Shownotes
An actor and activist who was diagnosed with HIV at 16, kept the secret for 15 years, turned it into a one-man show that earned 53 five-star reviews, and was cast in It's a Sin while still performing at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Summary
Nathaniel Hall grew up in Gatley, a suburb of Stockport. He was a straight-A student, head boy, and quietly realising he was gay in a school where Section 28 was still in force and the only mention of homosexuality in his entire education was a video of a man dying from AIDS in a PSHE lesson taught by his maths teacher. He wanted to wear a cream tuxedo to the prom. The hire shop didn't have one ready, so he sat on a bench in a park playing Snake on his phone. A man with bleach tips in his hair came and sat next to him.
That summer fling - possibly grooming, a question he still works through in therapy - ended when Nathaniel's parents found out. On holiday in Menorca, in a 45-degree heatwave, he fell violently ill. It wasn't the water. It was seroconversion. Two weeks before his 17th birthday, he was taken down a long corridor at Stepping Hill Hospital to a room with two chairs and a box of tissues. The nurse told him his result before she'd even sat down.
For 15 years, Nathaniel told almost nobody. He went to theatre school, graduated, worked as an actor, fell into a toxic relationship fuelled by drugs and alcohol, and watched himself lose all sense of who he was. The turning point came at a party when he looked in the mirror and couldn't recognise the person staring back - a slow-motion car crash he could see happening but couldn't stop. He started showing up for himself. He told a filmmaker he'd been working with, who said: let's make it. The result was First Time, a one-man show that premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 to 53 five-star reviews, two awards, and standing ovations every night. Russell T Davies saw it and cast him in It's a Sin. He got the phone call about the part while holding a five-star review from The Stage.
But performing his own trauma had a shadow side - what he calls a shame hangover, the feeling after a show of having opened his soul a bit too much. His second show, Toxic, sat in the messiness of life rather than offering a neat ending. Audiences found it harder. Life isn't linear. His third show, A Whole, is about finding joy in anal sex after sexual trauma, and will premiere in Manchester in 2027.
Key Moments
- [01:18] The kid from Stockport - head boy, straight As, Section 28, and the only queer representation at school: a man dying from AIDS on a TV in maths
- [03:47] The wallpaper of death - growing up absorbing the association between gay visibility and AIDS as so normalised it didn't even register as abnormal
- [06:31] The bench, the prom, and the cream tuxedo - waiting for a hire suit that hadn't arrived, playing Snake, and a man with bleach tips who sat down next to him
- [10:42] The question of grooming - something that comes up often in therapy, and the tension between wanting something and being too young for it
- [11:17] Menorca, 45 degrees, seroconversion - falling violently ill on holiday, presenting to a GP with his mother, and being told it was a waterborne virus
- [13:09] Two weeks before 17 - the long corridor at Stepping Hill, the box of tissues, and a nurse who delivered the result before she'd sat down
- [16:34] Shame entering the body - how discovering sexual pleasure and acquiring a virus at the same moment tainted everything that followed
- [17:35] Fifteen years of need-to-know - a long relationship that ended, the return to dating, and the fear of criminalisation that hung over every disclosure
- [18:30] The toxic relationship - drugs, alcohol, physical violence, and enabling each other on a downward spiral
- [22:30] The party and the mirror - the slow-motion car crash, losing all sense of self, and the decision to start giving a shit about himself
- [25:20] First Time - telling a filmmaker, getting a commission, 53 five-star reviews at Edinburgh, and the phone call about It's a Sin on the same day as a Stage review
- [26:57] The shame hangover - performing your own trauma night after night, the feeling of having opened too much, and falling back into drinking
- [30:01] It's a Sin and the limits of visibility - why visibility is not the same as acceptance, and the German footballer attacked in his home after a public proposal
- [33:50] Not another fucking AIDS play - why Nathaniel's second show sat in the mess of living with HIV, and why audiences prefer a tidy ending
- [37:11] The great-uncle - a man who never married, lived in a council house, loved cricket, and left a surprising amount of money. Nathaniel is writing a novel that re-imagines his life as a gay man who lived in secret
Dedication
Nathaniel remembers his great-uncle, a quietly spoken man who never married, loved cricket, and liked a glass of wine. Nathaniel is writing a novel that imagines the life he might have lived - and through him, all the men before decriminalisation who carried their shame in silence.
