Sarah Polley Rewrites Her Story

The Sweet Hereafter Go and Dawn of the Dead. In her twenties, she made the move to writing and directing. Her first film away from her started Julie Christie and Olympia Ducacus and earned Polly an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay as well as a Genie Award for Best Direction. Since then, she has continued to write and direct for TV and film, and she branched into documentary with Stories We Tell, the film about her family history.

Poully can now add author to her growing list of accomplishments. She recently released her first book, It's called Run Towards the Danger, Confrontations with a body of memory, and it's a pretty stunning collection of essays exploring some difficult chapters in her life. Sarah Paully told me what it means to run towards the danger. Well, the first time I heard that was from a Dr Mickey Collins at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and I had had a

pretty serious concussion, very serious concussion. I mean, for the first year I wasn't able to do much at all, and then I would have periods that were better than others, as long as I managed my stimulation while and didn't have too much noise or light. But basically it altered my life and made me unable to do a lot of the things I've been able to do, and unable to handle a lot of the things I've been able

to handle. I eventually ended up with Dr Mickey Collins in Pittsburgh, and I remember him saying to me in that first meeting, if you remember only one thing from this meeting, remember this run towards the danger. And what he meant by that was a kind of paradigm shift in terms of how to recover from a concussion. So a lot of the advice you get when you have a concussion is to rest, to listen to your body,

to slow down. The better concussion doctors will tell you to exercise, but when you feel like your symptoms are becoming too much, go rest or do something else. And his advice was really different from that. His advice was, the things that are hard for you, the things that are causing you discomfort and pain because of your concussion, are the things you actually need to do more of because your brain has become weaker and weaker at handling these things. Because of this, you know the way you've

been protecting yourself. So this was of course scaffolded with a lot of like vestibular exercises and physical exercises, and every treatment he gives is different. But the notion of moving towards what causes you discomfort instead of away from it being a key ingredient to healing was a really new concept for me, and then one that kind of exploded out into all of these other areas of my life and became, in a way, the genesis for bringing

all of these essays together into this book. Also, I should say at that time, you had two small kids, like you're juggling a lot of things while you're trying to take on this this advice of confronting the pain or pushing past what you think your threshold is. And it's one thing to do that on a physical level, but then it's a whole little thing to do that on an emotional level with stories like you've done with this book. What was the process like for you of

pushing past the threshold to get these stories out. I mean, it was a long one and kind of it was a bit of a windy road. I mean, I'd been writing some of these essays for twenty years and didn't have the courage to either finish them or to share them, or I would, you know, write a few paragraphs and put it away for years and then pull it out again. I mean, the stories in this book were some of the hardest stories for me to look at that I've

ever experienced. The ones that were pivotal, the ones that hurt the most, the ones that I wasn't even sure what the shape of the narrative was. Those stories that leave you with a kind of confusion that you haul

along with you. These were those stories for me. So this idea of running towards the danger began um taking on the form of, you know, opening these word documents that I kept shutting or had put away or even like hidden myself in files and the combune where they were hard to find, and going, what is it about this that's making me so scared to continue the story, or to finish the story, or to even read what I've written. And those became the stories I became most

determined to tell, no matter how hard they were. Why I determined to tell them for yourself, for your own exorcism, or for the benefit of others, or a combination. I think some of them I didn't know why I was writing them. I mean, some of these essays. There's one about stage fright and scoliosis and my mother dying, and you know, a thousand other things. The first essay, which is called Alice Collapsing, which I wrote when I was eighteen and twenty three and thirty three and forty, like

it's written by four different people. Like, I don't think I knew why I was writing that story when I started it, and by the time I was writing at forty, I probably did. I think all of them became for me interesting ways of looking at the way the past and the present relate to each other the way I think we are all very well acquainted now with the idea that our past and childhood experiences inform our present life.

I guess I also hope that like this notion that childhood trauma or experience are difficult experiences from another time in your life, aren't static. They don't have to live there always as these ticking time bombs or these jaggedy sharp things that like, if you get to live a life where stories that echo those story is go a

different better way. Those stories can become lighter, like, those stories can become easier to carry, Those stories can have in the end a totally different meaning to you than they have now. Like those stories that feel so static and hard and rigid in your stomach can actually loosen um and become more flexible and interesting if you can kind of dive in and pull the threads and be curious.

