Character Study

This week, a special bonus episode: the prologue of Freya's debut novel, A Real Piece of Work, read by actor Ellie Kendrick. OUT NOW A Real Piece of Work follows Nola, whose memoir about her late sister Darina has become a hit — critics love it, producers want the film rights, and everyone in her family hates it. When an anonymous complaint about the book lands with her publisher, Nola is certain...

Novelist Sarvat Hasin reads from the second chapter of her novel Strange Girls — the beginning of Alia's story. Sarvat and Freya talk about how the two narrators of Strange Girls arrived in different voices and tenses: Ava, bold and certain, who could only ever be written in first person, and Alia, quieter, rendered in a storybook third-person past. They discuss the novels woven through the book —...

Novelist Sarvat Hasin, author of This Wide Night , You Can't Go Home Again and The Giant Dark , joins Freya to talk about her latest novel Strange Girls a novel that explores the relationship of two former friends forced to reunite at a hen party after a decade apart. She’s written many other award-winning books and is also in a workshop group with Freya, sharing early drafts with one another, whi...

Author and Boys Book Club co-founder Lucas Oakeley answers listener questions in this Q&A episode of Character Study. Listeners ask Lucas where his creative spark comes from, whether he has a way of dealing with people who interrupt his energy (he doesn't, he thinks friction is good for you), and how he gets back into his novel each time he sits down to write. His tip: never stop writing when...

Author and Boys Book Club co-founder Lucas Oakeley reads from his debut novel Nearly Departed in this passage episode of Character Study. Lucas reads the chapter What Dreams May Come, in which grief-stricken Joel describes a recurring dream to his therapist: a woman on the opposite platform at a train station, both reading the same edition of Wuthering Heights , their eyes meeting across the track...

Lucas Oakeley is the author of Nearly Departed , a debut novel about a man navigating grief and love three years after losing someone close — a rom com that somehow manages to be genuinely funny. He's also the co-founder of Boys Book Club, a community built around the radical idea that men can just read books for pleasure, and a journalist whose bylines span Vogue, GQ, and Esquire. In this episode...

Singer-songwriter Hope Tala answers listener questions in this Q&A episode of the podcast. Listeners ask Hope what she wouldn't change about the music industry, who her dream collaborator is — her answer is Kendrick Lamar, whose album To Pimp a Butterfly she wrote her university dissertation on — and how she navigates the pressure to post constantly on TikTok when she'd rather be writing. She...

Singer-songwriter Hope Tala reads from her debut album Hope Handwritten in this passage episode of Character Study. Hope reads the lyrics to A Story to Tell — a song she wrote on a sunny day in Los Angeles when the music wasn't coming and she felt completely stuck — and reflects on why writing has been a solace since she was a teenager, the quiet resistance of making things purely for yourself, an...

Singer-songwriter Hope Tala, one of the most exciting voices in British R&B, whose debut album Hope Handwritten charts three and a half years of heartbreak, new love and coming of age. As if writing an acclaimed album wasn't enough, Hope is also in the process of writing a debut novel, Maelstrom which sold in a heated seven-way auction. She joins Freya for this week's episode of Character Stud...

Stand-up comedian, writer and Peckham bookseller Ben Pope answers listener questions in this Q&A episode of the pod Listeners ask Ben whether inspiration comes in sparks or from hard work, how you know if your joke is original or just unconsciously borrowed from someone you admire, and what the best knock knock joke he's ever heard is. Ben reflects on the years he spent writing material that c...

Comedian Ben Pope reads his mischievous short story, Tomato Mozzarella Salad. A recipe that is also, somehow, an entire relationship contained in a single dinner. The story begins as a set of instructions and ends as a meditation on love, choice and the specific friction of spending a life with someone. Ben and Freya discuss what it means to make the choice right rather than the right choice, why...

Ben Pope is a comedian, bookseller and writer based in south London. He manages Review bookshop in Peckham, has been doing stand-up for over a decade, and has taken a string of critically acclaimed shows to the Edinburgh Fringe — most recently The Cut , a narrative show that begins with a very personal medical decision and opens out into something much bigger about grief, fathers, and what it actu...

Freya puts listener questions to actor and author Hannah Murray, whose memoir The Make-Believe is out now from Penguin. Hannah answers questions from listeners about her time on Skins — including the behind-the-scenes moment she'd most want to relive — and reflects on whether the qualities that made her a good actor, empathy and emotional availability chief among them, also made her more vulnerabl...

In this passage episode, Hannah reads from the opening chapter of her memoir The Make Believe. A scene from the set of the film Detroit, where she played a victim of sexual assault in one of the most physically and emotionally gruelling shoots of her career. Hannah describes having her dress ripped from her body, take after take, night after night, and the moment she realised that however much her...

In this episode of Character Study, Freya sits down with Hannah Murray: actor, author and now writer, best known for playing Cassie in Skins and Gilly in Game of Thrones. Hannah's debut memoir The Make Believe explores fame, mental illness and the blurring of the line between magic and reality. They talk about what it means to build an identity around being chosen — as an actor, as a romantic part...

In this listener Q&A, Emma Gannon answers questions sent in by Character Study followers from around the world. On everything from how to get noticed as a new author, to beating writer's block, to whether nature really does help your creativity. WATCH the full episode HERE Buy Emma Gannon’s  Creative Compass ,  A Year of Nothing  and more. And remember you can now pre-order Frey...

In this passage episode from our guest, Emma reads from her latest book Creative Compass — a story about watching a Bill Cunningham documentary in her early 20s and the creative philosophy it unlocked. Bill Cunningham, the beloved New York Times street photographer, lived in a rent-controlled room at Carnegie Hall, slept surrounded by filing cabinets, and ripped up a large cheque rather than compr...

In the first ever episode of Character Study, Freya sits down with Emma Gannon: author of nine books, Substack writer to 80,000 readers and one of the most distinctive voices on the internet about creative life. They talk about what it really means to build a career from creativity, the difference between performing as a creative person and actually being one, why Emma's burnout happened when she...

Everyone plays a character. But what does it really mean to turn your life into art? In this new podcast series, Freya explores how writers, artists and performers shape their character. Each episode, she’ll be talking to creatives of every discipline about the delicate art of finding inspiration in the everyday. From memoir to standup via autofiction and Instagram, what happens when we blur the l...