Olivia Attwood - ‘It’s either vodka and a gay club until 5am, or hyperbaric oxygen’

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0:45Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that treats all failure as data acquisition. Before we get to our guest, I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing with Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions and we offer advice on some of your failures too. Here's some advice from Olivia Atwood. talking of great successful people you know through history how many of their stories start with that just taking that leap you know like leaving that job or just you know taking writing that play and submitting it there's everyone when you can almost pretty much think of do join in by following the link in the podcast notes where you can send me an email or look out for my monthly call-outs on Instagram for quickfire questions.

1:30Thank you so much for watching. Of all the many achievements my guest today can lay claim to, perhaps one of the most culturally significant is that she gave us the term the ick. When Olivia Atwood burst onto our TV screens in 2017 as a contestant in the third series of Love Island, she instantly became a breakout star thanks to her dry humour, gobby relatability, and for introducing us all to the concept of getting the ick, that sudden feeling of revulsion towards a potential romantic partner. Since Love Island, Atwood has not just been adding words to the Oxford English Dictionary. In fact, she's become a media force to be reckoned with.

2:13A regular panellist on Loose Women, she also fronts hit documentaries for ITV, including an investigation into cosmetic procedures called The Price of Perfection, which has been streamed almost 7 million times. Her award-winning documentary, Getting Filthy Rich, which looks into the online adult industry, has just returned for its third series. Last year, she launched her podcast, Olivia Atwood's So Wrong It's Right, which promptly went straight to number one. According to her TV bosses, she is a great talent and the face of the future. And yet, as a child growing up in Surrey, Atwood was, as she recalls, shy and anxious, always pondering.

2:58My parents are staggered by the shift that's happened in me over the last decade, because as a kid, the idea of being the centre of attention was horrifying. Olivia Atwood, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much. What an introduction. I'm so happy you're here, even though you are now the centre of attention. I'm sorry if that's making you feel uncomfortable. Well, you know, as we learn, I have become quite accustomed to it somehow. When do you think that switch flipped? When can you remember feeling more comfortable with attention? I think when it was on my terms, when I was kind of commanding attention rather than being thrust into it in a way that felt that I wasn't ready for.

3:43for example being singled out like in the choir or singled out in a classroom somewhere I felt like I was I was out of my depth and then everyone was going to look at me um was horrifying I see there's a trend on TikTok at the moment talking about did you used to do this at school you know everyone would read a paragraph yes and that if you were someone who was dyslexic or wasn't weren't a confident reader that fear of knowing these two more people before you those kind of situations like just filled me with dread um whereas now I don't I don't have that because I feel I feel comfortable in what I'm doing basically so you have dyslexia and you were diagnosed with that at school yeah really early on but you also had ADHD and that was a much later diagnosis it was yeah it was it was an interesting one you know as we know with ADD and ADHD there's so many facets to it and it doesn't actually just fit this one textbook mold that we all previously believed and so I fit the characteristics as I was impulsive and I was sometimes hyperactive but I was also meticulously neat and organized and like you said in the intro quite anxious at times and and thoughtful so it was conflict and that's I think what you know child psychologists and whoever else were kind of having a look at me at different times where they couldn't kind of pin it down.

5:08I think now I am the classic, like, high overachieving female with ADHD who overcompensates. You know, in women, we naturally try to find ways to be socially acceptable because society is less kind to us when we are annoying and breaking things and falling out of trees than they are to men and boys. So boys don't need to learn to mask as much. What did that feel like when you were younger? And did you feel that you were being misunderstood? I guess looking back on it, I did. But I don't think that was something I registered at the time. I remember feeling quite a lot of frustration towards myself of just the way that I navigated things.

5:56And why did I find certain things difficult that other people found easy? and there was quite a lot of that going on, I think. But it's hard, isn't it, to look back, to access those memories, I think, from when you were a kid or a teenager, truthfully, is quite hard because I think we also rewrite our own memories a lot. I also think with me, I sometimes think I have a memory, but actually I've just seen a photo. And I wonder if that's especially surreal for you because you were on TV in your 20s being followed around the Love Island villa, falling in and out of relationships and crushes. Have you ever watched yourself back?

