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

Today's guest is someone whose creative work has shaped the way millions of people see women on television, not young women, not simplified Hollywood versions of women, but real women. Older women, complicated women, angry women, brave women, women-reeking rules. Who don't tidy up their emotions for anyone? Sally Wainwright is the creator and producer behind some of the most acclaimed British television dramas in the last 20 years. Happy Valley, gentlemen Jack, Last Hango and Halifax, Scott and Bailey, and Unforgiven. Her stories introduce us to characters who have lived entire lives before we ever meet them. Women who carry grief, desire, sexuality, rage, intelligence, love, courage, exhaustion, drama, and resilience in bodies that reflect actual lived experience. Now Sally has a new six-episode BBC Britbox drama called Riot Women. It's a series about a group of five women in midlife who escape their complicated lives, filled with caring for kids and ailing parents and dealing with menopause by forming a rock band. I just finished watching it and I was hooked within minutes. I cried in the first ten. I laughed hysterically in the next ten. She hits so many of the issues I hear from women every single day in my clinic, in my DMs, and in their whispered questions and late-night fears, body changes. Aging parents, loneliness, isolation, mental health shifts, feeling invisible, the emotional free fall of midlife that no one prepares this for. These characters are multi-dimensional, complicated women dealing with the issues my patients walk into my clinic carrying every day. And Sally puts all of it on screen with honesty, ferocity, and humor. The tenderness, the rage, the absurdity, and the heartbreak. It feels like someone in entertainment is finally telling the truth. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner. I'm also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and conicology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Welcome to Unposed, the podcast where we cut through the silence and talk about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life. Tell me a little bit about your background. Like where are you from? Well, I was born in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and I grew up in West Yorkshire. I grew up kind of in Halifax. I went to university in New York, which is North Yorkshire. And then I finally got to live in London because at that time people said if you want to be a writer, you've got to live in London. And that was always your dream. Oh, yeah. I really wanted to get away from like a lot of people where you grow up. It was like the back of beyond and I wanted to be where it mattered, which was London the other time. Your whole life? Old writing, yeah. Yeah. I never stopped writing. You know, when you're a little kid, you're right. And so me and my sister used to write stories and draw cartoons and that kind of thing. And I remember when I was about like 10, 11, 12, me and my sister used to write plays together. And it got to a point where I knew she was doing it to humour me and she was getting too old to do this. She kind of outgrew it and stopped. And I just never stopped. I just literally never stopped. So you did it all through secondary school and university? Yeah. What did you study in university? English literature. I wrote dialogues from being about 11 because I kind of thought it was the most important thing when I read novels. I'd never seen a play written down but I was writing dialogue before I kind of knew what I play was because whenever I read a novel, I thought all the stuff was boring, all the descriptions. But you didn't need that. You just need to know what people are saying. Yeah. So that's what I'm excited about. I realized I was a sort of dramatist without even realizing what. And then your first job was a bus driver? Yeah. As I say, I went down to London because people said if you want to be a writer, you've got to go and live in London, which isn't true anymore, but it was then. And I didn't have any money, didn't have a job. I managed to get a room in a house with a friend from university. One friend said to me, oh, you should apply to join the civil service and another friend said, oh, you like driving? Why don't you apply to be a bus driver, the old one need bus drivers? So I applied for birth and I got offered jobs from birth on the same day. And I decided that being a bus driver was more compatible with wanting to be the writer because it's even more wacky. It would leave my brain free to think about drama and think about writing. And did you... It was a good experience. And there's so many different people getting off and on the bus. Yeah, exactly. I mean, three years at university didn't teach me very much. Whereas at 18 months as a bus driver, kind of really, you had to grow up, you know. When did it become you are a writer and now you're going to make your living as a writer? Well, I took a place at the Edinburgh Festival when I was at university. I wrote to a lot of exec producers whose names I'd seen on TV and agents. And nobody came to see the play. But one agent wrote to me and said, I can't come but really send me a copy of the script. She took me on as a young writer, you know. And she got me a job on a radio soap called The Arches, which is the longest running soap in the world. It was started in the 1950s in England. And so I wrote The Arches for a couple of... Which terms in Greg was in? It was plays Holly in right with me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was my big... I started off writing the Arches. And then I moved on to Serbs like Coronation Street. And then finally got my own original drama away in 1999 with a show called That Home with the Brithwit, which was nominated for an Emmy, which was the first time I came to New York. Wow. So... So, I just have this vision of, you know, there's been a few shows in the US where they show writers rooms, you