Series Two, Episode Five - Rosa Hesmondhalgh
Read Rosa’s blog, Madame Ovary, here: https://madameovary.blog/ Below is a list of cancer support organisations mentioned in the interview:
CLIC Sargent website: https://beta.clicsargent.org.uk/
CLIC Sargent financial support: https://beta.clicsargent.org.uk/what-we-do/financial-support/ Actors’ Benevolent Fund: https://www.actorsbenevolentfund.co.uk/
Macmillan Cancer Support: https://www.macmillan.org.uk/information-and-support
UCLH Cancer Services: https://www.uclh.nhs.uk/OurServices/ServiceA-Z/Cancer/Pages/Home.aspx
Interview
ROSA: I was actually born in Oxford and lived there for the first primary school years of my life. Then we moved up to Leeds when I was about eleven and that’s when I started doing AmDram and stuff like that, and school plays, and gained a lot of confidence in that way. And I’d always had my auntie who was in the ‘industry’, if you will. She played Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street for most of my young life, so I could always see her on TV and I just thought she was the coolest person ever and everyone always recognised her, and when you’re a child you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool!’ And so I really heard a lot from her about what being an actors like, and drama school as an alternative to university. At the time drama school was a lot more expensive, so I was thinking it was kind of a dream, but when it came round to it and the cuts were made and university became more expensive, Julie, my auntie, was like, ‘Oh, you should totally audition and try out for LAMDA,’ which is where she went. And so it took me a couple of goes, but I got into LAMDA. I was 19 and yeah, it all kicked off from there really, doing proper, “proper acting”.
Laughter
EMILY: What was your experience like at LAMDA?
ROSA: I had a really good time. It was the first time I felt like I’d really found my people, my ‘tribe’, y’know, really like-minded people, not just who liked acting, but who also liked the same weird TV programmes or odd books, or even, y’know, just liked reading! And I just felt really allowed to be myself and be a bit weird, and I just relaxed into the small intimate group of 30 that there was in our year. Which was lovely.
EMILY: You write a lot of poetry
ROSA: Yes.
EMILY: Had you always done that? Did you start writing through drama school time or were you doing it at school as well?
ROSA: Yeah, I’d been writing poetry in my bedroom about the various boys in secondary school who didn’t fancy me.
Laughter
ROSA: That had been a very private but well-practiced hobby for many years. And then I did a couple of poetry readings at the Ilkley Literature Festival - in fact I elbowed my way into a competition that was meant to be for people who applied for the competition, and I like asked them, ‘Can I read my poems [to] like break up the acts by reading some poetry?’, and they said yes. So I’d done a bit of that and it was only when I got to drama school when I realised I could write about a whole plethora of cool things and that people were doing the same, which I found really exciting!
EMILY: How did you find the experience of final year of drama school and then transitioning into the industry?
ROSA: I found the final year of drama school really tough. I had a great time and I did some fantastic plays and was really lucky with being cast in stuff as characters that I really cared about and identified with. But I found that the agents weren’t emailing and I was kind of expecting something and when that didn’t come I felt really, as a lot of people do, like, ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong with me?’ And then finally towards the end of the year when I did sign with my wonderful agent, I started to feel a bit better, but still didn’t feel safe. I was like, well this is only the first centimetre in what miles and miles and miles of my career is meant to be, and I didn’t really know what my career was going to be. Which I liked, but was also terrified of.
And then a few weeks into the summer holidays I got called in for an audition at the West Yorkshire Playhouse for a play at Hull Truck that Christmas. It was A Christmas Carol, and I got the job with Amy Leach who is the associate director at WYP - now Leeds Playhouse actually - and she was amazing. I’m so happy she took that kind of punt on me, because automatically I was like, no matter what happens afterwards, I’ve got this job coming up. And that gave me a lot of, kind of ... zen.
LAURA: And what was your experience on that job? Did you like Hull?
ROSA: I loved Hull!
LAURA: Did you?
ROSA: It was right at the end of its City of Culture year and it had so much going on, and it was cheap and it was friendly and it was really cold and I loved it. And that job was the perfect first
job to have. It was a really well-known, well-loved story, so we didn’t have to worry about putting
bums on seats and we could really focus on creating a really exciting new version of this classic
Dickens tale. And I worked with eight of the most - seven actually - most wonderful, kind actors
who had been working for ages and in really amazing stuff. Just completely took me under their
wing. And the director, Amy - John, who did the music - everyone who worked on the show just
made me very like, ‘Oh, this is where I’m meant to be, I’m not an imposter.’
EMILY: It’s interesting reflecting on - cos graduation was only a year ago for us, we all graduated a year ago, and as much as a year can feel like quite a defining and testing thing, it’s interesting talking to you about it because none of us could begin to think about what then happened after that job.
ROSA: (Laughs) Yeah.
EMILY: What the next six months were gonna be.
ROSA: It’s been a weird old year, yeah.
EMILY: Yeah ...! Do you wanna talk a little bit about what happened around Christmas?
