Sally Wainwright on Riot Women, Identity Theft of Menopause, and Writing Real Female Characters

25:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver:What made you decide that midlife and that all that comes with it for women would be, why this why now well again i tend to write about women who are my age i've realized yeah i don't think as you get older the characters all my shows across the last kind of 25 years i've realized that the man the person who is the most in the people who are the most interested in me are people my age like i guess all writing is by autobiographical at some level not always consciously so did you start with an idea of they're going to have a rock band yes as i say What I wanted to do was try and find a way to write about this part of women's lives and the experiences that go through this time without being whiny women.

25:55I wanted to find a way of creating a show that people would think, oh, that looks interesting, that looks exciting. And then by stealth explain to them about the midlife experience. so it was conflating the idea of a punk rock band a female punk rock band with um women who are at this age where you're doing a lot of stuff you're juggling a lot of life's difficult things i'd wanted to write about a rock band since i was 13 there was a show on telly in england when i was 13 called rock follies it was actually rock follies of 77 so i was 13 in 77 and it was about a female rock band and it totally changed my life it was like watching this show it was it was like something had happened to me it wasn't just like watching telly it was like something had actually happened to me yeah watching this tv show and I remember really tangibly thinking oh that's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna I'm gonna make television I'm gonna write television so I was lucky at 13 that I knew what I was gonna do and I did actually go on to do it yeah it was a kind of guiding light And you got to bring that full circle to write the script.

26:58Yeah, it felt like it was, it was like my homage, really, writing Riot Women to Rock Follies.

27:03Dr. Mary Claire Haver:And you have, so some of the characters are in their late 40s. Some are definitely, they say their ages a couple of times. But you actually have characters in their 60s. The Kitty's 44. But the other four women are around 60. They're either just, I think they're all just under 60. One of them's just over 60. Yeah. What kind of research did you do for the show? I know you had a medical advisor on the show. We had a doctor who specializes in menopause on board. But the most research for the show was the music. That was the biggest kind of... So it's obvious that Katie's character was singing her own voice, which is phenomenal.

27:39But she's a big West End star. She's not particularly big on telly, but she's massive in the West End.

27:43Dr. Mary Claire Haver:So West End, for our US listeners, is like Broadway. Broadway, yeah. So she really was acting in the show. Oh my God, yeah. And then they're playing instruments. Were they really playing? Yes, they were, because I wanted them to, I didn't want it to look like they weren't doing the real thing, the real deal. So I asked them to, if they would, when we offered them the parts, we asked them if they would also learn to play the instruments. So they had five months to learn. Wow. And apart from Rosie, who plays Kitty, who could play guitar, none of them played their instruments at all. So they had five months.

28:16Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Even Beth? Beth's character? No, no, Beth. She couldn't keyboard at all? Joanna. I think she did a little bit, but not in any way that she felt confident with. Yeah. So they did all learn. They all had tutors. And then they all came together. Lorraine, who's the drummer, Jess, had even less time because she couldn't get on board. She was busy. So she had even less time to learn than the others. And I learned to play the drums, especially as research for this. And I know it's hard, like learning any instrument. And then they all came together for two weeks rehearsal. One was for the scenes and one was for the music and it's that that's a real achievement yeah and you know the wonderful thing was it really bonded them you know like when you rehearse with actors they bond anyway because they're all putting their hearts and souls on the line but actually asking them to play music together it really gave them a real buzz there was real adrenaline in the room you could feel it in the show and you can see how nervous like the Tamsin Craig character was on the bass like how unsure she was that came across as I was like well I think she's really playing well Tamsin would tell you she was acting at that point because she actually got better as tamzin than she was supposed to be as ollie when she was practicing when you know she'd learned so much but they had to play two gigs one is at the concert in episode four and then one is at the festival the festival in episode six because of the magic of telly we had to um put the music on top afterwards in the edit but they were actually playing properly so when they came off stage they were just they were saying that i can understand why you do want to go back and smash your hotel room up they got so I'm not sure.

29:48Happy you're done.

29:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Energy and adrenaline flowing, yeah. You've called menopause identity theft. I like that term. I think there's this common thing that women go through when they're, I did, and I've talked to other women about this. When you get to 40, you go through a phase of thinking, oh, I don't care anymore. And this is me. That's the best part to me. Yeah, it is. It's wonderful. Where you stop worrying about all the silly little things that people might think about. And you just think, or if you've said something a bit silly and you're used to agonize about it. You get to 40 and you think, oh, they know what I meant.

30:19They won't misinterpret it. You get so confident about all the silly little things that used to worry you. And then I got to, as I say, 50 and all those little doubts seemed to creep back in again and snatch away this thing that you'd achieved where you felt, I'm okay now, I've arrived. I am who I want to be kind of thing. So that's what I meant by that, that it did. It's not just the sort of joylessness that seems to take over and the brain fog And it was like you do become a, you feel like you're not the person you thought you were.

30:50Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Do you feel like if you would have known, if someone would have prepared you, that these things might happen, you may have these symptoms, these mental health changes, the brain fog. If you were like, oh, that's what, this is what this is. Definitely would. Because, you know, if you can give something a name, it means it exists and it's not just you. I was at a conference in Oxford on Saturday, a menopause thing. I think I'd been at it as long as the light relief. there were some professors who three women who specialise in studying the menopause and one of them does work with well all different kind of communities all over the world and she was saying in some cultures there is no word for menopause so how do you go and talk to the doctor about it if there's no word for it you just describe a collection of symptoms and you don't necessarily know it's this one thing so of course well in the US and I think in the UK for decades, you know, menopause, the menopause was only defined as absence of period.

31:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver:So most women can identify that and maybe some hot flashes. But this whole, like you said, the list of 35 that you saw, I was never taught that in any of my training. This is something that I learned in the last five years, you know, becoming a menopause specialist. Well, I wasn't, I mean, my only knowledge of the menopause was what my mom told me, essentially. What did she tell you? My mom told me that she laughed her way through the menopause. Oh, amazing. But she didn't. This is the thing this is what she told me and I kind of believed her because she was a funny woman very clever very funny and she she said oh I laughed my way through it and I and I believed it just because she said it and I believed everything my mom said but now I look back and I don't think she was I think she was actually quite depressed then and I didn't see it I certainly didn't see it as being part of the menopause because I didn't have a clue um I just thought she was depressed but when it came to the menopause she laughed her way through it I didn't connect the two.

32:39And now I realize she wasn't at all laughing her way through it. It was just her generation didn't acknowledge the menopause. It's like, oh, that's not going to touch me. I can deal with things and I'll deal with that. So I just thought the menopause was your period stopped. Good. Tick. And you laugh your way through it. Good. Tick. So when these things started to happen to me, I didn't connect them. I hadn't even heard of the perimenopause.

33:03Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Yeah. Perimenopause, I learned how to pronounce. I want to go back to Riot Women and talk about Beth and Kitty in this opening scene, which like grabbed me by the breasts. You know, we can't say grabbed me by the balls because I don't have any. But I guess grabbed me by my ovaries, which have shriveled up and died. But so they're both suicidal. Yeah. I don't want to give it away. No. And make it seem like a downer. But like one's going out like a lamb and one's going out like a lion. I think that's a quote from you. Well, I said one's going out with a bang and one's going out with a whimper. Yeah.

33:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver:But I mean. Was that important to you to include that in the story? Because. Yes. Yes, statistically, the most likely time a woman will commit suicide or complete suicide is between the ages of 45 and 55. No coincidence. Yeah. I wanted them to rescue each other. Basically, they can come to each other's rescue. It's like these two very unlikely women. You would never imagine being friends. And they find this very unlikely connection. And it becomes a very creative connection. And then it becomes even more of a connection than they've realized, which I can't give spoilers away, but you know what I mean.

34:04So I had to start off with them being low to show how they rescue each other. And now they find... And the whole thing about what's, I hope, joyous about the punk rock band is they start writing songs about the stuff that bothers them. They're great. Did you write the songs? No, I didn't. No, we got a punk rock band called Arcs on board. It's these two brilliant young women who live in Brighton. It was so wonderful. But we would give them ideas. We'd send them basically what the song should be about. So Seeing Red, definitely about the need for HRT. So we sent them lots of ideas for lines, ideas for the theme of it, ideas for...

