Olly Alexander: “I couldn’t accept my identity” Queer joy and mental distress co-exist
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2024
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There should be no shame in being who you are. Musician and actor Olly Alexander has felt first hand how grappling with your identity can lead to poor mental health.
In this chat with Fearne, Olly explains why he feels there’s such a high level of mental distress in the queer community, and how acting in It’s A Sin helped him unpack his own lived experience.
Both Fearne and Olly share their experiences of poor body image, wondering if bulimia felt like a helpful tool to regain control in an intimidating world. How can you go from disliking your body to recognising the brilliant things it can do for you?
Plus, how to let yourself off the hook when you’ve messed up at work or in a social situation, and what to do when you don’t feel you’ve ‘achieved’ enough to be of value...
Olly’s solo album, Polari, is out in February.
CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains frank chat about suicide, self-harm, and bulimia, so take care while listening.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before we start, this episode contains chat you might find difficult to hear, |
| 0:04.1 | so do check the show notes for more details if you need. |
| 0:08.5 | Hello, and a massive welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. |
| 0:13.2 | This is the show that grapples with fundamental questions about identity. |
| 0:17.4 | Today, I'm chatting to Olli Alexander. |
| 0:20.5 | People in the queer community, we kind of inherited |
| 0:22.8 | some issues, right, around being able to live our lives the way we want to. I mean, that's pretty |
| 0:28.5 | obvious, right? And that can manifest in these quite complex and variable mental health problems. It |
| 0:34.4 | happened to me, you know, it wasn't just because I was gay, but I knew that because I was gay, that was affecting the way that I, you know, had all these high levels |
| 0:41.4 | of shame. I just couldn't accept my identity. How are you lovely lot? I hope you're okay. Now, this is |
| 0:47.3 | weird because I'm recording this little intro a bit ahead of time, but I know by the time this |
| 0:51.4 | episode comes out, I will have had to have an operation. |
| 0:58.6 | And I'm hoping that I've mentioned that on Instagram already, because I certainly plan to because I don't beat around the bush or pretend that anything's happening other than my actual life. |
| 1:04.5 | So I found a benign tumour. |
| 1:07.7 | Well, I found a little lump, and it's a benign tumour. Just below my ear, on my jaw, with a little one above it. |
| 1:13.3 | So the beginning of the December means an operation and then rest, which for that is my plan and loads of other good TV and hopefully seeing some friends. |
| 1:30.1 | So I'll be doing a bit of resting. |
| 1:32.9 | That's why I had to scramble and get all my Christmas prep done in November, quite frankly. |
| 1:37.8 | So if you are going through something similar or you are out for injury or whatever, we're in this together, |
| 1:45.6 | I'm going to hopefully be under a blanket. I hope you are too if you're listening to this during some sort of recovery. And hopefully |
| 1:51.9 | I'll be back at it very, very soon. But there'll be no break in the podcast. We've been extremely |
| 1:57.2 | organised and we've got episodes for days. don't worry about that but that's where |
... |
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