# Hannah Diviney - Disabled in an Able-Bodied World

An episode of [The Imperfects](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1476501557), 9 Mar 2025, 1 h 34 min.

Audio: https://enrichment.soundstack.com/4vjqq8/episode.flightcast.com/ea666kyi7zvftbsq6wlqj6gd.mp3

Hannah Diviney is one of the most powerful people in pop culture. At just 25 years old, the author, advocate, and actor hasn’t just called out Lizzo for using an ableist slur—she also took on Queen B herself. And she succeeded on both fronts. Which, once you get to know her, isn’t surprising at all. In our Vulnerabilitea House, Hannah reflects on the questions: “How do you see yourself? Is it the same way your loved ones see you?” Answering with incredible vulnerability, Hannah shares how her relationship with her disability has evolved over time and what it was like growing up in a world where the Paralympics seemed like the only visible marker of success. We talk to Hannah about being a part of intimate television history, and Ryan, the love doctor, Shelton manifests a Brad (or Stewie, or Chris, or Michael-Angelo) in her future. Hannah, we are so desperate to be your friend. To watch this full episode on YouTube, click here: https://bit.ly/41vzALg 🫖 Imperfects episode’s mentioned in this episode • Grant Denyer - Self Worth Was Worth Fighting For - https://apple.co/4fyvmsj 🎟️ Things to go see • Audrey at the Melbourne Women in Film Festival - https://bit.ly/4bvMHkq 📺 Things to watch • Latecomers - https://bit.ly/4kBLFaG • Hannah’s speech at the National Press Club - https://bit.ly/3QJPzQZ 📖 Things to read • I’ll Let Myself In by Hannah Diviney - https://bit.ly/3DjeffZ The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14.

## Transcript

[0:00] This episode of The Imperfects features a conversation that references suicidal ideation.
[0:05] If this is too much for you right now, then we suggest you skip this one and come back when you're ready.
[0:13] I got in the car on the way home and said, Mum, why don't my legs work?
[0:21] And Mum was like, well, you have this thing called cerebral palsy and that means your legs don't work.
[0:29] Why?
[0:31] Well, I don't know.
[0:33] What do you mean you don't know?
[0:36] Well, I don't know.
[0:37] Well, who knows?
[0:40] No one, they don't know why.
[0:43] What do you mean there's a question without an answer?
[0:47] The Imperfects invites you into a very safe place.
[0:54] A place where we share without judgment.
[0:59] and drink heaps of vulnerability.
[1:05] Grab yourself a cup.
[1:07] This is The Vulnerability House.
[1:17] Well, this is a very special episode and it's all about Hannah DeVinney.
[1:23] But before it's all about Hannah DeVinney, I just have to point out the fact that it's Josh van Carlenburg's birthday.
[1:30] And I just want to pay a quick tribute to the birthday boy.
[1:33] Hugh's going to sing happy birthday too.
[1:39] Well, you've already done it.
[1:40] Yeah, I've already done it.
[1:41] Happy birthday, Josh.
[1:42] Thank you very much.
[1:43] Happy birthday, Josh.
[1:44] I feel bad.
[1:45] I should have brought you a present.
[1:46] Oh, I feel bad for taking the limelight off you.
[1:49] That's all right.
[1:50] No, you're the present, Hannah.
[1:52] This conversation will be the gift.
[1:55] Very smooth.
[1:56] It would have been an incredible move by you just to go, Larlene, just in case it's his birthday, I better bring a present.
[2:01] Yeah.
[2:02] I should have asked.
[2:04] Who is Hannah DeVinney?
[2:06] Let me just say.
[2:07] Who am I, Hugh?
[2:08] Please tell me because I don't know.
[2:12] Let me start by saying, warning, warning, warning, we have a future potential Australian of the Year.
[2:17] Aw, thank you.
[2:19] Just let me start by saying that.
[2:21] Yeah.
[2:22] I had the great joy of reading your book and I was shocked you weren't already of Australian of the Year, but so that's my warning to everyone, just in case they're there to know the future.
[2:31] Great call.
[2:32] Yeah.
[2:32] And Divini's right, isn't it?
[2:33] It is Divini.
[2:34] It's Divini.
[2:35] Divinity.
[2:36] Sorry.
[2:36] That's all right.
[2:37] Like you must get some crazy variations of that.
[2:39] Yeah.
[2:40] We get like divining a lot of the time because the best way we tell people to spell it is divine and then put a Y on the end.
[2:45] Oh yeah.
[2:45] So then people just go diviny.
[2:47] Sometimes you get divinity.
[2:48] Sometimes you get du, duvenay.
[2:50] That's, that was a fun one.
[2:51] Duvenay.
[2:52] Yeah.
[2:52] It's like.
[2:53] Duvenayter.
[2:54] Du, duvenay.
[2:55] Oh, okay.
[2:56] Duvenayter would be pretty weird.
[2:57] Duvenayter would be like, uh, my evil villain.
[3:01] Evil villain that like shoots duvets.
[3:05] I will smother you with my two days.
[3:08] Oh, no, it's the Duvernator.
[3:09] Goose down.
[3:13] Goose down.
[3:15] Got him with the goose down.
[3:19] Oh, the Duvernator.
[3:20] Well, for those people who don't know the Duvernator yet, I just want to say some things because your journey is quite remarkable and it is such a great privilege to have you here.
[3:29] So Hannah was born 12 and a half weeks premature.
[3:34] Just a smidge.
[3:36] Just a smidge.
[3:37] Just the three months.
[3:38] And your dad's wedding ring actually was able to fit around your arm.
[3:41] If people would like perspective on how small you were.
[3:44] Yes, and my first hat fit a tennis ball.
[3:48] First hat?
[3:49] So.
[3:49] What sort of a hat was it?
[3:50] I'm imagining a top hat.
[3:52] Yeah, no, it was clearly a top hat.
[3:56] That is not the question I expect.
[3:57] What kind of hat?
[3:58] That's a remarkable part of the story.
[4:01] I don't know why I was visualising the hat you were wearing and it seemed like a top hat.
[4:06] A top hat on a tennis ball.
[4:09] That would be a great look for a baby.
[4:10] They should make baby top hats.
[4:12] Okay, don't worry about what hat it was.
[4:13] Definitely not the most important part of the story.
[4:16] There are more important questions to be asked.
[4:20] During her stay in the ICU, Hannah had a bleed on her brain and was diagnosed with periventricular leukomalacia.
[4:28] Yeah.
[4:28] Good job, Hugh.
[4:29] Thank you.
[4:30] We more commonly refer to it as PVL because that is so much easier.
[4:33] Oh, yeah.
[4:33] Yeah.
[4:34] I have no problems pronouncing it, so I don't mind saying the whole thing.
[4:37] Thank you to George.
[4:39] And that is actually what led to cerebral palsy.
[4:41] Yeah.
[4:42] Yeah?
[4:44] Well, it's not a completely straight line.
[4:49] It's hard to tell because the thing with cerebral palsy is no version of it is exactly the same as any other.
[4:57] Right.
[4:57] So even if you meet people with CP who present similarly, there will be slight differences.
[5:03] Right.
[5:04] But for me, yeah, basically what PVL is, it's a thing where it eats away at the white matter in your brain and leaves cysts behind.
[5:14] Yeah.
[5:15] And then they explained it to my parents as when the cysts dissolved, so did the parts of my brain that the cysts were attached to.
[5:26] So they said it worked like a black hole and we were like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[5:30] And then a couple of years ago I got an MRI for something and we pulled it out and we could actually see the holes.
[5:38] And we were like, oh, there they are.
[5:40] Oh, like it showed up that clearly.
[5:43] Wow.
[5:44] Whoa.
[5:44] Yeah.
[5:45] How was that?
[5:45] Yeah.
[5:46] It was very trippy because I thought when they said like a hole, it would be like something that you need, like a special medical instrument or like special training to be like able to identify.
[5:56] And I was like, no, I can see that.
[5:57] And I'm not a doctor.
[5:59] That's very scary.
[6:00] Yeah.
[6:01] Yeah, wow.
[6:02] Gee whiz.
[6:03] So your parents were told in the hospital and your mum's joining us here today, which is very exciting, behind the curtain.
[6:08] Wizard of Oz, as you said before.
[6:09] It's made me laugh a lot.
[6:12] Your parents were told that worst case scenario, you would never be able to walk, talk or feed yourself.
[6:17] Correct.
[6:18] And obviously that didn't come to pass because otherwise this would be an epic hallucination you were all having together.
[6:28] Collectively.
[6:29] Yeah.
[6:30] The very first hallucinatory and perfect.
[6:32] Yeah.
[6:33] Yeah.
[6:34] Um, can you describe cerebral palsy?
[6:39] Like your experience of cerebral palsy?
[6:40] You say there's different for different people.
[6:42] Yeah.
[6:42] So cerebral palsy is a condition that affects my fine and gross motor skills.
[6:48] So in non-scientific English.
[6:51] That means it affects everything from my ability to stand up, my balance, so I have zero balance.
[6:58] So if I stood up without holding on anything, I would last maybe two seconds max before I hit the floor.
[7:06] And it's stuff like getting out of bed, being able to dress myself, go to the bathroom independently,
[7:13] Um, I won't be driving a car or winning a hundred meter sprint anytime soon.
[7:20] Sadly.
[7:21] Um, I think we'll leave that for Gout Gout and Usain Bolt.
[7:25] Yeah.
[7:26] I want to see those two face off now.
[7:28] I'm like, can we do that?
[7:29] Can we do an epic race of some kind?
[7:34] I just discovered gout yesterday.
[7:36] Yeah.
[7:38] It's unbelievable.
[7:39] Yeah.
[7:40] And especially because he's only like 16 or something, so he's going to continue to grow and like get stronger.
[7:45] Wow.
[7:46] So he'll get faster, I guess.
[7:48] When does sprinters peak?
[7:49] 26 to 30.
[7:50] Oh, wow.
[7:51] So he's 10 years off peaking.
[7:53] And he's already got the Australian record, doesn't he?
[7:55] Yeah.
[7:56] It's ridiculous.
[7:57] Yeah.
[7:57] Well, this is not a Gout Gout episode.
[7:59] So against Gout Gout, I have unfortunately no hope.
[8:05] But, yeah, and it affects things like my handwriting, my ability to, like, use a knife and fork properly, play a musical instrument, do up the buttons on something, all that kind of stuff.
[8:17] Yeah.
[8:19] You fell in love with the art of storytelling from a very young age.
[8:22] I did.
[8:23] I've wanted to be a writer since I was four.
[8:26] Really?
[8:26] Yeah.
[8:27] Consciously knew that you wanted to be a writer.
[8:28] Yeah.
[8:29] Well, I think that was about the age that I realised that the names at the bottom of the books that I loved reading every day were actually like real people.
[8:37] Oh, yeah.
[8:37] Whoa.
[8:38] And were like, wait, you get to do this for a job?
[8:41] Cool.
[8:41] I want to do that.
[8:42] Like the idea of like inventing stories and yeah.
[8:46] Yep.
[8:46] We talk about Gak out at the age of 16 being a phenomenon.
[8:50] At the age of 15, you were working for Mamma Mia.
[8:52] I was, which is no small workplace environment, that's for sure.
