May 16, 2022 • 26 mins
How much can we trust our memory? Sex therapist Dr. Martha Kauppi tells us to stop wasting time on the evidence. Writer Mark O’Halloran talks about the experience ghost writing for Frances and actor Emmanuel Okoye helps us think about who our characters are when they’re not seen through Frances’s eyes.
Martha Kauppi
https://www.instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conversations-with-friends-strangers--5711089/support.
Martha Kauppi
https://www.instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conversations-with-friends-strangers--5711089/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Straw Hut Media. Well, Noam, is there anything else you
want to ask her?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I love your shirt?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Is that glitter it is?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Conversations with Friends and Strangers.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm Maggie, I'm Nolam.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In the show, we take a closer look at the
complicated relationships in the Hulu series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
We'll meet some of the cast and crew, chat with experts,
and share our own kind of sexy, kind of uncomfortable,
but relatable stories about the messy relationships we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Today on the show, we're really starting to question our
own memory. How much can we trust it?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Sex therapist doctor Marthakalpi tells us to stop was seeing
time with the evidence in.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Certain situations only climate change is real. People podcast hosts
Gillian Hamilton share some of the wisdoms she's collected. Then
Marco Hollaran talks about ghostwriting for Francis and actor Emanuel
o'kooyer helps us think about who our characters are when
they're not seen through Francis's eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Is she an unreliable narrator?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
You're an unreliable narrator.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I don't know why you're being so aggressive right now?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
All right, let's recap.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Frances story about Bobby continues. She tries to buy a coffee,
but her account is overdrawn. She can't reach her dad.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And then Valerie reaches out for a drink. She says
Melissa speaks very highly of her, and so Francis sends
her the fresh short story.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The period pain comes back, and it's so bad this time.
She passes out in the rain while crossing the quad
to meet Bobby.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, different quad. Bobby takes care of her and she's
very very sweet and they have a little hard to
heart while Francis is in the bath and Bobby calls
Nick and tells him to come over.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Frances finally tells him what's going on with her, and.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Everyone is being very nice to Francis. Nick even told
Melissa about the relationship. They love each other and to
quote a different join a newsome song for the time being.
All as well.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Now that we've seen episode nine or three quarters of
the way through the story, I feel like we've gotten
to know our characters pretty well by now, though there's
always room for.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Change, and we're also getting pretty detailed accounts of how
Frances feels about Bobby through her short story.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
So we'll talk about characters more today, But there's this
moment when Francis is in the bath and talking to Bobby.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Is that why you dun't me?
Speaker 4 (02:22):
What for being difficult?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I didn't dump you.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I ended it to save you the trouble.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You'd have let it drag on for months. We were miserable.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That's why I WoT remember it.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I can't help that.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That had me thinking about the idea of misaligned memories,
where one person remembers an important moment differently than the
other person involved.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
That's a really really common dynamic, and it's built on
some big misconceptions.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Here's Calpi.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
So the way that I would clear that up with
my clients and in my own relationship and for anybody
would be to explain when you have a difficult interaction,
the way that you record it is very unique and
self protective. So you're noticing the things that you perceive
as a threat, which are going to be different from
(03:21):
what somebody else perceives as a threat in that situation,
and you're going to remember things in kind of a
fragmented way. And so when some time goes by and
then you revisit that event, and you say what the
events were that you perceived. Your partner's memory is not
going to match because they took the snapshot and their
(03:42):
brain from their own self protective stance. So it's the
biggest waste of time ever to try to square up
history after the fact. It just never ever works.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Not only is it a big fat waste of time,
Martha says, it's also not necessary to resolve the conflict.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
The much more important conversation is about what did you perceive,
my darling, So what did you experience? What happened for you?
What did you perceive that I was saying or doing?
What did it mean to you? So that I can
understand and we can go back and forth both ways,
so that everybody can learn not how to do it different,
(04:22):
but what their partner constructed from that thing, what it
meant to them, And beginning to realize that how we
make meaning of events is as unique as a fingerprint.
There is no other way to find out what happened
for your partner. No kind of real of movie events
(04:46):
unfolding is going to tell you what happened that is important.
What's important is what happened inside of you.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
As in, how did it get under your skin? What
did it mean to you? What emotions did you experience.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
And then to begin to kind of lean into that,
I'm so sorry that you felt frightened, I'm so sorry
that you were upset, I'm so sorry that you felt
betrayed or you know, whatever it was. It wasn't my intention.
I don't even remember it the same way. But that's
not the point. The point is you experienced what you experienced,
and so how can we start to get past it,
(05:19):
remedy it, and also eventually make decisions. I would be
making decisions, of course, to help my partner not have
a traumatizing experience wherever possible, but I'm not going to
be able to predict that unless my partner actually shares
something about how they make meaning.
