NAOMI ACKIE: Why We Need to Celebrate Our Successes | GREAT MOMENTS

From Blink Twice to her portrayal of Whitney Houston in the 2023 biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Naomi Ackie has built an award-winning career on her ability to truly embody the characters she plays. But away from the screen, Naomi is a perfectionist who has been incredibly hard on herself. In this Great Moment, she reflects on how playing other people has helped her find herself, and why she’s finally learning to celebrate her own successes. Listen to the full episode HERE https://open.spotify.com/episode/6WGSwxLCnmUpeX5MJfGBVB?si=NqsjLTllQlG_2FuKjwcz-g! If you enjoyed the show, you can also follow us: Instagram-@greatcompanypodcast https://www.instagram.com/greatcompanypodcast/# TikTok -@greatcompanypodcast https://open.acast.com/networks/611e511b4ec6dc00134bced2/shows/65d737dfdc02e00016c413b2/episodes/www.tiktok.com/@greatcompanypodcast And if you've got thoughts, questions and comments, you can email us at: [email protected] THE CREDITS Assistant Producer: Issy Weeks-Hankins Video: Josh Bennett Social Media: Laura Coughlan Snr Producer: Helen Burke Exec Producers: Ewan Newbigging-Lister Great Company is an original podcast from JamPot Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

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• 2:38Jamie Laing?

  Hello, everyone. I'm Jamie Lang and this is Great Moments.

• 2:44Jamie Laing?

  Hey, everyone. I hope you're well and welcome back to Great Moments. Now, if you're new here, this is the place where I'm going to bring you a standout moment from one of my favorite great comedy conversations. These are the moments that have stayed with me long after the recording, and I hope you can take something away from them. Now, if today's conversation leaves you wanting more, you can find the link to the full episode in the show notes. So sit back, settle in, and here it is.

• 3:08Jamie Laing?

  Are you still big into fantasy books?

• 3:11Speaker 05

  I'm getting back into it.

• 3:12Jamie Laing?

  Really?

• 3:13Speaker 05

  I'm trying to force myself to read how I used to read because I stopped reading for a while.

• 3:18Jamie Laing?

  You used to read a book a week.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I was just absorbing so much, like amazing stories. And then social media came into my life and that kind of F'd it. The joy of a book, like the joy I would get from reading a good book. I still, I don't even, it's a very separate joy to watching a good film. It's a very different feeling.

• 3:42Jamie Laing?

  Oh, it's so, it's so personal. Like, it's such a personal journey you go on. And I was never a big reader. And then actually, I sort of challenged myself last year, start reading, so now I read more books. And what I didn't realize, right, about books?

• 3:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:56Jamie Laing?

  This is maybe TMI.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:57Jamie Laing?

  Like, when you watch a movie and there's like a romantic, like an erotic scene in the movie. You just, you just, you watch it.

• 4:03Speaker 05

  You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:04Jamie Laing?

  In a book?

• 4:05Speaker 05

  Crazy.

• 4:08Jamie Laing?

  Holy shit.

• 4:11Speaker 05

  Have you heard of Akata?

• 4:15Speaker 05

  The sexy fairy books.

• 4:16Jamie Laing?

  No, what is this?

• 4:17Speaker 05

  Oh, mate.

• 4:18Jamie Laing?

  What's Akata? Do you know these, mate?

• 4:20Speaker 05

  A Court of, what's she doing? A Court of Thorns and Roses.

• 4:24Jamie Laing?

  Okay.

• 4:25Speaker 05

  It's a series of books. And, you know, these all start the same. She's just a girl, right?

• 4:31Jamie Laing?

  That, that looks, oh, okay. Innocent, sweet girl, right?

• 4:33Speaker 05

  She's an innocent, sweet girl. She just knows how to use a bow and arrow out of nowhere.

• 4:38Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 05

  She gets kidnapped.

• 4:39Jamie Laing?

  Wow.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  Hot guy kidnaps her. You're going to stay in my house.

• 4:43Jamie Laing?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:43Speaker 05

  But now I love you. Now we're going to have sex.

• 4:47Jamie Laing?