So I think for me, that's what the the recovery process with all of these stories looked like for me was the diving in and the being conscious of the past in the present life. Having the present life go a different way actually meant the past looks and feels differently to me. Now. The subtitle of the book is

Confrontations with a Body of Memory. And when we talk about the literal body that you're confronting in this book, you've already mentioned a concussion scoliosis, which you are diagnosed with at age eleven, being in a hard plus dig brace at a time of puberty when your body is changing. But also for you, at a time when you're starting on a television show and day in and day out you are being looked at by people and people are

putting clothes on you and and fitting you for things. Um, how did that diagnosis looking back on it now, how did that diagnosis shape your relationship to your physical body? Yeah, I mean the thing that complicated the experience for me, and I think it's complicated for any person who goes

through this as a kid. But the thing that complicated for me was I was living a very public life and I was on the lead in the TV show, and at a certain point I was also you know, on stage at Stratford, and so you know, there were long costume fittings of like how do we make her body look normal? Or how do we accommodate the costumes to fit this brace. So it was a very public display of what was already a very uncomfortable and somewhat

humiliating experience. So the way I dealt with that was just separating who I was from what was happening to my body. I think, and I get a sense like learning to maybe a nor what your body is telling you about how it's feeling in order to perform in the way you have have to. Is that fair to say as well? Yeah? Absolutely, Is that common in the acting industry, I would think, I think so. I think so.

I mean, I think there's also there's a sense that nothing can stop for a human being, right, Like I think in film and television, the idea that anything would delay anything for an hour even is inconceivable. So you kind of learned to just trudge through your humans. Like I remember we were just location scoting for this film

I did in this summer. It was like a hundred and eight degrees with the human dex and we were trudging through these soy fields and and how much water food with us, and we all just kept going and like we did that for like hours, and I got home and went like, why didn't one of us complain about that or stop it. And this was a pretty compassionate set compared to most, and we're all pretty aware and we had conversations about it all the time, how

do we make this a really safe, welcoming place. But ultimately nobody wanted to be the one to say, like it's too hot, I need water or I need food. And it's like we had created an environment very consciously that was to be humane. It's like this thing switches on you go into like soldier mode or something where you're just you got to be a trooper. And I certainly have that from being a child actor. It's like you can't be the one to delay or stop anything.

And I think it just creates the possibility for a lot of really big problems on sets. You know, I sa a lot of pressure if you don't mind it. Like I think the incident that's coming to mind, which you relay in the book, is when you were nine years old and starring in this film that was directed by Terry Gilliam. Would you mind saying a little bit about what that set experience was like so that we

can you know, picture what you're saying. Yeah, so I actually lot as a kid and one of the main parts I did was the role of Sally Salt in the Adventures of barrenman Chausen, which was directed by Terry Gilliam when I was eight, and it was a production that, you know, notoriously spiral that of control. There was a

book written about it called Losing the Light. I mean, it was like one of those big disastrous movie stories about a production gone awry, and there were a lot of special effects, there were a lot of stunts, and many times things felt wildly out of control and dangerous, and you know, some of those incidents involved explosives going

off really close to me. And there was an incident in a boat where we're in a rowboat with a few actors and a horse, and explosives were going off in a water tank beside the horse and the boat, and it spook the horse and it started backing up into us, and the rider took it overboard, and that surfaced another explosive that went off really close to me, and I went to hospital, and you know, there were a lot of really terrifying things that happened on that set.

Um So I kind of grew up with this feeling of a set being a very unstable, scary place, but that it was absolutely not my right to stop what was in motion, no matter how unsafe it became, and that,

you know, that became somewhat ingrained. And so I think I've spent a lot of time as a filmmaker trying to unpack those instincts that make you want to keep going when you should really stop, and to try to kind of reorient what the priorities and focus need to be when you are responsible for a whole bunch of other human beings. But you know, I don't think I'm always successful at it. It's like it's just like a

work in progress all the time. What made you want to act in the first place, Like, was it was it your choice when you were a really small kid. Was it something that you wanted to do? I mean the story I was told as a kid, was I desperately wanted to do it? My parents were in the industry, you know, my mom was a casting director. My gut is it probably happened a little bit more organically in terms of her breaking and for an audition than that.