Speaker 6 (05:37):
So we have to remember it's not about facts, it's
not about the evidence. It's about our personal experience, and
knowing that can be very liberating.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Right, And it's a really important point because it comes
up all the time because we really want to square
up the facts. We want to get a record, you know,
in place, we want we wish they're that a movie
of it, so that we could prove our point we
go to therapy so that our therapist can be the
judge and jury and say that we were right and
our partner was wrong and they did us wrong, and
(06:08):
you know, then tell us what to do, but only
tell us what to do if I'm the one that
gets what they want. Don't tell us what to do
if my partner gets with right. So that's just a
condoluted mess. And it's an enormous waste of time.
Speaker 7 (06:24):
Now that you said that, I realized that I remember
that with an X of mine, we recorded one of
our fights, just a disagreement that we had, and we
played it back in the morning and we were both
just embarrassed. Nothing that came out of me were like,
let's just forget this ever happened.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I never do that again.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I think that's a great experiment because I think we
all have to kind of learn that memory is plastic,
like it's not concrete, but we relate to it as
if like this is a rock and it's my bedrock.
And if you can't even agree with the facts that
I know are true, then what do we even have together?
(07:07):
And how can I even trust you? And you know
that comes from such a deep and real place, but
it is a self protective stance that is based on
a complete fiction about how memory works. And also every
time we take a memory out of storage and take
a look at it and put it back in storage,
we also have changed it again. So the more times
(07:28):
I ruminate about that fight, the surer I become about
my perception of what happened. And I'm never going to
feel understood by my partner unless my partner asks me
what I perceived and what I experienced, And they would
have to actually really separate themselves from a need to
be right or see it the same in order to
(07:49):
give me what I'm looking for. So we go looking
in the wrong places for the wrong things.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
With that conversation, I really loved talking with doctor Martha Colthy.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
It's got a really special energy about her.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yes, very calming, and she makes me feel like I'm
capable of being reasonable. We've been friends now for something
like four years. Have we ever had a fight where
we disagreed on the fundamentals of what happened? Maybe not us,
but I know we were both party to a fight
that dragged on for quite a while. Her feelings, miscommunication, hunger, Yeah,
(08:25):
and I remember going through the text messages where that
fight started and progressed and rereading them obsessively for confirmation
of my own position.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
It didn't.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
We want to make it into a one act play.
At some point you did?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Did that help resolve the conflict about Yeah? I think
you know the answer to that question. The answer is no.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
The answer is no, And that fight dragged on for
quite a long time.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, it did. But back to this episode, we get
to hear a lot more of Francis's short story of
the dance, and that's something that we didn't actually get
to read in the novel. Similar to the spoken word
poetry they performed together, Sally Rooney leaves that up to
the reader's imagination, but bringing the story into the visual realm,
they had to actually write some of that story.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I think I was the only one who understood her
power over circumstance and people. It seemed to me that
what she wanted she could have, and the rest was
cast aside. We met in secondary school. She was the
(09:38):
new girl. Back then, she was opinionated and frequently in attention.
Nobody liked her, which drew me to her immediately. When
we were seventeen, we had to attend a fundraising dance
in the school. She wore a flimsy summer dress and trainers.
(09:59):
She was raised attractive. I told her I liked her dress,
and she gave me some of the fuck that she
was drinking. We snuck off together and I could hear
the music buzzing from inside, like a ring tone that
belonged to someone else. She gave me more of her
vodka and asked me if I like girls. I just
(10:20):
said sure.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Here's writer Marco Hollerin again on that process.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
There is a text that is alluded to that is
felt to be a catalyst for a major psychological and
emotional shift within the novel. And then there was toying
with the idea that perhaps the novel itself is the text.
So what we did was what I did was I
(10:49):
collected all of the pieces from the book that she
says about Bobby or Bobby says about her in describing them,
and constructed the short story out of those. So again
it was feeling as if it was coming from the book,
that the person who loves the book will come to
(11:10):
this drama and recognize it. That we're not pulling tricks
with people or introducing new texts and it worked out
really well. There was a degree of trial and error
with that of trying to get the tone of it right,
but I thought it was the right approach.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I mean it's funny.
Speaker 9 (11:29):
It's almost like ghost writing for Francis, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The whole idea of adapting this massively internal novel into
a television series is so.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Wild to me.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I mean, Sally has such complex characters. Their inner world
is very, very rich, especially Francis, and I feel they
did a very good job.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Okay, let's take a quick break and when we come back,
we'll talk to Mark a little bit more about the
pros of adapting Welcome Back. Right now, we're in conversation
(12:22):
with writer Mark O'Halloran about the process of adapting the
novel Conversations with Friends into the series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I mean, there was Episode nine for me was possibly
a more satisfying.
