00:00 It's been quite a while.
00:01 - It has.
00:01 - What made you want to go back to directing?
00:04 - I love directing.
00:05 I always wanted to direct again.
00:06 You know, I didn't want it to be such a long wait
00:08 until I got to do it again.
00:09 But to be here now, at the end of the process,
00:13 it feels amazing.
00:14 Yeah.
00:15 I just love the whole, you know,
00:17 I love every aspect of directing,
00:19 from working with actors, to making the score,
00:21 to the grade.
00:23 I loved it.
00:23 - I noticed in the film that your own mental health issues
00:27 are actually sort of woven into the fabric of the film
00:29 in terms of the story and in terms of your character.
00:32 So when you were putting the story together,
00:35 how much thought did you give to actually
00:38 whether you should include that or not?
00:40 Or was it just a given from day one?
00:42 - Yeah.
00:43 I feel like for me,
00:44 when I was going through my kind of,
00:46 my own mental health struggles,
00:48 I think there was so much written about me at the time
00:50 that I was a bit taken back by that.
00:52 You know, like I'd read it and I'd be like,
00:54 wow, this is quite scary for people to read.
00:56 And I felt like one day I've got to take ownership of that
01:00 and kind of, and I guess talk about it,
01:02 but talk about it in a creative way,
01:05 rather than just doing interviews.
01:07 And like, because I, you know,
01:09 mental health means a lot to me,
01:10 and especially breaking the stigma
01:12 and getting young men to talk about mental health.
01:15 So even though Rico and Kate, sorry, Rico and myself,
01:19 we're completely different as people,
01:21 but yeah, we both have bipolar.
01:23 And I feel like it was just,
01:26 I wanted to normalise the conversation,
01:28 if that made sense.
01:29 - You've taken some time away from your film career
01:31 to be a mental health advocate.
01:33 I wondered how you balance that
01:36 with your acting and your directing.
01:37 - I think this is why I wanted to make this film,
01:39 because I feel like maybe the industry,
01:42 at some point, they were scared of me
01:43 and they read certain things about me.
01:45 And it's like, I can understand why things you've read
01:47 might be quite scary, but it's like,
01:49 I have come a long way and I've learnt a lot.
01:52 I've grown up a lot.
01:53 I know how to deal with my own mental health a lot better.
01:56 So yeah, it was kind of,
02:00 I feel like, yeah, I just had to kind of
02:04 talk about it in that way, really, yeah.
02:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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