Imagination, Inspiration, and Creative Resilience with Lizzie Hopley

Actress and writer Lizzie Hopley was born in Liverpool and trained at RADA. As an actress, she has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Globe Theatre and recent screen work includes Black Doves and upcoming feature film Fackham Hall. As a writer, her radio sitcom Green won Pozzitive TV’s Funny Dot Comp 2021 and TV series Bloody Betty is currently in development. She has written and appeared in over 90 Big Finish audio adventures including Dark Shadows and Doctor Who, and her Doctor Who audio play The Curse of Lady Macbeth won the 2022 Scribe Award.

Lizzie joins me to talk about how her childhood love of writing and acting became a vocation, auditioning for RADA—twice—and how she ended up continuing to write even as a drama student, how learning to think of acting and writing as having a target changed her work, and a whole lot more.

Episode breakdown:

00:00 Lizzie Hopley shares her creative childhood and love for books.
04:56 Acting out movie scenes alone sparked early passion for performance.
08:45 Family encouraged storytelling, costumes, and imagination at home.
13:11 Difficulties pursuing creative careers; importance of following passion discussed.
17:33 University and RADA experiences shaped her acting and writing path.
22:24 Writing plays began due to lack of desired acting roles.
27:29 Rewriting and feedback are crucial for improving both crafts.
32:54 Learning to target audience while writing; acting versus writing focus.
37:22 Acting training emphasizes focusing on scene partner, not yourself.
43:48 Importance of editors and learning to kill your darlings.
48:21 Confidence and caring less about others’ opinions increases with age.
53:07 Acting and writing overlap at Big Finish; playing her own roles.
57:16 Big Finish’s community impact, creative freedom, and professional development.
01:02:18 Target books and early Doctor Who fandom as creative inspiration.
01:07:04 Embrace varied interests; open doors for yourself in creativity.

Show Links: Lizzie Hopley

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Transcript: Lizzie Hopley

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Actress and writer Lizzie Hopley was born in Liverpool and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. As an actress, she has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Globe Theatre, and recent screen work includes Black Doves and an upcoming feature film, Fakim Hall. As a writer, her radio sitcom, Green, won positive TV’s fuzzy.comp 2021, and TV series Bloody Betty is currently in development. She has written and appeared in over 90 Big Finish audio adventures, including Dark Shadows and Doctor Who, and her Doctor Who audio play, The Curse of Lady Macbeth, won the 2022 Scribe Award.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:55]:
Lizzie joins me to talk about how her childhood love of writing and acting became a vocation, auditioning for RADA twice, and how she ended up continuing to write even as a drama student, how learning to think of acting and writing as having a target changed her work, and a whole lot more. I think you will really enjoy my conversation with Lizzie Hopley. Lizzie, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.

Lizzie Hopley [00:01:21]:
Thank you. I’m so glad to be here after we met in it was eventually sunny LA, wasn’t it? It was raining when I arrived.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:32]:
After the original downpour. Yes.

Lizzie Hopley [00:01:35]:
Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:36]:
Yes.

Lizzie Hopley [00:01:37]:
What a strange time.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:39]:
Yes. After the fires came the deluge. So

Lizzie Hopley [00:01:43]:
Yeah. All pretty apocalyptic.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:46]:
Right.

Lizzie Hopley [00:01:47]:
But then we spent I don’t know about you, but I spent three days pretty much underground in the world of Gallifrey One.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:55]:
Yes. That is correct.

Lizzie Hopley [00:01:57]:
Pretty much of the sky, whatever it was doing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:00]:
I know. Everybody heard I was going to LA, and they were like, oh, you’ll be out in the sun. I’m like, nope.

Lizzie Hopley [00:02:06]:
Yeah. I took my husband for the first time. He’d never been to LA before. We went I I took him on a bit of a tour, you know, so he’d see the sign and all of that. Nah. Nah. He just saw a lot of clouds. Nope.

Lizzie Hopley [00:02:18]:
Didn’t see the sign.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:19]:
Lots of clouds. It’s a

Lizzie Hopley [00:02:20]:
viewing platform. It looked like Manchester. We came back. That was it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:23]:
That’s it.

Lizzie Hopley [00:02:26]:
Aw.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:28]:
So I start everybody with the same question. Were you a creative kid, or did you discover your creative side later on?

Lizzie Hopley [00:02:35]:
I was a ridiculously creative kid, and I’m so glad I was brought up in an age without mobile phones and technology. And we only had the three and then went to four channels excitingly when I was growing up on the telly. But, telly wasn’t even that massive when I was a kid. It was books, books, books. I’ve I’ve benefited from a mom who just was so into reading. And, while I was a child, she did an open university degree, which for a woman born and brought up in Toxteth in Liverpool was was unheard of. So the house is full of books, and I loved drawing, although I was rubbish at it. But that was what I I first did, just reading, reading, reading.

Lizzie Hopley [00:03:23]:
And I was such a spud with reading. I wasn’t just content with reading. I wrote book reviews of the books I read for, not in a kind of the way we understand review are now, as in, oh, I’m not sure about that, and that was a little bit. It was just, I read this book, it’s about this, and it’s brilliant because this, You know, I I wrote them for my local library so I could get these certificates for each one that I write. So, yeah, it was, that’s how I started. And you know how most people, Nancy, kind of I don’t know if you did you did the whole singing into an a a hairbrush to music when you’re in your in your bedroom. Mine was I had a a a record player, and I had a cassette player. And I had these cassettes of, like, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars, and it was just the soundtrack filled with narration with them bits and the black hole.

Lizzie Hopley [00:04:19]:
And I acted along to those. I did the hairbrush thing with music, but also I was acting. I mean, I had no idea that it was called acting. I didn’t know what it was. But if something was exciting and there was a story, I wanted to be in it. And so I would learn the words, I would mouth along to the action, and I would, in the tiniest bedroom, fight all the aliens and run away from the great big stone balls and and carry off the the golden idols and put myself in the star of every film. Yeah. And then realized that that was a whole profession that I would struggle to do as good as I did when I was 16.

Lizzie Hopley [00:04:56]:
Where?

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:59]:
So did your family encourage you, or did they just kind of say, yeah. Okay. Typical kid stuff, she’ll grow out of it. Or

Lizzie Hopley [00:05:06]:
I think it’s probably their fault, to be honest. I was, partly brought up by my nan as well because my dad my dad was in the Merchant Navy and, not always at home. And when my mom was working, she my nan would bring me up. And, of course, she had all the Liverpool stories that she turned into urban myths about our family members and things like that. So it was kind of ghost stories and fantasy and all stuff like that. And I would act out things with her. She would give me, you know, I would allow her to go through her drawers of clothes and put on her night dresses, and she played Prince Charming. And I’m actually somehow married to my own grandmother, I suppose, in a different universe.

Lizzie Hopley [00:05:50]:
But, you know, we we we make up these adventures, and she she was an amazing storyteller. And then my mom kind of inherited that as well for Halloween, you know, telling ghost stories. But that was always a a creative play and role playing and pretending to be other people. The world of imagination was a massive thing. You know, I wasn’t just read to. I was interacted with, you know, and and we didn’t just play with toys. We used our brains. We used our imagination, and I do think that’s getting rarer and rarer.

