Katherine Parkinson – ‘I’m Still Learning How to Be Me’

*triggers: contains description of physical assault Katherine Parkinson is the two‑time BAFTA‑winning actor beloved for The IT Crowd, Doc Martin, Humans and most recently, Rivals, the hit Jilly Cooper adaptation that became an international Emmy winner. Fresh from her latest BAFTA win, she joins Elizabeth to reflect on the unexpected turns that shaped her life – from Surbiton to Oxford, from comedy to chaos, and from self‑doubt to a hard‑won sense of confidence. In this episode, we talk about her childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut, how her brothers are convinced she’s in MI5 (we will never know), the class anxieties that coloured her university years, her lifelong battle with disorganisation and the pressure she put on herself to “earn her place”. Katherine also opens up – for the first time – about a violent assault she minimised for years, the shame she carried and how motherhood has reframed her understanding of fear, safety and resilience. We also explore the joy she found in acting, the liberation of embracing her own contradictions, the friendships that sustained her and the work that goes into rebuilding after trauma. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Intro 03:48 Northern Ireland Roots 04:06 Why Rivals Works 05:34 Class and Oxford 08:08 Lizzie and Fred Fred 10:51 Jilly Cooper Loss 14:03 Failure One Disorganised 15:46 Exam Breakdown Story 19:14 Fear of Winning 20:52 MI5 and Astronaut Dreams 22:07 Academia vs Acting 23:07 Pressure and Perfectionism 23:59 Choosing the Actor Path 25:23 Facing Unprocessed Trauma 26:04 Assault 30:03 Shame and Cultural Context 33:45 Anxiety and Motherhood 38:56 Anger and Survival Instincts 40:08 Oboe Failure and Braces 42:21 Failing Freely as an Actor 43:49 Happiness and Goodbye 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: “My mum has always said to me, ‘You’re not afraid to fail’” “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a company [as Rivals] where everybody makes me laugh so much, and that is literally all I care about.” “I used to want to be an astronaut.” 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: All episodes of Rivals are now available to stream on Disney+ in the UK and internationally, with new episodes dropping weekly and a second instalment arriving later in the year. In the US, the series is available exclusively on Hulu. Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Danny Dyer – the actor and national treasure on identity, anger, vulnerability and learning to break the patterns you were born into: swap.fm/l/L192dU5DZHQnCUjFWuX8 Miranda Hart – the beloved comedian and writer on anxiety, belonging, people-pleasing and finding the courage to take up space: swap.fm/l/oTScN30b80GflJtO4rgu 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Guest bookings for How To Fail only come from official @sonymusic.com emails Elizabeth answers listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] _________________________________________________________________________ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you know, my mum has always said to me, you're not afraid to fail, which is kind of, I was like, what do you mean? I don't know if I like that. I was literally walking around with my shoulders like, come on, tap me, tap me. I remember being in the hospital that night and hearing the, I think what I find upsetting.

• 0:20Elizabeth Day?

  This episode of How To Fail is supported by Dove Whole Body Deodorant because feeling fresh all over gives me the confidence I need. Hello and welcome to How To Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast that believes that all failure can end up teaching us something meaningful in the fullness of time. Before we get cracking on this episode, please do remember to like, subscribe and follow so that you never miss a single conversation. Confession time. I have a tendency to postpone certain decisions for far longer than is sensible. Not the big life decisions, oddly enough, those I can usually handle. It's the smaller ones that somehow become disproportionately complicated.

• 1:05Elizabeth Day?

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• 1:49Elizabeth Day?

  That's ernestacom. Katherine Parkinson used to want to be an astronaut, but when she was cast as Puck in her grammar school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, aged 13, her life took a different turn. After studying classics at Oxford University, Parkinson attended the London Academy of Music. And dramatic art before being cast as Jen Barber in the Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd, for which she won her first BAFTA. She went on to star in the TV series Doc Martin and Humans, as well as appearing in movies such as The Boat That Rocked and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. On stage, she was nominated for an Olivier for Home, I'm Darling,

• 2:33Elizabeth Day?

  and wrote a critically acclaimed play called Sitting in 2018, based on her own experiences of sitting for a portrait painted by an aging artist. And as of last night, mere hours ago, I can officially say that Parkinson is a two-time BAFTA winner, after scooping the Best Comedy Actress Award for her turn as the neurotic Rachel in the BBC comedy Here We Go. But the role for which she has most recently become especially beloved is that of Lizzie Verrika, the romantic novelist married to bullying TV presenter James in Rivals on Disney+. The hit series adapted from the novels of Dame Jodie Cooper. The first season won an international Emmy and is a highly

• 3:17Elizabeth Day?

  entertaining 80s romp through the fictional county of Rottshire. The show is notable for its emphasis on the female gaze, especially when it comes to the sex scenes. "I'm just a normal 47-year-old woman who's breastfed two girls, and that doesn't mean I'm not able to represent a sexual being," Parkinson said last year. "For me, doing this job has been a glorious, fairly belated celebration." Katherine Parkinson, welcome to How to Fail.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 3:51Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so delighted you're here, and we're going to get on to Rivals, the second season, in a minute, but I just want to say first of all, congratulations. This is literally hours after you've won your BAFTA, you are here.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and a surprising win, I think, fair to say. I think everybody was surprised, most of all me. I am still a bit drunk. And I realised the last time I saw you, I was also drunk because it was at Gillie's memorial. I saw you across the church.