But certainly I think they were getting something out of it, Like I think they were getting access to a world that they wanted access to. I think they were excited for me to get access to a world that had been hard for them to get access to. There was nothing malicious about my parents, and they were very loving,

great people. But I do think it's possible to get carried away, Like, especially when a kid has a certain measure of success, it can get hard to track how much of this is my kid's passion and how much am I getting out of it. I think that can be really easy to lose track of. Yeah, I'm interested to know. I guess how you made the transition from acting when you were a kid to the choices that

you made for yourself as an adult. Because can imagine a world where you could have thought, I want to be the hollywoodist actor that I can be, Like, now that I'm doing it and I'm in this industry, I'm I'm going to go for it. Tell me about, like how you decided what was going to be of interest to you as an adult if you continued acting well.

I think one of the advantages of being a child actor and seeing you know, big Hollywood productions completely out of control and seeing how kind of disposable people's well being was at a very early age on sets Is. It made me really skept a call, which I think was really helpful and really healthy as an adult in terms of making choices, Like, I think I was really conscious I had a really really active bullshit detector. I

knew that I didn't want to be really famous. I knew that I wanted to if I was going to be involved in this industry at all, which I think I had a lot of cynicism about generally. I knew that I wanted to be on projects that I had felt had some meaning or something to say, or at least would be in connection with people that weren't single

focus who had a sense of humanity about them. So I think it really helped shape the kinds of decisions I made, and then certainly as a filmmaker, Um, I really want to know why I'm making what I'm making, like, I really want to know who it's serving and why and how. So it's got to have meaning for me, It's got to have a purpose, that has to have

a reason for being. I think the gratitude for just being here is is slowly dawning on me as an adult and as I get older, but it's taken a long time to get here, If I can say so, I think that's why your work is so good, Like it's made for the sake of having something to say, rather than for the sake of making something or or anything else. I mean this, this shouldn't really be remarkable,

but it kind of is that you. You made your you directed your first film when you were in your mid twenties, and I say it's remarkable because it's quite young, especially for a female filmmaker. The film Away from Her, which was so beautiful. What was it like to actually get that film made. I had been trying for years to get a film made before that one, and it was really hard at first. I think the idea of a young actress making a movie was really hard for

people to wrap their heads around. Like there are a lot of amazing young actresses making movies now. But then it was like if you were a male actor trying to direct, it was treated very, very differently, and I think people thought it was like some hobby or something

I was trying. Yeah, so I tried to make one movie for like years, and then it was I was turned down in more and more humiliating ways by Telefilm, our government film ending agency, and finally I I wrote away from her quite quickly, and I gave myself a deadline, and the deadline was like something absurd, like in six months from now, if this film isn't green light, I'm not going to try to direct again, Like I just

can't do this anymore. And it turned out it was that kind of energy that's sort of nothing to lose, do or die energy that it took to actually get a movie financed. And then I had champions, like then there was this big changing of the guard at Telephone, which was the film funding agency at the time, and then it came together quite quickly. But certainly there was a lot of you know, not always being taken seriously,

like thankfully my closest collaborators did. And I was surrounded by both really supportive women and also really great men who who took me really seriously and helped me just sort of assume that leadership role which I was nervous about.

But in terms of financiers and like sort of people on the outside and around it, you know, you're sort of where you were being watched like this little ingenue trying to trying something on, and yeah, it was it was interesting, And it was interesting also to go from being an actress who people kind of humored to somebody who was in a position where, you know, you could really feel what people thought of you and felt about you, and it was it was healthy. But you know, a

bit of a shocked bassist. Yeah, I bet at what point did you feel like you had earned people's respect? Well, you know, I'd made a bunch of short films at that point, and I'd slowly, through the crewing of those short films, found my people and found the people that we're like really trying to create a space for me

to find myself as a filmmaker. So I found my D O P and my first A D and so I did feel like I had an incredibly supportive team when I was actually on the floor of that film, and Julie Christie and Olympdocacus like these were people who had been kind of mentoring me and pushing me forward.