know, for, you know, their dramatizing, you know, a TV show and you'll walk into a room and there's like a conference table with like, A.N. people. Is that what writing was like in those early days? It was like that on... So far, it was like Coronation Street and East End is that kind of thing. But on our long dramas, we don't tend to do that the same way in England. Largely because it's money, you can't afford to do it in the same way that it's done in America. Often a show like that will be run by one person. And I think the model's changing now with streaming. There are shows where you will have big numbers like Doctor Who, which is such a big operation. They'll have, you know, any number of writers involved in something like that. But on the whole, it's still tends to be sort of ortho-led or right-led. Where do you write? Where do I write? I've got an office in my house. I can't actually write anywhere, I've really... But I know I'm a worker, Holly. This morning I was thinking about where can I write, where can I sit down? The one at the desk in my room with the house, I was like, what am I going to do? Do you, so you have your laptop? Yeah. And you just start dreaming up ideas. I think I'm a worker, Holly. I never actually, my brain never actually stopped. People think you must be very disciplined and I'm not. I'm not so all disciplined. It's just like I have to work. It's an internal drive. And you have two sons. You have got two boys who are in the ground. 20's here. And then, did they live close or... They live with me? Oh good. Me and my husband split up about five years ago. And the boys are still at home. They both work. It suits us all at one moment. Yeah, no, it's great. This is so curious. This whole world of, you know, I'm a doctor, most people I say, I'm a doctor. And everyone knows what that is, right? But what is a show runner? You described as one of the most prolific show runners like in the history of the BBC. It's kind of a misnomer because I'm not a show runner, because what I think a show runner is, it is an American thing. And it's somebody who has invented the show, has a lot of experience. He's usually a writer and has a group of other writers with them who they sort of are in charge of. And they run the room, whether the writer's room. And then they also act as an exec. So I don't do that bit. I don't run a room. I tend to write all my shows myself. But then the other aspect of being a show runner, which I do do, is an exec on the show as well. So I'm across all the decisions that I made about casting, heads of departments, you know, what the show looks like, what it feels like, what the ethos of the show is, how it comes across on screen. And I also directs my own shows. I was wondering. So that's, again, that's not what usually a show runner does. A show runner would usually be across all the directors are. And I assume beyond set with them. And again, it's about the look and style of the show. So I'm kind of a show runner in the exec and the anas direct. So I'm very much across what the show is. It's probably different to what people generally do. Do you see that editing, everything post-production? Yeah, I'll be in the edit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How long does that take? Well, Riot Women, I started writing in the January of 2023. OK. And I finally finished in the edit of July this year. So it's been two and a half years. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a big undertaking. Amazing. It seems like listening to, you know, reading about you that you are drawing from your own life for a lot of the characters. Riot Women was really personal. It was a really personal show. I don't know whether it was conscious when I started, but it was kind of my own response to realizing that I was starting to go through the menopause. And when was that? So I started, well, I started, the idea of it came to me about 10 years ago. OK. There are a number of things that brought it about. First, the show is a conflation of two ideas. It's a female rock band. And it's about, I had to say it's about the menopause. It's more about the female experience when you get to 50. No, I think you're totally right. It's about all those things. It's about all those things. Part of the story. Yes, exactly. As is, menopause is part of every woman's story if she lives long enough. Yeah. But it wasn't the star of the show, right? No, exactly. Like the women in their lives. It's kind of touched on. And it's an aspect of what's got, what these women do. But really, it's about everything that women deal with when you get to a certain part of your life. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't have to be 50. It can be, it can be earlier or it can be later. But it's, for me, it was, it was personal on a number of levels. The idea starts, basically, when my mom was starting to develop dementia. Yeah. And she lived to, I live in Oxford and she lives in York. She was like 200 miles away. And she was starting to be forgetful and starting to experience things that are a problem for me and my sister who just didn't live close to her. At the same time, I'd got two teenage boys. My marriage wasn't as good as it had been. I had huge amount of pressure at work. You know, I've been across several shows at the same time and been pulled in lots of different directions there. And you get to this edge where you kind of feel you are capable of dealing with these things because you always have done, because somebody who's always prided yourself on dealing with stuff. And in the middle of all that, I started to feel that I was disappearing. It's like everybody needed a piece of me. You know, the other adage about, you know, if you want something doing, ask a busy woman. Right. And you felt like, oh, it's me. I'm the person who's being asked things off. And in the middle of that, I started to, but it started to kick back a bit and be quite angry and in a way that was not always appropriate. And you got quite realise