Elizabeth Oldfield speaks with actor and producer Greg Wise 07/02/2024

Intro

Elizabeth 

Hello and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield and this is a podcast about our deep values, the principles of the people who shape our common life and how we might build habits of curiosity and empathy towards those who are not like ourselves. I am so delighted to welcome you back to this new series after a little bit of a hiatus. To kick us off, we are very characteristically going deep quickly. We’re going to talk about death today. Last year, Theos, which is the think–tank under which the project of The Sacred sits, had a bit of a year of death. Don’t worry, we mean that in a really good, meaningful and important way. Theos launched a report about death, which you may well have seen in the media, because there was a huge amount of courage about our changing attitudes to the way we want to die, and particularly about funerals, and the fact that fewer and fewer people want funerals. Theos did an annual lecture with Dr. Catherine Mannix, who you’re going to hear about a little bit in this interview. That was accompanied by a new animation by our extremely talented animator, Emily Downe, and a team in which Dr. Catherine Mannix talks about what to expect from death. It’s an incredibly beautiful piece of work which has already traveled far and wide, and I’d really encourage you to go and check it out. We are also thinking about death today because through that work, the lecture and the animation, we got to know Greg Wise. That’s who I’m going to be interviewing today. Greg is an actor, he is an activist, he’s a writer, he’s been an architect, he is a man of many talents. You may know him from the Sense and Sensibility that had Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson in it, an absolute classic for Austen fans. You may know him more recently for The Crown. You may know him for standing beside his wife, Emma Thompson on red carpets, or for his beautiful book, which he co–authored with his sister, Claire, about the process of the end of her life. I’m really delighted that we got to talk to Greg on the podcast, and I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation. If you’re interested, at the end of every episode, I do a set of reflections on what I’ve heard and what it’s left me thinking about. So I hope you will keep listening to those, but in the meantime. Enjoy this conversation with Greg Wise. 

What is Sacred to you? Greg Wise responds

Greg, we are going to go deep fast. There’s no chit chat warm up here. I’m terrible at small talk. I’m always straight for the intense. We’ve had a little bit of time to think about what is sacred to you. But maybe before you reflect on that, how did the question land? Does it feel kind of warm and inviting, or a bit spiky and off putting, or something you’re very familiar with, or something very unfamiliar? 

Greg Wise

I think about the sacred a lot. I’m actually writing a bit tangentially, about the sacred. I liked the framing of what is sacred is something that you would fight hard for if it were threatened to be taken away from you. I think that’s a wonderful way of looking at it because it puts things in a very clear perspective. I was not brought up in a religious household. I hope I was brought up in a moral household. I think my clearest driving forces behind me are to try and be kind and to try and be inquisitive. If you can try and do those two things, you’re doing all right, because the problem that we find a lot more now is that would too boxed in thought, and we’re not inquisitive enough about other people’s views, and other people’s political views or religious views. And I’m very lucky now in my household that we have a son who was from Rwanda, he’s married to a Chinese girl. I’m from a central European background, I’m married to a girl who’s half–English, half–Scottish. We still have her 91 year old mum living opposite us. I was able to care for and be with my sister when she died. All of these things open up the mind of someone who was brought up in the grim north in the 1970s. So I feel very privileged to constantly be questioned by both myself, my family and the greater world in general. That was what was so wonderful about meeting you all at Theos a few weeks ago, when my lovely friend Kathryn Mannix gave your lecture, ‘Dying For Beginners’ Kathryn and I have worked a bit over the last few years talking about death, because death is essential in any conversations about life. 

Elizabeth 

What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? That way of framing the question, what is sacred to you, really clarifies the question. If you’re going to die in a few years, would you want people to stand up and say about you? And are you living as if that is the case?