And I also think that I hugely benefited from those very un usual experience I had had, which is that I'd worked with a few female filmmakers as a young actor, which again it's not a big deal now to have worked with female filmmakers it was a really big deal then, like to have worked with Katherine Bigelow, to have worked with Isabel Quichet, to have these models, and as soon as I expressed the slightest interest in directing, they just sort of threw their bodies behind me and pushed, you know,

like it was just like, you know, being a female filmmaker twenty years ago was really freaking hard. It's it's hard now, but it was a lot harder than and they were just like, here's okay, you're a dog with a bone. Don't let the bone go. Everyone's going to try to take away from you. Remember Catherine Bigge was like this, everyone will try to take the bone away from you. Hold onto the bone, and like it was such great advice, and that is kind of what it took.

It was like people are trying to get the bone away one of the phone and Isabel just going okay, what's next, what's next? You know, Like there was this sense of women who are a bit older than me shoving me forward. And I think that's ultimately the real reason why I made a film in my mid twenties at a time when it was unusual for a young actress to make a film because I had had these

female mentors, I had seen it modeled. They put that energy into encouraging me, and I think that's sort of everything. You know, when you are part of a group of people that's underrepresented, you need those people ahead of you and behind you shoving you forward. Yeah, and you need to not not let go of that bone. I want to come back to acting for just a second in your adult life, because in getting ready to talk to you, I watched this clip of you on a Canadian talk

show called John Division from back in the day. I was like, I grew up in cann It's a beloved TV show and you're so cool on it. You're seventeen years old. And you said, um, I've am quoting you. I've never been a good actor or had this great talent. I've just sort of taken sides of myself at different times and toyed with them. But I don't think it's a great talent that's in my blood or something. And I heard that and I was like, wait, isn't that

what acting? Is that what acting is for some people? I don't know what do you make of What do you make of that? Now that you've acted a lot as an adult and also directed other people. Yeah, that's so interesting. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess it can be what acting is, although it's funny, like I directed this film the summer called Women Talking, and the actors in this film were just machines, like they

were acting machines like they were. It was Claire Foy and Jesse Buckley and Rooney Mara and Sheila McCarthy and Judith Ivy and Michelle McCloud and it was just like Ben Wishaw and Francis McDormand, and like they were just like these geniuses. And I was watching the way they were working, and I really do think there's something fundamentally different about what I used to do as an actor

when I was acting on what they're doing. And I think what they're doing is like pushing themselves to like the absolute outer or limit of what is possible in terms of like embodying another human being and risking everything, like risking everything psychologically and emotionally to get where they need to go. I didn't do that as an actor. I mean, i'd like to think if I ever went back to acting one day, and I don't know if I will, but if I did that, I would be

willing to take those kinds of risks with myself. But again, because of the experience I had as a child where I felt like both my emotions were kind of exploited and my physical safety was taken for granted, I had limits on what I was going to give. So I think I got good at doing a couple of things,

you know, like I could. I could kind of had a couple of things I could do pretty well, but I didn't ever explode my sense of myself or risk myself to like embody an emotion I couldn't predict coming upon me in a scene, and watching great actors do that is electrifying. If I ever did go back to acting, I wouldn't do it unless I felt like I was

prepared to do that. So I think that's maybe what I meant in that quote is like I was staying in a zone that was comfortable for me, and I think that I I would like to think if I could do that part of my life over that, I would I would push myself more in risk more. That's actor and author Sarah Paulli. If you like conversations with skilled actor turned directors, check out our episode with Maggie Gillenhall. The thing I like love about the few roles that

I've done that I feel the most proud of. Um that I think I executed the best. I think are actually sort of the most human people, so maybe the most conventional in terms of being like we actually are. And I know the woman in the movie does things that many of us would never ever do, but in so many other ways I relate to her so much much. You can hear more of alex conversation with Maggie Gillenhall

in our archives and Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, I talked to Sarah Paully about her decision to finally come forward with a me too story she's kept private for decades. Hey, I'm Talia sh Langer, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In the nineties and the auts, Sarah Pauli was a celebrated actor. It seems like she was at the height of her career and she could have had any rules she wanted, but instead Sarah walked away from acting. I wanted to know why.

This is one of these questions where like it's sort of like writing the essays in this book where I feel like I suddenly have a whole bunch of answers I didn't expect to have to that question, like, oh, I haven't unpacked this. I mean, on the one hand, it's like I had discovered directing and I was in love with writing and directing, and I was like, this is what my priority, he is, And so I always knew that was the the direction I was moving in.