Speaker 10 (12:37):
Writing experience for me, because the drama is quite odd
because it's centered, I mean half of it is centered
in the bathroom and she's having a bath and she's ill,
and she's in emotional extremists and Bobby invites him back
into their lives, and I thought.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That triangulation of emotional relationships is incredibly both sad and affecting. Actually,
I felt really sorry for Bobby at times in the book.
Speaker 6 (13:09):
Actually, yeah, she's definitely a tragic character. I enjoyed the
fact that that episode nine that we saw more of Bobby.
I felt that, well, this was very Francis forward as
a series, and thirty minutes that makes sense. But Bobby's
such a great character. In an episode nine is like, ah, okay,
here's Bob's back.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Well, she hears for quite a lot of the novel, actually,
and sometimes I feel in the novel she's the idea
of a character sometimes or she's the idea that Francis
has of the character. I don't mean that as a
criticism of the writing. I mean that that's just the
structural reality of it. And to make her reel was
quite a job of work actually for all of us
(13:51):
to try and find her. And we had the same
with Nick actually to really solidify Nick and to make
him more and more believable. And literally it's literally because
Francis has a lot of ideas about people, but that's
not necessarily who they are really. When you get out
of Francis's head and look at them, and that was
(14:14):
quite interesting. I mean, Bobby's really incredibly complex and kind
of joyous at the same time, and she's wicked, you know,
she pushes things, and I like that about her.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This is all super interesting to me about the adaptation
because you know, Francis in the novel is an unreliable narrator,
and she can't be quite so unreliable in the series
because it doesn't work in a visual well, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Because she is very much the hero of her own story,
even though she's the hero of our story. I feel
that there's a very good point that you brought up earlier,
not in the podcast, in real life when you were
talking about this and you said, a very good example
is that conversation has with Melissa Croatia.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Do you remember, Yeah, so she says you're not fucking him,
are you? But in the series she says there's nothing
I should know, right, which had me thinking, is that
really the way Melissa asked it in France?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Or is that the way that Francis perceived or heard
the question, Because it's the same question she's asking and
for those of us who read the book, it's it's
kind of like a it's an eye opening moment of oh.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
In the way that doctor Calpy was saying, there's no
movie reel to play back after a disagreement. In a way,
the job of the writers adopting a novel that was
written in the first person like Conversations with Friends is
deciding how to recreate that reel of what happened in
a realistic way while still taking into account how important
our main character perspective is.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Nick, Bobby, and Melissa are all very different in the
series versus the book, because they have to be real
people seen from the viewer's perspective and not just Francis's.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
There's a brilliant st of script to edits who work
within element. Chelsea Morgan Hoffman is one of them, and
Emma Norton, and they were tasked with caring for the
complete arc of the of the.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Drama because Mark wrote episodes two, three, and nine, but
other writers like Alice Birch and Made McHugh and Susan
Soony Stanton were writing other episodes, and.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
So you start to lose track of that drama and
they will come to you and say, look, you need
to hit these points here because they're echoed in episode seven,
and you got to keep and you got to listen
to them and hear that as well, you know. And
then they also will tell you whether something is balanced
or unbalanced within the voice that's heard in the text,
(16:44):
whether it's something whether you need to amplify it a
little bit more, whether characters are beginning to sound not
like each other. Across multiple episodes, there was a bit
of that going on.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm curious if there's a particular character in the story
that you relate to the most, or that you had
maybe the most fun sort of adapting or getting to
know on the screen.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I'm not often like that as a writer. I don't
often feel but I have to say that I think
possibly we all think we're Francis. I just enjoyed her
confusion at life and yet her honest way in which
she went about meeting it. I remember when I was like,
I was like eighteen or nineteen years of age, and
(17:29):
I went to university for a while, but I didn't finish,
and I was very confused in life about what I
wanted to do.
Speaker 10 (17:35):
And I remember I went to a debating society thing
that was going on, and there was like the House
says that we are.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Scandalized by I don't know, some government policy. And I
watched all these people of my own age debating and
having really opinions about everything, and I just felt I'm
the most black person in the whole world.
Speaker 10 (17:56):
So I have no opinions about this. I don't have
any opinion about any of this noise. And I when I.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Was writing the I were adapting the novel, I thought
I remembered something of Francis's confusion. Although Francis probably has
more opinions than but she's also she can move, she
can contradict herself. She can I don't think she's as
set in stone as as perhaps some people who encounter
(18:26):
her in the novel thinks she is.