34:41I think I came up with the drumbeat for that, in fact. But interestingly, the first line, which is, I'm so depressed, I can't get dressed, that came from my police advisor. She came up with that when we were just chatting about things. So that's quite joyous.

34:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Two of the main characters are police officers. Well, one. One, yeah. And then the side character. Oh, that's right. Nisha, of course. Nisha. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you'd have an advisor for that. So yeah, I did have my police advisor from Happy Valley a lot. And she came up with that first line for the song about menopause. Typically, we're playing catch up in popular culture. And the way menopausal women are portrayed, it's usually comedic. Oh, yeah. Which can be funny. So much of menopause is kind of funny and you do a good job with that. That's what I was saying earlier about why I moved away from Hot Flush being the title.

35:28Because that's what menopause gets reduced to. and of course the more I learned about the menopause the more I realized how much more there is to it and how much more I was experiencing that was the menopause

35:38Dr. Mary Claire Haver:when you were researching like all that's you're having like aha moments like wait wait wait that that was me you know yeah yeah you know just thinking about all the brain fog worrying that I'd got dementia all that kind of thing I just realized this I can't call this hot flush it's so much more yeah to it and I didn't want it just to be about the menopause either so you were able to incorporate, I mean, in six episodes, HRT, libido. That was super fun. Feeling of invisibility. I'm astounded you got this past people funding the show. I just, you know, I just imagine the walls you must have hit when you're like, we're going to do this show and it's five women in their fifties and they're having libido issues and they're having heavy bleeding.

36:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver:You did a great job with Kitty's character having in medicine, we say menorrhagia, even like sure we're getting off the couch in like a puddle, you know, of blenum. This is very, very real stuff that's happening. So I've never seen that integrated into a storyline. And I just, you know, no pushback. No, no, I think not. Because I think, I think after I'd written Happy Valley, which did hugely well in England, I think it went down pretty well in America as well. I think people attributed me with knowing how to tell a good story. So I think, I hope that's what it was, that people knew whatever it's about it will be entertaining it will be fun to watch it'll be it'll have layers it'll be interesting it'll be saying something and it'll be fun it definitely had funny parts to it which were all appropriate when you handed the script so you picked your actors who were incredible incredible incredible fantastic and they're reading these parts like what was their reaction to the character were they identifying i think they loved it i mean we didn't We weren't, you know, they were very happy to come and do it.

37:22They were all pretty eager. And I think, you know, what is really interesting is they all got on really, really well. They had a fantastic friendship group off screen and it was a really happy shoot. There was a really nice atmosphere. And one of the interesting things, as I said on Saturday at this conference I was at in Oxford, was how important female community is in menopause, how we often all support each other. through it we talked to each other about it and um that came that was really apparent i think within their responses to the script that they understood that this was something important to talk about that they hadn't quite seen before yeah and the way they you know they were dramatized through the you know the very vivid characters that they were all playing i mean that any one of those five women would play the lead in yeah any show and so the fact that they were all happy to come and kind of be an ensemble was a bit of a win.

38:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Yeah, no, it was great. I've never seen this before, ever, is you openly talk about HRT on the show, going down to the doctor to get sorted. And it was like, no big deal. You know, I'm going to take you to whatever you call it in the UK. To the GP, yeah. To the GP and go get yourself sorted. And then the story flashes forward about six weeks or so. I mean, their lives aren't perfect, but they're just feeling so much better. and able to manage. And one of them even has her libido back and they're kind of joking really nice about that. And I have never seen that talked about in such a positive way.

38:55Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Oh, good. I'm pleased. Or in any way really at all, you know, there's usually hot flashes and the joke stops there. Yeah. And maybe she's making an appointment to go to the doctor, but never like the aftermath. So of how a woman can kind of get some of her resilience back and be able to function and take on those challenges that were stumbling her. before so kudos to you thank you well it was kind of important for me to do that because i i resisted going on hrt why because i still was under the impression that it causes breast cancer which i now know it doesn't and i know if you have breast cancer you can't go on hrt right but if you haven't got breast cancer it's it is not it doesn't cause breast cancer right and i didn't know that because there was the report that was about 20 years ago.