6:34So that's really interesting because I purposefully have never watched like long form versions of the show, like for example, a whole episode because I actually made the decision really early on after leaving the villa that I didn't want to edit my memories because I lived it and I remember how it was in my mind. But of course, you know, there's 45 minutes to go on telly, give or take, of 24 hours and they're going to compress it and certain things will make it, certain things won't. And that is the nature of television, something that I've obviously come to love and appreciate, the art form of editing and making good TV.

7:10But that isn't my full memory. So we watched Bits and Bobs. I remember quite early on seeing maybe half an episode and I felt kind of instant like, you know, you could get yourself really wound up, which people do. And I think the best thing to do if you're going to do a show like that is just submit yourself to the process. You are not going to be able to tell the entire 200-minute story because there just isn't time. I want to talk about your TV career post-Love Island in a second. But because we've just touched on your anxieties as a child, to go from that to Love Island is quite a big leap.

7:47What was it that gave you the ability to do that? Was it being a grid girl? oh like it's it's so wild to talk about the grid girl stuff and I worked for energy drink companies and different brands I did promo modeling and that really got me kind of traveling and seeing the world in such a positive way because there's so much negativity around obviously that kind of work especially when a lot in the media about grid girls and the sexualization of women and I and all of that I can there's an argument for that that I completely get on board with but for me it was a really pivotal moment into finding independence and kind of just getting outside of my comfort zone really um it got me away from really shitty horrible boyfriend like physically gave me distance when I'm like physically traveling in the world and meeting new people and I was like oh my god the way I've been living is not normal because sometimes your own bubble well they just are used to what you're used to so how can they shine a light on anything particularly you know groundbreaking because they do they're just used to what you're used to yeah but yeah getting space like emotionally and physically it helped me find my confidence yeah let's go on to your failures go on the first they're really really good yeah well thank you so much because i i really i could tell that you'd really engaged with the premise and that means a lot to me so your first failure and i'm reading act because I want to get it specifically right the way you expressed it.

9:17Failure to realize I can't find my strength in other people and therefore not realizing sooner I could do things alone, specifically with boyfriends. That is such an interesting one. I think a lot of women will relate to it. And I think it's probably intimately connected with people pleasing. I don't know how you feel about that. But tell me about this. And when you first started feeling like you couldn't be on your own or you needed to be with someone else? So my mum would say that I was like a clingy child. Like I, you know, I was that, that kind of out of the three of my siblings, I was the one who would be like, I don't want to go to the toilet on my own.

9:55Or, you know, can you do, can you come with me here? Can you come with that crying on the first day of school? That was kind of very embedded in who I was as a person. And my parents, my mum did a really good job to be fair of trying to help kind of push me to speak with my own voice and stand on my own two feet. I went to boarding school and things like that kind of forced me into situations that, you know, that otherwise wouldn't necessarily happen. And I think that what I did was I just replaced that kind of crutching on a parent or, you know, a guardian who is nearby to then friendships and then boyfriends.

10:35And I always had, you know, even from a young age, a best friend And it would be like a really, you know, intense kind of overly suffocating where we're best friends and no one is as close as us. And, you know, and that then moved on to the way I felt with boyfriends. I used to kind of become really focused on this one person. Everything else on the outside was like white noise. And I would tell myself the narrative that I had separation anxiety, which to an extent I really did with those early relationships. You know, I was very emotionally dependent on whoever was, I would call it like an emotional crutch of my life.

11:14At that time in my life, that's how I treated relationships. How much do you think ADHD might have played into that? Quite a bit. And I think when I was working out who I was and what my value to life was, and for a large part of my teens, my 20s, I really thought I didn't add any value to anything. that was I know this it sounds really dramatic but it's genuinely how I felt and I I I then put everything into a friendship or a boyfriend because that gave me like a sense of purpose do you know what I mean yeah I wanted it to be suffocating and and and and then therefore I attracted really I was like prime kind of right for the picking for people that don't have terribly nice personalities you know if you're like a narcissist or you're you've got a bit of borderline personality disorder and you've got this girl who's like I want to move in next week and we should get matching tattoos you're like fucking yes let's go like she's going to be the easiest one ever to manipulate even if they didn't know they were doing it I made it too easy you know I relate to that so completely my 20s I was in a series of long-term monogamous relationships from the age of 19 to 36 and I got married then to my last one and then divorced so it didn't work out spoiler alert and I think I outsourced my sense of self to other people yeah and I just didn't know who I was I was too scared to find out and all I wanted to do was please the other person or meet the other person's needs or what I thought their needs were and I remember vividly an ex-boyfriend who was lovely asking he was one of the good ones asking me where do you want to go for lunch and I was like I don't know I don't know you go where do you want to go for lunch and I genuinely could not work out where I wanted to go for lunch.

