April 23, 2025 • 47 mins
In this edition of Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, actress Rebecca Gibney opens up about her newest TV project and the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone.
Richard Roxburgh and journalist Peter Gresta joined Francesca to discuss their new movie The Correspondent - where Roxburgh portrays Gresta's 2013 arrest in Egypt.
And Amanda Knox tells her story of being wrongly convicted of murdering her flatmate in Italy in 2007 and surviving 4 years in prison in her new book Flee.
Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin brings you the best interviews from Newstalk ZB's The Sunday Session.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks ATB. 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 ATB.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hello and welcome to Great Chats. I'm Francisco bud Can,
host of the Sunday Session on News Talks EDB, and
in this podcast, we picked some of our favorite feature
interviews from over the last month for you to enjoy.
Coming out for the Gorgeous Rebecca Giveney joins me to
talk about her latest show, Happiness and the importance of
stepping out of your comfort zone and Ozzie Legend. Actor
Richard Roxborough and journalist Peter Grest with me to talk
(00:51):
about the film The Correspondent, which tells the story of
Peter's arrest in Egypt in twenty thirteen for terrorism. Richard
plays Peter and I tell you its a hell of
a youn. But first up this month, we've got an
exclusive New Zealand interview with a Man Knox, who's released
a new book called Free. It tells her story of
being wrongly convicted of murdering her flatmate in Italy in
(01:13):
two thousand and seven, surviving four years in prison, and
what her life has been like since been cleared. We
started the conversation talking about how she coped with life
in prison by finding a way to be useful.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
In the same way that I think poets find limitations
and constraints to be really conducive to creativity. When you
don't have many options, you end up being able to
see clearly what you have to offer to your community.
And I saw very clearly that I was very different
than a lot of the women that I was imprisoned with.
I was educated, I was healthy, I had this familial support,
(01:50):
and so eventually I realized, Wow, instead of just being
in constant contest for scarce resources with my fellow prisoners,
I could be a resource myself, and I developed my
little prison hustle, which involved a lot of trans There
were a lot of foreigners in the prison, so I
was translating between English in Italian, but also random languages
(02:13):
that I was just using the dictionary for.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I also was a scribe.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I had really good handwriting, so people wanted me to
write their letters for them so that they would be
pretty for the person who received them, and I gave
quite a few back massages, not gonna lie.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So how important was that purpose.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
It was?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I think it was really important, especially for that sense
of community. Right Like, I was facing a twenty six
year sentence and I had to ask myself, how do
I make this.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Day worth living? And part of.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
It was continuing to, you know, have relationships with people
on the outside and have a good relationship and intellectual
and emotional relationship with myself. But ultimately I was immersed
in a very restrictive environment, and I think it was
really important for my sanity to develop a sense of
(03:06):
place and purpose, which made it all the more strange
to realize like this, it was much harder for me
to find place and purpose once I got out of prison.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, and we'll get to that. What impac does prison
have on you mentally and physically?
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Well, it's really not good.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I know I sort of am painting a slightly rosy picture, but.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
It was horrible. It was horrible.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I was very much I had no privacy I had.
It was there was very little health support, both physically
and mentally. If you were dealing with any kind of issue,
you got the very barest of treatment. The food was terrible,
just like it is a toll on your body and soul.
(04:01):
And I spent the entire time that I was in
prison very sad. That was sort of my emotional baseline,
and I really I only realized this afterwards. I became
numb to so many other emotions that would have rendered
me very vulnerable in prison, Like anger. Anger was an
emotion that I wasn't I didn't really have the luxury
(04:22):
of entertaining in a prison environment where I constantly had
to be on my toes, I constantly had to be
looking over my shoulder and take you know, taking care
of myself. So in a survival like you're in a
survival mode, I just the only emotion that I was
really able to experience was just a deep, constant sadness.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
You had a few sort of techniques that helped you survived,
and one of them was having conversations with your youngest self.
Tell me about that.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Well, it's nice to call it a technique.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
At the time, I thought I was just going absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It was my polite way of putting it.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Yeah, yeah, your way to say you're unwrapp and it's useful.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
I mean, that's the really key thing is like.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Your brain and your heart and your and your body
will find ways to adapt to really, really difficult environments.
And one of the ways that my mind adapted to
this sense of loneliness and also to this sense of like,
I don't know how to deal with this.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I don't like I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Was I imagined a younger version of myself who had
not yet gone through this experience, and I sort of.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Baby like baby sat her through it.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Was I was explaining to her what was going to
happen to her and how she was going to survive
and what was really hard about that. That's a chapter
in the book that could to this day makes me cry.
Is like the fact that I was telling myself I
was going to be okay, even though I didn't actually
know for sure.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I wish that, you know, thirty.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Seven year old me today could have been the one
talking to twenty two year old Amanda, but unfortunately that
person didn't exist yet. And it's really the person I
am today is in large part due to twenty two year.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Old Amanda and her conversations with her younger self.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Absolutely your mother was always optimistic. She always felt that
there was light at the end of the tunnel, but
you didn't see it that way, especially after being convicted.
Was it Why was it important to you to just
accept that this was your life?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Well, I feel like that's really the key to life ultimately,
because that being able to just see reality for what
it is and not sort of torture yourself with wishing
reality was otherwise was a really important way for me
to encounter the prison environment. Like I couldn't open that door, right,
(06:53):
I had a barred door and I could not open it.
And I was only going to make myself suffer even
more if I fixated on the fact that I couldn't.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Open the door.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
So instead I embraced what I could control, which was
very little but ultimately important to me, and stuff that
I could have value in. And it really looked like
expanding that metaphor of this is a locked closed door
to everything.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
About my life, like this is my life? This is it?
How do I make this life worth living?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And you know, I definitely buttoned heads with my mom
about this because she was in a very different emotional
and mental space than me. She was in save my
daughter like save Amanda, and she couldn't accept that this
was my life and that this was my fate. And
she didn't want me to be trying to imagine my
(07:44):
best life in prison. She wanted me to be with
her in the getting Amanda out of prison idea. And
I think I understand that now as a mom, because
I really do feel that what my mom was going
through was even worse than what I was going through.
She would have traded places with me in an instant
(08:05):
if she could, but she couldn't.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Think that it's led to a really interesting divide in
our philosophical paths. And I do think that like my
sort of ability to just like sit with reality as
it is and be okay whatever is happening externally is
ultimately the right path for an individual.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
But try telling that to a mom. Just try telling
it to a mom. It's not going to work.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Amanda returning home was just so overwhelming. Can you remember
those first few days and weeks?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Oh God, the first few days and weeks were insane.
I barely ate for the first week and I barely
slept just because I was constantly overstimulated. Like I had
spent four years where I did not have access to
the people I loved except for an hour at a time,
(09:06):
like hour of time, you know, once a week. I
only had one ten minute phone call, and I only
had access to the very limited amount of things that
were in my room. And suddenly I was just inundated
with choices and people and I got completely overwhelmed. Not
to mention, I was being chased by paparazzi and helicopters,
(09:29):
and I couldn't leave my own house without being stalked.
It was very very It was very, very disappointing because
I felt like I had been waiting four years to
get my life back, and then I realized very quickly
that the life that I had been sort of fantasy
(09:50):
or fantasizing about returning to no longer existed.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
And I was.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Plunged into what felt like a new kind of prison
where but one where I didn't really have a place
in the world, that I didn't really have a purpose
because I was constantly being I was still on trial
for one thing, but other than that, I was sort
of experiencing, like survivors guilt by proxy, where people were
sort of they had in their minds my identity had
(10:19):
become inexpecably linked with my friend's death, and so any
like anything about me was just a reminder of my
friend's death, and everything that I did was an offense
to her memory, and it felt like the only thing.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
That I could do was to just disappear off the
face of the earth. I think that it was just.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Because as the years go by, you kind of realize
that no matter what you do, people will continue to
invade your privacy, and it's impossible to fight the slender
against you. I mean, that is very defeating, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
It is?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And there was a there was a period there where
I was very lost, I was very desperate. I was
making mistakes because I was trying to cling to some
sense of normalcy and to cling to people who I
felt like I could trust. And I ultimately trusted some
people that I absolutely should not have trusted, and I
went through experiences that put me in real danger. And
(11:18):
I think I think that is how my story really
actually is very universal, because people who go through traumatic experiences,
they suffer from PTSD afterwards, and they're trying to make
sense of this horrible thing that happened to them, and
they end up like It's very very common for people
who are survivors of rape or natural you know, natural tragedies,
(11:43):
like you know, they they are discombobulated, and their sense
of like what they can even you know, rest their
faith on and put their trust in is completely thrown
up into the air, and so they end up making mistakes.
And I was one example of that.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
How did you feel about people caching in on your story?
You know, you've sold magazines and newspapers and books for people,
films and TVs.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
I think my biggest regret, So.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
What I will say is I do think that what
happened to me and what happened to my roommate Meredith
is in the public interest in a way. It is
a story that belongs to everyone. What I regret about
how the story has been consumed and packaged by the
broader public is that very very quickly, the truth about
(12:36):
what happened to my friend was utterly lost. The truth
about the person who actually raped and murdered her was disappeared,
and to the point that, like to this day people
ask me, well, who really.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Killed your roommate?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Then, like it's just utterly absurd that after over ten
years of coverage, there are some people out there who
have no idea that the actual murderer was found. But then,
of course the story that sort of took over there
like that that replaced the truth of what happened to
my friend, was a story that was based on a horrible,
(13:15):
misogynistic myth that like women ultimately hate all other women,
they're constantly in sexual competition with each other, they're constantly
judging each other like that was the story that was
packaged by the prosecution and the media and sold for.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Years and made international headlines.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Foxy Oxy murders her you know beautiful roommate in a
death orgy, and that beautiful roommate happens to be, you know,
an uptight, judgmental British girl. It's like, it was just
so absurd how we were just turned into these these
like wildly unrealistic ideas about about young women.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
At opposite sides.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Of the binary and instead of realizing that we were
just very similar girls who were studying abroad and discovering
ourselves and trying to find our away in the world
and had the whole.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
World ahead of us.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I think that that's one of my biggest you know,
sadness is about the case is that the truth about
what happened to Meredith was lost and instead people latched
onto this, this horribly misogynistic narrative that was untrue to
the both of us.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Amanda. It's meant that throughout your life you've been unable
to celebrate the milestones that many of us love to celebrate,
things like, you know, your wedding, the tabloids crashed your wedding.