Finding perspective: the cathedral of rock

Greg Wise 

I hope they would say I was kind. Kindness brings with it everything. I was with my sister on her journey to her death a few years ago, I was her full–time carer for the last three months of her life 24/7, trapped in her flat with her. She was dying of bone cancer, which you don’t get better from and is terminal. Ss a result of my time there with her and the time that allowed me moments of quiet contemplation at the same time as having to step up and shower her, change her, do all of these things and be with her in the moments towards her death, that has made me a better person and has made me kinder and more compassionate, more generous, more caring and hopefully less judgmental. I think for me, that’s been an essential shift. Because of course, acts are the stars of our show. To remember that you’re just the roadie in someone else’s show is really important. In terms of the wider spirituality, and where I took myself off to after my sister died, is into nature. That’s where I resonate. Especially mountains, the highest spaces, because I used to love rock climbing. I was never terribly good and I fell a lot. Over time, the falls became worse and I lost the ability to be able to scale a vertical rock. I never lost the pull of wanting to be up in high spaces. Now, I do winter mountaineering. For me, that is the essence of meditation. I’m terrible at meditating. I can’t sit there in the dark and try and picture the flame of a candle. I’ve tried, I’ve really tried. Up in the highest spaces, up in the snow, where all you can do is concentrate on step and breath, and gentle movement through an exquisitely powerful landscape, all you can do is get into a meditative state. You’re not marveling at your surroundings, you’re trying not to die. Being up in the highest spaces brings with it so many things about life, position on life, perspective on life, self–care, trust, faith, supplication. When we think about the sacred, these are words that we use. But to me it’s the cathedral of rock, rather than a man made space or a God made space.

Elizabeth 

I’m fascinated by that word supplication. Does it feel in those moments like you are in some kind of conversation with nature, that you are asking something of it?

Greg Wise 

Completely. But you are asking something of something that does not care a jot. That, to me, is the basis of it. Where you aren’t doesn’t care about you, you care about it. Hopefully, within that movement, you then have to bring self–care in, because you’re in a place that doesn’t care whether you live or die, you are completely insignificant. Therefore, you have to care about yourself. If you don’t care about yourself, you die. You have to care about whoever is with you on your exploit and hope that they care about you as well. Fascinatingly, within the world of mountaineering, there is the narcissistic drive. We talked about conquering. I think what is extraordinary about that is the scope, the scale, the size of the outward journey, which is absolutely mirrored in the inward journey of it all. You’re meditative, you’re also having to exhibit extreme self–care and care for those around you.

Elizabeth 

Forgive me if this is painful, but am I right in thinking that you lost a friend who you mountaineered with? Do you think that helps shape some of these perspectives? 

Greg Wise 

Absolutely. My very wonderful friend Simon, who was killed in our mid–20s. In our mid–20s, we’re invulnerable, we were immortal. We are never more egotistical and never more sure about everything. Simon drowned. He and I used to climb waterfalls and do crazy climbing. He always lived very much on the edge. The death of someone so potent and so powerful at the age of 25 reminded me that it is insane to ever have an idea of the shape of life. I think I was fortunate that I never planned. I used to travel a lot, on my own, from my mid–teens onwards. I never really planned anything, always just wanted to set off and then see what happened. I’ve brought that with me into my more adult life where I’ve never had an ideal career. I think that’s just mad. Whatever comes in that seems appropriate at the time to do, do it. The only power you have as a self–employed actor is the power to say no. God laughs when man makes plans. Having someone powerful die as a powerful age, for me was very useful.

Rugby, choir and York Minster: Growing up in Northumberland 

Elizabeth 

I know that your life has been punctuated by these losses and moments of moral profundity. I really want to dig into those but first, I want to locate you your origin story. I’d love to hear a bit about your childhood. Paint me a picture of Greg, say age 11. Where were you? What were you doing? How are you feeling about it?

Greg Wise 

I was born in Newcastle, brought up in Northumberland. We had a little cottage about 20 miles outside Newcastle where we’d spend all weekends and holidays. Born into an interesting combination of central European firebrand mother, and stoic, northern father. My mum’s mum was Croatian. Her father was Transylvanian. They’d met in Paris, my mum was born in Paris, of Jewish stock. They came over in the early 1930s and stayed here. My mum was one of the first women to study architecture up in Newcastle. My dad was just leaving the university at that point, he then became a professor of architecture. It was always a reasonably stormy marriage and a reasonably bumpy childhood. It was then that I knew that my place of safety and emotional protection was in the landscape. We were very lucky to have the Northumbrian landscape all around us. That formed what I’ve carried on in my life. Interestingly, my place of safety is a place where an awful lot of people would feel unsafe. I’ve just kept pushing that I suppose in my life to the extent that I do that winter mountaineering, which is dangerous, but it brings with it the idea of safety because you have to retain the safety of yourself in an uncaring environment. I learned that very early as a child. From a very early age, my safe space was being outside. 