• 4:16Elizabeth Day?

  Oh my gosh, Gillie's memorial.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Wasn't that the most beautiful day?

• 4:20Elizabeth Day?

  It really was stunning. In Southwark Cathedral, the sun coming through those windows, the queen in attendance.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:28Elizabeth Day?

  And then everyone stayed and champagne was served endlessly.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  I don't think I've ever been stotious in a, is that a word?

• 4:37Elizabeth Day?

  Stotious, don't know, I made it up.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh, I love. I think it means drunk. I think I've heard my dad use that word for drunk.

• 4:43Elizabeth Day?

  Your dad's Northern Irish, isn't he?

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:45Elizabeth Day?

  It's another, we've gone totally off on a tangent already. I grew up in Northern Ireland.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  I remember reading that.

• 4:50Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Goodness me, well, I was in Belfast every single school holiday.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  I used to love the Ice Lollies, Hot Shots and Mr Frosties. Do you remember those?

• 5:02Elizabeth Day?

  I remember them very, very well.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Gosh.

• 5:06Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, let me get this back on track, but not before I've asked you all about Rivals, because I've been lucky enough to see the first three episodes of the new season. And of course, like everyone else in the world, loved the first season. This one's even better. It's so, so fantastic and so smart. And that's the thing that I often think people downplay because it's vastly entertaining and it's funny and it's sexy, but it's actually very, very smart what it does as well. And I think your character really epitomises that. What drew you to Lizzie Verriker in the first place?

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Well, I completely agree that I think it's such a smart, craftily written show. So just when you think people can kind of not dismiss it, but put it in the category of a lightweight sort of entertaining romp, you know, bonk buster. Rather like Gillie, the writing is actually far cleverer than, than you, you just can't sort of dismiss it. There are sort of really funny jokes. It's quite gently political, I think. And I think Laura Wade and Dominic Treadwell Collins, you know, if you know them, are just about the cleverest people in any room you're in. So I never had any doubt it was going to be. A show with depth.

• 6:18Elizabeth Day?

  And Laura and Dominic, as you say, but Laura particularly is so adept at writing about class, as Dain Giddy was. And there's something in the second season as well, where it really sort of unwraps all of that. And I wondered how much that appealed to you as someone who grew up Surbiton, Northern Irish dad, and then ended up at Oxford. Do you think you've got a particular interest in class and observing it?

• 6:49Speaker 00

  How interesting you ask me that. I've never been asked that before. And sometimes I sort of feel like I have to be careful because it's such a sort of hot potato, isn't it? Because of course, I don't, I don't want to ever suggest that I'm from a lower class background than I am, because I'm absolutely middle class. But the jump to sort of have never met anybody from even private school to suddenly living with three wonderful, hilarious boys that all have been to Eton. And that is quite a big difference.

• 7:23Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Grammar school and public school, so boarding school and grammar school. I mean, I hadn't even been away from home, really. So when I got to Oxford, I met these, you know, wonderful bohemian, public school educated girls who were very open about their sexuality and, you know, explored all sorts of different avenues. And it hadn't compromised their essential classiness. Whereas I felt that there was, my, my classiness was absolutely dependent on me being quite chaste.

• 7:51Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  I felt like I couldn't get away with being, not get away with, but I couldn't be sexually active particularly even, because I felt that I would quickly be seen as cheap. And I look back and I think that's quite, that's a shame. And clearly, it's something that I think has changed. I think, I think that women are, girls are, there was a lot of shame for me. I don't know if that's the Northern Irish.

• 8:23Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Thing, but it's certainly. Not something I felt was anything to do with my parents. It was it was something to do with how essentially different I felt in the company I was in at university and how I had kind of earned my place at the table by being quite, I was like a mascot sort of thing. But God forbid, I sleep with anyone.

• 8:47Elizabeth Day?

  That makes complete sense.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  I feel awful saying it because I don't want to say it with any judgment about the company I was in because they were some of the best people and the best times I had.

• 8:58Elizabeth Day?

  I don't think you're judging them. I think you're analysing yourself.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:03Elizabeth Day?

  This is how you perceived you might be judged rather than anyone making you feel like that.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 9:07Elizabeth Day?

  And just to bring it back to Rivals again, you know, I love the character of Lizzie and I love her affair with Fred Fred.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 9:15Elizabeth Day?