Speaker 10 (18:29):
And that's kind of interesting. So I really I dug her.
I dug what she was, what she.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Was going through.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
Yeah, I mean as too. I think I think we
all see ourselves in Francis in the in the romantic
ways and then also in the really unhealthy, unromantic ways,
you know. I think that's why the story is so powerful.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
I agree. I think that there's something that she is
convinced of herself and the black and white in her
world through not a lot of grace that I feel
we develop with time, but she's very smart at the
same time, so it was just very confusing because she's
building her own walls that she's running into Francis in
the book, Francis in the show, We're all Francis.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
We may all be Francis. That with these other characters
being brought into the realm of reality, some of us
are actually Bobby.
Speaker 8 (19:26):
And especially the way they cast it with Sasha is
just incredible. In my opinion, I think it's like inspired cast,
like Luise Kylie did an incredible job with the casting.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That's actor Emmanuel Okoyer. He plays Andrew.
Speaker 8 (19:40):
She always does clearly, but a great example of how
you should adapt source material for a different medium in
my opinion, Yeah, I probably relate more to Bobby because
she has that dual identity, you know, as an American
and and I are. She has like one parent from
both in the show now that they've in the adaptation,
(20:04):
and I feel like I've always felt that being Nigerian Irish,
you just constantly flitting between two different modes of expression
depending on who you're interacting with. And yeah, I feel
like that might might come out for Bobby.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
What about like these like complicated relationship dynamics. Do you
think that there's like a specifically Irish flavor to these
like messy like exes that remain friends in like affairs
with married couples.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And you know, blurred sexuality.
Speaker 11 (20:38):
Do you think that that's like a Dublin thing or
do you think that's more of like a universal idea.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
I don't know that it is a specifically Irish thing.
If anything, I think it's a it's more of a
Trinity thing that because like Trinity has a reputation of like.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Of like.
Speaker 8 (21:00):
People who love overindulging in like the irts. And what
am I trying to say now?
Speaker 12 (21:05):
I think it does the it achieves what I feel
like every artist is trying to do by making it
like really really specific and through that also making it universal,
if that makes any sense.
Speaker 8 (21:21):
So I don't know that it is particularly Irish, but
it is particularly human I think to have messy relationships
because we're all messy. We're all messy as much as
we you know, try to pretend otherwise. I feel like
the only connection I can maybe make with Irish culture
(21:44):
and identity would be the fact that Ireland is so small,
so that when you make connections that you like, real authentic,
genuine connections with somebody and it doesn't pan out how
you would maybe like, there are that many other options,
(22:04):
so you kind of have to just be an adult
and you know, if it if it's if it didn't
end horribly of course, then yeah, you just stay with
the people that you've formed a connection with.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
That.
Speaker 8 (22:21):
I don't know if that's applicable in larger cities, but
I feel like definitely here anyway, Like I from secondary
school to now, I have very few, like really really
intimate relationships and friendships, and I feel like, regardless of
(22:42):
what happens over the course of those relationships, I'll just
always want to know that person. Do you get me.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
At this point in episode nine, Nick has finally told
Melissa everything.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Okay, thought that should be angry and I was ready
for that.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
It was a difficult conversation.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Us I tell them everything. What if everything mean someone
to keep saying that?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
So the relationship is out in the open, But what's
going to happen next?
Speaker 11 (23:25):
I'm curious over the years, how often would you say
you see a relationship recover from a major infidelity.
Speaker 13 (23:33):
Because I'm an optimist, I'd have to say most of
the time, I see it recover.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
This is Jillian Hamilton. She's the host and producer of
the podcast Cheating When Love Lies.
Speaker 13 (23:44):
Because that doesn't necessarily mean the two parties are coming
back together in life partner bliss. Maybe they've grown from
the experience, have moved on individually, but the experience of
the affair has benefited their emotions personal growth.
Speaker 11 (24:01):
I think that that's true that sometimes cheating is the
jumping off point for recognizing that something isn't working.
Speaker 13 (24:07):
Right exactly, and it is a myth that people believe,
well things aren't working therefore I cheat. Someone can cheat
simply for the thrill of the adventure for self discovery.
As we discuss more and more often the idea of
polyamory being fluid, some people will use cheating or affairs
(24:29):
to discover themselves as other sexual identities.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I know.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It's how to show emmy all. This show is hosted
and produced by me, Maggie.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Bowles and me Noa'm Gadweiser.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
It's written and edited by me, with assistant editing by Noah.
Our supervising producer is Ryan Tillotson, with help from Tyler Nielsen,
Frank Driscoll, Nick Bailey and the entire Straw Hut team.