Elizabeth 

It sounds beautiful and also quite isolating. Forgive me if this is too nosy, but has that posture ever made it difficult to find your place of safety in others?

Greg Wise 

Yes, but that’s the glory of being alive, isn’t it? I’ve been with my wife now for half my life. Anyone who thinks it’s easy hasn’t done it. I’m still reminded by my wife that when I spent too long on my own, up in our cottage on the west coast of Scotland running feral, when I get back it’s tricky. It’s the reentry back into the atmosphere. It’s coming back from the moon, and you burn through the outer atmosphere before you reenter the stability of the of the world and the family life. I’m happiest in the wilds on my own. When I do have to come back and renegotiate how to live with my partner and family, it can be bumpy. But we’re well versed in that anyway, being actors, because often we’re away for weeks or sometimes months at a time. 

Elizabeth 

It sounds like a useful set of skills to have. You were in boarding school, I think. What was the experience of that, like?

Greg Wise 

I was at a boarding school as a day boarder. It was six days a week, from 08.30 to 17.30 every day. But I loved it. I was very fortunate to love school. I was fortunate that I was both in the first team of rugby and also sang in the choir, which you weren’t really allowed to do both. I loved singing, I loved the church music, but I also love playing rugby. Even at that young age, I didn’t want to be told what I wasn’t allowed to do. If stuff was on offer, I wanted to do whatever was on offer. I keep that in my life. Being an actor, also writing and also trying to make documentaries.

Elizabeth 

It’s got a reputation for being quite a religious school. Obviously you were in church choir, how did that feel? What was your emotional experience of being in a school that was telling a Christian story? Or was it was it more in the background than I assume? 

Greg Wise 

We had a chapel so I went back in on Sunday. I loved I loved the church music. I sang solos in the Minster. I was singing and so right at the top of the rood screen. It was really high, both within the church and also in the notes that I had to achieve. Then I had to sprint down the winding stairs to the bottom to do a duet with another chorister. York Minster had the epiphany service. They had the Minster song school starting off in the I think the zouche chapel and us starting in the chapter house. They turned off all the lights and the two choirs process singing with candles. I think it was a Victorian construct that it was the light of God coming in, and it was exquisite. Even though I had no connection to the dogma, I had a connection to the music and to the drama of it. I still now. I’ve just been doing a load of charity carol concerts and I love I love singing in church.

Elizabeth 

Speaking of drama, when did the sense that acting might be something that you wanted to pursue begin to emerge? Was it a slow burn or a real gear change?

Greg Wise 

I studied architecture first, but I knew before I started studying that I probably wanted to try and be an actor. I was Joseph in the nativity play at my kindergarten. I’m told that in the Nativity pay play, I picked up Jesus by his hair which probably wasn’t the right thing to do. I was brought up in an artistic house, both parents were architects. There was always an awful lot of art and there was always space for exploration. Along with my sister, we were fortunate in New York to have a playroom that spilled out onto the garden so all the local kids would come around. We did what kids do and were the pirates on the ship or moon landings or whatever else. I loved that, I loved dressing up and pretending. That’s what I’ve done for the rest of my life, just dressed up and pretended to be someone else.

The role of actors: humour, humanity and darkness

Elizabeth

What role to actors play in our common life? What are they there for?

Greg Wise 

Depends how you look at it. There’s the Grotowski idea that we are the sacrificial lambs. The dramas that people would see, from mediaeval time, you would see enacted out on a cart. The story of Adam and Eve, the Flood, the morality tales, the actor as the sacrificial lamb. You’re saying, if you behave in this way, this will be the judgement inflicted upon you by God or man or combinations of the two. So probably don’t kill your best friend. So there is always within every tale, a sense of a morality, a sense that we are standing up on a cart in a town square, doing a doing a moral story, for people to hopefully think about it. But if you forget at your peril that you are also an entertainer. My first job leaving drama school, where I’d spent years, three years doing Shakespeare and learning the Stanislavski and movement and voice and I suppose reasonably full of myself and a little bit precious. My first job was a rock and roll musical at Liverpool Playhouse, which I was obviously thrilled to get, because I got my equity card with it and I got paid. But I was tiny bit sniffily until the first preview, when 750 people in an auditorium went crazy. And I thought, oh, I see, I’m an entertainer.

