My name is Morwenna Banks and I'm the writer of a film called 'Miss you already'
and the film is about what happens when one of the characters played by Drew
Barrymore is going through IVF treatment and at the same time her friend gets a
diagnosis of breast cancer and it's about what happens to that friendship
specifically and also what happens to the lives of everyone around them and
actually how the diagnosis impacts on everyone
I was inspired to write the script because there was a time in my life when a number of women I knew were
diagnosed with breast cancer and several of those women were in their thirties
and were grappling with life's jobs, young children, and were trying to
also then undergo treatment and hold a family together. So 'Miss you already' is a
fictional account of somebody who's going through treatment and
also it's about the lives of those around her - her husband, children, mother, best friend,
best friend's partner. The impact is very wide I think and I wanted to
look at the diagnosis from all points of view.
I'm very interested in female friendship and in friendships in general and I wanted to
look at the dismantling of a friendship and how that is reconstructed under
different circumstances.
Ultimately you are dealing with a massive diagnosis and there are very
big issues to deal with. How you look and how you feel are a really big
part of your identity and if that's taken away from you as well as your chances of
living as long a life as you might have expected. It's a very complicated set of issues I think.
I haven't personally been through it so I wanted to talk to as many people
as I could who were prepared to talk to me. People were very generous with their
time and I talked to people at different stages of breast cancer, people
who were many years clear, older women younger women. So I spoke to as many
people as I could and witnessed many aspects of it and then tried to reflect
that as honestly and accurately as I could
I kind of think in observe terms. Things will strike me comedically or absurdly.
Having said that cancer isn't funny. But I wanted to write about
people who were funny and people who could say funny things and were
authorized to say the darkest things at the kind of the darkest moments and I think
within a friendship between two women that I depicted that you know people
are quite rude with each other as they know each other so well they
are able to say things that quite often many other people aren't allowed to say
Your best mate can say something to you that you would be really annoyed if your mum said.
I think the thing is that if you have suspicions that something's not right,
to trust your instincts and I think that women quite often their lives are so busy particularly when they
have small children they kind of do anything or say I don't have to go to the doctor and put it off
but don't you know. I say please don't put it off if you can
and to feel I think also women are quite reluctant to kind of keep going
back if they've been told you're fine your basic reaction is thank god for that
I don't want to deal with it anymore but if beyond that you feel you're not and
your symptoms don't go away I think to be persistent and another is I guess the
importance of friendship in terms of getting through and of trying to in some way
if you can to share and from the other side if you're a friend
of someone who's going through this or a daughter or a sibling or a brother to
try and be there even when you don't know what to do and if you feel
useless and stupid you've just got to keep
trying to be there