ROSA: Yeah. So, I’d noticed, during A Christmas Carol, actually, you’d have these old-fashioned kind of - you’d been tied into these costumes that were made to measure at the beginning of rehearsals by the designer, and I noticed in the last couple of weeks of the show, coming up to the end of the run, that I was not like being able to be tied into these dresses anymore. And obviously it was Christmas, and I’d been going to the pub after every show and eating a lot on the run, like Christmas food. So I was like, oh, I’ve put on some weight, I’ll just lose it in the new year, no big deal. So I kicked off the new year with an exercise plan, and I was doing this like bullshit intermittent fasting thing that my flat mate, who knows quite a lot about nutrition, was like, ‘If you just wait to eat till after midday and then you eat your breakfast, your metabolism kicks in better’... or some bullshit. Obviously I didn’t research anything.
Laughter
ROSA: Load of nonsense! But I was like, ‘Okay cool, brilliant, brilliant, I just need to lose this half a stone that I’ve piled on.’ Especially round the belly, it was quite funny to look at. So I then started to get, on top of that, bloated, and I put that down to this fasting, that that had messed up my metabolism so I was just full of air, or y’know, full of not eating food. So I was like, ‘Oh god, what have I done?’ So I went back to normal and whenever I’d eat a meal this bloating would just come and not leave. Like, you know, you get a bit bloated after food and you wake up in the morning and it’s gone, you’ve got a flat belly again. And that just wasn’t happening. So I was like, ‘Awwww, what is it? Am I allergic to gluten?! PLEASE NO!’
Laughter
EMILY: It’s interesting reflecting on - cos graduation was only a year ago for us, we all graduated a year ago, and as much as a year can feel like quite a defining and testing thing, it’s interesting talking to you about it because none of us could begin to think about what then happened after that job.
ROSA: (Laughs) Yeah.
EMILY: What the next six months were gonna be.
ROSA: It’s been a weird old year, yeah.
EMILY: Yeah ...! Do you wanna talk a little bit about what happened around Christmas?
ROSA: Yeah. So, I’d noticed, during A Christmas Carol, actually, you’d have these old-fashioned kind of - you’d been tied into these costumes that were made to measure at the beginning of rehearsals by the designer, and I noticed in the last couple of weeks of the show, coming up to the end of the run, that I was not like being able to be tied into these dresses anymore. And obviously it was Christmas, and I’d been going to the pub after every show and eating a lot on the run, like Christmas food. So I was like, oh, I’ve put on some weight, I’ll just lose it in the new year, no big deal. So I kicked off the new year with an exercise plan, and I was doing this like bullshit intermittent fasting thing that my flat mate, who knows quite a lot about nutrition, was like, ‘If you just wait to eat till after midday and then you eat your breakfast, your metabolism kicks in better’... or some bullshit. Obviously I didn’t research anything.
Laughter
ROSA: Load of nonsense! But I was like, ‘Okay cool, brilliant, brilliant, I just need to lose this half a stone that I’ve piled on.’ Especially round the belly, it was quite funny to look at. So I then started to get, on top of that, bloated, and I put that down to this fasting, that that had messed up my metabolism so I was just full of air, or y’know, full of not eating food. So I was like, ‘Oh god, what have I done?’ So I went back to normal and whenever I’d eat a meal this bloating would just come and not leave. Like, you know, you get a bit bloated after food and you wake up in the morning and it’s gone, you’ve got a flat belly again. And that just wasn’t happening. So I was like, ‘Awwww, what is it? Am I allergic to gluten?! PLEASE NO!’
Laughter
ROSA: I love bread and pasta so much. So that was really disappointing, but I carried on. I was back to working two front of house jobs, auditioning, trying to kind of get my life back in a place after being in Hull. And I was noticing, along with the bloating, a lot of pain in my abdomen and my back. I put it down to being exhausted and doing this new exercise regime, I was like, ‘Oh no, what have I done to myself?’ And then I was on a date and my leg during this date went completely numb, I lost all sensation in my thigh, and that was the moment where I was like, okay, all these things are going physically wrong with me, maybe it’s not unrelated - maybe I need to get this checked out.
So I went to the doctors. I don’t have a GP in London because I’m so unorganised and shit and complacent. So I went to a walk in centre where they can’t do anything for you, can’t even do blood tests. She had a little feel of my stomach and said, ‘Oh, y’know, you’re full of gas. So you need to take some Buscopan (IBS medicine) and some peppermint capsules.’ I said I will, but another couple of days and nothing was working, the pain’s getting worse every day and I was starting to find it hard to walk cos my thigh was so numb, and I was finding it hard to eat because every time I did I was starting to look about 6 or 7 months pregnant. It was very, very strange.
So I checked myself into A&E. And that’s when it all kind of kicked off that is wasn’t just trapped wind or constipation as I’d been thinking, and been lead to believe. There was lots of blood tests and ultrasounds that revealed my stomach was full of liquid. Which is really not normal, I think, scientifically your lymph nodes are there to drain fluid from your stomach and other parts of your body and my lymph nodes weren’t doing that. So I had a couple of scans and an MRI scan and they found a mass growing on the left side of my body. So yeah, after a couple of more detailed scans and investigations it turned out to be a fifteen centimetre tumour on my ovary and fallopian tube. And that I did have Stage 3 ovarian cancer.
