From UN Advisor to Netflix Actress: Meet Creative Force Catherine Joy White

0:00I think it sent me into like speed fast forward. I will prove to everyone that I will never be a statistic so yeah like when I think about it now but I my waters broke at drama school I went away had my son came back a week and a half later I was like I'm finishing the year got a job in a West End show you know it I didn't stop to ever acknowledge or think about what happened.

0:30Welcome to The Slowdown, your time to redefine success and growth for yourself with a little inspiration from others. I'm back at Brazen Studios in London Bridge for another episode of season three, which is sponsored by Clue, the period and cycle tracking app that equips you with data and knowledge about your body. I interviewed award-winning actor, author, filmmaker, university of oxford fellow and gender advocate katherine joy white i met kat when she joined me on a panel about creative writing and i was blown away by her story and how much she had achieved and wanted to dig a little deeper just as a snapshot example katherine was studying at drama school while being a new mom and working for the un now that's a serious juggle i speak to her about why she was reluctant to tell people in the film world that she was a mom why she started her own production company, what it means to turn your book into a movie, and how she defined success and found the right pace to do things in her own terms in an industry determined not to let you.

1:31I hope you enjoy this episode. Thank you Kat, welcome to The Slowdown, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, so nice to be here. You've achieved so much, it's honestly baffling to read. You're an award-winning actor, author, filmmaker, gender advisor, and honorary fellow at St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. Your debut 2023 book, This Thread of Gold, reclaims the narratives of extraordinary black women throughout history and is currently being adapted into a feature film. You published your second book, Rebel Takes, on the future of food in October 2024. four your debut screenplay and multi-award winning 54 days which you directed and starred in was selected for over 50 film festivals worldwide and won the 2024 Cannes Film Festival diversity and Cannes showcase and is now available to watch an all-american airlines flights which is a lot of flights as an actor you're in the upcoming Bridgerton season four with several other projects on the go you're also CEO of Cassini Productions a TV and film production company creating opportunities, changing the narrative and championing diverse voices.

2:40You regularly give talks on gender and race equality, ranging from UK media appearances to international organizations such as the African Union and the UN Human Rights Council. Your work has been featured in Refinery 29, Metro, BBC, Rolling Stone, Variety, and the World Humanitarian Forum. I think it's safe to say that through film, literature and activism, you're reshaping the cultural landscape, inspiring a new generation to tell their own stories unapologetically do you ever stop to take that in like how does that summary make you feel uh I mean it sounds a lot when you hear it out loud and it's also always a very awkward thing hearing your bio red right because you're just kind of like yeah I don't stop to take it in no because I guess that's the that's probably what we want to speak about today it's like we're constantly on this sort of journey of onto the next thing and when life's busy you don't stop and kind of process how things feel so I think it's quite nice sometimes to hear it read and think about yeah the different elements and it's many strings 100 % is there anything that I've missed out that you feel is an important thing to list in your successes I think the thing I'm trying to like kind of speak more about at the minute is that I am also a mum and I became a mum very young and that's always been a bit of a like almost shameful secret I think and I'm trying to redress that now and just be honest that that's also something that I go home every single evening and take care of a seven-year-old.

4:12That's definitely something I want to dive into but I'm also very interested in of course where this determination and conviction to do things your own way came from and so I'm wondering what were the earliest examples of success and what did you believe success looked like when you were growing up it's so interesting I've always been like completely fascinated by these strong like characters I suppose some of them real some of them fictional like Emmeline Pankhurst was my childhood hero which is yeah interesting and Rosa Parks and at the time it was kind of these very well-known women like I had a book like 10 women who changed the world and that was I guess my bible um but I also can now recognize that I had quite feminist parents I think um they're super traditional and like very religious and I was raised in a very strict household but at the same time they were quite keen for myself and my sisters to be able to go and do anything we wanted to do and like I'm the eldest child so I was always thinking of success in quite traditional terms for me as a like young teenager that looked like studying law and I really remember being set on this like I'm going to be a lawyer I'm going to be a human rights lawyer I'm going to change the world you know not just inspired by Legally Blonde but it was kind of that thing at the time I didn't really know what it meant but I knew that I cared about women's rights and changing things and I went to these open days and I was like dead set I'm going to apply to Oxford I'm going to study law and French law and I came home from this open day and like told my parents and my mum was like oh yes sounds great love you know brilliant and my dad who's a Yorkshire man a man of few words shall we say you know like has told me he's proud of me or loves me probably like on one hand I could count those times one of those he's not like a the doting like typical doting dad and he just sat in the corner and went really really quiet and I was like are you like how do you feel about this plan and he didn't say much and then after a while I was sort of talking about excitedly he just very quietly said don't study law I was like okay and I didn't let it dissuade me at the time because I knew what I wanted to do I'm also very headstrong but it didn't leave me and I applied to study law on the UCAS form or wherever it was but then something was just and I changed why what I was applying to university to do to become just English and French not law and French law with the idea that you can always go and do something like law later and I think that set the trajectory for not necessarily following like the tested path in terms of what society outwardly says is a safe thing to do perhaps I think yeah success has always It's felt a little bit like being brave enough to do what you love rather than what feels like it will bring you the most money or the most comfort or stability.

