Priya Parmar is the author of the book Exit the Actress, which is one of my new favorite books and one of the best historical fictions that I've ever read. I was very nervous about contacting her for an interview, but I was thrilled when she agreed to do this for my blog. Thank you so much Priya!
Priya Parmar's Website: http://www.priyaparmar.com/
Exit the Actress is available on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere.
How did you get started writing?
It is funny but I do not really know. I was always a voracious reader and I think that started it off. And then, for years, I had to do huge amounts of critical writing for my undergraduate and postgraduate work. That sheer habit of constructing a line was invaluable.
Eventually, I left academics and began to work in theatre. Writing for theatre was amazing. It was write it one night and then try it out the next day, life without a net sort of stuff. It was a wonderful apprenticeship. In terms of creative writing on my own, it is terrible to say, but this is the first thing I have done. Should I say that? Probably not…
Who are your favorite authors?
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, E.M. Forster, Jane Austen, Jean Rhys, Emily Bronte, Leo Tolstoy, Henry James and more recently, Philippa Gregory, Sharon Kay penman, Sandra Gulland, Michael Cunningham, Michael Chabon, Tracy Chevalier, Sebastian Faulks, Jude Morgan… so many!
Describe yourself in one word.
Disorganized
Why did you decide to write historical fiction?
There was an inevitability there that I do not really understand. I never considered anything else. I look at novelists who do not have to spend years meticulously researching a period and think, why did I do this to myself? But I love the nexus where history and story meet.
What was it about Ellen and her story that you were drawn to?
Again, there was a weird inevitability. I had researched her for my doctorate and she just stayed with me; a happy but somewhat belligerent ghost that insisted I write about her.
Ellen herself came across as a bright and spunky young lady, how much of that was actually her and how much was your interpretation?
It is interesting. There is the Eleanor Gwyn of history and the Nell Gwyn of popular legend. I tried to go back to the history and resist the personality lent her by centuries of popular culture. That is why I chose to call her Ellen. She only signed her name to very few documents but she used the initials “E.G.” As well, Aphra Behn dedicated her play to her dear friend “Ellen Guin.”
She must have been more than a cheeky, fun, illiterate girl to hold the interest of the litarati company she kept. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that she came from an educated, well off family before her father died on the wrong side of the Civil War. Her grandfather was a canon at Christchurch and her father was a captain in the Royal Army. Her mother, who also likely came from a moneyed family, probably fell into prostitution after the death of her husband and her addiction to alcohol.
As well, the loose morals that are always attributed to Nell seem misplaced. She was assiduously faithful to the man she was with—and in her life, there were only three! She must have refused dozens of men, even though they could have offered her huge wealth. That seems rather principled to me.
The diary format was an interesting format, and I felt like it really helped the reader to get inside of Ellen's head. Why did you feel that a diary format would be better than 3rd person?
Everyone warned me off the diary format and told me a first person narrative was a classic first novelist’s mistake. I was terrified and tried to nudge it into third person but she just refused. The story wouldn’t move.
I think after working for years with primary documents during my academic life, I was just more comfortable writing this way.
How long did it take you to write Exit the Actress? Did you have to do a lot of research?
It took about five years. I had done a huge amount of research during my doctorate but I still had so much to do. It was a different animal to write about her creatively as opposed to critically. I had to make friends with her, get to know her and her family and friends in a whole new way.
If there was one key idea or message that you wanted the reader to take away from Exit the Actress, what would it be?
I hope everyone will come away with a different message or lasting impression and that is exactly how I would like it to be. For myself, I came away understanding exactly how difficult it is to make the choices you have to make in order to live the life you want to live. Ellen had to decide exactly what she would and would not accept to be with the man she loved. She was very precise in setting her watermark.
What are you working on now?
I have moved to the years just before and during the First World War. It is a different more modern, leafy London. It is so interesting to be writing about the last moments in the history of the world when we could not conceive of a world war.
Do you have any advice for new or aspiring authors?
Write the thing you need to write. Whatever it is. However contradictory to popular opinion or common sense. It will be the right thing.