Lizzie Hopley [00:06:24]:
Mhmm. And then when my parents realized that I was wanting to be to do this acting thing, they tried to look in the local area and they found little drama groups that I could become part of. And my dad, when he was around, kind of did am dram with me in a local drama group. He did the backstage stuff, which he went on to do a lot of, actually. He really loved the theater. And when he was doing jobs abroad, he very often put on plays starring the kids of the people who were employing him or the, you know, the companies that that he was working for. And that’s crazy because he wrote a book about that a few years ago. We got that published.

Lizzie Hopley [00:07:02]:
And reading those things, I was thinking, there it is. It’s in my family. My mom was in a Ken Loach film before I was born. He did, I suppose, one of a Wednesday play type film called The Golden Vision about the Edison football team before around the time he was making the big flame, before he did flickering flame, and then, you know, started to make, proper films before Kes, basically. She was meant to be in Kes, but didn’t have an equity card. So, yeah, he found her in Woolworths. Working in the office in Woolworths, Ken Loach came in and said, who wants to be in a movie? And he auditioned a few people and got people to got some of the women to improvise. Not that my mom knew what that meant.

Lizzie Hopley [00:07:47]:
And she could just pretend to be a person in a scene, and he he used her. And she’s got quite a prominent role in one of his first films. So it it’s it was definitely there, but I don’t think any of us knew what it was. Nowadays, you know, they’d be like, oh, let’s get her an agent. You know? Let’s let’s have more of a clue. But in Liverpool, especially in Liverpool eight, no one wanted to be active. And I suppose I heard Stephen Graham on a podcast talking about this. He was on off menu quite recently talking about how he got into it.

Lizzie Hopley [00:08:18]:
And there was only there was a guy in his street, the actor who played Scully, I think, was a series in Liverpool, who was an actor. And that’s so so Stephen Graham saw him and went, oh, well, well, if he can do it, I can do it. And it all that’s all it takes is just seeing one other person do it or, you know, realizing it is an actual career that you can follow. But none of us knew that, I suppose, at the time. We were all just doing it because it was fun.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:45]:
Right. Right. That’s how these things start. Right? I’m having fun.

Lizzie Hopley [00:08:49]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And if you’re in a house like you know, you were you were in a house with music and writing and books and, you know, and and you had that I love that thing you say in on your website that if you were if you had your mouth taped up in some kind of apocalyptic situation, if you if your keyboard or your pens are taken away from you, then then there would be no reason to live, but only until then. You know, and I’d listen to Desert Island Discs and people say, no, I couldn’t live without this, I couldn’t live without that. It’s it’s pens and paper, and then I’m happy. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:23]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:09:25]:
Then I’m free.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:26]:
So when did you realize that this was not a thing that was gonna go away, it was gonna be a significant part of your life?

Lizzie Hopley [00:09:33]:
I I don’t I think it was, you see, I’ve got a bit of a dual thing going on here. Because as much as I love books and I love writing, and I would go to bed at night and I would write what I now realize was, like, my own space novel, I would just kind of write my own version of Star Wars and put me in it. And I also wanted to act as well. So I was kind of joining the school plays and learning that that was a thing, and I had a very formative teacher in school as, you know, most wonderful creative people do, called Mrs. Barnes. She was my English teacher and discovered Shakespeare and started to do school plays. So I suppose it was in my early teens that I realized I was doing nothing else but these things. I wasn’t going to be a sporty person.

Lizzie Hopley [00:10:25]:
It was writing and acting, but they’ve always been equal. Mhmm. So, I went to a school where drama wasn’t it was a a a you could do an o level when you’re in your a levels, but it didn’t really exist as an option, a career option. None of the career teachers knew how to help me, and I was advised to do a typing course or try university. And I I went to Manchester University to study drama, but then I didn’t I didn’t know. It wasn’t a practical course. The the the polytechnic in Manchester did a practical course. Mine was very academic, and I suppose it pushed the writing a bit.

Lizzie Hopley [00:11:05]:
But I didn’t know about drama schools. I didn’t know I didn’t know they existed. So it wasn’t like I I knew it was a career that I could follow. It was just it was a hobby that I didn’t want that was consuming everything else. But it was only, I think, when I I did a careers test in school when I was about 17, 16, 17, we all did it. And we we it was a really weird time because, obviously, computers were just just happening. And we had these questions, and you put a little pinprick next to the answer. And the computer read the holes in the page, and that was their early, I suppose, algorithm.

Lizzie Hopley [00:11:46]:
And it worked out what what career you should be, and mine was sales. And I just thought I’d rather I’d rather die because of all the things that, you know, like good communication skills and Mhmm. You know, love talking to people and love you know, and all those skills that I thought I had said that I would be a good salesperson. And that was a very bleak time. Very bleak time. And I feel my heart goes out to all those poor people who came before me or even after me or what whatever that are pushed into an area like that without any other options. Because, you know, there must be a lot of very inventive salespeople out there who have a whole other missed life that they should have had. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:12:38]:
Horrendous, isn’t it?

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:39]:
I mean, there is a lot of overlap in skill set, for sure. And I know, you know, there are lots of folks who study theater who end up applying it that way, but that isn’t necessarily to say that, oh, you, you know, you could be either and be equally happy. That’s not necessarily the case. But but yeah. You know, it’s, they’re very different things even though they’re similar skill sets. So

Lizzie Hopley [00:13:11]:
Absolutely. Have you ever Nancy, have you ever performed? Have you ever done any acting? Oh, you have. You see, I wondered if you had. Because you’ve done the teaching as well, which is something I’ve done. And I really think there is a massive crossover in that whole, if you’ve got that inside, then So what have you done? Just to turn this around and ask you? That’s okay.

Nancy Norbeck [00:13:35]:
It’s totally fair. I’ve done some community theater. I’ve done some improv. I Yeah. Once upon a time, wrote a ten minute play and had that performed. That was an interesting experience. And then when I was teaching, I helped with the middle school play and wrote part of that one year. So so it’s in there.

Nancy Norbeck [00:13:52]:
It’s it’s never been as much as I really, honestly, in my heart of hearts, would have liked. I I realized, I don’t know, five or ten years ago, I thought, you know, really, I could have majored in theater in undergrad and probably done everything in my life that I’ve done with an English degree. And it would have been at least as much fun because at least then I would have had a chance to play around with theater in a way that I didn’t get to do. You know? I mean, an English degree is great. You do a whole lot of writing and, you know, all of that and reading with both of them. So and and I think the reason that I never had the nerve to do it either as a double major or to or to switch is, first of all, I spent the first semester of my undergraduate years thinking that I was going to double major in engineering and English, which ended when I managed to fail out of calculus one. So that’s a whole other side story. But, also, I was pretty sure I never tested the theory, but I was pretty sure that if I told my dad that I was gonna switch to a theater degree, he would say, great.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:03]:
And how are you gonna pay for your undergraduate degree? So I never I never tested that particular water because I didn’t wanna have that conversation. But I, you know, it’s one of those things that it’s like I I had a conversation, gosh, like, eight eight years ago with someone I met online who was, I think at the time, maybe 19, and was somebody I didn’t know and just happened to be in a conversation with, and she was she was trying to figure out what she wanted to do. She was like, I wanna be an actor, and I know that that’s silly, but I really think theater is magic. But, you know, I could also go get a university degree and do something really practical. And I said, look. I Said, you you wanna hear a voice from twenty five years down the line? Because I can tell you. It was like, if you if you wanna go get a theater degree and you have the means to go do it, for the love of god, go do it. This is the last chance you have to go play with the thing you wanna play with, and then you’ll know you at least got to do it for a while.