7:19Why do you think your dad said that? I think, yeah, we've had a couple of conversations, but as I say, he's not incredibly forthcoming. So he sort of bats it away now. He doesn't quite realise how formative that was for me. But I think what he has said and what I've gleaned from how he sees the world as well is about feeling like I had something more to give, that I wouldn't thrive being in a box, I suppose. He felt that I had more to create and to make my own way and still have those same impacts, I suppose. while you were at school before you went to Oxford what was your report card like what kind of student were you I was again this like quite contradictory so I was like top of the class but because of that I also got really bored so I was expelled from French um for the whole of year nine which is quite interesting given that I went on to study French and use my French with the well with UN I speak French in my upcoming role in Bridgerton it's fascinating how that's ended up white like winding its way into my life I was also uh excluded from history again interesting but I remember just being in this classroom and looking around at this teacher who was droning on in just the least engaging way about something and I could I just looked around my classmates and we had someone picking their nose someone leaning back and I just stood up and said miss can you see around us like what is the kind of purpose of this is there a different way we can do this which is so wild now and I got sent out and then excluded for that was just the rest of that term so it was this really weird mix of being like bright and hard-working but bored and looking for another way and then what came first studying at university or trying acting or entering the work world yes acting actually came later so my gosh now I have to tell you this the chronology the chronology in whistle stop tour because it's also a long story and we want to talk about other things but I went to uni studied English and French loved that and then went and did a master's in women's studies and it was whilst I was doing this master's that I started working remotely for the UN as an intern so I was paying for my masters by working for the UN um loved all of this had this offer of a job at the UN um as a gender equality expert working on sexual violence in conflict zones it was kind of the dream job but had started doing a lot of plays and films and creating things when I was at university and just in the same way that I thought I can go and study law at any point I had this feeling I was like I'm not going to go and try and be an actor when I'm 30 let's try it now and so I did a year at drama school after the masters and then ended up kind of going straight into working as an actor whilst continuing to work remotely for the UN and juggling both and then that also like culminated with the pandemic happening as well.

10:27So it ended up being an interesting time of doing all of these. And in parallel, there was also something, as you mentioned, going on in your personal life. Yes. So whilst I was at drama school doing this one-year course, even before I started, in fact, I found out that I was pregnant and that was kind of a, well, yeah, a huge, yeah blow crisis um as I mentioned I'm from a very religious family and like that happening outside of a marriage is a deadly sin um and also I was you know super ambitious want to go on to change the world and people don't in my mind at the time change the world by becoming a you know a parent at 22 um so you know I had these these went to this appointment with the an abortion clinic and had these conversations and they sent me away because they were like you're not ready and I also knew that I wanted to go and do this drama school course and I didn't want to it was just a looking at it now it was a total of course it was a this crisis um so I just kind of pretended it wasn't happening didn't tell anyone apart from obviously my boyfriend um and my sisters I think and went on to drama school did this year and eventually around seven months people started to notice because I was also a very tiny little so people didn't know and I was hiding it like dressing in a certain way and because of how it happened I think it set also a tone for keeping this as a secret I was kind of like okay well if I'm gonna do this I'm sure as hell gonna continue to live the life that I would have done otherwise I think it sent me into like speed fast forward I will prove to everyone I will never be a statistic so yeah like when I think about it now but I my waters broke at drama school I went away had my son came back a week and a half later I was like I'm finishing the year got a job in a West End show you know it I didn't stop to ever acknowledge or think about what happened that set the tone for how my life went from there I was like I will prove to everyone that I will do more and be more yeah and your reluctance to not tell people as you move forward so when you started doing auditions and going up for roles and left that drama school was that because you felt that there would be a stigma or you know a casting director might think that you wouldn't be fully committed to a role or available or what was the reason why you continue to maybe not mention it so forthcomingly I think it was a mixture of all of that I think a sense that yeah you're you're a young mom like what what a dreadful thing to be like definitely the religion thing was playing into it but also I think all of the stereotypes that we have forced upon us as women you know you need to be young and beautiful and innocent and even though like my partner would take Jude to auditions hand him over to a casting assistant and they love it they'd be like this young dad oh my gosh but he'd also be met with lots of questions of like but where's the mum whereas I think for me I knew that it would be looked upon as though I didn't have my life together and I was very much trying to prove that I did so I just kept it quiet and I think there's also to a certain extent and I don't judge myself for this I am very private in so many ways and I think it's so important to protect your personal life when you're moving into a world that has the public in the public eye and i also believe that for my son it should be his decision when he comes into so i think there probably is some of that as well but it shouldn't be something that is yeah hidden that's when it becomes a problem i think how do you feel about all the kind of maybe it's just me but my instagram is flooded with baby announcements new