Episodit
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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 Study to talk about writing a coming-of-age album over three and a half years, what it feels like to watch strangers sing your most intimate songs back to you, and what happened when Hope took her album to her label and they told her it was only 60% there. They also talk about being a big feelers in a stiff-upper-lip culture, Hope's artistic journey and why openness has been the making of her, sending a song to your partner very early in a relationship to say this is how I feel, and what it means to release art into the world and let it stop being yours.
This is a conversation about feeling things deeply — and why the best things in Hope's life have happened because she let herself.
🎥 WATCH the full episode HERE
🎶 Listen to Hope's music
🤳 Follow Hope on insta
📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
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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 came out sounding entirely like Dylan Moran, why comedians freely give each other punchlines after gigs, and why sitting in a café with a notebook is genuinely the pleasure of his life.
This is a conversation about creativity, originality, and why the thing that makes your work truly yours is simply that you wrote it — even if someone gave you the ending.
🎥 WATCH the full episode HERE
🎟️ Buy tickets to Ben's Book Club comedy show at the Fringe this year, or his WIP standup also in Edinburgh this summer
📘 OUT NOW Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work.
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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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 the arguments you have with a partner are often the same argument on repeat, and why the grass on the other side looks greener only because you haven't spent enough time standing in it.
This is a conversation about commitment, and why the smell of basil might be all the answer you need.
🎥 WATCH the full episode HERE
🎟️ Buy tickets to Ben's Book Club comedy show at the Fringe this year, or his WIP standup also in Edinburgh this summer
📘 OUT NOW Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work.
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 actually means to look after yourself.
In this conversation, Ben and Freya talk about what it's like to build a creative identity in public when your work resists easy categorisation, the difference between performing vulnerability on stage and exposing it on the page, and why comedy is one of the best coping mechanisms humans have — as long as you're honest about what it's actually doing.
They get into the real economics of Edinburgh Fringe, why Ben didn't have a smartphone until 2020, and the strange experience of performing something deeply personal in front of strangers and having them come up afterwards and say: me too.
This is a warm, funny and quietly moving conversation about what happens when the most honest story you can tell also turns out to be the funniest one.
🎥 WATCH the full episode on YouTube
🎟️ Buy tickets to Ben's Book Club comedy show at the Fringe this year, or his WIP standup also in Edinburgh this summer
📘 And remember you can now pre-order Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work.
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 vulnerable to the experiences she writes about. She offers practical, hard-won advice for anyone attempting their own memoir: set strict time limits, move it off you physically, and don't rush — because no one else can tell your story the way you can. Plus, a poet friend's reframe of writing exhaustion that stopped both Hannah and Freya in their tracks.
This is a conversation about what it costs to go back — and why the only cure for creative jet lag is getting outside.
🎥 WATCH the full episode here
📘 Buy Hannah Murray's The Make Believe and remember you can now pre-order Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work.
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 mind knew it was pretend, her body didn't. Freya and Hannah then discuss the physical and emotional cost of playing dark material repeatedly, what it means to access your own trauma on screen, and what Hannah's experience on Detroit set in motion.
🎥 WATCH the full episode here
📘 Buy Hannah Murray's The Make Believe
📕 Pre-order Freya's debut novel: A Real Piece of Work
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 partner, as a spiritual seeker — and what happens when that external validation disappears. Hannah opens up about her involvement in a wellness organisation that led to a psychiatric breakdown, the seductive appeal of magical thinking, and why writing her memoir felt like the most authentic creative act of her life.
This is a conversation about the stories we tell ourselves, the gap between imagination and reality, and what it really means to make yourself up.
🎥 WATCH the full episode here: https://youtu.be/QODMs-gDC6g
📘 Buy Hannah Murray's The Make Believe and remember you can now pre-order Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work.
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 Freya’s novel: A Real Piece of Work.
👤 Follow @emmagannonuk on socials and Substack
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya’s newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 compromise his freedom. The passage that follows is Emma's meditation on what that means for a creative life: keep your overheads low, consume less, create more.
Freya and Emma then discuss the passage and where it sits in their own creative lives.
WATCH the full episode HERE
Buy Emma Gannon’s Creative Compass, A Year of Nothing and more. And remember you can now pre-order Freya’s novel: A Real Piece of Work.
👤 Follow @emmagannonuk on socials and Substack
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya’s newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 forgot to live and how stepping back from the "shiny" version of success led to her most honest work yet. Emma also talks about her new book Creative Compass—a cosy, permission-giving guide on how to return to your creative practice—and why she wanted it to feel less like a manual and more like a reminder that you're a writer and you can do this. This is a conversation about romanticising your creative life, protecting your time and energy and why the writing is always the best bit.
WATCH the full episode here: https://youtu.be/m9hv0nQNGEo
Buy Emma Gannon’s Creative Compass, A Year of Nothing and more. And remember you can now pre-order Freya’s novel: A Real Piece of Work.
👤 Follow @emmagannonuk on socials and Substack
💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya’s newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 lines between fact and fiction? These conversations explore how seeing yourself as a ‘character’ in your own story can unearth unexpected courage, compassion and curiosity. And maybe even a bit more self-reflection.
This podcast isn’t just for writers, it’s for anyone trying to make sense of their own story.
Series 1 guests include Emma Gannon, Hope Tala, Hannah Murray, Will Harris, Sharlene Teo, Sarvat Hasin, Ben Pope, Lucas Oakeley and more
📲 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions
📚 Join Freya’s newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts
🎙️And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/character-study/id1896655831
#CharacterStudy #LiteraryPodcast #bookpodcast
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