what's happening to you. And starting to feel, I started to get quite low moods, brain fog. And the big one. Someone who uses their brain so much. Yes, and you're worried, you know, when you write a script, you're using your brain in a thousand was a second, you know, a thousand different was a second. You constantly think about patterns and connections and how things work, you know, the structure of telling stories is so complex. If you want to get it right, which I was wondering. So you start to worry that, oh, well, if this isn't working anymore, what we're going to do. Do you have a big thing that struck me as I was starting to develop the show more was something I started to experience, which was quite shocking was, it's feeling that all the joy it's gone out of life and losing motivation to do anything. And it was, you know, it's a real shock when that kicks in. And if I had known that was part of the menopause, how much happier I would have been, but I didn't, I just thought it was me being miserable and depressive. And the problem is when you get into that, you start, you don't want to tell your friends, you don't want to talk to your friends because you don't want to be the miserable one who's off-learning all the time. So you kind of keep it to yourself. So it seemed to me that I needed, it was my own therapy to be able to write about this, the character of Beth who joined the Scanlon plays beautifully. So beautiful. It's really personal. It's kind of, that kind of is as sort of autobiographical as ever being. I'm not saying I was suicidal in the way that she is when the show opens, but certainly being lower where I've thought about nobody noticed if I wasn't here. My patients admit the same thing you are describing and I've been through some of it myself, the amalgamation of the patient experience, of a loss, a feeling of invisibility, a feeling of overwhelm, a loss of resilience, they had their lives managed. They had the sick parents, they had the teenagers, they had all of that was managed. And then all of a sudden, they're struggling to manage and then they're having reactions to things that were different like rage or anger or severe sadness or like you said, in medicine, we call it anodonia, which is loss of joy. So this is medical time for it. Yes, so it's not that you're depressed or so low, but you can't get motivated or have joy. You've just lost the joy in everyday things. Yeah, yeah. And so we see it in the patients all the time and that's why I'm so excited about this show because I think shows are starting to mention menopause more, but this one really gave such a realistic. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's the show was originally called Hot Flush or Hot Flush, as you said. And the menopause doctor, I was working with in England said, I really do what you should call it that. And we pushed back against it eventually, even though I think the BBC liked it because it was clear what the show was if you called it Hot Flush. A heck of a question now about, did you get pushed back? You want to do a show about, I mean, you're a champion at the BBC, but I think it's successful. I think it's an interesting question because I think because I've got certain status, they would have. Had you been in a no? Yeah, I think it's probably less likely. But also just getting funding for it wasn't that easy to might think because it's not the usual staple of men with guns, saving women, which is what 95% of television is. And even when we do see women playing lead parts in shows, it's often a male version of what women are. Mm-hmm. It's women on TV are so poorly represented. No, they're often impossibly glamorous. They usually stick thin, they usually under 30. And that's what we normally get as role models for women alike. The line from First Wives Club that said, women have three ages in Hollywood, babe, district's attorney, and driving Miss Daisy. So those are the big three. And I'm like, you found the sweet spot. You found the actual real women living real lives. Well, I think there's so much drama on women who've got history. There's so much drama in stories that begin 60 years ago, when I wrote Las Tango, it was a story that started 60 years ago. Riot Women is a story that starts a number of years ago because the women have all got life experience. And that's interesting. It makes them rich. It makes them complex. It makes them layered. And it makes them interesting because they don't take crap off people anymore. The character Kitty, I didn't want to like her. She was hard because she was just chalping me. She's a challenging. At the end, of course, I absolutely fall in love with her. She's probably one of my favorite. They're all fantastic. Your sweet spot seems to be this multi-layered, complex woman who's going through 10,000 things at once. I love that. You didn't just take it down to one dimension. She's just menopausal. She's menopausal with a mother with Alzheimer's, with a son who's struggling with all the normal things that my patients, my followers, are going through. I really think how did the show do in the UK? It's done really well. I mean, it's certainly it's a target audience, but it's coming on that as well. It got really good view. And we've had so many comments from women, predominantly, saying, I feel seen. I feel this really reflects what I'm going through. I've not seen it on screen before. We got a lot of really nice comments from men, which really delighted me. And it was interesting, actually, when we were thinking about the show, who will watch this? Will men watch it? And it's interesting because people never ask, you make a West and nobody says, will women watch this? That question is never asked, is it? But obviously, it's about, it's niche, because it's about women. It's even more niche, because it's about middle-aged women. It's for anybody who likes being told a re-cracking story, I think. However, I have to say, we did get a handful of really small-minded comments from some