13:02You'd actually disconnected that much from your own needs. Yes. One of my best childhood friends who has stood the test of time and I also think your interest in friendships is fascinating. I love it because people don't talk about friendships enough. Right. We just gloss over it. But anyway, one of my best friends who's been since a child, so she really knows me and she was like, she's called me the chameleon because I was like that. If I dated a guy that was a rock rocker, I'm wearing skinny jeans, the hair's going dark, then I'm dating a guy that's like, you know, I don't know, really sporty.

13:33I'm sporty. And I just would constantly like shapeshift to whoever had come in and kind of wooed me. I would, yeah, I would go in to fit them, never to fit me. I'd always go to fit them. And let's talk about friendships. So how did that impact your friendships? Well, I speak there of my best friend, Charlotte, who I've been best friends since primary school. And she, I mean, I don't know what she did in her past life to deserve me because she used to fulfill the test of time with me. And we, and she's, you know, she's had to, she's always given me her honest opinion, but she's never abandoned me in the choice of my bad decisions.

14:08So she is a true friend. And you know what it is to have a true friend is like someone that genuinely is like wants you to win. Like there's no like conditions or thing. they genuinely want to see you do great and and and have the kind of love that you deserve and I think with female friendships especially jealousy is such an issue you know which it kind of weaves its way in I think that women are like society makes us be so competitive with each other so when you find a true female friend who is not in competition with you also having quite different tastes I think actually works well like yin and yang like sometimes I think if you you put us together people were like how have you two been best friends for like you know over 15 years because you're quite different but I think that also does work I think I've had friends where I've met you know in different points in my life or we're like I think we're like kindred souls I'm like oh my god you're just like me and you we did and that kind of implodes on itself I think after a while if you're too similar to someone I'm just laughing because I'm relating so hard And it's taken me longer than it's taken you to understand and unpack all of that.

15:18Because I think that what we're talking about is codependency in relationships. And actually the best, most functional relationships are interdependent. And I'd love to talk to you a bit about your husband, Brad. Because when I met my now husband, I remember him saying this thing to me once where we had the chat where I was like, where's this going? And he said, well, I'm enjoying the time I spend with you. and I'd like to I like the fact that we're walking along parallel lines and we're we're separate but together and he's like and if that continues for a few weeks a few months or a lifetime then that would be a great experience and I was like god that's so unromantic how on this is like date three Olivia I'm looking for matching tattoos yes exactly I was like why are we not running away to Rio yeah yeah because I was so used to being love bombed by narcissists yeah and just having my own agency stripped away from me whereas Justin gave me the chance to state what I wanted not only the chance but like made me actually really really evaluate that and now I feel so supported and safe in that relationship and we are independent and interdependent and it's the best way of being what's Brad like what made him different it's to be honest it is it mirrors that quite a lot um Brad you know people know the story of our getting together and untogether and everything like that if I hadn't gone on Love Island I don't think we would be together I think that we had to kind of pull away for us both to get some perspective now with Brad he is the first male relationship like you know dating relationship I've had where like you just said with your relationship he has his own thing like he has his own job he has his own goals and I have mine and he wants me to have them like Brad is when I like you know the best decision I think anyone can ever make is like their life partner because when it when it's wrong it can be so terrible but I think more so like for women because society is not it's still harder for us to win right yes so if the if your literal co-partner in life doesn't want you to win what fucking chance do you have like if you're you know sitting there at home and you're going oh I didn't get that job and your husband's going well you know that's all right you know just do something else or they're going no go back and kick that door down because you deserve that job it makes a big difference and I think not many men truly want to see their female partner like fly like and I know that's that's really controversial because I think to have success and also when you have success like in our industries like I call it like loud success like my sister's like super successful I'd argue more successful than me she's you know what she does in a very corporate world but it's not like our stuff's loud it's like you know he can't turn on the telly or open a phone that's seeing my face and then he has to live with me that could become very jarring very quickly I never had that before so precious and I think you'll bang on yeah I definitely had exes who might claim to be supportive but they're actually supportive in a very superficial way it's like they're supportive of you showing up and looking nice when they need you to but when you actually I've had this direct experience when I wanted to make a career change there was no support there whatsoever it was just like no you can't do that yeah you need to stay small essentially and I think what you're identifying is generosity of spirit in both friendships and romantic partners and it's so important how did you get out of this pattern of outsourcing your sense of self to others feeling like you needed someone else was it something that a bad relationship taught you how did you work it out I don't think it was an intentional thing I think I around the time of accepting to go on love island because I turned love island down twice right for boyfriends so chic oh less chic they were chasing me I just honestly it's like such a knob every time I say that but yeah but I and I turned it down momentarily for Brad and then I realized that Brad and I weren't in quite the locked off monogamous situation I thought we were and then I had a bit of a come to Jesus moment where I was like what are you doing you have to go and do something because I was in this area of doing things that scared me so I was like this is scary and I don't like it and I don't know what it's going to be and the easier thing would be to stay here again and just argue with this guy I'm seeing about why he's not treating me right or I can just like fully take control and go and do this thing and then whatever happens after this happens and I know Love Island And it's obviously quite an unusual example to make.

