January 16, 2025 • 41 mins
On the final episode of the summer edition of Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, we hear from author, podcaster and former late night talk show host Chelsea Handler joined the show before her tour to New Zealand.
Gemma Arterton, of Quantum of Solace and The King's Man fame, talked her latest movie, The Critic.
And award winning author Abraham Verghese spoke to Francesca before his appearance at the Auckland Writers Festival.
Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin brings you the best interviews from Newstalk ZB's The Sunday Session.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB. The big names, the fascinating guests,
the thoughtful conversations, bringing you the best interviews from the
Sunday Session. This is Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, powered
(00:27):
by News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello and welcome to the summer edition of Great Chats.
I'm Francisca Budkin and in this podcast we bring you
some of the best feature interviews from the Sunday Session
on News Talks EDB throughout twenty twenty four. First Up Today,
author podcaster, former late night talk show host and comedian
Chelsea Handler, who brought her comedy show to New Zealand
(00:50):
and twenty twenty four. We spoke before she arrived and
started off by talking about skiing as you do. We're
having a chat over a zoom and I'm just looking
in the background and what a beautiful view the snow
covered trees. I know, skiings a passion. Has it been
a good season.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It has not been a great season, which is okay.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I'm writing a new book, so it's allowed me to
you know, focus and actually be productive because when there
is good snow.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
It's really hard for me to stay inside. So I
got a new dog.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
I rescued a new dog this year, and he's a handful,
so he I am keeping my hands full. So the
skiing hasn't been epic, but I'm still skiing.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
You know, you still got to get out there and
ski it up.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Is he as much of a handful as Gary was? He?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Thank you for remembering Gary.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
I would like to go on the record and say
Gary was the only dog that I purchased and the
only dog that I returned.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Rescues are where it's at because.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
They are grateful, and I want my dogs to be grateful.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Now I haven't mentioned the name of your Sean. My
boss has said to me, I'm allowed to mention it once.
It's called little Big Bitch. But I did wonder whether
you love the fake that you've called it something that
really you know, people like myself and the media really
can't be blasting out over the airwaves.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I know I have a tendency. My last tour was.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Called vaccinated in a horny and the same issue kept
coming up about like on Instagram.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
You couldn't like forward it or like.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
And I was like, why do I constantly pick these
names that are not helpful to spreading the message. But whatever,
that's just my personality. I act first and then think afterward.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
The two is kind of an origin story stories of
your childhood. Tell me about the young Chelsea. What was
she like?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Very obstreperous.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I was not satisfied at all with my family dynamic
when I was born as the youngest of six children.
I remember being very young and looking around, like who
is in charge? Because it wasn't my mom and it
wasn't my dad. They were two hot messes and my
brothers and sisters were just doing what they wanted. And
I was like, no, no, I need I have big plans,
(02:59):
and I needed support for those big plans. So I
just started working as early as I could. I opened
up a lemonade stand when I was like eight, but
it was a hard let aid stand where I served gin,
tequila and whiskey, and I then I was like, you
can't make any real money in lemonade.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And then I decided to open up my own babysitting
company when I was ten.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
So I lied and I said I was fifteen, and
I ended up babysitting for a fourteen year old boy.
So I have like a lot of entrepreneurship in my background,
and I just wasn't going to settle for anything less
than the best.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
I wanted a big life. I wanted freedom, and I
wanted adulthood, and I.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Wanted to cut ties with anybody that was going to
hold me.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Back or you know.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
I felt childhood was insulting, Like I never felt like
a child. I felt like I was in a baby's body.
But it didn't make sense. I was like, no, no,
I'm a woman. I want to be my woman.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
You're very determined too, from what I can from what
I hear, Can you tell me about the time that
your mom said that you would never fly first class?
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yes, my mom.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
My mom told me that we want on our first
plane ride, which is very exciting when you're ten years old.
I had never flown, and I remember walking past the
first class section and I just was like sniffing around,
and I'm like, no, this is my group. You know,
this smells like my group. And my mom's like, keep going,
keep going.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
We're in the back. We'll never be able to fly
first class. Those people are rich and you know, and
we are not.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
And I was like, Uh, first of all, speak for yourself,
because I will be flying first class.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
That's the only class I'll be flying. And so I
saved up so much money.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
From my babysitting company when I was babysitting for a
kid that was three years older than me, four years
older than me actually for three summers, no less, I
baby slept with that kid until he was seventeen and.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I was thirteen.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So I saved up so much money that I went
and got the next time we took a plane ride, which.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Was like three years later.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
So I had like I had amassed a small fortune
from my babysitting empire.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I put.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
I went down the street to a travel agent and
purchased my own first class ticket. And this time I
was flying to California from New Jersey with my two brothers,
and I didn't tell anyone about my ticket. I got
on the plane, found my seat to see, looked at
both of my brothers with such joy in my heart
and said, see you idiots.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
At the end of the flight, the picture on the
tour postcad you look over it. You look angelic.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I was. And that was what was so tricky.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
I was an angel on the surface, but beneath the surface,
I had big plans and I was gonna.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Run over anyone who got in my way.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
It's interesting you talk about being obviously the last child
of six and you're wondering who was in charge and
everybody sort of had their own lives. Because what I
love about your stories is how close you actually are
to your siblings to this day.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I ad, yeah, we're a tight fai. Yeah, it is,
it is. It is special.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
I get you know, you always assume everyone's close with
their family, but that's simply not true.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I know from my podcast, Dear Chelsea.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I get calls all the time about family dynamics and
like you know, and that is always surprising to me
because I'm like, it's your family, you have.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
To figure it out. But I am like the leader
in my family.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I am the one that is like, that's not acceptable.
You need to you know, Like I am the youngest
and the oldest at the same time. And now they
listened to me because they know that I was right
all along. I was like, listen, I'm going to the mountaintop.
You can come with me, or you can resist and
stay behind.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It's up to you. But you know, that's where I'm headed.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
And now they're all like, okay, let's just stick with Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Away with her. So you were you were ambitious and
you were determined. Were you opinionated as a child as well?
And quite outspoken?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I was always.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Outspoken because that was rewarded in my family being outspoken.
My brother's like they thought I was this little cute,
kind of boisterous, precocious thing.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So they encouraged my loud mouth, you know, like.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
They would their friends would come over and they'd be like, go,
tell them what an idioto is.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm like, I got this, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
I was good at that, like kind of putting people,
like reading people and telling them what to do, and
so it was rewarded. And then I just kind of
took it and ran. I mean, you know, I'm a
loud and proud kind of girl. I'm not meek or
easily influenced by others. I kind of like to run
my own shop, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And I like that, and I like encourage women to
do the same.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
It's all about women knowing their own power and standing
up for themselves and being loud and brave. I like
to live my life in a very loud, brave way
as a kind of example to everybody, like, you don't
have to get married, you don't have to have babies
to be of value. There are a million things you
can do in this world that are valuable, and.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
That's only two of them.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
So so you know, I'm very outspoken on that front.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Look, and that's what we love about you, that honesty
and that you're just so authentic. I do wonder though,
you know, there's a lot of headlines. The headlines will
read Chelsea Handler faces backlash, or Chelsea Handler hits back,
or Chelsea Handler goes rogue. I love it when you
go rogue. Does it get to you a little bit?
Do you sometimes think to say, I could just make
my life a little bit easier.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
No, because it doesn't make my life any harder. I'm
not paying attention to the backlash, I don't, you know,
I don't if someone I.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Don't think of things in that way. I think of
things as.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Like, I think I'm on the right track. I think
I am full of love.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
I want to spread happy vibes and joyfulness, and if
anyone has a problem with that, then that's a bigger
problem for them than it is for me.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
That's so refreshing because a lot of us, especially in
this kind of digital world where we're constantly presenting ourselves
in a certain way that might not be real, a
lot of people do struggle to actually accept that maybe
you're not for everybody, that not everyone's going to like you,
and yet that's life, right. You know.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Also, if everyone does like you, what does that say
about you?