Elizabeth 

It was really sparking a thought when you were speaking about, one of the things I studied at York which was the mystery plays. These were tales in a preliterate age. Pre the translation of the scriptures into English. I had never thought of the performers in the Mystery Plays as essentially the preachers of the day. As essentially, I will communicate the sacred stories to you and therefore I will help you think about how you live. I think that is what good stories and good art does. It presents alternative lives and alternative paths to us in ways that was good. How do I want to live? What does this mean for me? What is what is good? What tends to end in heartbreak? Which type of characters tend to come out well? But it’s because that entertainment element is in there that we don’t feel preached at or lectured. CS Lewis said he started writing fiction because it helps truth sneak past the watchful dragons of the mind.

Greg Wise 

Alongside that, you are able to push people into places they maybe don’t want to go, as long as you also make them laugh. If you make someone laugh, you can actually push the agenda quite a bit further. One of the things about the Mystery Plays is that they’re very funny. Allegedly, Shakespeare is very funny as well. Humour, humanity: it’s the same thing. It’s one of the things that I’m always very clear about when I’m writing or constructing something: you have to make it humorous. If you make it humorous, you’re getting to the nub in a simpler and quicker way. You can say a lot of difficult things if you catch it in humour. It’s why we still do Shakespeare, it’s why we still do adaptations of Jane Austen. The stories are always very simple. They’re always very similar, because we’re exploring the human condition and the human–to–human relationship or the human to divine relationship. There are very few stories. This is why we continually go back and look at the ancient Greeks and we look at the mediaeval and we look at the Shakespearean, because we’re all trying to make sense of what it means to be alive, which is what our discussion is all about. 

Elizabeth 

As you were talking, I was just thinking about how much power there is in being able to take people places they don’t think they want to go. Do you ever get scared by the power you can wield in your craft?

Greg Wise 

I’m always drawn to, and have generally played the dark. I’ve never been the moral centre of the story. I’ve never had the moral agenda. Maybe because my central European heritage, but I never looked like the archetypal British hero, but was always very good at playing the darkness, because the darkness is essential in any story. Our darkness is essential within us, we have to be able to accept and respect and listen to it. Oddly, our daughter has seen everything that her mum has ever made and almost nothing that I’ve ever made because generally I’m the murderer, the rapist, the paedophile, the psychopath and she doesn’t want to see her dad doing that. 

Elizabeth

Have there had been times in your career where you’ve thought, I don’t want to do that? 

Greg Wise 

No. I mean, the devil has the better tunes. The moral majority isn’t interesting at all, it is the right thing to do. Where is the drama in the right thing to do? The drama is when all these other things come and you question and you turn yourself away from it. Then hopefully, there’s redemption. That’s the standard three act play of our errant knight. 

Elizabeth

This is something I come back to again and again with artists and creative because it drives me bonkers. You’re right, it’s completely true. I never remember if it’s Simone Weil or Hannah Arendt who talks about the banality of evil. The idea that fictional good is boring but real goodness is compelling. Fictional evil is sexy and glamorous and interesting, real evil is banal. Why can’t we tell stories of goodness? Or why is it so difficult? 

Greg Wise

You have to tell any large story tangentially. You cannot tell a large story front on. It’s not interesting. It’s interesting when stuff comes through at great speed and cuts it off. It’s one of the great joys of story writing, finding something that just comes and cuts straight across. It is as tedious to see someone who is good, and is just good, as it is to see someone who is bad and just bad, unless we understand where it comes from. There’s always the crucible somewhere in a story. I play an awful lot of the time difficult, dangerous people. I always try and find a moment within the piece where if we don’t sympathise as an audience, at least we can understand and empathise, because generally, the dark is driven by a pain. It’s a historic pain that is still being played out. If we can see the genesis of that then we can understand if someone’s just evil, it’s not interesting. We have to see the story within it. That’s where the drama is.

Grappling with Grief: trauma and privilege

Elizabeth 

You give me such a juicy picture of a role that an actor can play in our common life. I’m always interested in by these positions and how it’s shaping the way we are together, our ability to treat each other as fully human, to be kind to each other and to offer that curiosity and empathy that you’re talking about. One of the other hats that both you and Emma wear is campaigners around environment and mental health, and latterly, grief and death. Did that just come very naturally, or was there a moment where you saw, I’d have a responsibility to use my voice on some of these issues now? 

