ON FAMILY DYNAMICS… With Bella Freud and Danny Dyers

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2:15Danny Dyer:That's 15 % off at masterclass.com slash fail. Masterclass.com slash fail. Welcome back to How to Fail. This week, we're talking about family, the first relationships that shape who we are and our understanding of love. My first guest is fashion designer, Bella Freud, founder of the iconic Bella Freud label, celebrated for its witty slogan-led knitwear. She's also the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Bella speaks with extraordinary honesty about the devastating experience of losing both of her parents to cancer within a week, her complex childhood and the responsibilities she carried as the eldest sibling.

2:59Danny Dyer:Then we hear from the legendary Danny Dyer, who reflects on growing up on a council estate in East London with a single mother, and the trauma of discovering his father had another family and had the absence of love in his childhood shaped the parent he is today, one who's determined to give his children what he didn't always receive. This episode aims to offer reassurance, validation and some insight into family dynamics that are often considered a bit of a taboo. First up, here's Bella.

3:30Bella Freud:My father was dying of cancer and we were all expecting him to die. And then a week before he died, my mother went into hospital for some tests and she'd come and stayed with me, which she didn't do very often, but she'd been to stay with me a few months earlier and said she'd forgotten her painkillers and she wasn't someone who took painkillers. and I noticed that and thought, God, that's strange. And she said, I've had some pain in my back or something. She went into hospital, they did some tests, and then they said, you've got a week to live. And she did die a week later, and my father died on July 20th, and she died on 24th.

4:17Bella Freud:So it was so, so strange.

4:22Danny Dyer:That must have been horrendous. Yeah, it was so abstract that it, and in a way, because she was, she knew she was going to die and this doctor had told her exactly what, you know, what would happen.

4:43Bella Freud:and it seemed to be very peaceful and also it made it possible to ask her things or say things like, ask her if she had a will, say things like, I'm going to miss you and that was completely normal. I remember saying that to her and she said, I feel strangely detached from what's happening to me. it was kind of wonderful in a way because there's nothing i mean i don't suppose anyone else would want a long prolonged death but her more than anyone she was very immediate person and she'd had she they discovered she had cancer in three places and it was completely everywhere you know we made our peace and i thought we were going to be at the beginning of some other phase in our lives of begrudging acceptance of each other.

5:44Bella Freud:And we sort of were, and then that was it. She was gone. It was like a racehorse, an outsider horse streaking to the front. And she said, oh, I'm sorry. I'm just sorry I won't be able to come to Dad's funeral. And then we just laughed. And it was great in some ways. even though it was unbelievably shocking.

6:09Danny Dyer:I'm so sorry for what you and Esther must have gone through at that time. Did you have an opportunity to say to either of them, I love you, or were you not that kind of family?

6:23Bella Freud:I did say to my father once, I'd done some sort of self-help course, and I said, oh, this is the bit where I tell you I love you. And we just laughed. and I think it was really nice and I'm sure he appreciated that and I tried that a bit with my mother and in a way it was more about gestures and I was so glad that she'd come to stay with me because we kind of wound each other up and we had a really nice, she stayed for two or three nights and we had a really nice time together. And I remember we went, because she lived in Suffolk, and we went to the Latitude Festival, and we went to see Nick Cave, and then we went to see Blondie.

7:16Bella Freud:And when we were sort of rocking out, we looked at each other, and I thought, yeah, this is, you know, this is where we're. She just was like a rebellious teenager her whole life, and when I was together with her and that, We got on really well. And we had things out and some were successful and some much less so. I suppose there was some kind of acceptance of each other before she died, which was a peaceful thing.

7:55Danny Dyer:Did your father say, I love you back?

7:58Bella Freud:No, I don't think so. He didn't really use that language, but he showed it in many ways. So that didn't matter at all. My intention was to say something that was potentially embarrassing, but I wanted him to know anyway. And so he knew. Well done you for your courage in navigating your relationship with your mother.

8:29Danny Dyer:Your second failure, Seamless Link, is not joining the circus. Oh, God, yes. So was this actually an opportunity? Yeah. Okay.