Nancy Norbeck [00:16:12]:
Mhmm. And if it pans out beyond that, awesome. And if it doesn’t, you had it briefly. And then if you need to go get another degree, you can go get another degree. But, you know, because I said, don’t talk yourself out of it because there are so many people in this world who are out there to talk you out of it. They don’t need your help. They’re gonna do it anyway. And here’s my contact info.

Nancy Norbeck [00:16:36]:
If you need somebody to be your cheerleader, you come let me know. And I will be your cheerleader because I wish I could go back and have this conversation with my 19 year old self.

Lizzie Hopley [00:16:46]:
Talk about with, you know, paying it paying it back. I mean, that’s Yeah. They’re paying it forward. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:16:51]:
That is that

Lizzie Hopley [00:16:52]:
is such a valuable thing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:16:54]:
Yeah. And she went to London and she tried to get into drama schools for a while, and I she hasn’t ended up actually doing it, but we’ve stayed in touch.

Lizzie Hopley [00:17:01]:
And, you

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:01]:
know, so she she at least gave it a shot.

Lizzie Hopley [00:17:04]:
At least she tried. Right. Because regret is something that’s more the hardest thing to carry to the grave. And I was lucky that, again, it’s the age thing. I had four years of university grants from Sefton, and they’re a small authority. It’s not Liverpool, it’s just outside Liverpool, Sefton. And it was when I went so I went to university and I had my fees paid, and I had no student debt, which is amazing. Mhmm.

Lizzie Hopley [00:17:33]:
And then I came out of that. I did I did two years, on my own. I kind of thought I was taking a year out and then kind of started a theatre company, did various things in Manchester because it was a very interesting place to be at the time. Canal Street was massive, there was so much theatre going on, you could get money to do stuff. It was a ridiculous time. And, this was in the early nineties. Music scene was so huge, you know, that Manchester was just very exciting time to be creative. And then still had a year left of of funding to go to drama school when I realized that that was there and that I hadn’t done it, and perhaps I should.

Lizzie Hopley [00:18:13]:
So I had my first year of RADA paid for. Now to think of that happening now, I had both those things. I had university and then I I I then the second, third year abroad, it was paid for by grants and, and sponsored. But my my parents certainly couldn’t couldn’t do that. Mhmm. But that would not have happened to me. Right. It just wouldn’t have happened to me because student student loans didn’t exist, you know, so I was able to do it.

Lizzie Hopley [00:18:43]:
But now, of course, you would have to choose, especially now the government is taking away so many arts, based courses and resources from from schools, universities. To choose that now is a big risk because it has to be vocational. You know, you have to kind of think of the future. And if I’m gonna have to pay all this money back, I’d better not train to be an actor.

Nancy Norbeck [00:19:08]:
Right.

Lizzie Hopley [00:19:08]:
Right. Because money is one thing you’re not going to get. And with writing, you know, if you’re lucky, you can tick on by. Mhmm. Yeah. And be a jobbing actor and writer, which I am, which is unbelievable. But I’ve spent many, many years doing all the jobs that fill the gaps, just to make ends meet. And that and so many people I’ve known through university, but particularly through Radha because, I mean, you know, it it’s so oversubscribed, and I was so lucky to get in.

Lizzie Hopley [00:19:43]:
But most of the people I knew have left because it it however good they were, it’s too hard, especially if you want a family and a quality of life. You can’t be an actor. Yeah. So it it it’s so hard. And it’s literally because it’s the only thing I can do, and because I have the backup of writing, which makes me happy. And if I wake up in the morning and go, Oh, I want to act today. You know, you can’t, unless you’re mad and you want to stay in your room and just do it on your own. Done that.

Lizzie Hopley [00:20:13]:
Did that as a kid. But you can’t just do it. Right. But you can do that. You can wake up in the morning and go, I’m gonna write today, and you can. No one’s stopping you. So I’m very lucky that I have something to back me up, which is something I also love. Mhmm.

Lizzie Hopley [00:20:31]:
So, yeah, I mean, that’s a very long long answer to your when did you realize you wanted to do this thing. But, you know, it was always for me, it was always both, and I couldn’t choose equally between one or the other, thankfully, really. So what happened when, you know, between one or the other, thankfully, really.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:46]:
So what happened when you, you know, went off to drama school and, you know, you’re more doing theater than writing?

Lizzie Hopley [00:20:58]:
Again, that was a strange thing because, yeah, I I went straight from the North to the South. I’m in London. Huge. Very excited to be at Roger. The only reason I’d applied to Roger is because it’s the one I’d heard of. I picked up a book about Laurence Olivier and found out who went there, so I thought better do that. And, also, I was in Manchester, and they held auditions at the Royal Exchange Theatre. So I was like, oh, it’s just down the road.

Lizzie Hopley [00:21:25]:
So I went and did that. And the then principal said, where have you been since you left school? And I said, well, I I I’m at university. So I was in the middle of my university course then, and he said, what do you mean you haven’t finished? No. I haven’t. I just, you know, I want to be an actor. And he said, well, we don’t take quitters. We you finish your course and reapply. And in a way, I’m glad because I then got a degree.

Lizzie Hopley [00:21:51]:
And in my final year, I wrote stuff because I couldn’t find anything I wanted to play that wasn’t a man. And they didn’t have gender blind casting then, so it’s like, well, you can’t do it. You’ve either got to be a girlfriend or a wife or a mother or a little bit. So I thought, well, I’m gonna write my own stuff then. And that’s how I started writing properly and not just as a hobby. It became, oh god, I can write a play like you did. You know, I can actually write a little thing and people can be in it or I can be in it. So that’s when I I kind of thought I would done that now.

Lizzie Hopley [00:22:24]:
I’m gonna start my own theater company, write my own plays, do a bit of stand up comedy, do this, that, and the other. So I then didn’t do what he I finished the course, like he said, but then I didn’t reapply. And it was only when I was two years into all of that thinking, well, what’s happening? You know, I’m not a professional actor. I don’t have an agent. I don’t you know, what am I doing? And that’s I thought I’d better probably train and take it seriously and get to London. And I suppose the shortcut I chose was a three year shortcut that took me to a drama school. And as I said, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art was the only one I’d heard of, so it was the only one I applied to. And that time, I got in.

Lizzie Hopley [00:23:03]:
And I was it was a very key stage for me as well because I had I knew I had the confidence at that time. I’d also been to see a film the night before with Gary Old man. And, you know, sometimes you come out of a film and it gives you, it gives you the power of the film. You know that, right? Sometimes you come out of a plane, you’re inspired, or you come out of a movie about superheroes and you feel like a superhero, or you feel like Erin Brockovich. And I came out of this Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And I borrowed my friend’s leather jacket, and I thought I was Gary Old man. And I turned up to this audition, and I just I wasn’t gonna not get in. It was very strange because it wasn’t really me.

Lizzie Hopley [00:23:47]:
It was a bit, you know, me on a very odd day where I just wasn’t gonna take any prisoners. And I knew when I’d auditioned, I I knew I’m gonna get in here. And I got a recall and, fortunately, managed to blag that. But I did think if I if I hate the people, I’ll leave. And although some of the tuition there was a bit poor at that time, the people themselves were great. The people I was with were good. There were a lot of northerners, which I don’t think I don’t think that’s really a a a common thing now. But certainly in my year, there were a lot of people from the North who felt a bit more at home.