mom announcements pregnancy photos like all of this stuff like very very public displays of uh you know announcements around children is there a mix of emotions is part of it like oh I wish I was more like this or is part of it like this is a red flag like they should be more private about this it's so hard I do think we are too we're all too online I think but we're too online with our personal lives and I think yeah I wish I had that but privately like I wish I had that with my family and friends I don't wish I had that for my Instagram following I want people to protect their especially when there's another life involved I want people to protect that space more it's so sacred and I think there's something about being able to preserve that and celebrate it among those who yeah know you and will be part of your life that feels important so this was about like how you felt you needed to present but what was the reality of the day-to-day of auditioning running for roles still doing things with the UN and being a mum not sleeping firstly absolutely no sleep and yeah I think just a feeling of like impending crash because it was there was so many moments where I'd be like on a zoom with I don't know the human rights council and I'm 10 minutes later getting in a makeup chair because I'm filming a show in Sweden or something and meanwhile I'm trying to call my mum who's looking after my son and a feeling of constant juggling but when you keep going you do keep the balls in the air I think so it was just also a sense of just gotta to keep going and a rest will soon be coming and I'll figure it all out I always had that sense that like I'm gonna figure it all out um in hindsight do you feel like you needed to grow up too fast and do you now have a sense of any kind of missed youth or 20s yeah I do I think that I feel like there's a lot of lessons I missed that like my contemporaries know about and sometimes it surprises me even if you take something like dating like I was just always in a relationship so I never dated so I never had that experience that everyone else was going through of kind of falling in love in different ways with different people not that's necessarily like I think it's also a beautiful thing to kind of like find love um but I think there was there's all sorts of things that I just that passed me by not just because I grew up but because I was too busy I was just too busy to do much other than work and when I wasn't working I was being a parent but because of that I sort of missed yeah like five years or so I think of of my life of that formative period in your 20s.

17:41Yeah and you mentioned at the beginning about you know Emmeline Pankhurst and Rosa Parks being heroes and obviously with them there's such a sense of doing something huge in the world and leaving this massive mark and legacy and I wonder where the line for people is between ambition and legacy and contentment and being like I'm doing enough and if I do more it will be too much for me um do you ever feel like if I try to leave a legacy I'm doing too many things and it's overwhelming or do you have a clear sense of this is what your mission is in the world and what you would like to try and achieve and that you feel that that is possible I do feel really clear on my mission I live by this ethos of using joy and hope as a means of activism and as a means of enacting change and I'm really clear that that particularly looks like how can I champion women how can I champion women especially black women women from diverse groups that feels really clear to me I think the thing that gets messy is I don't have to be the person doing all of those things and you know audrey lord speaks about overextension and there's a so overextension is this kind of you are stretching yourself so far that you will snap like stretching is good stretching is growth stretching is resilient stretching is kind of moving into new spaces but when you overextend well you make yourself sick she was writing that she was dying of cancer she died of cancer in her 40s and I think it's also recognizing that you cannot be the change if you are you're you're essentially useless if you've run yourself into the ground um and what's your legacy then there's a fine line of course we still Audre Lorde is like a hero of mine I could never deny her legacy but I think the fact that she recognized that in herself as she was dying of cancer it can be a lesson to us that you're yeah you know what your mission is but you have to preserve the self at the same time and you also started a production company and was that because you felt frustrated by not getting roles that you were interested in or you didn't feel like there was a space for the kind of storytelling that you wanted to be told or what was the reason that you started your production company yeah I think that was a bit of a pandemic baby when everyone was suddenly founding businesses and I made a film with my best friend and she had a company I was like this is amazing because we that film I was in and she was in and we did this but then I was kind of like I can tell stories not stories that I'm in it wasn't so much of frustration with the roles it was more of a I can tell different stories I was also at the time doing quite a lot of like on the ground activism I'd set up a fund the Black and British Impact Fund which was giving out small grants to small scale community focused projects because I think activism often can feel really hard to know where to begin so I always say like why don't we start with the the little corner around you so that was that fund I had all these different initiatives and mentoring program for people from state schools applying to Oxford I was like I could bring them all together under this banner of kind of is there's a there's a shared outlook it felt like a way to bridge the worlds of the UN and the worlds of acting so there was all of that and it felt like the right move and I guess that was an incredible move but then that was what I think was the main reason I was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for the production company work rather than just acting and it also then kind of created a community of fellow change makers and people that cared about the same sorts of things but I would also say that was one of the biggest factors in being in overextending because I mean you know what it is when you're running your own business and juggling multiple other full-time projects and jobs yeah it's um I asked because obviously I also run a production company creative agency and and