39:43Dr. Mary Claire Haver:And, you know, most women were working on it to spread that message. But that is the prevailing thought in most women. And I love that you didn't even have to go there. You didn't even talk about the breast cancer risk or any of that. You just, they went to the doctor, they got what they needed, and now they're back on track with their lives. And I also thought that I don't need to take. That's why my mom, I got this thing I thought from my mom, you know. You know, I don't take anything I don't need to take. and I didn't understand I just didn't understand that you know you don't get through the menopause you stop having you stop creating those hormones and once they've gone they've gone you don't get through it it just stops it's your postmenopausal forever the doctor we worked with has worded me to start trying HRT and I did and it did about three months oh for yourself yeah so because I said brain fog joylessness depression and I just accepted those things I thought it was part of the human condition that I should feel like this I thought it was because I was a writer I should be miserable

40:41so you're just more emotional than most people and after about three months it really kicked in and made a difference and I wanted to reflect that in the show it happens quite quickly in the show, well it's six weeks and I know it's different for everybody how soon it does actually start to kick in but it certainly made a big difference to me it certainly affected the joylessness, that kind of really disappeared and the lack of motivation, the lack of feeling like you just don't really want to do anything.

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42:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver:In a classroom of sodas, most stay quiet. Then there's Mr. Pipp, sweet cherry, bold outbursts, the kind of flavor that gets attention. Bold kick of cherry. Hey, yo, Mr. Pipp. What have the people who've seen the show, what kind of responses as far as are they telling you it's changing their life? Or you said they feel seen. Yeah, I think a few people have, again, it's just talking about it and people knowing that these things are part of the menopause. I think that's what the response is. I've had so many messages on Instagram and that kind of thing. The BBC have had more letters about this than, I saw our exec from the BBC last week and she said normally when people write to the BBC it's to complain.

42:49So it's been kind of refreshing for them to get a whole bunch of letters that are saying, well done, thank you.

42:56Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Well done. This is interesting. You're helping me. You know, this has helped. So you also have a lot of personal experience with grief, dealing with your parents' dementia. Both of your parents? Both my parents died with dementia, yeah. And were they very close together? No, my dad died 25 years ago. Okay. And he had quite early onset. Well, he was 17 when he died. And then my mom was 93. Wow. So my dad's dementia was, there were kind of different forms of dementia. But my mom lived with dementia for about six years. It was like a slow process. That's where my mom is right now. Right. Good days and bad days.

43:39Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Yeah. She fell and broke her hip. So she's wheelchair bound. and just all of the, you know, I cried in those first few minutes, the suicide, but then you quickly touched, she answered the phone with her brother in that first scene and he was arguing with her about the dementia care and Beth's character. And that made me cry because I've been through that. And it's also like my sister lives close to my mom. And so we're the eldest daughters and she's really bearing the brunt of the day-to-day decisions. and I feel so guilty about that you know because I'm a state away you know I'm 400 miles away 300 miles away and you know super busy and in traveling and doing all this stuff and she is really managing the day-to-day stuff it's so hard it is hard and it tends it does tend to fall to one yeah child to do it because she it's like a logistic you know reality of her choosing to stay close to you know where we grew up and it's fallen on her yeah you know I want to die like a man you know but my dad literally lived his best life he had some slow down that last month we were all gathered around we loved on him and he died peacefully at home with all of us there it was great and after a long wonderful life in his 80s and you know the women it's forever it's horrible Well, I say my mum lived for six years in a care home.

45:05I mean, it got to a point where she needed 24-hour care. Yeah, that's my mum's in a care home too. Which I wasn't going to give my career to do that. I couldn't have done it. Even if I had, I don't think it would have been feasible. I don't think I could have physically done it. And I think one of the sadnesses that I've tried to reflect in the character of Beth is watching what your parent goes through in those six years and having to witness things that you kind of feel a child should never have to witness their parent going through. But you do. You do have to witness it because it's happening.