Lizzie Hopley [00:24:26]:
And one of the tutors really encouraged my writing. And it was while I was there that I wrote my first play and my first screenplay. And that was a massive leap to be reading so many plays and then watching film and going. But I want and I I taught myself screenwriting. I bought all the books that you do. I bought the idiot’s guide to screenwriting, screenwriter’s bible, all the Sid Field books, you know, story of Robert McKee, bought everything, absorbed it all and taught myself all the formats. And got a lot of criticism, and got better and better. But, yeah, that was that was a huge step forward for me, the the RADA thing, because I suddenly thought, ah, this is a this is how to be professional.

Lizzie Hopley [00:25:16]:
You know, you’ve gotta do it seriously, and you’ve gotta even though we didn’t have a, a professional development course at the time, I still had to learn an awful lot. But that’s when I suddenly took that leap forward. I’ve been doing interesting things in Manchester, things that I’ll never forget that were very creative and fun. But learning how to monetize it and learning how to get people interested in it to represent you and then getting two agents, a literary agent and an an acting agent, suddenly things took that, you know, the the leap forward and you kinda think, oh, I could I could have a stab at this.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:56]:
Yeah. So you were basically doing both at the same time anyway?

Lizzie Hopley [00:26:00]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:01]:
Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:26:01]:
But and it was just to give myself a role. You know, like, I don’t know about you, but I was you know, I watched one of my most formative things was watching, Glenda Jackson play Elizabeth the first on telly a million years ago and thinking, oh, she’s interesting because she’s not a simpering wife, mother, child. You know, she’s not doing all the things that I see women do. And she was basically doing all the things men do. Obviously, it was Elizabeth the first, so she did rule as, I suppose, a man who then didn’t have a you know, was never a wife and a and a mother. And I just was so inspired that an actress could do that. And I looked for roles that were like that, and there were very few. There was Caryl Churchill.

Lizzie Hopley [00:26:48]:
There was Pan Gems. And I I soaked up their plays and then thought, well, why not write my own then? So my dissertation at university was that. And then this tutor at RADA used to get us to write our own speeches, which is brilliant because all the female monologues are usually quite dull, or overdone. And and so I was able to write my own things, and he really encouraged that, and also gave good criticism for the first time, because that’s a massive step forward in writing. The first time someone gives you proper criticism, and then you go, oh, right. Oh, okay. This thing called rewriting exists. I’ve gotta do that.

Lizzie Hopley [00:27:29]:
Oh, no.

Nancy Norbeck [00:27:29]:
Yeah. Nobody tells you about that part

Lizzie Hopley [00:27:32]:
at first. Yeah. That sorts the wheat from the chat. It’s a bit like if you fail auditions, you you’re not gonna make it as an actor. If you don’t get past the rewriting stage, you’re not gonna make it as a writer. So that’s the next step, isn’t it? It’s like proving you’re good, learning from the mistakes, and getting better. Yeah. And there’s lots of luck involved.

Lizzie Hopley [00:27:54]:
Of course, there is. But unless you put in that work and can get to that next stage and understand the process of it. So the getting better as a writer, I think, is one of the most fascinating things I’ve been through because I can chart it happening, you know, and it’s I could see it happening in other people, which is exciting.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:16]:
Yeah. Well and, you know, when you’re talking about writing plays because you couldn’t find the kind of things that you wanted to be in, it kind of reminds me you know, I saw this clip of of Stephen Colbert a couple months ago where he was talking about how when when, you know, he was either in school or just out of it, you know, he and and when one of his friends would come up and say, hey. You wanna go Get in Trouble? And Get in Trouble was code for, I’ve found a venue, and a bunch of us are gonna get together. And in nine days, we have to put on a show, and we’ve already invited the press. So in the next nine days, we have to come up with the show and put it on. And it was, you know, we’re all here. We don’t have jobs. We haven’t been able to find a job, so we’re gonna make up our own show, make up our own job.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:04]:
And when we’re done, the press are gonna come, and we’re gonna something to put on our resume. And so it was like I

Lizzie Hopley [00:29:10]:
love that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:10]:
You know. Yeah. That’s what I said. I was like, wow.

Lizzie Hopley [00:29:13]:
Get in trouble. I love that way of doing it. But but that’s what’s driven me so much because if if you’re not getting paid, and, what’s the motivation? We can all write in our bedrooms. I said before, you can get up in the morning and write, but then what happens? So to slap on a deadline, and I used to do this all the time. My first proper finish things when I was at university, it was a dissertation, but then I’d go, Alright, I’m going to book an evening at the Stephen Joseph Studio, which was our studio, sell tickets, and call it this and make a poster, and then I’ve got to learn it and do it. So it became a thing, and that’s what I always did. I suppose the Edinburgh Festival is a bit like that as well, which I never really got into till much later because, again, I just wasn’t educated enough about these things. But, you you know, like, in the February, you’re you’re asked for the title of your play or show.

Lizzie Hopley [00:30:10]:
And whether you’ve written it or not, you just make it up and then fund it, book the poster, and write it. And so many comedians talk nowadays about that dreadful time in February where they have to completely find a generic term for their show that means they can write anything, and the title still applies. But, yeah, having an enforced deadline like that is genius. Because, you know, people are coming, and then then it’s excitement and adrenaline. Yes. And the terror of missing that you can’t miss the deadline.

Nancy Norbeck [00:30:42]:
Right. Right. Because the press are coming. It’s not just that you’re gonna have an audience. The press are

Lizzie Hopley [00:30:47]:
coming. Yes. Exactly.

Nancy Norbeck [00:30:50]:
They’re gonna review you the next day.

Lizzie Hopley [00:30:55]:
That’s genius, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. But I

Nancy Norbeck [00:30:59]:
mean How to put

Lizzie Hopley [00:30:59]:
a rocket up your own arse. It’s the only way.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:05]:
Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:31:05]:
But you’re you’re doing it for yourself. Like, so many I’m watching Severance at the moment, you know, and that wonderful thing about the I don’t know if you’re watching it at all. I’ve seen

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:13]:
some of it. Not Not much.

Lizzie Hopley [00:31:14]:
No. TV. But, you know, everyone loves it because it’s so, it it it looks at your work self versus your real self. And, you know, that there’s this self help book that the the work selves discover, and it’s all about, you know, you’re working for the man. You’re working for the other person. You’re putting so much of your effort in for someone else. And at least I know that everything I produce is for me or is ultimately for the audience. And, you know, the people you you write it, you write stuff for the reader or, you know, form stuff for the person watching.

Lizzie Hopley [00:31:48]:
However, at the end of the day, I I benefit from everything I do. Not always financially Nancy. I’m but Put that out there in case anyone’s thinking of being a writer or an actor.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:03]:
But if you’re writing it to please everybody else and not to please yourself, the odds are you’re not gonna end up pleasing anybody. Whereas, you know, you gotta be happy with it.

Lizzie Hopley [00:32:18]:
Well, what I mean about writing it for other people, you’re absolutely right about that. And let’s so let me clarify. I suppose the the the thing I mean is I used to write just for myself, and it gave me a voice. It helped me find a voice. The people talk about finding your writing voice. I have, I suppose, several because I write for so many different people in so many different media. But then when it comes to monetizing it, you then do have to think of your end viewer, your end listener. My first, professional commissions were for Radio four.