When you got pregnant, you kept it hidden because of course,
the minute people saw you living your life, they immediately
would make a reference to the fact that you know,
(14:49):
Meredith is not living her life. So do you feel
now that you are free and that you are seen
as more than just the girl accused of murder?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Well, those are two different questions, because because you know,
I am still seen as the girl accused of murder,
because I am I was the girl accused of murder.
I of two young women who went to go study
abroad in Perusia, Italy.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Fate flipped a coin.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
One of them did not get to go home, and
one of them did not get to go home the
same and I am forever branded with being associated with
my friend's debt. But I feel free in the sense
that I do not feel utterly and only defined by
this worst experience of my life. I've really learned to
(15:42):
step outside of that box that people have tried to
trap me in, and I've learned to stand on top
of it and use it as a platform to tell
my own story and share my own message and the
insights that I've gained along the way.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
In the same way that like.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Someone who has you know, has survived cancer, who will
go on to probably talk about, like you know, do
lots of cancer research and advocacy and support. I feel
like I'm trying to make good and pay forward the
things that I have learned from surviving my ideal.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
The biggest names from the Sunday session great chats with
Francesca Rudkins on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks I'd be that.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Was Amanda Knox. I tell you I could have spoken
to her for an hour if they'd let me. There
was so much to touch on from the book about
how she has overcome what happened to her and forgive
those who were determined to see her convicted. As you
can tell, very articulate, intelligent woman trying to claim her
life and purpose back She does a lot of work
for the Innocent Network conference, which we didn't get around
(16:50):
to talking about, but if you want to learn more,
the book is called Free My Search for Meaning and
is out now. Up next, Ossie, Foreign correspondent Peter Gresta
and the man who plays them in the movie, The Correspondent,
Richard Roxborough, talk us through what happened in December twenty
thirteen when Grista, working as a journalist, was arrested in
Egypt in charge with aiding a terrorist organization. Peter starts
(17:13):
by setting the scene for us.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
We were covering the unfolding political crisis between rival groups
supporters of the Old Muslim Brotherhood, the government that had
been ousted about six months earlier, and the supporters of
the interim administration that was trying to set up fresh elections.
And yeah, I was doing what I'd considered to be
pretty vanilla journalism, nothing overly controversial, because as you said,
(17:37):
I was only filling in and I didn't really know
the politics of the country that well, so it was
just fairly routine stuff. And there was a knock on
the door December twenty eighth of twenty thirteen, and opened
the door and rushed a whole bunch of very burly
Egyptian security guards or security officers, playing clothed, but it
(18:00):
was pretty clear that they were moving with the kind
of professionalism that officials you'd expect officials to have, and
they marched me off, placed me under arrest, and very
quickly learned that I was facing some very very serious
terrorism charges.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Richard, what did you know of Peter's story? Can you
remember this?
Speaker 7 (18:17):
Yeah, look, I followed it really closely. Australia kind of
stood to attention when this happened. I don't think Peter
himself realized how front and center the story was in
Australia at the time. It just seemed so bizarre to
everybody that, you know, a known, respected foreign correspondent whose
(18:37):
face we'd seen in reports across time, had suddenly been
dragged off the streets for doing his job essentially and
was then charged and was then in prison for seven
years on terrorism charges. It seemed so it seemed so
outrageous and bizarre, and it was certainly a big part
(19:00):
of the Australian conversation at the time.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, I imagine it was, Peter. It is such an
incredible story. I mean, you were accused of financing and
aiding a terrorist organization. It was mind boggling and also
extremely serious. So how do you win those early days
and weeks and months, get your hit around finding yourself
in a situation like this.
Speaker 8 (19:26):
Initially I couldn't. I mean, you know, I'd never done
anything like this before. I hadn't been through it. I
didn't really quite understand what was going on.
Speaker 6 (19:35):
And there's a guy that appears makes a cameo in
the movie, a guy called it la abdul Fata, who
had been an extraordinary, wonderful, intelligent humanitarian and pro democracy activist,
and regrettably he had been imprisoned by most of the
regimes in Egypt at the time because he was a
(19:57):
wonderfully charismatic figure who had the capacity to really mobilize people.
But he also schooled me in the darker huts I
suppose of surviving prison made it. He helped me understand
that prison first and foremost, even though we initially focus
on the physical confinement, on the bars and the walls
and the doors and so on, it's actually a psychological problem.
(20:17):
And once I understood that, once he gave me the
tools to cope, I found it so much easier to
manage because was it.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Him that told you that there is no place for
self pity in present?
Speaker 6 (20:30):
Yeah, and he's still in prison, by the way, I've
just come back from a hunger strike earlier this year
to support his mother, who's also striking to try and
get him released.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
So, Richard, how do you get your head around a
character like this? I suppose? Also my first question to
you is what was it about the story Peter's story
that drew you to really wanted to play him?
Speaker 7 (20:54):
Well, I guess, as I was saying, it was such
a kind of it was such a shock to Australia
at the time that this had actually happened. So it
was an important story in that context, but given what's
happened to journalists and journalism since that time, it felt
(21:15):
like it was a you know, it was an even
more urgent story to tell the simple fact that the
journalists used to be protected by the Geneva Convention and
they're now regarded as.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Fair game.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
In theaters of war. But also that you know in
the White House now that the Press Corps is chosen
by the government for the first time, there are all
of these things that are happening to journalism that are
really potent and quite scary encroachments on what used to
be a pretty straightforward thing that people accepted. So I
(21:58):
guess I felt that it was a really urgent and
important story to get involved with, and.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Quite a response ability in a sense. I mean, was
it a daunting role to take on?
Speaker 8 (22:09):
Totally?
Speaker 7 (22:12):
Totally, because you know, I had such respect for Peter
in his work, and it's not something you take on
lightly playing something some playing a character who's a real
human being. Luckily, in this instance, Peter has been such
a supporter of the project from the get go, So
from the very first read through, he was there, and
(22:35):
I was able to obviously, apart from do the sneaky
actors work of kind of you know, checking out his
every move and the way that he was and the secret,
sly things that actors take away and put in their pocket,
it was also just knowing that I could talk to
him freely and that he would help me out if
(22:56):
need be, and I could pester him with irritating little
questions along the way, because Richard.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I know that you know, when playing a real life character,
some actors like to meet the person they're portraying others,
don't they do their research in other ways. So clearly
it was very helpful in this particular situation to have
Peter around. Is that the way you would normally work.
Speaker 8 (23:21):
Well, it really depends on this situation.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
I mean, I've played real life characters, some of them
very much in the public eye in the past. In
this particular case, though, in conversations with the directory, it
became really clear that we didn't want to do a
kind of impersonation of Peter, that that was not where
the relevancy of this story lay. That it was much
(23:44):
more going to be about trying to occupy the internal
space of what that person went through in that environment.
So that once the kind of impediment of having to
look like be like act like Peter was taken away,
it felt like it was safer, It was safer terrain
(24:06):
for all of this because the film also is oddly
it's it's a POV.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Film, so it's all you, yeah.
Speaker 7 (24:16):
So apologies to everybody, but it's it's one hundred percent
I mean every single frame, which I which was also
unexplored territory for me.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I think I was three quarters of the way through
and I thought I don't think I've seen a scene
without Richard and it yet. No, no, no, no, you don't
need to apologize. You don't need to apologize. But I
did think to myself, of course, this was an exhausting shoot.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Yeah, it's one of the things that I actually took.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
It was hugely gratified by that approach, too, I have
to say, because it meant that I was also absolved
in having to worry about whether he'd got my walk
right or some verbal tick of mine right. That you
know he was he was embodying the experience rather than
me as an individual, and that was that was naded
a lot easier, I think, to watch and also to
(25:03):
work with him.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Did you notice, though, Richard watching you sort of slyly
out of the corner of his eye when your first
Do you think he is keeping a close eye on me?
Tell me, Peter, what did you What was it like
to sit and watch your story on the big screen?
Speaker 8 (25:19):
Strangely discombobulating.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
Like I've spoken about this a lot, I've actually built
a career on being on what I went through in Egypt.
I've written about it, I've given countless speeches and interviews
about it.
Speaker 8 (25:33):
So a lot of that is kind of downstream processing.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
It's actually sort of ongoing therapy, if you like, by
applying meaning and significance to what to the experience we
went through. And so I thought I knew it inside
and out. But watching Rock's on screen, watching the film
on screen for the first time was really through me
because I didn't anticipate that they would nail the experience.
(26:01):
The kind of disorientation of the arrest, the confusion and
claustrophobia of confinement, that loss of agency, the loss of control,
all of those things were really really deeply embedded in
the core of this film, and so to see that
and be drawn right back there was really really made
(26:24):
me feel a little bit punch drunk. After I walked
out of the cinema for the first time.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
What really struck me was just how incredibly powerless you were.
You know, like the Australian embassy would come and see
you and they would say to you, oh, look, there's
an official process to go through. Al Jazia would send
you a lawyer, but they would then be arrested for
trees and it felt like no one else could see
how utterly ridiculous, you know, what was happening to you was.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
Yeah, it certainly felt that way.
