- Minnie, thank you so much for joining me
to talk about your memoir,
your collection of stories about your life,
managing expectations.
Why did you go for the format of kind of individual stories
from moments in your life
rather than kind of like trying to tell everything?
- Well, I'm not a huge fan of.
I was born in.
I'm not a fan of that, although sometimes I am
but I didn't wanna do that.
I realized that the stories that I like to tell
like I've noticed over the years,
like you become super attuned to any kind of audience
when you're an actor, like and that includes five people
around your kitchen table for dinner on a Tuesday
of stories that connect.
And you're also really attuned to like holding an audience.
And I've just seen the stories
that I've told that have just made people really laugh
or have made them ask lots of questions afterwards
or have moved them or have just sort of held them.
And so I had a pretty good idea of what was engaging.
And I thought that that was probably a good place
to begin in writing a book,
was to really know what you are writing.
And I know these stories,
and I already knew that they kind of,
I'd seen them connect in another way.
So, I'd seen them connect orally.
So I was like, okay, well, perhaps if I write them down
and I can play around with language a bit more.
- And were they moments that were,
in some way, all formative for you?
- Yeah, they were definitely,
they were all inflection points.
And they were all stuff going wrong, like not working out.
- Yeah.
- And then what that then became.
I don't really believe in a linear idea of success at all.
I think that is cruelly hefted upon people
by outside influences that have no business
deciding what the barometer for success is.
- [Holly] Yeah.
- I've thought it was different things at different times,
but it was kind of in review really realizing
this kind of richly experiencing life
even when it all goes tits up.
Sorry, can you say tits up?
- [Holly] Yeah. - What it (indistinct).
But when it all goes pear-shaped,
that there's the better version.
And then seeing what that then turns into
and invariably, that's your life, like that.
Your life is this stuff not working out, working out.
- And is that why you say
that kind of happy endings were overrated?
- Yeah, because I just never came across a happy ending
that was the end.
Like it might have been a moment
where it felt like a completion,
but they're, excuse, to double negative,
but like there's never not a shoot,
a little green shoot of something else coming out
of that ending beginning the next piece.
And it's all connected,
so I was just sort of interested in that idea.
And also, I tortured myself
with the idea of needing a happy ending for so long
that perhaps I've also found a way
to create my own philosophy about their uselessness.
(laughs)
- And how have you in contrast
that now managed to make yourself, kind of aware
of enjoying a journey of wherever that might be going?
- My boyfriend reminds me
(Holly laughs)
because I'm useless at it.
I wrote this book clearly as a textbook to remind myself
of all stuff that I just need to learn.
Someone said that when I was really young,
probably one of my teachers
that you write best what you need to learn,
or you teach best what you need to learn.
And it's true.
I really do.
It's something I have to remind myself to do.
Like you are to kind of take your coordinates
from your current position.
Don't constantly be trying to monitor your journey
from like where you were or where you think you'll be
but to be really clear where you are.
And sometimes that's hard because where you are can suck,
and it's sort of about going, that's also fine.
It's fine for it to suck.
It will turn into something else.
Just give it a minute.
Breathe, have a cup of tea, cry,
ask your boyfriend for help.
(laughs)
- And the stories from your childhood,
there's one where you are sent away from Barbados
by your dad when his,
well, when you as quite an outspoken child
said something to his new girlfriend.
- Yeah, I was not kind to her.
- Explain a little bit about what happened
with that experience and how,
and what maybe that meant to you as a child
to kind of do this,
be sent on your own to kind of fly back to England and.
- Well, I mean, 'cause the reality was like,
I thought I was being sent back to England, but I wasn't.
I was actually sent to Miami, age 11 by myself
where I spent a day and a night by myself
in this insanely amazing crazy hotel
called the Fountain Blue which was the sort of hub of,
like it was the biggest debt of inequity
in the Southern states of North America.
I mean, it really was, it was hardcore.
And my father was so cross with me
for being rude to his girlfriend.
He couldn't wait the 24 hours
until there was a direct flight back to England.
He needed me to leave then.
And that was the only flight available was this.
So it was an odyssey of yeah,
getting thrown out of somewhere.
So being exiled.
So that experience, but also,
I've clearly always been up for an adventure.
So even at 11, I couldn't quite believe
that it was happening to me and I was really into it.
And I was also horrified.
The big takeaway that I do remember
when I walked out 'cause I decided I was gonna kind of,
first of all I was gonna buy the entire gift shop
because he'd left a credit card on file at the hotel.
So I basically ran out like this thousands of dollars
on his credit card, that was part of my revenge.