Theme music is by Maggie Glass and Square Fish, and
big thanks to aria Via Shi, Lauren Thorpe, Exavior Salas,
and the Hulu tem.
Speaker 14 (25:31):
Mag Smiles, Little Shoe, A Little Show Oo
Straw Hut Media. Well, Noam, is there anything else you
want to ask her?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I love your shirt?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Is that glitter it is?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Conversations with Friends and Strangers.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm Maggie, I'm Nolam.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In the show, we take a closer look at the
complicated relationships in the Hulu series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
We'll meet some of the cast and crew, chat with experts,
and share our own kind of sexy, kind of uncomfortable,
but relatable stories about the messy relationships we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Today on the show, we're really starting to question our
own memory. How much can we trust it?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Sex therapist doctor Marthakalpi tells us to stop was seeing
time with the evidence in.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Certain situations only climate change is real. People podcast hosts
Gillian Hamilton share some of the wisdoms she's collected. Then
Marco Hollaran talks about ghostwriting for Francis and actor Emanuel
o'kooyer helps us think about who our characters are when
they're not seen through Francis's eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Is she an unreliable narrator?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
You're an unreliable narrator.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I don't know why you're being so aggressive right now?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
All right, let's recap.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Frances story about Bobby continues. She tries to buy a coffee,
but her account is overdrawn. She can't reach her dad.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And then Valerie reaches out for a drink. She says
Melissa speaks very highly of her, and so Francis sends
her the fresh short story.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The period pain comes back, and it's so bad this time.
She passes out in the rain while crossing the quad
to meet Bobby.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, different quad. Bobby takes care of her and she's
very very sweet and they have a little hard to
heart while Francis is in the bath and Bobby calls
Nick and tells him to come over.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Frances finally tells him what's going on with her, and.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Everyone is being very nice to Francis. Nick even told
Melissa about the relationship. They love each other and to
quote a different join a newsome song for the time being.
All as well.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Now that we've seen episode nine or three quarters of
the way through the story, I feel like we've gotten
to know our characters pretty well by now, though there's
always room for.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Change, and we're also getting pretty detailed accounts of how
Frances feels about Bobby through her short story.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
So we'll talk about characters more today, But there's this
moment when Francis is in the bath and talking to Bobby.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Is that why you dun't me?
Speaker 4 (02:22):
What for being difficult?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I didn't dump you.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I ended it to save you the trouble.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You'd have let it drag on for months. We were miserable.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That's why I WoT remember it.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I can't help that.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That had me thinking about the idea of misaligned memories,
where one person remembers an important moment differently than the
other person involved.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
That's a really really common dynamic, and it's built on
some big misconceptions.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Here's Calpi.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
So the way that I would clear that up with
my clients and in my own relationship and for anybody
would be to explain when you have a difficult interaction,
the way that you record it is very unique and
self protective. So you're noticing the things that you perceive
as a threat, which are going to be different from
(03:21):
what somebody else perceives as a threat in that situation,
and you're going to remember things in kind of a
fragmented way. And so when some time goes by and
then you revisit that event, and you say what the
events were that you perceived. Your partner's memory is not
going to match because they took the snapshot and their
(03:42):
brain from their own self protective stance. So it's the
biggest waste of time ever to try to square up
history after the fact. It just never ever works.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Not only is it a big fat waste of time,
Martha says, it's also not necessary to resolve the conflict.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
The much more important conversation is about what did you perceive,
my darling, So what did you experience? What happened for you?
What did you perceive that I was saying or doing?
What did it mean to you? So that I can
understand and we can go back and forth both ways,
so that everybody can learn not how to do it different,
(04:22):
but what their partner constructed from that thing, what it
meant to them, And beginning to realize that how we
make meaning of events is as unique as a fingerprint.
There is no other way to find out what happened
for your partner. No kind of real of movie events
(04:46):
unfolding is going to tell you what happened that is important.
What's important is what happened inside of you.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
As in, how did it get under your skin? What
did it mean to you? What emotions did you experience.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
And then to begin to kind of lean into that,
I'm so sorry that you felt frightened, I'm so sorry
that you were upset, I'm so sorry that you felt
betrayed or you know, whatever it was. It wasn't my intention.
I don't even remember it the same way. But that's
not the point. The point is you experienced what you experienced,
and so how can we start to get past it,
(05:19):
remedy it, and also eventually make decisions. I would be
making decisions, of course, to help my partner not have
a traumatizing experience wherever possible, but I'm not going to
be able to predict that unless my partner actually shares
something about how they make meaning.