[8:56] That's an extraordinary, I mean, that is just incredible, age 15 to be employed there.
[9:00] I think it's just, I mean, you went on from there.
[9:02] You've done so many incredible things.
[9:04] Your work has been published in the ABC every day.
[9:06] Fire up the Guardian careers with STEM.
[9:09] You're the editor-in-chief of the publication platform Missing Perspectives.
[9:13] I was, yes.
[9:14] You were, sorry.
[9:14] Yes, you were.
[9:15] That's okay.
[9:15] It's only a recent change.
[9:16] Yes, yeah, yeah.
[9:18] And your name became known worldwide when you called out Lizzo for a discriminatory lyric in one of her songs.
[9:25] What an amazing thing that was.
[9:27] That was a complete accident.
[9:30] Really?
[9:30] Well, it was one of those things where, you know, you tweet and you go, well, the
[9:35] That's how I feel, but they're not going to read it.
[9:38] Yeah, no one's going to read it.
[9:40] Yeah, and it took me like five seconds to write.
[9:44] You know, I tweet all the time.
[9:45] And then I picked up my phone a couple of hours later because I think it was like the long weekend or something, so we were doing things, and I went, ow, that's hot.
[9:55] And then went, wait.
[9:56] The phone was hot.
[9:56] Why is it hot?
[9:57] And looked down and was like.
[9:59] oh my god you have one billion what is happening and then i it just kind of kept going um and it got to the point where i was like okay so lizzo might not see it but someone somewhere who knows her or who knows a member of her team is going to find this and then what happens
[10:21] And before you go on, what did the tweet say?
[10:24] So the tweet was basically like, hey, Lizzo, just so you know, because she used the word spaz, which is obviously short for spastic, and the type of cerebral palsy that I have is called spastic diplegic cerebral palsy because I have spasticity or kind of this unending, like, constant tightness in my body, particularly in my legs.
[10:48] So even now while I'm talking to you, I am...
[10:51] pushing hard through my feet and my quads will be quite sore after this because it will be like I've been in a squat the whole time I was talking to you.
[11:00] It's called dystonia and it's something that happens a lot when I concentrate.
[11:04] So for instance, I was doing my three-hour HSC PDHPE exam and I got a quad cramp in the middle of the exam and I was like,
[11:16] I don't think that's supposed to happen, but cool.
[11:19] But of all the exams to get a quad cramp in, PDHP is probably the right one.
[11:22] Like, let me just write about this for an answer.
[11:25] Describe what's going on.
[11:27] Describe.
[11:28] So is that an involuntary thing?
[11:30] Yeah, it is.
[11:31] I can't control that.
[11:32] And even though I'm aware that it's happening, I can't.
[11:35] do anything really about it so yeah it happens when i'm concentrating when i'm excited if i'm like really focused on something and especially for like something like an exam i can only type with two fingers so i'm going at it as fast as i can because i'm like i gotta get the words out yeah but
[11:57] Yeah, basically I just said, hey, Lizzo, that word spaz, it doesn't mean what you think it means.
[12:05] Like it actually means this and it's really not cool that you use that and like do better basically was the call in 2022.
[12:15] Were you a fan of Lizzo's?
[12:17] Yeah, yeah.
[12:18] And I thought because at the time she had like such a platform of,
[12:25] empathy and like radical acceptance and just being who you are and all of that.
[12:30] I was like, oh, this doesn't really vibe with that.
[12:34] So I'm just going to gently call it out and see what happens.
[12:37] Seems like someone who would want to know.
[12:39] Yeah.
[12:39] Yeah.
[12:40] Didn't expect her to necessarily do anything about it because didn't think that re-recording and re-releasing a song was that easy because if it was...
[12:49] Why include that word in the first place?
[12:50] Wasn't it?
[12:50] Was kind of my thinking.
[12:52] But yeah, that exploded.
[12:54] And then I got a message like three days after I sent the tweet from a friend.
[12:59] It was just an all in caps.
[13:01] She's changing the lyric.
[13:02] Check Instagram now.
[13:04] Whoa.
[13:05] And I'm like sitting there with a bowl of Whit Bix, like spoon halfway to my mouth going,
[13:10] What?
[13:11] Like, check Instagram.
[13:13] Oh, my God.
[13:13] There's like a full written statement happening and she's apologising.
[13:17] And wow, like, isn't that nice?
[13:19] Because obviously as a marginalised woman herself, she knows the impact of certain words and slurs that have probably been used against her.
[13:27] So you're right.
[13:28] I didn't think she'd want to do that intentionally.
[13:30] And now she's changing it.
[13:31] Cool.
[13:32] And at the same time, like, as wonderful as Liz's response was, and I got lots of wonderful responses from people who...
[13:39] were disabled who felt kind of vindicated or people who hadn't realised that the word was necessarily bad and were going to work to eradicate it from their vocabulary.
[13:52] I also got pretty significantly trolled.
[13:55] Oh, really?
[13:57] Yeah, I think if you drew up a bingo card of all of the insults you'd probably throw at a young woman, most of them would have been marked off by that experience.
[14:07] Yeah, it's awful.
[14:09] Thank you.
[14:10] Not fun.
[14:12] Very surreal to be like, wait, you're targeting me?
[14:17] Like, I'm just sitting at home in my bedroom.
[14:21] What are you doing?
[14:23] And then six weeks later, Beyonce releases a song with the same slur in it.
[14:30] And someone was trying to bait me and they're like, oh, so you're going to call out Beyonce too?
[14:34] And I was like, what?
[14:36] What's going on?
[14:37] And then I look up the lyrics to this Beyonce song and I was like,
[14:42] Lord help me.
[14:44] Do I have to change all the lyrics in the world?
[14:47] Come on, man.
[14:48] And I remember coming downstairs and being like, Mum, Beyonce's done it now.
[14:54] And being like...
[14:57] I think I have to call her Beyonce, don't I?
[15:01] And she's like, yeah.
[15:02] I was like, but Beyonce is Beyonce.
[15:07] Like, if I thought Lizzo fans was scary, the beehive is way scarier.
[15:15] Yeah, that's a whole new level.
[15:17] It's like, I'm going to die.
[15:19] But you're the Duvernator.
[15:23] This is not going to be good.
[15:25] It's such a weird position to be in where you feel like it's your obligation to call out Beyonce.
[15:30] When I was like, well.
[15:32] I did it for Lizzo.
[15:33] So I guess the same rules apply.
[15:35] And were people contacting you saying, are you going to say something?
[15:38] Yeah, they were.
[15:39] And then I wrote a piece and I woke up one morning to my phone ringing.
[15:45] So this is after the Beyonce thing?
[15:47] Yeah, so this was after the Beyonce thing.
[15:49] And it was a radio show host.
[15:52] I can't remember who it was.
[15:54] And I didn't know they were going to be calling me.
[15:56] So all of a sudden I'm like live on radio.
[15:59] Local or was it?
[16:00] No, I think it was national, national radio.
[16:04] And they go, morning Hannah, how do you feel about Beyonce changing the lyric?
[16:09] And at that point I didn't actually know she had.
[16:12] And I was like, oh, I feel great.
[16:14] While internally being like, what the?
[16:18] And then I got off the phone and I was like, Mom, you can't say it.
[16:23] Change the lyric.
[16:24] And I remember getting a call, I think it was from James Valentine, like the ABC radio guy, and he said, how does it feel to be the most powerful person in pop culture today?
[16:34] And I went, oh, um, I mean, good, I guess.
[16:40] It's fine.
[16:41] It's fine.
[16:43] And because of the fact that,
[16:46] Lizzo and Beyonce were also, happened to be both African-American women.
[16:52] I was also being accused of being quite racist.
[16:57] And I was like, I promise it had nothing to do with that.
[17:02] I'd have called out whoever it was, but no one would kind of hear me.
[17:06] And I remember at one stage, someone called me the, what did they say?
[17:12] The poster child for white privilege.
[17:15] And I went, I think there's a few people in that queue ahead of me, but, uh, but it's like, cool.
[17:25] That is such a good comeback.
[17:28] I didn't actually write it down because I was like, don't engage.
[17:31] But also like.
[17:32] Oh, perfect thing to say.
[17:34] Or like I had people saying like, you'll never walk.
[17:38] And I'm like, is that supposed to be news to me?
[17:42] Like, surprise.
[17:45] After 23 years of being in this disabled body, I'm only just figuring out now that I... That was just like a message I sent.
[17:51] Yeah, they're like, you'll never walk.
[17:53] And I was like, alone?
[17:55] Like, are you a Liverpool fan?
[17:56] Like, what's... Like, what's going on?
[17:57] You didn't finish the sentence.
[17:59] And I still...
[18:00] I'll occasionally get people being like, why did you make Liz and Beyonce change it?
[18:04] Or like some version of that.
[18:05] I'm like, it was two years ago, guys.
[18:07] Can we like move forward?
[18:09] But yeah, it got to the point where I had people sending me GIFs of like people in wheelchairs being pushed off cliffs.
[18:16] And I was like, I didn't even know there was a GIF for that.
[18:22] I would have hoped not.
[18:23] I'm like, that's something I probably could have done without knowing.
[18:26] Cool.
[18:27] God, the internet really does just bring out the worst in people, doesn't it?
[18:30] It does.
[18:30] But also like the internet is why I'm in the position that I'm in, because if I hadn't written an open letter to Disney when I was 15, I wouldn't have got the job at Mamma Mia if I didn't start a petition.
[18:45] Um.
[18:46] Can we just jump back to that open letter to Disney?
[18:49] I feel like people should know that.
[18:50] Yeah, okay.
[18:51] What was that?
[18:51] So the open letter to Disney was, I'm assuming you've all seen the wonderful film Inside Out.
[18:57] I still haven't seen Inside Out 2 yet.
[18:59] I unbelievably have not.
[19:01] Ryan, you have to.
[19:02] I know, it's shocking.
[19:03] I don't know why I haven't watched it.
[19:04] But you need to bring tissues with you because you're going to cry.
[19:06] I know, I know.
[19:07] I don't know why I haven't watched it, but I haven't.
[19:09] Anyway.
[19:10] So the gist of Inside Out, obviously, for anyone who hasn't seen it, like Ryan, is...
[19:16] that you have these emotions inside this kid's head, and it's like the visual manifestation of those emotions.
[19:23] And I remember going to see that and thinking,
[19:27] That's pretty heavy duty for a kids movie.
[19:30] Like, I wonder how hard they had to sell that concept.
[19:33] And then I'm like, well, if they can do that, surely it's a hop, skip and a jump.
[19:37] No real pun intended there, but a hop, skip and a jump to creating a disabled character, like someone that's in a wheelchair or otherwise visually obviously disabled.
[19:49] So I wrote this open letter to Disney and posted it on my blog and then was bold on Twitter and tagged Mia
[19:57] Mia Friedman.
[19:58] Mia Friedman.
[19:59] And then I got an email from her team saying, would it be alright if they republished it?
[20:06] And I was like, um, yeah.
[20:09] And then I got an email a few hours later that was like, actually, do you want a job?
[20:14] And I was like, um.
[20:16] Do you want a job?
[20:16] Yeah.
[20:17] A few hours later.
[20:18] Yeah.