men who had comments like, there are no nice men in it. And Sally Winnwright doesn't write men nicely or something. And it's like, hello, there are no nice women in it, actually. They're complex, interesting women in it. But the whole, you know, the point the show really was about the female experience. And a big part of the female experience is the way men look at women or the way men treat women, or the way women feel at this age that they're either made to feel invisible, or they're often the target of disparaging comments, you know, like what happens to Kitty in episode four. Yeah. We had a really interesting storyline meeting where all the women in the room talked about how they'd had nasty little sexual comments whispered in their ear or shouted at them across the street, you know, sexualized put downs that are intended to show power, sexual power, and the we all like to think, oh, it's water if it looks back, but actually it isn't. It boils into your brain. It spoils your day. You know, every woman in the room, even me, had experienced that kind of behavior. 100%. And then I get criticized because I do it right, nice men. It's like, watch 95% of telly if you want depictions of nice men, you know, but I'm not, you know, that I'm doing something else. And it's interesting when you think about that because it's so common. I don't know. I say everyone I've ever spoken to has experienced that. At some point. At some point, yeah. So there's a quote you have, which I love. I find women just more interesting than men. I think women are more heroic than men because they have more to deal with. I think women are more emotionally articulate than men. So it's easier to write them having difficult times and being articulate about it. So I really think you captured that well. Pairi Menopause is not early menopause. It is its own distinct biological phase. And it has been largely ignored. My new book, The New Pairi Menopause, is about the seven to 10 years before your period stop. A transition that is anything but gentle. Hormones fluctuate wildly. And for many women, this is when the anxiety, brain fog, sleep disruption, weight changes, mood shifts, joint pain, and that unsettling feeling of, I don't feel like myself anymore, begin. Long before anyone says the word menopause. Pairi Menopause often starts quietly. It shows up in the brain first, then the body, then everywhere else. And too often, women are told nothing is wrong. I wrote the new Pairi Menopause because you deserve answers before things spiral. You deserve care before burnout. And you deserve a clear roadmap for a transition that medicine has ignored for far too long. The new Pairi Menopause is now available for pre-order everywhere books are sold. Learn more and pre-order your copy at ThePauseLife.com. What made you decide that midlife and that all that comes with it for women would be the, why this, why now? Well, again, I tend to write about women who are my age. I've realized, I don't think it was ever planned. I actually get older, but all my shows across the last kind of 25 years, I've realized that the person who is the most, the people are the most interested in me, I'll people my age. 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 rough end? 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. I 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 a conflation, the idea of a punk rock band, a female punk rock band with 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 try about a rock band since I was 13. There was a show on Tally in England when I was 13, called Rock Follies. It was actually Rock Follies of 77. So I was 13 and 77. And it was about a female rock band. And it totally changed my life. It was like watching this show. It was like something had happened to me. It wasn't just like watching Tally. It was like something had actually happened to me watching this TV show. And I remember really tangibly thinking, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make television. I'm going to write television. So I was lucky that 13, that I knew what I was going to do and I did actually go on to do it. It was a kind of guiding light. And you got to bring that full circle to write this story. It was like my home age really writing right women to rock Follies. And you have some of the characters are in their late 40s, summer, definitely. They say their age is a couple of times. But you actually have characters in their 60s. The Qt's 44. But the other four women are around 60. They're either just under 60. I think they're all just under 60. One of them's just over 60. What kind of research did you do for the show? I know you had a medical advisor on 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 Qt's character was singing her own voice, which was phenomenal. But she's a big West End star. She's not particularly big on telly, but she's massive in the West End. So question for our US listeners is like the Broadway. Yeah. So she really was acting. Oh my god. And then they're playing instruments. Were they really playing? Yes, they were, because I wanted them to... I didn't only to look like they weren't doing the real thing. The real deal. So I asked them to... 