Abi Morgan on embracing catastrophe and rebuilding just about everything in your 50s

The Shift with Sam Baker

Sam Baker Ltd

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 525 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s guest is a woman I’ve admired for the longest time: stage and screenwriter Abi Morgan. Throughout her thirty year career Abi has written some of our most memorable drama: Shame, Sex Traffic, The Queen, Iron Lady, The Hour (for which she won an Emmy), Suffragette and, most recently, the BBCone hit, The Split. In her work, female characters took centre stage long before that became the fashionable thing to do. But now, Abi has been forced to take centre stage herself. Four years ago, she returned home one lunchtime to find her partner of 20 years, Jakob, collapsed on the bathroom floor. It was the start of a sequence of events that would upend their family forever. And it’s the subject of perhaps the most extraordinary memoir I have ever read - This is Not a Pity memoir. And it isn’t. It’s about love, trauma and ultimately - weirdly! - about hope. Abi joined me to talk candidly about the cataclysmic impact of Jake’s illness, the long - and ongoing - journey to rebuild their family and how, in the midst of all that, she coped with her own breast cancer diagnosis. She also told me about being a lone woman in a world of white men in leather jackets, budging up to make room at the table and why she’s done with being “user-friendly”. You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including This Is Not A Pity Memoir by Abi Morgan and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me! And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/ • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo have arrived on Disney Plus.
0:04.5	We're having a baby.
0:05.5	We're having a baby.
0:07.2	I've always wanted to be mom.
0:09.4	And we're bringing you on our journey through everything.
0:12.4	I have no idea what we're doing.
0:13.6	Thank you. I have more of an idea.
0:15.6	I think of it like a Tamagocchi.
0:17.8	At the end of all of this...
0:20.0	We're going to have a little baby. Raising Chelsea, a Hulu
0:23.7	original series streaming exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required T's and T supply.
0:30.2	Hello, it's me, Sam Baker. And before we go on with the show, I want to tell you about an
0:35.1	exciting new initiative coming from The Shift.
0:42.2	Many of you have asked how you can support the podcast further and get more shift into the bargain.
0:46.4	Well, now you have the opportunity to do just that by joining the Shift community.
0:52.2	You can go to study.media forward slash The Shift and become a member of the Shift. In return for supporting the podcast, you'll receive
0:55.2	exclusive weekly newsletters, community membership and plenty of other perks aimed at bringing us
1:00.2	all closer together. That's steady.media forward slash the shift.
1:10.0	Hello and welcome to The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds about truth about being a woman post-40, created and hosted by me, writer and broadcaster, Sam Baker.
1:20.1	Today's guest is a woman I've admired for the longest time, stage and screenwriter Abby Morgan.
1:25.8	Throughout her 30-year career, Abby has written some of our most memorable drama.
1:30.3	Shame, sex traffic, the Queen, Iron Lady, the Hour, for which she won an Emmy, suffragette, and most recently, the BBC One hit, The Split.
	...

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