[20:19] And I was like, I don't think that's how that's supposed to happen.
[20:23] And you were 15?
[20:24] Cool, yeah.
[20:25] So I was two weeks away from turning 16, I think.
[20:27] So I did it for like year 11.
[20:32] Then a couple of years ago, the idea kind of came back around again and I started an official change.org platform
[20:39] petition for a disabled Disney princess.
[20:43] And I did that very intentionally because I know that aside from Mickey Mouse, the princesses are the characters that are seen the most.
[20:52] So they're the ones that get featured on the bedspreads and the toys, the books, the lunch boxes.
[20:58] So I was like, well, if we want a disabled character, we want it to be a princess because that's going to have maximum impact.
[21:04] because the impact is twofold.
[21:06] Like obviously you're helping disabled kids see themselves, but you're also teaching able-bodied kids not to be afraid of stuff.
[21:14] And did you ever get a response from Disney?
[21:17] I got a response that basically was like,
[21:20] We see you, we hear you, we understand our responsibility to tell stories well, and that's as far as it went.
[21:29] But I'm also still of the opinion that you need representation in
[21:35] animation specifically because you should start representation as young as you can yeah and then it becomes normal yeah and then you don't have any of like kids lashing out at things they don't understand and it also makes it harder for parents to shush their kids and pull them away before they can ask the question that they're naturally going to because they're curious like i i have kids ask me all sorts of weird and wonderful things um what's the most common question
[22:02] it's generally phrased like, what's wrong with you?
[22:05] I'm like, well, there's nothing specifically wrong with me because I don't want to build on that assumption, but my legs don't work.
[22:13] And I kind of explained that like the messages get a bit scrambled, like they don't quite make it from my brain to my legs.
[22:21] So I kind of have scrambled legs and that always makes them laugh.
[22:24] Then we go from there.
[22:26] Yeah.
[22:28] But it just depends because some kids,
[22:30] will be really little and just want to like their eyes go wide at the wheelchair and they just want to touch it and they just want to like they go wheels, wheels, wheels.
[22:39] And their parents are like, yeah, it's called a wheelchair.
[22:41] She uses it to get around.
[22:43] And one of my favorites was, were you born in your wheelchair?
[22:48] And I just completely folded over in laughter because all I could picture was this tiny little wheelchair coming out with the umbilical cord that, like, blew as I did.
[22:56] Like the wheelchair grows with you.
[22:58] Yeah.
[22:59] And I was like, ouch, that would have hurt.
[23:01] Yep.
[23:04] Jill, we haven't touched on it.
[23:06] We're talking about movies here, but you're so multitalented.
[23:08] You scored acting roles in Late Comers, the first Australian film to portray a disabled person having sex, as well as Audrey, which was released this year and it's available to watch now.
[23:20] Yeah.
[23:20] So you do it all.
[23:23] Well, I give it a go.
[23:24] But I think, again, like...
[23:27] As a kid, I was always a drama kid.
[23:29] Like I could generally be found on or near a stage.
[23:32] And I think it was just because then it was more storytelling.
[23:35] And also I could control what people thought of me then.
[23:41] Or like I could deliver a punchline and have control over the people laughing at me instead of kids laughing at me because they thought I was weird or
[23:50] Oh, that was a conscious thought.
[23:51] Yeah.
[23:52] Yeah.
[23:52] And I was always taught, like, if you make the joke first, it takes the air out of it.
[23:58] So you guys have probably noticed I have quite a strong sense of humour and that's also to make people feel naturally...
[24:07] more comfortable around me because I think the instinct, unfortunately, still when you see a wheelchair is to kind of freeze for a second and be like, do we mention it?
[24:14] Do we not?
[24:15] Do we?
[24:16] And so if I tell a joke, then straight away people are like, oh, it's okay.
[24:21] It's safe.
[24:22] I'm not going to say the wrong thing.
[24:24] Is it?
[24:25] Is it a frustrating burden to always have to be the one to take that initiative?
[24:28] Sometimes.
[24:29] Or is there power in the... Do you find power in... Yeah.
[24:32] Both.
[24:33] Because I think the part that I would probably classify as slightly more burdensome is probably the relentlessness of it in the sense that, like, I don't get a break from being disabled as no one gets a break from being themselves, but...
[24:54] Like I'm always having to do some form of labour, whether it's for other people, for myself, in my own brain, like unlearning internalised stuff or, yeah, and it can get pretty tiring,
[25:10] I also acknowledge that like, well, if I don't do it, there might not be another chance.
[25:17] Yeah.
[25:17] Okay.
[25:18] Like this, this person's interaction with me could define the way they, the way they look at and feel comfortable interacting with disabled people forever, because I might be the first one they meet or the only one they meet for a while.
[25:31] And so I kind of owe it to everybody to make sure that
[25:35] I give them the best interaction I can so that the next time they meet a disabled person, hopefully that pops up in their mind.
[25:43] That feels like an enormous responsibility.
[25:45] It can be sometimes, Ryan.
[25:47] I have very small shoulders.
[25:50] Carries a lot, though.
[25:51] Yeah.
[25:52] It can be a bit heavy sometimes.
[25:55] Believe it or not, this is a vulnerability house and we haven't picked a card yet.
[26:00] So we've just been so, so, this is so interesting talking to you, Hannah, and there's so much to talk about.
[26:06] But, I mean...
[26:08] I hate breaking rules and the rules are we've got to pick a card.
[26:12] So we have this deck of cards.
[26:14] Now, for those of you who haven't heard the vulnerability house before, the way it works with this deck of cards, each of these cards has a question on them, which will hopefully invoke some level of vulnerability or a memory or a story or something.
[26:27] And the way we usually do it is we pick three cards.
[26:30] And then if one of those cards resonates with you in some way and sparks a memory or a feeling or anything, then you can have a talk about it.
[26:38] Yep.
[26:39] Do you want me to just pick three for you?
[26:41] Sure.
[26:42] So for those of you who aren't watching the video, Ryan is being my hands because I struggle to turn things over sometimes.
[26:49] And if I tried to do it, the whole deck would end up all over the table.
[26:54] So those three cards.
[26:56] Oof.
[26:57] These are, you guys are good at this.
[27:00] Okay.
[27:01] So on card number one, the card closest to me, we have, who have you never really thanked for the influence they have had on your life?
[27:09] Which is something I actually try to do quite consciously a lot.
[27:13] I feel like that came through in your book as well.
[27:15] Thank you.
[27:16] The book I'll Let Myself In, by the way, it's so beautiful.
[27:19] Aw, thanks.
[27:20] In what part of your life do you feel immature?
[27:23] Well, that's a loaded question, isn't it?
[27:25] It wasn't meant to be.
[27:27] No, that's all right.
[27:29] And...
[27:30] How do you see yourself?
[27:32] Is it the same way your loved ones see you?
[27:35] Why or why not?
[27:36] Okay, with that one, you guys have 100% been talking to my therapist.
[27:42] To be clear, not 100%.
[27:43] No, no.
[27:46] We have not been talking to your therapist.
[27:48] So it's closer to zero than 100%, but I get your point.
[27:51] Yeah.
[27:51] Yeah.
[27:52] Okay, so which of those three, if any, feel...
[27:57] I reckon we're going to go with how do you see yourself?
[28:00] Is it the same way your loved ones see you?
[28:02] Why or why not?
[28:03] The question your therapist gave us.
[28:05] Yeah.
[28:06] Why not?
[28:06] Okay.
[28:09] Wow.
[28:09] So the short answer to that is no, it's not the same.
[28:13] Um...
[28:17] I think my version of myself has a bit of catching up to do with where I'm at now because I felt stuck in the same place for a long time and I've done a fair bit of growing in the last couple of years.
[28:34] Life has transformed in some very big and small but all equally kind of unbelievable ways.
[28:43] Is there a moment which you kind of see as your like pre-Lizzo, post-Lizzo or what's the moment?
[28:50] Yeah, I think it kind of started in the pandemic because I started noticing how blasé people were.
[29:02] about like the stakes of COVID in the beginning and how it didn't take much for me to figure out that like some of the people in the disabled community, whether they were friends or strangers, like COVID would be an absolute disaster.
[29:17] It would probably mean the end of their life if they got it.
[29:20] So I felt very much like
[29:25] Well, I'm privileged enough to literally have a voice and be able to articulate myself.
[29:30] Don't you think you better use it?
[29:32] And that was a real 180 because when I was a teenager, there was nothing I wanted less than to be a disability advocate.
[29:41] I did not want anything to do with disabled stuff.
[29:45] I was doing my best to proverbially run away from it.
[29:51] And for someone whose body isn't built for running, I was pretty damn good at it in that sense.
[29:57] So take that, gout gout.
[29:59] I'll tell you what, this Hannah gout gout feud is building.
[30:04] Yeah, that's the real feud.
[30:05] That's what we're going to get out of this episode.
[30:07] Yeah, no, that's definitely it.
[30:09] But yeah, no, when I was a teenager, I would have done anything else.
[30:15] because I just didn't want to be defined by my disability.
[30:21] I didn't want people to look at me and only see my disability.
[30:24] And I felt like that had been the emotional centre point of a lot of my school experiences.
[30:35] There's a lot of times I ate lunch alone as a kid and I think that is kind of the image
[30:44] I have of myself sometimes that I return to.
[30:47] Like I know...
[30:49] You guys talk all the time about no matter what you achieve, there's always that little voice in the back of your head that is saying nasty things or not letting you celebrate something or not letting you be in the moment or whatever.
[31:02] And for me, that little voice looks an awful lot like little me sitting alone at lunchtime or not being invited to the party or not being invited over because someone's parents thought it was too hard to have me at the house or...
[31:16] someone saying, oh, we wanted to invite you to the party, but we had stairs, so the parents said you couldn't come, instead of asking how we would navigate that.
[31:26] They would just take the invitation away.
[31:28] So I think I've kind of been stuck there for a long time because it persisted
[31:33] all the way through high school and then uni happened and that was kind of meant to be a fresh start.
[31:39] But by the time I found my feet there, the pandemic hit and I was doing it from my room.
[31:46] Just to go back to that experience of like the way you put it, the invitation got taken away.
[31:52] I don't want to assume how that felt.
[31:57] I think I can imagine how that would feel, but I'd be interested to know like what is from an emotion point of view, like,
[32:03] It was a lot of, oh, I guess I'm not good enough then because they couldn't figure out a way for it to work.
[32:15] Like being angry that they didn't think to ask me or my parents, being sad that no matter how hard I tried or what other parts of me people liked, they weren't ever going to be able to get past.
[32:31] the chair and I wasn't able to get past the chair for a long time either because it just felt like this giant barrier to everything and I'm not going to lie, sometimes it still does even though things are miles better than they once were in some ways.
[32:46] It doesn't feel like I've moved that far at all.
[32:48] Because I think for me, unfortunately because I missed out on a lot of childhood friendship stuff.
[32:56] Adult friendships are very different, but because I didn't get the childhood friendship stuff, my brain still kind of goes, why can't it be like that?
[33:05] And I have to consciously be like, but we're all adults now.
[33:07] We all have different lives.
[33:08] We all have different time.
[33:09] Just because you don't talk to someone for a couple of months doesn't mean they don't like you.