About Nathaniel Hall
Nathaniel Hall is an actor, writer, and HIV activist from Stockport. He was diagnosed with HIV at 16 in 2003. His one-man show First Time received 53 five-star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and led to his casting in It's a Sin. His second show, Toxic, explored the messier realities of living with HIV. His third, A Whole, about finding joy in anal sex after trauma, premieres in Manchester in 2027. He is currently writing his first novel.
Resources
- Nathaniel Hall - official site
- George House Trust - Manchester HIV support
- Terrence Higgins Trust
- LGBT Foundation - Manchester
- National AIDS Trust
If you have been affected by the themes in this episode, support is available at tht.org.uk.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcripts
Dan Hall
Welcome to 'HIV: The Morning After'. I'm Dan Hall. I'm a documentary producer and director. I've spent my entire adult life watching ignorance and prejudice play out around HIV. And frankly, I'm tired of it. And I'm sure many of you are too.
This podcast is an attempt to do something about that. By doing what I do best, interviewing people and letting them tell their own stories.
I can make these episodes, but I can't make people listen to them or find them on their algorithms. That beats down to you. Please rate, review and share 'HIV: The Morning After'.
Right then, let's get started.
::Dan Hall
nd activist, in the summer of: ::Dan Hall
ed at the Edinburgh Fringe in: ::Dan Hall
And suddenly millions knew his story. This is a conversation about shame, secrecy and survival, and about what happens when you finally say the beast out loud. Nathaniel Jay Hall, welcome to 'HIV: The Morning After'.
::Nathaniel Hall
Hi, August. You know, that introduction just gave me goosebumps cause I was like, that's my story. And it's just a while since someone has sort of reflected it back to me. So yeah, that was quite powerful.
::Dan Hall
And it's incredible. It's it's your story. Look what you've done.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah. It's very humbling. Very, very humbling. Like sometimes, you know, in the work that we do, we just behave in a way, you know, I'm just like, I still see myself as this kid from Stockport, you know, trying to do something, you know, good for the people.
::Dan Hall
So tell me about that kid from Stockport, what was home like?
::Nathaniel Hall
And when I grew up. Yeah, I grew up in, south Manchester, a nice suburb of Stockport called Gatley. I had a nice, wonderful, safe childhood. You know, I'm one of, four siblings. And, like you mentioned, I was a straight-A student. I am, I was actually head boy at my high school. On the flip side of that, I was, realising probably around the age of 13, 14 that I was gay.
::Nathaniel Hall
And this is back, at the start of the millennium, which was a very different world. Section 28 was still in place when I was at school. You know, homophobic bullying wasn't dealt with. The word gay was used, you know, negatively. And I was bullied. And, you know, sometimes physically, you know, experience physical violence at school as well for being perceived to be gay.
::Nathaniel Hall
You know, I was into drama and music and all the things that, you know, I perceived as, associated with being gay or feminine.
::Dan Hall
And you don't have to be shouted at to feel like shit. It's enough just to be invisible and and and just not see yourself anywhere.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I remember and I talk about this quite a lot when I'm out and about doing my activism. A very powerful memory of when I was in about year ten at school, and we had a, a Pshe lesson, about and it was the only mention ever in my whole education about being gay.
::Nathaniel Hall
And it was my maths teacher because, you know, she so it was just like a random teacher. And it was a video they put on, and it was a gay man who was dying from Aids. Was out a day, you know, about already. Only by a few years. But, you know, a medication was around and the picture was changed dramatically.
::Nathaniel Hall
But I was the first representation that I had in front of me. If I, you know, the person that I knew was I was like, you know, it was he was saying, you know, it was like Coach Carr, we mean girls, but not funny. You know, it's like you will get Aids and you will die.
::Dan Hall
One of the things that shocks me is how normalised this all is for us. I, you know, I had a similar thing. I mean, I'm a generation older than you, but I had that similar thing with the visibility of queer visibility being weakened, man, Kaposi's sarcoma, all of these things. And when I look back on it, I think cos one of the most alarming things about that is that it just seemed normal to me.
::Dan Hall
Yeah, but there was almost no reaction from me because it was just. It was the wallpaper.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah, yeah. And you can't be what you don't see. Right. So as young, impressionable teenagers were just trying to work out our place in the world and were very much modelling that, on what we can see around us. And I think it's really important, and it's one of the reasons why I moved very much to be in my later life to be vocal and open and not only, you know, look at the challenging things about queer life, but also celebrate, you know, queer joy, and what it means to be to be, you know, part of this amazing LGBTQ+ community that is crazy and wild and wonderful and full of joy and love
::Nathaniel Hall
and laughter as well.