8:40Bella Freud:Tell me this story. I think I was 19 and I was going through a phase of trying to be an actress or vaguely entertaining, like being in a band or being an actress, being a performer of some kind. and I used to get the stage and look at the adverts and I saw there was an advert for something or other. I don't know if it said. Anyway, I went for this meeting and it was in the middle of Shepherd's Bush Roundabout where there was a circus and I was going for a job, it transpired, of being the girl that dances on a ball. You know when they'd have an enormous ball and there would be someone who somehow stayed on it.

9:24Bella Freud:and I went for the audition and I got the job and then... Wait, so in the audition did you have to stand on the wall? No, no, she just sort of checked me out. How old were you? I was 19, I think, 18 or 19. It was the first part of the job I'd have to go and live in Birmingham in a caravan on the side and I wouldn't be paid for anything at all, no living costs, no food. And then after a month, I think, I would then get my living costs and then when I was in the circus, I would get a sort of minimum wage. And I just didn't do it. And I stayed home and I always regretted it. and I actually, I mean in some ways I think if I had joined the circus I might still be in it.

10:24Bella Freud:So in some ways I'm glad I didn't do it because my life took me in a different direction and it was one of my fantasies as a child to be in the circus. I loved all the people in it, I always loved people in that type of world and outside, you know, an outsider life with a lot of pride. And it's something that I still think, oh God, you know, I wimped out.

10:54Danny Dyer:You do look like you'd be a great addition to any circus. I mean that as a compliment.

10:58Bella Freud:Yes, no, I take it as that.

11:01Danny Dyer:You mentioned there that when you were younger, so sort of six, you were the one who felt you had to be responsible in the absence of adult responsibility. And then in your teenage years that switched. And I wonder how that affected your relationship with your younger sister Esther, if at all.

11:21Bella Freud:Yeah, no it did. Because when we were children she was the person I trusted. And I don't know if it's an oldest child syndrome that... She was so important to me, but I also felt like, you know, I was looking out and she was behind me. So she gave me this moral support, but I was the soldier on the front line. and I mean whether I was or not is neither here nor there but it's and I don't know if other eldest children have that feeling of slight loneliness of we're the ones we also get the love because we're the first one but then we lose it and we get the first we're the ones that are the experimenters as it were she just was such a great ally and she always believed in me and believed me more than anything and you know as a teenager people are it's the time where you get dismissed and very much so in the 70s um and she believed me and that was such a big thing I was always grateful and still am for that

12:51Danny Dyer:Yes, what's it like today? That's more important than ever

12:58Bella Freud:There's some kind of thing in some I can't remember how it exactly goes about resilience and it's something to do with trauma when it's not witnessed is a catastrophe But trauma, when there is some sort of witness, i.e. someone believes what happened to you, makes it much easier to recover from. And when your experience is denied, it's just this kind of, you can get stuck in this thing for your whole life of proving or just disappearing because what everyone saw, you're being told didn't happen. to have that information so that it's not dismissed and notice it in other people.

13:54Danny Dyer:Thank you. It's so rare, I think, that we talk about sibling relationships. And it's rare on this podcast too. And I really value having the chance to talk about it as one of two sisters myself. And I'm the younger sister. And I completely agree with you, by the way. I was so grateful to my older sister Catherine for being the experimenter the kind of bulwark the first defense um and it's a it's just a very interesting relationship that completely shapes who we are and our character yeah and I really appreciate how much attention you pay to family when you do your podcast fashion neurosis you do it sitting on a chair that was your father's chair in his studio, this sort of battered, beautiful, painterly armchair.

14:43Danny Dyer:And of course, the act of what you're doing is psychoanalytical, as your great-grandfather was the founding father of it. And I just wonder what your relationship is with the Freud name.

14:57Bella Freud:My whole relationship was with my father. He never talked about his grandfather there was no reference hardly at all he made a few jokes about him and it was really about what you do yourself and he was the model for that so we didn't we didn't use that as a kind of blanket. I felt that would be a bit tacky to just, you know, in the end, if I don't do a good job of whatever it is I'm doing, then who cares? If I then use that as some sort of magic carpet, that's the worst thing I can imagine. So we were never brought up with a thing about Freud at all. But my father, there he was, he was everything to me.

