit embarrassed about the fact we’re not married. And I’m embarrassed about the fact that I’m embarrassed that we’re not married.” And it struck me as this incredibly generous honesty and something deeply true that I’m sure many people reading the book have felt in life. Those layers of ourselves, the tender things, and then the way we shame ourselves for having the tender places in ourselves. And the title of the book is “This Is Not A Pity Memoir”. I just wanted you to say a little bit about what you think memoir does, and its humanising effects. What comes through is obvious in the title and elsewhere, some of your ambivalence about it, and its validity or its power. That’s a very convoluted question, forgive me, but I hope you can find something to grab on to.
Abi Morgan
I mean, well, I think a memoir is a kind of call, it’s a call to remember, isn’t it? A memoir is a moment where you recall an experience or a moment in your life. And so that does one or two things. It demands interrogation and scrutiny, because we know that we create memory. And yet, we also know that there are some facts and truth in that. And that’s always what I’m battling with in the book, which is what is real and what isn’t, what is my construct and what’s really happening. It is a constant thing I’m circling in the book. And so, I think, for me, that the title of the book works on many levels. And what’s key is that it’s actually one of the first conversations I have with Jacob – which I talked about in the book – which is when I met him at a dinner party for the first time. At the time, I was chasing a beautiful memoir, which was Ruth Picardie’s “Before I Say Goodbye”, which is the most stunning collection of emails and articles and bits of writing by Ruth Picardie, who was a journalist and who said she was dying of breast cancer. And she writes about the experience of… and the extraordinary in the ordinary of saying goodbye to those you love. At the time, she was married with two small children, and she had a very dear relationship with her sister Justine. And I love this book, and I was chasing the film rights for it. And I was at dinner and sitting opposite me was an incredibly drunk girl, and she said, “What do you do?” And I said, “I write for television”. And I was just starting to talk about writing, and I said, “I’m trying to get the film rights for this book”. And she was like, “God, I hate those pity memoirs”. And that phrase ‘pity memoir’ really stayed with me over the years. And one of the reasons why instantly connected with Jacob was, he was sitting next to this girl and he went, “I don’t. I love those books. Tell me about it.” And he was so open, and he was really interested in storytelling and human storytelling. And so for me, that was like that ping I talked about, that kind of moment, which… I’ve never told my children this, but I still believe that I don’t think there’s one person for us. I think there are several people for us. But I think when we hear that internal ping with somebody, trust it, it’s a real moment of deep connection. And so the title is very dear to me whilst also sounding cynical. And the conclusion of the book is that there are no such things as ‘pity memoirs’, they’re just words on pages. And if they mean something to someone, then that but worth being said, worth being written. And that’s really what I feel about. The gift of the memoir is that you’re not necessarily… Yes, you’re trying to tell a story, but you’re also journeying with someone through your own experience, and the gift you give anyone else is to go “…”. And the gift that they give you back by buying that book and reading it, is that they make you feel less alone. And so for me, writing that book was about feeling less alone. And that’s really at the heart of everything I do. If I’m absolutely honest, that’s why I write, because I’m always writing to say, “Have you ever felt like this? Can you identify this character? Can I tell you this story? If you listen to this story, will you feel the way I feel about it? Do you care about these people? Do you care about this ending? Will you journey with me for the next 60–minute episode? I’m asking you to come with me.” And if they do, and when I occasionally read those tweets and those Instagrams and often the bad reviews, sometimes the good reviews, then I feel that’s the thing I’m looking for, is that I often write to just connect with people. And it’s a beautiful thing, screenplay writing, because I always say, “I never know if I am the birth mother, or the surrogate.” Because what happens when you write a screenplay and you create a group of characters, is they very quickly get adopted by a director, and a producer, and then actors. And then they become their own. And then you have a shot in the world that you can be in a hotel room, and suddenly it comes on, and you think “God who wrote that?” It becomes something so separate from you. And I love that. I love something moving on from me. And in fact, that’s why I don’t really like to look back at my work. I like to just keep going forward, because the job and the experience of writing it was the thing. That was the thing that was important. It wasn’t about me, sort of laying… I never keep a single screenplay. I haven’t got a single screenplay. My sister who works for me, my very dear sister, is currently trying to archive all my work, and I think that she’s tearing her hair out because she’s like, “Why did you never keep anything?” But I don’t keep anything. I throw everything away. I’m a mass consumer, I’m afraid. If I can’t use it, then I move on.