Speaker 4 (08:45):
That says that you're not, that you have no opinions,
that you don't stand for anything. Because it's impossible but
to be liked by anybody. I mean, listen, I started
my career understanding that a lot of people would not
like me, and so anyone who likes me.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Is a bonus, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Like, I know that where we live in a time
where it's still like, oh, you're so outspoken for a woman,
It's like, excuse me, of course I'm going to be
outspoken for a woman, but it's not for a woman.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I'm an outspoken person. So you know, until we live
in a time which I'm sure I.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Won't survive during to see that, but until we live
in a time where women are respected and treated as
equally as men are, then I will continue to behave
this way, and.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I love that you're a passionate advocate, and I presume
that you know for many things and causes and I
and comedy is just such a great tool for that,
isn't it.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Yes, comedy is a great way to deliver some medicine
with laughter. And I have no problem making a fool
out of myself. So comedy comes very easily to me
because my whole life is just.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
One experience after another that's so outlandish and crazy.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I mean, in my stand up shows, I tell this
Bill Cosby story that is so ridiculous, and I don't
Not a lot of people can say they have a
good Bill Cosby story.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I do.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I have a great Woody Allen story that I share
because I got stuck at a dinner with him and
I'm like, there's no way I could sit across from
Rudy Allen and not confront him like that's not the
type of woman I am, So.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I tell that story.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
I have a lot of really ridiculous I was at
Kenny Bunkboard once during COVID, accidentally on three edibles, dealing
with the former president whose political belief system is very
misaligned with mine, so that's a good one too. But anyway, yes,
I like to share those experiences and I like to
have you know, I want my.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Life to be one big adventure and it has been.
And getting to come to.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
New Zealand and Australia and traveling the globe to make
people laugh is a total, total privilege.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Just warning you there will probably be men wearing flip
flops or chandles in July even though it's winter. So
I'm just letting you know that because I know that
that's a small issue for you. That's just a Strolian
and New Zealand for you. Hey, look, I want to
talk really quickly the critics choice. You will always get
a call Grida Gowick and Mago Robbie up that impromptued
(11:07):
acceptance speech. Was it sort of was it premittative or
did you did you actually just kind of do that
as am on a whim.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
No, Well, they had four minutes to kill, and.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Yeah, they had four minutes to kill and they were
and they said, go can you go up there and
you know, just do some material And I was like, well,
are there any other options? Like, because I know that
Barbie got an award before the show, and then I thought, yeah,
let's give them some more flowers.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Because you talked about it being the year of the woman.
What about twenty twenty three do you think was so
big for women?
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Taylor Swift, first and foremost is dominating culture, dominating the
zeitgeist by it Beyonce Pink, their tours are the most
successful tours of the year of twenty twenty three. And Barbie,
the movie directed by Greta Gerwigs, starring Margot Robbie. I mean,
there's just so many female success stories America Ferrara and
(12:05):
the culture and the econ me, Like, women are so
underserved that when you serve it up to us, we
show up in droves, and that's what we're telling the world.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Like, you can't tell us that we are not contributing,
because when we contribute.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
It's massive and it's actually more powerful than many men.
So I think hopefully this will be the beginning of
a nice trend in female success stories.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Tyler Swift slight small, slight, you know, sort of sow
point for many of us here in New Zealand who
missed out on tickets to go to Australia to see you.
It seems like everybody else got to go except me,
But that's okay. Do you miss late night television because
women are so underrepresented in that space, would you go
back to it?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I don't think I would go back to that schedule.
That was pretty rigorous.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And I'm now forty eight years old and I love
my life. Like I get to do my podcast, I'm
writing a new book, and I get to tour when
I want a tour and extend it for as long
as I want to extend it. So I have a
pretty sweet gig going, and I get to take as
much time off a year as I want.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
And when I work, I go at it pretty hard.
And uh so, I don't know that I would ever
be drawn back to that type of schedule, but.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
I would be drawn back to doing like a once
a week show or something if the right opportunity presented itself,
which it hasn't, you know. I mean, I'm always looking
at opportunities and thinking about things and what I'm going
to do, So it just really depends where I am
and what's happening.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
If Trump gets elected, I'm out skate doodled, so I'll
be over there a lot more than I already am.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Would you move to Canada permanently?
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I don't know about permanently because I am a United
States resident and there are tax implications for moving. You
have to if you are American and you leave the country,
you have to pay American taxes for the rest of
your life. So there's really it doesn't really behoove me
to leave, but I would spend a lot less time
in America.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
The biggest names from the Sunday Session great chats with
Brad Jiska Rutkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
It'd be that was Chelsea Handling And obviously that interview
was recorded before November elections, and I wonder whether she
is in Canada again this Northern Hemisphere winter. Up next
British actress and producer Jimma Arttitan. You may know her
as the Bond Girl from Quantum of Solace, or from
The Kingsman Rogue Agent or the TV show Funny Woman,
(14:23):
but when she joined me recently on the Sunday Session,
it was to talk about her new film set in
the nineteen thirties, called The Critic. I started by asking
what attracted her to the character of Nina Land an
actress who was blackmailed by a theater critic.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
Well, I sort of did relate to her to a
certain extent.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
I mean, she's an actress that's you know, desperately trying
to seek approval, which you know that resonated me to
an extent. But she's very complicated. She's a working class
actress at the time the film is set in the
nineteen thirties who's trying to you know, establish herself as
(15:02):
one of the great actresses of the stage, doing Shakespeare
and whatnot, and and so she has quite a lot
of things that she's struggling with. But more than anything,
I was attracted to the project as a whole because
it was written by Patrick marlbur who is one of
our great writers over here. He did Closer and Notes
on a Scandal, and then Sir Ian McKellen, who I
(15:26):
had to do I had lots and lots of scenes with,
which was one of the biggest privileges of my whole
life really, I think, working with him.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
So it was a no brainer.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Really, Am I right that yours was the first name
attached to the critic and then others came on board.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Yeah, I believe so, which shocks me because that doesn't
usually happen.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
But yeah, I think I was. I don't know why
I think that.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
I think maybe Patrick had me in mind for the role.
But yeah, yeah, I was an early one.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And so did they say to you were going to
try and get in mchael or did you have a
bit of a say in maybe who would be playing
the other parts?
Speaker 5 (16:12):
I didn't have a say. I yeah, it was a
surprise to me when sir Ian was attached. I mean
it was such a gift of a role. And he
will say that himself, you know, he's very humble and modest,
but it was a I think for him. He came
along and he thought, oh, this is fantastic, Like I absolutely,
of course I'll do it.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
It's a juicy role for him as well. And the
two of you work so well together, an interesting on
screen relationship. But what was it like working with him
sort of day to day.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
Day to day.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
It was just joyful. I mean, he's really fun. He
loves a gossip. I love a gossip. So we'd spend
our time, you know, in between takes, just gossiping about
life and people we know and all that and having
a great time and then we'd switch into the kind
of the scene, which I always loved that he's definitely
not a kind of method actor who's carrying it around
(17:04):
with him in between takes, and that neither am I.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
So we had a lot of fun.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
But he's just, you know, he's so game and he's
so available as an actor. He's an actor's actor, you know,
he's just he's just wants to do his best and
play and have fun, but also, you know, really strive
to get the best out of the scene.
Speaker 6 (17:25):
And I just adored working with him.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
I wish we had even more scenes together because those
were my favorite scenes.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
To do the film. Of course, A seat in the
world of theater? Was that something that appealed to you
about it as well? Because theater you're so familiar with.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's such a rich world to
explore because it's bustling and it's full of characters and
especially period theater, and I relate to it. I started
off in theater. Yeah, so I think so. And yeah,
and I guess because the characters are so can be
quite extreme in theater world, like the actors can be,
(18:04):
you know, larger than life and dramatic, and they have
all these issues. I thought, yeah, it was great, and
I had to play an actress that's not very good.
So that was a challenge to allow myself to be
not very good on screen and know that that was
going to be committed to film. But Anna Antucker, who
(18:27):
directed the film, he was very supportive, and so were
Patrick Marber actually and saying, be rubbish, don't worry, We've
got your man.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I was going to bring that up and say, you
were very good at being very bad. Are they Are
there any similarities between being an actress trying to establish
themselves in the nineteen thirties and today.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it's just
a trick. It's just a tricky business to be in.
If you're anyone in the acting business, it's very fickle.
It's very changeable. And Ian McKellen's character, who's a theater critic,
he says, you know, you know, one review can make
you or it can break you. And that's still I
think the case. I think, you know, it's there's a
(19:12):
lot of competition and and and yeah, I strive to
have a long career until I'm very, very old, but
that's not an easy thing to do. Because you have
to go through lots of different phases as an actor
and you have to kind of embrace them. So yeah,
I think it's still it's still relevant, it's still very
(19:33):
much identifiable.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
You were so well established that now though, Jim out,
I mean, do you do you care about the critics anymore?
