Marc Fennell finds that an unexpected diagnosis has helped him understand aspects of his life and reconsider the past.
Hosting a dinner party to discuss health issues is the latest television project for the prolific Marc Fennell.
Tell me what you really think? revolves around health-related topics of conversation.
Fennell hosts five guests to list and contrast their experiences, around plates of charcuterie – SBS is the foodie network, after all.
Fennell reveals he has always wanted his own chat show. Of sorts.
“I wanted to take the ‘TV’ out of the chat show, if that makes sense,” he said.
“One of the things I liked about this was that when I’m actually talking to people, I’m much more interested in them talking to each other and trying to find the nuances of their life experience than I am in doing a ton of traffic stops.
“I’m much more interested in reaction photos and how they react to each other.
“Obviously, other shows have navigated the experiences of group life. But one of the things I was most intrigued by was, ‘How do people change over the course of the hour, and how do people respond to each other’s life experiences?’ I love the energy of a dinner party. I love that you have something to do with your hands.
“There is nowhere to hide in chat programs and interview programs.”
The first episode ADHD raises the question: does everyone have ADHD now?
Guests include Noongar woman and justice reform advocate Rocket Bretherton, clinical psychologist Daniel Jones, advertising executive and ADHD Australia board member Andrew Thompson, true crime podcaster Emily Webb, Australia only S2 winner Krzysztof Wojtkowski.
In separately filmed segments, Fennell even receives his own diagnosis from psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Morgan. But what he didn’t count on was being diagnosed with ADHD himself.
Fennell explains that he was filming multiple projects at once, including Your secret DNAs in Bathurst, leaving little time for reflection on the diagnosis until recently.
‘I drive forward, try to give meaning to my life and say: ‘Oh yes, maybe that event has meaning if you compare it to ADHD.’ I always end up shooting two things at the same time, but it doesn’t give you much time to process it. We filmed the actual dinner party stuff at the beginning of this year while I was shooting Brain”, he recalls.
“I’d never thought about it before. Strangely enough, leading up to this, there were a few other people who just looked at me and said, ‘Well, obviously you are.’ I think a lot of it comes from the fact that in the 1990s, when I was a kid, there was a certain image of what ADHD – or ADD – looked like that was very different from what I was. I think the understanding of what it is as a health condition has definitely evolved.
“The psych diagnosed me largely based on my masking: the things I’ve done to self-manage a diagnosis that I’ve never had before. I’m very focused on my work, as you can probably tell from the results and things like that. But I’m also a little scattered in other ways.”
Further episodes will discuss Fat, Old and Menopause with guests including TikTok creator Mark Azzopardi, drag artist Stan Munro, women’s health advocate Shelly Horton and author Kathy Lette.
“One of the reasons why I find health really interesting is that it’s very profound. It’s all about you, your experience, your perspectives, what happened to you versus what happened to (someone else). But at the same time, it touches on really big things,” he continues.
“It especially stood out to me when we did the Fat episode, because it’s not just about you and how you think about your body. It’s also about how the world thinks about you and your body. How the world looks at you. What I see is that these conversations become a prism through which you look at yourself differently, but also how you look at everyone on the street differently. ADHD is often talked about, among other things, as an invisible health condition.”
So how does he now evaluate his own diagnosis?
“It’s definitely helped understand some things, but I’m also very careful about not wanting to be one of those people who walk around and their diagnosis becomes their whole personality. I didn’t choose to be on medication or anything like that. He kind of made the observation that ‘it’s definitely up to you.'”
“The short answer is, it’s made me think about the past, my interactions with people and why I have certain reactions to people internally. I’ve tried to bring that together.”
Tell me what you really think? will be shown on SBS on Tuesday at 8:30 PM.
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