  And Fred Fred is that, played by Danny Dyer, previously of this parish.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:20Elizabeth Day?

  It stands in that he, his character and his wife are the kind of nouveau riche, and sort of looked down upon in so many ways. And yet here is this soul in Fred Fred that we gradually see unfurling.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 9:34Elizabeth Day?

  And we see this intimacy blooming between the two of you. And I just think it's played so beautifully.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 9:38Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm not sure I have a question. I just love watching it. I love watching the two of you.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I was speaking to the magnificent Felicity Blunt, who was saying, you know, this, that, that, that the, it's clever because in this series, I think the audience is almost invited to slightly judge Valerie ourselves and then shame on us at the end.

• 10:03Elizabeth Day?

  And Valerie is Fred Fred's wife.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:04Elizabeth Day?

  And Felicity, I should say, is exec producer on Rivals and a mutual friend.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Yes. And I think it's, you know, in Julie's books, those characters are sort of written with that sibilance, which I definitely had when I was growing up. So I did well to shake that. But I feel like there's a lot of compassion in the TV show for, you know, we're not, that it's telling a truth of snobbery in this country that I wonder what the Americans make of it. I wonder what the equivalent is in America. But there is an awful lot of snobbery in this country. And I suppose what I'm saying is, I did feel it at university.

• 10:50Elizabeth Day?

  Final question on Rivals for now, is it as fun as it looks? When the cameras...

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah.

• 11:00Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, because everyone I've met who is an actor on Rivals seems utterly delightful.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  I don't think I've ever been in a company where everybody makes me laugh so much. And that is literally all I care about.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  That's all I've ever cared about. So Danny Dyer, as you know, is hilarious. Then we've got Claire Rushbrook, David Tennant, all these people, Lisa McGillis, Emily Ateck.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  There isn't actually a person in that cast, Gary Lamont Hubert, that doesn't make me... Alex Hassel, Bella, they're all funny.

• 11:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  So I feel like it's...

• 11:45Speaker 00

  I think, you know, that basically is why it's so fun.

• 11:47Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. I said it was my final question on Rivals, I did lie, because we started off talking about seeing each other at Dame Jilly's memorial. And of course, there's a tremendous sadness that must have come with filming this series. Because she died so unexpectedly and suddenly. How did you as a cast and a crew handle that?

• 12:11Speaker 00

  It was such a shock. And I think, yeah, I know that's, I know, obviously, she was the age she was. But she was in such fine fettle, so it was very upsetting. And oddly, it sort of chimed slightly, as you'll see with things we were filming. So that sort of made it weirder as well.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  And yeah, she just wasn't the sort of person you expected to die. It was sort of... So I think it's still, you know, people like Dominic Treadwell Collins and Felicity Blunt are just... were extremely close to her. So you want to sort of respect that because their grief is sort of...

• 13:06Speaker 00

  More personal, but she was, she was very present, Julie. And she had that writerly ability to make you feel very regarded when she, when you were in her presence. So, yeah, she's, she's, she's very missed. And I think they're still, we're all still a bit shocked. Yeah.

• 13:26Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, I'm so sorry. This season is such a beautiful tribute to, to her, her spirit and her work.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:34Elizabeth Day?

  Let's get on to your failures.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:40Elizabeth Day?

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• 14:23Elizabeth Day?

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• 15:04Elizabeth Day?

  Your first failure is a failure to be organised, Katherine Parkinson. So what do you mean by organised? For you, what would a perfectly curated and organised life look like?

• 15:18Speaker 00

  So I was worried about offering this up as a failure because I thought I'm failing to have interesting failures because this is such a boring failure. And also, you know, I should say in many ways, I am organised. I think my head is quite organised, although people say that I jump around in conversation and it's a nightmare.

• 15:37Elizabeth Day?

  I haven't experienced that. You seem very organised. You were here on time.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:42Elizabeth Day?

  Incredibly eloquent.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have been known for lateness in the past. That's a sort of, there's an optimism, I think, with this organisation. So I sort of think, oh, we'll be fine, we'll be on time because there's a world where we could be. When I was a student, I would be like, okay, I'll stay up all night, I'll take some Pro+ and I'll read three Euripides plays in the original ancient Greek. No, you're not, you're not going to do that. So, you know, I remember a headmistress saying at my school, you know, the key to life is organisation. And I thought, I'm screwed, you know, because I, when I was a child, I couldn't colour and keep in the line. It's like, I cannot.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  I haven't sought out any kind of diagnosis, by the way, but there are just patterns of behaviour and very impulsive. I change my mind all the time. My agent has to be very patient with that. So there's a, there's a room in our house that my husband calls the chaos room, which is my, my little room. I feel like I know where everything is. But the reason I feel it's a failure in my life is because my, I had a couple of times during exams in my A levels and then my mods at university that were kind of the worst times of my life. And I could call it a meltdown, but a breakdown is probably a more, you know, a truer definition

• 17:11Speaker 00

  of it because it was pretty awful. And it was because I had not been organised. I was, you know, had all the right things going on in terms of liking the work and all the rest of it, but I just... I don't know, I just didn't pull myself together and it was all a bit of a disaster. The reason I qualify it is because I ended up being fine and my finals were great and everything was fine. So it's a qualified failure, but it was a failure emotionally because I lost it.

