Golda Rosheuvel - ‘I don’t see my dyslexia as a failure anymore’

0:00This month, we are partnering with Pink Lady Apples. Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast where we ask each guest about the things that went wrong to get them closer to the things that went right. Before we get on to this particular episode, please do remember to subscribe and follow so that you never miss a single conversation. Bridgerton is an interesting story because I went up for Lady Danbury first. I just fell completely apart and it was a terrible, terrible, terrible audition. I've been with my personal trainer four years now in the gym. We've had some right old ding-dongs where I've gone.

0:35He's asked me to do something and I'm like, no, I didn't get the job. And I was like, why, why, why, why, why, why? And they said, because I wasn't black enough. Hello, this is Elizabeth Day from the How to Fail podcast. I wanted to share something I'm genuinely excited about. One of my favourite UK wellness brands, Ancient and Brave, has just launched in the US. I've used two of their products in my daily routine and they've made a tangible difference. The first is True Creatine Plus. With added taurine, vitamin D and magnesium, it supports physical performance, energy and cognitive function.

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2:19Golda Rochevel is an acclaimed actor of stage and screen, whose varied work encompasses hit TV shows such as Silent Witness and Doctor Who, and theatrical productions of Romeo and Juliet, Jesus Christ Superstar, and the lead in a lesbian version of Othello. But she is arguably best known for her role as Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton, the smash hit Regency period drama. Bridgerton is one of Netflix's most popular shows ever. It has racked up 298 million views in its three series, as well as winning five Emmys. Rochevel also starred in the spin-off Queen Charlotte, a Bridgerton story. She has said that playing Queen Charlotte, the only Bridgerton character loosely based on the real-life historical figure who was married to George III, is an homage to her maternal, upper-middle-class English heritage.

3:13Rochevel's mother, Judith, was a white social worker who met Siegfried, a Guyanese Anglican priest, by chance at a choir rehearsal in Jamaica. Rochevel spent the first five years of her life in Guyana, South America, before moving to England and settling in Hertfordshire. Her early ambitions were to be an athlete, but a teenage ankle injury meant that she pursued drama instead. It's a fascinating childhood, but one that Rochevel has always insisted was filled with love and acceptance. When she told her younger brother John that she was gay, his response was, cool, what do you want for lunch? Rochevel now returns for the fourth series of Bridgerton, launching this month on Netflix.

3:59She was, she says, surprised when she first got the role that would change her life. There was a part of me that didn't quite believe it, because I never think that anybody's going to like what I do. Golda Rochevel, welcome to How to Fail. Hello. Thank you for that. Thank you for living such an interesting life. I was like, my life was flashing in front of me in my very eyes. Great, lovely. It's fascinating. There's so much to get into. But I was actually quite surprised by that quote that I found that you said when you said, I don't think anybody's going to like what I do. Is that true? Yeah.

4:36Why do you think that is? I think because I guess it's such a place for me acting in terms of and what do I mean by that? I mean, it's a place where I disappear. It's a place where I can imagine things that are bigger than me. It's a place where I can tell stories. And, you know, my upbringing was full of stories and full of sitting down, listening to my parents tell these stories. So that kind of escapism is real for me and it feels, I feel a need for it. So when you dive in blindly to a character and a storyline and you communicate with other characters, I'm never thinking about the finished product.

5:26So when it's finished and it goes out there, I have no concept of it whatsoever. and I hope and pray that people will like it. But my ideas and my imagination is so out there that I never think that anybody's going to connect with it in a way that, you know, you want to as an actor. So how does it feel now, knowing that these 300 million people have seen your performance as Queen Charlotte and you've been catapulted into this stratosphere of fame and attention. How does that feel? Odd, weird, very grateful and important because representation is important. We want to see people who look like us, who we can relate to.

6:24So that part of it is really, really good and I feel as though my job is done and I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the right job because people are connecting to it and aspiring to things that they might not have thought they could aspire to. You know, seeing a black queen. So that part of it is really good. What do people say to you now when they recognise you're on the street? Thank you. I can't believe you're nicer than your character. Yeah, thank you. And that one is really special when they say, thank you. I never saw myself before. I never knew that I could reach for the stars. And that's really special and beautiful.

7:10Some of it can be quite mad. You know, people will talk to you and scream at you in your face. And, you know, that's quite bizarre. And it can come out of nowhere. I kind of say now that my senses are really heightened so if I walk into a room or I'm on public transport or something like that I know somebody's recognised me from that sound and that sound can be like, you know, a mile away I always remember watching Paris Hilton her documentary, I think it was on Netflix and she spoke about the sound of camera shutters and how it actually re-traumatises her now whenever she hears it. You become so attuned, don't you?