Lizzie Hopley [00:32:54]:
So I had to think about the the listener of Radio four afternoon plays and really think about, you know, them on the other end of this radio, you know, listening to this story and knowing that I had to keep them engaged, I had to keep them excited, I had to, you know, really take them on a journey. I’m still writing for me because I need bits my idea, and I want it to be fantastic and the best thing ever. And I’m bringing my ideas to them, but I, I never lose- I’ve never lost sight of the importance of that end, user. And that’s, that’s, you know, knowing that there is a connection between you and that individual person in row u of the stalls or whatever is is is so important. And it was actually working with, Declan Donovan who runs the theater company Cheek by Jowl and who’s written a very fabulous book called The Actor and the Target. He talks about never losing sight of the individuals in your audience. And I remember I used to suffer terribly from stage fright until I did a world tour with with him, and I I had this very entertaining character, and I used to get laughs. And then he gave me notes at the end and said, Lizzy, what are you doing it all for? Who who is it all of this for, this dancing around and stuff that you’re doing? And I said, well because he said, at the moment, it seems to be for the for the audience, you know, and and all of that.

Lizzie Hopley [00:34:22]:
And I’m like, well, you know, as in you. It’s to get you laughs. And he said, you’re actually doing it for your fellow actor, who is your mistress. You’re a servant. She’s your mistress. You come in in the morning to wake her up, and everything you do and say is for her benefit. And if you get laughs along the way, that’s great. But it’s never forget that you have a target and that you have a job to do and that you have to you know, and and it’s a very it’s a very complex structure, really, because, yes, it’s all for the audience.

Lizzie Hopley [00:34:58]:
But if your mind is on entertaining the audience as an actor, then you’re not really doing your job unless you’re a stand up comedian, in which case it absolutely is. But as an actor, it’s very different from a writer because, of course, the writer, you don’t have anyone to interact with. At the writing, all you have are your characters and your story. So you make them as good as possible. You focus on them, but the very end is the person who’s gonna be listening to it or reading it or watching a somatailing. Yeah. This makes sense. Does that make any sense?

Nancy Norbeck [00:35:33]:
It it does. It it especially makes sense to me from an acting point of view, and I’m really curious about how you put it into practice in writing.

Lizzie Hopley [00:35:41]:
Yeah. I guess it’s just being aware of, I call it m the end user, I suppose. But I mean, that whole thing about the actor and the target helped me in a lot of ways because as I said, I was very nervous. And one of the side effects of of having your focus on your target properly as an actor is that you lose your nerves, or I did anyway, because your attention isn’t on yourself. Mhmm. And I think if you’re all about you, what you know, and and I stopped writing for myself for quite a long time even though that is that’s what got me into writing because I thought, well, actually, let’s try writing for other people. Let’s just get better as a writer and see if you can write for other people, other actors, and, you know, just widen your range. And I did.

Lizzie Hopley [00:36:27]:
My voice got a lot sharper and a lot more, mobile, and so I learned to write for different mediums, and I learned to write prescript you know, prescriptively for certain actors, which is a good skill. And in terms of of acting, if you’re self conscious, you can get very nervous because you’re just so self aware. And, also, I think an audience can kind of tell. You know, you’re not lost in something. All of my favorite actors and all of certainly the, you know, people that are hailed as wonderful actors, they do get lost in their roles. They do seem to go somewhere else or be so in that moment that you can’t tell they’re acting. Yeah. And often if I can watch people acting and I see them acting, it’s it’s a very different thing to just being, you know, it it they are they’re watching themselves, and I found that so hard.

Lizzie Hopley [00:37:22]:
When I was at drama school, I got feedback from people saying you were kind of watching yourself, you’re directing yourself because I’d only done it in my bedroom. I didn’t know. I said, you know, I was always kind of self critical and putting my attention on the person I was speaking to and properly listening to my fellow actor or concentrating on what I was trying to achieve. And Declan Donlon just puts it in a different language, your target method means, you know, or Stanislavski. They all have their terminology. Every acting method is pretty much trying to get you to do the same thing, which is to to be in action rather than a state of emotion. That’s a byproduct. When you’re actually trying to do something, it’s why acting verbs exist.

Lizzie Hopley [00:38:11]:
You know, if people use that, they they use, acting verbs as well. Anytime I’ve tried to teach at a drama school, I pretty much cherry picked all the things that have helped me and try and get the best results in the shortest amount possible for the actors to see, oh, this works in the moment. This isn’t just some theory that I go home and study. I can actually do it now in the moment and get better better results and feel the difference and see the difference in other people. And when you are putting your attention on the other person rather than on yourself, it makes a massive difference, and the audience can tell. And funnily enough, you shorten that gap between yourself and the audience immediately by doing that because they they are not aware of the artifice anymore. They’re just drawn into that moment with you because they they can see something that’s active rather than performed. Mhmm.

Lizzie Hopley [00:39:08]:
Gosh. There’s a lot of terminology in all of that, and I hope it I hope it makes sense. But it it’s I mean, certainly, I’ve enjoyed teaching so much more the more wonderful mentors I’ve had as an actress, enabling. And I just take and take and take the whole time. And I’m constantly if I do and I taught at GSA. I taught at, BARDA, American, drama school in in London. And each time, I’m constantly updating my information based on the very best of my own experience and what’s helped me. Because if you can’t show someone how to get better in a few minutes, you know, because acting is literally that simple.

Lizzie Hopley [00:40:07]:
Mhmm. It’s just there’s a lot that gets in the way, and you have to learn how to strip that away and go, how can I show this person like a magic trick how to do it instantly? And, and it’s it is miraculous because you can sit and only have thirty minutes with a group of students, and you can literally give them something they can take away with them and go, god, that worked. I got better as a result.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:32]:
That’s really what so much of of art and even parts of life is, isn’t it? It’s like stripping out all of the things that get in the way.

Lizzie Hopley [00:40:42]:
Yes, isn’t it? Mostly from our own brain.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:45]:
Yes.

Lizzie Hopley [00:40:47]:
I have trouble sleeping. Do you? Have you got a busy mind? No.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:50]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It never shuts up.

Lizzie Hopley [00:40:52]:
Really? Oh, okay.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:53]:
I wish it had an off switch.

Lizzie Hopley [00:40:55]:
It was funny. When I was reading your website, I was just like, I think I know this woman. I think I know this kind of mind. Yes. Definitely. It was I love the thing you said about silly. You know, that that silly is the the the virtue of being silly in terms of creativity. Because I know that I’ve often been shut down or shut myself down because I felt silly or I was being silly and childish.

Lizzie Hopley [00:41:21]:
And goodness, I mean, children are again, I go back to Declan Donlen, but he just said every child knows how to act. We all know how to act because we all lie as children. We all perform as children. We all know how to get something. And that’s what children are doing. They’re getting something. They need to achieve something so they become little masters of manipulation very early on. And it’s fascinating because it’s a simple transaction.

Lizzie Hopley [00:41:45]:
When you see a toddler at work, you think, bloody hell, I’ve lost that. I’ve lost the ability to do that. I need to refind it. Yes. I’ve also a husband who’s very annoying. He’s very he he doesn’t play games, and he doesn’t come with an agenda, which is wonderful, but he won’t let me do it either, which is really annoying. So it means that I can’t manipulate him. So whenever I do, Nancy, whenever I manage to do it, I’m so proud of myself because it means my powers have got just that bit stronger.