• 17:42Elizabeth Day?

  And when you say you lost it and it was dark, what did that look like?

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Um, well, I, I just, it honestly, it's almost like those periods of time were slightly blocked out. And, you know, I do remember, this is terrible, but I do remember falling asleep in one of my exams. And waking up and just seeing I had a green biro and just, and they were, you know, they, obviously I didn't pull off good marks in those mods. But it was fine in the end, but I think I was, it's part and parcel of what we were talking about earlier. I was in student digs for the first time, I was in a student house. I didn't have a lock on my door. I was so, such a bloody people pleaser.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  So whenever any of these boys came in the door, I wanted to be funny and charming and ready. So I really just couldn't focus. I can remember instead of a normal lamp, I had a red light. So I couldn't really see the words on the page. I would go to tutorials and the tutor would say, have you read the Xerox? And I didn't realise he meant a photocopy. I'd be like, yes, I love Xerox. I was just such a fraud for that period of my life. But I think with hindsight, so I don't know if this ties into disorganisation, but with hindsight, I was trying too hard to be this person to these new people that I had met and blaming it on the Ettonians. I was trying too hard to be everything to them.

• 19:13Elizabeth Day?

  Honestly, even Ettonians blame it on Ettonians. I think we're fine there.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  They were like the funniest, best people that I'd met and I really wanted them to like me and I knew they did and I wanted to keep that up. And so I didn't manage to have a split focus.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  When I was in my final year, I was living in college, in an all female college, um with lovely friend girlfriends walking me around the grounds like a sort of, I was in a sort of sanatorium and it and I I listened to the music I liked and, you know, sort of in smoked in my room and had a and and really fell in love with modern philosophy particularly and had a had a had a beautiful time in that final fourth year. But there have been, there were chaotic times where I, yeah, my A levels, I I wasn't myself, you know, and I I um, yeah, it was a dark time.

• 20:10Elizabeth Day?

  I'm sorry, I I had a similar thing with my A levels too, it was interesting. And I wonder,

• 20:18Elizabeth Day?

  this lack of organisation, the word that's coming up for me is a kind of fear. And I wonder if it's almost like you don't let yourself think, actually, I'm really great at this subject, I'm going to nail my exams.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Um, yeah.

• 20:30Elizabeth Day?

  Does that?

• 20:30Speaker 00

  That's that is very familiar to me. I think there's um, I really used to want to do, uh, well, I was um, listening to the amazing Chris Hoy, um, saying that, you know, it's important to sort of concentrate on the task at hand. I think sometimes in the past I was end gaming it and thinking, if I'm honest, I think I I really wanted to go to Oxford and it wasn't that the odds were stacked against me. I was academic, but I wasn't the most academic girl. Um, I wanted to go to Oxford because I wanted to be an actress and and that's the only kind of, I know that seems mad, but that was the route I saw.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  I thought if I go to Oxford, I can make that weird choice and it won't, whereas if I go anywhere else, I'll have, I have to do, do the, not to denigrate, all the jobs that I, you know, but I didn't think they were going to suit me maybe as much as um, act, uh, but you but you don't know, it's an instinct. And then it sort of seems, it seems like a sort of naive kind of, you know, I also wanted to be an astronaut.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  I'm a very silly person.

• 21:42Elizabeth Day?

  And your biggest disappointment is not being taps up by MI5. Me too, by the way, I'm so gutted.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  I was literally walking around with my shoulders like, come on, tap me, tap me. And you were, were you studying?

• 21:54Elizabeth Day?

  I did Russian, I didn't do Russian at university, but I have done Russian in the past. I'm like, surely, but I am very.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  What's going on?

• 22:00Elizabeth Day?

  The thing is, I am very indiscreet. I do want to tell people everything.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  I'm very indiscreet and I'm not sure I blend as much as, so yeah, I did actually do the MI5 exam.

• 22:10Elizabeth Day?

  Did you?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  And, you know, I didn't, I'm not in MI5, Elizabeth.

• 22:15Elizabeth Day?

  Well, that's what you would say.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  But my brothers are, my brothers think I'm in MI5.

• 22:20Elizabeth Day?

  Do they?

• 22:21Speaker 00

  No matter how many times I say, I am not in MI5, I'm quite, I'm an actress. Haven't you seen anything I'm in?

• 22:28Elizabeth Day?