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (19:44):
I do, and I don't.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I mean, I I care so much that I don't
read my reviews because I'm far too sensitive to manage
reading theater, especially theater, like I have in the past,
read reviews while I'm doing a play. Is often that's
when they come out, is while you're at the beginning
of the run, and that's really unhelpful because then you
(20:07):
have to go and do the play that night, and
you've got all of this critique, whether it's good, bad, whatever,
in your head, and it's not necessarily helpful. So I
try to avoid them when I'm doing plays. Particularly when
I'm doing TV and film, I feel a little bit
more detached from the project because usually you've shot it,
you know, two years before or whatever. So I don't
mind so much reading reviews when a film comes out.
(20:33):
But yeah, I am quite a sensitive soul, so I
tend to try and avoid.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And Jimmy, you work, as you've mentioned, do work across
film and television and theater. Do you have a favorite
or do they all offer you something different that you love?
Speaker 6 (20:51):
Yeah, they all.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Offer something different.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
I do love doing plays because you have that immediacy
and there's a thrill that you get that you don't
get when you're doing TV and film, I think. But
then I can get a bit bored doing plays as well,
because I like a short run.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
As opposed to, you know, a four or five month run.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
I can get a little bit of you know, board,
But and I guess you know, with TV and film
you only get one shot really, I mean you can
do lots of takes, but that's that day and then
it's done. Whereas with theater, you often you find you
have discoveries along the run that you know you wouldn't
necessarily have with film, about the character or a way
(21:34):
to play the scene. Yeah, they're very different. But that's
what's nice about my job. I get to kind of
dabble with in all of those things.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Jimmy, you have an incredible body of work to your name.
It feels like you never stop.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
Is it the case, No, it is the case. It
is the case I've just had.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
I've been lucky that my projects have usually come they
usually come out quite evenly. But I had I had
a child last year, and I've only worked once since
I had my son, and I do at the moment,
I feel a little bit like and will I ever
work again? You know, so at the moment, I'm having
a quiet time, but it will all be fine. Yeah, No,
it's I think now as well. When I was younger,
(22:16):
I used to jump on every single project and just work, work, work,
But now I think I'm a little bit more selective,
so less output.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
The moment, I'm pleased to hear because I feel incredibly
prolific and I never know what you're going to tune up.
Nick's telling what story? I mean, this is the one.
You're very fortunate that your career has been so diverse.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
Yeah, I think thank you for saying that, because I
think it's something I actively think about when I'm choosing work.
And I also like to, you know, if i've done something.
I just did a very comedic role that's very broad
and glamorous, and then I try to sort of do
the absolute opposite for my next role, which is very
contemporary and serious, and so yeah, I like that, and
(23:04):
I like thinking about how I can challenge myself in
that with character, but also with genre and working different
periods and they offer different challenge. So I always like
a bit of variation.
Speaker 7 (23:20):
Jim.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I was thinking about Nina as an actress who's trying
to establish herself, and I was wondering, what if you
could say one thing to your younger self when starting
out and all those big roles started coming in. What
would it be? What have you learned over the years
that you'd love to go back and be able to
tell it that young actress starting out.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
You know, there are a few things that I turned
down when I was younger, because you know, they were
too art house or I was advised to do something else,
and I really wish I hadn't done that, you know,
I wish I'd gone with my intuition. I think I
was very naive when I was younger, and I was
just very grateful to be, you know, for anything. So
(24:03):
but actually I had this intuition about certain roles I
I should have done, and I think that's so important intuition.
I think it's you know, we or instinct, whatever you
want to call it. I think it's as an actor,
it's sort of like your gold and you know, your money.
Really when you're that's your your thing that you should
really listen to you So that's what i'd say to myself,
(24:25):
listen to your intuition more.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Well, that's something that you can sort of you should
put into play across your life. You should. You know,
as a mother, you need to use your you know, intuition,
don't you about your child and things like that. Absolutely
need to trust ourselves more, don't we. Yeah, exactly, So
you've hit those little pause. Just finally, what can we
expeact next from Jimmer?
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Well, I do have a project next year that I'm
really excited about. It's for TV as well, and I
can't can't reveal what it is because it hasn't been
announced yet. But again it's it's very, very different to
anything I've done before, So I'm excited about that one.
So and then I have quite a lot of things
in the pipe. I have a production company and there's
(25:09):
a whole plethora of things that we're developing. A musical
and we've got kind of crime drama and all of
these things that hopefully in the next year or so
they'll start to come into light.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday session
Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio Empowered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It'd be Jimma Addington and her very distinctive voice there.
Jimma has had a varied career, she really has done
it all. I know that I've said this before on
Great Chats, but I'm often taken aback by how normal
many of the stars are that I speak to, and
of course they should be. They are just humans. Very
well known ones may be and they are just doing
their job promoting their films. But man, they are so nice,
(25:54):
in normal and surprisingly punctual. We could all learn something
from them. My final highlight from twenty twenty four is
a real special one for me. It's one of my
favorite authors, Abraham the Geese, author of books such as
Cutting for Stone, The Tennis Partner, and The Covenant of Water.
He came to town for the Auckland Writers' Festival and
(26:14):
I was delighted to speak to him beforehand. Abraham is
not just an award winning author, but also a renowned
infectious disease doctor and a professor and vice chair at
Stanford University. We started off by talking about how he
got into writing. Now, you are a doctor and a writer.
Can you talk us through how you got into writing?
Speaker 7 (26:35):
Well, I actually became a writer well into my medical career,
largely because I was living through an extraordinary experience with
HIV and a small town in Tennessee with far more
numbers there than anyone expected, and I realized it was
really young men coming home from the big city up
to decades now that they were ill and had the virus,
(26:56):
and that this was happening in every small town. I
wrote a scientific paper describing that, but I really felt
the language of science didn't begin to capture heartache, the
tragic nature of that voyage. And that was the moment
that I became a writer.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Is writing a release for you? In some way? I
know that when you decided to take a break from
your medical career and you hit it off to I
think it was the Iowa Writers' Workshop and you obtained
a degree in finance. It was around nineteen ninety. You
described that as an act of self preservation, that that
work that you had been doing with those AIDS patients
was really starting to take a toll.
Speaker 7 (27:35):
Yeah. I think it was the early days of HIV
when pretty much every patient you saw and really got
to know well because they were with you for a
fair amount of time, they all wound up dying, and
you know, so it was pretty intense. There wasn't the
kind of social support and resources we have now, not
to mention a tremendous amount of prejudice and misinformation. So
(27:59):
I'm proud to say that I'm, you know, still in
the business, but I think you do have to pace
yourself and take breaks from time to time. And I
should mention Francisca that I really see myself as all physician.
I just happened to look out at the world through
the lens of being a physician, and I think I
bring that to writing. I bring that to doctrine, and
so I somewhat resist the notion of two different hats,
(28:22):
you know, writers and physician. It feels very much all
one one thing to me.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Because both require a curiosity about humanity and an empathy,
don't they.
Speaker 7 (28:34):
Yeah, I think, and both are also, in their own way,
very fulfilling and very frustrating. And you know, I think
some of the attention to detail that I learned as
a medical student, and that's sort of ingrained in internal medicine,
which is my specialty, you know, is ideal for writing.
You're trying to take these disparate little pieces, these nuances,
(28:55):
and out of them bring together something that makes a whole.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Lot more sense.
Speaker 7 (29:00):
And so there's there's a great joy in sort of
having both things going at the same time.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
But it does make me a.
Speaker 7 (29:07):
Very slow writer. I've written four books since nineteen ninety four.
I've written four books, so I'm not exactly churning them out.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
You can take all the time in the world as
far as I'm consumed, as long as there is another
one at some point along the way. You're very kind.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Clearly being a physician informs your writing and what you write.
Do you use your writing to present the world of
medicine to the reader in a different way?
Speaker 7 (29:33):
I mean, I don't my goal with every novel, and
I only have two to speak up, but my goal
has always been very simply a good story, well told.
And I feel that, you know, writers are always told
to write what they know. Medicine is what I know.
But I also think I'm not apologetic about using medicine
(29:53):
so often, because what is medicine but life plus plus
life at its most extreme, life at it's most lived
in a funny way. So I see it as quite
organic to any story, all life. And I just happen
to use more of of sort of the drama of
illness and recovery than perhaps another writer might.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You've written a mix of nonfiction and fiction, Do you
prefer one or the other?