there's this I guess double-aged sort of like creating a bigger container a bigger vessel that is bigger than you that can encapsulate so many more people and projects feels like the right direction in terms of there's only so much I can do as an individual this is this bigger container where we can do so much more but then you have to contend with the business insurance all of these other elements that come with doing something that isn't just you and it sounds like prior to that being an actor you know being a individual service provider to the UN or wherever it might be it's just you offering your time as a service whereas this becomes like an entity of a limited company in a business and and the complexities that come with that why the name uh Cassini Productions is the name and I watched this film it's not like the most amazing film but it's called Countdown at Cassini it was produced in 1976 and it's the first ever major motion picture produced by a group of black women so they kind of got fed up with the stories they were seeing and not being able to get something financed that felt like it spoke to them so they raised the money themselves among themselves produce it themselves and it was yeah Columbia Pictures was the first ever kind of big Hollywood production and I just love that ethos of community firstly but secondly rallying among your peers among your group to make something happen even if it's not in the kind of mainstream way it's it's finding another way which really spoke to what felt like the ethos of everything I wanted to do want to do yeah you've done so many things both as an actor uh with this production company and projects that you're working on at the moment is there any one or two that really come to mind that feel like roles or projects that you feel most proud of feel like it was the most important story to tell like which ones really stand out to you from your work so far hmm that's such a good question I think the first one would have to be 54 days which you mentioned which looks at a woman a young woman who starts wild swimming every day for 54 days in the lake where she'd lost her father to suicide um and I wrote that was my first screenplay and I wrote that after both my friend and uncle um died by suicide uh in quite a short space of time and it was essentially what happened to me I started swimming every day in this lake um and kind of that was the only way I could process that grief and I looked around and I was like there's no narratives that speak about what happens after you lose someone you love to suicide and everything I found about suicide was it felt very sensationalized like 13 reasons why or um even watching a star is born and not known where it's the big dramatic ending and then it ends yeah and especially when you're in that place I mean statistically those who've lost someone to suicide are the most likely group to go on to become suicidal and I wasn't suicidal but my god I was close I lost it's the only time in my entire life where I have just not known how I will get out of bed in the morning and I was yeah finding this thing of swimming is so it sounds so mundane now I'm this is like four years later but it wasn't it was like if I could get in that lake I knew I would be okay for the rest of the day and it was it was during the pandemic it was during this totally other time where nothing made sense anymore and then eventually I am a doer like my default mode is how can I do something about this I have to do something I have to make sure that other people who are going through I'm going through can know that there is hope but I also have to do something for those who are suicidal and are living with thoughts of suicide so I started working with papyrus which is the uk's young suicide prevention charity became an ambassador for them did a lot of advocacy work so the idea for the film came from that this is such a long tangent i don't know how i went into the full backstory about this story of hope and how we grieve differently because i was grieving very differently to my family who yeah it suicide was a taboo is a taboo my friends of course we all grew in different ways and it was about this kind of journey of yeah finding your way and recognizing that hope is there that was like the personal thing behind it and then I guess it resonated with a lot of people because then it it just did this had this extraordinary journey um with film festivals and awards and panels and it just went all over the world into schools as well and museums and centers and it felt like it sparked a conversation so it kind of had this like commercial success but it's quite it shows me that the commercial side of things is great but what actually matters is this feeling that you have maybe changed someone's life in a way that they wouldn't have found that hope otherwise yeah and it's so beautiful and I highly recommend people people watch the watch the film but um did you struggle with um replaying that as an actor like I assume you would have been filming it however many months later and to go back into that place and into that situation to kind of re-emerge all of those experiences was that hard to recreate or did you see it as like your duty and role as an actor and you were able to no it was probably one of the hardest like creative decisions I've ever made because at first I wasn't even going to play this role like I thought about I started like drawing up a list of actors who I wanted to play that role and was casting it as like a filmmaker and but the closer I got to it the more it was kind of like I can't watch someone else do that so then it became this personal thing of well I have to do it that was one thing and I was focused on making the film that was another thing and then as we got closer to the shoot and got the closer to that scene it was just a really really daunting prospect that yeah I think if if I think if I hadn't been like making the film myself it might have actually been harder but because I had to have this sense of like I am making this film I'm the person responsible for it I stayed somehow one foot out of it and it was really cathartic I think I can now see that that the reason that was so important to me was because it was my healing it was my own yeah journey of healing as well this season of the slowdown is brought to you by clue the period and cycle tracking app that goes deeper than dates on a calendar I talk a lot on this podcast about somatic wisdom and tuning into the signals from your body and that really starts with understanding your cycle better.