[33:14] Like all that kind of stuff is stuff I constantly have to remind myself because otherwise the voice in the back of my head is just spewing poison.
[33:24] Mm-hmm.
[33:25] But yeah, I think all of that kind of stuff leaves you with a real thirst to prove yourself constantly.
[33:33] And that could be exceeding people's expectations of me as a disabled person, because when I was a kid, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me a variation of the question, what's your Paralympic sport going to be, I'd be up there with Gina and Rupert.
[33:51] And it's not until I've gotten older that I realise that they thought they were helping.
[33:55] But I was also very quickly able to go, well, hang on a minute.
[34:01] I've got two able-bodied sisters just over there who are younger than me, but you're not asking them what their Olympic sport's going to be.
[34:10] So why not?
[34:12] Oh, well, because not everyone gets to the Olympics.
[34:17] Not everyone's good enough.
[34:19] Yeah, okay.
[34:20] Or not everyone wants to.
[34:22] Ah, there you go.
[34:23] So why doesn't that same logic apply to me?
[34:26] And for a long time, like, I think that's because it was the only real marker of success that was publicly visible for disabled people.
[34:35] Like, when I was growing up, it was either five minutes of the Paralympics at the end of the evening news on, like, the ABC, or it was road safety ads.
[34:45] Hmm.
[34:47] where obviously the context of that is to try and persuade people not to make a dangerous or ill-thought-out decision behind the wheel of a car.
[34:59] But obviously to make those ads kind of hit home, being in a wheelchair is meant to be like, your life is over, da-da-da-da-da.
[35:08] But for me, someone who has obviously had a permanent condition since birth,
[35:13] the idea that people thought my life was over because I was, you know, seeing and understanding and internalising these ads from like the age of five onwards, seeing people thought my life was over like at five, I'm like, oh, that doesn't feel good.
[35:31] So yeah, it's just been constantly trying to prove myself.
[35:33] And I still do it all the time.
[35:36] I'm like, I'll prove that I'm a good friend.
[35:38] I'll prove that I'm a good actor.
[35:40] I'll prove that I like...
[35:42] that I'm a good advocate, that I'll just do all the stuff.
[35:45] And if I just keep doing, maybe the feeling will eventually go away.
[35:49] I mean, I've done a lot of stuff so far in 25 years and the feeling hasn't gone away yet.
[35:55] So.
[35:57] Was the feeling there before your teenage years or did it come with teenage years?
[36:01] No, it came straight, pretty much straight away.
[36:04] Yeah.
[36:05] Well, it came from the idea that not that.
[36:09] I necessarily had teachers who were overt about this, but there were teachers who I could tell didn't think I could do it.
[36:17] Yeah.
[36:18] Weren't sure that I was smart enough to be in the room.
[36:25] And I would see people...
[36:27] like have this kind of preconceived assumption of me.
[36:30] And then I'd put up my hand and ask a question and you could watch their face just kind of change.
[36:35] And it still happens now, like constantly, because I've been traveling a lot for work this past year.
[36:42] Flight attendants will say, oh, so are you going on a holiday or coming home or what or what are you up to?
[36:48] Like, no, I'm traveling for work.
[36:51] And most of them are pretty good at catching themselves.
[36:54] and hiding it, but some people let the surprise be written all over their face.
[36:59] Yeah.
[36:59] Oh, gosh, what do you mean a disabled person is travelling for work?
[37:03] Mm-hmm.
[37:04] When you say, you said a phrase before, I'm going to paraphrase it, you said it better than me, but it was about proving people's expectations of you wrong.
[37:14] I imagine that there are many ways to react of people having low expectations for you and I imagine there would be a temptation to retreat sometimes and isolate and just not want to deal in that at all.
[37:24] Was there a moment where you were like, no, I'm going to prove people wrong and that was it or is it a sort of fluctuation?
[37:29] I think...
[37:31] It's been fairly consistent, but the fluctuation comes from the, I'm tired.
[37:37] Yeah.
[37:38] I really don't want to do this anymore.
[37:40] I'm like in the kind of really bad episodes of mental health that I've had, the thoughts will be, I don't want to be me anymore.
[37:49] It's too hard.
[37:50] I'm too tired.
[37:53] And it's taken me a long time to be able to identify that that's actually what the thoughts were.
[37:57] But yeah, that's the kind of stuff that pops up.
[38:01] And like to the credit, no one in my personal life expects me to prove myself.
[38:08] Everyone tells me that like, it's okay.
[38:12] You've done the thing.
[38:14] You can stop now.
[38:14] But I think it's going to be.
[38:16] In terms of like you've done the heart, you've like done it.
[38:18] But it's also proving it to myself too because I don't necessarily think I believe it.
[38:24] Believe?
[38:25] Like.
[38:26] That you're worthy?
[38:27] Yeah.
[38:28] I have pretty low self-esteem, low self-worth, which is why this question is so interesting because I see myself as probably a lot smaller and less powerful or put together or...
[38:44] insert phrase here, than a lot of other people.
[38:48] Yeah.
[38:48] And now it's interesting because the prove myself stuff is still there.
[38:53] But then because of the success that I've had and because of the platform that I have and the people who message me and are like, thank God my disabled kid is going to have you to look up to or something like that.
[39:04] There's also a lot of, OK, well, I can't let anyone down.
[39:08] Yeah, and that's the big weight on the shoulders.
[39:11] On the small shoulders.
[39:12] Yeah.
[39:13] Well, it's also a lot of weight for you to carry when underneath that you're dealing with your own self-worth.
[39:20] Like that's something fragile underneath it that's carrying a lot of weight.
[39:24] And also like my version, like I'm pretty hard on myself, my version of letting people down doesn't leave much room for error.
[39:37] Got pretty high expectations for yourself.
[39:39] Yeah.
[39:39] Yeah.
[39:41] You write so beautifully about self-worth in your book, I'll Let Myself In, which, by the way, is one of the best titles for a book I've ever heard.
[39:49] Yes, it's magnificent.
[39:50] Interestingly enough, though, and again, I think this comes back to like the self-worth thing, wanting to be a writer, I never, ever wanted to write a book about myself.
[40:01] It was like, no, that's a memoir thing.
[40:05] That happens when you're like 80 years old and Mick Jagger.
[40:07] It's not...
[40:09] It's not like...
[40:10] He's the only one to have written a memoir.
[40:13] But you know what I mean?
[40:14] You have to have a whole life that people are interested in.
[40:18] You can't write a memoir in your early 20s.
[40:21] That's a wanker thing to do.
[40:25] So I was always sure that it was going to be fiction.
[40:29] And then...
[40:30] At the end of high school, actually, and I talk about this in the book, I had a pretty decently sized nervous breakdown, conveniently, before my Year 12 exams.
[40:44] I just had to hold it together and kind of didn't, but that's okay.
[40:48] What was it about?
[40:49] What was it?
[40:50] Just, I think it was just an implosion of a lot of different things.
[40:56] So I had gotten to year 12 and still wasn't getting anywhere kind of friends.
[41:02] In fact, things were going backwards.
[41:05] There had been times where I thought I was making progress and then it turned out I wasn't.
[41:11] Like every time I thought things were getting better, the rug would get pulled out from under me.
[41:16] You shared a story where you went to a friend's house for a sleepover.
[41:19] Yes.
[41:20] Can you tell us that story?
[41:21] Because that to me is kind of...
[41:23] I can tell you that story.
[41:25] So when I was, I think, 17, there was a girl, and I'm not going to use her name, but she sat behind me in maths class
[41:35] And we clicked.
[41:38] And I was like, where have you been?
[41:41] This is fun.
[41:42] Maybe this is the friend that all the movies and all the songs are about.
[41:47] I'm like, great.
[41:48] And we got really, really, really close.
[41:52] to the point where we could detect even like the tiniest shifts in each other's moods.
[41:59] And she had asked me to come over for a sleepover, and I was ecstatic because the number of sleepovers I've had where it's been me going to someone else's house are small, very, very small.
[42:14] And we went away to art camp and we're sitting on the bus and she's really quiet.
[42:21] very withdrawn.
[42:23] And I went, are you all right?
[42:25] And she's like, yeah, I might.
[42:28] Are you still all right if I come over?
[42:31] Like, and I remember asking her a couple of times, like, are you sure?
[42:35] I don't have to come over if you don't want me to.
[42:38] Like, I gave her some very clear outs and her mum picked us up from art camp and we got there and I reckon I'd been there for
[42:50] maybe an hour, and she sat me down and said, I have to tell you something.
[42:55] And I went, uh-oh.
[42:58] You know that feeling you get when you're in a lift or if you're on a plane and your stomach just, like, plunges through the floor?
[43:04] That was the feeling.
[43:05] I was like...
[43:07] warning, warning, warning, something bad is coming.
[43:10] Like pretty much I have to tell you something or like we have to talk.
[43:14] Some variation of that sentence is never good news.
[43:19] So I kind of sat in there very still.
[43:22] And I remember it felt like all the sound in the room, except her voice, vanished.
[43:30] And she said, look, I, um, I don't really want
[43:38] you here.
[43:41] And I went, what?
[43:42] And she's like, well, you know, you're full of darkness.
[43:48] You like drag everyone down.
[43:50] You've, you are just so miserable and sad all the time.
[43:56] And it's, it's too much.
[44:00] You put too much pressure on everybody.
[44:02] And like all this kind of stuff.
[44:04] And to be fair, I had been going through a rough time because I was also trying to prove to myself and to the education department that like I was a worthy student who deserved to do her exams in the best way that I could do them.
[44:23] And I blocked out most of what she said, but that's kind of the general gist of it.
[44:28] And then you stayed over.
[44:30] Because I remember sitting there going, and my voice came out like really high pitched, like, okay, like, thanks for telling me.
[44:37] Like, I'll try and be better.
[44:39] All right.
[44:40] And I remember sitting there going, okay, two choices here.
[44:47] One, I stay.
[44:49] Two, her mum's just out there.
[44:54] And I come out an hour into our sleepover and ask to go home.
[44:59] And when she asks why, I tell her the truth and say, she doesn't want me here, like, this is what she said.
[45:07] And then I could just see it.
[45:09] And I didn't know whether this was what would happen or not, but I could just see the situation being like when her mum confronted her about what she said, she'd say she hadn't said it.
[45:20] Yeah.
[45:21] And I was like, okay, so that's not really an option.
[45:25] So I have to stay.
[45:26] Oh, my God.
[45:28] And that is one of the, I think, the best acting performances I have ever given in my life.
[45:35] Because inside I was like, what is happening?
[45:38] And...
[45:41] You flooded with really strong feelings of like homesickness.
[45:44] Yeah.
[45:44] I feel like that's what I would have.
[45:46] Yeah.
[45:47] But I was like, I can't call my parents because like they're at an event and I don't want to upset their night.
[45:54] And also they're like far enough away that it would take them a long time to go and get me.
[45:58] And I don't really like any phone call I'd have to make.
[46:01] I'd have to make it in this house with her parents, with her twin sister, with whoever.
[46:08] And I remember
[46:10] We were watching Stand By Me, which is obviously a beautiful film about friendship.
[46:16] And I remember sitting up watching this film, and I'd never seen it before at that point, looking at my friend sleeping and being like, now what?
