The Make-Believe

Brought to you by Penguin.

'There is one kernel of reality left – he sat me down in a chair and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that magic was real.'

This is the story of the blurred line between what is real, and what is an illusion; what we must accept and what we wish to be true; between solid earth beneath your feet and a world where anything is possible if you only commit. It is about the lure of those that tell us they can save us, and the deceptive structure of organisations that promise us ‘wellness’. It’s about the acting world, but also about the way all of us act, hiding our vulnerabilities from everyone except the people trained to prey on them.

Hannah Murray is an acclaimed actress and star of seminal films and tv shows including Skins and Game of Thrones. She has spent her career playing women on the shimmering edge, cracking open her own psychological foundations and body to express another’s life. In 2016 she played a teenage girl in Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, a character violently stripped naked in one scene. Her body brutally exposed before a crowd of people she told herself ‘it’s not real, it’s not real’, and yet it was really happening, really her body. Vulnerable, she visited an ‘energy healer’ who performed a transcendental healing that felt like magic, offering a route to a stable mind. Very quickly Hannah had subscribed to a rigorous practice involving ritual, superstition, and financial outlay. She became enthralled to a charmismatic leader who assured her that the only truth was what he told her. As the dogma of the organisation sunk deeper, she lost all sense of reality, and at the end of a week-long intensive course had a full psychotic break. She was sectioned, and spent a terrifying period hospitalised, consistently reassured by the cult leader that she was not unwell, that she must disregard the doctors. Once released, and still in the grip of the cult, she slowly came back to herself and broke free.

© Hannah Murray 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026