  If you are though, will you tap me up? The two of us.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Why do you think I'm here?

• 22:35Speaker 00

  But we do that, we do that afterwards.

• 22:37Elizabeth Day?

  When we're not recording. Okay. Anyway, right, so disappointment, it's not an astronaut.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Not an astronaut.

• 22:43Elizabeth Day?

  Allegedly not a spy, but that is what she would say. The acting piece, I'm, so I do think that we are sometimes born with an instinct as to what we want to do. And clearly acting was your thing. How does your lack of organisation play into that? Is it actually helpful in certain ways?

• 23:04Speaker 00

  I think that with, you know, I kind of love that in with, with academia, you're just a number. And, and you do a, a paper. I remember going into exam schools when I was doing philosophy and you, you know, it's a joint school. So you'd have people that were doing maths and you had people that were doing PPE. And then you'd have the classicists and we'd all answer it differently, but it would all be kind of the right answer. But it's like an objective, you're not talking your way around anything. They don't know who you are or whatever. But I also really struggle with the slightly kind of black and white. You're, you're a 70% person and you're an 82% person.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  And I kind of love with acting, the subjectivity of it, you know, like some people will love your performance and other people won't. And I find that a safer, I find that a safer space to be. I think I, to be honest, with hindsight, and I really should have therapy, but with hindsight, I think that I.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Because therapy, I think, would gets clarity on these things quicker and better. But I think with hindsight, I struggled with the pressure I put on myself. Because I didn't have pressure from my parents. Once I got into grammar school, that was, that was job done, you know. But I put a lot of pressure on myself to, to get really high marks rather than kind of loving the subject. And, and, and it was then that I lost my way. When I loved a subject, when I was into the philosophy or had these brilliant tutors and got, got excited about it, it was fine. But I think if you're end gaming it, just to get a kind of mark out of 10, that's when I wasn't happy.

• 24:49Elizabeth Day?

  And that it sounds therefore that acting has been really good for that because you don't end game it. You love the process and if you win a BAFTA, brilliant.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  Everything's been easy since I sort of dared to become an actress. Like, because it's difficult because a lot of people want to be an actress. So I thought, am I just being unimaginative in my, you know, sort of notion I, I want to do this. But I, I, I have found everything much less stressful. And I haven't, you know, that if I have sort of stress dreams, they're still about exams. They're not about forgetting my lines. So I think that I felt like a fraud when I was, because, you know, not to bang on about my, but I do feel like I had a bit of a, because it was a long degree. And, you know, that, that life, I felt like I was pretending to be something I wasn't. This life, I don't.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Whereas you hear a lot of people say, I feel like I'm a fraud or whatever as an actor. I feel like, thank, thank God I, I dared to do it because I feel, I feel like I'm doing the thing that I'm, I am. Yeah.

• 25:54Elizabeth Day?

  Beautiful. And how ironic that you literally are pretending to be people you're not.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:01Elizabeth Day?

  And that is the purpose that enables you to live an authentic life.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And obviously working for MI5.

• 26:08Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, exactly, exactly. I am very convinced by your cover story.

• 26:15Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable, so you can live more of the life you want to

• 27:00Elizabeth Day?

  live. If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15 minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail. Let's get on to your second failure, because I'm aware, I want to give this the time and the acknowledgement that it deserves. And I'm very grateful to you for talking about it. I think it's probably the first time that you have really spoken about it. And so I want to acknowledge that and say I'm sorry for what you went through. And if at any point you want us to stop, we totally can. I'm also so aware that you haven't had therapy, which I find completely fascinating in and of itself, because so many people

• 27:39Elizabeth Day?

  who come on this podcast have. And I'm really intrigued in, given what happened. So your second failure is, how have you put it, failure to acknowledge trauma. And there's a specific incident, isn't there? We were in a town out of London, and I had, last minute, disorganised, booked my digs for, I think it was 12 quid an hour. It was the cheapest digs I could find, because I had this idea, you know, I wanted to prove I could be financially viable as an actress, because I-

• 28:12Speaker 00

  I I had to be and I didn't know then whether it was gonna work because I hadn't had any telly jobs and I've um you know. So I wanted to save some money from this theatre job, which was optimistic of me.

• 28:22Elizabeth Day?

  Um.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  Um booked the cheapest digs I could find, was walking home one night with a colleague from the theatre and um a guy who had um previous form of uh doing this um got into a bit of a disagreement with this um colleague of mine and I said, leave her alone and he knocked me out cold and broke my nose and everything else and but he was he was uh I think immediately uh arrested or certainly went to you know went to prison for ABH and all the rest of it. Anyway, the reason I so I was back on stage next week. Um I remember being in the hospital that night and hearing the um I think what what I find upsetting.

• 29:09Elizabeth Day?

  Oh.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  I think what I find upsetting about it most is that I I remember hearing the. Oh god, sorry.