The superpowers of faith, love, and resilience
Elizabeth
Wow. What you said about “art makes us feel less alone” is what I see so strongly in so many stories. That story itself is kind of searching the world for bits of ourselves reflected back to feel real, or to feel kind of valid. But I think particular in a memoir and true stories, there’s the relief CS Lewis talks about, that reading something and saying, “Oh, you feel that too. I thought I was the only one.” And it does feel like kind of intensely humanising. One of the things I found particularly in your book, is this kind subtle strand / question about spirituality and religion. You talk about Jacob’s cultural Judaism, but strong atheism and at various point, when you’re going through this valley of the shadow of death, people are praying for you, you light a candle… I kind of love… It feels like there’s many stories in the world of people who are very assuredly religious, and stories in the world of people who are definitely sure they are not. Could you say a little bit more about that complexity, and in particular, how it played out during that very intense period with Jacob?
Abi Morgan
Yeah, I mean, I think faith… I said to you before, I think faith is the belief in something that can’t be proven, otherwise, it wouldn’t be faith, it will be something more absolute. And so I think marriage is faith, I think relationships are faith. Nobody can know 100% someone, so the act of loving someone or supporting someone, it’s an act of faith. And maybe the only love that we really have is the unconditional love of our children, because inherently they become something. They come from us physically, but actually, even they become their own people in their own right. So faith is really interesting. I talked about that philosophical relationship I have with another person in my head. That could be the view, or that could be the internal voice I carried very early on. I remember making a deal with God when I was about 13, to try and get my sister into drama school. And I said, “If you get her into drama school, I believe you”, and she didn’t get in. And I remember giving up at that point. I literally remember that as a moment. But actually, what I’ve come to see is that you don’t get necessarily what you ask for, it’s not what you expect it. So I think the experience that happened with Jacob was very interesting, because the thing I had to hold on to, and actually was very easy to hold on to – people often said to me, “God, didn’t you want to leave Jacob?” And that wasn’t ever in my mind. Because the thing I held on to, and still hold on to, to this day, is I like Jacob so much. I don’t just love Jacob, I like him. I really like this man. And so it became bigger than me and him. And it became bigger than whether we were going to survive as a couple. What really became important to me is that he’s such a good person in the world. And so I wanted him to come back in the world. And so I had huge faith in him. And also, I had two children with Jacob, and we’ve got two very loving families who were around us and supported us through this. And I realised in that moment that Jake was bigger than my relationship with him. And of course, I knew he was a father, and a son, and a friend, and a brother. But Jacob had always really been mine. And I was incredibly territorial of that at the beginning. And then when Jacob didn’t recognise me anymore, one of the things I realised was that… and I talked about in the book, is that it’s not that he didn’t know who I was anymore; it’s that he didn’t know who he was anymore. And so, the job became about helping Jake find his way back into himself. And I don’t know what God is. I think God is whatever you need it to be. Genuinely, whatever you want your God, whether it’s Allah or if it’s Jesus, or if it’s Hashem, or if it’s chocolate, I don’t know what your God is. But all I know is the thing that carried me through – and I talked about it before and I can’t describe it, and it sounds whimsical. If you put this on a t–shirt, I just swear no one will buy it – but it’s a kind of “harm of love”. And I just felt how this love pulled me through. and I still think also that “love is interest”. I know, it sounds ridiculous. But if you’re interested in something – you’re interested in that plant, or you’re interested in that conversation with a stranger on the bus, or you’re interested in what’s happening in the Ukraine – there is love there. There’s love, there’s a connection. So, for me, I never lost that level connection. And even when Jake didn’t know me, one of the things that was really clear to me is that something in Jake defied what the psychosis was doing, and something in him didn’t make sense. So, what was key – and I’m only saying this without sort of dropping it heavily in the room – but if anyone reads the book… People often say, “you brush over this”, but I also got breast cancer in the middle of this, which was another really bad plot twist which we know about… But one of the things when I had breast cancer is that for Jacob, he couldn’t understand why he felt so sad about it. He felt sad because I was this person working for the state, but he couldn’t understand why he was truly so pained by it. And what I started to realise is that, while he had forgotten me emotionally, intellectually – he didn’t feel anything for me, he didn’t feel anything for me – there was something about my physicality that started to trigger and reconnect his feelings, and I think, quite literally started to help reconnect the neurons in his brain. So he’d see me lose my hair, and seeing the shape of my head, or recognising the flatness of the back of my head, or seeing me have chemotherapy upstairs in our living room and looking around the corner at me, all of those things became… I’m so sorry.