  No. This is all in the book?

• 4:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is in the book. And now you've got magic powers too. And now you've got to save the whole world. That's essentially what these books are.

• 4:58Jamie Laing?

  It's unbelievable.

• 4:58Speaker 05

  But there is a lot of a slow burn, beautiful passages of really intimate things.

• 5:07Jamie Laing?

  Do you know what? This is what I've worked out. This is what I've worked out, right?

• 5:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:11Jamie Laing?

  Okay, I sort of, let's go TMI, whatever.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:15Jamie Laing?

  What I realized, like with, with sex and things like that, right? I always think like, just get in there, get it on, see it. Like, let's go, let's go. Now I've read erotic fiction a little bit.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:26Jamie Laing?

  Oh, no.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  No, you've got to take your time.

• 5:28Jamie Laing?

  It's a lot slower. Take your time.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Weeks.

• 5:33Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Start on Monday.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  It's just start on Monday.

• 5:36Jamie Laing?

  You may get it Sunday.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:38Jamie Laing?

  There we go.

• 5:39Speaker 05

  It's a look. It's, it's the heavy breathing. It's the storyline. It's the storyline. It's the stakes, okay? It's the location.

• 5:50Speaker 05

  This is too much.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  I tell you, for Akata, I suggested it to my agents who then all read it. They were like, oh, my God, I love it. Like, I think it's just done something, same, I guess, as heated rivalry. Like, it's just awoken something in women.

• 6:05Jamie Laing?

  That's, that's awoken something in my mom.

• 6:07Speaker 05

  Oh, no way.

• 6:08Jamie Laing?

  Who's 71 and she's like, she can't get enough heated rivalry.

• 6:13Speaker 05

  I need to watch it.

• 6:14Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, she's like, I don't know what my mom is doing in her house.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  You don't need to worry about that.

• 6:20Jamie Laing?

  I don't think about that.

• 6:24Jamie Laing?

  Just got Instagram back?

• 6:26Speaker 05

  Well, I've had it. I've, I've always had it, but then I took it off my phone so that I wouldn't be sad.

• 6:33Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's actually, that's actually the best description.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  It makes me sad. But then I put it back on because work.

• 6:43Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  And also like trying to figure out how to like be, I don't know, because I'm just an actor.

• 6:50Jamie Laing?

  Hmm.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  So it's just like, what, what kind of, I feel like the work does the thing. But now we're in a space where the work doesn't just do the thing. I'm old fashioned. I didn't realize how old fashioned I was in terms of my approach to the work until like maybe the last five years, probably from like when I did Whitney. I was like, I don't want this. I don't want the, I don't want to conjure up this like excitement about myself. I want to conjure up excitement about the story. But that's just not the reality of the, the world we live in. So it's kind of, and if I don't do it or don't try to do it. I, I don't know. You, you can face situations where you're not,

• 7:34Speaker 05

  you're missing out on opportunities potentially from not playing the game.

• 7:38Jamie Laing?

  That is really interesting because what you're kind of saying there is movies are these kind of beautiful things that we love. And as a consumer, it's like you get to go to the cinema, but you, we also forget it's a business. And you kind of forget how much money goes into these things and how people, and the way people see it is through marketing. And so what you're saying is that you kind of just want to act.

• 8:01Speaker 05

  I just want to act.

• 8:02Jamie Laing?

  You just want to act.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  I just, that's all I want to do.

• 8:04Jamie Laing?

  You don't want to have to be this marketing platform as well.

• 8:06Speaker 05

  I don't, don't. And it's, it feels like, then it's like you're selling a personality look. The thing is, it's like I'm hired to do a job where I play a character. That's awesome. But then it feels like not being hired and actually paying because when you do promotion for a job, you're paying your publicist to put you out there. So I'm paying to play another character because that's not me. Do you know what I mean?

• 8:30Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, I never thought of it that way.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  And I'm just like, what's, what's this about?

• 8:33Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  It's expensive.

• 8:35Jamie Laing?