16:02Bella Freud:And I just, you know, he was just such a powerful person in my life. And I looked up at him and how he dealt with life. And he seemed to deal with life by painting through any problems.

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18:09Elizabeth Day:You know, obviously come from a family of, you know, of some sort of criminal fraternity. I really started to really feel that when I went into the theatre world. Wasn't so much with the TV world, but definitely when I started to, you know, be around theatre gnats, as you'd like to call them. I was well out of my depth with just dialogue in general. especially when you do a play and then afterwards you come off stage and then you know you've got sort of people in the bar waiting I didn't quite know what to say to these people really and I felt that there was always a class thing going on but it gives me a drive and an ambition really I've never been to drama school I don't want to lose who I am the essence of who I am because my theory on acting is that my toolbox is me and my traumas and my you know my truth and so I have to dig into my box to find certain emotions and feelings and so I wouldn't want to become a blank canvas which is what you're taught at drama school, lose the accent and then going back to the Pinter thing that's what happened with Harold, Harold was from East London but Harold was told I suppose he was an actor during the 50s and the 60s so therefore you know working class people shouldn't really be on the television.

19:23Elizabeth Day:Interestingly I've just heard a stat that in the arts at the moment there is six percent uh of working class people wow it's at the lowest it's

19:32Danny Dyer:ever been something that needs to change I feel tell me a bit about your your childhood and that idea of being rooted in where you come from but not forever defined by it you were raised by strong

19:44Elizabeth Day:women yeah I was raised by strong women absolutely my dad left when I was quite young so I had no real role model or father figure around me I mean my mother brought up three children you know on her own on a council estate and always did it with a smile and always had a cuddle and that's what our as children actually it didn't matter that we had fuck all it was about our currency as children and I noticed from having children myself quite privileged kids is affection and love and security you know so I didn't have me father for that but I did my mother was always there she was a great talker a great listener I had a matriarch in my nan nanny polly who said a lot right so this was a word that was around me a lot again going back to the classes and thinking I was only later on when I was at dinner parties and I'd use that word you know I realized that maybe if you look at the broader society it's quite rare that word yeah in particular but you know I always felt safe around me now do you remember that moment when your mom

20:50Danny Dyer:found out that your dad had been having this affair and had another family yeah i do because she was on the phone she got a phone call from from the woman that my dad was having an affair

20:59Elizabeth Day:with and uh and she just sort of dropped to her knees crying and she had my sister in her arms and i think she knew i think she knew anyway but you know it was like this really dramatic moment of you know it's a tricky one with my dad because obviously i just made a documentary and i was worried about maybe getting a bit of backlash from maybe women's groups and stuff because I because I felt that the timing of trying to make a documentary about how men are struggling is probably bad timing because everybody's struggling anyway I upset my dad because he he he googled my name and he hadn't watched the documentary yet and he and and and the press had said that I said that he was a violent man he was never a violent man he was just he was just a bit shit and it was my brother's truth you know it really affected me when he left my brother not so much he was a bit more you know logical about the whole situation and even though he was younger than me he realized that dad not being around meant it was going to be a calmer happy house whereas I just wanted me dad about you know I didn't understand why he wasn't there and I sort of blamed my mother for it because she was in front of me yeah but all these traumas that I had as a kid I think it just defines you as a human being you know what I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't go back and change anything I suppose this was the way it was meant to be.

22:12Elizabeth Day:And I think it shaped me as a father myself, you know, and try and do the right thing. And I did speak about my dad's upbringing in the 50s, which was really difficult for him. He was born in 55, so, and it was a very strict upbringing, you know what I mean? And so he didn't quite know how to be affectionate with his own kids. There was one moment when he was going to cross the road and he said, nah, I went to oldies and he went, no, we don't do that anymore, boy. And for some reason that stuck with me.

22:37Danny Dyer:You are very warm. Kindness kind of emanates when you meet you. That's my experience as a woman. So how did you learn how to do that?