7:56Yeah, you do. And when you... I don't think that I'm famous at all. But in this world of fame, of notoriety, your world becomes smaller. It has to, to protect yourself. Tell me about Bridgerton. It's enormous fun to watch. is it as fun to make? Yes. Is it? Yes. Do you all get on really well? Yes. You're not going to tell me no anyway. No, it's one of those, you know, cliche, we're a big, humongous, gorgeous, happy family. I love every single one of them. And it's a privilege to work with them. It's a privilege to have those core, you know, oldies, as we call ourselves, myself, Adjua, Ruth, who are staple.

8:44And then these wonderful, young, beautiful actors come in play you know the two lovers. Talk to me about the costumes because so much of Bridgerton is about the presentation. The costumes and the wigs. Yes. Yeah yeah yeah. What's the hardest thing about the costumes? The corset. Yeah the corsets are really I'm double corseted so I have a normal one of those corsets and then my jacket is corseted as well. I actually managed to persuade John our designer to to let me off the the one that's the the proper one so now and I hope that continues now I just wear a bra and one corset I never understand how those women wore those things back in the day but they did what about the wigs the wigs are pieces of art um as far as I'm concerned.

9:40It takes about a week to make one of them. And the detail, the attention to detail is quite extraordinary. There is storytelling in the wigs. Well, we'll talk more about Queen Charlotte as it comes up in one of your failures. Yes. But let's get into those failures. You've given me three. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And your first one, first of all, how hard was it for you to come up with them? Or did they come quite easily? The first two came quite easily. But the third one, I actually asked my wife like what? Because I didn't and she was like you need to do something fun and relatable. Well done.

10:17You're a bit dark at the moment. Okay. So your first failure is dealing with your dyslexia. Yes. This is the first time I've talked about this actually in depth. So I'm looking forward to it. Well thank you. I might get emotional but I am looking forward to it. Well all emotion is welcome here and thank you so much for sharing this because so many listeners will relate to it and viewers too. So talk to me about how you first knew that you had dyslexia. I knew you were going to ask that question. And it's a very bizarre encounter. I was in junior school. We lived in Bishop Stortford. And there was a summer school at my junior school.

11:00And my mother enrolled me for the summer school. and to cut a long story short, I loved sports. I was captain of my netball team. I was captain of the rounders team, hockey team, you know, and I did athletics. So I was playing rounders. Do you know rounders? Yes. Kind of like a baseball game. And very happily playing this game of rounders and the guest teacher basically after that day went up to my mother and said, do you know that your daughter is dyslexic? And my mother had never heard of that word. She was like, no, what is it? How do you know? And the woman said it's the way she swings her bat and connects to the ball.

11:55That's the story. That's a true story. I mean, it must be about dyspraxia or some kind of distance between and how you connect to the bat to the ball. And how old were you, sorry, at this stage? So I must have been like eight, nine, ten, something like that. And just to situate us, so the first five years of your life were in Guyana. Yes. And that transition from Guyana where you had this fascinating experience of moving around a lot and spending time with indigenous tribes because of your father's work. Yeah, yeah. Going from there. My mum strapping me on her back. Right. And hiking up into the bush.

12:33Do you have many memories of that time? No. Those are the stories that I would sit and listen to my parents talk about, you know, these travels and hiking up into the bush and being on the Essequiba coast and him preaching to the indigenous people and, you know, my mum kind of supporting him. Wow. Beautiful. So then you transition, you move. Yes, we moved. Age five. Age five to Britain. Yes. Because my mum was English and we thought that that was the better move. And I've heard you speak about this before, that you've said that actually it was a very welcoming environment. A hundred percent, yeah.

13:12My grandmother welcomed us with open arms because my mum's quite, or she was, she's passed now. Whenever my friends used to come round, she was like, your mum's quite posh. and the story is that my aunts and uncle arrived with like fur coats and stuff because we literally had, you know, the clothes we stood in and it was dead of winter, like snow was on the ground and, yeah, we were kind of scooped up in the arms of my, you know, uncle and aunts and then we stayed at my uncle's in Charterhouse. He was housemaster of a public school in Charterhouse So we stayed there for a little while until my dad was able to get a job as a priest.

13:56He actually worked for the United Society for the Proclamation of the Gospel, which is a missionary society. And he got a job there and we moved up north. So to get back to the dyslexia. So age nine or ten, you have this rounders teacher tell you this thing. Tell my mum, I think your daughter was dyslexic. She should get tested. Did you realise that you had it before? Was there any? No. No. So what happened then? I got tested. They found out that I was dyslexic. So I then moved to secondary school and my grandmother paid for extra classes on a Friday night after school with this wonderful teacher.