20:08But I think there's situations in everyone's lives where they could have that kind of uncomfortable decision axle, where that one decision is going to change their whole life. And in terms of the relationships and what I then decided I wanted from relationships, I feel like as humans, we're hardwired to feel important on some level and to feel like we are good at something and people have value to us. And I think up until that point, because I didn't feel like I had any importance, and I don't mean importance in the egotistical sense of, I'm important because I went on Love Island. I meant like, I didn't feel any important to myself, like, you know, in that sense.

20:48So I was like, once I came out of Love Island and I started kind of organically like bleeding into this other TV work and I felt like I was good at it, it changed the way I felt about myself for the first time in the whole like 25 years I've been alive. and then I think in turn it then changes what you expect from other people yes so I feel like if you can be a stay-at-home mom and you get genuine you know importance and you kind of validation from that that's fucking amazing and that means that that's what you're meant to do but for other people I think that's why it can be a bit of a road of like misery because I think they feel they lack that feeling of what is my thing what is my meaning yeah my purpose and I feel like as I started to find that everything else just fell into place your authenticity shines through because actually if you're unsure about something you will take the audience along with you and I think that's the other thing is not pretending that you have all of the answers all the time and I also think we're in such it's like we're in such a set up to fail kind of world because and I also think of always reminding everyone that I'm not perfect and I have rough edges and I will sometimes drink vodka and pass out face down in a gay club I'm not ever going to say to everyone I am this perfect pristine who makes the right decisions all the time because then when you do put a foot out of line they're coming for you with pitchforks