[46:28] And we got up and she asked her mum, oh, is it okay if I sleep in my sister's room tonight?
[46:38] And her mum went.
[46:40] No, you have a guest.
[46:44] Like, obviously you're going to sleep in the same room as Hannah.
[46:48] Like, that's the whole point.
[46:51] Of a sleepover.
[46:52] Of a sleepover.
[46:54] And I was like, oh, my God.
[46:59] And, you know, I'd had visions of we'll stay up half the night talking and we pretty much...
[47:04] I got into bed, said goodnight, and that was it.
[47:08] And then I got up the next morning, and like I said, we were in the same maths class, and she was still doing some maths homework.
[47:18] And I said, oh, do you want to maybe do something this morning, like hoping to kind of resurrect the events?
[47:28] And she was like, no, I have this stuff finished.
[47:30] And I'm like, oh, okay, well, could we maybe like put a record on or something while you're doing that?
[47:37] Because I've done my part and I'm just kind of sitting here watching you do your homework.
[47:43] And she was like, oh, no, I have to study in silence.
[47:47] And I was like, oh, OK.
[47:50] So I was reading my book and as I was reading my book, I could feel my, like, the kind of protective thaw that I'd put over myself starting to, like, splinter a little bit.
[48:02] And I was like, uh-oh.
[48:04] I'm getting angry and upset right now.
[48:07] And coincidentally, her dad put his head around the door at that exact moment and said, hey, just let me know when you want to go home, Hannah.
[48:14] And I was like, no, please.
[48:17] And she came, but she didn't even really say goodbye.
[48:21] And I remember
[48:23] my auntie shutting the door and saying, you're home early.
[48:26] Like, we'd been specifically told not to expect you till, like, the afternoon because, like, it was going to be a full two days.
[48:33] And I was just like, ah.
[48:36] Tears.
[48:37] Yeah.
[48:37] And then it got to the point where I was like, well, what?
[48:40] Are all of the people who are kind of my friends, do they all think this way?
[48:43] And they've all just been pretending and keeping it from me and like, what's happening and what's going on?
[48:48] And there had also been all that stuff previously.
[48:52] And I wrote about this too with the Year 11 social on the boat, which was very wheelchair and accessible, so I couldn't go.
[49:02] And my year didn't care that I and another disabled girl in my year were the only two who couldn't go.
[49:11] Oh, it's heartbreaking.
[49:13] And stuff like that.
[49:13] So a lot of friendship trauma.
[49:16] But just for reading the book, this stuff continued to just happen to you over and over again.
[49:20] And so.
[49:20] Yes, repeatedly.
[49:21] And my instinct when I make a friend now is.
[49:29] how long before the shoe drops.
[49:33] Like I have a really, really good friend, someone I would, someone who actually called me their best friend recently and I was like, I can't speak.
[49:42] Like thankfully they texted it to me so I wasn't physically in front of them because I think I would have just been like, ugh.
[49:48] But even then, like I had to talk to my psychologist and
[49:52] I feel like I don't trust it.
[49:55] My brain's going not if this falls apart, it's going when this falls apart, what am I going to do?
[50:03] Do you feel that, I was going to ask you exactly, you already went there with what I wanted to ask, but I wanted to ask it in more general terms.
[50:09] With the roles you've been playing, some of the opportunities you've had to speak at the press club recently and stuff like that, when these opportunities come around and they seem all incredible, do you feel a sense of when's this all going to stop?
[50:27] Every single time.
[50:29] Yeah.
[50:30] Everything, like I, we have this joke at home that my life is a snowball and it just keeps rolling.
[50:39] And it's like, I don't know whether I'm in front of the snowball, trying to stay out of the way before it flattens me, behind the snowball racing to catch up, or somewhere in the middle screaming as we go down the hill.
[50:50] And every time I'm like, well, surely it's going to stop now.
[50:53] Mm-hmm.
[50:55] Like I have a lot of imposter syndrome about like, well, yeah, but surely this can't be how life is now.
[51:05] Like surely someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and say, all right, that's enough.
[51:11] Like go back to just being regular.
[51:14] Almost like you don't deserve the success.
[51:16] Yeah, pretty much.
[51:18] Pretty much.
[51:18] And then it's a lot of like, why did this success happen to me and not someone else?
[51:24] And like feeling guilty for taking up space.
[51:29] Oh, wow.
[51:29] Yeah.
[51:30] I just need to remind you right now, like, how well you write.
[51:33] Like, we said this before, but, like, everything you do, you do so incredibly well.
[51:37] That is why this snowball continues to gather pace and size and momentum because, like, I mean, this is, yeah, the whole time reading your book, I was just, the first thing when I came in today, Josh just said, how well does she write?
[51:49] Yeah.
[51:50] It's an incredible skill that you have.
[51:53] Thank you.
[51:55] I'm really bad at taking compliments.
[51:57] I'm going to give you one now as well.
[51:59] Go on.
[52:00] To back up exactly what he was saying, I actually listened to the book.
[52:04] I'm a terrible reader.
[52:05] That's okay.
[52:06] It's still reading.
[52:07] It's okay.
[52:07] Well, the thing I loved about it was that it's you reading it.
[52:12] I thought I was good at speaking until I started reading my audiobook and then was like, why have I lost the ability to form words?
[52:21] And also, why did no one tell me to put more commas in my sentences?
[52:24] Why did I write this so long?
[52:26] I can't breathe.
[52:27] It was like, damn.
[52:29] I don't think I've read a book that has made brought me to tears more often.
[52:35] Oh, I'm sorry.
[52:36] No, in a beautiful way.
[52:38] It's not all just like sad tears, happy tears, all the kind of tears.
[52:42] All the tears.
[52:43] It's the way you write, but it's also the way you read it.
[52:45] It's so beautiful.
[52:46] There's a vulnerability in the way you talk.
[52:48] And I think there's, but it's not just vulnerability.
[52:51] There's like this incredible mixture of vulnerability and power that come together that is so engaging.
[52:57] Yeah.
[52:59] Um, and I don't know if this is going over the top, but just to also back up what Hugh said, I think it's worth saying to you, cause I'm sure you've been said this a lot, but even if you weren't brilliant at all this stuff, like you're still worthy and you're still incredible.
[53:13] Yeah.
[53:14] I've started saying that a lot to other disabled people too because I'm like, look, the versions of success that you see are me, Dylan Alcott, like Chloe Hayden, and we're all relatively doing well and like there's a lot of skill and there's a lot of very big...
[53:35] opportunities, but it's okay if your life isn't big.
[53:39] Like it doesn't have to be big to mean something.
[53:43] It can be just a regular everyday life and be just as valuable and just as important.
[53:49] And it's funny because I'm a lot better at saying those things to other people than I am at believing them myself.
[53:55] But I think I've started saying it as a way of trying to get my brain to believe it too.
[54:03] I think it will start rubbing off on yourself at some point.
[54:06] Yeah, hopefully.
[54:08] So in the book you write about the chapter started in quite a heartbreaking way and then it just turned into this extraordinary example of kindness around the time that you had a fall out of your chair.
[54:20] Yes.
[54:21] And the school decided.
[54:22] So what happened was it was a regular day at primary school and some of the ramps at my primary school were particularly steep, like –
[54:32] And this one was a particular monster.
[54:35] There was no way I was getting up it by myself.
[54:39] And this one kid, who was my friend at the time, was pushing me up the ramp.
[54:46] My first warning sign should have been that he wasn't tall enough to see over the handlebars, but you live and you learn, so it's okay.
[54:55] And the thing about...
[54:57] wheelchairs is the front wheels are like shopping trolley wheels.
[55:01] So if they hit something, they stop.
[55:04] So we were going out this ramp.
[55:06] We've hit a stick.
[55:07] The chair stopped.
[55:09] It's flipped and I've kept going.
[55:11] So I flew over the side of the ramp, landed on the ground, and I was like, I'm okay.
[55:18] And the teacher's like running over and I was like,
[55:23] yeah, you need to go to the office right now.
[55:27] I didn't know at that point.
[55:28] I was like, my head hurts.
[55:30] Yeah, that's because I had a giant egg on my head.
[55:34] And then my school was so freaked out by what had happened.
[55:38] They told me that if I wanted to come back and be on the playground, I needed to wear headgear, like a footballer's piece of headgear.
[55:47] And I was like, you guys, I'm already like...
[55:53] Please don't.
[55:54] I don't have friends now.
[55:56] I'm not going to have friends if I wear headgear.
[55:59] Oh God, it's going to make it so much worse.
[56:02] But anyway, they insisted, so mum went out and bought headgear.
[56:07] And she's laughing because the only piece of headgear she could find was bright, bright,
[56:15] blue with like red trim around the outside.
[56:19] Like a bacon.
[56:20] Yeah, it was like a neon sign.
[56:24] Like, this kid is different.
[56:28] You didn't get the helmet that said that, did you?
[56:29] No, no.
[56:31] She tried to sell it to me.
[56:32] I'll never forget it.
[56:34] I was like, oh, you'll be really cool because you'll be like Jonathan Thurston, who at the time was like the only digital record.
[56:43] And I was like, we support New South Wales.
[56:47] I don't care about Queensland.
[56:48] I don't want to be like them.
[56:50] That was the issue.
[56:51] Yeah.
[56:53] It's like, oh, no.
[56:55] So I was like...
[56:58] going to school with, like, lasers coming out my eyes, being like...
[57:02] I hate this.
[57:04] And my teachers decided, Mrs. Whitfield and Mrs. Gacy, if they're listening, they were a dream team.
[57:11] They decided that on the first day that I had to wear my headgear, they would make every kid in my class, so there was about 30 of us, and them wear funny or silly hats.
[57:22] Oh, wow.
[57:23] So that in the playground there were 30 kids and that was harder to make fun of than one.
[57:29] Wow, that's brilliant.
[57:31] And I have never, ever forgotten that kindness because it is one of the single kindest things that someone has ever done for me in just making me feel like it was going to be okay.
[57:43] And so it meant that the next day when I had to wear the headgear by myself, it was okay.
[57:48] Yeah.
[57:48] And not only okay, but you're part of us.
[57:50] Like you're one of us.
[57:52] Like you belong with us.
[57:54] Yeah.
[57:55] Which is all I've ever wanted as a kid and as an adult.
[57:59] So yeah, it's one of the singular kindest moments in my life.
[58:04] And it's the little things that mean the most.
[58:07] I was just hoping that one of them was a baby top hat.
[58:13] I think someone was wearing a top hat.
[58:14] I'm not sure who, but I'm pretty sure if we go back and look at photos, there was definitely a top hat in there somewhere.
[58:20] That's such a silly thing to bring up after all.
[58:22] It paid off.
[58:24] That is so beautiful.
[58:26] Yeah.
[58:27] Beautiful.
[58:28] Amazing.
[58:28] One of the stories that moved me most, I think, often when you ask people their earliest memories, they're like four or five years old.
[58:34] Yeah.
[58:34] One of your earliest memories is from actually when you were three.
[58:37] It is.
[58:39] I had a feeling you might want to talk about this one.
[58:42] Well, I was so moved by this whole story.
[58:46] So the memory that Hugh's talking about is the first time that I consciously went, huh, I'm different.