Speaker 6 (26:49):
I mean, you know, I think a lot of people
could see how ridiculous it was, which is one of
the reasons it'd got such enormous global outrage. But you know,
when you're in the middle of that maelstrom, you really
have to submit to the fact that you really are
out of control, and that you've to accept the reality
of the thing that you're confronting rather than the fantasy
(27:10):
of what you'd like it to be. It's a difficult
thing to be involved with.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
How has it impacted you, Peter, and how you went
on to continue to do your work?
Speaker 6 (27:22):
Well, it buggered my career. I'm still a convicted terrorist.
I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve and
that those are things that are pretty difficult to have
when you're to carry when you're trying to work as
a correspondent. In the end, I had to give that
career up, and as I said, I've built a career
out of being a media freedom activist. There's a lot
(27:46):
of people, I think and expect me to be psychologically damaged.
I've certainly been affected by that experience. It certainly changed
me in very profound ways. I don't think I suffer
from PTSD. I think I learned a lot about myself,
a lot more than I think I would have wanted.
But you know these things. But you know what they say,
what does and kill it makes you stronger, And it
(28:07):
didn't kill me, So yeah, I you know it was.
It was an experience I would never want to have
gone through again, but I wouldn't want my worst enemy
to go through.
Speaker 8 (28:18):
But it wasn't all bad.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I'd love to get your reactions to this, to get
both of your reactions to this. There is this scene
it near the end of the film when you're changing
out of your prison clothes and you put on a
black and white shirt and when you got changed, you
sort of stood there for a moment. You're looking at
yourself in the mirror. I think, and I remember looking
(28:40):
at you, going, that's not the Peter I met at
the beginning of this film. And I don't know whether Richard,
that was your intention in that scene to sort of
represent the impact that this whole experience had had on you,
or whether Peter, that was how you felt, But you know,
in that moment, you could just see what an impact,
you know, I felt like you were a different person
(29:02):
than the person I've been at the beginning of the film.
Speaker 8 (29:05):
Yeah, I let Rocks onto that.
Speaker 7 (29:08):
Yeah, look, we talked to I talked with the director
Creeve Standards briefly before we went into that scene, but
none of us had We didn't really know what we
were going to do, and so I guess I pulled
on the clothes and then whatever came out came out.
(29:31):
And I talked to Creeve afterwards about that moment, and
he said, we both agreed that we probably didn't need that,
that it could be a much simpler thing. And so,
in the way of filmmaking, you do kind of five
different versions of it, and so the version of it
that he chose was the one which, you know, pity
(29:52):
kind of goes to pieces. But again, you don't know
at the time if that's if that's going to work.
It just seemed to be I guess, to underpin the
fact that there were so many things happening in that moment,
(30:13):
First and foremost was the fact that Peter was leaving
behind his colleagues, to whose prison terms hadn't been commuted
at that point, So there were so many difficult things
that he was going to have to face. And yes,
as you rightly point out the fact that something has
changed and changed forever.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Richard d Roles leave a mark on you. And if yes,
what has stayed with you from this film?
Speaker 7 (30:44):
I've become so much, so much more aware of the
place of journalism and the concerned about what's happening to
the world of journalism.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
The fact.
Speaker 7 (31:03):
You know that everywhere you seem to turn these unless
journalists have seen to be towing the line, unless they
seem to be conforming to the whatever the kind of
appreciate you know, the particular political narrative is that they
are regarded as the enemy of the people. And I
(31:25):
think this is the world that we're increasingly living in,
and so I'm so much more my years, they are
so much more attuned to that now.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And Peter, maybe I can give you the last word
on this. You know, why is it important to keep
reminding people, you know that journalists going about their daily
job can face such challenges and dangers day to day.
Speaker 6 (31:51):
Because I mean, it's I guess it's democracy one on one.
Isn't it that you can't have the functioning democracy without
a free press. That's capable of holding the powerful to account.
And I know sometimes that sounds a little bit cliched,
but it is. You know, like all cliches, there's a
fat gob of truth in there. We need good journalists
(32:12):
to help inform public debate, to keep us to keep
a system working.
Speaker 8 (32:17):
As it should.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
It's one of the reasons why whenever you get a
military coup or you get an authoritarian in power, the
first place as they go is to the local news
organizations to try and shut them down or control them.
That's the erosion of press freedom that Rocks has been
talking about is something that is at critical stage right now.
(32:41):
More journalists have been in prison than ever before, more
have been killed on the job than ever before. And
so if this movie does nothing other than provoke a
few conversations about that make people think a little bit
more deeply about the role of good journalism, then I
think we'll have achieved something important.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday Session great
Chats with Francesca Rudgin on Hard Radio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It be.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Richard Rockxborogh and Peter Gresta.
Speaker 8 (33:12):
There.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
The film does a really, really good job of bringing
this horror situation to life and Richard is absolutely fairbous
as Peter Grestor. Thank goodness, otherwise that could have been
quite an awkward interview, couldn't it. Look it doesn't matter
who Richard's playing. I think he's just He's always quality,
isn't he? And finally, today, Rebecca Gidney joins me to
talk about stepping out of her comfort zone over the
last few years and being honest about life and coping
(33:33):
with all its ups and downs. We started off by
talking about her new show, Happiness, and she explained how
hard she campaigned to be part of it.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
We were filming under the vines in Queenstown and everyone
was auditioning for this show and I'm like, what is everyone?
Speaker 2 (33:48):
What is the show?
Speaker 9 (33:49):
And there was just this buzz and it was a
show called Happiness, and I went, well, I have to
be a part of that, anything that's called happiness, particularly
the way the world is at the moment, and I said,
you know, can I can? I have talked to them
and they went, oh, well, you know, can she sing?
Speaker 10 (34:01):
And I'm like, wait a second.
Speaker 9 (34:03):
And I had to go back through all my stuff
and I found this little tape that I did of
a song called Fever that I sang years ago.
Speaker 10 (34:13):
And I went, okay, I wonder if I can recreate that.
Speaker 9 (34:15):
So literally, in the living room of the place that
I was renting in Clyde, I put on a boombox
instrumental to Fever and I sang along to it into
my phone and I sent them that and said, see,
I can hold a chune. I'm not the world's best singer.
And then they came back and went, right, can she dance?
I'm not sending you a dancing.
Speaker 10 (34:36):
But I did.
Speaker 9 (34:37):
I think the character was so specific and not that
they asked for an audition, but I didn't hear for
a few days, and I went, you know what, I'm
just gonna I'm just going to do the audition and
send it in. And so I did and sent in
and I dressed up for it and everything, and I
just went umborn to play this character.
Speaker 10 (34:52):
There is no one that can play.
Speaker 9 (34:53):
This character the way I can, because I've actually been
working on a character similar to Gay Summers for a
very long time and I hadn't been able to get
her on anything. So when I read her, I went, Okay,
I'm bringing my own ca character to this and that's
Gay Summers.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
When was the last time you auditioned for something?
Speaker 8 (35:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 10 (35:12):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it depends on what it is.
I'm lucky that I do get off of things.
Speaker 9 (35:15):
But if if there's a film or something that's that
people may not see me in that role, I'm quite happy.
Speaker 10 (35:21):
To put down a self tape for her.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
So you're part of a musical group, a cabaret group,
musical group we should call it.
Speaker 9 (35:33):
Is the president ZZ amateur theater company in tolong She
and she talks like that.
Speaker 10 (35:41):
She talks very softly.
Speaker 9 (35:42):
Yes, but it's part of an ensemble and I love
that as well. So they keep giving Gay a role
on the show because she's the president. Because she's definitely
not the best singer, and she's not the best dancer,
and she's possibly not the best actor either, but jees,
you'll give it one hundred and fifty percent.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
So, as you just said, look, you hadn't done a
lot of singing publicly that we knew about or dancing.
So was the other reason you're attracted to this role
was because it was going to push you out of
your comfort zone.
Speaker 9 (36:07):
Oh totally absolutely pushed me out of my comfort zone,
and also just to be a part of an ensemble.
I hadn't actually been part of an ensemble for a
long time. I'm often and when I'm in a show,
I'm maybe the lead or so I've always got lots
to say and lots to do. And I went, how
great to be part of a group that has to
learn singing and has to learn dance numbers and we
all get to do it together. And it just felt
(36:28):
like an amateur theater production. And that's how we felt
when we were filming it. It really felt like we
became this little family.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It is very funny happiness, but it's just filled with joy.
It looks like it must have been such fun to film.
Speaker 10 (36:41):
It was a joy every day.
Speaker 9 (36:43):
Like Carrie who plays my son Charlie in the show,
he and I had actually met through other means. He
co wrote some of Under the Vines. He's a writer
as well as an actor. But from the minute we
all got together on set, from day one, it was
like this little family and we laughed NonStop.
Speaker 10 (37:00):
It was just joyous.
Speaker 9 (37:03):
I don't think New Zealand has ever produced anything like
this show.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Yeah, we need a bit of Dreid right now.
Speaker 10 (37:07):
Totally Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's like being wrapped up
in a warm hug.
Speaker 9 (37:11):
You finished the first episode and you think, I have
to watch the second one and the third one because
it just.
Speaker 10 (37:15):
Brings you joy.
Speaker 9 (37:16):
We had a screening the other night for the cast
and crew, and most of them hadn't seen it. And
to just be in a room with everyone watching it
and hearing the joy and the laughter and.
Speaker 10 (37:25):
People just being so excited, it was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Now it's famously written. There are some laugh out loud,
weitty lines in this How important are community theaters so important?
Speaker 9 (37:37):
And that's kind of the theme of the show as well.
As the series wears on, we get to an end
where actually the two main characters, Gay and her son,
have a fight and she has this piece of dialogue
where she says, people do this because it makes them happy.