29:33Clue is an essential part of my daily routine, not just knowing when my period is coming but knowing what phase of my cycle I'm in, how I'm feeling, my energy, my sleep and now I use it in the trying to conceive mode. If you've ever felt like your body was trying to tell you something but you weren't quite sure what, this is where Clue comes in. It's science-backed, inclusive and totally ad-free so that you can reclaim your rhythm one insight at a time and especially for the slowdown listeners clue is offering a 75 discount code on their annual clue plus subscription via their website to redeem this go to hello clue.com and enter the code slowdown at checkout that's slowdown one word i'll also attach the direct link with the discount already embedded in the show notes so download clue today and start making space for the signals your body's been sending all along yeah and i mean what a amazing gift to give the world that you chose to do it in that way and now that that exists as a as an artifact and there's something beautiful about water obviously i don't know if that was intentional or not intentional but um i was writing a kind of tv show idea with a friend and we very much had a whole scene of a girl in open water swimming as part of the and that was long before I heard about your film or had anything to do with your film and and I think I've since seen it in in some films too like is there something about water that you think felt like an interesting symbol or metaphor I mean water's so expansive isn't it and there's so many moments when I'm swimming where you like the sky and the horizon that place where they meet and especially if you're someone that is constantly on the go busy mind overthinker very cerebral it takes one for me one of the few things that makes me puts me my place it reminds me that we are part of something way bigger than our own little worlds and our own worries and our own fears and it's kind of this space of yeah we are this has been here way before us and it will be here long after we've gone breathe into that also it's just such a beautiful like who can who can be by the sea and not feel in awe at its beauty its vastness its turbulence it's I always think of water as a woman I'm always like she is I think that's why I liked Moana so watch the disney movie um yes and i want to be moana i really want to be you it's so good it's such a feminist tale for our time i mean wow what a film um so do you consider swimming still something that you use as a method to slow down and recalibrate or what other tools do you use when life is running away you've got a lot of things on the go you're juggling all of these things are happening um what are your tools and techniques to slow down anchor I mean swimming yes but that was such a particular time that like year and a half where I was we're in a pandemic I lived in Oxford and I live right right next to a lake like a two-minute walk now I live in London you have to like book on an app and pay and it's just a different thing and for me it was the thing of like I can wake up and go as soon as I have to book something is that's not slow down for me that's like oh my gosh but I don't know what tomorrow looks like yet so therefore so that's not it anymore when I do it always whenever I'm whenever I can be in the sea that's my place of peace but I don't know what my thing is at the minute I think it's actually rather than something I'm doing is things I'm I'm stripping away like I'm trying to travel way less that's slowing down for me even like up till last year I was traveling probably every week every flight you get on takes I feel like it strips years off your life it's just it's a sort of wrench to do that constant so I think like removing travel removing yeah commitments removing saying yes to everything because I don't want to let people down or because I don't want to miss out so I don't have to say yes to every project I don't have to say yes to every social commitment I think I'm in that phase at the minute and as I do more of that I might find something new that fills that space or I might just have some space I don't know you were talking to me earlier about your decision to stop working for the UN and I'd like you to kind of tell that in more depth because to work for the UN seems like a huge goal for most people you know an amazing accolade achievement family proud all of those things so what what did that actually look like for you and why did you decide to step away in your own way yeah I mean you're so right it's this kind of this is the thing that people are like oh oh my gosh, your parents must be so proud.

34:42It's that kind of thing. And it was, you know, it was a job that I loved dearly and was incredibly passionate about. But that point of stepping away, it didn't exactly come from an informed decision. It came, as I think often these things do, from extreme burnout and being, my book was about to come out and we just sold it to the US and I was in LA with 54 days a festival and all of these things were happening and I needed to be doing things in Geneva and I had you know like problems with my relationship and I was away and I wasn't being the mum I should have been for Judah all of these things were going on I think I was approaching my 30th birthday and I just hit like a crisis point and I realized that I couldn't do all of these things anymore and not only that but I was not able to do many of the things so I completely put a pause on all of the like Coutinho Productions projects I had a very hard call with my manager at the UN who was so understanding and even though we had a number of projects come up she just got it and she kept me I think on full pay for um a month which because I'm a consultant essentially I was full-time but it was renewed contracts she that was a gesture that she didn't have to do and I left it with this this kind of thing of I'll see how I'll I'll be back like I'll see how I'll be in a couple of weeks but then I couldn't yeah I couldn't go back because I I just couldn't do all of those things anymore and it was a really hard reassess because there's like a security to that job there's a prestige to that job but I also recognized that it wasn't it wasn't the thing that was going to light me up for the rest of my life it was causing it was causing me a lot of stress all of the travel and so that was a decision that was kind of forced upon me in some ways but it was a decision like I'd made that choice and then I've had a very very probably the best year and a bit now of my life since then of being a bit more at peace with what I'm doing and I'm actually just now starting another project with them but on a freelance basis one of the projects that I would have been working on a year and a half ago um with with the premier league mental health and leadership program for school-age girls so we're going to be delivering some trainings and setting that up in the uk this summer so there's like a full circle to it now and i've also yeah i've found space everything in life has an opportunity cost so you've got to figure out if i'm doing this something else has to give you know it's impossible to to do everything and it's really cool that you've been able to realize like leaving something doesn't mean that your whole identity shifts and in losing this thing suddenly you're no longer an activist or an advocate and to be able to pick up those specific projects that work for you at times in your life that it works for you is is a really like cool way that you've been able to figure out how to do that yeah I think I've said this to you before but around that time I spoke to a doctor that's like the one time I've even had these kind of conversations and I was trying to explain what was happening I was like I can't breathe and I'm this and this and this and she said to me resilience is about having something to expand into that I think about that every day you have to have somewhere you can expand and when you're already overflowing in other directions you can never grow as a person as a yeah as a family member parent a friend but also as a professional as well it's all of those things there's also this amazing like 17th century very obscure poem Japanese poem and it's haiku it says barns burnt down now I can see the moon and I have that like framed now next to my bed and I'm like it's okay like if everything burns to the ground that to me is the most wonderful thing to live by because you'll have a better view exactly so interesting because as you were talking I immediately thought of a Chinese proverb oh I went to China in 2016 and I went to Forbidden Palace and walked around and there was this really beautiful bit of calligraphy above the women's quarters.