[58:54] So I was at daycare at the time.
[58:59] It was like this beautiful home daycare.
[59:01] So it was a really lovely, wholesome environment.
[59:05] Not very many kids.
[59:08] Home-cooked food every day.
[59:09] Like it was great.
[59:10] Um, and I finished my lunch and my best friend at daycare got up to go and play and I went, right, okay, well, I'm obviously going to go and play with her now too.
[59:25] And then I kind of looked down and was like, Hmm.
[59:32] I'm not moving.
[59:34] Why aren't I moving?
[59:36] My brain wants me to move.
[59:38] Doesn't it know how?
[59:41] What's going on?
[59:42] And it hadn't kind of occurred to me that I'd needed help to get into that chair in the first place to sit at the table or that I was the only one who still needed help out of bed at nap time, like everyone else could kind of get themselves up and out to the living room or that like...
[59:59] most of the time some of these kids were being allowed to go into the bathroom by themselves and I never was and stuff like that.
[1:00:08] And I remember going, huh, that's interesting.
[1:00:13] And I think the next thought was, OK, well, we can't cry about this now.
[1:00:19] We'll just have to file it away and ask Mum.
[1:00:22] Like, Mum knows everything, so she'll have an answer.
[1:00:26] And I don't fully remember this, like writing about it was as much using Mum's memory of it as my own.
[1:00:36] But I got in the car on the way home and said,
[1:00:41] Mum, why don't my legs work?
[1:00:46] And it's only kind of when I got older that I found out from my dad that they were like, damn it, we thought we had more time before she asked this question.
[1:00:57] We thought we had another year or two to kind of be like, prepare.
[1:01:02] And Mum was like, well, you have this thing called cerebral palsy and that means your legs don't work.
[1:01:10] Why?
[1:01:12] Well, I don't know.
[1:01:14] What what do you mean you don't know?
[1:01:17] Well, I don't know.
[1:01:19] Well, who well, who knows?
[1:01:22] No one.
[1:01:22] They don't know why.
[1:01:24] What what do you mean there's a question without an answer?
[1:01:28] At three.
[1:01:29] Like what do you what are you talking about?
[1:01:33] And then, unfortunately, when you realise something like that, it's one of those things you can't unrealise it.
[1:01:41] So it suddenly becomes present in every scenario, every situation, it's kind of like a...
[1:01:51] I guess, extra person sitting at the table or like this giant hole that you just kind of have to move around.
[1:01:58] And also, like, I didn't see anyone who looked like me.
[1:02:03] So I once I figured out I was different, I was like, well, that's OK, right?
[1:02:08] And then I didn't find anything that necessarily told me it was.
[1:02:13] So a lot of.
[1:02:15] Incredible Hulk feelings went into that for a while.
[1:02:21] I was a pretty angry little kid.
[1:02:23] Which makes sense.
[1:02:25] Yeah.
[1:02:26] And it's funny, I was watching The Avengers a couple of years ago, and I can't remember which of the characters it is, asks the Hulk, what's the secret?
[1:02:37] Like, how do you control when you go green or whatever?
[1:02:40] And he went, oh, well, I'm just angry all the time.
[1:02:45] And I just choose when to let it out and when not to.
[1:02:48] And I went, oh, so that's what that is.
[1:02:52] That's how that, that's what that feels like.
[1:02:56] Cool.
[1:02:57] Okay, great.
[1:02:58] So I think there's, there's a permanent part of me that will always be angry and sad and tired.
[1:03:04] It, I, I just work really hard to make sure that that's not the part that rules everything else.
[1:03:11] And the impact on your mental health, I'm guessing, is... A lot.
[1:03:14] Is a lot, yeah.
[1:03:16] Yeah.
[1:03:17] And you've been through ups and downs throughout your life so far, but there have been some pretty dark places.
[1:03:22] Many ups and downs.
[1:03:24] Yeah, so I was probably nine or ten the first time that I had suicidal thoughts, I think.
[1:03:38] Mm-hmm.
[1:03:40] and they were the byproduct of some pretty intense medical trauma.
[1:03:49] So when I was a kid, I had a lot of orthopedic surgery, which is to do with bones and stuff like that.
[1:03:58] And the first surgery I had was what they call multi-level surgery, and they call it that because they do multiple things at once while the kid's under anesthetic just to get it done.
[1:04:07] So apologies if anyone's squeamish.
[1:04:09] You might want to skip this part.
[1:04:11] But they broke my femurs, rotated them, inserted metal plates inside and then glued them back together.
[1:04:21] Which...
[1:04:21] But a femur is a bone from the hip to the knee.
[1:04:24] It's the biggest bone in your body.
[1:04:25] Yeah.
[1:04:26] And the hardest.
[1:04:27] To break.
[1:04:27] Yeah.
[1:04:28] That was a fun thing to learn in PDHP like 12 years later and be like, oh, cool.
[1:04:33] That explains that.
[1:04:34] That explains that.
[1:04:36] And be like, it's impossible to break.
[1:04:38] And I went, it's not.
[1:04:40] You can.
[1:04:40] You can break it.
[1:04:41] I'm not sure how they did it because I never asked them, but.
[1:04:44] Trust me, I've had broken ones.
[1:04:46] And the thing about that is too, you don't use your femur to wipe bare either.
[1:04:51] So they get you out of bed 24 hours after you've had the surgery and go, all right, it's time to walk.
[1:04:56] And you're like...
[1:04:59] I really don't want to, like it hurts.
[1:05:01] They're like, no, but you have to.
[1:05:04] Okay, fine.
[1:05:05] So I have a really messed up relationship with exercise and physical fitness as well, too.
[1:05:10] But like, I'm a pretty small person now, but when I was nine, I was really tiny, obviously.
[1:05:18] And you guys talked about this, I think.
[1:05:23] in an episode with Grant Denyer and his drug addiction.
[1:05:27] But the cocktail of drugs that I was on as a nine-year-old for pain were gabapentin, diazepam and oxycodone.
[1:05:37] Oh my God.
[1:05:39] Yeah.
[1:05:40] And it's not till I got older and started reading about like celebrities who have overdosed on drugs and being like...
[1:05:46] well, fuck, that's oxycodone for like... And you're nine.
[1:05:51] Yeah.
[1:05:52] And I don't think a child's brain is built to be on narcotics at all, let alone that many.
[1:06:01] So I had a terrible time.
[1:06:02] I was like hallucinating.
[1:06:04] I was...
[1:06:06] I would like go blank where I would be awake, but I'd have no memory of like what I'd done or what I'd said.
[1:06:13] And then I'd come out of it and be like, what'd I do?
[1:06:17] And that was when I was like, I just want this to end.
[1:06:20] I just wanted this to be over.
[1:06:21] And like, I just want to be out of here.
[1:06:23] Yeah.
[1:06:25] And I think, unfortunately, because your brain is very much still developing, like I was always an anxious person, but that catapulted my anxiety.
[1:06:37] Introduced me to our lovely friend, depression.
[1:06:40] And those thoughts are like an emergency exit on an airplane.
[1:06:44] Once they're pointed out, you notice it.
[1:06:47] Like it's in the periphery of your vision everywhere.
[1:06:52] Wow I know it seems strange off the back of that to go back to something There was something I wanted to ask you that I think ties into the end of that Without wanting to gloss over what is extremely traumatic for you as a nine-year-old
[1:07:07] The concept of, I'd never thought of it this way before, but as a three-year-old, having, as you beautifully said it, a question without an answer and such a, at that point, no bigger question for you in your life that didn't have an answer.
[1:07:23] That's got to profoundly affect your sort of relationship with uncertainty.
[1:07:30] Yeah, it meant that I, when people said I don't know, I was like, but you have to know.
[1:07:36] And it also meant that as a kid, I asked questions from the time I got up in the morning to the time I went to bed at night.
[1:07:44] I wanted to know everything and I wanted to know it now.
[1:07:47] And I was also the kid who very much needed to have a plan.
[1:07:51] So like if we were going out for the day, I needed to know where we were going, what we were doing, when we were going to stop to eat, what we were going to stop to eat, when we'd be home, all that kind of stuff.
[1:08:01] I couldn't deal with change whatsoever.
[1:08:05] which is hilarious now because my entire working life is built on uncertainty and change.
[1:08:12] I said that to my psychologist recently and she's like, yeah, you might have gone a little bit too far the other direction.
[1:08:17] I was like, oh, yeah.
[1:08:20] So it's no surprise to me at all that uncertainty would lead to anxiety to a huge degree.
[1:08:28] So were you anxious from a very young age?
[1:08:31] Yeah.
[1:08:32] I didn't know that I had anxiety until I was maybe 10 or 11, but I'd had it for a long time at that point.
[1:08:43] So I would have what I now understand to be like meltdowns or anxiety attacks and anxiety attacks.
[1:08:50] as a kid, but because I didn't have the language to articulate either what was going on in my head or for me to necessarily understand what an anxiety attack even was, I thought there was something wrong with me, like bad, that I couldn't manage my emotions.
[1:09:10] I was like, why do I just explode what's going on?
[1:09:14] And then I started to learn language and labels and
[1:09:19] names and stuff like that.
[1:09:20] And then it was like, oh, well, at least I can tell people now.
[1:09:24] They're like, I'm having a panic attack.
[1:09:26] Help.
[1:09:28] Yeah.
[1:09:29] And it's interesting because, like, I've been in therapy since I was four, so that's over 20 years.
[1:09:36] But a lot of the time when I was a kid, all of the tools that I was given would be swept out of my head by the size of what I felt.
[1:09:46] So I wasn't at a point where I was able to go, okay, let's take, you know, 10 deep breaths or let's think of five positive things or let –
[1:09:57] Like logically I would know that that's what I needed to do, but I just couldn't access the toolbox.
[1:10:03] Now I've gotten to the point where there's a little bit of a buffer, I guess.
[1:10:09] Maybe it's just because I'm older and I've practiced, but now when it's happening, I can access the toolbox and be like, okay, sometimes it still doesn't work, but I can at least go logically I know this is what I need to do and I can do it.
[1:10:22] I feel like I've, I mean, I'm 38 now.
[1:10:26] I feel like I've only been able to access the toolbox a little bit this year.
[1:10:32] Yeah, it's not 100% of the time.
[1:10:34] It's definitely far easier said than done.
[1:10:37] But there have been a couple of times where I'm like,
[1:10:39] hey, that actually worked.
[1:10:42] Cool.
[1:10:44] Yeah.
[1:10:44] Yeah.
[1:10:45] It's a remarkable thing but just it doesn't surprise me that a child is unable to access it.
[1:10:53] I don't know about you guys but I find that like being up when I'm going through something...
[1:10:58] It's very rare that I can have the sort of almost like a third person experience to go, oh no, slow down, let's do something to stop this or anything like that.
[1:11:08] I think that's probably forever be trying to find new tools.
[1:11:12] Yeah, yeah.
[1:11:13] Trying to work or even just get the ones to work.
[1:11:16] The ones I've got to work.
[1:11:17] Brains are complicated, aren't they?
[1:11:20] Seems to be.
[1:11:20] Yeah.
[1:11:21] I think I've got a pretty good handle on mine.