LAURA: ... Wow.
ROSA: Yeah. It was quite a weird one to go in at the beginning of the week expecting them to give me some laxatives for constipation and coming out with a chemotherapy plan.
LAURA: When you had all these symptoms, did you - I’m a massive hypochondriac so I Google anything that ever happens to me. Did you Google it, and have any sense of that - ?
ROSA: Not even for a second. Which is so funny cos the joke about being a hypochondriac is that you think everything is cancer. I wouldn’t call myself a massive hypochondriac but I’m often like, ‘Oooh, what’s that?’ And I did do lots of googling, I even downloaded this GP app which is where you type your symptoms into a chat room and this robot replies, and nothing was coming back. I was typing: “bloating won’t go away”, “huge stomach”, “appetite loss”, “am I pregnant?” And everything was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know, got to your GP and have a blood test,’ and I don’t have a GP so I was like, ‘Arghhhh!’ But honestly, it didn’t cross my mind that it might be cancer.
Even when they told me they found a 15cm mass growing with its own blood supply on my
ovary, did I think, ‘Oh, it’s a tumour’. I thought, oh, it’s a baby, it’s an ectopic pregnancy. How
has this happened? It’s not biologically possible! It was just everything else that it could have
been. It was only the first meeting with a gynecologist consultant when she said, ‘We need to
get you an MRI tomorrow morning because - we don’t know - but we think it might be a
cancerous tumour.’ And even then I was like, ‘It’s probably not, they have to say that don’t they!
Give you your options.’ So yeah, lots of denial.
EMILY: What was your journey from that point?
ROSA: So my Mum was luckily doing some work in London on the day of my MRI, which was a couple of days after my trip to A&E, and so she could be with me to get the results. And I knew after my MRIv when the doctor came in and said, ‘Is anyone coming to join you, Rosa?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, my Mum should be here in an hour,’ and she said, ‘I think it would be nice to have someone with you, just sometimes a lot to take in on your own.’ And I was like, okay, I’ve definitely got cancer then.
And so from there it was kind of about keeping my friends and family from freaking out. Really. Because I think big news like that doesn’t hit you in the way you think. I wasn’t really thinking about what I was gonna do and what my steps were, I was just thinking about - I need to tell my Grandmas I’m gonna be okay, cos I’m so scared they’re gonna have a heart attack and die when they hear that I might die before them. Which sounds very dramatic, but it is very dramatic, I guess.
So my first thing was to ring everyone I knew and be like, ‘Okay, so, I know this is gonna sound a bit much, but just don’t overreact. It’s all ok, I just need to tell you something, and there’s gonna be a word that’ll make you freak out, but I just don’t want you to, okay?’ And there was lots of phone calls like that. I was sent home from this one hospital for the weekend and I was sent to this other hospital that specialised in my tumour, which is called a germ cell tumour, on Tuesday. So I went home for the weekend with my Mum, and my dad came down as well. I made all those phone calls and I had all my friends come over and just - it was a very painful weekend because I still had all the symptoms and a huge belly. So it was just getting through the pain and being with my friends and family. I wasn’t really thinking about what might happen to me at the hospital, I was kind of forced to be in the moment by the symptoms I was dealing with. Yeah.
LAURA: And did you find that generally speaking - how did people respond to that? Did you feel you were treated differently? Because I can imagine that people won't know how to react, especially people that you don't know particularly well.
ROSA: No, I think it's been a real lesson to me. How my close friends reacted is how I would want to react if I ever got big bad news. Everyone just completely took it the right amount of serious whilst also staying incredibly brave for me. I don't think I quite realised at the time how
EMILY: What was your journey from that point?
ROSA: So my Mum was luckily doing some work in London on the day of my MRI, which was a couple of days after my trip to A&E, and so she could be with me to get the results. And I knew after my MRIv when the doctor came in and said, ‘Is anyone coming to join you, Rosa?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, my Mum should be here in an hour,’ and she said, ‘I think it would be nice to have someone with you, just sometimes a lot to take in on your own.’ And I was like, okay, I’ve definitely got cancer then.
And so from there it was kind of about keeping my friends and family from freaking out. Really. Because I think big news like that doesn’t hit you in the way you think. I wasn’t really thinking about what I was gonna do and what my steps were, I was just thinking about - I need to tell my Grandmas I’m gonna be okay, cos I’m so scared they’re gonna have a heart attack and die when they hear that I might die before them. Which sounds very dramatic, but it is very dramatic, I guess.