Greg Wise 

The grief and death, because of my sister, very much. I was fortunate enough to be in a situation where I could drop everything and move in with her and be her carer and be with her up to her death. I’d also been with my mum as she died. I’d been with my dad all the way through to his death, but being my dad, obviously, he was going to wait, I’d been with him for months. As soon as I said, I’m just going to take a week off, he decided to die. My sister had written a blog when she was originally diagnosed with breast cancer, just to let people know what was going on. Then she really enjoyed the writing process and found she was actually rather a good and very funny writer. When she became too ill with the bone cancer and I moved in, I took over her blog as a form of self–defence in a way, because I didn’t want to have to spend the precious moments that I had not looking after my sister, calming all her friends down. So I said, this is what’s happening, and to start with it was very factual and I didn’t want to ever write anything that would make someone pick up the phone and go, oh my God, what’s going on. The blog itself was written originally as a source of defence and then it became actually a very important thing for me to be able to do because I was alone with my dying sister for months. It helped me in my in my mental health, but also to just try and explore a little bit of what it is to be alive and what it is to face the mortality of the closest person in my life. The book was taken up by a publisher and I said, we can’t edit this, it was written as a real time document. The most frustrated and kind of angry I was with my sister in my writing was the evening before she died. I didn’t know she was going to die. I didn’t want to go back in and re–edit, making myself look lovely. The book was published and I think has been very helpful and that introduced me into the world of death and grief and end of life. I felt that I could be useful within that world as a lay person. I found myself on various book tours, book festivals and places public speaking about it and finding myself public speaking with an extraordinary woman called Dr. Kathryn Mannix. Katheirne was one of the first palliative doctors in the country and ended up running the Marie Curie hospice in Newcastle for many years. She had just written a book about and we found ourselves talking together and it was a very potent combination of an exquisite professional and an absolute idiot. It was Kathryn who was talking at the Theos event last month. She and I have kept on our conversations have kept working together. We’re patrons of the death doulas. We do little bits of work with academics on how to talk to children about death. I’m involved in a wonderful organisation called Good Grief Trust. I still do work for Marie Curie and for Macmillan. I won an award earlier in this year from a Scottish palliative charity, it’s called the Demystifying Death Award, which is rather wonderful. I now feel immensely privileged. The death of my sister and the lead up to that was almost an exact balance of trauma and privilege. I think a lot of life is a balance of trauma and privilege. I realised that actually I can be quite useful in being able to talk openly, honestly, hopefully and humorously about how bad we are in this country about end of life and death. 

Elizabeth 

I was watching Loose Woman which was just really funny because they were using all these euphemisms for death, like losing someone or passing away. No, they died. Let’s just say, death. I wanted to ask about that divide, because I’m very interested in anything that has a potential to divide us from each other and what do we need in order to be able to hold that relationship to hold that connection. When someone is themselves dying, or is living with grief, we can feel like this huge chasm has opened up. They are on the other side of some metaphysical existential profundity that we don’t know how to navigate, and it can be very lonely. What helps us cross that divide? What do we need to know? 

Greg Wise 

Wow, that’s a big question. I think have start talking and have to start learning the language because it is a different language. It’s a new language. It’s a language we’re not taught about, grief, bereavement death. I’m interested in the moment at schools, where is it called a PSHE. Within all of that, let’s talk about death. We need to start being able to talk about death and grief and have it more matter of fact, because generally, we only are accosted by it in extremes. We only start to think about it when we get the terminal diagnosis or when we meet a mate in the street who’s just lost a parent or spouse or whoever. And one of the things that I’m trying to do now, and I’m bullying everyone I know like crazy, to start talking about it in the pub with their mates. Over Sunday lunch with the family. Going for a walk with a chum. End of Life. Crazily, people still haven’t got wills sorted out. It’s this odd both adolescent and also the denial that we’re all heading the same way. With the work I’ve done with the doulas who are an extraordinary outfit that, they call themselves the midwives for death. They are putting together an advanced plan for the end of life. I’ve sent that off to all chums, now saying just fill this out and make sure that those you love know where it is. Then we have a death box or a death file. Where are the spare keys? Who’s your pension provider? What’s your accountants details? I’ve had to try and unpick all of this from my mum, from my dad, rom my sister. Get all this information sorted out, because it is an act of love. It’s one of the things that I bang on a lot about now. We think it’s loving to be reticent, we think it’s loving not to talk about our death to our loved ones. But in fact, it’s cruel. It’s that simple. The sooner we can start to open up these conversations that are difficult, the more able we will all be to hopefully have a good death and have everything in order for those that we leave behind. 