• 29:19Elizabeth Day?

  No, don't apologize at all.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  I do remember hearing the nurse in the hospital say, oh, she's she's a nice girl, you know, as well, she's a nice girl. And the sense of shame I felt that um. That I'd there was there was a sense, I remember somebody saying uh to me, you know, um what were you doing to get? There was a sense that I had brought it on myself and it made me think of, you know, at the time I was still hanging around with my university friends. And they were saying, Parky, you you you walk from the station, we're gonna go and pick up so and so and so and so. You know, and I did sort of, there was a sense, I was, I did sort of think that I I felt like I was a sort of cheaper cheaper commodity when

• 30:06Speaker 00

  you know, I was just as vulnerable, you know.

• 30:08Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  So I think it's good with hindsight to acknowledge it and acknowledge the.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Legacy of something like that, because what I have found is that I'm really neurotic when it comes to my daughters about walking anywhere on their own. And, you know, I was chatting to somebody at the school gate who said, you know, sometimes it's things that have happened to us. So has anything happened to you? I was like, no, no, no. And then you, and then you think, God, yes, it has. I just sort of have this kind of, I think my generation.

• 30:41Elizabeth Day?

  Um.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Our generation. I think there was a sense of just getting, getting on with it. And I think that I want to be able to, I mean, my mother's generation, the, the things that they have tolerated and put up with. And I think there's a lot to be said for getting on with things. But I also think, um, although I haven't had therapy, the wisdom of therapy, I think, has bled into our culture in a really, a way I find quite helpful. I watched in lockdown Michaela Cole's show and I found that really, um, because it's about confronting your.

• 31:20Elizabeth Day?

  I may destroy you, isn't it? It's extraordinary.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I, and I think that made me, that, that helped me actually. And I, I sort of think, I, I need to acknowledge that I did have quite a serious assault that had uh repercussions that are basically, I'm not gonna be cross with myself for being a really neurotic mum.

• 31:43Elizabeth Day?

  Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for talking about that. And I'm so sorry, it's horrendous. There's one thing that I absolutely have to say to you, which is you have no cause to feel any degree of shame. You did nothing wrong. That is all on the perpetrator's shoulders. And I know that at some level you know that, but there's probably another level which doesn't, which hasn't taken it in. And I want you to know that beyond doubt, that you survived something.

• 32:18Elizabeth Day?

  So appalling, so out of the blue, so violent, so shocking, that it must have required such recalibration of how you felt about the world around you and its relative safety. It was a huge thing to go through. And you sped past the fact that he went to jail and you were in hospital. That's horrendous. But I think you're so right. Our generation, it's a very specific generation.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:47Elizabeth Day?

  We grew up analog, we transitioned to digital. We were carrying a lot of shame.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, shame.

• 32:55Elizabeth Day?

  Our mothers fought an amazing battle, but there was still a legacy of shame as a young woman. And we were given lots of conflicting messages. And I remember at that time, there were a lot of news stories about women who quote unquote brought on themselves or wore the wrong thing.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:11Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm so happy that we are unpacking that as a culture. But you were a product of that. And I also don't want you to beat yourself up about internalizing it. But I want to just absolve you of any remnant of that.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Thank you. And that is so true. There were a lot of stories back then about that. And I think I probably didn't present as, you know, I wore liquid eyeliner and short skirts and shamefully smoked and all the rest of it. But I know how vulnerable I was. And I suppose it did just, because I, you know, it ties into my disorganization as well because I've got a terrible sense of direction. So part of it was because I didn't know how to get back. But anyway, I just think that I'm giving myself, now I'm 48, just a bit more license

• 34:06Speaker 00

  to realize that your experience informs who you are. And like you say, your recalibration in a world where I used to just feel so confident and sure, unfortunately, a literal smack in the face makes you, it changes you. And so I think it's, but you know, I would also say, I remember thinking, in the sort of 48 hours after that, I experienced more kindness from.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  But you know, I had a terribly messed up face for a while and I did feel a judgment walking around, you know, I carried on, I put an eye patch on and was on stage in a different city the next week. There was also an expectation back then, there was no, no counselling, there was no sense that the theatre, you know, might have been, you know, not, they weren't responsible, of course they weren't, but there was no real pastoral care, was it was a, it was, it was a bit embarrassing, I think, for people to see. And that I felt a judgment with this messed, messed up face that I, you know, from people that didn't know me, that I was a hard person, that lived a hard

• 35:25Speaker 00

  life, and that couldn't have been further from the truth. So I, I think, just, you know, I mean, just talking about it is good, actually.

• 35:32Elizabeth Day?

  I'm very honoured that you have. And you've mentioned your self-stated neurosis when it comes to being the mother of your daughters. How do you feel in the world around you? Did you have a period of extreme sort of vulnerability and not trusting the surroundings?