Speaker 7 (30:21):
I really think that I prefer fiction, because you know,
I'm a great believer that there's no other instrument that
can stop time the way a big novel can. You know,
you enter into it and you just suspend your disbelief
and you live generations and live through wars, and you know,
when you finally put the book down.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
It's still Tuesday.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
And I love that feeling of, you know, living great
sweeps of time and yet living only a very short time.
So that kind of escape, if you like, is powerful.
But I also think novels are instructive. Novels are the
great lie that tell the truth. And I came to
medicine because of a novel, and I think that, you know,
we all use great books in our lives to instruct,
(31:06):
just to steer the course of our ship. So they're
doing more than entertaining us, though, or they should.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
What novel brought you to medicine?
Speaker 7 (31:16):
Well, the book that brought me to medicine was actually
paradoxically off human bondage. So it's not a book that
most people would mention. But for my generation of physicians
and the ones before me, it was not uncommon to
speak of a book that called them to medicine. And
I think in the United Kingdom it was usually The
Citadel by AJ Cronin, whereas in America, for example, it
(31:38):
was Arrowsmith by Saint Clair Lewis. And to this day,
when I get a letter from a medical student or
a physician who says, you know, I read one of
your books and that's what brought me to medicine, I
think I prized that more than any other accolade I
could ever receive.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
The Covenant of Water draws from your mother's stories of
growing up in Kerala in India. How did those stories
become the idea for this novel?
Speaker 7 (32:04):
Well, I think I was always struck how heroic both
my grandmothers were, and yet how unheralded they were. And
I think all of us know women like this who
are powerful and heroic, and yet no one but you know,
their immediate family or a few other people around, quite
appreciates how they are. And the kind of adversity both
(32:27):
my grandmothers came through was very inspiring. But I was
born in Africa because my parents were teachers there, and
I think I was a bit hesitant to set a
story in India, in Carolina, in our small community of Christians.
But when my mother was in her seventies, at the
request of her niece who was five years old, who
(32:48):
of my niece, of her granddaughter, my niece asked her
how much she what was it like when you were
five years old? And my mother began to write in
a school notebook all these anecdotes of her childhood with illustrations,
and they were all familiar to us. But in the
richness of I saw on the page, I just knew
(33:08):
that I had to set my story in this setting
of our community in the south of India.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Is she a good storyteller? Is that where you get
your ability to tell an amazing story?
Speaker 7 (33:20):
I mean, my mother was a great storyteller, a great artist. Interestingly,
many of the stories that she wrote down I noticed
we considerably embellished from when I first heard them as
a child. I think she really must have been a
very good storyteller.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
You take us on these incredible journeys in your books.
They're these rich, sort of generational sagas. The characters are
always so fully developed and the place is so well drawn.
They're like characters all these different narratives that of interweave
with each other. How do you pull it all together?
I mean, I know that this book took you about
fourteen years, But do you start off with an idea
(33:55):
about where it's going to go and how it's going
to unfold or do you just let it happens as
you explore these stories?
Speaker 7 (34:03):
Oh, Francisco, I wish I could tell you I knew
the whole story before I began, because that would make
me a much more efficient writer. This book took almost
fourteen years. I mean I had a general idea that
this is the geography, which is huge, This is the
time period nineteen hundred to nineteen seventies or so, and
I wanted three generations of a family because as a physician,
(34:25):
the most rewarding thing I've had in forty years of
practice is witnessing these diseases for which we only had
a name but no understanding, and then pretty soon we
have an understanding at a molecular level. Then we have
a sort of development of a genetic probe, and then
we have treatment. And you know, watching that unfolding of
illness can only happen if you have a story that
(34:48):
has that kind of sweep. So I knew those things,
but and I even have a whiteboard where I had
it all plotted out. But the thing is, you you
put a character that you're developing under pressure, and all
of a sudden, they can indicate you that there they're
not going to do this thing you had in mind,
So you have to take a photograph of the whiteboard,
(35:09):
erase it, and make a new whiteboard. So I think
I discovered a lot as I went on. I certainly
did not know the ending, But to me, that's kind
of the joy of writing. I think that if I'm surprised,
genuinely surprised by something a character does, the odds are
that a reader will be too. And you know, I
think there are two schools of thought on this. Many
(35:30):
writers do know the whole story. I'm envious, I'm afraid
I don't, and I have to plod my way through
and at some point all of the connections become visible,
and so at that point I do know. But that's
well well into the book.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Abraham. You began your medical training in Ethiopia, you finished
it in what was then Madress. How did training in
those two places impact or mold you into the doctor
that you've become. Do you think you could have potentially
been a different doctor if you'd trained fully in the US.
Speaker 7 (36:02):
Yeah, I think I would have been a very different doctor.
I mean I began any Euopia in a school partly
run by the British Council for East Africa, which had
several schools. But then my education was interrupted by civil
war and I wound up joining my parents, who had
come to America a few years before that. But I
(36:22):
was kind of stuck because in America you need an
undergraduate degree before you go to medical school, and I
didn't have one very much. In many parts of the
UK and the Commonwealth, you go straight to high school
A levels pre med, and then you're in med school.
And so I worked for a year and a half
as a nursing assistant or orderly, I mean I wasn't
(36:43):
very happy about it at the time, but I looked
back and that was probably the most powerful medical training
I had because I really got to see what happens
to the patient in the twenty three hours and fifty
seven minutes that doctors are not in the room, and
it gave me a real solidarity with the nursing profession. Eventually,
(37:03):
India took me in as a displaced person and I
finished medical school there in a very similar system to
what you have in New Zealand or what they have
in the UK. And then I came to America, and
you know, I think that for all the torturous nature
of my education, it turned out to be the best
kind of education because it was really focused on what
(37:25):
the body can tell you, reading the body as a text,
if you like. And to this day, my reputation in
medicine ironically centers around those kinds of things, which represent
what I learned as a student. We've become so, you know,
so postmodern in our medical delivery, especially in America, with
all our focus on everything but the patient, that that
(37:49):
skill turns out to be precious, because you know, my
bias is that medicine since antiquity well, and it wasn't
always will be a human to human transactional I mean
relational you know encounter. It's not a transaction, it's not
a piece of data being exchanged. It is a relational
(38:10):
encounter between someone who's ill and someone trying to help them.
And you know, I think there's nothing more powerful than
validating that their symptoms, their disease are happening on their body,
not on a biopsy report somewhere else, or not on
an image on a you know, a radiological image of
image of some kind, but somehow bringing it back to
(38:32):
this person and their unique experience of this. And so
that tends to be sort of my academic focus is
the very thing that I learned in you know, in
both Ethiopia and.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
India humanism and medicine. It's something that you talk about
in your Ted talk a doctor's touch. How we've lost
that bedside examination sort of skill because really a lot
of the time, the first thing that a patient wants
is to feel that they've been heard.
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I don't want to sound like a
lud item. I mean I practiced at Sanford and I
loved the cutting edge technology we have access to, but
it really isn't either, or I think that there's something
very powerful in being able to quickly and simply read
the body by doing a good exam. But more than that,
the ritual, you know, and if you think about it,
(39:19):
it's full of ritual. One individual in a white shamanistic
outfit and the other one in a paper gown that
no one knows how to tire or untie, and all
of this in a special room. So the ritual, I
think is also profoundly important. And if you perform the ritual, well,
you sort of buy something. You sort of get a result,
(39:39):
which is a deepening of the patient physician relationship. Whereas
if you're there with half your attention on the screen
and the other half on the patient and you barely
touch them, or when you do, you do it in
such a way that they are immediately onto you, I
think you lose something. So that tends to be what
I preach. And you know, it's a difficult thing because
(39:59):
we are getting busier and busier with more data, more tests,
and pretty soon you find yourself sitting in front of
the screen twice as long as you are in front
of the patient. And I think that's that's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
The best guest from the Sunday session Great Chatz with
Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
At B That was Abraham Virgheez. I remember that interview
not just because I'm a fan, but because of the
response that we got from it. Many of you got
in touch to say how moved you were by Abraham's compassion,
his perspective on medicine and how our medical systems have
gone wrong. And that is one of the great things
about radio hearing from our listeners, the conversation that we have,
(40:41):
So thank you very much for all your feedback throughout
the year. That was the last episode of Great Chats
for summer. We will be releasing new episodes monthly throughout
twenty twenty five. Thanks for joining me on this NEWSTALK'S'DB podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB. The big names, the fascinating guests,
the thoughtful conversations, bringing you the best interviews from the
Sunday Session. This is Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, powered
(00:27):
by News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello and welcome to the summer edition of Great Chats.