But why I stopped acting entirely was I had a couple of really bad experiences towards the end of my acting career um with uh, really insensitive people and really vulnerable situations where things were handled really badly and really insensitively, and I just had this moment where I thought, I'm not I'm not going to put myself in this kind

of situation again. And it was like a time, you know, was this is pre me too, and pre these conversations about bullying on sets and safety on sets, which thank god, are happening finally, but at that time they weren't. And so I just thought, this behavior is going to go on forever, nobody's going to be accountable, and I'm just going to be expected to kind of suck it up.

And I'm not going to do it anymore. And I've got this other job that I love, which is directing, where I have some agency over my working conditions and how I'm treated, and I'm just not gonna put myself in the line of fire anymore. So I removed myself based on a couple of really terrible experiences I had

in a row. I also had a great experience that year working with Jacko vandr Mal who directed Mr. Nobody, who was the antithesis of that kind of filmmaker, was incredibly empathetic and sensitive and passionate, and people's experience making the film was far more important to him than the film itself, which is something I try to carry with me, like I just try to carry in my head because

I said, how are you managing this? Like we're working such civilized hours, people have their kids coming to set. You seem to care so much about how everybody is doing, Like, how are you managing this? And he said, if this film is everything we wanted to be, it'll maybe affect a couple of people for a few weeks, hopefully, But what we know for certain is that the experience of making this film will be with all of us for the rest of our lives, so that has to be

the priority. And I was like, that to me has just stayed with me. So it's really But I had a couple of other experiences that were really really depressing and demoralizing, just in terms of watching where people were putting their priorities and how much people couldn't pay attention to other people's well being in the middle of of making a film. So I went and made my own

films and was very very happy to do so. I had this discussion recently with someone on set where like there had been this moment where someone hadn't behaved that well, and someone said to me, you know, if that person didn't behave that way, you might not be getting the job that you wanted, Like that might be what contributes

to their ability to do their job. And I remember saying and I didn't even know I felt this way, but the words just like popped out of my mouth and I just went Nobody asked me what my priority was, like if someone had said to me, you could have less of a film. But people, we'll be behaving well towards other and treating each other decently, and like that's the choice, I absolutely will vote for the latter every single time. Like I want to make great films. I'm

super ambitious for the films that I do make. But given the choice, I don't choose the genius over the well being. Ever, I will never accept talent as an excuse for bullshit. I just won't do it. I don't have it in me anymore. And it seems, I mean, it seems maybe like people are shifting towards that a little bit more as we're opening up these conversations. Maybe

I think they are. I mean, I think I think this is like kind of something I didn't ever expect to even see happen, Like in my life, you'vened about sexual harassment, Like I just thought, this is something we're stuck with, Like I didn't think to say anything about it or to you know, you just this was the landscape we lived. And so it is amazing to see these conversations open up. I'm really excited to see them open up more in industries where there isn't a huge

spotlight shown on them. I mean, I hope that we can see a continued progress with this, because it's it's a lot easier for us to complain about it given the platforms we have. Yeah, well, let's talk, um, if you would, about the second essay in the book, which is called The Woman Who Stayed Silent. And as much as I want to talk about this essay with you, I also I want people to read every single word

of it. The way that you've crafted it, the depth of the story that you're telling, and the nuance that you're able to bring to the thinking around this essay I think is so important. And if you don't mind, Sarah's just setting up with the premise of the chapter as as much as you're comfortable. Sure, you know, this essay took years to write and to think about and to choose the exact words for and so really the the entirety of the essay itself is the best answer

to any question about it. But that said, what it is about is an experience that I had when I was sixteen years old with Gian Gameshi, who was acquitted of sexually assaulting multiple women. Just stepping out of the interview here for a moment. Gian Gameshi is a Canadian broadcaster. He was a prominent radio host at the CBC until that year. He was the subject of several sexual assault allegations, Gameshi was charged, went to trial and was ultimately acquitted

of all charges. In and just so you have the heads up, the following conversation will contain discussions of circumstances surrounding sexual assault. Okay, back to Sarah and the allegations when they came forward. We're a really big news story in Canada, and I had to make a decision about