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23:25When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. let's get on to your second failure because I'm aware that I could natter to you all day and you've probably got places to go to documentaries to present your second failure we've touched on it it's your failure to care for yourself when I had low I don't like to use it self-esteem my feelings towards myself weren't positive and I think that was it I was kind of like bobbing around in bad relationships I didn't have the ADHD diagnosis I didn't know why I found things harder than other people and then I think as a result of that when you not when you really don't love yourself everything you do reflects that so like the way you eat the way you prioritize sleep if you exercise all of that do you know I mean I just felt like prioritizing any form of wellness which I know Gen Z are way better at than us was yeah not not something I was actually like worthy of which that sounds so deep doesn't it it does sound deep and I'm wondering where it comes from did it I mean did it come from your upbringing in the sense that those things there's definitely in this country there's a mentality of stiff upper lip and you get on with it and there's a lot to be said for that sometimes yeah my mum always verbally would you know kind of talk to me especially like you know about taking care of myself and eating right and all those things but I think like you say just the way in being a 90s kid obviously you've got the stiff upper lip of like the Englishness and then my dad's German so you you put those two together and it's a real get on with it mentality I mean yeah it's like lying in to my dad was like my god it's night but my dad has a North American accent just for clarity he's like my god it's 9 a.m this girl is like still asleep so maybe there's a little bit of a that kind of vibe but I don't know I think I think it was more me I think it was more my relationship with myself really seeing as we're talking about the 90s and we can remember that very strange culture where much of it was really kind of liberating and great and it was ladettes and great music and all that and then the other side of that was this like toxic media circle of shame looking at women's bodies analyzing criticizing them how do you think that affected you how did you feel about your appearance at this stage in your life I think that probably influenced more than I realized that kind of failure to self-care because like you say I feel like the rock the sort of supermodel staying out all night partying Nicole Richie kind of era was really glamorized so kind of not taking care of yourself in that sense if you flip it to now of what's like trendy it's like everyone's obsessed with taking care of themselves and yeah I think I was influenced by that in the sense that I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to like be cool and I wanted to be, you know, being thin and smoking and drinking was all just things that were social currency that we knew held value, you know, which also had massive detrimental effects on our wellbeing.

26:52How do you feel about your looks now? Like I hesitated then because it's, again, it's such a female British thing. I'm not going to say I think I look good because everyone's going to think I love myself. God forbid. No, I'm happy with the way I look. I've always been pretty consistently happy with the way I look and my body, despite my feelings about myself. It was one thing that always stayed quite consistent. I never had any major hangups. I think I was maybe too into my looks at different points because I really felt that was like the only thing that I had going. So any way that I could kind of in my eyes improve on that was really important but I was naturally I was lucky in the sense that I was well I say lucky it was just a toxic mess but I was tall and I was naturally really skinny so in that era when everyone was just starving themselves like I remember being at boarding school and I would be the one like eating the pile of toast in bed and like you know my dorm mates would be like you fucking bitch you know because they'd all be yeah restricting what they ate which was was something that was so normal around everyone my age and for those years and it was something I didn't have to worry about too much but also on the other hand of that it's like you know when I did get too thin at times it's like you know from again just not looking after myself it was something that was praised on rather than people going oh I don't know if it's healthy to be that thin you know it was something that is just interesting the way we approach things now whereas now I strive to be strong yeah I'm in the gym lifting weights like I love that you love weights.

28:26Can you imagine me doing that 15 years ago? I'd have been like, oh my God, get out. Am I going to lift a weight? Well, the gym was really uncool. It was not cool. And if you were going, you're just going to run on a treadmill like a rat. That was something that I discovered in my 30s. And latterly, I've got very into weights. And I know that you love your weights. Love it. And you're right that it's a kind of mental headspace as well that's really important. Because I did years of fertility treatment and I felt like I lost control of my own body in a way. and being able to re-inhabit my body feels so powerful.

28:58And weights and resistance training has given me that. Yeah. And everything, the fact that we've undermined the fact that women need skeletal muscle for so long is actually crazy as well because it's like our survivability against anything is better when we're stronger. And I really take stock of that now. you know and I kind of I wouldn't have cared if I missed a meal you know 10 years ago I'm like whatever now I'm like I I'd feel really guilty if I you know didn't eat enough protein in a day it's I prioritize it but it like you say it's a mind shift what else do you do for your care now I do everything honestly like I it's so weird because I was actually on the phone with my agent this morning and she was like there isn't I've always been quite an extreme person but there's there's there's either like I say like vodka and gay club till 5am or there's like hyperic oxygen there's literally and I do the first one much less now but I mean I do I do a lot of supplements I work out like resistance training four to five times a week um I try and sleep more um I'm on the NAD injections don't know yeah report back but so far feels yeah like I don't know if it's placebo.