Elizabeth
It’s beautiful. Please don’t apologise.
Abi Morgan
I’m laughing while you’re crying. But also, if anyone hears is it’s not like now, Jake, and I look at each other and we’re kind of like white doves. We still argue, we still drive each other up the wall. It’s a normal marriage. But I was so invested in Jake, I was so bound up in Jake, I so wanted him to live in the world, and I still feel like that about him. I still feel like, irrespective of where Jake and I ever ended up together, I really… One of the great achievements of me is that Jake is now back in the world again, and whole, and whilst different, and while still recovering, he’s still that extraordinary person, and he’s still that lovable person. And that feels like that’s nothing to do with me or my superpower. But I do think it’s the sort of superpower of whatever Love is, that we managed to all communally be that through my brilliant children, or our family, or our friends. And it was difficult. And it’s a grenade in the dynamics of family. And there was anger, and there was rivalry, and there were jealousies, and there were fights. And it was not all perfect. But within it, what was absolutely true was that the biggest commitment and the greatest faith we had was our commitment to getting Jake better. So that became a really noble and worthwhile thing to do with one’s life. And if anything, what it’s made me realise now is that – I keep saying this, and I forget it, but I have to know that – this is enough. That, if this is all I get of life, this is enough, because to see Jacob’s mortality challenged and then to experience my own mortality challenged, then I realised that actually, this little life that we get is enough. It’s got to be enough. Because suddenly, then you see the god in small things. You do see the god – whatever that is – in small thing. Jacob drove me mad last night about something, and just before we went to bed, he went, “Let’s not go to bed being angry with each other”. And I really wanted to go to bed angry with him. I was looking forward to going upstairs and watching Happy Valley and being really cross with him. But actually, forcing me to stay with him and laugh with him again and hold him again and remind myself that actually, it’s a day–to–day commitment. Every day, I have to renew those commitment that vow to each other.
Elizabeth
And you did get married?
Abi Morgan
Yeah, we did get married. I know. Yeah, we got married… Poor guy. I mean, I have to be absolutely honest. I think he would admit it as well. I’m not entirely sure he was ‘compos mentis’ when he walked down the aisle. So if you really want to get someone to marry you, just make sure that they’ve just gone through some major kind of traumatic brain experience, because traumatic brain injury makes someone much more susceptible to getting married. And he does look extraordinary bewildered on all the photos, but it was the most beautiful day. I mean, it basically came around in about the spring of 2021, when Jacob was starting to recognise me, and certainly the world was opening up for him a little bit more. And I just felt this profound sense of us needing to be married and knowing that, if anything happened to him again, I would… Just the legality and also, let’s be honest, tax – that I’d be able to be there for him. So it was lovely. It was just both our families and a couple of really good friends in our favourite Italian restaurant. And he still thinks that he looked like Laurel Hardy in his enormous grey suit that was immediately burned when he when he finally lost all his weight, but it was a really special day. And actually, it does feel different. It feels very different. I mean, the weird thing is he’s embraced being married much more than me. He’s much more into the idea of “husband and wife” whereas I still find it very strange. And listen, I’m not an advocate… Most of people I know and love have never got married. That doesn’t mean they’re not married. They just haven’t done it legally. But we just needed to do it. I guess, in a time of uncertainty, I needed to do something very traditional and very certain and that had a very obvious ritual. Although I have to say the guy who married us did look like KFC Colonel Sanders, and that kept us laughing through most of the ceremony.