Speaker 6 (05:37):
So we have to remember it's not about facts, it's
not about the evidence. It's about our personal experience, and
knowing that can be very liberating.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Right, And it's a really important point because it comes
up all the time because we really want to square
up the facts. We want to get a record, you know,
in place, we want we wish they're that a movie
of it, so that we could prove our point we
go to therapy so that our therapist can be the
judge and jury and say that we were right and
our partner was wrong and they did us wrong, and
(06:08):
you know, then tell us what to do, but only
tell us what to do if I'm the one that
gets what they want. Don't tell us what to do
if my partner gets with right. So that's just a
condoluted mess. And it's an enormous waste of time.
Speaker 7 (06:24):
Now that you said that, I realized that I remember
that with an X of mine, we recorded one of
our fights, just a disagreement that we had, and we
played it back in the morning and we were both
just embarrassed. Nothing that came out of me were like,
let's just forget this ever happened.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I never do that again.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I think that's a great experiment because I think we
all have to kind of learn that memory is plastic,
like it's not concrete, but we relate to it as
if like this is a rock and it's my bedrock.
And if you can't even agree with the facts that
I know are true, then what do we even have together?
(07:07):
And how can I even trust you? And you know
that comes from such a deep and real place, but
it is a self protective stance that is based on
a complete fiction about how memory works. And also every
time we take a memory out of storage and take
a look at it and put it back in storage,
we also have changed it again. So the more times
(07:28):
I ruminate about that fight, the surer I become about
my perception of what happened. And I'm never going to
feel understood by my partner unless my partner asks me
what I perceived and what I experienced, And they would
have to actually really separate themselves from a need to
be right or see it the same in order to
(07:49):
give me what I'm looking for. So we go looking
in the wrong places for the wrong things.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
With that conversation, I really loved talking with doctor Martha Colthy.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
It's got a really special energy about her.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yes, very calming, and she makes me feel like I'm
capable of being reasonable. We've been friends now for something
like four years. Have we ever had a fight where
we disagreed on the fundamentals of what happened? Maybe not us,
but I know we were both party to a fight
that dragged on for quite a while. Her feelings, miscommunication, hunger, Yeah,
(08:25):
and I remember going through the text messages where that
fight started and progressed and rereading them obsessively for confirmation
of my own position.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
It didn't.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
We want to make it into a one act play.
At some point you did?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Did that help resolve the conflict about Yeah? I think
you know the answer to that question. The answer is no.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
The answer is no, And that fight dragged on for
quite a long time.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, it did. But back to this episode, we get
to hear a lot more of Francis's short story of
the dance, and that's something that we didn't actually get
to read in the novel. Similar to the spoken word
poetry they performed together, Sally Rooney leaves that up to
the reader's imagination, but bringing the story into the visual realm,
they had to actually write some of that story.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I think I was the only one who understood her
power over circumstance and people. It seemed to me that
what she wanted she could have, and the rest was
cast aside. We met in secondary school. She was the
(09:38):
new girl. Back then, she was opinionated and frequently in attention.
Nobody liked her, which drew me to her immediately. When
we were seventeen, we had to attend a fundraising dance
in the school. She wore a flimsy summer dress and trainers.
(09:59):
She was raised attractive. I told her I liked her dress,
and she gave me some of the fuck that she
was drinking. We snuck off together and I could hear
the music buzzing from inside, like a ring tone that
belonged to someone else. She gave me more of her
vodka and asked me if I like girls. I just
(10:20):
said sure.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Here's writer Marco Hollerin again on that process.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
There is a text that is alluded to that is
felt to be a catalyst for a major psychological and
emotional shift within the novel. And then there was toying
with the idea that perhaps the novel itself is the text.
So what we did was what I did was I
(10:49):
collected all of the pieces from the book that she
says about Bobby or Bobby says about her in describing them,
and constructed the short story out of those. So again
it was feeling as if it was coming from the book,
that the person who loves the book will come to
(11:10):
this drama and recognize it. That we're not pulling tricks
with people or introducing new texts and it worked out
really well. There was a degree of trial and error
with that of trying to get the tone of it right,
but I thought it was the right approach.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I mean it's funny.
Speaker 9 (11:29):
It's almost like ghost writing for Francis, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The whole idea of adapting this massively internal novel into
a television series is so.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Wild to me.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I mean, Sally has such complex characters. Their inner world
is very, very rich, especially Francis, and I feel they
did a very good job.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Okay, let's take a quick break and when we come back,
we'll talk to Mark a little bit more about the
pros of adapting Welcome Back. Right now, we're in conversation
(12:22):
with writer Mark O'Halloran about the process of adapting the
novel Conversations with Friends into the series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I mean, there was Episode nine for me was possibly
a more satisfying.