We've all got other lives, we've all got jobs. They
come here because it brings them something else. It brings
them joy, and that's what this show's all about. It's
(37:59):
about stepping away from your real life for a minute
and sitting down and experiencing joy for twenty minutes, half
an hour.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
That's what the show is clearly kind of stiffing out
of your comfort zone and is something that you're very
interested in or pursuing it a little bit at the
moment because I know that later this year you're also
returning to the theater for the first time since two
thousand and six, almost twenty years. What's I don't.
Speaker 10 (38:28):
It was a long time ago, but it was a
long time agoin I has brought this.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
About turning sixty.
Speaker 9 (38:32):
I turned sixty in December of last year, and I
actually went, I just want to do things. I don't
want to slide into my final act without challenging myself.
I don't want it to just become Okay, well I'm
getting older now.
Speaker 10 (38:42):
I'm just going to.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Retire final act now.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
But they say from sixty onwards, you know you're lucky
if you have twenty five, thirty to forty years left,
and I just want to make the most of them.
And I think learning something new, learning a new skill,
doing things that will challenge you is going to keep
your brain going and it'll keep your body going. Another
reason why I said yes to Dancing with the Stars
when I've said no to that a thousand times, I
said yes to that. I just finished that halfway through that,
(39:07):
I think, why did I say yes to this? The
fifteen year old in me wanted to do it. The
sixty year old body got three weeks into it, and
when you are insane, that was.
Speaker 10 (39:16):
A stupid thing to do.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
But I loved it. I loved it, and you can't
tell us anything about okay, any about it. Restraining it
made me.
Speaker 9 (39:24):
I did actually think, like I said, my sixty year
old body after week two went wow, there were muscles
that I didn't know I had muscles that just hurt.
Speaker 10 (39:33):
Everything hurt, everything hurt for like eight weeks.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Everybody, everyone who goes on it says, you have no
idea what it's like. You have no idea how hard
it is, no idea.
Speaker 10 (39:43):
No four to five hours of training a day.
Speaker 9 (39:46):
The judging as well, when you get up and all
of a sudden you're being judged for something that you're
not necessarily good at. And also at my age, i'd
gotten to that thing, well, well, if I can't do something, well,
I don't want to do it and I don't have to.
But I forgot for some reason, I thought, oh, I'm
going to be able to master this. And week three,
week before I'm like oh I'm not. No, I don't
want to do this, but it was too late. I'd
already committed, so so send that self doubt, the imposter syndrome.
(40:10):
All those feelings came flooding back. I was in floods
of tears.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
A lot of the time.
Speaker 10 (40:14):
I was hurting.
Speaker 9 (40:15):
The great thing was, so were all the other contestants.
They were like newsreaders.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
You know.
Speaker 9 (40:19):
Michael Lasher, who's the news reader, is in his forties
or early fifties. He said he his hands hadn't shaken
for twenty seven years. He used to have to hold
a pen when he read the news because his hands
were shaking, he said, in twenty seven years. That didn't
happen until he got on the stage for the first
time I did the dance. All of a sudden, his
hands started to shake, and he said in all the
fears came flooding back from when he was an intern,
(40:40):
and everyone felt like that.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Did you get a little bit competitive?
Speaker 5 (40:43):
Though?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Did decide, while I am here now, I might as
well try. And when that did.
Speaker 9 (40:48):
Get competitive, except when I walked out in front of
a studio audience, I actually froze. My poor dance partner.
I deer in headlights and went, I can't do this.
I actually when I can't do this', it's still a
blur to me my first dance because I don't know
how I got through it, but he just grabbed my hand.
Speaker 10 (41:06):
And when you're doing.
Speaker 9 (41:07):
It, and of course you never do it as well
as you've done it in rehearsals, and so then you
beat yourself up thinking, oh I could can I just
do it exactly exactly? And that's the thing is an actor.
When you're making television, you can see I'm going to
do another take, another third tap that you don't get
another go at this. It was like when I did
Master Chef, you didn't get another go. If you burnt
the steak, you burnt the steak.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Honestly, last year I watched you in Under the Vines,
prosper a remarkable place to die, and now we have happiness,
and I'm wondering, do you ever stop?
Speaker 9 (41:40):
No, I've now got a crime drama and development in
Australia fantastic about an investigative journalist.
Speaker 10 (41:45):
So no, I don't. I'm my brain never stops.
Speaker 9 (41:49):
I don't sleep, so I'm always awake at like two
in the morning thinking about Well, recently it was dance Steps,
and now I'm thinking about the thing that I'm writing
and that I'm working on, and yeah, no, I'm constantly.
I've got a film that I'm writing about, weirdly enough,
a dance group for older women. So yeah, no, I'm
I don't want to stop, because I do think we've
got one life. I don't know how long I've gone.
(42:09):
I just want to make the most.
Speaker 10 (42:10):
Of every day.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
You were inducted into the Logi Hall of Fame last year.
What's an acknowledgment like that mean to you?
Speaker 9 (42:20):
Well, again, you know, the first thing that you think
of when that happens is imposter syndrome. You go, there's
must be way more people that are way more you know,
deserving of it than me. So overwhelming, very humbling, And
then on the night to have it actually presented by
my son was extraordinary, Like that's probably the highlight for me. Yes,
getting the award was phenomenal and having all these incredible
(42:42):
people saying amazing things, watching my body of work and thinking, yes,
I've been doing this a very long time. But then
when my son came out and said, you're a good
person and you're kind and all.
Speaker 10 (42:52):
Those things that went meant way more to me.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Oh, that would have been very hard to get up
the in and actually do the speech after hear it
what I imagined, because you are only the fourth woman
I know in forty years. What are they doing over there?
Speaker 9 (43:05):
I know, well, I you know, it's hard again because
you know, part of me goes, oh my god, that's insane.
But then I also went, well, it's just you know,
thank you, and let's hope that there's many more to come,
because again I thought I could rattle.
Speaker 10 (43:17):
Off names and names and names of females that deserve it.
But hopefully that's just a start. Next year's going to
be another woman.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
You've mentioned sort of imposter syndrome and things a few
times in this interview, and I'm intrigued it. As you said,
you've just turned sixty, that you still have this. What
do we need to do, apart from inducting you into
that you want to favor, to convince you that it's
been an incredible career and you deserve to be where
you're at and you belong. I do believe that. I don't.
Speaker 10 (43:46):
It's weird. The dancing thing brought up some issues about actually.
Speaker 9 (43:51):
Tapping into the younger me, because that's the other thing
that I keep wanting to go back to the fifteen
year old me that I was, so I judged so
harshly in the twenty three year old that had panic
attacks and the thirty two year old that had a
nervous breakdown and full of self loathing, and I do
often when I'm fully aware of it, I can go
back and remind myself that I've come a long way.
(44:12):
But what Dancing with the Stars did teach me? Or
is it still there? The young girl still gets hurt
and there is all those feelings, and so I think
it's just what you just got to talk about it.
You can try and cover it up. I don't want
to pretend that everything's amazing all the time. I'm certainly
a lot happy than I was ten years ago, way
more comfortable with where I'm at. I am very contented
in my life. But it doesn't mean that things don't
(44:34):
come up every so often. And when they come up,
I want to face them. I'm not going to bury
them back down, because that's how you get sick. If
you pretend that something doesn't exist and just push it down,
you'll get sick. So if something comes up that creates
a feeling in me, I'll either talk to a therapist
or I'll talk to my husband, or I'll talk about it,
get it out and try and figure out how am
I going to deal with this now.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
It is a tough industry you're in. Yeah, it's a
cruel industry at times. You have to be able to
deal with a lot of rejection, you know, criticism, judgment,
all sorts of things when you go about your day
to day job. You do have to have quite a
thick skin.
Speaker 10 (45:10):
I don't have a thick skin at all. Weirdly enough,
you know.
Speaker 9 (45:14):
The good thing is that I because I think I
was so tough on myself in my twenties and even
my thirties, you get into your forties and it stopped.
Speaker 10 (45:21):
You stop caring as much. And what I've tried to
say to my son.
Speaker 9 (45:23):
Zach, because he's obviously just starting out as an actor.
When you don't get a job, it's not a rejection
of you. It is because someone else, they saw something
in a certain person that they needed completely different vision
of it.
Speaker 10 (45:38):
Maybe they want to the right height, whatever blue eyes
or brabb exactly.
Speaker 9 (45:44):
So, Zach, I think he's got a very healthy self
esteem because of that, and he's a very secure young man,
like he knows what he wants and how to get it,
and he also knows that he's got parents that will
support him no matter what.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So so does he listen to his mother when you
give him advice on the industry and acting? Mostly?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
I do.
Speaker 9 (46:02):
Actually, sometimes I'll say something and I can just it
goes in one air and out the other one thing
or that didn't that didn't land at all. But then
three days later he'll be talking to someone else and
he might repeat it, and I'll go, oh, he.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
He probably won't attribute it to you, will I will?
I will have he will have heard it somewhere.
Speaker 10 (46:19):
Sometimes he attributes it to me.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Oh well, look, it's so exciting. It's really exciting to
see what is next for you. And I can't wait
for more episodes of happiness and really looking forward to
watching Zach and his career blossom as well.
Speaker 9 (46:32):
Oh no, I think I have no doubt that he's
going to do well. He's got so many auditions coming up.
That's a great thing. We can help each other. He
helps me with mine and I.
Speaker 10 (46:38):
Help him with his.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Got best guest from the Sunday session Great Jazz with
Francesca Rudgin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks. I'd be.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Rebecca. Give me there, gosh, she's a breath of free share.
She's just all warmth and sunshine.