Elizabeth
Which is a lovely thing to do.
Abi Morgan
It was a lovely day…
Elizabeth
Abi Morgan, thank you for the book, it’s beautiful, and thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.
Abi Morgan
Thanks so much. Thank you so much, lovely to come on it. Thanks a lot, bye.
Reflection and Outro
Elizabeth
While listening back to that interview with Abby, I had a second cry. It’s not that unusual for me to cry in an interview – it’s more unusual for me to cry listening back and reading it back. She has such a fascinating story. It’s been recounted in much more detail, both in the book and in lots of other interviews. I didn’t want to kind of go over well covered ground, but I would encourage you to either buy the book or go listen in more detail to the beats of that story, because it’s just an extraordinary thing to live through. But she also has such a helpful way of talking about both that and her work. And so, we started right before what she said was sacred, she said how much of a battle it is to keep anything sacred. And I think that’s partly why I asked the question. It’s probably why I ask the question of myself: what are my values? Why do I think I’m here? What am I trying to live for? And keep the main thing in a world where that is easily designed out of our lives. And she said “truth”, and I knew she would. But it’s so interesting. She also said “time”. It sounds like her life is extremely busy. But she said truth. And it reminded me of the interview we did with Rowan Deacon, who is a documentary filmmaker. And she had this thing that, if you try and do something in the edit that isn’t true, the film will fight you. Which stayed with me so much, maybe more than more than… It stayed with me for a long time. And Abi seems to be grasping at the same thing. That even though she’s telling fictional stories, not factual stories, truth is still very much a play. And a fictional story that has truth in it is different from a fictional story that doesn’t. And I think we all sort of know what she means, but it’s really hard to describe what she means. You know, sometimes you just read a line in a novel, and it’s the shock of recognition, the shock of “Yes, that is an accurate way of describing the world, or how humans work, or my experience.” I will be very interested to think more about what we mean by that, and why I both know it’s true, but don’t know how to talk about it. Truth and fiction. So clearly, this child formed by stories from very early on – “what is the shape of a life?” “What is the shape of a story?” And when I asked her, “What is she drawn to? Why does she tell stories?” She said, chaos. “Even chaos has a form”, that she’s trying to make sense of her own mind, and that… There’s such a strong thread through this conversation and through her work which is “meaning–making”, making meaning out of chaos. Making meaning out of the events of our lives that can seem random. And how that is so clearly her practice of meaning–making and how she is helping make meaning, and how storytellers are helping make meaning for the people who read, and watch, and consume their work. Fascinating thing to watch someone and read someone who is so clearly writing their own life as it unfolds. And particularly with memoirs or with personal essay. The ability to be present in your life, even as you’re thinking about how to describe your life, is, I think, a double–edged sword. It might both make you pay more attention and do the thing that Jacob obviously thought that it was doing for Abi for many years: making her miss her life, making her absent. There’s something about being present that involves kind of surrendering to the ephemeralness of the moment, not taking a picture, not making a memory, not having this thing that I sometimes call “prestalgia”, which is being nostalgic in advance when you’re still there. But just letting it pass, being in it, and then letting it go. And how difficult that is, actually. She really is just delightfully honest about herself in the way that makes him very lovable. The vulnerability, and the earnestness, and the worry, and the hyper–vigilance, and the bit like “Why did this happen? Why did this happen?”, which is so deep in so many of us, right? Like any kind of suffering that comes up close to us busts our previous… reveals our previous default assumptions, whether that’s about deserving things, whether we’ve talked about meritocracy, whether it’s about a kind of prosperity gospel, whether a religious or a secularized version, whether it’s a kind of punishment and reward frame. So, suffering really kind of goes deep.