45:40Yeah. And you have to be there and you have to, you know, see them go through things that you know they would not want themselves. That.

45:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Or that they never plan for that to be your life. No, because we don't plan. We don't plan for it. We don't plan for dementia. Nobody does. you know because you kind of you know you hope it's not going to happen because it doesn't always happen I wouldn't wish it on anybody and I do feel like a different person because of that yeah and and at the same time as all the menopausal changes are happening to you as well at the same time and you had teenagers you went through a separation you're divorced now is that you know was all that happening at once yes yeah yeah but as I say my therapy really was writing this show So my way of dealing with it was creative, which is kind of the message of the show.

46:29It's my message for the show is if you're struggling with the menopause, join a rock band.

46:34Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Well, the characters you've written have this truth that I'm seeing over and over again on, you know, my direct messages on social media and in my clinic of the positives of this age. The biggest one is that loss of caring about the small stuff. And just feeling like you now have permission to live your best authentic life. Because if you don't, no one's coming to save you. You know, you really have to circle the wagons around yourself. So not really caring what people think or what you're wearing or what, you know, all these things you would fret about before. For me, and you deal with some parent-child relationships in the show or the younger, you know, the Tom, is it Tom?

47:21Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Yes. The son. And then the other kids of... Oh, Jess's kids. Yeah, Chloe. So, you know, I'm so focused on like, how do I figure out this adulthood with my daughters? And like, not mothering, but I'm still the mom, but I want to let them be independent. So I have to like, shut my mouth, you know, like remind myself, don't talk or comment on their clothes or what they weigh or what their choices and decisions are. Because I want them to remember me happy. You know, in a good way. and it just makes me think about you know all the the comments so i think you did a really good job with that too showing how difficult those relationships can be of being a mother but not mothering well the show really letting them be who they are it's about that what tamzin greg very eloquently calls the middle squeeze where you are you know you've got elderly parents you're dealing with them but you also got adult kids who've often got kids of their own so your grandma are as well.

48:17And you are somehow in the middle, you're kind of the matriarch, you're in the middle of all this. You're the one who's there for stability for everybody. So I kind of wanted to dramatize that. Yeah, you did a great job. So it seems though we're having a cultural moment.

48:31Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Women of a certain age in their 50s and 60s are really, you know, we're done with the Golden Girls, though they were fabulous. I have to say I love that show. But I feel like there is a renaissance. So I'm seeing, you know, when I was 30, when I thought about 60, I thought gray hair grandma and slowing down and becoming quiet and invisible and being a family supporter. I never imagined at 57, I would start a company or 55, 50, whatever I was, you know, start a podcast, you know, start a social media channel, step away from my like safe, guaranteed job of delivering babies, which was beautiful and I'm glad I did it, and like open a rogue menopause clinic.

49:12Dr. Mary Claire Haver:It's a pretty interesting time of life. And I think you're capturing that so well. What was 30-year-old Sally thinking about 60-year-old Sally? Or did you think at all? I don't think I was thinking about me at all at that age. I couldn't imagine. I thought about my sons being bigger. You know, my sons were tiny boys. I wondered what they'd be like when they were 27. But I never thought about myself. Yeah. Would you imagine you'd still be like producing some or you'd be producing some of the most successful shows no i didn't i just didn't project ahead i didn't imagine what i would be like um but i think it's interesting to talk about the plus side of menopause that you you know you you do i love it you know you know you know there are cultures like maori culture where people women are celebrated well and they call it second spring in china yeah you know it's you know they've achieved they've achieved wisdom yeah and they're retaining their blood because it is now part of their wisdom yeah different cultures do celebrate and that the women are the wisdom keepers yeah and they hand down their traditions and they are and there's you know there's some anthropologic theories of menopause some of them are bunk um and purely patriarchal but one that i kind of like is that you know we if we just kept having children like other mammals they have most mammals can breed till they die but women get this break so that they can pass on the history, the generations, the teaching.

50:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Yeah. That doesn't mean they're the caretakers or the babysitters, but they are the source of wisdom because the men still have to go out and hunt and gather. Yeah. So I do love that part of it. So what do you think that television has historically kind of gotten wrong about our age? I think it's just the invisibleness of it. It's the myth that, well, the myth that women aren't interesting at all, really, except how they relate to men, which we've suffered with for quite a long time on television. You know, we've suffered for quite a long time on television with women being female constructs because all telly was written by men for so long.

51:08Forever. And even to the point where when it was written by women, women also bought into those female, those male constructs of what women should be. In the same way that men have designed women's bodies for so long with, you know, the invention of corsets and high heels.

51:25Dr. Mary Claire Haver:You know, women didn't invent those, men did. So I had a conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Komen. She's an oncologist. So she does just breast cancer. But she studied medical history as an undergrad at Harvard. And she talks about the evolution of plastic surgery. It started with men getting their faces shot off in wars. And then once they figured out anesthesia and they could do this painlessly, surgeons became not just butchers chopping off limbs, but they could put someone's face back together. And that kind of evolved into, well, can we take women who are not attractive and make them more attractive?

51:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver:Because not being attractive to a man is a mental problem. And we can make them mentally more happy. And so all of the, originally, there's some great female plastic surgeons, but when the field developed, it was all the male gaze. Like women were not coming in asking for breast implants. Men were telling them in the beginning that you have micromastia, small breast, a medical condition called small breast. That's making you unhappy. If we make them bigger, you'll be happy, which just absolutely blows me away. Fascinates me. That'd be a good show. It's shocking, isn't it? On TV, it's about women writing about women and being honest about women.

52:37You know, historically, when you think about Charlotte Bronte, when she wrote Jane Eyre, the reason that was such a big part, a big part of why that was such a big hit when she wrote it, because it was the first time there was some literature that was genuinely about the female experience as a governess, a working class woman, writing about what it was really like to experience what she went through as a woman. But I think that's what we've got wrong for so long is that men have written women. The way that they thought. We've bought into what women should be

53:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver:because of what we've seen on screen. We see the same thing in medicine. So forever, medicine doctors were men, you know, nursing didn't become a profession until, you know, there were nursing type things, but they weren't writing books and papers and teaching until, you know, the last 100 years or so. And forever, like the male body, the white male body was the default and anything else was atypical, abnormal, you know. So that first generation of female physicians coming through, which was amazing, were biased by what we were taught. So some of the people I've had on the podcast who trained a generation above me talk about how you just fall into the trap because that's what you know and it's what is taught to you as normal.

53:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver:so those you know until and it's now that we're like wait a minute these studies were never done for us in women this yeah we're not reflecting the true female body in this study or this experience so yeah we have the same thing okay well i love the show thank you i can't wait for everyone to see it it's coming out in the u.s i just loved it so i did get to see it unofficially um your producer sent me thank you access yeah i binged all six episodes fantastic such a beautiful portrayal. I can't wait for it to come out in the U.S. Thank you. Sally's new series, Riot Women, is premiering on BritBox January 14th.

54:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver:You can also find Sally on Instagram at Sally Wainwright Official. You can find full episodes of Unpaused on YouTube at Dr. Mary Claire. I'd love to hear from you about this topic and anything else that's on your mind. You can find me on Instagram at Dr. Mary Claire and get honest, accurate information on health, fitness, and navigating midlife at thepawselife.com. My upcoming book, The New Perimenopause, is available for pre-order on Amazon. If you're loving this podcast, I have an important request. Please take a moment to follow Unpaused on your favorite podcast app. Following and listening is what pushes this information to more women who need it.

55:16Dr. Mary Claire Haver:So if this podcast has helped you feel seen, understood, or supported, hit follow right now so you never miss an episode. Thank you for being here with me. Let's keep going. Unpaused. Unpaused is presented by Odyssey in conjunction with Pod People. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Claire Haver. The views and opinions expressed on Unpaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The UPS Store is making packing and shipping Easter gifts quicker than ever this year with UPS Air.

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