whether or not to come forward. And I spent a really long time and a lot of hours with my newborn, you know, strapped to me and the carrier and my toddler with me asking everybody I knew, and I know a lot of lawyers and a lot of people work in the criminal justice STU been asking them if I should come forward because I felt a deep obligation to support the women who had come forward, whose stories sounded very similar to my own, And the advice I was

given across the board was to not come forward, because every lawyer I met, but for one, said they would never advise a woman that they loved to come forward in a sexual assault case based on how are jewous and difficult the encounter of the criminal justice system would be, how long it would drag on how close so many people came to suicide by the time the process was over, and knowing what I did about what would lie ahead of me and coming forward and having two little kids,

I made the decision to stay silent. It was a

really hard decision on a lot of levels. And I think the contribution that I wanted to make now, this many years later, with having had years to think about how I would tell this story, is to shine a light on the parallels between the inconsistencies that were pointed out in those women's stories and the holes that were poked in their memories and characters and my own, Because everything that was lobbed at those women on the stand in terms of them not be being reliable witnesses to

the truth, would have been lobbed at me. And the impact that trauma has on memory, the way it makes us unreliable narrators of the details before and after an experience like this, and the way that makes our entire stories seem not credible, seemed like a worthwhile contribution because what happens when women enter into or anybody with an allegation like this, what happens to people when they're on the stand, is these inconsistencies, and these problems in our

memories get lobbed as at us as evidence that the thing itself didn't happen. And so my my idea was, what if I offer all of that stuff? What if I offer up everything I would be cross examined with my friendly encounters with him afterwards, my friendly emails with him, the way in which my memory didn't capture this part

or that part at various stages. What if I offered the whole, embarrassing, messy, completely commonplace picture of what a memory and what an account after a traumatic experience like this looks like, hopefully to shine a light on and maybe add credibility to all of those people who have been discounted because of these inconsistencies. Because at this point I don't have a lot to gain by telling the story.

It's not particularly fun to tell this story, I bet yeah, But I feel like there's some contribution to be made in saying, here are all the embarrassing parts, and I'm still telling the truth. Here all the inconsistencies, and I'm

still telling the truth. Here is all the mess of my memory and why I seem like a total flake, and I'm still telling the truth, and so many people who have come forward in cases like this have been discounted as flake here are not credible because of these details, which I think are so commonplace, and I think most people who have had experience like this don't actually come forward and we don't hear from them, and so I kind of wanted to shine a light on what that

experience looks like and why a point that you made here that I have not heard made nearly enough that you that you also just sort of hinted at is the idea of how people who have been through traumatic experiences with somebody can exhibit confusing behavior after the fact.

And one of the things that you write about is being interviewed by Jon who hosting I was working at the CBC at that time also, I should say, and he was hosting an arts and culture show where he interviewed you about, you know, your work, and you write in this essay about sort of watching clips of yourself and how you diminished yourself in front of him or or were giggly or we're sort of warm towards him,

and you wrote this is a quote. It can seem perplexing from the outside, this pool that many women experience to make things better for those who have hurt us. M hm. And you're such a powerful and talented person, it must have taken a lot to say that, and then so many of us do this. So where do you think that this behavior comes from. I think it

comes from a lot of places. I think it can come from a desire to normalize a situation that's very very hard to process, and that's living in a very jaggedy place inside us, and to try to make it so that it didn't happen. In my case, I think it came from fear. I think I was really scared of him, and I was really scared of how many could be because you know, even in the years following that, every time I saw him, he had something mean to say.

And when somebody has something mean to say to you, but the history of your relationship with that person is one that was terrifying and violent, that has a different meaning, and it affects you and goes through you in a different way. So I think I was doing everything I could to make things nice for him and to make um myself not threatening. I think that people underestimate how circuitous behavior can become when we're afraid and when we

don't know how to process a situation. And at that time, there wasn't the same language for these kinds of experiences. So it's like we weren't all throwing the word assault around, you know what, I mean, Like it was like, what the hell happened? I don't know. So I think that you know, we know now there's a huge body of research that shows us that memory is really fray cured by trauma. It's not consistent. We don't remember everything perfectly.