[1:11:23] But you seem to have, and through necessity in many ways, but like this incredible team of people around you that help you.
[1:11:34] And your mum's here today.
[1:11:36] She is.
[1:11:36] She's hiding behind her.
[1:11:37] She's hiding, yeah, the Wizard of Oz.
[1:11:39] The Wizard of Oz, okay.
[1:11:42] But, like, I love my mum.
[1:11:45] But, like, I would love to hear how much you love your mum and the role your mum plays in your life.
[1:11:53] Do you want her to leave the room while you do this?
[1:11:56] Would you like to come out while I do this?
[1:11:58] Oh, that would be really nice.
[1:12:00] No?
[1:12:01] Okay.
[1:12:04] My mum means a lot to me.
[1:12:05] I mean, I wouldn't be where I am.
[1:12:09] without my mum or my dad, both my parents, it's a testament to them that when they found out that I had brain damage and then that that brain damage resulted in cerebral palsy, that mum tells the story, like they cried for 24 hours and then were like...
[1:12:26] okay, what are we going to do?
[1:12:29] How do we give her or me the best life that we can?
[1:12:34] And that's kind of the whole attitude.
[1:12:38] But I think it's interesting because I love my mum and we have a closeness.
[1:12:44] We also have a physical closeness that is very intimate because, you know, she has to help me get dressed or go to the bathroom or do that kind of stuff.
[1:12:53] But we're also at the stage where...
[1:12:57] 25, I'm trying to not rely on my mum so much because most people my age have very different relationships with their mum.
[1:13:10] And mum was always one of those people who was like, if you ever call me your best friend, like there's going to be a problem.
[1:13:16] I'm your mum.
[1:13:17] I'm not here to be your best friend.
[1:13:19] Find someone else.
[1:13:21] Like you need, you need more than one person to fill
[1:13:24] The role, right?
[1:13:25] You can't.
[1:13:26] Yeah, yeah.
[1:13:26] There are different roles.
[1:13:27] I can't be your multi-purpose person who fills every gap.
[1:13:34] Like you have to be able to go out there and make friends without me.
[1:13:38] I'm pretty harsh from you, Mum.
[1:13:40] I'm not going to be your best friend.
[1:13:46] I need you to confirm that that is indeed what you said, Mum.
[1:13:48] 100%.
[1:13:50] There we go.
[1:13:51] It comes from such a good place.
[1:13:53] It does.
[1:13:53] It does.
[1:13:54] Yeah.
[1:13:55] I love it.
[1:13:55] It's just like, get yourself together.
[1:13:57] Get out of there and find a friend, damn it.
[1:14:00] That's amazing.
[1:14:02] Wow.
[1:14:03] It's funny, like just listening to you, you know, sometimes you'll listen to a podcast or someone chatting, you think, oh, I reckon I'd be friends with that person.
[1:14:11] And you and some people just have that personality when you listen to them.
[1:14:14] It's like, but everyone thinks I'd be friends with that person.
[1:14:17] You actually have that.
[1:14:18] You have that, the way you talk, listen to this.
[1:14:20] It's just like everyone listening to this would be like, oh, I want to be a friend.
[1:14:23] There'd be a queue of people.
[1:14:25] Come be friends with me, guys.
[1:14:26] Yeah.
[1:14:26] Well, you've got three friends and us, that's for sure.
[1:14:28] There's some vacancies open.
[1:14:30] Good timing.
[1:14:32] Yeah.
[1:14:34] So the movie is out now, Audrey.
[1:14:36] Yes.
[1:14:38] Can you tell us a bit about your character?
[1:14:39] I can.
[1:14:40] So first of all, just generally, Audrey is what I like to call a pitch black dark comedy.
[1:14:46] Wow.
[1:14:47] Because, yeah, it's about a mother named Ronny who
[1:14:55] is like a failed soap star.
[1:14:58] She was supposed to have this big career and then kids' life got in the way.
[1:15:02] So she puts all of her energy and all of her unrealised dreams into her daughter Audrey, who was played brilliantly by Josephine Blazier.
[1:15:12] And Audrey gets pretty sick of that, climbs up on the roof in protest and...
[1:15:18] falls off the roof, falls into a coma.
[1:15:21] Her family's lives improve while she is in said coma and her mother steals her identity.
[1:15:28] And Hugh is looking at me like I am just slapping across the face.
[1:15:33] It's just not what I was expecting.
[1:15:35] Yeah, no, it's not.
[1:15:36] And I play Nora, who is the 15-year-old, so it was funny for me to play 15.
[1:15:42] I was like, are you sure?
[1:15:44] And then they're like putting a school uniform on me and I'm like...
[1:15:49] We swore we'd never do this again.
[1:15:50] What are we doing?
[1:15:52] What are we doing?
[1:15:54] And she's kind of the forgotten child.
[1:15:56] Like no one really, really notices her much.
[1:16:00] And she's sarcastic and dry and really witty, so nothing like me at all.
[1:16:07] And she has a passion for fencing.
[1:16:15] So I got to learn how to fence at least a little bit.
[1:16:19] Whoa, how's that?
[1:16:20] Which was really, really odd.
[1:16:23] I asked a really stupid question.
[1:16:24] You were talking about the sport?
[1:16:26] Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[1:16:27] Not building fences.
[1:16:28] Okay, just wanted to clarify this again.
[1:16:31] That would be even more difficult.
[1:16:32] So it's on the top of my mind, but yeah.
[1:16:35] That would be even more difficult than with the sword.
[1:16:38] They're bringing that into the next Olympics.
[1:16:41] Oh, yeah.
[1:16:41] Actual fence building.
[1:16:43] They should.
[1:16:44] That would be interesting.
[1:16:47] So when the character was written, she always had cerebral palsy, but they weren't sure who was going to play the character.
[1:16:54] So...
[1:16:55] they had her with a different type and they originally, she has like this arch nemesis in the film.
[1:17:02] And at one point she delivers a roundhouse kick to their face.
[1:17:06] And I read the script and went, look, guys, I consider myself an okay actor, but like a roundhouse kick might be a little bit out of the...
[1:17:21] A range of possibility.
[1:17:22] Like, if I can do a roundhouse kick, we'll be throwing a party.
[1:17:26] Then, like, the whole universe will know.
[1:17:29] Yeah, the movie's becoming about a different thing.
[1:17:32] Yes.
[1:17:32] I'll do a roundhouse kick.
[1:17:34] Yeah.
[1:17:35] And so I said, look, we might need to...
[1:17:38] come up with a different sport.
[1:17:39] And I was expecting them to go like, oh, basketball or tennis.
[1:17:44] I was expecting like a very Dylan Alcott-esque thing.
[1:17:48] And then the writer, who is a genius comedian, came back and said, so you're going to do fencing?
[1:17:53] And I went, yeah, give the girl with no motor skills a sword.
[1:17:57] That should be fine.
[1:18:01] Like, please don't make it sharp.
[1:18:02] Oh, dear God, someone's going to die.
[1:18:08] We also have to ask you about actually being the first person with disability to play a sex scene as well.
[1:18:13] Yeah, that's a piece of history I thought I'd never own.
[1:18:17] Sorry, Mum and Dad.
[1:18:18] Yeah.
[1:18:20] How did that come?
[1:18:21] Like, what was the first conversation where?
[1:18:23] So I was only supposed to be going to latecomers to help.
[1:18:28] This is the show that you're in.
[1:18:30] Yeah, to help them out with a read.
[1:18:32] So what they did way before production started is they got all these actors who weren't tied to it just come into a room and read the dialogue and stuff out loud so that the writers could work out if it actually felt like stuff people would say and if jokes were landing and if anything felt...
[1:18:52] weird or uncomfortable or didn't land the way they wanted it to.
[1:18:57] And I had a really great time.
[1:18:59] Like, remember, I was a drama kid, so this was like excellent for me.
[1:19:03] And then the director and the head of casting kind of came over and they kind of looked at me and went, so you're auditioning for the show?
[1:19:12] And they phrased it as a statement, not a question.
[1:19:14] And I went.
[1:19:14] Oh.
[1:19:16] Um, I am.
[1:19:18] They went, yep, because you can act.
[1:19:20] And I went, um, I can.
[1:19:23] Like, there's a big difference between night of holiday camps and national television.
[1:19:26] Are you sure?
[1:19:27] Like the imposter syndrome was like, are you really sure about this?
[1:19:31] Yeah.
[1:19:32] And they're like, yeah, so what are you expecting to see your audition tape?
[1:19:36] And I was like, great, great, cool.
[1:19:38] All good.
[1:19:38] Just one question.
[1:19:40] How do you do an audition tape?
[1:19:43] And they were like, oh.
[1:19:45] And I was like, yeah, this is the level of green that you're dealing with, guys.
[1:19:48] Like, I got nothing.
[1:19:52] And then I auditioned and I was like, oh, that went well.
[1:19:56] And then I got down to like the final two or whatever and I panicked because...
[1:20:06] Some of the stuff that the show confronts, including the sex scene, felt like it was going to cut too close to home.
[1:20:14] I was like, I can't play pretend with this.
[1:20:17] Like, this is how I really feel about myself.
[1:20:21] Like, what am I, what am I doing?
[1:20:23] Opening this Pandora's box and like, I haven't done this stuff in real life yet.
[1:20:27] Do I really want to do it for the first time?
[1:20:31] playing pretend with a camera, like, right there?
[1:20:34] Like, I don't think this is going to work.
[1:20:37] And so I rang the director to pull out, to just say, look, I'm just going to excuse myself from the audition process.
[1:20:45] Like, you can pick whoever else because I'm not...
[1:20:49] I'm not up for it.
[1:20:50] And she didn't know me all that well at the time.
[1:20:54] And she said, oh, that's a shame because we were going to pick you.
[1:21:00] And I went, dang it.
[1:21:03] Because now I was like, well, if I'm sitting on this at home watching this show, all I'm going to be thinking is that could have been me if I was brave enough and I wasn't brave enough.
[1:21:15] So you still, you saw it as bravery?
[1:21:17] That was the...
[1:21:18] Yeah, like, don't be such a chicken.
[1:21:20] How hard can it be?
[1:21:22] Was kind of my thinking.
[1:21:23] And she was like, look, do the chemistry test with the guy who we think is going to play the romantic lead.
[1:21:27] And if after that, you're still unsure, then you can pull out.
[1:21:33] She was cheeky.
[1:21:35] She knew.
[1:21:36] So we had to do a chemistry test via Zoom because it was pandemic times.
[1:21:41] Doing a chemistry test via Zoom is very odd because you're just there on screen and we were in different states.
[1:21:47] And at one point, both of us kind of looked up and the director and the casting director were crying and we were like, oh, I think this might be kind of working.
[1:21:59] So we're like,
[1:22:02] We're like, are we that bad?
[1:22:03] Or like, are you telling us we have chemistry?
[1:22:07] Like, what's going on?
[1:22:08] And then they're like, yeah, it's going to be you guys.
[1:22:12] And then it was like, oh, let's do this.
[1:22:13] We're going to do the sex scene.
[1:22:15] And they have this wonderful thing now on film sets called intimacy coordinators, which I can't believe they didn't have at one point.