So my first thing was to ring everyone I knew and be like, ‘Okay, so, I know this is gonna sound a bit much, but just don’t overreact. It’s all ok, I just need to tell you something, and there’s gonna be a word that’ll make you freak out, but I just don’t want you to, okay?’ And there was lots of phone calls like that. I was sent home from this one hospital for the weekend and I was sent to this other hospital that specialised in my tumour, which is called a germ cell tumour, on Tuesday. So I went home for the weekend with my Mum, and my dad came down as well. I made all those phone calls and I had all my friends come over and just - it was a very painful weekend because I still had all the symptoms and a huge belly. So it was just getting through the pain and being with my friends and family. I wasn’t really thinking about what might happen to me at the hospital, I was kind of forced to be in the moment by the symptoms I was dealing with. Yeah.
LAURA: And did you find that generally speaking - how did people respond to that? Did you feel you were treated differently? Because I can imagine that people won't know how to react, especially people that you don't know particularly well.
ROSA: No, I think it's been a real lesson to me. How my close friends reacted is how I would want to react if I ever got big bad news. Everyone just completely took it the right amount of serious whilst also staying incredibly brave for me. I don't think I quite realised at the time how
amazing my friends and family were at being very strong and keeping very positive, actually,
and just coming to my bedside and staying with me and doing whatever I needed, which was
brilliant. And then as time went on with telling people that didn't know me so well, even that was
... there's no one way to react, and the way I’d feel about people's reactions changed day to
day. So sometimes I wanted someone to grab my hand and be like, ‘Oh my god, I'm so sorry!’
and other days I feel like, ‘What the fuck are you sorry about? There's nothing to be sorry about,
it’s not your problem!’ Cancer makes you very fickle with how you want people to react to the
fact that you've got cancer. Some days I’m like, ‘Let me sit down on the Tube! Can't you see
have I have cancer?!’ and then other days I’m like, ‘Don't look at me, I'm just normal! This
hairstyle’s a total choice, just leave me alone.’ So yeah, it's interesting.
LAURA: And how quickly after the diagnosis did you start your treatment?
ROSA: So that weekend I was meant to go home, I actually had to go back to A&E a day before I was due to be in because I was just in too much pain and because obviously the tumor was growing and spreading, and the liquid in my belly was multiplying and getting bigger. So I got to the A&E and they needed to drain my stomach before they could start chemo, and that was a very long, arduous and quite traumatic process, because I lost a lot of blood during the draining process, so I kind of lost consciousness and my memory for those few days and had a couple of blood transfusions. And then it was like, let's get going, because the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes and my stomach lining and my omentum, which is this part of my stomach that no one knows they have, but they do, it's like an apron over your organs. And so they needed to just start on chemo very very quickly. It was very whirlwind and I didn't really have much time to be to process what was about to happen.
EMILY: Going down quite a practical route - obviously as an actor who’d only been 6 months out of drama school so probably hadn't built up a huge amount of lifetime savings, and without any sick
pay or anything like that, how did you make all of that work?
ROSA: It was really overwhelming, actually, trying to think about that stuff. I turned my phone off for that first week while I was quite poorly because I just couldn't - I don't have any energy and when I turned it back on I had an email from my agent with an audition and I was like, ‘Oh no, he's going to drop me! What's going to happen?’ And I didn't know what to do. And obviously he didn't drop me, he was amazing and kept me. That was quite hard to be like, ‘I don't know when I'm going to be back.’ And then I had to tell my bosses at my part-time jobs that I wouldn't be back, and obviously I was working zero hours contracts, so that was all fine, but I didn't get sick pay or any assurance that financially I'd be alright, or even that those jobs would be waiting for me when I was well enough again. What the hospital did was pair me up with a social worker from a really amazing charity called CLIC Sargent, and they basically talk you through your options of financial support. Which is the most stressful thing you can think of when you're plugged into chemo and you have just had this life-changing week, and you have someone coming to sit by your bed to tell you about financial support you can apply for by calling up a number. The last thing you want to do is speak on the phone, so it's nice that you have a social worker to help you with that stuff. But nonetheless, I still found this stuff really, really traumatic, having to be on hold and wait for someone to tell me how much money I am entitled to, which is not very much. I was, however, really luckily put in touch with some charities that are specifically for actors. The Actors’ Benevolent Fund has helped me so much - they paid my bills for me during treatment and they also gave me a couple of one-off grants. Macmillan also gave me a grant of like 400 quid to tide me through those first few weeks of not working. There are options there before you have to start doing stuff like Personal Independence Payment and Employment Support Allowance and Housing Benefit. I was very lucky that this stuff was temporary for me. There are people who cannot go to work who have to deal with these really long and difficult things to apply for. And the proof you have to send that you’re actually poorly is ... the last thing you want to do when you're really really poorly is prove to someone that you're really really poorly. So yeah, that was very difficult.
LAURA: And how quickly after the diagnosis did you start your treatment?
ROSA: So that weekend I was meant to go home, I actually had to go back to A&E a day before I was due to be in because I was just in too much pain and because obviously the tumor was growing and spreading, and the liquid in my belly was multiplying and getting bigger. So I got to the A&E and they needed to drain my stomach before they could start chemo, and that was a very long, arduous and quite traumatic process, because I lost a lot of blood during the draining process, so I kind of lost consciousness and my memory for those few days and had a couple of blood transfusions. And then it was like, let's get going, because the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes and my stomach lining and my omentum, which is this part of my stomach that no one knows they have, but they do, it's like an apron over your organs. And so they needed to just start on chemo very very quickly. It was very whirlwind and I didn't really have much time to be to process what was about to happen.