Lizzie Hopley [00:42:21]:
But it also means that I’m so proud of myself, I have to tell him. So I lose the you know, I lose instantly. But it’s like, I just made you do that because that made you feel it. But it is you’re absolutely right. It’s simplification is the key in acting. Acting is a very complex it is an art. It is something you can get better at, definitely. Some people are are are born with that simplicity built into them.

Lizzie Hopley [00:42:51]:
There are some actors I’ve worked with where you just go, god, I wish I had that straight line from a to b that you have, and they seem to not lose it along the way. And, it’s very easy to to clutter your mind with thoughts. And as soon as you do something good as an actor, it feels good. Immediately, your self congratulatory eye goes, oh, that was good. And immediately you’re out of the moment, you know? And the mind is such a clever beast. And I do think it it works in writing as well. You can become very writerly and get lost in clever dialogue or witty this or what witty that. And my best editors, who I’ve always hated because they’re always right, But the best editors will strip away those lines.

Lizzie Hopley [00:43:48]:
They’ll strip away your best material and make you work hard. So annoying.

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:53]:
Yeah. I I have those moments when, you know, I hear that voice in my head going, you know you have to kill your darlings. You know you love that line, and you know it needs to go. You know? Like, you can copy and you can paste it somewhere because you love it, and you know you’ll never look at it again once you do that. But but if it makes you feel better right now, you can copy it and you can paste it somewhere, but it needs not to be in this particular thing. You know? And I hate that voice in my head because I know it’s right. I know it’s right. That’s right.

Lizzie Hopley [00:44:26]:
That’s right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:44:26]:
But I’m like, but this is really good. It’s like, yep. But it doesn’t belong here. Yeah. But yeah. And

Lizzie Hopley [00:44:36]:
there’s so many scripts that I’ve finished and thought, you know, oh my goodness. That’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect. It’s so valuable. I used to post them to myself as a way of, you know, copyrighting them and oh my goodness, could never open them. And then you look back at those things because sometimes there’s an idea in them that you need to reuse or you think, you know, an idea suddenly gets to be zeitgeisty and you think, oh, I had that thing ages ago. And you look at it and you go, oh, well, yeah, that’s all rubbish, but I could use the final, you know, 10 pages. And you think, God, I used to think that was the Bible.

Lizzie Hopley [00:45:07]:
And I’ve just looked at it and just discarded 98% of it as being useless. But you had to do it in order to to still have that gem of the 2% left. Yeah. It’s a it’s a very interesting journey. And as soon as you lose your ego as a writer and as an actor, I remember Judi Dench talking about losing her ego very early on in acting when she realized she accepted her shape and that she was never really gonna have a waistline that she wanted and and learning to just put on a costume and go, yeah. That’s right. I don’t look right, but that’s right, was a very valuable thing because it set her free.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:46]:
And look at what she’s done.

Lizzie Hopley [00:45:49]:
Look at what she’s done. I saw her Cleopatra a million years ago when I was in school, and she it was at the Olivier Stage at the National Theatre in London. I was so far away, And it’s one of my favorite roles in one of my favorite plays, and there was a moment in that which was wordless. You know, it was a reaction to something Anthony said, and she just was really annoyed by it. And she walked the whole length of the stage, and she’s all of five foot two, this little squat woman. And she brought the house down because of her physicality, you know, and she was the absolute physical antithesis to what most people would think of Cleopatra now, certainly in today’s, you know, like, with casting, trying to, you know, be a little bit closer to reality and and history and the truth. But, you know, like, Judi Dench playing Cleopatra was was hilarious because it she transcended any of the rules just by truth. And that was a nice thing to watch.

Lizzie Hopley [00:46:47]:
It was a powerful thing to watch because you didn’t judge her because she didn’t care.

Nancy Norbeck [00:46:52]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:46:54]:
Yeah. And it and it I find this I don’t know about you, but I find as I get older, I let I care less. Oh, absolutely. I tried stand up comedy in Manchester, and I was I wish I’d done it because it I was absolutely in the right place at the right time with so many people who then went on to be massively successful. But I was too nervous, and I couldn’t do it. I was too self conscious, and and it died a death. And I did a year of it. I think it was in 02/2017.

Lizzie Hopley [00:47:21]:
A friend of mine just got tired of me boring her about how I should have been a stellar comic. She said, why don’t you just do some? So I did it for a year and ran a and had a blog. And I found the more I did it, the less nervous I was, which was really interesting. I learned a lot about, you know, how it I was gonna take a lot longer to be a successful stand up comic. But I realized also the older you are, the less you care what people think. That’s a cliche. But when you actually experience it for real, especially as a woman, it’s brilliant because the freedom that you have, even though the whole world sees you as less of a human being and you’re so invisible in so many situations. You’re still fighting that.

Lizzie Hopley [00:48:07]:
OBS. But within yourself, the fact that you care less is is a wonderful thing. And how ironic it is that, you know, not enough of us at 20 have that those same feelings.

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:20]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:48:21]:
Because what could we achieve? What could we achieve? Yeah. I mean, the men that feel like that when they’re 20.

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:31]:
Really? I do sometimes have the the feeling like, oh, wait. I think I have to rein in the caring less part before I land in trouble with someone, like, you know, my family. Maybe I’ll go a little too far. But but yeah. No. Definitely. And, you know, it’s funny when when I was about, I don’t know, 25 or 26 and my mom turned 50, I called her on her birthday and I said, happy birthday. I’m so jealous.

Nancy Norbeck [00:49:01]:
And she said, are you crazy? And I said, no. I don’t think so. And she said, why? And I said, well, because I figured by the time you turn 50, one of two things has happened. And she said, uh-huh. And I said, either you’ve figured it all out or you don’t care that you’ve figured it all out. Yeah. And so when I turned 50 a couple years ago, I called her up and I said, you know what? I was right.

Lizzie Hopley [00:49:30]:
That’s wonderful. It’s like, yeah. I haven’t figured it all

Nancy Norbeck [00:49:34]:
out, but I really don’t care.

Lizzie Hopley [00:49:37]:
That’s fabulous. You know? I was when I I remember when I turned 40, a friend of mine who is a lot older than me said, congratulations. You’ve just earned your first broomstick. But sadly, you won’t you won’t learn to use it properly until you’re 50. And I I thought that was great. But, yeah, there is that that not caring thing is can be empowering

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:00]:
Oh, yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:50:02]:
To a certain degree.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:05]:
Yeah. So before I forget and before we run out of time, I’m really curious as you have this whole writing acting thing at the same time going on. And since you’re writing and and started at least acting for Big Finish, Have you ever acted in something that you’ve written?

Lizzie Hopley [00:50:28]:
Oh, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:28]:
For especially, like, for Big Finish? I should probably know this, but it’s hard to search comprehensively on their site.

Lizzie Hopley [00:50:35]:
And there’s I know. And there’s also so so many. And Uh-huh. I started acting in them first because I was, in a stage play of Abigail’s party, and one of our supporting actors was Conrad Westmass, who plays, Carys in in Big Finish. And there were some well known names in that cast. And, yes, at the stage door every night, there would be people there for Conrad, and we were like, who the hell are you? And he was explained about, who were you then? And he explained about Big Finish, and I was just just, get me in on that. It sounds amazing because, of course, Doctor Who had been not been on our screens. And, it was Gary Russell that started giving me loads of parts.