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 not apart from Rosie, who's Place Casey, who could play guitar. The none of them played the instruments at all. So they had five months. Even that? That's character, so she... No, no, Beth. She gave the keyboard at all. Joanna, I think she did a little bit, but not in any way that she felt confident with. Yeah. She still learned the all her 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 the others. And I learned to play the drums, especially as research for this. And I know it's hard, like learning any instrument is... And then they all came together for two weeks rehearsal. One was for the scenes and one was for the music. And that's a real achievement. Yeah. And do 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 gave them a real buzz, those real adrenaline in the room. You could feel it in the show. And you can see how nervous, like the Tamzin Craig character was on the bass, like how unsure she was that came across. I was like, well, Tamzin is really playing. Well, Tamzin 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 factored. When you don't, you learn so much. But they had to play two gigs. One is at the concert in episode four. And then one is at the festival in episode six. Because of the magic of Telly, we had to 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, I can't understand why you do what to go back and smash your hotel room up. They got so much energy and adrenaline flowing. You've called menopause identity theft. I like that term. I think this is a common thing that women go through when I did, and I've talked about, to the wound about this. When you get to force, you go through affairs of thinking, I don't care anymore. And this is my best part. Yeah, it is 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 14, you think, how do you think they know what I'm in? They won't listen to it. You get so confident about all the silly little things that you used to worry about. And then I got to, as I say, 50, and all those little doubts seem to creep back in again. And snatch away this thing that you'd achieve where you felt, I'm okay now, I'm a revived, I am a revived, 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 diff, you feel like you're not the first thing you thought you were. 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, these the brain fog, if you were like, oh, that's what this is what this is. Definitely it 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 just been at the lungs of the light relief. There were some professors who, three women who specialize in studying the menopause. And one of them just worked with, well, all different kinds 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, menopause was only defined as absence of periods and was women can identify that. And maybe some half-assures. 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 question. Well, I mean, my only knowledge of the menopause was 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 said, oh, I laughed my way through it. And I believed her 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 knew I'm a glue. I just thought she was depressed. But when it came to the menopause, she laughed her way through it. I didn't connect with her. And 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 stretch me. I can deal with things. And I'll deal with that. So I just thought the menopause was, you period stopped. Good, take. And you laugh for your way through it. Good, take. So when these things start to happen to me, I didn't connect them. I didn't even heard of the period before. Yeah, period menopause, 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. We can't say grab me by the balls because I don't have any. But I guess grab me by my ovaries, which have troubled up and died. But so they're both suicidal. Yeah, I don't want to give it away. No, but I want to make it seem like a downer. But like, one's going out like a lamb. Yeah. And one's going out like a lion. I think that's a quote from you. Yeah, well, I said one's going out with a bang and one's going out with a winpuff. Yeah. But I mean, it's important to you to include that in the story. Because yes, because 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 realised, which I can't give spoilers away, but you know what I mean. So I had to start off with them being lowed to show the rescue each other. And now they have defined. And the whole thing about that was, I hope, the joyous about the punk rock band is they start writing songs about the stuff that the punk rock. So they started writing songs? No, I didn't. We know we got a punk rock band called Arks on, but it's these two brilliant young women who are living bright. And it was so wonderful. But we would give them ideas. We'd give that we'd send them, like what the song, basically what the song that should be about. So seeing red definitely about the need for HRT. So we sent them lots, like ideas for lines, ideas for the theme of it, ideas for, I think I came up with the drum beat for that, in fact. But interestingly, the first line, which is, I'm so depressed, I can't get addressed. That came from my police advisor. She came up with that. Well, we were just chatting about things. So that's quite joyous. Two of the main characters are police officers. Well, one, yeah, and then the side character. That's right. You sure? Of course, yeah, yeah. So, you never have a father. Yeah, I do definitely advise her from happy value and what. And she came up with that first line for the, you know, something about menopause. We're playing catch up in popular culture and the way menopause of women are portrayed. It's usually comedic. Yeah. Yeah. Which can be funny. So much of menopause is kind of funny. So that's what we're saying now about why it moved away from hot flush, bring the title because that's what often get 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. So, yeah, when you were researching, like all that's not worried about. And you're having like aha moments, like, wait, wait, wait, that was me, you know? Yeah, yeah. You know, just thinking about all the brain fog worrying that I got dementia or anything I realized, I can't call this hot flush. It's still much more 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 a visibility. 