::Dan Hall
thaniel, we're going to go to: ::Nathaniel Hall
You know, I guess you think you're an adult, don't you? At that age, you just like you've done your GCSEs. It's like you suddenly got this freedom, you know, your parents are letting you sort of like lengthening the leash in a way. You know, you can go out a little bit, stay out a little bit later, you can go into town on your own and all these kind of things.
::Dan Hall
Totally. I remember at that age, my mum let me go to Paris to go and see Madonna's blonde ambition. So like, there could be nothing more grown up in my whole life than doing that.
::Nathaniel Hall
So nothing dire either. That's fantastic.
::Dan Hall
I like those early signs.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah, yeah, the signs were always there. No, I just it was it was full of the joys of youth, really. I was like, I was going to. I'd got into the college I wanted to go to, you know, I was waiting on those GCSE results, which, you know, is always great. And there was the prom coming up.
::Nathaniel Hall
So it just was like, I was and, I always say this, I was very fortunate, other than the bullying that I experienced at school, you know, I have a really strong, stable foundation in my family. And my mum, you know, was aware probably that I would get bullied and, you know, had conversations. But we didn't talk about being gay.
::Nathaniel Hall
She had conversations about, you know, how to deal with bullies and how to, you know, and how to rise above that and be, you know, comfortable in who you are and you know, and not like that impacts you. So I was very lucky in some ways. I had a and I think that's the one thing that stopped me from completely spiralling.
::Nathaniel Hall
It was actually the day of the prom. I was head boy and the me and the deputy head boy been having a thing up in the attic of my mom's house. So he came out on a Friday, would put Big Brother on, but we wouldn't be watching much big brother, you know. And now I was sort of in this fantasy world, desperate, you know, I wanted to go to the prom with him, right?
::Nathaniel Hall
That's how it should have been. And I should have been able to. But it just wasn't. That just wasn't the world we were in. So I, so I think my way of making that same sort of statement at the prom, because I've always been a bit of a disruptor and a bit of a show off, although I am quite introverted as well.
::Nathaniel Hall
But I, I thought, I know I'm going to wear cream to everyone's black, I'm going to wear a cream tuxedo. You know, it's sort of probably my last kind of hurrah leaving school. Sort of two fingers up to the bullies. Like, I don't care what you think of me, but when I got to the highest shop in Stockport, did not write it.
::Nathaniel Hall
Not he was hiring it because he didn't have them, so did not arrive from the place where he got his suits. So he was like, it's going to be another two hours. And so I went and sat in this park and on this bench.
::Dan Hall
And what happened?
::Nathaniel Hall
So, you know, I was sat on this bench minding my own business. I think I was playing snake on my phone. Amazing games pass the time because we didn't have smartphones back then. And I just was aware of this guy sat on another bench a bit further down. I'll just eat it like it was in a boots people ordeal.
::Nathaniel Hall
You know, and he was just very obviously queer. I was very obviously gay, you know, ripped into his eye tanned. He had sort of bleached bleach tips in his hair and very sort of noughties gay lock about AB. So obviously that piqued my interest. And he was sort of looking over and then he got up and he came over and he sat next to me and we just started chatting.
::Nathaniel Hall
And it just felt really nice and really normal. Obviously, I was inside. It was like I was like a swan, graceful on the surface, but inside everything, my feet were like flapping away under the surface. My heart was racing. I said I needed to go, he said, do you want to swap numbers? And so we did.
::Nathaniel Hall
And that was really. That's how it started.
::Nathaniel Hall
There's a there's a big question over it whether I was groomed or not. And, you know, that something comes up in therapy a lot for me. And, you know, but I, I, I wanted I was ready for that. I was, you know, I'd already started exploring, you know, myself sexually and my sexuality. So I was ready for that.
::Nathaniel Hall
And so that opportunity presented itself to me.
::Dan Hall
Now, though, Nathaniel, when did you start to realise something was wrong?
::Nathaniel Hall
Well, my parents found out, so that was fun. That I've been seeing this older guy, my mum had a chat with me. Told me he was too old. So I called it. I called it off after a, you know, so basically a sum of a few weeks, I've sort of summer romance.
::Nathaniel Hall
And then I was on holiday with my parents in Menorca, and it was, in the middle of a heatwave. So it was like 45, 48 degrees in the day. It was just really unbearably hot. And I got really sick, and I was, you know, vomiting and diarrhoea sometimes at the same time. But obviously at that point you go, I'm on holiday.