This “why” question is so deep in human beings, and she’s so raw with it, and so honest, and she says, “I can’t believe I’m saying this on air”. And again, this like forcing herself to say things that are a bit embarrassing, is so humanizing, and so lovely. The way that she surrenders to the universe when she says, “Universe, it’s in your hands”. As so many of the people I’ve spoken to, whether Kate Bowler or Nick Cave, Clover Stroud, even Oliver Burkeman actually more recently, around time, I just have such a strong sense that part of growing up as a person, part of growing up spiritually in my language, is knowing when to surrender. Knowing when things are not in our control. It’s that old, old serenity prayer, right? “Teach me to know the things I can change, and the things I can’t change. To accept the things I can’t change, to surrender, to unclench against the circumstances of our lives.” Well, that’s wisdom. And the other thing that comes through so strongly in the book and in Abi’s conversation is how powerful the love she has for Jacob is, and how rigorous… Even starting to write the book as a play because he is an actor, his previous career as an actor, and she was thinking, “How can I get him back on stage?” The seriousness and the fierceness of that kind of love – and I’m questioning myself here, but honestly, my first thought is, “Is a woman’s love, is the care of a woman’s love…” And it’s probably because I’ve been watching (high–brow alert!) ‘Queen Charlotte’. Yes, the Bridgerton prequel about Queen Charlotte and the monarch who was known as Mad King George, and how she fought for him and stood by him and loved him as he lost his mind. And she’s talking about meaning–making, and the strong sense from Abi is that, even though in some ways what they’ve been through is the worst possible thing, her commitment to loving him through it has been a rich source of meaning and purpose. It has been enough. She just talks about “If this is all the life we have, it’s been enough.” And yeah, very profound. She talks about memoirs as a call to remember. And it’s making me think of memoir as a form of attention. And the way that she calls it “This Is Not A Pity Memoir”, there’s ambiguity around it. There’s a lot of ambiguity, I think, right by ourselves. I’m trying to write about myself a bit at the moment, and there’s layers of shame and gender stuff, and “is it interesting?”, and “why would anyone care?” And I think the thing about “the most particular is the most universal” is so powerful. The reason Abi’s story tells us something powerfully universal about love, and about meaning–making and about courage is so particular. Capgras syndrome – incredibly rare. Your husband thinking that you are someone else for two years, whilst you were responsible for their very significant care because they have very significant brain injury? Just something most people go through. But in telling the particularity of her story, she connects with something in all of us, I think.
I’m thinking about the particular and the universal, because the other night I was reading the Gospel of John with three memoir writers (what is my life?) – but I have accumulated lots of friends from his podcasts and from elsewhere, and I happen to have some friends that are memoir writers. And we wanted to read some of the Bible together, because they’re interested in it as a text as writers. And for me, it’s a sacred text, but they were just interested in the text. And we started with the Book of John. And in the Book of John, it says, “In the beginning was the Word” and it starts at this mythical, mystic, universal level. The beginning was “Logos”, in the beginning was communication, in the beginning was this weird, quite abstract concept. It was the ‘Light of the World’, light in the darkness. It becomes clear that the book is talking about Jesus, but it starts universal, it starts abstract. It’s amazing, amazing poetry and it’s relating to Genesis, we had a great conversation about it. But then, chapter two of John is the wedding at Canaan. Sometimes people talk about the incarnation as the scandal of particularity. Like, God – forgive me for this theological rabbit hole – but God, we often assume, is this “phenomenal cosmic power” (yes, I’m quoting Aladdin) and omnipotent, omniscient… all of these very big, abstract philosophical concepts. But in the story that my faith uses to tell us something about God, there’s a particularity of a guy who goes to a wedding where the wine has run out. You know, so domestic, and particular. In our particularity, in our incarnation, in our bodies, in our embodiment, in our lives, in the day–to–day granularity of our lives, is something deeply profound when we pay attention to it, as Abi has been paying attention to him. I’ll probably leave it there, because there is much more I could say, but I love this book. I love the way it is real about the way we want pity. And we want dignity. And we want to be held, we don’t want to suffer, and we don’t want our loved ones to suffer, but we do. And so, we have to find our way through it together. Maybe the last line I’ll leave you with because I thought it was the most beautiful thing about the whole thing is when, and I’m summarizing, but she basically said: “His mind had forgotten me, but his body remembered me.” Extraordinary.
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