14:32And my mum used to pick me up and we used to drive out to this woman's house and we used to do like exercises and stuff like that. So from day one, I was always supported in my neurological difference. Yes, it is a failure. But I don't see it as a failure because it was never told to me that it was a failure. Do you know what I mean? Yes. It was never, oh my God, you know, you can't read, you can't spell. You mix your D's and your B's up and, you know, your brain scatters. As you're reading a line, it like glitches. Those were never bad things. it was you see the world differently this is really exciting yes what a gift a real gift for the not like other people but that's like yes really special and we can find ways that you can move through the normal life you just need a bit of help and the tools to kind of get you through So B's and D's, I know a D because the word and finishes with a D.

15:48And that was, let's find a thing that helps you conquer that thing. So every time I need to spell a D or and is the first thing I go, okay, oh, that's a D. So I don't need that one. I need the other one. Yes. And that's a B. Wow. Thank you for explaining it like that. It's like coding. Like my, our coding is different. Yours is natural. It's, you don't even think about it. My coding is about sounds, seeing letters differently and the glitch that happens when I'm reading a line. That it just got, you know, like a glitch on the television. It goes like that. My brain does that. So pink is a good colour for me.

16:34I'm so pleased. It's a high-to-field branding. But every dyslexic is different, right? And the tools that they use are different. So my tools are quite old-fashioned, is that I have a pink highlighter. And I have to highlight everything. And that stops the glitch. Huh. You've said that you turned down jobs because of it, though. So which jobs did you turn down and why? Oh, God. This is the painful part of dyslexia, where you are offered a job reading Shakespeare with Ian McKellen and Harriet Walter. I can't do that. I can't go to a theatre and be handed a piece of text and read it in a way that you might be able to.

17:26Or somebody else who is not neurologic, has neurological differences. I would kill to do those kind of jobs. Being dyslexic doesn't stop me from enjoying language, doesn't stop me from enjoying words and being fascinated by language and words and Shakespeare and, you know, the classics. It stops me from reading it. So many, many times I've been offered those jobs. And many, many times I've had to say, no, I can't. Oh, Golda, I can feel the pain. If I was to do a job like that, I'd need six months. If I was to read, you know, with other actors, the whole of Othello or Hamlet or, you know, off the cuff, I would need six months to a year to prep.

18:33I'd probably learn every single line so that I could read it easily. And do you still learn through reading or is there a method where you can hear it? So my first port of call, if I have the time, time is a precious, precious thing for a dyslexic. We need time to be able to prep and to know and to ask, what does that word mean? Or to look it up on Google or whatever. so my first port of call whenever I'm given a script it goes through a thing called speech uh speechify so my scripts are all read to me first and I read along with listening right so that's what I only need to hear it read it once with speechify uh Gwyneth Paltrow is my reader uh Snoop Dogg can can be the reader but uh yeah okay Snoop Dogg reading Shakespeare Shakespeare is beautiful.

19:31Yeah, his rap in a way is... It's great. But Gwyneth, I've chosen Gwyneth Paltrow on this app thing. She's great. So she reads me all my scripts. And then that's fine. Then I delve in and start doing the work from the script itself. Fascinating, because there's such a musical heritage in your family, isn't there? Your brother's musical. Your parents met through the choir. Both my parents, yeah, absolutely. Everybody plays an instrument apart from me. Were there times in your early career before you had sorted all of this out really that you feel you were deemed as less than by people in the industry?

20:12No, because I think you can hide it well. And I think I hid it very well. I was functioning. and as I said time is my diamond and if you can speak to your agent and you have people around you that understand you need that time um then that's fantastic you know if I was going up for like a self-tape or something like that before the Bridgerton days um and they would only give me like two days there's no way I'm getting that job and I I understand that and I am prepared to not get the job but I am not prepared to not do the work for it yes because there's always that slim chance that you might get it yeah so I will do the work for it it won't be as as good as I want it to be Bridgerton is is a interesting story because I went up for Lady Danbury first and that was in person with Kelly Kelly being the casting director and I I knew it outside of the room they hadn't given me that much time when I got in the room and the camp you know Kelly was there in the cameras I just fell completely apart and it was a terrible terrible terrible audition lucky I was so lucky that like literally an hour later Kelly said oh there's the part of the queen that was done I did a self-tape for the queen and that was done with literally pieces of paper with words that I that I couldn't remember and trying to place them in positions where I could just glance and go boom and yeah so some of my self-tapes are literally like if you see if you turn the camera around you would see like a whole heap of like pages and papers and stuff like that sometimes I would do it on an auto cue but that got a bit weird because yeah trying to film yourself and do the the timing of the auto cue so you could have the thought processes that you wanted to have But yeah, for Bridgerton, there were literally pieces of paper.

22:34Are you happy you didn't get Lady Danbury now? Yes. It went to a much better actor. Oh. Adge was phenomenal. She is. She's phenomenal. So are you. Seeing the world differently, everyone around you really gave you this feeling, rightly, that that was a wonderful thing. That that difference was wonderful. I wonder if that played out in other parts of your life. because your parents were clearly extraordinary individuals and yet you also had this experience of coming to England at a certain age. And I imagine, were your family not that great, feeling like an outsider? Yeah. Can you talk to me a bit about that?