EMILY: Going down quite a practical route - obviously as an actor who’d only been 6 months out of drama school so probably hadn't built up a huge amount of lifetime savings, and without any sick
pay or anything like that, how did you make all of that work?
ROSA: It was really overwhelming, actually, trying to think about that stuff. I turned my phone off for that first week while I was quite poorly because I just couldn't - I don't have any energy and when I turned it back on I had an email from my agent with an audition and I was like, ‘Oh no, he's going to drop me! What's going to happen?’ And I didn't know what to do. And obviously he didn't drop me, he was amazing and kept me. That was quite hard to be like, ‘I don't know when I'm going to be back.’ And then I had to tell my bosses at my part-time jobs that I wouldn't be back, and obviously I was working zero hours contracts, so that was all fine, but I didn't get sick pay or any assurance that financially I'd be alright, or even that those jobs would be waiting for me when I was well enough again. What the hospital did was pair me up with a social worker from a really amazing charity called CLIC Sargent, and they basically talk you through your options of financial support. Which is the most stressful thing you can think of when you're plugged into chemo and you have just had this life-changing week, and you have someone coming to sit by your bed to tell you about financial support you can apply for by calling up a number. The last thing you want to do is speak on the phone, so it's nice that you have a social worker to help you with that stuff. But nonetheless, I still found this stuff really, really traumatic, having to be on hold and wait for someone to tell me how much money I am entitled to, which is not very much. I was, however, really luckily put in touch with some charities that are specifically for actors. The Actors’ Benevolent Fund has helped me so much - they paid my bills for me during treatment and they also gave me a couple of one-off grants. Macmillan also gave me a grant of like 400 quid to tide me through those first few weeks of not working. There are options there before you have to start doing stuff like Personal Independence Payment and Employment Support Allowance and Housing Benefit. I was very lucky that this stuff was temporary for me. There are people who cannot go to work who have to deal with these really long and difficult things to apply for. And the proof you have to send that you’re actually poorly is ... the last thing you want to do when you're really really poorly is prove to someone that you're really really poorly. So yeah, that was very difficult.
EMILY: Once you had those things in place, was it enough for you to feel like you could now just focus on getting better?
ROSA: Not really. It still wasn’t a huge amount - not that I needed a huge amount. I was still worried about where that was going to come from. But my friends did an amazing thing for me. They did a fundraiser that they called ‘FundRosa’, which I think is just genius -
Laughter
ROSA: And they threw a party and spread a Just Giving account around - they didn't have to do that, I would never ask them to do that, but it was amazing. And they raised a lot of money for me and that was the thing that made me not worry at all. At all. They really did an amazing thing by putting my mind at rest. Obviously there are way more important things than having a lot of money, but at the same time the most important thing to think about was getting better, and they made that possible for me.
EMILY: Because you had to be in London, didn't you?
ROSA: Yes, it was the best hospital - UCLH - for my type of tumour. My consultant was based there. There was the option to go back home but it would have been very difficult to get someone of her - I don't know, like, training? her, just, amazingness - to deal with my tumour. And I felt very comfortable in that hospital. The Macmillan Centre was there, which is this incredible centre where you go for various outpatient services, and I’ve made kind of solid friends with nurses, and I just knew that that was my base. I had to keep up a flat in North London, which is obviously not cheap, so that was also an amazing thing, to be able to keep it.
EMILY: At what point did you start to feel like you could see beyond the treatment? Was there a point where you started to be like - okay, I get this now, and I know that I can think about the future?
ROSA: I was keen to just start having those thoughts as soon as possible. After a couple of rounds of chemo I felt very confident that I was going to be okay, that I was going to get better. And I knew that whilst I was doing chemo it was going to be hard to actually think about the future, because it's such a debilitating, horrible, horrible experience. But I knew that it was going to be 4 to 6 rounds of chemo and an operation and then then I was going to start feeling better by the summer. And I think I'm the kind of person who - I sometimes overdo it, and I do too much, and I'm like, ‘No, no, I'm fine, I can do it, I can do it!’ So I kind of signed myself back on to life and auditioning again probably a bit sooner than I should have done and ended up making myself quite poorly. But I'm glad I did because now I am actually better everything seems a little bit more manageable. I don't feel like everything's come back to me so quickly.
EMILY: How quickly did you start auditioning again?