Speaker 9 (46:53):
That woman.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
She's as delightful as you would expect. Her latest show,
Happiness is screening on three and three now. And if
you are wondering have Rebecca went in the Aussie version
of Dancing with the Stars, I can't tell you. It
doesn't air in OZ until the middle of the year. And
as hard as I tried and as charming as I was,
she's a lot smarter than match. She wouldn't tell me
a thing. Thanks for joining me on this news talk
(47:15):
z i'v podcast. Please feel free to share these chats,
and if you like this podcast, make sure you follow
us on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't
forget we release a new episode of Great Chats on
the last Thursday of every month.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
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 ATB. 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 ATB.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hello and welcome to Great Chats. I'm Francisco bud Can,
host of the Sunday Session on News Talks EDB, and
in this podcast, we picked some of our favorite feature
interviews from over the last month for you to enjoy.
Coming out for the Gorgeous Rebecca Giveney joins me to
talk about her latest show, Happiness and the importance of
stepping out of your comfort zone and Ozzie Legend. Actor
Richard Roxborough and journalist Peter Grest with me to talk
(00:51):
about the film The Correspondent, which tells the story of
Peter's arrest in Egypt in twenty thirteen for terrorism. Richard
plays Peter and I tell you its a hell of
a youn. But first up this month, we've got an
exclusive New Zealand interview with a Man Knox, who's released
a new book called Free. It tells her story of
being wrongly convicted of murdering her flatmate in Italy in
(01:13):
two thousand and seven, surviving four years in prison, and
what her life has been like since been cleared. We
started the conversation talking about how she coped with life
in prison by finding a way to be useful.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
In the same way that I think poets find limitations
and constraints to be really conducive to creativity. When you
don't have many options, you end up being able to
see clearly what you have to offer to your community.
And I saw very clearly that I was very different
than a lot of the women that I was imprisoned with.
I was educated, I was healthy, I had this familial support,
(01:50):
and so eventually I realized, Wow, instead of just being
in constant contest for scarce resources with my fellow prisoners,
I could be a resource myself, and I developed my
little prison hustle, which involved a lot of trans There
were a lot of foreigners in the prison, so I
was translating between English in Italian, but also random languages
(02:13):
that I was just using the dictionary for.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I also was a scribe.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I had really good handwriting, so people wanted me to
write their letters for them so that they would be
pretty for the person who received them, and I gave
quite a few back massages, not gonna lie.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So how important was that purpose.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
It was?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I think it was really important, especially for that sense
of community. Right Like, I was facing a twenty six
year sentence and I had to ask myself, how do
I make this.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Day worth living? And part of.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
It was continuing to, you know, have relationships with people
on the outside and have a good relationship and intellectual
and emotional relationship with myself. But ultimately I was immersed
in a very restrictive environment, and I think it was
really important for my sanity to develop a sense of
(03:06):
place and purpose, which made it all the more strange
to realize like this, it was much harder for me
to find place and purpose once I got out of prison.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, and we'll get to that. What impac does prison
have on you mentally and physically?
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Well, it's really not good.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I know I sort of am painting a slightly rosy picture, but.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
It was horrible. It was horrible.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I was very much I had no privacy I had.
It was there was very little health support, both physically
and mentally. If you were dealing with any kind of issue,
you got the very barest of treatment. The food was terrible,
just like it is a toll on your body and soul.
(04:01):
And I spent the entire time that I was in
prison very sad. That was sort of my emotional baseline,
and I really I only realized this afterwards. I became
numb to so many other emotions that would have rendered
me very vulnerable in prison, Like anger. Anger was an
emotion that I wasn't I didn't really have the luxury
(04:22):
of entertaining in a prison environment where I constantly had
to be on my toes, I constantly had to be
looking over my shoulder and take you know, taking care
of myself. So in a survival like you're in a
survival mode, I just the only emotion that I was
really able to experience was just a deep, constant sadness.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
You had a few sort of techniques that helped you survived,
and one of them was having conversations with your youngest self.
Tell me about that.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Well, it's nice to call it a technique.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
At the time, I thought I was just going absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It was my polite way of putting it.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Yeah, yeah, your way to say you're unwrapp and it's useful.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
I mean, that's the really key thing is like.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Your brain and your heart and your and your body
will find ways to adapt to really, really difficult environments.
And one of the ways that my mind adapted to
this sense of loneliness and also to this sense of like,
I don't know how to deal with this.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I don't like I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Was I imagined a younger version of myself who had
not yet gone through this experience, and I sort of.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Baby like baby sat her through it.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Was I was explaining to her what was going to
happen to her and how she was going to survive
and what was really hard about that. That's a chapter
in the book that could to this day makes me cry.
Is like the fact that I was telling myself I
was going to be okay, even though I didn't actually
know for sure.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I wish that, you know, thirty.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Seven year old me today could have been the one
talking to twenty two year old Amanda, but unfortunately that
person didn't exist yet. And it's really the person I
am today is in large part due to twenty two year.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Old Amanda and her conversations with her younger self.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Absolutely your mother was always optimistic. She always felt that
there was light at the end of the tunnel, but
you didn't see it that way, especially after being convicted.
Was it Why was it important to you to just
accept that this was your life?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Well, I feel like that's really the key to life ultimately,
because that being able to just see reality for what
it is and not sort of torture yourself with wishing
reality was otherwise was a really important way for me
to encounter the prison environment. Like I couldn't open that door, right,
(06:53):
I had a barred door and I could not open it.
And I was only going to make myself suffer even
more if I fixated on the fact that I couldn't.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Open the door.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
So instead I embraced what I could control, which was
very little but ultimately important to me, and stuff that
I could have value in. And it really looked like
expanding that metaphor of this is a locked closed door
to everything.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
About my life, like this is my life? This is it?
How do I make this life worth living?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And you know, I definitely buttoned heads with my mom
about this because she was in a very different emotional
and mental space than me. She was in save my
daughter like save Amanda, and she couldn't accept that this
was my life and that this was my fate. And
she didn't want me to be trying to imagine my
(07:44):
best life in prison. She wanted me to be with
her in the getting Amanda out of prison idea. And
I think I understand that now as a mom, because
I really do feel that what my mom was going
through was even worse than what I was going through.
She would have traded places with me in an instant
(08:05):
if she could, but she couldn't.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Think that it's led to a really interesting divide in
our philosophical paths. And I do think that like my
sort of ability to just like sit with reality as
it is and be okay whatever is happening externally is
ultimately the right path for an individual.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
But try telling that to a mom. Just try telling
it to a mom. It's not going to work.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Amanda returning home was just so overwhelming. Can you remember
those first few days and weeks?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Oh God, the first few days and weeks were insane.
I barely ate for the first week and I barely
slept just because I was constantly overstimulated. Like I had
spent four years where I did not have access to
the people I loved except for an hour at a time,
(09:06):
like hour of time, you know, once a week. I
only had one ten minute phone call, and I only
had access to the very limited amount of things that
were in my room. And suddenly I was just inundated
with choices and people and I got completely overwhelmed. Not
to mention, I was being chased by paparazzi and helicopters,
(09:29):
and I couldn't leave my own house without being stalked.
It was very very It was very, very disappointing because
I felt like I had been waiting four years to
get my life back, and then I realized very quickly
that the life that I had been sort of fantasy
(09:50):
or fantasizing about returning to no longer existed.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
And I was.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Plunged into what felt like a new kind of prison
where but one where I didn't really have a place
in the world, that I didn't really have a purpose
because I was constantly being I was still on trial
for one thing, but other than that, I was sort
of experiencing, like survivors guilt by proxy, where people were
sort of they had in their minds my identity had
(10:19):
become inexpecably linked with my friend's death, and so any
like anything about me was just a reminder of my
friend's death, and everything that I did was an offense
to her memory, and it felt like the only thing.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
That I could do was to just disappear off the
face of the earth. I think that it was just.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Because as the years go by, you kind of realize
that no matter what you do, people will continue to
invade your privacy, and it's impossible to fight the slender
against you. I mean, that is very defeating, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
It is?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And there was a there was a period there where
I was very lost, I was very desperate. I was
making mistakes because I was trying to cling to some
sense of normalcy and to cling to people who I
felt like I could trust. And I ultimately trusted some
people that I absolutely should not have trusted, and I
went through experiences that put me in real danger. And
(11:18):
I think I think that is how my story really
actually is very universal, because people who go through traumatic experiences,
they suffer from PTSD afterwards, and they're trying to make
sense of this horrible thing that happened to them, and
they end up like It's very very common for people
who are survivors of rape or natural you know, natural tragedies,
(11:43):
like you know, they they are discombobulated, and their sense
of like what they can even you know, rest their
faith on and put their trust in is completely thrown
up into the air, and so they end up making mistakes.
And I was one example of that.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
How did you feel about people caching in on your story?
You know, you've sold magazines and newspapers and books for people,
films and TVs.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
I think my biggest regret, So.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
What I will say is I do think that what
happened to me and what happened to my roommate Meredith
is in the public interest in a way. It is
a story that belongs to everyone. What I regret about
how the story has been consumed and packaged by the
broader public is that very very quickly, the truth about
(12:36):
what happened to my friend was utterly lost. The truth
about the person who actually raped and murdered her was disappeared,
and to the point that, like to this day people
ask me, well, who really.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Killed your roommate?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Then, like it's just utterly absurd that after over ten
years of coverage, there are some people out there who
have no idea that the actual murderer was found. But then,
of course the story that sort of took over there
like that that replaced the truth of what happened to
my friend, was a story that was based on a horrible,
(13:15):
misogynistic myth that like women ultimately hate all other women,
they're constantly in sexual competition with each other, they're constantly
judging each other like that was the story that was
packaged by the prosecution and the media and sold for.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Years and made international headlines.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Foxy Oxy murders her you know beautiful roommate in a
death orgy, and that beautiful roommate happens to be, you know,
an uptight, judgmental British girl. It's like, it was just
so absurd how we were just turned into these these
like wildly unrealistic ideas about about young women.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
At opposite sides.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Of the binary and instead of realizing that we were
just very similar girls who were studying abroad and discovering
ourselves and trying to find our away in the world
and had the whole.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
World ahead of us.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I think that that's one of my biggest you know,
sadness is about the case is that the truth about
what happened to Meredith was lost and instead people latched
onto this, this horribly misogynistic narrative that was untrue to
the both of us.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Amanda. It's meant that throughout your life you've been unable
to celebrate the milestones that many of us love to celebrate,
things like, you know, your wedding, the tabloids crashed your wedding.