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 the show and it's five women in their 50s and they're having libido issues and they're having heavy bleeding. You did a great job with kiddie's character having in medicine. We say menoraja, even like sure we're getting off the couch and like a puddle, you know, a blend of 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 drink and happy valley, which did hugely well in England, I think it went down pretty well in America as well. I think people are shrewish 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 less. It'll be interesting. It'll be saying something and it'll be full. It definitely had funny parts to it, which were all appropriate. When you handed the script, so you picture actors who were incredible, incredible, incredible, incredible, fantastic. And they're reading these parts, like what was their reaction to the character where they identifying. I think the love to it. I mean, we didn't, we weren't, you know, they were very happy to come and do it. They were all pretty eager and they, I think they, I think, you know, what was really interesting is they all got on really, really well. They had a fantastic friendship group off screen. And it was a really happy show. There was a really nice atmosphere. And one of the interesting things, as I said yesterday at this conference, I was at in Oxford was how important female communities in Menopause, how we often all support each other through it. We talk to each other around her. And that came, that was really apparent, I think, in their responses to the script, that they understood that this was something important to talk about that they hadn't quite seen before. And the way they, you know, they were dramatized through the, you know, the very vivid characters that they were all playing. I mean, any one of those five women would play the lead in any show. And any, so the fact that they were all happy to come and kind of be an ensemble was a bit of a win, you know? No, it was great. I've never seen this before ever is you openly talk about HRT on the show, yeah, 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, 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. Yeah. And able to manage. And one of them even has a 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. Oh, good. So or in any way, really at all, you know, this usually hot flashes and the joke stops there. Yeah. And maybe she's making an appointment to the doctor, but never like the aftermath. So of how a woman can kind of get some of her resilience back and be on, 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 because because I still was under the impression that it causes breast cancer, which I know, no, it doesn't. And I know if you have breast cancer, you can't go on HRT, but if you haven't got breast cancer, it's, it is not. It doesn't cause a risk. Right. And I didn't know that because there was the report that was about 20 years. 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. Yeah. 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 a moment. I 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 heart. You stop creating those hormones. Mm-hmm. And once they've gone with gone, you don't get through it. It just stops. It's your personal and puzzle forever. The doctor we worked with. It's where they made me to start trying HRT and I did. And it did make it about three more years. Over yourself. Yeah. Yeah. So because I was, I said, I had brain fog, joylessness, depression. And I just said, I have to have things. I thought it was part of the human condition. This I should feel like this. I thought it was because I was a writer. I should have been miserable. So I thought it was more emotional than most people. Yeah. And after about three months, it really kicked in. I made a difference. And I wanted to reflect that in the show. It happens quite quickly in the right six weeks. And it's different for everybody how soon. It does that. It starts 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. 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 said, 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. That's so many messages on Instagram and that kind of thing. The BBC have had more letters about this than that. I saw our exec from the BBC last week. And she said, normally on people write to the BBC, it's a complaint. So it's been kind of refreshing for them to get a whole bunch of letters that are saying wonderful. I wonder if you'll say, well done. This is interesting. You're helping me. You know, this has helped. So you also have some personal, a lot of personal experience with grief, dealing with your parents, dementia, both of your parents. Both my parents died with dementia. And were they very close in together or do they're dead? No, my dad died 25 years ago. Okay. And he had quite early onset. When he was 17, when he was 23, when he died. And then my mum was 93. Wow. So she, my dad's dementia was, there was kind of different forms of dementia. Yeah. One of the, but my mum lived with dementia for about six years. It was like a slow process. That's where my mum is right now. Right. Good days and bad days. Yeah. She fell in Brooker 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 that's character. And that made me cry because I've been through that. And it's also like my sister lives close to my mum. 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 a four-in-a-month, three-inch-a-month away. And, you know, super busy and traveling and doing all this stuff. And she is really managing the day-to-day stuff. It's so hard. It's just hard. It just tends to fold to one child to do it. And I've, 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. You know, I don't want to die like a man. You know, but my dad literally lived his best life. He had some slowdown 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. I say my mum left for six years with in a car home. I mean, it got to a point where she needed to transfer my mum. I'm not going to care home, too. Which I wasn't going to give my career to do that. I couldn't have done it. I, even if I had, I don't think it would have been feasible. I could, I don't think I could have physically done it. Yeah. I think one of the sadness that I've tried to reflect in the character of Bethes watching what your parent goes through in those six years. And having to witness things that we kind of feel nobody should, a child should never have to witness their parent going through. But you do, you do have to witness it because it's happening. Yeah. And you have to be there and you have to, you know, see them good through things that you know, they would not want themselves to be going through. 