::Nathaniel Hall
I've a it's something dodgy. Is it the water I forgot, you know, sunstroke. There's all these things that you know, you know, instantly going, oh, it's HIV. So, I when we came home, my mum took me to the emergency doctors. And again, you know, at that point I was still 16, 16 year old boy presenting with his mother.
::Nathaniel Hall
Just been on holiday. It's a water borne virus, you know, you ride it out if it gets worse, come back. But I was sick for. For quite a while. Like, more than what you'd think for waterborne virus or something like that. And I lost about stone in weight because I just couldn't eat. Looking back, that was my Sarah conversion.
::Nathaniel Hall
That was my body going, this new virus here that we need to fight. Like, I look at pictures of myself from that, and I don't look like a healthy 16 year old. Like, I look gone and pale and, like, a bit. Yeah. Under the weight. But I started college, and then I was getting started to get other symptoms.
::Nathaniel Hall
I started to get symptoms in the Dell studies department and, queen seepage, which no 16 year old will. No one. But at 16, you certainly don't want for me private parts. And it was at that point I went, yeah, I need to go to the sexual health clinic and, get myself checked out, which I got myself booked info.
::Dan Hall
And it comes back positive two weeks before your 17th birthday.
::Nathaniel Hall
It does? Yes. In very dramatic turn of events. Until I got the I got the bus up from college to the hospital, to outpatients Department Bay, stepping Hill. It's a little old sort of collection of prefab buildings that were put in in like the 80s that never got removed, you know, and a lot of hospitals have and I,
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah. Last point of the day, I was taken down a very long corridor, with all the appointment, the sort of rooms I decide I kept sort of go, oh, I've not been this far down this corridor. I've never come all the way down to this end and into a room with two seats and a table with a box of tissues on it.
::Nathaniel Hall
So, you know, I sort of my heart sank and the nurse just set it straight away. Just not even she actually hadn't even sat down. She just said, we like. So tell people straight away, I'm going to tell you your results positive. And that was that was the moment it all it all kind of came crumbling in question down, I guess.
::Dan Hall
A number of the guests I've had on have spoken about this point in this aftermath of, of just the sense of the world being exactly the same and yet incredibly different at the same time, and that they're almost suddenly it's almost like they're suddenly existing behind a plate glass window where they can sort of see the world, but are no longer part of it.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah, yeah, I think all of a sudden and there's a writer called Susan and sort of intellectual thinker called Susan Sontag, and she wrote a lot about cancer and the psychological impacts and the social impacts of cancer. And then she wrote another version of the same book or added on to it about HIV. And she talks very much and other great things because of it.
::Nathaniel Hall
Said, at some point we all were in the were in the world of the living, and at some point something will happen to us medically and we will we will enter the world of the unwell. And that at that point on mortality is presented to us and making a new show. And I taught and then part of my thinking around that is, it's looking at how do you find joy in, queer sex, in anal sex, and particularly after the, after sexual trauma?
::Nathaniel Hall
And, you know, for me, I found pleasure, right? I discovered sexual pleasure, from anal sex. And then from the first time I found I had that, an experience that this thing entered inside me. It's not just the virus. All of that shame and all of that history and all of that stigma also entered me at that point.
::Nathaniel Hall
And it was. And it tainted everything that I thought I was. I was discovering about what should have been, you know, a positive experience of exploring sexuality.
::Dan Hall
And so how did you feel the diagnosis changed your relationship with yourself?
::Nathaniel Hall
I think I went, as a lot of people do, into practical mode and just went, okay, I mean, obviously was devastated. I cried and cried and cried. And then I just sort of went, okay, right, let's get on with it. On the surface, I convinced myself it hadn't changed anything. But actually what it was doing, unbeknown to me and actually, you know, the wisdom of time and age as you look back and you go, oh, yeah, it was having this profound, profound impact on my sense of self-worth, which then, you know, rears its ugly head throughout the rest of my story, through my life in terms of the way the situations I put myself
::Nathaniel Hall
in, the way I treated my body, the way I allowed other people to treat me, I went into a relationship that last a is, he left me for someone else. Which was dramatic.
::Nathaniel Hall
So in my, in my sort of like, yeah, about 24. I then went back into the world of gay dating and then you, you suddenly realise when you've been in a monogamous relationship for so long. Oh, yeah, I've got this thing. How do I tell other people, you know, you've got to navigate all of that shame. And this is prerequisite to this pre any you know prep was just starting to come on the scene.
