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Woman's Hour

Andrea Riseborough, Egg Freezing, Women in Qatar

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.22.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The actor Andrea Riseborough has taken on roles ranging from Margaret Thatcher to Stalin’s daughter. But now she’s playing someone quite different: Mrs Wormwood in the new Matilda the Musical film, which will be released in cinemas on Friday 25th November. The film is an adaptation of Tim Minchin’s hit West End musical of the same name, and stars Emma Thompson as Mrs Trunchbull and Stephen Graham as Mr Wormwood. Andrea joins Emma Barnett to discuss what it’s like capturing the camp, comedy, and darkness of one of Roald Dahl’s most famous and reviled characters. As Jennifer Aniston speaks publicly for the first time about her fertility struggles and says she wishes someone had told her to “Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour”, Emma talks to one woman who’s put her future on ice, and a lecturer in Women’s Health from UCL who’s warning against women viewing egg freezing as a guaranteed insurance policy. In the run up to the men’s football World Cup 2022 being held in Qatar, it was the England women's footballers who were the most outspoken about staging the tournament in a country which outlaws being gay and where women’s rights are severely curtailed. On Woman’s Hour yesterday we asked if there was any point in further protests as fans now clamour to enjoy the game – today we ask Rothna Begum, Senior Women’s Rights Researcher at Human Rights Watch, how the tournament is affecting women in Qatar. Tampax has been causing quite a stir on social media after a Tweet they posted went viral. Putting its own spin on the popular 'You are in their DMs' memes about men approaching women flirtatiously on social media, the tampon company explicitly referenced how its products are used by women in a tweet on Monday, writing, 'You're in their DMs. We're in them. We are not the same'. The post has racked up more than 360,000 likes and 73,600 retweets proving that there were plenty of fans, but critics accused the brand of going too far and calling people to #BoycottTampax. Emma speaks to Chella Quint, the founder of Period Positive, a menstruation education advisor, comic and author of the books 'Be Period Positive' and 'Own Your Period'.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

0:04.4

Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.

0:09.9

A treat for you today, the actor Andrea Reisbrough will be joining me shortly, talking ahead

0:14.8

of the new Matilda film coming out on Friday, which she plays Matilda's mum Mrs. Wormwood.

0:20.7

It's quite the performance and my goodness, her outfits in it are just remarkable.

0:25.3

So is Matilda played magnificently by 13-year-old Alicia Weir? And that's what I wanted to ask

0:31.0

you about today. If you relate to Matilda, presuming you know the story, an academically gifted

0:36.9

girl who loves studying, she does well at school and she's finally allowed to get in there,

0:42.1

and it's not appreciated, shall we say, within the family and also perhaps at times at the

0:47.2

school that she ends up being at. Has it been a good thing for you or a bad thing in your

0:51.7

life if you were perhaps one of those girls who absolutely loved learning and excelled

0:55.7

at it? I'm just casting my mind back. Do you remember when girly SWOT was weaponised

1:00.3

as a phrase for a while when it emerged Boris Johnson at called David Cameron, that

1:06.2

as an insults and then Baroness Hale, the first woman to be appointed to the UK Supreme

1:10.6

Court, said that she loved being a girly SWOT, defended the moniker as something to be

1:16.0

proud of. It got us thinking about the idea of girls and then who obviously grow into

1:22.2

women, enjoying their studies, doing well, excelling and whether that's been a good thing

1:26.9

in your life or not. If you can relate to that, if you have a bit of Matilda that you find

1:31.8

relatable, get in touch this morning, it'd be lovely to hear from you and how it's affected

1:36.0

you for the rest of your life would also be interesting to hear. The number you need,

1:39.5

84844, text charge of your standard message rate on social media or at BBC Women's Hour,

1:44.5

or send a WhatsApp message or voice note on 03704444, do you check all the terms and

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