Breaking Character: Ex-Acting Students Speak Up (Part 1)

A Little Bit Culty

Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames

True Crime, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Alberta Mayne Bligh, Brooke Henderson, and Erin Boyes are among the 26 ex-students who recently spoke up about their experience under the acting tutelage of Michèle Lonsdale-Smith in a revelatory story published in The Cut. Lonsdale Smith is, by many accounts, a dogmatic leader who claims her techniques help actors tell the truth about their unresolved human motivations and make the world a better place. But what happens when details of your personal life are put on stage? What if your teacher fat shames you? Makes personal accusations, belittles, and berates you? You know, for the sake of deepening your craft or – culty red flag – self-improvement?

Our three guests today are ex-students of culty acting classes, each with their own thriving careers in film, theater, television, directing, development and even art therapy. In the first of this two-part series, we dive into what attracted these acting students to Lonsdale Smith and what happened – the good, the bad, and the messy.

Please note, this series includes details of sexual abuse. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you, or someone who know, is a survivor of sexual assault, abuse, grooming, child abuse, or human trafficking, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers support at 800.656.HOPE (4673).

Notes:

May 16, 2023 article published by The Cut about Michèle Lonsdale Smith.

Alberta Mayne Bligh can be reached on Instagram and Facebook.

Erin Boyes produced Three Days with her producing and writing partner, Dani Barker. It touches on the culty side of acting classes. Here’s Erin’s website: http://www.erinboyes.com/

Brooke Henderson is known for filmwork but she’s pivoted from acting and is now doing post-grad work in art therapy in Toronto. You can find her on Instagram.

Also…

Let it be known far and wide, loud and clear that…

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The views and opinions expressed by a little bit culty are those of the hosts,
0:03.6	and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast.
0:07.8	That's true.
0:08.5	Any of the fire content provided by our guest bloggers, sponsors, or authors are of their opinion,
0:13.6	and are not intended to malign any religion group, club, organization, business individual,
0:18.2	anyone, or anything.
0:19.3	Unless you're abusing people, then I have a problem aligning you.
0:22.6	Also, we're not doctors, psychologists, or wizards.
0:25.8	We're just two non-experts trying to make you a friendly, informative podcast that helps you understand culty shit.
0:40.8	Hey everybody, Sarah Edmonds in here.
0:43.2	And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippy, Sarah's husband, and you're listening to a little bit culty.
0:49.5	aka aLBC.
0:51.2	A podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side.
0:54.6	We've been there, and back again, a little about us.
0:57.3	True story, we met, and fell in love, in a cult, and then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge.
1:03.1	And the whole thing was captured in the HBO documentary series The Bow, now in its second season.
1:08.4	I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, SCARD.
1:11.4	The true story of how I escaped next year, the cult that bound my life.
1:15.2	Look at us, couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night.
1:19.8	Where we interview experts and advocates and things like cult awareness and mind control.
1:24.0	Wait, wait, wait, this does not count toward date night bait.
1:26.8	We gotta schedule that that separate.
	...

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