I'm Francisca Budkin and in this podcast we bring you
some of the best feature interviews from the Sunday Session
on News Talks EDB throughout twenty twenty four. First Up Today,
author podcaster, former late night talk show host and comedian
Chelsea Handler, who brought her comedy show to New Zealand
(00:50):
and twenty twenty four. We spoke before she arrived and
started off by talking about skiing as you do. We're
having a chat over a zoom and I'm just looking
in the background and what a beautiful view the snow
covered trees. I know, skiings a passion. Has it been
a good season.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It has not been a great season, which is okay.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I'm writing a new book, so it's allowed me to
you know, focus and actually be productive because when there
is good snow.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
It's really hard for me to stay inside. So I
got a new dog.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
I rescued a new dog this year, and he's a handful,
so he I am keeping my hands full. So the
skiing hasn't been epic, but I'm still skiing.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
You know, you still got to get out there and
ski it up.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Is he as much of a handful as Gary was? He?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Thank you for remembering Gary.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
I would like to go on the record and say
Gary was the only dog that I purchased and the
only dog that I returned.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Rescues are where it's at because.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
They are grateful, and I want my dogs to be grateful.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Now I haven't mentioned the name of your Sean. My
boss has said to me, I'm allowed to mention it once.
It's called little Big Bitch. But I did wonder whether
you love the fake that you've called it something that
really you know, people like myself and the media really
can't be blasting out over the airwaves.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I know I have a tendency. My last tour was.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Called vaccinated in a horny and the same issue kept
coming up about like on Instagram.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
You couldn't like forward it or like.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
And I was like, why do I constantly pick these
names that are not helpful to spreading the message. But whatever,
that's just my personality. I act first and then think afterward.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
The two is kind of an origin story stories of
your childhood. Tell me about the young Chelsea. What was
she like?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Very obstreperous.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I was not satisfied at all with my family dynamic
when I was born as the youngest of six children.
I remember being very young and looking around, like who
is in charge? Because it wasn't my mom and it
wasn't my dad. They were two hot messes and my
brothers and sisters were just doing what they wanted. And
I was like, no, no, I need I have big plans,
(02:59):
and I needed support for those big plans. So I
just started working as early as I could. I opened
up a lemonade stand when I was like eight, but
it was a hard let aid stand where I served gin,
tequila and whiskey, and I then I was like, you
can't make any real money in lemonade.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And then I decided to open up my own babysitting
company when I was ten.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
So I lied and I said I was fifteen, and
I ended up babysitting for a fourteen year old boy.
So I have like a lot of entrepreneurship in my background,
and I just wasn't going to settle for anything less
than the best.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
I wanted a big life. I wanted freedom, and I
wanted adulthood, and I.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Wanted to cut ties with anybody that was going to
hold me.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Back or you know.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
I felt childhood was insulting, Like I never felt like
a child. I felt like I was in a baby's body.
But it didn't make sense. I was like, no, no,
I'm a woman. I want to be my woman.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
You're very determined too, from what I can from what
I hear, Can you tell me about the time that
your mom said that you would never fly first class?
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yes, my mom.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
My mom told me that we want on our first
plane ride, which is very exciting when you're ten years old.
I had never flown, and I remember walking past the
first class section and I just was like sniffing around,
and I'm like, no, this is my group. You know,
this smells like my group. And my mom's like, keep going,
keep going.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
We're in the back. We'll never be able to fly
first class. Those people are rich and you know, and
we are not.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
And I was like, Uh, first of all, speak for yourself,
because I will be flying first class.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
That's the only class I'll be flying. And so I
saved up so much money.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
From my babysitting company when I was babysitting for a
kid that was three years older than me, four years
older than me actually for three summers, no less, I
baby slept with that kid until he was seventeen and.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I was thirteen.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So I saved up so much money that I went
and got the next time we took a plane ride, which.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Was like three years later.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
So I had like I had amassed a small fortune
from my babysitting empire.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I put.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
I went down the street to a travel agent and
purchased my own first class ticket. And this time I
was flying to California from New Jersey with my two brothers,
and I didn't tell anyone about my ticket. I got
on the plane, found my seat to see, looked at
both of my brothers with such joy in my heart
and said, see you idiots.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
At the end of the flight, the picture on the
tour postcad you look over it. You look angelic.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I was. And that was what was so tricky.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
I was an angel on the surface, but beneath the surface,
I had big plans and I was gonna.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Run over anyone who got in my way.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
It's interesting you talk about being obviously the last child
of six and you're wondering who was in charge and
everybody sort of had their own lives. Because what I
love about your stories is how close you actually are
to your siblings to this day.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I ad, yeah, we're a tight fai. Yeah, it is,
it is. It is special.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
I get you know, you always assume everyone's close with
their family, but that's simply not true.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I know from my podcast, Dear Chelsea.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I get calls all the time about family dynamics and
like you know, and that is always surprising to me
because I'm like, it's your family, you have.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
To figure it out. But I am like the leader
in my family.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I am the one that is like, that's not acceptable.
You need to you know, Like I am the youngest
and the oldest at the same time. And now they
listened to me because they know that I was right
all along. I was like, listen, I'm going to the mountaintop.
You can come with me, or you can resist and
stay behind.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It's up to you. But you know, that's where I'm headed.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
And now they're all like, okay, let's just stick with Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Away with her. So you were you were ambitious and
you were determined. Were you opinionated as a child as well?
And quite outspoken?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I was always.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Outspoken because that was rewarded in my family being outspoken.
My brother's like they thought I was this little cute,
kind of boisterous, precocious thing.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So they encouraged my loud mouth, you know, like.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
They would their friends would come over and they'd be like, go,
tell them what an idioto is.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm like, I got this, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
I was good at that, like kind of putting people,
like reading people and telling them what to do, and
so it was rewarded. And then I just kind of
took it and ran. I mean, you know, I'm a
loud and proud kind of girl. I'm not meek or
easily influenced by others. I kind of like to run
my own shop, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And I like that, and I like encourage women to
do the same.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
It's all about women knowing their own power and standing
up for themselves and being loud and brave. I like
to live my life in a very loud, brave way
as a kind of example to everybody, like, you don't
have to get married, you don't have to have babies
to be of value. There are a million things you
can do in this world that are valuable, and.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
That's only two of them.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
So so you know, I'm very outspoken on that front.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Look, and that's what we love about you, that honesty
and that you're just so authentic. I do wonder though,
you know, there's a lot of headlines. The headlines will
read Chelsea Handler faces backlash, or Chelsea Handler hits back,
or Chelsea Handler goes rogue. I love it when you
go rogue. Does it get to you a little bit?
Do you sometimes think to say, I could just make
my life a little bit easier.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
No, because it doesn't make my life any harder. I'm
not paying attention to the backlash, I don't, you know,
I don't if someone I.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Don't think of things in that way. I think of
things as.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Like, I think I'm on the right track. I think
I am full of love.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
I want to spread happy vibes and joyfulness, and if
anyone has a problem with that, then that's a bigger
problem for them than it is for me.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
That's so refreshing because a lot of us, especially in
this kind of digital world where we're constantly presenting ourselves
in a certain way that might not be real, a
lot of people do struggle to actually accept that maybe
you're not for everybody, that not everyone's going to like you,
and yet that's life, right. You know.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Also, if everyone does like you, what does that say
about you?