ROSA: Well obviously my agent hadn't seen me, he didn't know what I was really, you know. So he was like, ‘I've got this audition and I know you'd really like this job like, do you think you'll be okay to do it? And I was like, ‘Tell me what the job is?’ And he did and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm fine actually! I'm fine!’ Whereas I’d actually just finished chemo about 2 days before, and the week after chemo or the couple of weeks after chemo are the worst thing ever. But I was like, ‘I'm just going to go for it, I'm going to go for it.’ Then he rings me up the next day and he's like, ‘I've got another audition for you if you want to do it. You can say no.’ And I was like, ‘What is it?’ And again, another great job, and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it's good, let's do it, let's do it!’ And I ended up getting really passionate about it and really wanting to do the same amount of work I would have done, and I gave myself this horrific rash because your immune system gets completely ruined. And so I've been working so hard and not giving myself a break and I just came out with this awful rush, and had to go to these auditioned covered in hives.
EMILY: Oh god!
ROSA: With a steroid puffy face and just no hair, limping in being like, ‘Hi! Thanks so much for seeing me!’ ... Terrible idea. Needless to say I didn't get the job, but I'm still glad I did it.
Laughter
LAURA: In the first year out of drama school you feel under so much pressure to just hit the ground running and constantly be doing something. I can't imagine what it's like to have a period where you just have to check out of that for a bit. It must be really frightening - you must feel like, well ... how am I gonna carry on? What impact is this going to have long-term on my career? How did you feel about that, because I imagine that is a huge thing to have to deal with.
ROSA: It's horrible. Especially because we have this thing drilled into it - as human beings, not just as actors - that we need to be busy all the time, and we need to be productive and work ourselves to the bone to progress our own careers. And I was so of that mindset. I had 19 things on the go at once, and I was suddenly told, ‘You can't do any of these things for at least 5 or 6 months.’ And I guess in retrospect if I was told that now, having gone through that, I would allow myself to relax and be okay and just enjoy having nothing and not having the pressure to do anything. But in reality it's not like that when you're not used to it, because you still feel like you need to prove that you're ... I'm still here! Don't forget about me, world! Especially in the acting world, because there’s constantly this fear that you're just going to disappear, whether you are ill or not. And suddenly I felt like I was so insignificant and small and I felt like shit, I felt so poorly. But I would still try and get up and do something productive with my day and end up just being tired and miserable because I’d done it. So after a while I let myself relax a bit more and just tried to focus on getting better, and know that people wouldn’t forget about me. People weren’t gonna just cut me out because I was ill. It was very irrational thought.
LAURA: I think that's so specific to ... I mean, it affects everyone to some extent. Especially now where everything moves so quickly that you feel that you need to constantly be on the ball all the time. But in acting, especially, like you said. It's that pressure that you're just gonna fall off the map and that's going to be the end of it. And especially as a woman, you're made to feel that your sellability exists for 10-15 years and if you don't make enough of an impact ...
ROSA: Of course, and I'd always been confused about what my sellability was. I had long hair and a slim frame and I was like, ‘Oh, that means I can get heroine parts.’ But my character was not that, really. I was much more probably suited to - or my casting bracket was more funny stuff. And I've been told time and time again, ‘Just wait until you’re 35 and then you'll come into your own and you can play those roles!’ And it’s like, ‘... Oh, god!’ So that was even harder when I had all this water retention in my face and lost all my hair and I was as red as a tomato because of medicine. That was very terrifying for me because I was like, well who's going to want to cast me in anything other than a very convincing cancer patient in a hospital programme? I just don't know who I am now or what molds am I fitting into. Because I'd had drama school to kind of give me an idea of that and that had completely changed. It's sad how much is image-based, and how much of your confidence and self esteem in this industry rides on a few strands of hair.
EMILY: How do you feel about that stuff now that you're out of treatment?
ROSA: I have to say I've kind of found a lot of self worth in in myself in terms of knowing that I can really feel incredibly ugly at my lowest point but still have a really really positive attitude about a life-threatening illness. And so I feel like if I can do that, then what's the point of growing all my hair back? Because all I was doing was hiding behind it anyway, and using it as a thing that might make casting directors want me. Whereas now I'm like, I still look great. I’m still a great person and a really talented actor and the length of my hair is ... just stick a wig on me! I've got about 14 at home, I'll just bring them to rehearsal. I just think it's hilarious how much a headshot is part of the casting process before someone even meets you. It’s ridiculous.
LAURA: So when you were going to those auditions, when you were still ill, did you feel a pressure to hide what was really going on? Or have you been quite open with people since about what's happened?
ROSA: I had an audition to play Desdemona where I went in and wore my wig, which is kind of a little bit longer than my old hair, and it just ... it just looks like a wig, honestly. It does. And I'm not very comfortable in it when moving around. And I was annoyed at myself for going for what I thought they wanted rather than what made me the most comfortable, and so in the couple of auditions I had after that I would wear a headscarf, which I think people were confused about at first, especially when looking at my headshot. Like, ‘Why she putting all this lovely red hair up in a headscarf?’ And then there's usually a casting director would know about my situation through Twitter or something like that and explain to the other people, and they were always really really lovely about it. Obviously, of course they were. And often they’d give me a pat on the back for making it out of the house. So I was happy that no one is going to say anything bad to you about looking like a cancer patient when you are a cancer patient. I guess the thing I was most worried about was that they might not know and think that I looked like that all the time.
