Hannah Murray is reflecting on her traumatic time spent living in a cult.
The English actress, best known for portraying Gilly in Game of Thrones, detailed being drawn into a wellness cult in her late 20s in a new interview on Saturday in support of her upcoming book, The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness.
"It's easy to go, 'Well, that would never happen to me,' but we do ourselves a disservice when we start saying that, because you don't know," Murray told The Guardian of her intense experience. "I had no idea I was going to go through any of the things in the book. I would've assumed I couldn't, that I was safe. I was well educated, from a middle-class family; everything should have been fine. I thought, 'I'm smart. I make good choices.' Well, I made terrible choices."
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Murray explained that she was originally drawn to an "energy healer," whom the article refers to as Grace, who helped her process the difficulty of shooting 2017's Detroit though a $150 "healing" session. The session was a positive one, which led Murray to a mystical class that in turn led to more classes with more members of the organization. "I wanted to go further and further, as far as you could go," the actress said.
She eventually met the man at the top of the group, whom the article refers to as Steve. "He exuded power in a way I had never known anyone to exude it," she said. "Magical power … I knew I was in the presence of a magician."
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The worst moment came when she was attending a five-day course in a London hotel. She was talking at "a million miles a second," seeing signs and symbols everywhere, and feeling incredibly happy.
One night, Murray found herself hallucinating and hearing Steve's voice in her head. She recalled taking refuge in a locked bathroom and experiencing a painful psychotic episode in which she felt like she was "giving birth through my skull." Members of the organization then surrounded the stall with bronze tools, chanting, "Be gone, evil spirit in Hannah."
Someone eventually called for help, and after she was pinned to the floor by a group of men in uniform, she was rushed to Gordon hospital in Bloomsbury, London, where she was detained for 28 days under the Mental Health Act.
Murray was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has now retired from acting. "I hear so much, 'We need to talk more about mental health,'" she said in the interview. "What they mean is, like, anxiety and depression. We're all happy to talk about that. But there's such a taboo around the idea of people who are sectioned. They are beyond the pale."
"It felt really important to say, 'I went through this,'" she added. "Lots of people go through this. That doesn't mean they are bad or f---ed up forever."