Speaker 4 (08:45):
That says that you're not, that you have no opinions,
that you don't stand for anything. Because it's impossible but
to be liked by anybody. I mean, listen, I started
my career understanding that a lot of people would not
like me, and so anyone who likes me.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Is a bonus, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Like, I know that where we live in a time
where it's still like, oh, you're so outspoken for a woman,
It's like, excuse me, of course I'm going to be
outspoken for a woman, but it's not for a woman.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I'm an outspoken person. So you know, until we live
in a time which I'm sure I.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Won't survive during to see that, but until we live
in a time where women are respected and treated as
equally as men are, then I will continue to behave
this way, and.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I love that you're a passionate advocate, and I presume
that you know for many things and causes and I
and comedy is just such a great tool for that,
isn't it.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Yes, comedy is a great way to deliver some medicine
with laughter. And I have no problem making a fool
out of myself. So comedy comes very easily to me
because my whole life is just.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
One experience after another that's so outlandish and crazy.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I mean, in my stand up shows, I tell this
Bill Cosby story that is so ridiculous, and I don't
Not a lot of people can say they have a
good Bill Cosby story.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I do.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I have a great Woody Allen story that I share
because I got stuck at a dinner with him and
I'm like, there's no way I could sit across from
Rudy Allen and not confront him like that's not the
type of woman I am, So.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I tell that story.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
I have a lot of really ridiculous I was at
Kenny Bunkboard once during COVID, accidentally on three edibles, dealing
with the former president whose political belief system is very
misaligned with mine, so that's a good one too. But anyway, yes,
I like to share those experiences and I like to
have you know, I want my.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Life to be one big adventure and it has been.
And getting to come to.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
New Zealand and Australia and traveling the globe to make
people laugh is a total, total privilege.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Just warning you there will probably be men wearing flip
flops or chandles in July even though it's winter. So
I'm just letting you know that because I know that
that's a small issue for you. That's just a Strolian
and New Zealand for you. Hey, look, I want to
talk really quickly the critics choice. You will always get
a call Grida Gowick and Mago Robbie up that impromptued
(11:07):
acceptance speech. Was it sort of was it premittative or
did you did you actually just kind of do that
as am on a whim.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
No, Well, they had four minutes to kill, and.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Yeah, they had four minutes to kill and they were
and they said, go can you go up there and
you know, just do some material And I was like, well,
are there any other options? Like, because I know that
Barbie got an award before the show, and then I thought, yeah,
let's give them some more flowers.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Because you talked about it being the year of the woman.
What about twenty twenty three do you think was so
big for women?
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Taylor Swift, first and foremost is dominating culture, dominating the
zeitgeist by it Beyonce Pink, their tours are the most
successful tours of the year of twenty twenty three. And Barbie,
the movie directed by Greta Gerwigs, starring Margot Robbie. I mean,
there's just so many female success stories America Ferrara and
(12:05):
the culture and the econ me, Like, women are so
underserved that when you serve it up to us, we
show up in droves, and that's what we're telling the world.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Like, you can't tell us that we are not contributing,
because when we contribute.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
It's massive and it's actually more powerful than many men.
So I think hopefully this will be the beginning of
a nice trend in female success stories.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Tyler Swift slight small, slight, you know, sort of sow
point for many of us here in New Zealand who
missed out on tickets to go to Australia to see you.
It seems like everybody else got to go except me,
But that's okay. Do you miss late night television because
women are so underrepresented in that space, would you go
back to it?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I don't think I would go back to that schedule.
That was pretty rigorous.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And I'm now forty eight years old and I love
my life. Like I get to do my podcast, I'm
writing a new book, and I get to tour when
I want a tour and extend it for as long
as I want to extend it. So I have a
pretty sweet gig going, and I get to take as
much time off a year as I want.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
And when I work, I go at it pretty hard.
And uh so, I don't know that I would ever
be drawn back to that type of schedule, but.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
I would be drawn back to doing like a once
a week show or something if the right opportunity presented itself,
which it hasn't, you know. I mean, I'm always looking
at opportunities and thinking about things and what I'm going
to do, So it just really depends where I am
and what's happening.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
If Trump gets elected, I'm out skate doodled, so I'll
be over there a lot more than I already am.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Would you move to Canada permanently?
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I don't know about permanently because I am a United
States resident and there are tax implications for moving. You
have to if you are American and you leave the country,
you have to pay American taxes for the rest of
your life. So there's really it doesn't really behoove me
to leave, but I would spend a lot less time
in America.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
The biggest names from the Sunday Session great chats with
Brad Jiska Rutkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
It'd be that was Chelsea Handling And obviously that interview
was recorded before November elections, and I wonder whether she
is in Canada again this Northern Hemisphere winter. Up next
British actress and producer Jimma Arttitan. You may know her
as the Bond Girl from Quantum of Solace, or from
The Kingsman Rogue Agent or the TV show Funny Woman,
(14:23):
but when she joined me recently on the Sunday Session,
it was to talk about her new film set in
the nineteen thirties, called The Critic. I started by asking
what attracted her to the character of Nina Land an
actress who was blackmailed by a theater critic.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
Well, I sort of did relate to her to a
certain extent.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
I mean, she's an actress that's you know, desperately trying
to seek approval, which you know that resonated me to
an extent. But she's very complicated. She's a working class
actress at the time the film is set in the
nineteen thirties who's trying to you know, establish herself as
(15:02):
one of the great actresses of the stage, doing Shakespeare
and whatnot, and and so she has quite a lot
of things that she's struggling with. But more than anything,
I was attracted to the project as a whole because
it was written by Patrick marlbur who is one of
our great writers over here. He did Closer and Notes
on a Scandal, and then Sir Ian McKellen, who I
(15:26):
had to do I had lots and lots of scenes with,
which was one of the biggest privileges of my whole
life really, I think, working with him.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
So it was a no brainer.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Really, Am I right that yours was the first name
attached to the critic and then others came on board.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Yeah, I believe so, which shocks me because that doesn't
usually happen.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
But yeah, I think I was. I don't know why
I think that.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
I think maybe Patrick had me in mind for the role.
But yeah, yeah, I was an early one.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And so did they say to you were going to
try and get in mchael or did you have a
bit of a say in maybe who would be playing
the other parts?
Speaker 5 (16:12):
I didn't have a say. I yeah, it was a
surprise to me when sir Ian was attached. I mean
it was such a gift of a role. And he
will say that himself, you know, he's very humble and modest,
but it was a I think for him. He came
along and he thought, oh, this is fantastic, Like I absolutely,
of course I'll do it.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
It's a juicy role for him as well. And the
two of you work so well together, an interesting on
screen relationship. But what was it like working with him
sort of day to day.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
Day to day.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
It was just joyful. I mean, he's really fun. He
loves a gossip. I love a gossip. So we'd spend
our time, you know, in between takes, just gossiping about
life and people we know and all that and having
a great time and then we'd switch into the kind
of the scene, which I always loved that he's definitely
not a kind of method actor who's carrying it around
(17:04):
with him in between takes, and that neither am I.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
So we had a lot of fun.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
But he's just, you know, he's so game and he's
so available as an actor. He's an actor's actor, you know,
he's just he's just wants to do his best and
play and have fun, but also, you know, really strive
to get the best out of the scene.
Speaker 6 (17:25):
And I just adored working with him.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
I wish we had even more scenes together because those
were my favorite scenes.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
To do the film. Of course, A seat in the
world of theater? Was that something that appealed to you
about it as well? Because theater you're so familiar with.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's such a rich world to
explore because it's bustling and it's full of characters and
especially period theater, and I relate to it. I started
off in theater. Yeah, so I think so. And yeah,
and I guess because the characters are so can be
quite extreme in theater world, like the actors can be,
(18:04):
you know, larger than life and dramatic, and they have
all these issues. I thought, yeah, it was great, and
I had to play an actress that's not very good.
So that was a challenge to allow myself to be
not very good on screen and know that that was
going to be committed to film. But Anna Antucker, who
(18:27):
directed the film, he was very supportive, and so were
Patrick Marber actually and saying, be rubbish, don't worry, We've
got your man.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I was going to bring that up and say, you
were very good at being very bad. Are they Are
there any similarities between being an actress trying to establish
themselves in the nineteen thirties and today.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it's just
a trick. It's just a tricky business to be in.
If you're anyone in the acting business, it's very fickle.
It's very changeable. And Ian McKellen's character, who's a theater critic,
he says, you know, you know, one review can make
you or it can break you. And that's still I
think the case. I think, you know, it's there's a
(19:12):
lot of competition and and and yeah, I strive to
have a long career until I'm very, very old, but
that's not an easy thing to do. Because you have
to go through lots of different phases as an actor
and you have to kind of embrace them. So yeah,
I think it's still it's still relevant, it's still very
(19:33):
much identifiable.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
You were so well established that now though, Jim out,
I mean, do you do you care about the critics anymore?