30:13I did hyperbaric oxygen actually over Christmas. My husband was doing it for his knee to help with some recovery. So I was like jumping in there with him. Again, there's no exact way to measure these things, but I felt like I had more energy and I felt revitalized. And then everyone knows like I'm, you know, I love a Medispa. I love an injectable, a facial, anything that's kind of new, you know, on the market. I'll give it a go to an extent. are you a workaholic do you think yeah what do you think of that term because i think i am too but i sort of want to reclaim it because i love work so work is also my hobby but i think you've just nailed it i think i think it's a privilege thing yes yeah of course we're workaholics look what we do for a job it's fucking awesome like but then i think trying to like shame people for not being in love with their job is also just really gross like it's really easy to go yeah I'm obsessed with what I do of course because to me there isn't a real like there isn't a real cut-off point between a working day and a non-working day because I'm actually always thinking of things like I'm always writing in my notes like sometimes you know even when it's like I'm off over Christmas that's when I got some best ideas of things that I want to research or and people I want to interview on the pod.

31:30And you must be the same. You must always be. So that to me is, yeah, it's kind of obsessive, but I'm completely happy to be obsessed with this because I'm doing something that I love. It doesn't feel like a job. But I don't think we should be thrusting that on people, you know? Because some people it's just a way to survive. And you put food on the table and that's fucking it. And that's also fine. Yeah. You know? Are you competitive? With myself. Okay. Yeah, because I would say, yeah, I give myself a hard time. I don't really look left or right. It's kind of internalized because sometimes if I set these kind of little goals, there's always a fear, isn't it, that things will kind of wean off.

32:16So you kind of, it's like the little legs like a duck below the boat. You want to keep pushing forward.

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33:04All new, Thursdays on FX. All episodes now streaming on Hulu. Let's get on to your final failure, which is a direct challenge issued to me, which is your failure to cry. I love that this is like me and you, because you love to cry, don't you? I do. I love a good cry. I cry very easily. I'd never met anyone who cries more than me until I met my husband. Oh my God, stop. Are you serious? I'm totally serious. Like sometimes we go to the cinema and he'll be... No, don't. He cried. It was in floods at Wicked. And I was like, am I now a hard-hearted bitch? So my other failure should be failure to just enjoy musicals.

33:42Oh my God, he loves a musical. I'm making him sound like he's a gay man. I was going to say, it's actually ideal for me. I love that. To be fair, second to my husband, I would marry one of my gay friends. That would be my choice. So they probably wouldn't marry me. But yeah, there we go. Yeah, it's something I don't think I really realized how I felt about it as much as I do in the last couple of years. Yeah, I don't. I have a really hard time with crying. And I also have a really hard time with people crying. So please don't cry. I don't worry. I'm going to hold myself together. But did you not cry when you were a child?

34:18I mean, obviously as a baby you did. Maybe this is a new reaction to having spent so many years being so tearful and kind of anxious and all the rest of it. And I cried a lot in those past relationships. Like, oh my God. I mean, cried myself until I could pass out cry. Like as if someone had died, like over these breakups and these arguments. And I think maybe... in this kind of era of my life that I'm in now, maybe it touches on something that I feel that I don't want to go back to her. So I've kind of shut it. Like, I'm like, I don't like the way... Even though I cried a lot, to be fair, having said that in those teenage 20 years, I still wasn't good at crying in front of people.

35:05Because it makes you feel too vulnerable. Vulnerable, like, just very exposed. It's a feeling that it's really hard to fully... put into words if I cry at home and my husband's there I always run and I go into the duvet like a child and he'll try and like pick me out from the duvet and I will just I don't almost I'm I'm happy for him to hug me and comfort me but I couldn't just sit in front of him and kind of sob but he he's not a crier but he's more I think he's more in touch of his emotions than yeah me so when you are really upset or sad about something is there a physical manifestation of it or do you just internalize it I'm moody probably like yeah I get like moody kind of shut down I to be honest I know that you're saying all of this like it's that you think I will think that that's weird I wish I was a bit more like that because I've definitely found myself in situations where I really want to make a point sometimes in work situations and then you break down and yeah and I feel really like I can feel my chin wobble and my voice starts wobble and I really don't like it and I I don't know how to stop it I've got a bit better at being aware of it now and I think what happens for me is that I immediately go back into a child self and I feel like I've lost my adult potency and it sounds maybe like something similar is happening for you but you're just dealing with it a different way like you're going you don't want to go back to that younger self and so you've got the strength of mind just be able to shut it off yeah but I think that it's hard isn't it to be a functioning human because I think there's a sweet spot isn't there yeah because I almost fear that I've gone I kind of I would like to find a point do you know what it is is I think about if if and when I have children which is something as I sit here right now I think that I want and I kind of I would like to be able to show them a range of emotion that's more that has more of a broad spectrum you know then then kind of the one I have right now which I think is quite quite stifled yes you know my parents were not criers I can I've never seen my dad cry and I could count on one hand the amount of times I've seen my mum cry.