EMILY: Do you feel like going through this experience has changed this attitude towards your career in the industry at all?
ROSA: Yes. I was so complacent. I was so comfortably numb. I would have dawdled along writing the opening paragraph of 100 different plays and being like, ‘I'll get round to it, I'll get around to it,’ and not searching for anything, just waiting for something to drop into my lap. And then maybe it would in 10 years time and I would have been okay with that. I would have complained a lot until it did, but I just would never... It’s a cliche but it’s true in that I really needed a wake up call to realise how comfortably numb I was in this industry, and how willing I was to be walked over and treated like ... not treated badly, I've never been treated badly in this industry. But, you know, lost among the shuffle and happy to be in the shuffle. And now I've realised that you don't get to be here for a long time, necessarily. Maybe you do if you're lucky, I hope I will be, but I'm definitely got the fire lit under my arse that I needed.
LAURA: And you’ve started writing a lot since? Your amazing blog, which is incredibly inspiring - was that something that you started after? How did that come about?
ROSA: That was when the curse of my need to be productive really was useful, actually, because I was doing chemo and people kept being like, ‘You've got to write about this, Rosa! You've got to, if you do anything, you've got to write about it.’ And I was like, ‘I know, but I can't think!’ - you know, chemo messes your brain up. And I was trying to write stuff that just was coming out so wrong and I was like, ‘I've lost it! I've lost my touch.’ I don't know what I was trying to do. I was trying to write diary entries and find how I was feeling and I was like, maybe I should record it as videos on YouTube, maybe I should do like a podcast where I literally just talk for an hour about what I've experienced. And all of it was just that little bit too much energy that I needed to conserve, so in the end I was just like, I'm just going to write a blog. I'm sure no one will read it but if anything I can just send it to my grandparents and they can read it and they can have a better idea of what it's like, because they're not close to me. So I thought about different ways to do it, whether it was going to be bullet points of ‘10 things not to say to someone with cancer’, and in the end I decided to just do it like a story, because that was what I always enjoyed writing. And amazingly, people really responded in such a wonderful way to it, and I felt it was such a bridge to the rest of the world that I've been missing a lot, and people really could understand what I was going through and the way that I really truly felt about it, without me having to be like, ‘No, no, I'm fine. Yeah, it's a bit of a shit year, but I am actually fine.’ They could really see how I felt and they would tell me how they felt in response to it, which was just all I could have asked for. People have been so lovely, being like, oh, you know, ‘I've sent it to my family. I sent it to my friends.’ And honestly, I love that. I'm not even going to be modest, I bloody love that people like it, because it was what I wanted to give - not even give, it was something that I wanted to do selfishly for myself and be like, no, look this what it's like. But at the same time I didn't know how many people would be like, ‘I've been through such a similar thing,’ or ‘I've sent this to my mum who went through breast cancer,’ or ‘I've sent it to my grandma.’ And that's really special to me, I always feel really happy about that.
EMILY: Are you going to carry on writing the blog, or are you now moving on to different things?
ROSA: I would like to carry on writing the blog, but I think the next kind of step for me is that I'm going to turn it into a one woman show. That's the next logical thing for me, I think, is to put it on the stage, and kind of make up for lost time not being on the stage this last year. And I'm hoping that that's all going to come into fruition in the next few months, but we'll see. We'll see where that goes.
LAURA: I was going to ask - you said that in that in the blog you felt able to talk about what it was really like. Have you felt generally ... Because I think that culturally we’re very bad at dealing with bad news, whether it's death or illness or anything, and I think there's such a pressure to cope with it in a way that seems dignified or stoic or kind of “strong”. Have you felt the pressure to do that or have you felt able to be kind of open about how difficult it’s been?
ROSA: It's been up and down, because I guess my way of dealing with stuff for myself is to stay probably kind of annoyingly positive, and I've often been very, ‘Oh yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine.’ Because I have been, a lot of the time. Things could be a lot worse with my situation, and I've met people who've kind of proven that to me and put things in perspective. But I guess goofy stoic about it and that's one thing that I've never let myself be pressurised by. I've always thought the best way to do that is to kind of take the piss and laugh about it, you know a bit of gallows humour has always served me very well. So it's been good having people around me who will do that with me, and we'll laugh about stuff, and that means that when I do need a day to just be upset and cry then that's okay too. It's been really amazing having people who just ... everything is okay. Whatever I need to do, they'll be okay with it, so that's really good.
LAURA: That's really good.
EMILY: I know you're doing a lot of work to raise awareness for particularly ovarian cancer, but cancer in general as well. Is there any particular useful information to pass on?