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (19:44):
I do, and I don't.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I mean, I I care so much that I don't
read my reviews because I'm far too sensitive to manage
reading theater, especially theater, like I have in the past,
read reviews while I'm doing a play. Is often that's
when they come out, is while you're at the beginning
of the run, and that's really unhelpful because then you
(20:07):
have to go and do the play that night, and
you've got all of this critique, whether it's good, bad, whatever,
in your head, and it's not necessarily helpful. So I
try to avoid them when I'm doing plays. Particularly when
I'm doing TV and film, I feel a little bit
more detached from the project because usually you've shot it,
you know, two years before or whatever. So I don't
mind so much reading reviews when a film comes out.
(20:33):
But yeah, I am quite a sensitive soul, so I
tend to try and avoid.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And Jimmy, you work, as you've mentioned, do work across
film and television and theater. Do you have a favorite
or do they all offer you something different that you love?
Speaker 6 (20:51):
Yeah, they all.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Offer something different.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
I do love doing plays because you have that immediacy
and there's a thrill that you get that you don't
get when you're doing TV and film, I think. But
then I can get a bit bored doing plays as well,
because I like a short run.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
As opposed to, you know, a four or five month run.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
I can get a little bit of you know, board,
But and I guess you know, with TV and film
you only get one shot really, I mean you can
do lots of takes, but that's that day and then
it's done. Whereas with theater, you often you find you
have discoveries along the run that you know you wouldn't
necessarily have with film, about the character or a way
(21:34):
to play the scene. Yeah, they're very different. But that's
what's nice about my job. I get to kind of
dabble with in all of those things.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Jimmy, you have an incredible body of work to your name.
It feels like you never stop.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
Is it the case, No, it is the case. It
is the case I've just had.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
I've been lucky that my projects have usually come they
usually come out quite evenly. But I had I had
a child last year, and I've only worked once since
I had my son, and I do at the moment,
I feel a little bit like and will I ever
work again? You know, so at the moment, I'm having
a quiet time, but it will all be fine. Yeah, No,
it's I think now as well. When I was younger,
(22:16):
I used to jump on every single project and just work, work, work,
But now I think I'm a little bit more selective,
so less output.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
The moment, I'm pleased to hear because I feel incredibly
prolific and I never know what you're going to tune up.
Nick's telling what story? I mean, this is the one.
You're very fortunate that your career has been so diverse.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
Yeah, I think thank you for saying that, because I
think it's something I actively think about when I'm choosing work.
And I also like to, you know, if i've done something.
I just did a very comedic role that's very broad
and glamorous, and then I try to sort of do
the absolute opposite for my next role, which is very
contemporary and serious, and so yeah, I like that, and
(23:04):
I like thinking about how I can challenge myself in
that with character, but also with genre and working different
periods and they offer different challenge. So I always like
a bit of variation.
Speaker 7 (23:20):
Jim.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I was thinking about Nina as an actress who's trying
to establish herself, and I was wondering, what if you
could say one thing to your younger self when starting
out and all those big roles started coming in. What
would it be? What have you learned over the years
that you'd love to go back and be able to
tell it that young actress starting out.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
You know, there are a few things that I turned
down when I was younger, because you know, they were
too art house or I was advised to do something else,
and I really wish I hadn't done that, you know,
I wish I'd gone with my intuition. I think I
was very naive when I was younger, and I was
just very grateful to be, you know, for anything. So
(24:03):
but actually I had this intuition about certain roles I
I should have done, and I think that's so important intuition.
I think it's you know, we or instinct, whatever you
want to call it. I think it's as an actor,
it's sort of like your gold and you know, your money.
Really when you're that's your your thing that you should
really listen to you So that's what i'd say to myself,
(24:25):
listen to your intuition more.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Well, that's something that you can sort of you should
put into play across your life. You should. You know,
as a mother, you need to use your you know, intuition,
don't you about your child and things like that. Absolutely
need to trust ourselves more, don't we. Yeah, exactly, So
you've hit those little pause. Just finally, what can we
expeact next from Jimmer?
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Well, I do have a project next year that I'm
really excited about. It's for TV as well, and I
can't can't reveal what it is because it hasn't been
announced yet. But again it's it's very, very different to
anything I've done before, So I'm excited about that one.
So and then I have quite a lot of things
in the pipe. I have a production company and there's
(25:09):
a whole plethora of things that we're developing. A musical
and we've got kind of crime drama and all of
these things that hopefully in the next year or so
they'll start to come into light.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday session
Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio Empowered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It'd be Jimma Addington and her very distinctive voice there.
Jimma has had a varied career, she really has done
it all. I know that I've said this before on
Great Chats, but I'm often taken aback by how normal
many of the stars are that I speak to, and
of course they should be. They are just humans. Very
well known ones may be and they are just doing
their job promoting their films. But man, they are so nice,
(25:54):
in normal and surprisingly punctual. We could all learn something
from them. My final highlight from twenty twenty four is
a real special one for me. It's one of my
favorite authors, Abraham the Geese, author of books such as
Cutting for Stone, The Tennis Partner, and The Covenant of Water.
He came to town for the Auckland Writers' Festival and
(26:14):
I was delighted to speak to him beforehand. Abraham is
not just an award winning author, but also a renowned
infectious disease doctor and a professor and vice chair at
Stanford University. We started off by talking about how he
got into writing. Now, you are a doctor and a writer.
Can you talk us through how you got into writing?
Speaker 7 (26:35):
Well, I actually became a writer well into my medical career,
largely because I was living through an extraordinary experience with
HIV and a small town in Tennessee with far more
numbers there than anyone expected, and I realized it was
really young men coming home from the big city up
to decades now that they were ill and had the virus,
(26:56):
and that this was happening in every small town. I
wrote a scientific paper describing that, but I really felt
the language of science didn't begin to capture heartache, the
tragic nature of that voyage. And that was the moment
that I became a writer.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Is writing a release for you? In some way? I
know that when you decided to take a break from
your medical career and you hit it off to I
think it was the Iowa Writers' Workshop and you obtained
a degree in finance. It was around nineteen ninety. You
described that as an act of self preservation, that that
work that you had been doing with those AIDS patients
was really starting to take a toll.
Speaker 7 (27:35):
Yeah. I think it was the early days of HIV
when pretty much every patient you saw and really got
to know well because they were with you for a
fair amount of time, they all wound up dying, and
you know, so it was pretty intense. There wasn't the
kind of social support and resources we have now, not
to mention a tremendous amount of prejudice and misinformation. So
(27:59):
I'm proud to say that I'm, you know, still in
the business, but I think you do have to pace
yourself and take breaks from time to time. And I
should mention Francisca that I really see myself as all physician.
I just happened to look out at the world through
the lens of being a physician, and I think I
bring that to writing. I bring that to doctrine, and
so I somewhat resist the notion of two different hats,
(28:22):
you know, writers and physician. It feels very much all
one one thing to me.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Because both require a curiosity about humanity and an empathy,
don't they.
Speaker 7 (28:34):
Yeah, I think, and both are also, in their own way,
very fulfilling and very frustrating. And you know, I think
some of the attention to detail that I learned as
a medical student, and that's sort of ingrained in internal medicine,
which is my specialty, you know, is ideal for writing.
You're trying to take these disparate little pieces, these nuances,
(28:55):
and out of them bring together something that makes a whole.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Lot more sense.
Speaker 7 (29:00):
And so there's there's a great joy in sort of
having both things going at the same time.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
But it does make me a.
Speaker 7 (29:07):
Very slow writer. I've written four books since nineteen ninety four.
I've written four books, so I'm not exactly churning them out.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
You can take all the time in the world as
far as I'm consumed, as long as there is another
one at some point along the way. You're very kind.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Clearly being a physician informs your writing and what you write.
Do you use your writing to present the world of
medicine to the reader in a different way?
Speaker 7 (29:33):
I mean, I don't my goal with every novel, and
I only have two to speak up, but my goal
has always been very simply a good story, well told.
And I feel that, you know, writers are always told
to write what they know. Medicine is what I know.
But I also think I'm not apologetic about using medicine
(29:53):
so often, because what is medicine but life plus plus
life at its most extreme, life at it's most lived
in a funny way. So I see it as quite
organic to any story, all life. And I just happen
to use more of of sort of the drama of
illness and recovery than perhaps another writer might.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You've written a mix of nonfiction and fiction, Do you
prefer one or the other?