Speaker 10 (12:37):
Writing experience for me, because the drama is quite odd
because it's centered, I mean half of it is centered
in the bathroom and she's having a bath and she's ill,
and she's in emotional extremists and Bobby invites him back
into their lives, and I thought.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That triangulation of emotional relationships is incredibly both sad and affecting. Actually,
I felt really sorry for Bobby at times in the book.
Speaker 6 (13:09):
Actually, yeah, she's definitely a tragic character. I enjoyed the
fact that that episode nine that we saw more of Bobby.
I felt that, well, this was very Francis forward as
a series, and thirty minutes that makes sense. But Bobby's
such a great character. In an episode nine is like, ah, okay,
here's Bob's back.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Well, she hears for quite a lot of the novel, actually,
and sometimes I feel in the novel she's the idea
of a character sometimes or she's the idea that Francis
has of the character. I don't mean that as a
criticism of the writing. I mean that that's just the
structural reality of it. And to make her reel was
quite a job of work actually for all of us
(13:51):
to try and find her. And we had the same
with Nick actually to really solidify Nick and to make
him more and more believable. And literally it's literally because
Francis has a lot of ideas about people, but that's
not necessarily who they are really. When you get out
of Francis's head and look at them, and that was
(14:14):
quite interesting. I mean, Bobby's really incredibly complex and kind
of joyous at the same time, and she's wicked, you know,
she pushes things, and I like that about her.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This is all super interesting to me about the adaptation
because you know, Francis in the novel is an unreliable narrator,
and she can't be quite so unreliable in the series
because it doesn't work in a visual well, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Because she is very much the hero of her own story,
even though she's the hero of our story. I feel
that there's a very good point that you brought up earlier,
not in the podcast, in real life when you were
talking about this and you said, a very good example
is that conversation has with Melissa Croatia.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Do you remember, Yeah, so she says you're not fucking him,
are you? But in the series she says there's nothing
I should know, right, which had me thinking, is that
really the way Melissa asked it in France?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Or is that the way that Francis perceived or heard
the question, Because it's the same question she's asking and
for those of us who read the book, it's it's
kind of like a it's an eye opening moment of oh.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
In the way that doctor Calpy was saying, there's no
movie reel to play back after a disagreement. In a way,
the job of the writers adopting a novel that was
written in the first person like Conversations with Friends is
deciding how to recreate that reel of what happened in
a realistic way while still taking into account how important
our main character perspective is.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Nick, Bobby, and Melissa are all very different in the
series versus the book, because they have to be real
people seen from the viewer's perspective and not just Francis's.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
There's a brilliant st of script to edits who work
within element. Chelsea Morgan Hoffman is one of them, and
Emma Norton, and they were tasked with caring for the
complete arc of the of the.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Drama because Mark wrote episodes two, three, and nine, but
other writers like Alice Birch and Made McHugh and Susan
Soony Stanton were writing other episodes, and.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
So you start to lose track of that drama and
they will come to you and say, look, you need
to hit these points here because they're echoed in episode seven,
and you got to keep and you got to listen
to them and hear that as well, you know. And
then they also will tell you whether something is balanced
or unbalanced within the voice that's heard in the text,
(16:44):
whether it's something whether you need to amplify it a
little bit more, whether characters are beginning to sound not
like each other. Across multiple episodes, there was a bit
of that going on.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm curious if there's a particular character in the story
that you relate to the most, or that you had
maybe the most fun sort of adapting or getting to
know on the screen.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I'm not often like that as a writer. I don't
often feel but I have to say that I think
possibly we all think we're Francis. I just enjoyed her
confusion at life and yet her honest way in which
she went about meeting it. I remember when I was like,
I was like eighteen or nineteen years of age, and
(17:29):
I went to university for a while, but I didn't finish,
and I was very confused in life about what I
wanted to do.
Speaker 10 (17:35):
And I remember I went to a debating society thing
that was going on, and there was like the House
says that we are.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Scandalized by I don't know, some government policy. And I
watched all these people of my own age debating and
having really opinions about everything, and I just felt I'm
the most black person in the whole world.
Speaker 10 (17:56):
So I have no opinions about this. I don't have
any opinion about any of this noise. And I when I.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Was writing the I were adapting the novel, I thought
I remembered something of Francis's confusion. Although Francis probably has
more opinions than but she's also she can move, she
can contradict herself. She can I don't think she's as
set in stone as as perhaps some people who encounter
(18:26):
her in the novel thinks she is.
Speaker 10 (18:29):
And that's kind of interesting. So I really I dug her.