• 35:49Speaker 00

  I mean, I didn't actually stop. You can't stop, can you? I, I've always, you know, travelled a lot and been on my own and, and, you know, being a theatre actress,

• 36:01Speaker 00

  been, been travelling late, late at night. So none of, none of that stopped. I suppose I was a little bit more, I am more, I, I have been more anxious in situations since I've gone straight to a very anxious place, which, when I wouldn't have done that previously. But I am aware that I am, as my children are getting older, I am not, I don't seem to be moving on to the stage I'm supposed to be doing.

• 36:31Elizabeth Day?

  Right.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  You know, when I was ten, I was getting three buses or whatever to the

• 36:35Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  school. I, I don't seem to be, so, you know, and when I say I haven't had therapy, it doesn't mean I'm not going to, I just haven't yet. So maybe I Maybe that's the sort of thing, when you can see it's manifesting in a way that probably is damaging to people you love, then you think, maybe I need to do something to, to sort of,

• 36:57Speaker 00

  yeah.

• 36:57Elizabeth Day?

  I offer this not because there's any equivalence, because what you went through was so extreme. I was mugged on the street in my twenties by four young men and one of them like hit me round the face, but it wasn't actually painful and it didn't require anything approaching.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  You're doing what I do.

• 37:13Elizabeth Day?

  No, but I'm like, I don't want you to, but I, that, that sense of vulnerability and neurosis, and I don't have children, but I'm very neurotic about my cat. So I do sometimes think, gosh, in a way, it's quite lucky that I don't have children because I'm not sure I could cope with the level of anxiety about sending them out into the world. I mean, it's not an irrational thing. I totally get it. And I remember for weeks after that mugging, when I would walk to the, it happened on my streets. And when I walked to the tube each morning, I would have my bunch of keys. Do you remember we used to be taught that?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:45Elizabeth Day?

  Like you can use your keys as a weapon. I mean, as if. And I, I temporarily took up smoking because I was like, if I smoke a lit cigarette, then I can just stab it in their eye. And I, it's so awful that we are made to feel that that is how we need to show up in the world because stuff like this happens.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think even the people, you know, even speaking to my husband not that long ago, you know, when awful things happen in the media as they have done in recent years, but things that I can't, I think a lot of us can't stop thinking about, you know. And I, I really, it is amazing subjective experience because you can be so close to somebody that, like I am with my husband, but they, I still had to say to him, no, no, no, darling, this is what mo- most women are thinking this when they walk home. Sorry, sorry if you didn't assume that. No, no, no, we're all like looking behind us and, and getting our keys out, you know, in London or, or otherwise. And yeah, I think that's, I, I, I think a lot about things that have happened in recent years. So I don't know, I don't know. It's

• 38:48Speaker 00

  neurosis, but maybe, like you say, it's, it's, it's based on experience and, and the world. So I don't know whether I'm just gonna carry on not letting them do anything.

• 39:00Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, I, I had.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  That's fine.

• 39:02Elizabeth Day?

  It's totally fine.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:04Elizabeth Day?

  It's very Northern Irish. Let's just bury the trauma.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  It is very, it is very Northern Irish.

• 39:10Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. But we will march every summer.

• 39:14Elizabeth Day?

  I had almost exactly the same conversation with my husband.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 39:19Elizabeth Day?

  And it was fascinating to me for those reasons. He's such an amazing man. He's such an extraordinary feminist. But he was like, oh my gosh, that's what women think all the time. Or if they're getting a taxi on their own and the driver is, seems a bit off or a bit aggressive. Oh, that's what you're thinking. I was like, yes.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like that, that Nagel essay, one of the few things I remember from my degree that I seem to be talking about a lot with you today.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  Is there was an essay of what's it like to be a bat and how it's not what's it like to be a bat, but what's it like for a bat to be a bat? And I always think, you know, you can empathise, but you don't know until you're actually this, that person with that person's vulnerabilities and experiences.

• 40:04Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, I think it's good. A failure to acknowledge trauma. And I've kind of unpicked it. I've acknowledged it with you today. So I've turned a failure into a non-failure.

• 40:18Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you for choosing to talk about it. And can I ask why you chose to talk about it?

• 40:24Speaker 00

  It's a privilege really to acknowledge trauma. And I think basically by acknowledging what happened to me, I'm giving myself permission to carry on being a really controlling mother.

• 40:35Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, fine.

• 40:38Elizabeth Day?

  But you're also modelling for your daughters not to carry the shame. And I'm, I'm actually quite struck by the fact that there's, there was no anger in your telling of that episode in your life. There was no anger that I could discern directed at the perpetrator. And again, that's so interesting because in one way it's enlightened and lovely. And in another way, there's so much fuel and power that comes from anger. And so many men, because patriarchy, have been taught that anger is their birthright, but we're much less used to expressing it.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  I remember being shocked at how little instinct I had to fight back, actually. And that was a bit of a shock. I was like, oh, okay. You know, hypothetically, with this sort of youthful swagger, I would think, you know, if that ever happened to me, I'd, you know. Give as good as I got or whatever and no, not, not an instinct in me to, and that was sort of not disappointing, but quite kind of a bit of a realisation of the, you know, the physical difference that we're, we're, you know, that we have to acknowledge and know. Um, yeah.

