‘Skins’ actor Hannah Murray details psychotic episode that ended in hospitalisation
Former Skins and Game of Thrones actor Hannah Murray has described a psychotic episode that ended in her hospitalisation after she joined a wellness cult.
In 2024, upon the announcement of her forthcoming memoir, The Make-Believe, the star revealed that she had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act in 2017.
In a new interview with the Guardian, she shared more details about the book, slated for a May 28th release, which explores her experience in an unnamed wellness cult.
In the new discussion, she acknowledged that her story might not be relatable to some: “It’s easy to go, ‘Well, that would never happen to me’, but we do ourselves a disservice when we start saying that, because you don’t know.”
She added, “I had no idea I was going to go through any of the things in the book. I would’ve assumed I couldn’t, that I was safe. I was well educated, from a middle-class family; everything should have been fine. I thought, ‘I’m smart. I make good choices.’ Well, I made terrible choices.”
In the interview, she explained that she was enticed by an “energy healer” named Grace. Grace first lent her services in 2017, when she helped Murray process her experience shooting Detroit with a $150 “healing session”.
Inspired by the success of the session, she eventually met the man at the top, referred to as Steve. The leader was a formidable presence. Murray recalled that he “exuded power in a way I had never known anyone to exude it.”
She recalled her love of Harry Potter and a strong desire to believe magic was real. Eventually, during 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.”
Things got worse for the actor, who hallucinated signs and symbols everywhere at a five-day course in a London hotel. She began hearing Steve’s voice in her head and hallucinating diagrams on people’s necks that revealed how they could be healed.
Candidly, she recalled thinking, “Steve is my father, and I do want to fuck Steve.”
In the depths of her illness, she hid in a locked bathroom; members of the cult surrounded the stall with bronze tools, chanting “Be gone, evil spirit in Hannah,” while Murray recalls that she felt she was “giving birth through my skull”.
After someone eventually called for help, she was rushed to the hospital in Bloomsbury, London, and was subsequently detained for 28 days. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has retired from acting.
“There’s such a taboo around the idea of people who are sectioned. They are beyond the pale,” Murray added, wanting to raise awareness for the condition.
She concluded, “It felt really important to say, ‘I went through this. Lots of people go through this. That doesn’t mean they are bad or fucked up forever.'”
Before her inclusion in Game of Thrones, Murray was best known for her role as the troubled Cassie Ainsworth in Channel 4 teen drama Skins. At only 17 years old, she soon found herself portraying tough topics like suicide, anorexia, substance abuse, and teen pregnancy.
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