I dug what she was, what she.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Was going through.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
Yeah, I mean as too. I think I think we
all see ourselves in Francis in the in the romantic
ways and then also in the really unhealthy, unromantic ways,
you know. I think that's why the story is so powerful.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
I agree. I think that there's something that she is
convinced of herself and the black and white in her
world through not a lot of grace that I feel
we develop with time, but she's very smart at the
same time, so it was just very confusing because she's
building her own walls that she's running into Francis in
the book, Francis in the show, We're all Francis.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
We may all be Francis. That with these other characters
being brought into the realm of reality, some of us
are actually Bobby.
Speaker 8 (19:26):
And especially the way they cast it with Sasha is
just incredible. In my opinion, I think it's like inspired cast,
like Luise Kylie did an incredible job with the casting.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That's actor Emmanuel Okoyer. He plays Andrew.
Speaker 8 (19:40):
She always does clearly, but a great example of how
you should adapt source material for a different medium in
my opinion, Yeah, I probably relate more to Bobby because
she has that dual identity, you know, as an American
and and I are. She has like one parent from
both in the show now that they've in the adaptation,
(20:04):
and I feel like I've always felt that being Nigerian Irish,
you just constantly flitting between two different modes of expression
depending on who you're interacting with. And yeah, I feel
like that might might come out for Bobby.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
What about like these like complicated relationship dynamics. Do you
think that there's like a specifically Irish flavor to these
like messy like exes that remain friends in like affairs
with married couples.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And you know, blurred sexuality.
Speaker 11 (20:38):
Do you think that that's like a Dublin thing or
do you think that's more of like a universal idea.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
I don't know that it is a specifically Irish thing.
If anything, I think it's a it's more of a
Trinity thing that because like Trinity has a reputation of like.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Of like.
Speaker 8 (21:00):
People who love overindulging in like the irts. And what
am I trying to say now?
Speaker 12 (21:05):
I think it does the it achieves what I feel
like every artist is trying to do by making it
like really really specific and through that also making it universal,
if that makes any sense.
Speaker 8 (21:21):
So I don't know that it is particularly Irish, but
it is particularly human I think to have messy relationships
because we're all messy. We're all messy as much as
we you know, try to pretend otherwise. I feel like
the only connection I can maybe make with Irish culture
(21:44):
and identity would be the fact that Ireland is so small,
so that when you make connections that you like, real authentic,
genuine connections with somebody and it doesn't pan out how
you would maybe like, there are that many other options,
(22:04):
so you kind of have to just be an adult
and you know, if it if it's if it didn't
end horribly of course, then yeah, you just stay with
the people that you've formed a connection with.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
That.
Speaker 8 (22:21):
I don't know if that's applicable in larger cities, but
I feel like definitely here anyway, Like I from secondary
school to now, I have very few, like really really
intimate relationships and friendships, and I feel like, regardless of
(22:42):
what happens over the course of those relationships, I'll just
always want to know that person. Do you get me.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
At this point in episode nine, Nick has finally told
Melissa everything.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Okay, thought that should be angry and I was ready
for that.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
It was a difficult conversation.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Us I tell them everything. What if everything mean someone
to keep saying that?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
So the relationship is out in the open, But what's
going to happen next?
Speaker 11 (23:25):
I'm curious over the years, how often would you say
you see a relationship recover from a major infidelity.
Speaker 13 (23:33):
Because I'm an optimist, I'd have to say most of
the time, I see it recover.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
This is Jillian Hamilton. She's the host and producer of
the podcast Cheating When Love Lies.
Speaker 13 (23:44):
Because that doesn't necessarily mean the two parties are coming
back together in life partner bliss. Maybe they've grown from
the experience, have moved on individually, but the experience of
the affair has benefited their emotions personal growth.
Speaker 11 (24:01):
I think that that's true that sometimes cheating is the
jumping off point for recognizing that something isn't working.
Speaker 13 (24:07):
Right exactly, and it is a myth that people believe,
well things aren't working therefore I cheat. Someone can cheat
simply for the thrill of the adventure for self discovery.
As we discuss more and more often the idea of
polyamory being fluid, some people will use cheating or affairs
(24:29):
to discover themselves as other sexual identities.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I know.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It's how to show emmy all. This show is hosted
and produced by me, Maggie.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Bowles and me Noa'm Gadweiser.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
It's written and edited by me, with assistant editing by Noah.
Our supervising producer is Ryan Tillotson, with help from Tyler Nielsen,
Frank Driscoll, Nick Bailey and the entire Straw Hut team.
Theme music is by Maggie Glass and Square Fish, and
big thanks to aria Via Shi, Lauren Thorpe, Exavior Salas,
and the Hulu tem.
Speaker 14 (25:31):
Mag Smiles, Little Shoe, A Little Show Oo
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