[1:22:25] So basically an intimacy coordinator is almost like a choreographer for a
[1:22:30] intimate scene and it doesn't have to be a sex scene it can be any sort of emotionally vulnerable
[1:22:36] scene or physically vulnerable scene.
[1:22:39] But basically what you do is you like choreograph what you're going to do.
[1:22:44] So you do all these consent exercises first to be like, hey, is it okay if I touch you here?
[1:22:50] And then if they say yes, you can put your hands there.
[1:22:54] Or like you work out if there's any areas that someone doesn't want to be touched or anything that they don't want to show.
[1:23:01] whatever it might be.
[1:23:02] And then, yeah, you choreograph it out.
[1:23:05] And I'm lucky that I had the best scene partner and we got on like a house on fire and we're able to be like...
[1:23:12] This is a big moment.
[1:23:13] Like yes, it's about us and yes, this is terrifying, but also this is the first time that a lot of people are about to see themselves represented on screen.
[1:23:21] So we want to make sure we do it the best we can.
[1:23:25] And it also was important to me then that it wasn't just implied for my comfort, but that you actually saw what was happening.
[1:23:33] because I was like, no, people need to see that disabled people can have relationships and want intimacy and sex and all of those things.
[1:23:43] And it was one of those like out of body experiences.
[1:23:45] And we I think I got to see it a few days before the premiere.
[1:23:49] They showed me that scene specifically and I was like, oh, that's something I can't take back.
[1:23:54] OK, that's done now.
[1:23:58] And that's out there.
[1:23:59] And like for me, it's not.
[1:24:03] Love and relationships is a complicated minefield.
[1:24:07] I mean, we were talking about self-worth before.
[1:24:09] If you want to pinpoint an area where I don't feel like I have a lot of, you know, prospects or worth in any sort of space, romantically is a big one, which as a hopeless romantic, as a storyteller, as a diehard fan of Taylor Swift, it's very difficult because that's...
[1:24:30] what you want, right?
[1:24:31] And like, I haven't had any luck in that area, not for lack of trying, but we'll we'll save those stories for another day.
[1:24:42] But I think it's also really hard because
[1:24:45] The assumption from a lot of people is that the only people available to me as potential partners are other disabled people.
[1:24:55] And I always get really peeved at that because I'm like, but why?
[1:25:01] And they're like, well, because it's easier.
[1:25:02] And I'm like, easier for who?
[1:25:04] Easier for me?
[1:25:05] Easier for them?
[1:25:06] Or easier for the invisible, like, able-bodied person who then doesn't have to be a person
[1:25:11] date me if I'm dated.
[1:25:13] Like, who is it easier for?
[1:25:15] Because for me, and I don't know, maybe I will come to change my mind on this.
[1:25:24] Never say never.
[1:25:25] But for me, I don't really want
[1:25:29] a disabled partner.
[1:25:30] I don't want a partner who struggles with the same things I do.
[1:25:35] It's not conducive to the way that I feel partners should complement each other if we both can't get out of bed.
[1:25:45] Or if we both, like if you're thinking much bigger picture, if we both can't teach a kid to kick our soccer ball.
[1:25:52] You need someone who's going to be able to fill in the gaps and then I fill in their gaps.
[1:25:57] That's kind of how it...
[1:25:58] how it works in my head.
[1:26:02] But yeah, it's very strange.
[1:26:03] I think another thing, and I'm still working this out and I'm sure there will be people who disagree with me, but I think even though it's really hard for every disabled person, it's going to be easier.
[1:26:18] just ever so slightly, if you're a straight disabled man.
[1:26:23] Because women and girls are more likely to be socially conditioned to accept taking care of you.
[1:26:33] Interesting.
[1:26:34] And accept like the load of like, oh, that's okay that you can't help around the house.
[1:26:40] Like, I'll cook, I'll clean, I'll do all the things.
[1:26:44] Whereas as a straight disabled woman,
[1:26:48] That takes a lot from a male ego.
[1:26:52] And so far in my travels, whether attracted to them or not, I haven't met many men or boys who I think could do that.
[1:27:01] Yeah.
[1:27:03] That must be really hard.
[1:27:04] Yeah.
[1:27:05] So maybe I'm just gonna be the fun aunt.
[1:27:08] Um, we'll see.
[1:27:09] I, I'm, I'm in, I hope.
[1:27:12] Hope not, but it's one, I know, but it's one of my biggest fears that like, I'm going to be alone forever.
[1:27:21] And like, I'm not actually worthy of all that.
[1:27:26] No one's going to choose me.
[1:27:27] It kind of feels like a, like when you're a kid and like you all line up and then two people have to pick you for sports teams.
[1:27:35] Like clearly I'm not going to be the choice with all these other people in front of me who are going to make it easier.
[1:27:41] Yeah.
[1:27:42] Yeah.
[1:27:43] It's, I mean, it's so, it's, it's hard with that, with self-worth.
[1:27:47] I find that really hard because there's so many things that have already happened.
[1:27:51] To speak from my own point of view, it's like, there are so many things that have happened to me that I would have sworn would never have happened.
[1:27:57] Because you can't imagine it.
[1:27:59] And just the way you've spoken today and how you felt about yourself and your prospects as a teenager growing up, the things that have happened to you you probably would never have thought.
[1:28:12] Absolutely not.
[1:28:13] I think if I could show the 17-year-old in me who was having a mental breakdown and who wrote down things that she would say if,
[1:28:28] She wasn't here anymore.
[1:28:29] If I could turn her around and be like, look at all this, she'd be quite blown away by it because there's no way that she'd be able to comprehend that that was her.
[1:28:41] And extending that out, I would say the 33-year-old version of you will be doing the same thing, saying 25-year-old Hannah will not believe this.
[1:28:51] Absolutely.
[1:28:52] To be more explicit about it, I'd put what Ryan I think was going towards is that I'd put love and a partner in that bucket, something that who knows, but I'm sure one day you'll look back and...
[1:29:05] They're like, oh, you didn't know it was coming, but it's okay.
[1:29:09] Yeah.
[1:29:09] You didn't know about Brad.
[1:29:11] Yeah.
[1:29:12] Brad, cool.
[1:29:15] And sort of in a weird way, it's kind of therein lies the romance of it as well, that it's an unknown.
[1:29:22] How awesome will it be if it's Brad?
[1:29:23] I know.
[1:29:24] That's all I'm thinking.
[1:29:25] The greatest.
[1:29:26] Although maybe we could record a few names.
[1:29:28] True.
[1:29:28] And then when it happens, we'll come back and change the name to look more.
[1:29:32] Chris.
[1:29:34] Stewie.
[1:29:38] Michelangelo.
[1:29:39] Any names you'd like us to put in there?
[1:29:42] No, I'm going to keep quiet on that one.
[1:29:45] I just let Ryan do all the work.
[1:29:48] But I can't help but imagine if you did meet a guy called Brad and you're like, oh, this is it, you're it, you're the one.
[1:29:53] Yeah.
[1:29:54] Ryan said this.
[1:29:54] And then I'm going to be like, Ryan, help!
[1:29:58] Brad, I kind of did foresee this happening.
[1:30:02] He manifested it.
[1:30:03] So like, let's go.
[1:30:04] Don't embarrass me, Brad.
[1:30:07] It has just been, what's the word?
[1:30:10] The best.
[1:30:11] The best.
[1:30:12] It's just been the best.
[1:30:13] It's been such a privilege for us to listen to you speak today.
[1:30:16] Thank you for having me.
[1:30:17] This is one of my favourite podcasts.
[1:30:19] So I was really, really happy to jump on board.
[1:30:22] Well, that means a hell of a lot.
[1:30:24] It really does.
[1:30:25] Thank you for saying that.
[1:30:26] Wow.
[1:30:26] You're welcome.
[1:30:28] You have so many friends.
[1:30:30] You have so many friends, honestly.
[1:30:31] It's so nice because I still feel like the kid who had no, who had no friends a lot of the time.
[1:30:35] So, but my brain has some catching up to do is like, no, you have friends now.
[1:30:39] It's okay.
[1:30:40] You can, you can breathe.
[1:30:41] You can kind of let that little girl go a little bit in the sense that like, we still look after her and we still be kind to her because she's always going to be there and she's always going to pop up and be afraid.
[1:30:52] And it's going to be your first defense mechanism, but she's okay.
[1:30:59] Obviously, I have not gone through anything like you went through as a teenager.
[1:31:03] You've been through some stuff, Josh.
[1:31:05] Don't minimise what you've been through.
[1:31:06] Yeah, but not to...
[1:31:08] I mean, I think teenage years are tough for everyone.
[1:31:12] Yeah, so if you're a teenager out there listening to this, it does get better.
[1:31:17] Absolutely does.
[1:31:18] Yeah, it definitely does.
[1:31:19] And I know I didn't believe that and people would try and tell me that when I was a teenager and it was like, but it sucks now.
[1:31:25] I just want it to get better now.
[1:31:26] And I'm like, yeah, but it will eventually.
[1:31:29] High school doesn't last forever.
[1:31:31] And all of the people who tell you that high school are the best years of your life, I get very worried about them.
[1:31:36] I'm like, you peaked at 17?
[1:31:37] What's happening?
[1:31:41] That's so true.
[1:32:11] Yeah.
[1:32:12] So I don't know why I brought that up just to say that you're not alone in those feelings.
[1:32:18] Thank you.
[1:32:19] And, yeah, I feel them.
[1:32:20] I really appreciate that.
[1:32:20] Yeah.
[1:32:21] I'm sure many other people do too.
[1:32:22] But, yeah, it was beautifully said the way he talked about the little girl to, like, yeah, look after her, but she doesn't have to be in control.
[1:32:30] Yeah.
[1:32:31] Yeah.
[1:32:31] I've done a really bad job wrapping up the episode.
[1:32:33] That's okay.
[1:32:34] But I'm so happy I have because it's just, it's great to listen to you speak and I look forward to a friendship in the future.
[1:32:39] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:32:41] You guys are stuck with me now.
[1:32:42] Yeah.
[1:32:42] Yeah.
[1:32:43] We shall have a friend called the Duvernator.
[1:32:44] Yeah.
[1:32:45] We do.
[1:32:45] So I'm wrapped.
[1:32:46] God, if I ever get bullied by anyone, I'm putting the Duvernator on.
[1:32:52] Yeah.
[1:32:53] Don't you make me call the Duvernator because I will.
[1:32:55] And I will answer your call anytime.
[1:32:57] I need a Duvernator signal to go up in the sky.
[1:33:01] floating duvet.
[1:33:03] Just in the wind, flapping.
[1:33:06] Or just like a pillow suddenly appears in front of me.
[1:33:09] Ryan needs me again.
[1:33:10] It's been a day.
[1:33:11] I was just there.
[1:33:12] I'm going back again.
[1:33:13] Thank you so much, Hannah.
[1:33:16] Thank you for having me, guys.
[1:33:23] If you enjoyed this episode but want a little bit more, we've got some good news.
[1:33:26] We have a brand new show called A Little More Imperfects, and it's on Patreon.
[1:33:30] For a little bit of money, you'll get access to bonus episodes with Hugh, Ryan and Josh every fortnight.
[1:33:35] Early access to live events, plus other things we haven't even thought of yet.
[1:33:39] Visit patreon.com slash theimperfects.

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