Hannah Murray, known for her role as Gilly in "Game of Thrones," is reflecting on her traumatic experience living in a cult. In a new interview promoting her upcoming memoir, "The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness," she detailed how she was drawn into a wellness cult in her late 20s.
"It's easy to think, 'Well, that would never happen to me,' but it's unhelpful to dismiss such thoughts, because you never know," Murray told The Guardian of her intense experience. "I had no idea I would go through any of the things described in the book. I assumed I was safe, well-educated, and from a middle-class family. I thought, 'I'm smart. I make good choices.' Well, I made terrible choices."
She added, "It's important to understand why people do these things, rather than going, 'Oh, they must be idiots.' Or, 'How stupid could you be?'"
Murray explained that she was initially drawn to an "energy healer," referred to as Grace in the article, who helped her process the difficulties of shooting the 2017 film "Detroit" through a $150 "healing" session. The session was positive, leading Murray to a mystical class that led her further into the organization with more members. "I wanted to go further and further, as far as you could go," the actress said.
Eventually, she met the man at the top of the group, referred to as Steve. "He exuded power in a way I had never known anyone to exude it," she said. "Magical power...I knew I was in the presence of a magician."
Murray noted that she felt predisposed to believe in magic because of her love for the Harry Potter series as a child. "The most appealing thing was the idea that you might discover this whole magical world just under the surface of our world. As a kid, I desperately wanted that to be true," she said. "When I was going through psychosis, my brain was a cocktail of those stories, this idea that I had discovered the truth, which was that I had this incredible destiny. I was going to save the world. I could fly."
She added that she felt strange sexual overtones in the organization, though those feelings were never consummated. "My own experience felt highly eroticized, without anything explicitly physical happening. There was just this charge to the energy in the room. I think there often is in these hierarchical spiritual organizations." When she suggested that the organization was some sort of "sex cult" to one of its teachers, they replied, "That’s hilarious. No, [Steve is] just really good at breaking down your ego and so a lot of sexual stuff might come up."
The worst moment came when she was attending a five-day course in a London hotel. She was talking at "a million miles a second," seeing signs and symbols everywhere, and feeling incredibly happy. One night, Murray found herself hallucinating and hearing Steve's voice in her head. She recalled taking refuge in a locked bathroom and experiencing a painful psychotic episode in which she felt like she was "giving birth through my skull." Members of the organization then surrounded the stall with bronze tools, chanting, "Be gone, evil spirit in Hannah."
Someone eventually called for help, and after she was pinned to the floor by a group of men in uniform, she was rushed to Gordon Hospital in Bloomsbury, London, where she was detained for 28 days under the Mental Health Act.
Murray was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has now retired from acting. "I hear so much, 'We need to talk more about mental health,'" she said in the interview. "What they mean is anxiety and depression. We're all happy to talk about that. But there's such a taboo around the idea of people who are sectioned. They are beyond the pale."
"It felt really important to say, 'I went through this,'" she added. "Lots of people go through this. That doesn't mean they are bad or f---ed up forever."
"The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness" is out June 23.