23:17Yeah, that goes to identity, doesn't it? And being biracial. That was my seamless link. Yes, very good, very good. Into my next failure. Yes, interesting. difficult especially as a young teenager and trying to figure out where you fit being told that you fitted with that community because of the way you looked and understanding that and getting that and having wonderful amazing beautiful friends you know within that community but then there was this other side that was kind of pulling, but I didn't really understand what that was and how that was a part of me because it was all about how I looked.

24:14Yes. Do you know what I mean? Yes. And that was the thing and that was my identity. Yeah. That was supposed to be my identity. But then there's this, and I always say in my household there were two people. I had a white mother and a black father. So I had my identity there in front of me every single day. They nurtured me. They kept me alive. So how can the way I look be dictated with who I am because I'm seeing these two people and I'm a part. I came from these two people. So I have to be part of both communities. But finding that as a teenager and as a young adult was really, really difficult because of outside understandings of the way I looked.

25:17Yes. And lack of understanding, like the lack of nuance. Yes. Do you remember at this stage in your life ever feeling like, I wish I looked different? No. No. No, never. But my upbringing did lean itself more to my mother. You know, being dragged in through manor houses, you know, country houses and museums and operas and, you know, you think that that's more leaning towards my mother's culture and lifestyle and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. black people people of color love museums they love minor houses they love classical music you know but it was it was difficult to find my heart to find my soul to find who I was you know I've just done this play with Tish she was I know Letitia yeah and there's a line in the play where Tish's character says to her mother, which I play, you know, don't you want to know half yourself?

26:35And my character says, I'm not half anything. I'm a whole Joyce. And every night I would be so grateful that I found my whole Golda. You know, and that happened. I can tell you when that happened. And it was relatively late. You know, I was in my 20s, early 30s, and I was around my cousin's house, my white cousin's house. And my family is very vibrant, both sides. Everybody talks over each other, but somehow we all hear each other. You know, it's real, like Christmases are amazing, beautiful. And I remember sitting and I was the only black person there, you know, as I had been for most of my life, all of my life.

27:25And I sat and I could hear this noise of, you know, very well-spoken, wonderful human beings. And there was such a moment of, I'm here. Oh, oh, I belong here. These people love me and they have loved me ever since I was born. and the realization of belonging. And that's when I was like, I found who I want to be. I know who I want to be. Beautiful. And it is everything that I see before me. And it is everything that I know and love. You know, whether that's soul food or chicken or, you know, sandwiches, you know peanut butter sandwiches or manor houses or the whole lot or reggae music or classical music or steel pan that my father played or it's all of that and that moment it was so powerful and so strong and so relieving you know I felt like the weight of the world had lifted off my shoulders in that moment and I felt I belonged I'd found the whole of me and there's that sense isn't there that belonging is when you don't have to change yourself yeah and you also don't have to explain yourself you no longer have to explain yourself anymore the self-acceptance is so powerful there too yeah I think that's that's a really good self-acceptance I think that was a really, really strong idea of I am everything.

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32:04And on our weekly show, Joe and James Fact Up, we bring each other a fact that we think is fascinating. Our only rule... Go on. The more interesting it is, the more true it is. We dive into the weird and wonderful, like whether you could survive on nothing but beans or if Shrek deserves a Nobel Prize. for discovering the fourth dimension. You might learn something new, probably something useless, but definitely something interesting. Listen or watch Joe and James' Fact Up every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. This does lead into your second failure. It's all part of it because your second failure is being biracial and navigating identity.

32:41I'm particularly interested now in talking about how this cauldron of feelings and this moment of sheer alignment and belonging played out or not in your professional life in terms of the parts you were getting offered? Yeah. I think the same with my dyslexia. The moments that I feel a failure with my dyslexia are the moments that I don't have the tools, I don't have the choice. I can't do it. I can't speak, you know, with Ian McKellen, Harriet Walsh. I can't it's just not possible and my heart breaks when I have to fill in a form like my wife is my dear dear wife always helps me with forms I can't do them it's impossible I need help it breaks my heart I feel like a failure with identity and being biracial there have been moments where I'm not black enough there have been moments when I've been too black you know and you're like well I you know there was a role that I played Jesus Christ Superstar played Mary Magdalene I understudied it first at the Lyceum Theatre I went on tour played the role and they were making a movie of it, of the stage production.

34:15And I auditioned. Fine. I'd been playing it for a year, the role. Did my audition. Went well. The feedback that I got was you're too exotic and your eyes are too close together. Who said that? Oh my gosh. So we're not going to give you the role?