Lizzie Hopley [00:51:13]:
And, of course, when it came back on telly, then you could get big names during the audios, so that it kind of slightly then reduced. But, I acted in lots and lots of stuff for them, and it was my first writing commission for them was the Dark Shadows. I knew nothing about Dark Shadows, and I thought, right, I’m gonna write a part for myself. And I don’t think I did that until, like, the second or third script. And then I wrote one about the American Civil War, and there was a part in it. And I thought, I I know how this should be played, and I I know how I would do it. And I didn’t want anyone else to have a bash, and fortunately, they let me. And it was called The Carrying Queen, the actual episode, and I played the manifestation of Roar and, quite an astonishing character, and I I loved it.

Lizzie Hopley [00:52:03]:
But I haven’t done that every time. Only every so often, I’ll say, please can I play this because it’s really important that I do? Just because I know that there’s a balance of humor and evil, which I particularly like or, you know, a certain accent or a certain, tone that I’m not sure anyone else would get. Although I’m probably you know, one of the wonderful things about losing your ego as a writer and writing for other people is then when people do justice to your work and then take it and make it better and find things you hadn’t planned, you’re like, wow, that’s a new experience and it’s fabulous. Of course, the opposite happens and I’ve got killers to people like, you know, I might get time to bump off one day when they actually ruin your work. But, every writer has that. But, yeah, I’ve done I’ve done quite a few now, and it’s been great working with, you know, a huge amount of of audio actors, some that have come from this from the doctor who, you know, the screen version to do audio and vice versa. So, yeah, still doing it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. You’re you’ve done so many.

Lizzie Hopley [00:53:12]:
I have. I’ve worked out. I’ve not done as many as John Dorney because I don’t think anyone has. But he did tell me this weekend that I’d he’d written the most for David Tennant. So, and I’m second. He and I are, like we kind of almost vie for who who’s written the most for David Tennant. And I think that was mostly in lockdown because he and I wrote, like, an audio a month during lockdown. It was just bam, bam, bam.

Lizzie Hopley [00:53:37]:
It kept me alive. Kept my brain alive, big finish. So I owe them a huge amount. A huge amount. And it’s it’s been I mean, I it gave me a certain training in structure because I’ve been asked to write audio novels. So it’s trained me in prose. And then, you know, in long form and short form, you know, I’ve learned how to do thirty minutes an hour because I’d only ever done a forty five minute afternoon play. Now I can I know how to structure things? It’s like holding a skeleton in your mind, and each time it gets longer and shorter.

Lizzie Hopley [00:54:12]:
But you know it’s got to have a head, a spine, limbs, a tail, whatever it is. You know that that’s what your structure is. And each time, it just kind of moves around differently. And and because it does involve sci fi and horror, the horror ones are always my favorite because I’m such a horror nut. But because it does go into that fantastical area, you can mess around with structure as well. So there’s room for that playing about that doesn’t always exist in the professional writing world. You don’t always get those opportunities. And even when the job opportunities do exist, you’re sharing them with the writers room that have rules or it’s for a program like doctors, which suddenly gets axed.

Lizzie Hopley [00:54:56]:
And it was a wonderful breeding ground for for writers, experimental breeding ground for writers. So Big Finish is a massive, massive opportunity to just get better, I think, at what you do. If you if they still I mean, they they’ve opened out their, their writing, their writers and their actors now that there’s so much more diversity there, which absolutely had to happen. And so sometimes there’s less work around. But if you’re consistently doing well and the fans are enjoying it, I mean, you look at you know, you go to Galley, and there are people turning up with pictures from box sets that you did years ago. And it’s their favorite story, and you think that matters so much. It’s it’s a wonderful family, I think. Not just in terms of writing and acting, I’ve also got a massive friend group from them.

Lizzie Hopley [00:55:52]:
We’ve got a running group, God help us.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:55]:
Oh, I’m sure. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like like Big Finish is a community as much as anything else.

Lizzie Hopley [00:56:02]:
Yes. And you never get really get to meet them, and unless you go to the conventions. I’ve heard so much about Galley one where I met you in LA, and I I it’s the first time I was invited was last year, and I couldn’t do it because I was working. I thought I’d never get asked again, and I was. So just to meet so many people to whom it means so much and make new contacts has been a gift. And I’m I’m doing Big Finish Day as well this year, and that’s it’s an honor to be asked because there are so many people involved in Big Finish. And when they actually go, Lizzie, would you like to do this? You’re like,

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:36]:
wow.

Lizzie Hopley [00:56:37]:
Because the standard is now so high, and, I still don’t understand why some of our top writers you spoke to Lisa and Alfie recently, Lisa McMullen, John Dorney, I mean, Tim Foley. There were Rob Ballantyne. There are so many wonderful writers. That’s just a few aren’t used more by the Tony version. But, I mean, that’s a whole another conversation, Nancy, and I’ll just get very angry if I have to go. But they mean that that some of the stories you just think, wow. That’s that’s top class storytelling. And, you know, if if if you know about Big Finish box sets, you’ll you’ll come across them.

Lizzie Hopley [00:57:16]:
But the wider audience that needs to hear those stories or, you know, get involved in those stories or see them if they were put on telling are missing out, but there you go.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:27]:
Well, and sometimes, you know, I mean, I’ve listened to so many. So I totally relate to the actors when they say, you know, I don’t remember that particular story because we banged it out in a day. I’m like, yeah. I’ve listened to so many. It’s like, yeah. I know I heard that one, but you’re gonna have to help me remember which one it

Lizzie Hopley [00:57:44]:
was. You know? Of course. But then when they do remember something, isn’t it? Because I I’ve listened to so many and they all I forget ones I’ve written. But if there’s a specific character or specific moment that logs in your brain, it’s there for a reason. And that means that, you know, you’ve created an iconic moment or someone’s created an iconic Oh, for sure. That you’ll character that you’ll never forget. And it’s so personal to everybody. You know, we all have our favorite moments from doctor the Doctor Who world if we’ve ever watched it.

Lizzie Hopley [00:58:12]:
Mine was the Target books.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:14]:
Oh, yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [00:58:15]:
I came to I came to Doctor Who through the Target books, and I definitely had my favorites there.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:20]:
Sitting here next to boxes full of Target books.

Lizzie Hopley [00:58:23]:
Oh, you. How did you get into Doctor Who?

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:26]:
I got into Doctor Who because when I was in ninth grade, so I was just about to turn 14, a girl moved into my school district who had lived in The UK for five years. She was very into Doctor Who. And so she started talking to me about it, and I was like, wait. I think I remember this show. I think I turned this show on once, like, four or five years ago on a summer afternoon. I remember this weird theme tune and this guy with curly hair and a scarf, and there was a giant green disembodied talking brain. And I think I lasted three minutes because it was the freakiest thing I’d ever seen. Wow.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:17]:
Because I was, like, 10. You know?

Lizzie Hopley [00:59:19]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:19]:
And she said, oh, yeah. I know which one that is. And somehow got me to turn it on again to one that was not the brain of Morbius. And I said, oh, okay. This isn’t as freaky now. And I kept watching. And so I was in in my area. You could watch Tom Baker on one channel, and you could watch Peter Davison on another one.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:43]:
So I was watching them side by side and just got completely hooked and stayed completely hooked. She, I don’t think, has watched anything in eons, and here I am going to conventions now. But, but yeah. And so, you know, as I tried to explain this to my nephews, who are nine and 12, a year or two ago, and, of course, they cannot fathom this at all. But, you know, I started buying the Target books because in the mid eighties, that was what you did. You didn’t have VHS, and you didn’t have DVD, and lord knows you didn’t have Netflix or Disney or anything like that. You had the Target books. So it was like, I’m gonna go.