When you got pregnant, you kept it hidden because of course,
the minute people saw you living your life, they immediately
would make a reference to the fact that you know,
(14:49):
Meredith is not living her life. So do you feel
now that you are free and that you are seen
as more than just the girl accused of murder?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Well, those are two different questions, because because you know,
I am still seen as the girl accused of murder,
because I am I was the girl accused of murder.
I of two young women who went to go study
abroad in Perusia, Italy.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Fate flipped a coin.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
One of them did not get to go home, and
one of them did not get to go home the
same and I am forever branded with being associated with
my friend's debt. But I feel free in the sense
that I do not feel utterly and only defined by
this worst experience of my life. I've really learned to
(15:42):
step outside of that box that people have tried to
trap me in, and I've learned to stand on top
of it and use it as a platform to tell
my own story and share my own message and the
insights that I've gained along the way.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
In the same way that like.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Someone who has you know, has survived cancer, who will
go on to probably talk about, like you know, do
lots of cancer research and advocacy and support. I feel
like I'm trying to make good and pay forward the
things that I have learned from surviving my ideal.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
The biggest names from the Sunday session great chats with
Francesca Rudkins on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks I'd be that.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Was Amanda Knox. I tell you I could have spoken
to her for an hour if they'd let me. There
was so much to touch on from the book about
how she has overcome what happened to her and forgive
those who were determined to see her convicted. As you
can tell, very articulate, intelligent woman trying to claim her
life and purpose back She does a lot of work
for the Innocent Network conference, which we didn't get around
(16:50):
to talking about, but if you want to learn more,
the book is called Free My Search for Meaning and
is out now. Up next, Ossie, Foreign correspondent Peter Gresta
and the man who plays them in the movie, The Correspondent,
Richard Roxborough, talk us through what happened in December twenty
thirteen when Grista, working as a journalist, was arrested in
Egypt in charge with aiding a terrorist organization. Peter starts
(17:13):
by setting the scene for us.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
We were covering the unfolding political crisis between rival groups
supporters of the Old Muslim Brotherhood, the government that had
been ousted about six months earlier, and the supporters of
the interim administration that was trying to set up fresh elections.
And yeah, I was doing what I'd considered to be
pretty vanilla journalism, nothing overly controversial, because as you said,
(17:37):
I was only filling in and I didn't really know
the politics of the country that well, so it was
just fairly routine stuff. And there was a knock on
the door December twenty eighth of twenty thirteen, and opened
the door and rushed a whole bunch of very burly
Egyptian security guards or security officers, playing clothed, but it
(18:00):
was pretty clear that they were moving with the kind
of professionalism that officials you'd expect officials to have, and
they marched me off, placed me under arrest, and very
quickly learned that I was facing some very very serious
terrorism charges.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Richard, what did you know of Peter's story? Can you
remember this?
Speaker 7 (18:17):
Yeah, look, I followed it really closely. Australia kind of
stood to attention when this happened. I don't think Peter
himself realized how front and center the story was in
Australia at the time. It just seemed so bizarre to
everybody that, you know, a known, respected foreign correspondent whose
(18:37):
face we'd seen in reports across time, had suddenly been
dragged off the streets for doing his job essentially and
was then charged and was then in prison for seven
years on terrorism charges. It seemed so it seemed so
outrageous and bizarre, and it was certainly a big part
(19:00):
of the Australian conversation at the time.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, I imagine it was, Peter. It is such an
incredible story. I mean, you were accused of financing and
aiding a terrorist organization. It was mind boggling and also
extremely serious. So how do you win those early days
and weeks and months, get your hit around finding yourself
in a situation like this.
Speaker 8 (19:26):
Initially I couldn't. I mean, you know, I'd never done
anything like this before. I hadn't been through it. I
didn't really quite understand what was going on.
Speaker 6 (19:35):
And there's a guy that appears makes a cameo in
the movie, a guy called it la abdul Fata, who
had been an extraordinary, wonderful, intelligent humanitarian and pro democracy activist,
and regrettably he had been imprisoned by most of the
regimes in Egypt at the time because he was a
(19:57):
wonderfully charismatic figure who had the capacity to really mobilize people.
But he also schooled me in the darker huts I
suppose of surviving prison made it. He helped me understand
that prison first and foremost, even though we initially focus
on the physical confinement, on the bars and the walls
and the doors and so on, it's actually a psychological problem.
(20:17):
And once I understood that, once he gave me the
tools to cope, I found it so much easier to
manage because was it.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Him that told you that there is no place for
self pity in present?
Speaker 6 (20:30):
Yeah, and he's still in prison, by the way, I've
just come back from a hunger strike earlier this year
to support his mother, who's also striking to try and
get him released.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
So, Richard, how do you get your head around a
character like this? I suppose? Also my first question to
you is what was it about the story Peter's story
that drew you to really wanted to play him?
Speaker 7 (20:54):
Well, I guess, as I was saying, it was such
a kind of it was such a shock to Australia
at the time that this had actually happened. So it
was an important story in that context, but given what's
happened to journalists and journalism since that time, it felt
(21:15):
like it was a you know, it was an even
more urgent story to tell the simple fact that the
journalists used to be protected by the Geneva Convention and
they're now regarded as.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Fair game.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
In theaters of war. But also that you know in
the White House now that the Press Corps is chosen
by the government for the first time, there are all
of these things that are happening to journalism that are
really potent and quite scary encroachments on what used to
be a pretty straightforward thing that people accepted. So I
(21:58):
guess I felt that it was a really urgent and
important story to get involved with, and.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Quite a response ability in a sense. I mean, was
it a daunting role to take on?
Speaker 8 (22:09):
Totally?
Speaker 7 (22:12):
Totally, because you know, I had such respect for Peter
in his work, and it's not something you take on
lightly playing something some playing a character who's a real
human being. Luckily, in this instance, Peter has been such
a supporter of the project from the get go, So
from the very first read through, he was there, and
(22:35):
I was able to obviously, apart from do the sneaky
actors work of kind of you know, checking out his
every move and the way that he was and the secret,
sly things that actors take away and put in their pocket,
it was also just knowing that I could talk to
him freely and that he would help me out if
(22:56):
need be, and I could pester him with irritating little
questions along the way, because Richard.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I know that you know, when playing a real life character,
some actors like to meet the person they're portraying others,
don't they do their research in other ways. So clearly
it was very helpful in this particular situation to have
Peter around. Is that the way you would normally work.
Speaker 8 (23:21):
Well, it really depends on this situation.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
I mean, I've played real life characters, some of them
very much in the public eye in the past. In
this particular case, though, in conversations with the directory, it
became really clear that we didn't want to do a
kind of impersonation of Peter, that that was not where
the relevancy of this story lay. That it was much
(23:44):
more going to be about trying to occupy the internal
space of what that person went through in that environment.
So that once the kind of impediment of having to
look like be like act like Peter was taken away,
it felt like it was safer, It was safer terrain
(24:06):
for all of this because the film also is oddly
it's it's a POV.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Film, so it's all you, yeah.
Speaker 7 (24:16):
So apologies to everybody, but it's it's one hundred percent
I mean every single frame, which I which was also
unexplored territory for me.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I think I was three quarters of the way through
and I thought I don't think I've seen a scene
without Richard and it yet. No, no, no, no, you don't
need to apologize. You don't need to apologize. But I
did think to myself, of course, this was an exhausting shoot.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Yeah, it's one of the things that I actually took.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
It was hugely gratified by that approach, too, I have
to say, because it meant that I was also absolved
in having to worry about whether he'd got my walk
right or some verbal tick of mine right. That you
know he was he was embodying the experience rather than
me as an individual, and that was that was naded
a lot easier, I think, to watch and also to
(25:03):
work with him.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Did you notice, though, Richard watching you sort of slyly
out of the corner of his eye when your first
Do you think he is keeping a close eye on me?
Tell me, Peter, what did you What was it like
to sit and watch your story on the big screen?
Speaker 8 (25:19):
Strangely discombobulating.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
Like I've spoken about this a lot, I've actually built
a career on being on what I went through in Egypt.
I've written about it, I've given countless speeches and interviews
about it.
Speaker 8 (25:33):
So a lot of that is kind of downstream processing.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
It's actually sort of ongoing therapy, if you like, by
applying meaning and significance to what to the experience we
went through. And so I thought I knew it inside
and out. But watching Rock's on screen, watching the film
on screen for the first time was really through me
because I didn't anticipate that they would nail the experience.
(26:01):
The kind of disorientation of the arrest, the confusion and
claustrophobia of confinement, that loss of agency, the loss of control,
all of those things were really really deeply embedded in
the core of this film, and so to see that
and be drawn right back there was really really made
(26:24):
me feel a little bit punch drunk. After I walked
out of the cinema for the first time.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
What really struck me was just how incredibly powerless you were.
You know, like the Australian embassy would come and see
you and they would say to you, oh, look, there's
an official process to go through. Al Jazia would send
you a lawyer, but they would then be arrested for
trees and it felt like no one else could see
how utterly ridiculous, you know, what was happening to you was.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
Yeah, it certainly felt that way.
Speaker 6 (26:49):
I mean, you know, I think a lot of people
could see how ridiculous it was, which is one of
the reasons it'd got such enormous global outrage. But you know,
when you're in the middle of that maelstrom, you really
have to submit to the fact that you really are
out of control, and that you've to accept the reality
of the thing that you're confronting rather than the fantasy
(27:10):
of what you'd like it to be. It's a difficult
thing to be involved with.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
How has it impacted you, Peter, and how you went
on to continue to do your work?