37:35And I think it's not because, and they never spoke shame on people crying, but I just think that, like I said, that German-English split in a family, we just, it's a very, get on with it, you know, kind of thing. And I think maybe, because I was a bit of a crybaby, you know, at school, and I probably had that kind of, I was met with that kind of irritation from teachers of, come on, Olivia, you know, let's get on with it. And then I had boyfriends who didn't have a very nurturing, I probably felt, I faced quite a lot of rejection when I did show emotion. So then as an adult, I think I'm self-protecting.

38:08And then what I've done is I think I then deflect people who are highly emotional all the time. I end up going, oh, for God's sake. I'm like that, you know, that kind of moody millennial person. Well, just because I'm emotionally constipated, you should be too. You know, like when people are really, I'm not saying I'd do this. If you cried, I'd comfort you, but I'd probably find it quite uncomfortable. Okay. I'd probably be like with like one finger like but would you think I was pathetic depends completely what it was okay I'm not gonna cry no it's in this episode so just to reassure you I think one of my I think I have a very astute and I think I've always had this read on people and I think I all I all mathematically know that you're a genuine person like I've watched your work for years I've listened to you I know that you are you're not performative or you know so i if you cried but then i think i have a very good read on people that are performing yes and and they cry as a as a deflection tactic as as a theatrical and that i have like so little tolerance for and i think that's why sometimes i came off quite cold in love island oh i loved you on love because i was like oh shut up again just like the kind of person i wanted to be but wasn't like no no honestly which i can't believe that about the ick that you basically introduced that i always get i mean i think i i take full credit for bringing it into like uk pop culture resurfacing it i have been told by people that it did it featured in a very early episode of sex in the city so the possibility that it was imprinted on my like early childhood memory while my mum was watching it in the background and i probably absorbed it but yeah me and my friends used to say it and i remember when i said it in the beat chat and the producer to say hold on the what and i said she's got the ick because we used to say that as a friendship group and she was like what what is that and i was like what you don't know what the ick is and then yeah i should have bloody trademarked that yeah that was the dumbest thing i've done legendary status um can i ask you a really personal question which is about so this whole crying vulnerability thing wait did you grow up in a family that named emotions did you tell each other that you loved each other no yeah I I have a very similar experience so if because I've just my mum if she was here she'd be like oh you little liar because when we were kids we as children definitely and it was so as I don't know when it stopped but as children it was right you know you did the the at the door sort of you know I didn't want a water and shut up right you know get your water good night love you like we did that and then I I don't know at what point we kind of stopped doing that and I it's I it's so funny because I have me and Brad were driving back from Manchester the other day and we got into this conversation and I guess I only noticed that my family don't do it once I became part of Brad's family and his family say love you all the time so any little phone call that's like oh we're five minutes away okay love you his mum is always like his mum says to me a message like his mum will send me a message and be like I just saw you on Loose Women I'm so proud of you, I love you and the first couple of times it really I was like what?