  It's expensive.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  I don't, I shouldn't say that, but like it is. It's expensive and it also like, I always get this thing. I'm better at it now, but like going to an event or a red carpet and you put on all the clothes and the, and the makeup and stuff and like, all the people and the adrenaline is awesome in the moment. But then you always go back home and then you're just you again. And then you're like, what was that? And it's not real, but it is real. But it was real for a second.

• 9:06Jamie Laing?

  Does it, does it, are you introverted or extroverted?

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Introverted.

• 9:09Jamie Laing?

  You're introverted?

• 9:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:10Jamie Laing?

  Okay.

• 9:10Speaker 05

  Deeply. It's a problem. I've got to reduce it at some point in my life.

• 9:17Jamie Laing?

  So going to those red carpets and do those awards, that's.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  Mate.

• 9:21Jamie Laing?

  That's a tricky one.

• 9:22Speaker 05

  My boyfriend, like the amount of times I've been in the car being like, I can't do it. I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go. I'm sweating from my pits. I'm like, I'm just, it, it, it stirs something in me that is so uncomfortable with being looked at. I get this thing where I try and, I try ahead of going to a space where there's a lot of people, where there's a lot of variables, planning out what I'm gonna say to everyone. Just in case I run out of conversation. And I, if there's too many people, then there's too many things to try and control. I'm a control freak. But it's, it's about anxiety, really.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  And so I, he was asking me on the way, cause I was like, I'm just feeling that like rush of adrenaline. I'm getting shivery and like, I had to do a lot of deep breathing and stuff to calm down before entering that space. And he was like, well, it's weird because then you're not like that on set. And I was like, yeah, because I know what's expected of me. I know when I step on a set, you know, it's six o'clock in the morning. I sit in the chair, I get my makeup done, I get, put my costume on. Then I sit around in a trailer, then they go, right, nay. Go and do the lines thing, do the acting thing you do. I do the thing. And then I go back and it's, it's very simple, whereas like people outside of work are more complicated.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  And there's more things to read and there's more subtext and I, I just don't.

• 10:53Jamie Laing?

  But also in that situation where you're sitting in a trailer and you're doing that, you're fully prepared.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  And. Yes, that's actually a good point.

• 11:00Jamie Laing?

  And, and you're a perfectionist, right? So you go into your, whenever you go onto a movie set.

• 11:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:04Jamie Laing?

  You know exactly who you're playing, you know the lines, you know everything about it. So there's no surprises for you.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  No surprises. And I cannot stand surprises. It's, I, I read the last page of books.

• 11:17Jamie Laing?

  Get out of here.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  I'm not joking you.

• 11:20Jamie Laing?

  Why?

• 11:21Speaker 05

  I love a spoiler. Oh, I love a spoiler. I like, I love.

• 11:24Jamie Laing?

  So you would read the last page of a book when you go to a book?

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:28Jamie Laing?

  That's madness.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  Just to know where it goes. Cause I quite like, I don't mind knowing the end, cause I quite like how it gets to the end.

• 11:35Jamie Laing?

  Okay.

• 11:37Jamie Laing?

  That's kind of, but, but it, that's kind of, um, it's kind of upsetting.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  I know, I know.

• 11:43Jamie Laing?

  It's kind of upsetting.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  I know, because I just can't take, like, every time I watch a TV show or something and something goes wrong, it causes my body. I, I'm like, I can't, even if I know it's not real, I just can't take it. It just, the tension is too much, so I need to skip it. Or I, I need to know what happens.

• 12:04Jamie Laing?

  But for, if we were gonna get deep for a second. What do you think the fact that you don't like surprises, that you want to know the ending, that you want to read the last page of the book? Where, where do you think that comes from?

• 12:13Speaker 05

  It's a deep fear. No, it's true. It's a deep fear of the unknown. You know, I, even as an example, I decided I wanted to be an actress at age 11. I was like, this is the thing I'm gonna do. I remember like trying to strategize at 11 to like 17, trying to figure out how I was gonna do it. I, I like to have things in place because of security. And I think ultimately, growing up, it wasn't, I love my family and they're amazing, but it wasn't necessarily, it, I didn't feel secure all the time in that space. Oh, the big personalities, conflicts, you know, that I, I was the quiet one. I was the youngest.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  I was the kind of quiet, um, I don't wanna say good child, because we were both good children. I have an older sister.