Elizabeth 

I liked what you said about the adolescent, that there is something sort of deeply grown up about taking responsibility for things in the future that you don’t know when they’ll be, that kind of forward planning is care for other people. I have actually just written myself a note to finally sort out my will. 

Greg Wise 

Can we take grown up out because that’s a bit pejorative, and can we say loving. It’s more loving, for oneself and for those we love. 

Elizabeth 

One of the things that can come up when we’re thinking about our own death is fear and questions of pain and interdependence. I know you’ve spoken quite publicly about being in favour of changing the law around assisted dying. It’s one of those topics that can be a deep divide. People have very different intuitions about what is sacred in that moment, how we set ourselves up as a society to live together with as much care and humanity as we can. Have you learned anything about how we navigate that divide with kindness and with curiosity rather than getting very entrenched in our potentially opposing positions? 

Greg Wise 

It’s really hard. It’s hard across the board. I was with my mum for the last few months of her life. She was dying of leukemia and she would rail at me, you wouldn’t do this to a dog. The day after she died I went to register her death. Oddly, I bumped into her GP. I said to a GP, we’ve got to get better at sorting out assisted dying. I said, this is what my mum said, you would have put a dog down by now. Her doctor said, your mum had more than enough medication in her house to kill herself. She didn’t kill herself, because you were there. We had this very healing time because we’d had a reasonably bumpy relationship of her last months together and me being there with her. It was very powerful. It was not a situation that either of us would have chosen to be in, with her being ill and in pain. But we’ve found finally, a very calm, caring, loving space together at the end of her life. It was a wonderful place to have found ourselves after a fair amount of bumpiness over the years. Similarly with my sister, we’d always had a very good very close relationship, but it became something wholly other in the last month. I always thought that when I got the diagnosis, I would take myself up into the hills with a bottle of whiskey and do the hypothermic route out. I realised that that that’s kind of cruel, because I’m taking away from those that love me the option to care for me at that moment in my life. That said, I absolutely also claim my right to say, enough and stop. God bless you all, but I’m going to take myself away now. So you can have both. I know that it’s, it’s, it is cruel not to allow those that love me these moments with me, at my end, before I say, stop now. I think we have to find a way of being able to legislate for an assisted dying with all the checks and balances, that will obviously be required because of course, the first thing someone says is what if  they’re just trying to save some money and they don’t want to spend all of the cash that you would have left to them keeping you in a nursing home for the last six years. We have to be able to approach this with the kindness and compassion that hopefully will be shown to us when we are in this same position. I’m certain that it will happen at some point. All the polls have found regularly that about 70% of the population want it. But for whatever reason, we can’t legislate for it. That will change at some stage. I also want to petition and legislate for my right to be composted, which is not legal at the moment. 

Elizabeth 

That is a beautiful metaphor as well as an actual thing that happens. The life that we leave can create fertile soil for others. Greg, I could talk to you about many other things, but on the note of composting our lives and fruitfulness for the future, I want to say a huge thank you for speaking to me on The Sacred. 

Greg Wise 

It was gorgeous. Thank you. 

Reflections from Elizabeth 

Elizabeth

Well, loads to chew on there. I think the first thing that struck me is his sacred value of kindness, and how many people say that, and yet how hard that is to hear as something with heft. It’s one of those words that has been somewhat drained of its power, of its value, of its ability to land with us in our imagination as something vital and vibrant and worth our paying sustained attention to. It feels quite pastel to me, quite mild as a concept. The older I get, the more I think noticing and trying to resist that temptation in us to let the things that actually make up a good life, which often aren’t very sexy or original or grabby or gritty, slide to the edges of our consciousness and spend our whole time and attention on things that are flashy and shiny but ultimately unfulfilling. I sometimes think about the Screwtape Letters, which was this book that C.S. Lewis wrote about, if you were a demon trying to tempt people away from the good life, what would you do? A lot of it is misdirection and redirection and I can just imagine this letter from this older demon to this younger demon about kindness. Make kindness seem a bit boring. Make cynicism seem attractive. Let cynicism appeal to your unstable ego and your status craving. Forget about kindness. It’s something that we grow out of. It’s something for children. It enrages me how fragile we are as humans and how easily led away from the good. It was great for Greg to really put that front and centre again.