::Nathaniel Hall
So very much the sense was I have to tell people if I don't I could be criminalised if you know if I transmit it. So I went through all of that. But then I went into, about three years after that, I went into another relationship and that, that relationship was an extremely problematic, very toxic. And we found a shared love of drugs and alcohol and, and a lot of risk taking sexual behaviour.
::Nathaniel Hall
And we enabled each other on a, I guess, a spot, a downward spiral.
::Dan Hall
Because I think when we exist in spaces or when we exist in a life that feels full of secrets and trauma, then it's no wonder that we used alcohol and comes to some does escape who we are.
::Nathaniel Hall
Absolutely. And also they're really fun. So we have to acknowledge that, you know, it doesn't always take it taking a drug or drinking alcohol and partying or having, you know, or going to or having, you know, sex whilst high is not in of itself a bad or negative thing. And it can be done, you know, in some people, you know, so they can very much enjoy it in a healthy way as part of their life.
::Nathaniel Hall
And that's totally fine. I don't want to stigmatise that in any way. But then I think when you're using drugs and alcohol, you know, I say, you know, they're all fun things if you're having fun and when you're actually not using to have fun is to use to mask or to avoid or to escape, that's then potentially where the issues start to creep in.
::Dan Hall
I totally agree with you, and I 100% agree with you. And I think it's really interesting when we have conversations around addiction or around toxic use of substances, we talk about the substances rather than what are we using them for? Yeah, but I've done it with sex. I've done it with running. I've signed up and run marathons because it avoids me having to manage the grief I feel from my father dying.
::Dan Hall
Yeah, it's. And, you know, anything that you do that is about a distraction technique is problematic.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah.
::Dan Hall
And I totally agree with you. I think that, if things are being done for the right reason, then that's great. But it, you know, people will not have that kind of nuanced conversation as most old.
::Nathaniel Hall
I think we're having a bit of a reckoning with our community. On that. And, you know, cancer and the issues relating to it and addiction, we know addiction rates are much higher in our community. And, you know, for two reasons. You know, my story and your story and our stories, demonstrate. And I think that within our community, I think we're getting, you know, we've always been good at looking out, looking after ourselves.
::Nathaniel Hall
Right. And we've all because no one's going to save us. So we've always been good. We led the way with HIV healthcare in the UK, in America and Europe. You know, we demanded better. You know, the idea of patient centred care is because people with HIV stop and said, I demand to know what's going on with my care.
::Nathaniel Hall
I demand to be able to make choices. We revolutionised healthcare, to to help ourselves. You know, we got prep on the NHS before at battle and we won it despite, you know, them thrown out of court twice the NHS. So we're very good at looking out for ourselves. And I think we're having a reckoning now around chem, sex and going how do we address this and how do we support one another around issues of addiction?
::Nathaniel Hall
But I think the bigger battle is to get the wider public to understand that it's not just hedonism, it's not just like, you know, gay men aren't or queer people aren't just irresponsible, you know, going out partying and taking drugs and doing all these things. There's there's stuff behind that. And we have to we have to think of that holistically.
::Dan Hall
So then, Nathaniel, it's: ::Dan Hall
I'm not sure what type of party it is, but I can guess. And you look in the mirror and you kind of go, I don't know who I am anymore.
::Nathaniel Hall
Oh, like how who's a car quits in slow motion if you're not in the film and you've got the person, the camera is on the person's face, the driver, you know, and the car is spinning around in slow motion. And all the kind of everything in the car is flying slowly around, and the person in the middle, the camera is on.
::Nathaniel Hall
You can see the horror on their face. They know what's happening and it's happening in slow motion. It's not happening. It's not a crash that happened to be really. I'm there today, aware of it, but that they have no control. And that's exactly how it felt in the week from that partying, the arguments, the physical violence, you know, the chaos that ensued, just was impacting me so badly.
::Nathaniel Hall
I was like, I don't even know who I am anymore. I've lost all sense of who I was. And the and the aims and, you know, and and the dreams I had in life, you know, to to, you know, go on and achieve great things. So that was the turning point.
::Dan Hall
So the screen fades to black and suddenly all the music goes away and we fade up from black a new morning. What are the things that you start to do that so that you are moving in a different direction, that things have changed?
