How Do You Stay Yourself While Everything Changes?
The conclusion of my conversation with Paul McGann
This week on the podcast, it’s the conclusion of my 2020 conversation with actor Paul McGann.
As I mentioned last week, my interview with Paul McGann is the longest I’ve ever done. We met up over Zoom at the beginning of May 2020, so lockdown was still relatively new, and we had no idea how long we’d be in it—or how long we’d stay on our call. I asked him if he had anywhere he needed to be at a particular time, and he said, completely deadpan, “Nobody needs to be anywhere these days.” So we went where the conversation took us until I noticed it had been nearly three fascinating hours.
In that time, we discussed acting for audio—a much bigger medium in the UK than the US, working with Richard E. Grant, and his personal favorite role: Eugene Wrayburn in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.
One of the biggest surprises, though (aside from the fact that even after all that time, there were still things we hadn’t discussed, like Horatio Hornblower), was his departure from social media, which he made pretty much literally overnight after realizing that it was turning him into someone he didn’t want to be.
I instantly related, having deactivated my Facebook account in 2017 for the very same reason and never looked back (though I did go through something like withdrawal for the first two weeks).
That leaves me wondering…
What’s something you’ve changed—not because it was wrong, but because it wasn’t right for you?
Listen to my conversation with Paul McGann on YouTube or your favorite podcatcher.
If you enjoy the episode, I hope you’ll share it with a friend!