I love the phrase he used, cathedral of rock. Did you hear that? I really loved this picture of him climbing and this very spiritual terminology he’s using right about supplication on the mountain and realising your own insignificance. I think a lot of people have a sense that when you strip everything back, when it’s just kind of you and the natural world, there’s a clarity around that. There is an ability to see what’s important. There’s an ability to see yourself a bit more clearly as well as the world. The Cathedral of Rock and going to it in supplication has really stayed with me. 

What really struck me with Greg is his freedom. When I was preparing for the interview, it’s like, this is an interesting CV. Yes, he’s an actor and he’s perhaps best known as an actor, but there’s been whole swathes of time where he’s not been acting. He’s been looking after his kids or he’s been a garden designer or he’s been nursing his dying sister or he’s been doing all kinds of things which probably we don’t know about and it’s none of our business. How refreshing that is because he doesn’t feel that doesn’t feel the need to explain it away. There’s so much CV advice that’s like, don’t have a gap in your CV or on’t change course. We expect very talented and ambitious people to sort of have this straight line of better and better things within one particular field. As we talked about with acting, we are story made creatures and just listening into the story of someone who’s like, I’ve just done what I’m interested in is really reassuring.

I really love one I love hearing about long marriages. I really love the honesty of him having really hermit tendencies, and he’ll go away to a cabin, or to the woods. When he comes back in, it’s very bumpy. There’s a reentry, when you reenter the earth atmosphere, something is a burning up, which was fascinating. They have made that work for them and the coming and the going, an acting life or any kind of sort of unstandard life requires a rhythm that really works and they’re still here several decades later. 

It was great to have this image of Greg as a choir boy in York Minster. This beautiful, pure voice, and then bolting it down the steps to get to a different place in the cathedral to sing. The formative role of that sacred music on him and his view of the world. I do feel so aware of what we are exposed to in childhood, the things that are seen as normal and part of a world that we are allowed to access in childhood really changes often what we do for the rest of our life, what we feel able to do, what we feel we have permission to do. I’m always glad when people have had those experiences of beauty in their childhood. I want that for my kids and for all kids. The imaginative space it creates about what the world is like, I think is really important.

Finally, we went all over the place with this lovely inquiry about what actors are doing and what role they play in our common life, how are they shaping our public conversation. It will really stay with me this sense of almost every play is a mystery play. Every story is a morality story in so far as it allows us to imaginatively play out another life or another set of choices. That’s just good for building empathy, right? It’s good for seeing the world from someone else’s perspective. It almost always softens us towards them. It’s also good for helping shape our choices and helping us understand how lives work and who comes out more whole. Who ends up more human, what kind of choices you have to make in your life to be in my language fully alive, to not just succeed on the terms of whatever leaderboard your industry or your society has set up for but also they help the rest of us make ourselves because we are story made selves. Storied selves, in Alastair McIntyre’s language.

I really enjoyed that conversation. I’d love to hear from you any thoughts that it sparked in a thing that you want to reflect on or feedback. You can do it via our email. Both The Sacred as a team and myself individually are on Twitter and Instagram. I also write a sub stack called MoreFullyAlive.substack.com and you can engage with me in the comments on there. I really do love being in conversation with you and I hope that today’s episode has been a spacious place in your day.

The Sacred is, as I said, a project of the think tank Theos. The production team are Dan, who you might have met on our recent Ask Me Anything episode, Fiona and myself. We are edited by Drew Hawley and our music is by Luke Stanley. You can find us everywhere you find your podcasts and as always it really, really helps if you haven’t yet left us a review, this is your time, this is your day. Get that thumb moving. If you have, a huge thank you, I love reading them. Perhaps more secretly, but more impactfully and relationally, send an episode to a friend. Start a conversation that goes deep, that maybe even talks about death today. I’ll speak to you next week.

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