I mean, I can't count the number of people I know who have, after a very terrifying experience with somebody, have been nice to them afterwards and it will have maintained contact. I mean, I'm I'm sure that a huge percentage of these kinds of experiences that happen, there's contact that is friendly and that is perplexing from the outside afterwards. And I think that if we can't make room for the mess of that, we're not going to be hearing

these stories the way we should be, you know. And I think what was what was really hurting about the Harvey Weinstein case was there was an expert call to talk about the impact that trauma has on memory to talk about typical post assault behavior, which can include contact like this, and that was a real service. But in in the Younga Messi case in Canada, there was no such witness called, and those women I feel were really hung out to dry and their behavior was made to

look flaky instead of completely normal. Yeah, it was three years before the Harvey Weinstein case. They were also they were humiliated. Um the title of the essay, the woman who stayed silent carries a weight to it. I guess a weight of reckoning with that decision. How are you feeling about that decision? I'm feeling good now. I've been dreading it. I've been dreading it a lot. I've always known I was going to have to tell this story at some point and really regretting that because I was.

I was really scared. I would say that the response has been really surprising to me, just the number of women who have said, yeah, like this is why I didn't come forward in this case. I think if we can develop a language around this and have a conversation around this where it becomes really understood that people aren't going to behave like a cartoon character would after something

like this happens, to us. I think that's that's an exciting conversation to be part of because I think it opens the door for a lot of conversations that have been hidden to come out. You Know, my question, which I ask in the essay is how many women didn't come forward in the Harvey Weinstein case, how many women

didn't come forward in the Gianga Mashi case? Like, we'll never know that, but I would hope that if there's more of a language and more of a conversation around what behavior and memory looks like after trauma, I would hope that more people will feel comfortable at some point telling these stories about their various traumatic encounters that they've

had over the years. There are a couple instances in in the book where it's it's very clear that the very systems that are set up to protect people really fail them, you know, in the what you expose about the criminal justice system and how it can deal with sexual assault cases, also in terms of your experience as a child actor and unions that are set up to allegedly protect you or who's watching out for you on set, and I would understand having experience with the failure of

those systems firsthand. Could make one a cynical person, but it seems to have made you to be a more curious person and a more engaged person. Is that fair to say? And if so, like, what is it about you that that makes that your inclination? Thank you? I'm glad that's how come across. I mean, I am curious, and I think I'm curious because I fundamentally don't believe that there are that many people in this world who mean harm. I mean, I think there are a lot

of people who do harm. I don't think there are a lot of people who mean to I guess that gives me a certain amount of hope that things can shift and change based on conversation and open curiosity. Like I actually just have an enormous amount of faith that if people knew how to do better, they would like even the experience of putting this essay out into the world, which I've been dreading for years, and you know, I thought that what I would receive was a lot of judgment,

you know, for not coming forward earlier. I certainly felt for myself. So to have that greeted with understanding and a conversation and you kind of go like, oh my God, like people have a lot of room like people, people can be tolerant and expansive and drop their judgment, and

that's hopeful. I just I mean, even like the people in this book, Like I feel like people are kind of really interested in telling horror stories about Terry Gilliam and I certainly have a few of my own, But I I actually don't think he's a monster, and I'm I'm not interested in vilifying him, And I'm actually most interested to know if there'll ever be a shift in that person because he has a really creative brain. He's really interesting, he's really alive. There's a real goodness in him.

That creative energy has not been directed towards his absorption of conversations that go in a progressive direction. There's like there's a real creative failure in the way he's approaching these things. But it's there, Like he's not a monster, so you know, he's eighty now, I don't know, like, how will you see things in a year? Like we

can give up on people, it's fair. I think there's a lot of evidence to support the end of giving up on something like that, but I kind of don't want to because I've seen the side of him that actually does have empathy. I've seen the side of him that's enormously creative, and so I think, like even the people I talked about in this book in a not flattering way, I'm just not willing to give up just it may sound naive, but I also think it's like, I don't know how you go forward like without that

belief that that that's possible. That's writer and director Sarah Paully. If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure you subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, you'll hear what happened when Sarah Paully turned the tables and asked me a question, one that caught me off guard. I'm Talia Schlanger. You're listening to Here's the Thing from

my Heart Radio. I've been speaking with actor, director and writer Sarah Polly, whose new book Run Towards the Danger reveals some of the more harrowing stories from a life lived on stage and screen. As you can tell by this point, Sarah Polly is a pretty insightful person, and I guess something in the way I asked her about her story involving Gian Gomeshi gave her a sense I might have a story to tell too, So just as we were about to wrap our conversation, she said this,

can I ask you a question. I'm curious, like, how would you describe your reasons for not coming forward? Well, I was not assaulted by Jian Gomeshi. Um, And I did participate in the investigation internally at CBC that was conducted to contribute to evidence of like a pattern of behavior. I was an intern. I wanted to be at the

