Hannah Murray Opens Up About Wellness Cult Involvement and Hospitalization for Psychotic Episode

Hannah Murray, the 36-year-old actress best known for her roles as Gilly in Game of Thrones and Cassie Ainsworth in Skins, has stepped back from acting in recent years. Now, she's sharing the personal journey that kept her away from the spotlight.

In her debut memoir titled "The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness," Murray recounts her involvement with a wellness cult over the past decade. The experience began on the set of the film Detroit in 2017, when she struck up a friendship that would significantly alter the course of her life. A $150 healing session with the acquaintance served as her entry point into the organization, leading her to enroll in classes and deepen her participation.

"I wanted to go further and further, as far as you could go," Murray explained to The Guardian. As she progressed within the group's ranks, she discovered the operation followed a pyramid structure. "The pyramid was structured to exploit everyone who tried to climb it. Except for one person, one man, who sat at the very top," she wrote.

The leader, whom she only encountered after investing in expensive courses, made a profound impression. Murray described him as someone who "exuded power in a way I had never known anyone to exude it. Magical power … I knew I was in the presence of a magician."

Murray traced her susceptibility to the group's appeal back to her childhood fascination with the Harry Potter universe. "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."

During her time with the organization, Murray experienced what she interpreted as sexual energy within the group dynamic. When she brought these concerns to instructors, they dismissed her worries, attributing them to the leader's methods. "Steve, the leader, is just really good at breaking down your ego and so a lot of sexual stuff might come up," she was told.

Participation in an intensive five-day course held at a London hotel proved to be the turning point. The experience triggered a severe psychotic episode, resulting in her emergency hospitalization. She was held for 28 days under the Mental Health Act and subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Reflecting on her involvement, Murray emphasized the importance of understanding how people become entangled in such situations rather than dismissing them outright. "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 told The Guardian. "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."

She continued, "It's important to understand why people do these things, rather than going, 'Oh, they must be idiots.' Or, 'How stupid could you be?'"