39:38And when we left, we went to a calligrapher's studio and he was like, is there anything you'd like me to write? Here are some suggestions. So we were getting little jade scrolls done. And I said, I really loved what it said above the kind of entry to the women's quarters. What does it mean? And he says, it's the art of doing nothing. And it just says doing nothing. And it's this great reminder of from the place of doing nothing is from where imagination comes it's from where ideas come like you have to do nothing to do something and it's a great reminder of like when we're so busy and I used to think I was addicted to stress and you know just wanted to be in and whenever I didn't have a really full plate and lots of things to juggle I was left to my own thoughts which was like a place I didn't want to be um and would get very existential and nihilistic and like what is it all for and so to be reminded that actually in that place is a totally okay place to be was this like reminder that I needed very much the second half of my 20s and so I had this jade scroll hanging in my room um for you know seven years that would like remind me every day whenever you know if things get taken away from me this project cancels I didn't get that job whatever the thing was and I now have space to not be like oh god what do i do i'm a failure because i have this like blank bit of space but to see it as a space from which things can be built or as you say from which you can expand into it's also now reminding me as well of um michaela cole's emmy speech about don't be afraid to see what comes to you in the silence yeah exactly that's why i love that speech so much because um it's exactly how i feel like our culture is fill every single space with as much stuff as possible if you're bored everyone's on their phone you know and the phones and instagram and all of these apps are designed to hook you and keep you and take all of your attention any spare attention but actually imagination and ideas and stuff comes from when you're bored of course you know as well sorry there's so many things this sparking but my school motto going right back was this was feel the unforgiving minute do you not just think that's absolutely abhorrent this sense that like you must feel every minute because time is marching on but I at some point like had this realization that for me it wasn't about like filling these like this severe time marching thing it was about like finding those moments in each second of like because I am I do feel that it sounds quite similar got this sense of time and needing to make sure that I'm filling it in the right way but instead it was kind of like what if it's about finding opportunities for and then I can think of something so maybe it's today i need to look for opportunities for connection in my day and not in every minute of the day maybe i need to look for opportunities for growth maybe today it is about like opportunities for like making some career moves i'm going to reply to those emails today do you know what i mean but i think it's reframing how we view time and we can still view it in a way of needing to fill it but it just doesn't have to be needing to fill it with productivity yeah like how we view time well yes because i think one of my biggest kind of fears is unfulfilled potential right but i think for so long because of society and capitalism and masculinity i believe that potential meant a certain thing success looked like a certain thing and so now i can i can kind of reorganize that in my mind and be like it doesn't have to be this huge big lofty goal i don't have to do all of this stuff it can like wasted potential can also mean like i didn't look at nature today i didn't mentor somebody today i didn't send a nice message to a friend today yeah um but you also speaking of obviously juggling so many different things you mentioned the book you wrote this book um and you've now written another book but why did you decide to write a book why did you decide on the topic that you chose and how was that experience of writing publishing and and bringing that book into the world um how did that feel different to anything you'd done before yeah I actually think with my first book with this thread of gold you know when you said earlier how does it feel to listen to all of that about the bio I feel like if I think about this thread of gold that's the thing I'm most proud of it's feels like a little piece of my soul and yeah I it's actually started its life as my master's dissertation which was on how black women used food as a means of resistance so it started that started with Beyonce's Lemonade which had come out I think the year or two before sorry ended with Beyonce's Beyonce's Lemonade it started with the Aunt Jemima figure who came out of slavery and then like just looked at all of these different ways that they'd use food as a means of resistance and like this was this big fight because I was like going to these Oxford professors like I'm gonna write my dissertation on Beyonce they're like no you're not I was like but I am wait watch and see and I did and they loved it in the end I was like good so it started life there but then I kind of was always thinking about it as something bigger and I think I thought at one point I was gonna just self-publish it as an essay or something um but then I yeah I was like I think there's something in this and just wrote to loads of agents like I did it honestly just really like cold emails I was like what do you think about this as an idea and lots of them came back and were interested but said it needed to be sort of commercial like trade appeal rather than academic for them to take it on so I went away and worked yeah exactly they're like we would sell to like trade we don't deal with academia so that's a different thing who's gonna want to read this tell us why so it was like kind of an interesting process and I went away and worked on a proposal and I was doing that without already knowing I didn't have an agent yet I was working on a proposal and then loads of them kind of through that process loved it and I also got lots of different pieces of feedback so eventually signed with my current agent and then we worked on it some more because you kind of you don't have to have the whole manuscript for a non-fiction book you have to have three chapters and a full proposal and um yeah then we went out on submission it was which is the most exciting and crazy process and you have these like someone did like a preempt which means you've got 24 hours to respond that's stressful or the offer expires you have to really weigh up like so we did that and didn't end up going with that preempt offer because yeah it wasn't the right one so that whole process was so incredible and then why I wanted to write it was because it's the same reason I want to do anything I wanted to like share these stories of joy like some of these are these women are just the most obscure figures from history that we don't learn