41:21It was confronting. I don't know what to do like what do you mean that you love me? I didn't know what to do with it and I think that's what shone a light on the fact that my family don't do it as adults and then I said to my, I said to Brad I I want to say to my parents that I love them right but I have this kind of fear that if I was to call them and say I love you they would probably think something was wrong with me I was dying and I'd almost ruin their evening because they'd probably be so do you know what I mean yes but then I have this thing and as life goes on and you lose people and things happen and you think oh you know it'd be a real regret that if something happened and I hadn't you know told them how I feel even though they probably know because I think it's an unspoken thing I know my parents love me I don't have any doubt about that we we just don't verbalize it in that way as adults and it is an uncomfortable thing for me and I think I when people tell me they love me my reaction to it is I think it it's like I'm like oh I'm like kind of disarmed by it yes do you say it with your family no do you know you say yeah it's more common than you think isn't it i think it is actually and i think also there's so much cultural fetishization of like the perfect quote unquote family and how they all are with each other and in the same way that there has been about romantic relationships and because we're all well you and i anyway although i know that you're younger than me but we're like bred on this diet of american rom-com but actually that wasn't the experience of a post-war generation in Britain it's like a totally different thing but I go to the opposite extreme and I tell everyone I love them all the time do you just not my family even though even though again like you I know that we do we just don't necessarily express it all of the time yeah it's making me laugh because you know if I was on the phone with my sister and we're having a good old chat and then I went okay I love you she'd probably go all right freak like where's that come from because it's just we we don't do that yes it's funny isn't it yeah it is but like you say this like younger generations are like psycho dissecting everything and I also think there's a sweet spot with that because I think there's a really good thing to look at things that have happened in your childhood and yeah people make mistakes your parents have made mistakes you've made mistakes and you know hurt each other and vice versa but also in most cases unless your parent is like pure evil your parents done the best they could of what they had and it's their first time living as being human beings as well so I feel like we could cut each other a bit more slack now if anyone else has said this failure which is such a great one by the way I would ask them the last time they cried but I'm very aware I don't want to upset you even though you wouldn't be upset because of everything we've spoken about but that you came in and said that your nan had just died and so I don't really want to bring that up but that I'm assuming is the last time you cried yeah that was yeah so I've she it was not isn't it weird when someone's elderly and they've not been well and we love using this expression like oh well you know it wasn't out of the blue it was it was kind of we knew it was like approaching but then when it happens it still is a shock and it was I think I dealt with my emotions around you know losing my grandmother quite a lot over the last few months I think that what it was was thinking of my dad in pain which I didn't like I didn't it made me feel sad so my mum told me on the phone I hung up and then I just like I was sitting on the end of my bed actually then I just kind of laid back and I was like oh so but I was thinking about my dad being upset because like I say I've never seen my dad cry and I didn't like the idea of knowing that he was in pain and that made me sad and then I cried and I laid back on the bed and I just cried but I don't know it must have been I'm laughing so this is how I deal with everything I don't know a few minutes and I was really I felt really sad thinking about it he was I knew he was out there in Germany and he'd be with his brothers and just kind of what that would look like and then I just kind of literally I kind of rose from the bed like some avatar I was like right I have stuff to do I have stuff to do I'm not I because I I also think because I went through the years of my 20s like I say when I had these arguments of boyfriends and I'd cry to the point where I could like literally I wouldn't be sick you know that kind of sobbing where you're like I do if I do cry now I kind of pull the cord on myself like I don't I don't let it because you can just go off a cliff edge can't you and I did have loads to do yesterday that stuff that I couldn't just you know I had to get on with stuff I was on like a time limit you're a boundary to crier so I was like and I felt I thought you know what I thought I've actually I do feel like I've let it out feel bit a little bit lighter and I felt sad for the rest of the day and I had the sadness and my husband was like very sweet to me because he knew I was sad and I was quieter but that was like yeah I felt like I'd kind of yeah I was I dealt with it I'm so sorry for you and your family's loss thank you very much and I've really really adored chatting to you oh likewise it's been such a privilege i've loved it i could have talked to you forever and i want to i know we said it off off camera we met in the corridor i want to say thank you again for your support over the years because it hasn't gone unnoticed and it's meant a huge amount to me honestly do you mean that go on cry i'm a big fan of you that means so much to me thank you and always and forever and i think it's because you're smart you get it thank you and the people that don't get it is because they don't you don't get it looking at human behaviors it's fascinating it's fascinating what's not fascinating about watching humans interact thank you it's anthropology it's like connection all of that yeah people are just so dismissive because and very often i find the harshest critics have never watched a single minute of reality tv yeah this is a whole other conversation yes it is yeah we'll put a pin in it for now you're going to stay to do failing with friends well yeah and i just want to say thank you so much again for being olivia atwood thank you for coming on how to fail please do follow how to fail to get new episodes as they land on apple podcast spotify amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts please tell all your friends this is an elizabeth day and sony music entertainment original podcast thank you so much for listening

48:26You