• 13:03Jamie Laing?

  She was more dominant?

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And she's seven years older than me and there was things going on in her life and in my parents' lives. And they were healing through their stuff and it, it wasn't neat. And I, I really don't blame them for that, but as a child, I watched a lot of those things happen in real time. And.

• 13:22Jamie Laing?

  Can I ask what was going on?

• 13:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, a lot. I think my, my mum and dad were like deeply in love. Deeply. My mum passed when I was 22, but they were deeply in love, but also growing pains and also just healing from their own stuff. Um, and, and the same with my sister and the same with me in a way. It just happened later on in life. And I, I think it caused for a lot of attention to be, um, aimed at each other because they were all older. And for me, I just went very quiet. And the lesson I learned was like, be small, be good. Um, and I just started to hyper-focus on this acting thing.

• 14:06Speaker 05

  That obviously has, has paid off, but that thing of like find security, find safe spots means that when I don't know what, what's gonna go on, there was actually too many things available. This is, is too dangerous to think, oh my gosh, the whole world is open to you, have so many options. I'm just like a pick one and stick at it for a very, very long time. But funnily enough, when I'm acting, I don't actually prep a lot.

• 14:33Jamie Laing?

  Do you not?

• 14:34Speaker 05

  I'm a winger.

• 14:35Jamie Laing?

  Cause you're that good.

• 14:39Jamie Laing?

  Really?

• 14:40Speaker 05

  The realisation came of like, I was scared, but I did it anyway. And like, a lot of my life, I have been scared. I'm a fearful person by nature. I don't know why. I think it's, I, I was starting to think about, there's this word epigenetics or something. Cause like the, the, how past trauma down, down the line.

• 15:02Jamie Laing?

  Has affected you, yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  It's just in my body. And I've always attributed that fear to being, the feeling of fear, to being weak, to being vulnerable in my life and being like, God, I'm just always so scared. I'm always so scared. I'm so sick of that. And like, why can't I be brave? Why can't I be brave? And then the realisation came of like, yeah, but I do things anyway. Like, I'm terrified of crowds. I, I work in a space that's usually housing at least 300 people. Like, I'm terrified of people. I've managed to be in a really healthy relationship. I like, and, and then suddenly I was like, yeah, I'm scared, but I'm doing things anyway. I'm fucking brave. I'm the bravest person I know. I'm really fucking brave.

• 15:48Speaker 05

  And it hasn't stopped the fear. I'm still a fearful person, but there's an appreciation that also I do things anyway.

• 15:56Jamie Laing?

  Wow.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  And that felt really like a solid thing to me. Like, I, I, I saw this, um, quite recently that was like, if you're, if you're saying that you're self-aware, but you're only labelling the negative things, you, you're branding yourself with like just all the things that you don't like about yourself. And it's so important to start finding out the things that make you, um, not a good person, cause good is such a blah, blah word, like a, a fleshed out human being. I spent a lot of time being like, right, I've got to fix myself, you know, what's the wrong things and tick them off the list. And it's like, no, but what are the good things?

• 16:32Jamie Laing?

  What are the good things? Focus on the good things.

• 16:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:34Jamie Laing?

  That is such a good point, cause I think we do that the whole time. We're so hard on ourselves.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  Hard, mate.

• 16:38Jamie Laing?

  And we don't look at the stuff we've actually done and completed and achieved. We think, well, we haven't achieved that. We always look up.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:45Jamie Laing?

  Rather than we look at like what we're doing here, we'll look behind us, right? And see what we've done. That is, and also I think you're so right where, you know, you're, you're, you've been so afraid, but actually you're, you're doing all the things that you're afraid of. Cause you're so focusing on what you're afraid of. You're forgetting that you're actually

• 17:01Speaker 05

  Doing it.

• 17:01Jamie Laing?

  Doing the stuff that you're afraid of.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. And it's all like, and then I go, oh bloody hell, what else could I do?

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

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