Morgana O'Reilly is an actor, writer, and one-woman force of nature whose credits span Billy T James Award-nominated theatre, Mean Mums, Neighbours, an Emmy award-winning covid comedy thriller series called INSiDE, and White Lotus. Her one-woman show ‘Stories About My Body’, a sellout tour exploring what it means to live inside a female body across the seasons of life, has just been made into a film, crowdfunded on kindness and released into New Zealand cinemas in July. Buckle up for a rollicking ride.

In this kōrero, Morgana and Petra have the kind of conversation that goes absolutely everywhere and enjoys every twist and turn. They talk about bodies, the loathing, the wrestling, the slow, imperfect, ongoing journey of coming home to yourself. Morgana shares the internal voice that shows up when disappointment strikes (“too fat, too old, too fat, too old”), as well as the realisation that her body has been bearing the brunt of any professional rejection for years, when really it's never been her body's fault at all.

Morgana offers her insightful framework of whether she’s engaging in conforming or adorning as a woman and an actress. It’s a very useful frame of reference for thinking about makeup, botox, aging, and beauty standards as we move through life. The question Morgana now asks herself whenever she considers changing something about how she looks: is this a celebration, or is it an apology? They talk about dopamine as the hormone of feminism, slow-release versus quick-hit joy, and why exercise stopped being about weight and became about keeping her brain juicy, pink, and moist.

There's a beautiful thread about what life looks like when the White Lotus tide recedes, the blue months, the practical brain that books the GP and the blood test but has yet to action the blood test, and what it means to succeed as an artist in cycles rather than destinations. And there's the game Morgana plays with her daughter, which might be the most quietly useful parenting tool in the entire season: what is life filled with? Pain. Which is why we have to find the joys.

This one is funny, warm, wise, and genuinely fizzy. Don't miss the boob impersonation.

Support the show: greyareas.nz/support

Song credit: Korimako, Performed by Aro, Written by Emily Looker and Charles Louker and published by Songbroker.

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