And then they were went to go swimming
in the pool and what was devastating?
You know, I was a little girl.
I'd never been to a pool without my family
or without a friend.
And I didn't know what an earth
you were supposed to do in a pool if you weren't playing.
And so I kind of started swimming up and down,
and that was the saddest that I got
because I was so cross with him
for ruining being at the pool,
which is like one of the great, amazing experiences
when you're a kid, like that is just pure unadulterated fun.
And there I was swimming up and down like a granny
and I was really bummed and really furious at him then,
and then I got taken in by this Cuban exile
and spent the rest of the afternoon
with him and his family in a cabana.
- As you do.
I mean, things could have gone really differently.
Like bad things could have happened
but bad things didn't happen.
I consequently, I'm quite a brave person
about like going places by myself.
- [Holly] Yeah.
- Like I rock up to things stag all the time,
and then get really weird looks from people
and people ask me if I'm all right,
and it's, but I actually quite like it.
- Yeah.
- And I don't mean this in a bad way.
- No, go ahead.
You can mean it in a bad way.
How many of the stories in the book
'cause they are these formative things.
- [Minnie] Yeah.
- Have you either talked to
or thought about talking to a therapist?
- Oh yeah.
That's, you got on this, to this, but.
(Holly laughs)
It's pretty fucked up.
(laughs)
Still am I asking, have you sought professional health?
- It's only 'cause there's a sort of things
that I talked to my therapist about
and I was like.
- Yeah, no, totally.
I have definitely.
I've definitely talked about.
I mean that the story, the Miami story
has made several therapists,
just kind of scream with laughter
and then be like, excuse me, I'm so sorry.
Let's get down to work,
'cause there's really a lot of work to be done.
You know, I didn't seek, I guess I sought a bit of help
through all of the crazy fame stuff when it first started
but it wasn't really time to go,
and I've talked about it subsequently
but I do this the useless boyfriend who cheated on me,
who, which is at the end of the book
who, what's most annoying
is that he was my great friend and I'm more annoyed
about having lost my friend really than the boyfriend.
But the greatest thing he ever said to me
was don't look back ever.
Just whenever you're really even thinking of doing that,
don't, don't look back.
Just be here now.
You gotta (indistinct) the shit out of life,
and just be here.
I look back for reference briefly,
but not to kind of seek comfort
or think that it will kind of heal this present moment.
I don't know.
I've done, I've a lot of looking back
and I didn't really do much.
I think it's better just to be here
and like check out your scars and your wounds occasionally
and like tend to them.
- And do you feel like having written these down
and I also narrated them for the audio book?
Do you feel like maybe there's some of these things
in the past and now and sort of let go almost?
- I was thinking about that the other day,
I was like, hmm, I don't know.
I mean, how, I don't know how you know.
- [Holly] Yeah.
- Like I sort of go and poke the wound,
and I'm like, that still, yeah, that does still hurt a bit.
It's like when you give a shape to something,
it's like you, I noticed that with my son when he was little
like if you would have a nightmare,
the best thing that we could do
was for him to tell me the story.
Like, tell me what you think it's counterintuitive
to kind of tell to be in it again,
tell the story and in telling the story,
and hearing it out loud and having it witnessed,
and acknowledged, he could then let it go.
- Yeah. - And just go
straight back to sleep.
So I wonder, I think it probably is really good.
I think that's why storytelling is so powerful
and why people being asked to tell their stories away.
I think therapists do that a lot.
They're like go and write this story down
and then burn it in a field on a full moon.
I like that.
I do that, but don't burn my book.
- [Holly] No, (indistinct)
- That is not that kind of a thing.
- So it's called managing expectations.
Whose expectations were you managing?
Your own, those around you?
- Everything.
I think expectations.
I think they're actually a really sinister word
sort of dressed up as like super kind of norm,
like norm core word that is actually devastating
and awful and should be.
We should get rid of it.
You actually can't manage an expectation
because having an expectation in the first place
is probably gonna trip you up.
But it's really those of society that if your parents,
the ones you put upon yourself, men to women,
women to men,
this idea that we have like some code, this has to happen.
I expect this to happen, and then this will happen.
Like it just doesn't work like that.
It just that life isn't linear at all.
And you can try and you can try
and like stake it out with events.
Like I'm gonna get married,
and then I'm gonna have a kid, I'm gonna get a mortgage.
And that means my expectation of a happy life
is almost assured.
You know what I mean?
- [Holly] Yeah.
- I think it's a weird word.
I don't like it.
- And so you chose it for your work.
- So I chose it for my title.
Correct.
(laughs)
- Still don't burn the book.
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