find, don't call me,

I'll call you.

And then she realized that she had no idea how to exist in the wild and the guy that she'd come with wasn't actually that fun and she went home.

But we all have a story like this about this city, but truly I'm so delighted to be here with you guys.

And it's, this is one of the last two stops of the tour.

I wasn't even gonna come and then I remembered how fun and vibrant this San Francisco vibe is.

And I thought, I better get my butt on that, get my butt on that airplane.

actually, go ahead and answer the

But I

was having a moment where I thought that I could sort of reverse engineer back my way into this adult role via the clothes.

And then there was a year where I was really inside for most of the time.

And I really wild out on the pajama front.

Like I bought like 1950s silk pajamas from China.

And I bought like weird old men's straight pajamas, which I wore with like a leopard dress coat.

And it was like the feeling of getting dressed totally for my own pleasure because I was getting dressed to, I don't know, talk on the phone and watch Bachelor in Paradise.

voices? What have you done?

I wonder how you dealt with that at the time, how you navigated that on top of managing the responsibility of a successful show and running a team and trying to be creative in the moment.

Well, I think...

Firstly, I'm going to hook onto two things you said.

One is I think talking about the fact that this was the rise of blogging.

I mean, I've said, I remember like joining Twitter the year that girl started.

I remember like posting my first Instagram photo.

This was sort of the wild, wild West.

How would you describe that?

I wonder how you dealt with that at the time, how you navigated that on top of managing the responsibility of a successful show and running a team and trying to be creative in the moment.

Well, I think firstly I'm gonna hook onto two things you said.

One is I think talking about the fact that this was the rise of vlogging.

I mean, I've said I remember s- like joining Twitter the year that Girls started.

I remember s- like posting my first Instagram photo.

This was sort of the Wild Wild West, and now we're sort of...

We've become used to, you know, I don't know, the Grammys happen and then everybody gets on with like 57 opinions about Sabrina Carpenter's shorts, and we are used to that cycle, but it was new, and, um, people were trying to figure out what it was and what it meant.

[laughs]

So now that you've done a bunch of these, what have you learned about how you like to talk about it? How do you take care of yourself when you talk about it? These are such good questions.

You've done this before.

I was like, it's a strange thing to write a book about what it costs you to go on press tours and talk about yourself and then go on a press tour and talk about it.

Like maybe the most truthful thing would have been to like, just, you know, drop it like a surprise album and then go, I'll be in my bedroom for six months.

You guys figure it out.

But at the same time, I really love, this is going to sound, I really love books and, um, but I really love books and I really love, I feel really lucky that I got to write it and really like, and there's, and there's issues in it.

Like, you know, the trying to talk about what it, how we, um, kind of, um, perceive and consume female celebrity, how chronic illness, mental health stuff.

What was Jenna like when she was 23?

[laughs]

...

this is gonna be involve a little bit of history, which is that we have a congenital terror.

We have a congenital...

It's something where we're, where sleep and death get equated early in childhood.

My father had it.

My mother had it.

[upbeat music]

It's hard, if people, younger people won't remember, but this was such a phenomenon, and you were thrust in the spotlight.

You know, young, when I see young people in the public eye now, there's much of, more of a s- people know the term media training.

They understand that what the Internet is and what it's capable of.

There's, doesn't mean that they don't get up to trouble, but there's a different kind of consciousness if you've grown up with it, and this was sort of the Wild West.

So, so these years were very dense with creative, um, education, and I had amazing, I mean, Judd Apatow was my television mentor, and he took me through this process, and I worked with an incredible cast and an incredible crew.

But I also was extreme feeling, I am by nature, um, which sometimes surpri- I'm very introverted.

I think if we're defining introvert by sort of being around people either gives you energy-

Mm.

It tastes almost as good as raccoon.

[laughs] Whoo! [cheering]

I'm gonna kill them, all of them.

M.I.A., streaming May 7th only on Peacock.

[upbeat music]

question for people who

don't know, and it's in the book, EDS is Ehler-Danlos Syndrome.

It's a group of inherited connective tissue and soft tissue disorders.

And, you know, I think one of the big lessons for me of chronic illness is, you know, we're all headed in the same direction of our, unless Elon Musk is able to pull through and and, you know, give us those cyborg casings.

We're all heading in the same direction.

And I think we have a real Western terror of our bodies failing or changing.

I mean, the lengths that we go to.

Actually,

Let's join the discussion now, live at the Hackney Empire.

Thank you guys so much.

This is very lovely and moving.

And I hear the cheers of an audience.

I haven't fucked anyone in it.

And that's what that is.

That's people who can be happy for you in a pure way.

you.

[laughs]

Which is [laughs], which is that you have these things happen to you that are beyond your wildest dreams, where you're getting to live your passion, and you never wanna complain about that.

Because I know so many artists who haven't had that chance, and so, and, but at the same time, you are isolated, and that makes it harder to let people in when something challenging is happening.