about but they've you know like changed little pieces of society like muriel trammis who developed a skin adaptation for the sims like these kind of random things people have done to make the world better and then sort of bringing them all together through my own lens i suppose it ended up being the most personal thing like more personal than anything else i've done at that point and that being as just a celebration of all of these incredible black women and how did that transform into now a section of it is being turned into a film yeah the final chapter of it is like letter to my daughter it's like the letter to the daughter that I hope I have one day um that I started writing the day after Roe v Wade was overturned and I was just so furious I started writing just a letter I was imagining I would give this to a future young woman who grows up without that right um but then I realized anger wasn't what I wanted to write I wanted to write something that reminded this woman this daughter of all of the wonderful things about being a woman and all of the beautiful things about existing in our bodies it wasn't ever going to be in my book it was something I was just doing but then I was like this is the perfect way to end this book it's a letter to all women about what I hope and dream for their future and then every time I was like on the tour and doing all the publicity stuff people would always ask me to read this letter and people would always cry and connect with it and yeah people always just loved that and I loved that and so often I found it really really moving so then I that was how the idea for it is it's an animated film came about like a letter that comes to life and we follow this journey from school girl learning to write her name to yeah now it's developed a lot obviously since then um three generations of women and it's being developed by lupus films who the leading animation company and gugu and betha roars our narrator it's yeah when is that coming out how can we watch that that'll be out next year yeah we've like finally got a good cut animations are a whole new world have you done one before no it's been a real learning curve that's also really exciting to be in that space so yeah that'll be i'm not sure where yet but it'll be out next next year like growing up i I was always, I wanted to tell stories.

48:37And I didn't know what career or what degree I needed to do that. You know, people were like, oh, if you want to make film, you have to study to be a director, you have to do this, and then you can only make this type of film. You know, if you want to do animation, that's a different thing. If you want to do this, that's a different thing. Theatre is a different thing. And I was very frustrated by these, like, narrow paths that led you to only one medium. And so starting the creative agency was my kind of revolt to that. and my wish to be medium agnostic and to be able to just come up with an idea and figure out what the best medium to tell that story would be and then just follow that working with the best possible people but just being the person that threads the story um and the other thing that you mentioned there obviously is um your body and being a woman and being a girl and you know how aware are you of your cycle during the month is this something that comes up because i think we're now in a time where we're suddenly having bigger conversations around our hormones our cycles how much more creative we are at different times of the month and different things and for me that was not something I ever thought about because kind of capitalism said I have to work nine to five every single day exactly the same so it was never something I considered but it's something I'm delving into now I am like exactly the same as you this is for the first time in my life in the past few months become something that I've started to look into you know from various conversations with close friends who are grappling with endo diagnosis trying to get endo diagnoses recognizing that we are as you say we are productive or well or happy whatever different times a month we just didn't learn about this and i never thought to investigate it and then i guess eventually when you we have that information using it to advocate for ourselves in different ways with my close friend that's grappling with the endo diagnosis she's passing out and throwing up and can't function when she's on the first day and second day of her period and she's been doing that every single month for what like 25 years so I think I want to I don't know what it is yet but I definitely want to be doing some more advocacy in this space and I think yeah the more we speak about that the better.

50:53Endo is a difficult one because people there's a thing of like believing the women and and and there's so much data around this um but with trackers so with an app like clue you can have a very clear tracking that proves that you can then take to a doctor and say clearly on these days i have these issues and it creates this like data for you to actually be able to bring forward as like a um uh you know a ledger of proof um which i think is super helpful i think it's so important it's kind of like an armor in yeah being able to be believed which is a whole other conversation itself but I do yeah I do think that's amazing yeah um and then we obviously mentioned um the ways on like how you slow down in your day-to-day um and being able to take pauses and you mentioned some of them but I just wanted to check if there was anything else even if it's like micro daily things like some difficult conversation that you need to have some conflict resolution that you need to do are there any like tactics that you've learned or developed over the years well conflict resolution I think there's so much beauty in being able to say you're sorry not needing to hold on to the idea of being right and I think that's something that has been a really beautiful thing for me to learn lately and just practice um in terms of slowing down I think you can never go wrong with like yeah a moment of exercise like make sure you move your body once a day even if it's in the form of a walk or something that just creates that space for yourself and I think that's something I'm also making time for even if it might not be managing to go all the way to the lake it'll be like I've made it for like a 10 minute walk today that's a really beautiful thing I'm not just like on this on this grind also cooking is just so wonderful I think I got into it when I was writing the second but way more just that is for me such a beautiful space and like we have to eat so it's you can always also justify if you are struggling to find time for an hour long pilates class or whatever it's like well you're going to make yourself some dinner today and it'll be a good thing if you don't order it i think that's a really wonderful thing and you can never go wrong with just connecting like yeah with the people that fulfill you and sustain you