ROSA: I think my main thing that I always like to talk about, because maybe not a lot of other people want to, is just about gynaecological cancers and other sexual health related problems that start with your vagina. There's so many more different types of gynaecological cancers that people don't know about. You can get cancer of the vaginal wall as well as cancer of the fallopian tube. People think of ovarian and cervical cancer, generally, but within those cancers there's four of five different types. And for me, if I could just make a small percentage of women feel more open to talk to their female friends about what goes on inside and around their vaginas - if they feel uncomfortable, if they feel embarrassed - to just get rid of some of that stigma. I feel like if Id just known a little bit more about how it all worked inside my body - I had no idea, really, what went on in there - maybe I would have put it down to something as serious as it was, and it would have been caught a bit earlier. So I think that the main thing is ending the stigma around the word vagina and feeling comfortable with yourself, to know when something is wrong and ask for help or ask, ‘Is this normal?’
LAURA: I think that's amazing, because gynaecology is one of the most notoriously under-researched fields of medicine and it’s very well documented that women are much more likely to be dismissed for talking about the same medical problem that a man might come in with. Did you find that while you were going through the process of being diagnosed? Did you have any people saying, ‘Oh, it's probably nothing,’ or sort of dismissing your symptoms?
ROSA: Yeah, everyone thought it was dietary. The nurse at the hospital thought it was gas. The nurse of the walk-in centre was like, ‘Oh it's gas, it has to be gas.’ And then the next person would be like, ‘No, it's not gas, but your liver profile has come back within the blood test so it's probably gallstones. And I’d be like, ‘Okay, cool.’ And then the next person would be like, ‘Oh, the same things are coming back in your blood tests to indicate ectopic pregnancy.’ Lots of options were put on the table, which is obviously important, you know, what kind of thing are going towards? But all you have to do is type “liquid in stomach” to Google and the first thing that comes up is cancer, so I don't know ... I feel like there should be a lot more done regarding the symptoms and knowing the symptoms and not just going straight to, ‘Oh, I must have a gluten intolerance because that's what my coworker told me.’
LAURA: I can't remember whether we recording when you said this, but you said that you'd hashtagged ‘OVConnect’ on Twitter and spoken with a lot of people who - ?
ROSA: Yes, I was amazed, actually. I kind of didn't know that there was - it’s stupid not to think - but there were so many actors and artists who have been through cancer, of all ages. A young man at 19 who's gone through testicular cancer during drama school. Women over 30 who have had breast cancer for 2 years but have still been on stage. And I was so amazed to connect through this OVConnect hashtag with people who've gone through a similar thing, so I think it
would be amazing for us all to kind of get together as artists with cancer and talk about our
experiences. I just think that really would be an amazing thing to see and discuss, and I'd love to
meet people like that.
LAURA: And you're planning a podcast.
ROSA: Yes, I'll steal this idea and this recording studio ...
Laughter
ROSA: I think it will be amazing, I'd love to do it in the form of a podcast.
LAURA: It's not something that I've ever thought about, how specifically it affects people within this industry compared to other more stable industries. It's a totally different experience.
ROSA: It’s something that I didn't even fathom, and you have to kinda think about all the people who are chronically ill, living as an actor or an artist in the freelance world, and how much harder it is for them. I’m very lucky, I’m better, and I can go on and carry on with my life as normal, but there are people who have Crohn's and colitis. That's very debilitating on an everyday basis, but they just have to keep powering through, having just as much belly trouble as I was having at the beginning of my diagnosis, so there's a lot to be done.
EMILY: We’ll bring it back to what we always ask - what would be your advice to any graduating actors going out into the industry?
ROSA: Check all your bits for lumps and bumps. But also don't be in a rush. There's so much time. You have so much time, and you will get to the place you want to be. And know that the thing that everyone is doing just after drama school is not necessarily the thing that you were meant to be doing, and your time will definitely come. The thing you're meant to be doing will make itself obvious. I really do feel like I know what I'm meant to be doing now, and I wish it hadn't taken a cancer diagnosis to find that out, but I am really happy that I'm not going with the flow so much. But take your time. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
LAURA: And you're planning a podcast.
ROSA: Yes, I'll steal this idea and this recording studio ...
Laughter
ROSA: I think it will be amazing, I'd love to do it in the form of a podcast.
LAURA: It's not something that I've ever thought about, how specifically it affects people within this industry compared to other more stable industries. It's a totally different experience.
ROSA: It’s something that I didn't even fathom, and you have to kinda think about all the people who are chronically ill, living as an actor or an artist in the freelance world, and how much harder it is for them. I’m very lucky, I’m better, and I can go on and carry on with my life as normal, but there are people who have Crohn's and colitis. That's very debilitating on an everyday basis, but they just have to keep powering through, having just as much belly trouble as I was having at the beginning of my diagnosis, so there's a lot to be done.
EMILY: We’ll bring it back to what we always ask - what would be your advice to any graduating actors going out into the industry?
ROSA: Check all your bits for lumps and bumps. But also don't be in a rush. There's so much time. You have so much time, and you will get to the place you want to be. And know that the thing that everyone is doing just after drama school is not necessarily the thing that you were meant to be doing, and your time will definitely come. The thing you're meant to be doing will make itself obvious. I really do feel like I know what I'm meant to be doing now, and I wish it hadn't taken a cancer diagnosis to find that out, but I am really happy that I'm not going with the flow so much. But take your time. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Comments
Post a Comment