• 41:48Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you, Catherine.

• 41:53Elizabeth Day?

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• 42:35Elizabeth Day?

  out, I could have saved myself a lot of time, stress, and some rogue design choices. If you're ready to hear the

• 42:43Elizabeth Day?

  of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.co.uk/fail to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at Shopify.co.uk/fail. Your final failure, there is no easy seamless link here, but it is your failure to play the oboe.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:03Elizabeth Day?

  Okay?

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. My mum loves the sound of the oboe, so, but when I was younger, I had really protruding front teeth. I mean, I had to have the Victorian head brace, the leather head brace and

• 43:17Elizabeth Day?

  Leather?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  They, they wanted me to wear it at school, I was like, no way, but I wore it at night. It was like a sort of harness.

• 43:23Elizabeth Day?

  Like a gimp, like a gimp mask.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  I wore a gimp mask, um, at night only. And, I must say, what's like a gimp mask? And, and the railway tracks and the plate and everything else. Now, it's fine.

• 43:36Elizabeth Day?

  Perfect smile.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  NHS orthodontist, thank you very much, Dr, not Dr, Mr Neville Upson of Kingston. Anyway, so I had a really sticky outy teeth. And why this didn't occur to my mum as a potential problem in learning the oboe, where you have to put your lips over when to get the read. So I used to go to these lessons and I would spend a whole hour with the really lovely teacher just saying, we just can't even get you in the right mouth position with the read.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Anyway, I did, I could play Joan, you know, the Miss Marvel theme tune, the Joan Hickson one, I played that once in a music thing at school and really thought, nailed it and got a very low mark. Yeah, the

• 44:25Speaker 00

  So I don't think it was a success, but the rea-, I remember loving going to the lessons because my, I'm, I'm lucky to have a very, very close relationship with my mum. And we used to go to a chocolate shop that made like those truffle, white truffle chocolates with a sort of mockery inside and it was sort of quality time with my mum. So I didn't really let on how little progress I was making because I enjoyed that time so much, but yeah, I don't play the oboe very well.

• 45:03Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think you learnt anything by being bad at it? Or not as good as you hoped?

• 45:09Speaker 00

  Do you know, my mum has always said to me, you're not afraid to fail, which is kind of, I was like, what do you mean?

• 45:17Speaker 00

  I don't know if I like that, but I feel like it's for the purposes of this podcast. It's like, I thought, yeah, no, I don't mind not being, on, once I got out of the academic world.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  I don't mind being bad at things.

• 45:34Elizabeth Day?

  Do you actually find that there's a sort of creativity in in being bad or or appearing comic and stupid, not that you that I'm saying that, but there's a clownishness?

• 45:45Speaker 00

  I I think that you have to be prepared to fail as an actor and and the ones that aren't going to necessarily do different performances are maybe sometimes ones that are a bit too controlling, that are kind of, I mean, I think it's probably useful to watch a monitor sometimes, but you don't want to be too aware, you want to just sort of be free, and that's the beauty of it, and that's when you're in flow with it, like when you're, why I love working with Danny so much is, you know, he is very instinctive and just turns up and is is going to lock on with with you and be in flow, and that's when you feel like you're living this different life briefly, like it actually feels like

• 46:28Speaker 00

  you're living a somebody else's life with somebody, you know, and I think you can only do that if you're not afraid to fail.

• 46:35Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Do you think you're happy?

• 46:39Speaker 00

  I do think I'm happy. That's a question I actually don't think I've ever been asked. I know I'm happy, actually, yeah, but I think it's taken, there's been, I think I have, I think I am a happy, of a happy disposition, but I do think that it's taken to this, it's taken, I think getting to this age has

• 47:08Speaker 00

  brought an acceptance of myself, which you hear a lot of people say, but I think, you know, I I would dare to say I I like who I am now, which I don't think I'd have said before.

• 47:25Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I love hearing that, and I think it's the perfect place to end, really. Does Lizzie get her happiness, do we know, in Rivals? What can you tell us?

• 47:37Speaker 00

  Does Lizzie get her happy ending?

• 47:39Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, I mean.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  I mean,

• 47:43Speaker 00

  it's complicated.

• 47:44Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, okay. We'll leave it at that. But Catherine Parkinson, you are such a wonderful talent on screen and on stage. And it has been a real delight to discover the warmth and the loveliness in person. Thank you so much for coming on How to Fail.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  I have loved talking to you. Thank you very much for having me.

• 48:07Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you so much for listening and watching. This episode has been brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.