so for me that's my sisters there's never any there's never any need for anything other than just like that simple connection they are my slowing down because I don't need to be anything other than whatever I am in that moment with them that's so nice um where are you at with taking holidays like actual time off out of office like when was the last time that you did that how has your relationship with that been yeah it's hard I think especially when you travel a lot for work as well sometimes the thought of like traveling for a holiday feels close to work so I'm trying to do now my birthday I was the last time I did an out of office and I did an out of office I was fully not checking my emails and it was really really nice um it does tend to be important occasions still at my sister's wedding or something and I am getting yeah I'm I'm feeling more aligned with protecting that space than ever and also I've noticed that if I'm working with someone and they say I'm going away but I'll be reachable on I'm like no no I don't want you to be reachable take your time take that time and space away I've got it or if there's anything urgent I'll figure it out and I think encouraging in each other is also really important but I think now as well you get to a point where you don't want to be reachable all the time um I it felt really good to be away for my birthday and I was just away no one could find me a question that I ask everybody is after all of these experiences that you've had what does success look like to you now like how do you define what's your working definition of success at this present moment I like that you've added at this present moment because I actually do think it shifts a lot and I like that I actually think maybe that is part of of it of what I how I see success is not needing to hold on to an idea of myself and of what I wanted from life and how I viewed success that I may have once had because that part of you will still be somewhere in you but that changes so I think maybe it's about yeah feeling free to let go of a previous idea that I had and finding whatever it is in this moment this year that's giving me fulfillment and joy I don't want to be doing something and wishing I was somewhere else ever again joy is your middle name it is my middle name you were born with the name I was born with it wow my mom and dad seems like an interesting serendipity I know a word that you hold so closely yeah and I've actually done like a reclaiming of that name it was the decision when I was publishing this sort of gold I was like am I keeping Cat White or can I just I used to be embarrassed that Joy was my middle name I was like how embarrassing mom what could you think to call me that like what was the shift for you it was with like I had to actively make this decision what name goes on the cover of my book and my publishers I had a deadline I had to decide I think I even did like a close friends Instagram poll like guys I didn't know what to do which is such a weird thing I didn't know whether to have my own name and it was the sort of the process of writing that book and writing about all of these people who like stood so authentically in themselves it felt odd to be doing my like punchy nickname that I created when I was 18 I was like no no it's time to have my full name that my parents gave me that absolutely speaks to who I am I mean I do still like my friends will still call me cat because it's also quite hard to suddenly but some of them have started calling me Catherine and sometimes I'm like oh that's so weird you've been calling me cat for like 10 years and now you're calling me Catherine they're like yeah but that's your name that's a nice feeling um and there's a final question that I ask everybody which um I'm always curious by the answer for which is if I had to watch one film or read one book or go to see one piece of art that would help me understand you better what would it be my gosh okay the thing that comes into my head is I don't know why I do know why it's because it's my favorite film I watch it the night before every birthday and I think it somehow brings me back to myself and I think it probably does speak to this thing of joy but there's not really much of a deeper meaning behind it it's the parent trap and yeah I think it it makes me feel home that's such a nice one I mean sisters oh and family yeah exactly relationships yeah and I always almost always watch it with my sisters as well and how has your relationship with your parents developed since you know you've mentioned a few times they were very religious you did certain things that might not have been in line with those beliefs how what is your relationship like with them now I think it's still evolving I think it's hard being the eldest sibling because especially when you are brought up in a certain way because you do bear the brunt of that and I can see like with my younger sister she's living her life she is you know she's got this like very almost friendly relationship with my mum in particular whereas I think mine is still more parental child but I think there's a moment isn't there when you recognize you see your parents as human and everyone's learning everyone's doing that for the first time and trying to kind of have some grace for each other I think is really important and recognizing now we meet again as adults don't we we are all doing our own thing now we're on this earth in our own way so I think we're sort of getting to know each other as adults yeah I like that and is there anything that we haven't covered that you would like to cover on this theme of of slowing down of redefining success for yourself of I think we've covered so much but I do just think well where we got into this thing of like the art of doing nothing and embracing the silence and I do really believe that that's what it looks like for creative for personal for professional for every sort of facet of of yourself and loving yourself and growing yourself you have to find that and be okay with that um and it's okay if it takes a while to find that as well like you can't force it and it's just about chipping away at that facade that says you must be busy i think there's so much beauty in recognizing that that's kind of at the heart of all of this that's where we find ourselves again exactly well thank you so much for your time thank you thanks for having me yes thank you so much Thank you.

1:00:23Loved it. Thank you for tuning in. This episode was hosted and created by me, Tiana Tambridge. It was produced by Whitney Rosenthal, with sound and video produced and recorded at Brazen Studios. Cover art and design by Natalia Ruhe, and the sponsor for this whole season is Clue. Please subscribe to The Slowdown to be notified of upcoming episodes, tell a friend, and leave a review, because it really helps a podcast like this get out there into the world. and remember we're all heading to the same destination and there is no prize for getting there early so we might as well slow down