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 do, 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 at the same time as all the men of puzzle changes are happening to you as well. At the same time. And so it's, 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 right. Yeah. My way of dealing with it was, was creative. Which is kind of the message of the show. It's the money message for the show is if you struggling with a men's post, join a rock band. Well, the characters you've written have this, 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, you now have permission to live your best authentic life. Because if you don't, no one's coming to save you. Oh, you know, you really have to circle the wagons around yourself. So, yeah, 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 there you deal with some parent-child relationships in the show or the younger, you know, the Tom characters that Tom, the sandsome, and then the other kids of. Oh, Justice kids. Yeah, Chloe. Yeah. 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. And it just makes me think about, you know, all 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 what Tom's in Greg very eloquently calls the middle squeeze where you are, you know, you've got a little parent-child dealing with them, but you also got adult kids. What have got kids of their own? So, your grandma as well. And you are somehow in the middle, you 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. Women of a certain age in their 50s and 60s are really, you know, we're done with the golden girls, so they were fabulous. I have to say I love that show. Of course. 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 minipost clinic. 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? Did you think at all? I don't think I was thinking about me as hard at that stage. I couldn't imagine. I thought about my sons being bigger. You know, my sons were tiny boys out on the be like when they were 27, but I never thought about myself. Yeah. Would you imagine you'd still be like producing some of your, 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. But I think it's interesting to talk about plus side amenopause that you know, you do. I love it. You know, I got there are cultures like Maori culture where women celebrate. Well, and they call it second spring in China. Yeah, yeah. It's, or you know, the machines, they've achieved wisdom. Yeah. And they're returning that blood because it's not part of that wisdom. Yeah, different cultures do celebrate. Yeah. And 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 miniposts. Some of them are bunk 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. 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. Oh, yeah. And gather. Yeah. So I do, I do love that, 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, it's, it's the, it's the, 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 tele was written by men for so long forever. 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 her heels, you know, women didn't invent those mended. 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 like plastic, certain, the evolution of plastic surgery, it started with men getting their faces shot off and worse. 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 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, it's some great female plastic surgeons, but when the field developed, it was all the male gaze. Yeah. Like women were not coming in asking for breast implants. Men were telling them, and they were beginning that you have micro-mastier, small breast, a medical condition, small breast, it's making you unhappy. If we make them bigger, you'll be happy, which just absolutely blows me away. Mm-hmm. Fascinating. That'd be a good show. A show could as well. On TV, it's about women writing about women. I'm being honest about women. And it's, you know, historically, when you think about Charlotte Bronte, when she wrote a J&A, the reason that was such a big, apart, a big part of why that was such a big hit when she wrote it. Because it was the first, one of the first time, the 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, these that men have written women. The way that they thought. We've bought things what women should be because 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, they were nursing-type things that 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 a typical 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 have 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 talked to you as normal. 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. 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 US. I just loved it. So I think you get to see it. Unefficiently, your producer sent me access. Yeah. And I binged all six episodes. Fantastic. Such a beautiful portrayal. I can't wait for it to come out in the US. Thank you. You Sally's new series, Riot Women, is premiering on Britbox January 14. You can also find Sally on Instagram at Sally Wainwright official. You can find full episodes of Unposed 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 thepawslife.com. My upcoming book, The New Perry Metapause, is available for preorder on Amazon. If you're loving this podcast, I have an important request. Please take a moment to follow unposed on your favorite podcast app. Following and listening is what pushes this information to more women who need it. 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. Unposed. Unposed is presented by Odyssey in conjunction with pod people. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Claire Haver. The views and opinions expressed on unposed 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.