Speaker 7 (30:21):
I really think that I prefer fiction, because you know,
I'm a great believer that there's no other instrument that
can stop time the way a big novel can. You know,
you enter into it and you just suspend your disbelief
and you live generations and live through wars, and you know,
when you finally put the book down.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
It's still Tuesday.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
And I love that feeling of, you know, living great
sweeps of time and yet living only a very short time.
So that kind of escape, if you like, is powerful.
But I also think novels are instructive. Novels are the
great lie that tell the truth. And I came to
medicine because of a novel, and I think that, you know,
we all use great books in our lives to instruct,
(31:06):
just to steer the course of our ship. So they're
doing more than entertaining us, though, or they should.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
What novel brought you to medicine?
Speaker 7 (31:16):
Well, the book that brought me to medicine was actually
paradoxically off human bondage. So it's not a book that
most people would mention. But for my generation of physicians
and the ones before me, it was not uncommon to
speak of a book that called them to medicine. And
I think in the United Kingdom it was usually The
Citadel by AJ Cronin, whereas in America, for example, it
(31:38):
was Arrowsmith by Saint Clair Lewis. And to this day,
when I get a letter from a medical student or
a physician who says, you know, I read one of
your books and that's what brought me to medicine, I
think I prized that more than any other accolade I
could ever receive.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
The Covenant of Water draws from your mother's stories of
growing up in Kerala in India. How did those stories
become the idea for this novel?
Speaker 7 (32:04):
Well, I think I was always struck how heroic both
my grandmothers were, and yet how unheralded they were. And
I think all of us know women like this who
are powerful and heroic, and yet no one but you know,
their immediate family or a few other people around, quite
appreciates how they are. And the kind of adversity both
(32:27):
my grandmothers came through was very inspiring. But I was
born in Africa because my parents were teachers there, and
I think I was a bit hesitant to set a
story in India, in Carolina, in our small community of Christians.
But when my mother was in her seventies, at the
request of her niece who was five years old, who
(32:48):
of my niece, of her granddaughter, my niece asked her
how much she what was it like when you were
five years old? And my mother began to write in
a school notebook all these anecdotes of her childhood with illustrations,
and they were all familiar to us. But in the
richness of I saw on the page, I just knew
(33:08):
that I had to set my story in this setting
of our community in the south of India.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Is she a good storyteller? Is that where you get
your ability to tell an amazing story?
Speaker 7 (33:20):
I mean, my mother was a great storyteller, a great artist. Interestingly,
many of the stories that she wrote down I noticed
we considerably embellished from when I first heard them as
a child. I think she really must have been a
very good storyteller.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
You take us on these incredible journeys in your books.
They're these rich, sort of generational sagas. The characters are
always so fully developed and the place is so well drawn.
They're like characters all these different narratives that of interweave
with each other. How do you pull it all together?
I mean, I know that this book took you about
fourteen years, But do you start off with an idea
(33:55):
about where it's going to go and how it's going
to unfold or do you just let it happens as
you explore these stories?
Speaker 7 (34:03):
Oh, Francisco, I wish I could tell you I knew
the whole story before I began, because that would make
me a much more efficient writer. This book took almost
fourteen years. I mean I had a general idea that
this is the geography, which is huge, This is the
time period nineteen hundred to nineteen seventies or so, and
I wanted three generations of a family because as a physician,
(34:25):
the most rewarding thing I've had in forty years of
practice is witnessing these diseases for which we only had
a name but no understanding, and then pretty soon we
have an understanding at a molecular level. Then we have
a sort of development of a genetic probe, and then
we have treatment. And you know, watching that unfolding of
illness can only happen if you have a story that
(34:48):
has that kind of sweep. So I knew those things,
but and I even have a whiteboard where I had
it all plotted out. But the thing is, you you
put a character that you're developing under pressure, and all
of a sudden, they can indicate you that there they're
not going to do this thing you had in mind,
So you have to take a photograph of the whiteboard,
(35:09):
erase it, and make a new whiteboard. So I think
I discovered a lot as I went on. I certainly
did not know the ending, But to me, that's kind
of the joy of writing. I think that if I'm surprised,
genuinely surprised by something a character does, the odds are
that a reader will be too. And you know, I
think there are two schools of thought on this. Many
(35:30):
writers do know the whole story. I'm envious, I'm afraid
I don't, and I have to plod my way through
and at some point all of the connections become visible,
and so at that point I do know. But that's
well well into the book.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Abraham. You began your medical training in Ethiopia, you finished
it in what was then Madress. How did training in
those two places impact or mold you into the doctor
that you've become. Do you think you could have potentially
been a different doctor if you'd trained fully in the US.
Speaker 7 (36:02):
Yeah, I think I would have been a very different doctor.
I mean I began any Euopia in a school partly
run by the British Council for East Africa, which had
several schools. But then my education was interrupted by civil
war and I wound up joining my parents, who had
come to America a few years before that. But I
(36:22):
was kind of stuck because in America you need an
undergraduate degree before you go to medical school, and I
didn't have one very much. In many parts of the
UK and the Commonwealth, you go straight to high school
A levels pre med, and then you're in med school.
And so I worked for a year and a half
as a nursing assistant or orderly, I mean I wasn't
(36:43):
very happy about it at the time, but I looked
back and that was probably the most powerful medical training
I had because I really got to see what happens
to the patient in the twenty three hours and fifty
seven minutes that doctors are not in the room, and
it gave me a real solidarity with the nursing profession. Eventually,
(37:03):
India took me in as a displaced person and I
finished medical school there in a very similar system to
what you have in New Zealand or what they have
in the UK. And then I came to America, and
you know, I think that for all the torturous nature
of my education, it turned out to be the best
kind of education because it was really focused on what
(37:25):
the body can tell you, reading the body as a text,
if you like. And to this day, my reputation in
medicine ironically centers around those kinds of things, which represent
what I learned as a student. We've become so, you know,
so postmodern in our medical delivery, especially in America, with
all our focus on everything but the patient, that that
(37:49):
skill turns out to be precious, because you know, my
bias is that medicine since antiquity well, and it wasn't
always will be a human to human transactional I mean
relational you know encounter. It's not a transaction, it's not
a piece of data being exchanged. It is a relational
(38:10):
encounter between someone who's ill and someone trying to help them.
And you know, I think there's nothing more powerful than
validating that their symptoms, their disease are happening on their body,
not on a biopsy report somewhere else, or not on
an image on a you know, a radiological image of
image of some kind, but somehow bringing it back to
(38:32):
this person and their unique experience of this. And so
that tends to be sort of my academic focus is
the very thing that I learned in you know, in
both Ethiopia and.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
India humanism and medicine. It's something that you talk about
in your Ted talk a doctor's touch. How we've lost
that bedside examination sort of skill because really a lot
of the time, the first thing that a patient wants
is to feel that they've been heard.
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I don't want to sound like a
lud item. I mean I practiced at Sanford and I
loved the cutting edge technology we have access to, but
it really isn't either, or I think that there's something
very powerful in being able to quickly and simply read
the body by doing a good exam. But more than that,
the ritual, you know, and if you think about it,
(39:19):
it's full of ritual. One individual in a white shamanistic
outfit and the other one in a paper gown that
no one knows how to tire or untie, and all
of this in a special room. So the ritual, I
think is also profoundly important. And if you perform the ritual, well,
you sort of buy something. You sort of get a result,
(39:39):
which is a deepening of the patient physician relationship. Whereas
if you're there with half your attention on the screen
and the other half on the patient and you barely
touch them, or when you do, you do it in
such a way that they are immediately onto you, I
think you lose something. So that tends to be what
I preach. And you know, it's a difficult thing because
(39:59):
we are getting busier and busier with more data, more tests,
and pretty soon you find yourself sitting in front of
the screen twice as long as you are in front
of the patient. And I think that's that's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
The best guest from the Sunday session Great Chatz with
Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
At B That was Abraham Virgheez. I remember that interview
not just because I'm a fan, but because of the
response that we got from it. Many of you got
in touch to say how moved you were by Abraham's compassion,
his perspective on medicine and how our medical systems have
gone wrong. And that is one of the great things
about radio hearing from our listeners, the conversation that we have,
(40:41):
So thank you very much for all your feedback throughout
the year. That was the last episode of Great Chats
for summer. We will be releasing new episodes monthly throughout
twenty twenty five. Thanks for joining me on this NEWSTALK'S'DB podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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