Speaker 6 (27:22):
Well, it buggered my career. I'm still a convicted terrorist.
I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve and
that those are things that are pretty difficult to have
when you're to carry when you're trying to work as
a correspondent. In the end, I had to give that
career up, and as I said, I've built a career
out of being a media freedom activist. There's a lot
(27:46):
of people, I think and expect me to be psychologically damaged.
I've certainly been affected by that experience. It certainly changed
me in very profound ways. I don't think I suffer
from PTSD. I think I learned a lot about myself,
a lot more than I think I would have wanted.
But you know these things. But you know what they say,
what does and kill it makes you stronger, And it
(28:07):
didn't kill me, So yeah, I you know it was.
It was an experience I would never want to have
gone through again, but I wouldn't want my worst enemy
to go through.
Speaker 8 (28:18):
But it wasn't all bad.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I'd love to get your reactions to this, to get
both of your reactions to this. There is this scene
it near the end of the film when you're changing
out of your prison clothes and you put on a
black and white shirt and when you got changed, you
sort of stood there for a moment. You're looking at
yourself in the mirror. I think, and I remember looking
(28:40):
at you, going, that's not the Peter I met at
the beginning of this film. And I don't know whether Richard,
that was your intention in that scene to sort of
represent the impact that this whole experience had had on you,
or whether Peter, that was how you felt, But you know,
in that moment, you could just see what an impact,
you know, I felt like you were a different person
(29:02):
than the person I've been at the beginning of the film.
Speaker 8 (29:05):
Yeah, I let Rocks onto that.
Speaker 7 (29:08):
Yeah, look, we talked to I talked with the director
Creeve Standards briefly before we went into that scene, but
none of us had We didn't really know what we
were going to do, and so I guess I pulled
on the clothes and then whatever came out came out.
(29:31):
And I talked to Creeve afterwards about that moment, and
he said, we both agreed that we probably didn't need that,
that it could be a much simpler thing. And so,
in the way of filmmaking, you do kind of five
different versions of it, and so the version of it
that he chose was the one which, you know, pity
(29:52):
kind of goes to pieces. But again, you don't know
at the time if that's if that's going to work.
It just seemed to be I guess, to underpin the
fact that there were so many things happening in that moment,
(30:13):
First and foremost was the fact that Peter was leaving
behind his colleagues, to whose prison terms hadn't been commuted
at that point, So there were so many difficult things
that he was going to have to face. And yes,
as you rightly point out the fact that something has
changed and changed forever.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Richard d Roles leave a mark on you. And if yes,
what has stayed with you from this film?
Speaker 7 (30:44):
I've become so much, so much more aware of the
place of journalism and the concerned about what's happening to
the world of journalism.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
The fact.
Speaker 7 (31:03):
You know that everywhere you seem to turn these unless
journalists have seen to be towing the line, unless they
seem to be conforming to the whatever the kind of
appreciate you know, the particular political narrative is that they
are regarded as the enemy of the people. And I
(31:25):
think this is the world that we're increasingly living in,
and so I'm so much more my years, they are
so much more attuned to that now.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And Peter, maybe I can give you the last word
on this. You know, why is it important to keep
reminding people, you know that journalists going about their daily
job can face such challenges and dangers day to day.
Speaker 6 (31:51):
Because I mean, it's I guess it's democracy one on one.
Isn't it that you can't have the functioning democracy without
a free press. That's capable of holding the powerful to account.
And I know sometimes that sounds a little bit cliched,
but it is. You know, like all cliches, there's a
fat gob of truth in there. We need good journalists
(32:12):
to help inform public debate, to keep us to keep
a system working.
Speaker 8 (32:17):
As it should.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
It's one of the reasons why whenever you get a
military coup or you get an authoritarian in power, the
first place as they go is to the local news
organizations to try and shut them down or control them.
That's the erosion of press freedom that Rocks has been
talking about is something that is at critical stage right now.
(32:41):
More journalists have been in prison than ever before, more
have been killed on the job than ever before. And
so if this movie does nothing other than provoke a
few conversations about that make people think a little bit
more deeply about the role of good journalism, then I
think we'll have achieved something important.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday Session great
Chats with Francesca Rudgin on Hard Radio powered by News Talks.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It be.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Richard Rockxborogh and Peter Gresta.
Speaker 8 (33:12):
There.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
The film does a really, really good job of bringing
this horror situation to life and Richard is absolutely fairbous
as Peter Grestor. Thank goodness, otherwise that could have been
quite an awkward interview, couldn't it. Look it doesn't matter
who Richard's playing. I think he's just He's always quality,
isn't he? And finally, today, Rebecca Gidney joins me to
talk about stepping out of her comfort zone over the
last few years and being honest about life and coping
(33:33):
with all its ups and downs. We started off by
talking about her new show, Happiness, and she explained how
hard she campaigned to be part of it.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
We were filming under the vines in Queenstown and everyone
was auditioning for this show and I'm like, what is everyone?
Speaker 2 (33:48):
What is the show?
Speaker 9 (33:49):
And there was just this buzz and it was a
show called Happiness, and I went, well, I have to
be a part of that, anything that's called happiness, particularly
the way the world is at the moment, and I said,
you know, can I can? I have talked to them
and they went, oh, well, you know, can she sing?
Speaker 10 (34:01):
And I'm like, wait a second.
Speaker 9 (34:03):
And I had to go back through all my stuff
and I found this little tape that I did of
a song called Fever that I sang years ago.
Speaker 10 (34:13):
And I went, okay, I wonder if I can recreate that.
Speaker 9 (34:15):
So literally, in the living room of the place that
I was renting in Clyde, I put on a boombox
instrumental to Fever and I sang along to it into
my phone and I sent them that and said, see,
I can hold a chune. I'm not the world's best singer.
And then they came back and went, right, can she dance?
I'm not sending you a dancing.
Speaker 10 (34:36):
But I did.
Speaker 9 (34:37):
I think the character was so specific and not that
they asked for an audition, but I didn't hear for
a few days, and I went, you know what, I'm
just gonna I'm just going to do the audition and
send it in. And so I did and sent in
and I dressed up for it and everything, and I
just went umborn to play this character.
Speaker 10 (34:52):
There is no one that can play.
Speaker 9 (34:53):
This character the way I can, because I've actually been
working on a character similar to Gay Summers for a
very long time and I hadn't been able to get
her on anything. So when I read her, I went, Okay,
I'm bringing my own ca character to this and that's
Gay Summers.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
When was the last time you auditioned for something?
Speaker 8 (35:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 10 (35:12):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it depends on what it is.
I'm lucky that I do get off of things.
Speaker 9 (35:15):
But if if there's a film or something that's that
people may not see me in that role, I'm quite happy.
Speaker 10 (35:21):
To put down a self tape for her.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
So you're part of a musical group, a cabaret group,
musical group we should call it.
Speaker 9 (35:33):
Is the president ZZ amateur theater company in tolong She
and she talks like that.
Speaker 10 (35:41):
She talks very softly.
Speaker 9 (35:42):
Yes, but it's part of an ensemble and I love
that as well. So they keep giving Gay a role
on the show because she's the president. Because she's definitely
not the best singer, and she's not the best dancer,
and she's possibly not the best actor either, but jees,
you'll give it one hundred and fifty percent.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
So, as you just said, look, you hadn't done a
lot of singing publicly that we knew about or dancing.
So was the other reason you're attracted to this role
was because it was going to push you out of
your comfort zone.
Speaker 9 (36:07):
Oh totally absolutely pushed me out of my comfort zone,
and also just to be a part of an ensemble.
I hadn't actually been part of an ensemble for a
long time. I'm often and when I'm in a show,
I'm maybe the lead or so I've always got lots
to say and lots to do. And I went, how
great to be part of a group that has to
learn singing and has to learn dance numbers and we
all get to do it together. And it just felt
(36:28):
like an amateur theater production. And that's how we felt
when we were filming it. It really felt like we
became this little family.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It is very funny happiness, but it's just filled with joy.
It looks like it must have been such fun to film.
Speaker 10 (36:41):
It was a joy every day.
Speaker 9 (36:43):
Like Carrie who plays my son Charlie in the show,
he and I had actually met through other means. He
co wrote some of Under the Vines. He's a writer
as well as an actor. But from the minute we
all got together on set, from day one, it was
like this little family and we laughed NonStop.
Speaker 10 (37:00):
It was just joyous.
Speaker 9 (37:03):
I don't think New Zealand has ever produced anything like
this show.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Yeah, we need a bit of Dreid right now.
Speaker 10 (37:07):
Totally Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's like being wrapped up
in a warm hug.
Speaker 9 (37:11):
You finished the first episode and you think, I have
to watch the second one and the third one because
it just.
Speaker 10 (37:15):
Brings you joy.
Speaker 9 (37:16):
We had a screening the other night for the cast
and crew, and most of them hadn't seen it. And
to just be in a room with everyone watching it
and hearing the joy and the laughter and.
Speaker 10 (37:25):
People just being so excited, it was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Now it's famously written. There are some laugh out loud,
weitty lines in this How important are community theaters so important?
Speaker 9 (37:37):
And that's kind of the theme of the show as well.
As the series wears on, we get to an end
where actually the two main characters, Gay and her son,
have a fight and she has this piece of dialogue
where she says, people do this because it makes them happy.
We've all got other lives, we've all got jobs. They
come here because it brings them something else. It brings
them joy, and that's what this show's all about. It's
(37:59):
about stepping away from your real life for a minute
and sitting down and experiencing joy for twenty minutes, half
an hour.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
That's what the show is clearly kind of stiffing out
of your comfort zone and is something that you're very
interested in or pursuing it a little bit at the
moment because I know that later this year you're also
returning to the theater for the first time since two
thousand and six, almost twenty years. What's I don't.