Nancy Norbeck [01:00:28]:
And I I remember buying, like, Galaxy four, which is, I think, a William Hartnell story. Right? And going, I don’t know who any of these characters are, and I’m reading this book anyway because I wanna know the story. And, like, she had to explain to me who the first doctor was and who all of these other characters were and, you know, and and I would just go and buy whichever ones I could find that I didn’t already have, and that’s how you end up with a box full of Target.

Lizzie Hopley [01:00:57]:
3,000 of them.

Nancy Norbeck [01:00:58]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [01:00:59]:
I used to go to the library, Nancy, and I had my library card that would give me six books, for each visit. And I would they had a huge array of Doctor Who books, So I would take six, and then on Sunday, I’d go I’ve been out booked I’d read one a night under the duvet, like, reading this book so I wouldn’t get into trouble because I was still reading and still up. And I would finish each one in a night, and then, oh, yes. There you go.

Nancy Norbeck [01:01:30]:
I just pulled one off of a out of a box here.

Lizzie Hopley [01:01:33]:
And, yes. I would be lost on the seventh day, not knowing what to do, and then I’d, you know, go back to the library and get get my next lot. But I even then, when I came across a brilliant line, I would copy it down in a notebook. And I’ve still got those notebooks where I’ve got a line that Tom Baker says or, you know, John Pertier would say and and that you’d or a moment that moved you and you go, that’s really good. And I had no idea what I was doing because I was the same age as you, 13, 14. Mhmm. And I but for some reason, I wrote it down because I thought, oh, I might I might like to write like that, or I might use that somehow plagiarist as I was. You know, and then just recognizing that something was good

Nancy Norbeck [01:02:18]:
Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [01:02:18]:
Particularly good. It’s funny, you know, and going, oh, I wanna use that. That’s really cool.

Nancy Norbeck [01:02:24]:
Well, and that’s the same age when I roughly the same age when I discovered Douglas Adams for the first time and was like, oh, words can be fun, like, really fun. You know? And started writing my own doctor who stories and torturing my English teacher with them and all of that. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [01:02:44]:
Isn’t it incredible how we start? I mean, I I kind of wonder what my life would have been, and I insist on no regrets. But I’ve diversified a lot, not just acting writing, but by doing different things with the in each genre. And I’ve seen friends of mine who’ve just gone right, I’m gonna do sci fi sci fi sci fi or horror horror horror or Shakespeare Shakespeare Shakespeare, and they’ve just, you know, plotted along and either in those things or you’ve seen how their career trajectory has benefited. I’ve never been able to do that because I’m too interested in too many things, which I don’t think is a better thing necessarily. But I’m I’ve I’ve talked to myself a few times and gone, it’s it’s okay to diversify. It’s not that you’ve done the wrong thing because sometimes people have gone, oh, if you’ve if you’ve just stuck to screenwriting, you might have been here by now. If you’ve just stuck to theater, you might have been there by now. I I I couldn’t do that.

Lizzie Hopley [01:03:48]:
I was too interested in too much. Like, my my English teacher got me into Shakespeare, and I loved you know, we love words. We’ve just said that. I loved the language of Shakespeare. I understood the poetry of it. It had a profound effect on me, and I still do. And I suppose if I had not felt that way, I wouldn’t have perhaps got into RADA because I I understood how to deliver Shakespeare to a standard that got me there, and understand it in lessons. But also, I performed at the Globe.

Lizzie Hopley [01:04:21]:
I performed at the RSC. I’ve done workshops all around the world. I’ve been able to travel with Shakespeare. I’ve gone all around the the The US. I’ve gone to states and taught in prisons in America and and universities with this language. And if I hadn’t had that, where are you know, that that whole area of my life wouldn’t have been opened up. So, you know, I’ve traveled with the acting, traveled less with the writing, but it kept me alive in other situations. And I suppose at the end of the day, you were talking earlier about when you reach 50 going, well, either you figured it out or you don’t care whether you figured it out.

Lizzie Hopley [01:05:02]:
I suppose I’m now looking at my life where it stands now and saying, I’m not holding up an Oscar, but I am blissfully happy with the experience that I’m

Nancy Norbeck [01:05:15]:
Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [01:05:15]:
Have and I’m having. Look at what I do on a daily basis. No two days are the same. And for someone that needs that change, that constant change and that constant challenge, I think it’s, yeah, it’s it’s it’s a good thing that I’m very content with. But just, you know, for your listeners, because this is about creativity, I think don’t beat yourself up if you can’t stay on one thing. You know, if your mind is in a lot of places, let your mind do that. Let the silly rule, you know, be creative. You’ll find that if a story wants you to write it, it will knock on your head until you do, and you’ll find out Yes.

Lizzie Hopley [01:05:55]:
It will. If it’s a short story, you’ll find out if it’s a screenplay. You’ll find out if it’s a novel. It might be all of those things. But don’t shut doors in your own face because there are plenty of people who will do that for you, which is something you said early right early on when we started speaking. There are plenty of people who will say no. Mhmm. And if anyone was listening to this for any kind of advice or guide God help them if they are listening to me.

Lizzie Hopley [01:06:21]:
But, you know, that that’s if they’re wanting to know about someone discovering their creativity and making use of it, it’s something that I’ve never done. And I think my parents encouraged me to do that. I’ve had odd teachers and guided you know, guidance throughout my life who have been encouraging. And I’ve also had a work ethic, but I’ve also done stuff that I enjoy. And I’ve I’ve never I’ve always opened doors for myself. And, you know, there isn’t money always and a career waiting on the other side of the door, but there’s an experience. And, and those things lead to other things. And often when they converge, it’s interesting.

Lizzie Hopley [01:07:04]:
You know, when you get a a commission for a story that links to something you did years ago. Write what you know. Suddenly, when you well, I’m now in my fifties. I’m looking at my childhood and thinking of things I want to use, you know, my experience in dumb jobs that I’ve had. All of those things are useful in some way or other when you’re looking for story content.

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:29]:
Yeah. It’s funny how that works. Yeah. It is. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [01:07:33]:
And look at you now doing this podcast. I mean, it’s like you go going to Galley, get collecting us all.

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:40]:
I sure try. Yeah.

Lizzie Hopley [01:07:43]:
And that’s just one branch, you know, the who people you’ve met. But, no. It’s, you know, it’s exciting.

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:49]:
Yeah. Yeah. It is. You never know where things are gonna lead you.

Lizzie Hopley [01:07:54]:
You’re really gonna Exactly.

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:56]:
So it’s worth exploring them.

Lizzie Hopley [01:07:59]:
Mhmm.

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:59]:
Yeah. And I think that’s a great note to end on.

Lizzie Hopley [01:08:04]:
Alrighty. So yes. Indeed.

Nancy Norbeck [01:08:06]:
Thank you so much for this. I’ve really, really enjoyed this conversation. It’s been wide ranging and really, really fascinating. That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to Lizzie Hopley and to you. Lizzie’s links are in the show notes. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, and it’s super easy and really makes a difference.

Nancy Norbeck [01:08:28]:
If you enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend. Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nancy Norbeck [01:09:09]:
And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.