CBC because of him. Uh. I dreamed of that show and I felt so much shame about when he took a shining to me going out with him, going to his house, and the way he interacted with me physically in one of those situations. My entire body was like, you need to get away from this man and you need to not see him again. Um And I told him so. And I was very scared about the first time I'm telling this story, uh publicly. I was scared for my career, um and for myself. And he was

extremely powerful at CBC. You know, there was like a two story high photograph of his face that I saw every single time I walked into that building. And I was fresh out of school. So when there was an investigation at cbc UM, they asked for people to speak to the lawyer who was conducting it, and I saw off for myself also the amount of shame that I felt even in telling her why I went out with

him on a date. It was scary enough to go through that without having been assaulted, but I can't imagine, Like I just got a little glimpse into what it might be like to come forward for something like this. And then I got I remember I got back to my desk and there was an email from our union that said, just so you know, if your managers find out you took part in this investigation, we don't have a lot of ability to protect you. Oh my god. And I just remember thinking, all my career in Canadian

media is over and that's fine. It changed the way I am in the workplace for sure, and I got really lucky, yeah, and also felt so much shame, so much shame. Yeah, it's amazing how we get left with the shame instead of the person who's done the really awful thing. You know. It's such a And then we have I mean, that's one story from a whole lifetime, so you know, like that's that's that's that, that's that

part of things. So but that is the other thing too, is you're kind of like, I'm focusing on this story because I want to, you know, I want to show what the similarities were between my story and these other women's stories. But it's like it's not even on the scale of things that have happened in my life. I'm not sure how much anything, you know that's like what's terrible. It's like this, sorry, guys, this isn't actually the big trauma on this issue, but that will be in the

next book maybe. Like it's just like, I mean, it's just this war zone, you know, like bi female in a professional environment. It's so messed up. It's so messed up. It's really messed up. Yeah, and what we've absorbed as normal or or just something we have to plow through, and we're kind of privileged, like we have these tough forms and like this is not even close to the as bad as it gets. It's just to even feel empowered enough to be able to say, well, if this

ruins my career, I lose my job. I know, that I'll still be okay and I'll find another way around. That's an enormous and enormous privilege. Absolutely, Yeah, I feel very emotional after what you just told me. So do I. I'm grateful to you for asking. I feel I've interviewed a lot of people, and people um never, I think that's the first time I've been asked a question. Well, I could see your face and when you like you.

At some point when I was talking, you started closing your eyes, and then I could see when you were talking. I could kind of sense what you weren't saying, and so I was like, I didn't want to intrude, but I also just wanted to open the space to talk a little bit because I, yeah, there's just so many people out there who carried these stories around, and I think the shame part is just such an important piece of the conversation because it's what that's what creates this

kind of toxic silence around it. You know, thank you so much. I could keep here for days and ask you a thousand more questions. I'm so tremendously rateful to you for writing this book and also for working in your career to make things better. Thank you. Thank you so much, what a pleasure this was. Thank you. I just want to make it clear, Sarah Pauli and I had never spoken before this interview, and I had no plans to tell my story, certainly not on this podcast.

But Sarah asked the question, and so I answered. And again, I'm not alleging that gian Gameshi did anything illegal towards me. That was just my experience of interacting with someone in a position of power, and I wanted to share how that impacted the way I felt about myself and about my career, especially in light of Sarah being so open and sharing her own story. We reached out to Gian Gameshi's team for comment and did not receive a response.

Survivors of sexual assault can reach out to the National Sexual Assault Hotline at one eight hundred six five six four six seven three. That's one eight hundred six five six hope. My sincere thanks to Sarah Poulli for an unexpected conversation. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Talia Schlanger. Alec Baldwin will be back next week here's the thing. Is brought to you by I Heart Radio