People may not take it as seriously because they, because if you have the kind of resources and seemingly the attention for it to be fixed.

And, and now that I look back, you know, my mother said this thing at one point, and I think it's in the book, where I was like, "I'm so glad you're my mother," and she said, "It could've been no other way." And that's really stayed with me, and there have been many challenging moments, but there have also been so many things that have happened where it could've been no other way.

Yeah.

So I spent time.

I looked at photos.

If people, younger people won't remember, but this was such a phenomenon, and you were thrust in the spotlight.

You know, young, when I see young people in the public eye now, there's much of, more of us, people know the term media training.

They understand that what the internet is and what it's capable of.

There's, doesn't mean that they don't get up to trouble, but there's a different kind of consciousness if you've grown up with it, and this was sort of the Wild West.

So, so these years were very dense with creative, um, education, and I had amazing...

I mean, Judd Apatow was my television mentor, and he took me through this process, and I worked with an incredible cast and an incredible crew.

But I also was extreme feeling...

Mm-hmm.

Oh, God

... you are what you say on the cup.

Like, you are a signifier of reclamation, the thoughtfulness with which you have engaged.

And what I'm so impressed by is you've not just engaged your own story or kind of w- reworked that, but also worked really hard to engage with other women who have been through things that may not be identical, but, and also work with them to do the challenging and investigative kind of procedure that is involved with underst- And also, I think a huge amount of why we are revisiting, whether it's how we treated teenage girls, the pa- the paparazzi treated teenage girls in the early 2000s-

Mm-hmm.

And that part of me, I had so much fun just being with myself and my own mind.

And, you know, if I'm lucky enough to be a parent, that is what, the thing I would wanna hold onto most in my children.

I just think it's, it's why I love having friends with kids, is just to be with that imagination.

I...

firstly, thank you so much for reading it.

And it means so much coming from you too.

Thank you.

And when I was, that was the title that came to me as I began writing.

And what I was thinking about was the idea that being famous and being sick are two conditions that we're sort of taught not to talk about.

There are two different kinds of isolation that other people don't necessarily want to hear you complain about for different reasons.

When did you realize that this is more than just taking it and feeling better, that it was an issue, that it was a problem?

[laughs] Customs hack.

But what was amazing was I had been, I knew I had endometriosis, and I'd been writing about my health, which involved more symptoms.

And also, there were times I had to pause life for my health.

And this woman had been paying attention, and she said, "Even the way that you run, the way that your skin flushes, it all makes sense." And sent me to this doctor at Johns Hopkins, and now there's more awareness about, there's both more awareness about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, other sort of autoimmune illness, the intersection between all these things, and endometriosis.

There's increasing sort of people in the medical field to understand.

But it was also a huge moment for me, 'cause I was like, you know, a Jewish girl who was raised to be like, "The doctor's always right."

Oh.

And it's about this family that potentially, it's unclear whether they committed sort of like mass acts of pedophilia or whether there was a sort of, um, like satanic panic moment that happened.

And now we're sort of, we've become used to-

to-You know, I don't know, the Grammys happen, and then everybody gets on with, like, 57 opinions about Sabrina Carpenter's shorts.

And we are used to that cycle, but it was new, and, um, people were trying to figure out what it was and what it meant.

And we happened to be in New York at a moment when New York media was really the center of that, and we were sort of adjacent to the people who were writing, but just far enough away that they could be pretty hypercritical, but just close enough that it could sort of feel a little like eating your own.

And it was...

Looking back, it's a kind of a fascinating cultural moment.

It's a fascinating study in, in so much about creativity, human behavior, you know, how we adapt to new technologies.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Another person is making the decisions.

And he said, "Lena, it's like once you have that experience as a kid, it's like, like the weak wolf that gets picked off the pack.

Like, someone who is looking for that sees you." And it wasn't shaming, it wasn't...

It was so beautifully put, which is like these experiences build up in you.

You develop more distance from your body.

People who wanna cross boundaries are able to identify that you are someone who might not know how to deflect that and...

And- and I wanna know h- how fame helped deepen that relationship, and then how fame also may have destabilized that relationship.

How did your sense of your body affect your own sense of self?

It's a really...

Interesting.

I mean, I have a whole sort of theory of the case about illness that would take a long time.

I was never a healthy kid.

And often that was perceived as, you know, she just wants to lie in her bed.

Like, I really was always fighting against, like, laziness label.

So what do you now understand about sort of processing who you are in kind of a public fashion?

Hmm.

It doesn't mean that you'll always nail it.

But the other thing that I've learned is that I don't have to respond to everything, which means I say less things, which means that happens less.

So that's a great lesson of my first half of my 30s.

And about how the show could have done better in terms of diversity and inclusion.

Yes.

Why would I ever fight that? And I was so glad that the show was a generator for dialogue around that.

And you will have to navigate this for the rest of your life.