Speaker 10 (38:28):
It was a long time ago, but it was a
long time agoin I has brought this.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
About turning sixty.
Speaker 9 (38:32):
I turned sixty in December of last year, and I
actually went, I just want to do things. I don't
want to slide into my final act without challenging myself.
I don't want it to just become Okay, well I'm
getting older now.
Speaker 10 (38:42):
I'm just going to.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Retire final act now.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
But they say from sixty onwards, you know you're lucky
if you have twenty five, thirty to forty years left,
and I just want to make the most of them.
And I think learning something new, learning a new skill,
doing things that will challenge you is going to keep
your brain going and it'll keep your body going. Another
reason why I said yes to Dancing with the Stars
when I've said no to that a thousand times, I
said yes to that. I just finished that halfway through that,
(39:07):
I think, why did I say yes to this? The
fifteen year old in me wanted to do it. The
sixty year old body got three weeks into it, and
when you are insane, that was.
Speaker 10 (39:16):
A stupid thing to do.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
But I loved it. I loved it, and you can't
tell us anything about okay, any about it. Restraining it
made me.
Speaker 9 (39:24):
I did actually think, like I said, my sixty year
old body after week two went wow, there were muscles
that I didn't know I had muscles that just hurt.
Speaker 10 (39:33):
Everything hurt, everything hurt for like eight weeks.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Everybody, everyone who goes on it says, you have no
idea what it's like. You have no idea how hard
it is, no idea.
Speaker 10 (39:43):
No four to five hours of training a day.
Speaker 9 (39:46):
The judging as well, when you get up and all
of a sudden you're being judged for something that you're
not necessarily good at. And also at my age, i'd
gotten to that thing, well, well, if I can't do something, well,
I don't want to do it and I don't have to.
But I forgot for some reason, I thought, oh, I'm
going to be able to master this. And week three,
week before I'm like oh I'm not. No, I don't
want to do this, but it was too late. I'd
already committed, so so send that self doubt, the imposter syndrome.
(40:10):
All those feelings came flooding back. I was in floods
of tears.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
A lot of the time.
Speaker 10 (40:14):
I was hurting.
Speaker 9 (40:15):
The great thing was, so were all the other contestants.
They were like newsreaders.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
You know.
Speaker 9 (40:19):
Michael Lasher, who's the news reader, is in his forties
or early fifties. He said he his hands hadn't shaken
for twenty seven years. He used to have to hold
a pen when he read the news because his hands
were shaking, he said, in twenty seven years. That didn't
happen until he got on the stage for the first
time I did the dance. All of a sudden, his
hands started to shake, and he said in all the
fears came flooding back from when he was an intern,
(40:40):
and everyone felt like that.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Did you get a little bit competitive?
Speaker 5 (40:43):
Though?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Did decide, while I am here now, I might as
well try. And when that did.
Speaker 9 (40:48):
Get competitive, except when I walked out in front of
a studio audience, I actually froze. My poor dance partner.
I deer in headlights and went, I can't do this.
I actually when I can't do this', it's still a
blur to me my first dance because I don't know
how I got through it, but he just grabbed my hand.
Speaker 10 (41:06):
And when you're doing.
Speaker 9 (41:07):
It, and of course you never do it as well
as you've done it in rehearsals, and so then you
beat yourself up thinking, oh I could can I just
do it exactly exactly? And that's the thing is an actor.
When you're making television, you can see I'm going to
do another take, another third tap that you don't get
another go at this. It was like when I did
Master Chef, you didn't get another go. If you burnt
the steak, you burnt the steak.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Honestly, last year I watched you in Under the Vines,
prosper a remarkable place to die, and now we have happiness,
and I'm wondering, do you ever stop?
Speaker 9 (41:40):
No, I've now got a crime drama and development in
Australia fantastic about an investigative journalist.
Speaker 10 (41:45):
So no, I don't. I'm my brain never stops.
Speaker 9 (41:49):
I don't sleep, so I'm always awake at like two
in the morning thinking about Well, recently it was dance Steps,
and now I'm thinking about the thing that I'm writing
and that I'm working on, and yeah, no, I'm constantly.
I've got a film that I'm writing about, weirdly enough,
a dance group for older women. So yeah, no, I'm
I don't want to stop, because I do think we've
got one life. I don't know how long I've gone.
(42:09):
I just want to make the most.
Speaker 10 (42:10):
Of every day.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
You were inducted into the Logi Hall of Fame last year.
What's an acknowledgment like that mean to you?
Speaker 9 (42:20):
Well, again, you know, the first thing that you think
of when that happens is imposter syndrome. You go, there's
must be way more people that are way more you know,
deserving of it than me. So overwhelming, very humbling, And
then on the night to have it actually presented by
my son was extraordinary, Like that's probably the highlight for me. Yes,
getting the award was phenomenal and having all these incredible
(42:42):
people saying amazing things, watching my body of work and thinking, yes,
I've been doing this a very long time. But then
when my son came out and said, you're a good
person and you're kind and all.
Speaker 10 (42:52):
Those things that went meant way more to me.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Oh, that would have been very hard to get up
the in and actually do the speech after hear it
what I imagined, because you are only the fourth woman
I know in forty years. What are they doing over there?
Speaker 9 (43:05):
I know, well, I you know, it's hard again because
you know, part of me goes, oh my god, that's insane.
But then I also went, well, it's just you know,
thank you, and let's hope that there's many more to come,
because again I thought I could rattle.
Speaker 10 (43:17):
Off names and names and names of females that deserve it.
But hopefully that's just a start. Next year's going to
be another woman.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
You've mentioned sort of imposter syndrome and things a few
times in this interview, and I'm intrigued it. As you said,
you've just turned sixty, that you still have this. What
do we need to do, apart from inducting you into
that you want to favor, to convince you that it's
been an incredible career and you deserve to be where
you're at and you belong. I do believe that. I don't.
Speaker 10 (43:46):
It's weird. The dancing thing brought up some issues about actually.
Speaker 9 (43:51):
Tapping into the younger me, because that's the other thing
that I keep wanting to go back to the fifteen
year old me that I was, so I judged so
harshly in the twenty three year old that had panic
attacks and the thirty two year old that had a
nervous breakdown and full of self loathing, and I do
often when I'm fully aware of it, I can go
back and remind myself that I've come a long way.
(44:12):
But what Dancing with the Stars did teach me? Or
is it still there? The young girl still gets hurt
and there is all those feelings, and so I think
it's just what you just got to talk about it.
You can try and cover it up. I don't want
to pretend that everything's amazing all the time. I'm certainly
a lot happy than I was ten years ago, way
more comfortable with where I'm at. I am very contented
in my life. But it doesn't mean that things don't
(44:34):
come up every so often. And when they come up,
I want to face them. I'm not going to bury
them back down, because that's how you get sick. If
you pretend that something doesn't exist and just push it down,
you'll get sick. So if something comes up that creates
a feeling in me, I'll either talk to a therapist
or I'll talk to my husband, or I'll talk about it,
get it out and try and figure out how am
I going to deal with this now.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
It is a tough industry you're in. Yeah, it's a
cruel industry at times. You have to be able to
deal with a lot of rejection, you know, criticism, judgment,
all sorts of things when you go about your day
to day job. You do have to have quite a
thick skin.
Speaker 10 (45:10):
I don't have a thick skin at all. Weirdly enough,
you know.
Speaker 9 (45:14):
The good thing is that I because I think I
was so tough on myself in my twenties and even
my thirties, you get into your forties and it stopped.
Speaker 10 (45:21):
You stop caring as much. And what I've tried to
say to my son.
Speaker 9 (45:23):
Zach, because he's obviously just starting out as an actor.
When you don't get a job, it's not a rejection
of you. It is because someone else, they saw something
in a certain person that they needed completely different vision
of it.
Speaker 10 (45:38):
Maybe they want to the right height, whatever blue eyes
or brabb exactly.
Speaker 9 (45:44):
So, Zach, I think he's got a very healthy self
esteem because of that, and he's a very secure young man,
like he knows what he wants and how to get it,
and he also knows that he's got parents that will
support him no matter what.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So so does he listen to his mother when you
give him advice on the industry and acting? Mostly?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
I do.
Speaker 9 (46:02):
Actually, sometimes I'll say something and I can just it
goes in one air and out the other one thing
or that didn't that didn't land at all. But then
three days later he'll be talking to someone else and
he might repeat it, and I'll go, oh, he.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
He probably won't attribute it to you, will I will?
I will have he will have heard it somewhere.
Speaker 10 (46:19):
Sometimes he attributes it to me.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Oh well, look, it's so exciting. It's really exciting to
see what is next for you. And I can't wait
for more episodes of happiness and really looking forward to
watching Zach and his career blossom as well.
Speaker 9 (46:32):
Oh no, I think I have no doubt that he's
going to do well. He's got so many auditions coming up.
That's a great thing. We can help each other. He
helps me with mine and I.
Speaker 10 (46:38):
Help him with his.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Got best guest from the Sunday session Great Jazz with
Francesca Rudgin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks. I'd be.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Rebecca. Give me there, gosh, she's a breath of free share.
She's just all warmth and sunshine.
Speaker 9 (46:53):
That woman.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
She's as delightful as you would expect. Her latest show,
Happiness is screening on three and three now. And if
you are wondering have Rebecca went in the Aussie version
of Dancing with the Stars, I can't tell you. It
doesn't air in OZ until the middle of the year. And
as hard as I tried and as charming as I was,
she's a lot smarter than match. She wouldn't tell me
a thing. Thanks for joining me on this news talk
(47:15):
z i'v podcast. Please feel free to share these chats,
and if you like this podcast, make sure you follow
us on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't
forget we release a new episode of Great Chats on
the last Thursday of every month.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
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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