::Nathaniel Hall
I started showing up for myself and I started giving a shit about myself, basically. And that was hard. And it wasn't like, it's not an overnight thing that looks like, learning and understanding the dynamics I had with my ex-partner and my not only my role in that, but also like demanding better, from that or and if that, if that was achievable, then stepping away he, he was orbiting around me and his own issues.
::Nathaniel Hall
I just sort of like a black hole. And he was on a path of self annihilation. And I was being I was being pulled constantly back into it, and I sort of had to keep pulling myself out of that orbit, you know, making better decisions and reconnecting with friends. And then, you know, and the big thing was, I'm going to tell this story because I know I knew deep down it was the shame of keeping that secret for so long that had impacted me negatively.
::Nathaniel Hall
So then I went on this journey. I told, a, a, a filmmaker I've been working with. I was about to produce his show and he's like, let's do it, let's make it. And he he started helping me to to write the story, and I applied for some money. And then I got a commission, which is the big thing.
::Nathaniel Hall
commission in to put it on in: ::Dan Hall
That must have been exhausting, though, for you doing your story night after night after night at night. I mean, I was exhausted anyway, but but to go from holding a secret for so long to then making it so public every single day, you know, or maybe it wasn't exhausting, was it incredibly relieving? Was it was it amazing to finally get it out there, having kept everything quiet for so long?
::Nathaniel Hall
I, I think in the with with rose tinted spectacles, looking back, it's very easy for me to go, oh, it's brilliant, you know, it's wonderful, you know. And in some regards it was the fringe is amazing and it's really hard to cut above the noise at the fringe. You know, there's so much good work there that just doesn't get the audiences it deserves.
::Nathaniel Hall
And I was very lucky and fortunate that my story resonated. You know, it just sort of something about the story and, you know, and the way it was told seemed to resonate. And we were getting amazing reviews and awards. And so it was wonderful to be there and be in. And I was actually at the fringe. I just got a five star review in the stage, and then I got a phone call from my agent to say, you've got the part and it's the said.
::Nathaniel Hall
So I was kind of riding cloud nine whilst there, but also, I have to acknowledge that there was a shadow side to that. Telling your story and delving into trauma is has it has an impact on your body. So and that's something I've learned because I've continued, I've made other work about my own story and, you know, and, and what I need to be able to do that, but, it does your.
::Nathaniel Hall
I have what you call a shame. I call it a shame hangover after a performance where you feel a little bit dirty or like you've shared too much or you've like, yeah, you've opened, you've made your soul a little bit too much, too much, and you need some time. And that would manifest sometimes that would manifest in falling back into, you know, drinking or drugs.
::Nathaniel Hall
You know, whilst I was still putting out this show and talking this more positive story, that was still a reality.
::Dan Hall
And I think that's perfectly acceptable for us to have two flavours of ourselves coexisting, because real life isn't like a nice scripted drama where characters gently move forward every single scene. You know, I think life is much more like a kind of rusty carousel up in a suburban park. Yeah. That's like, yeah, you keep ending up round it.
::Dan Hall
It's fucking hell.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah. Yeah. Mine's definitely got the creepy music sometimes. The scary music. Yeah. For sure. No, you're totally right. And that is one of the challenges. One of the issues is, is that your story continues. So who you are continues and it changes. And so you often you've you've written a story. And I say this to other artists who come to me and they go, I want to do what you've done.
::Nathaniel Hall
And I go, make sure you want to be telling the story in 2 or 3 years time, or even longer, because you need to be prepared for that, because, you know, you don't just make a show in a week and it go on like a show has to build and it has to build an audience and it has to progress, you know, to be successful.
::Nathaniel Hall
So you have to commit to that.
::Nathaniel Hall
I often thought a little bit like, first time doesn't sell a lie because everything's completely true, but it ends with this really hopeful place, this real hopeful, like lift out of the end of the show, which which gives you a standing ovation. Right. And, you know, so it's a kind of rags to riches story in a way which audiences love.
::Nathaniel Hall
And that's why my second show, toxic, which was much more in the messiness of life that was received, in a different way by audiences, and not necessarily, like, I think queer people very much appreciated the complexity of it. But yeah, audiences do like a nice linear story. And, see, life is just is not linear.
::Dan Hall
Is fucking mess. It's a mess.
::Nathaniel Hall
That's the like the show that is the live in in in first time that I repeat over and over and over. What a fucking massive.
::Nathaniel Hall
Show. Oh.
::Dan Hall
So then, Nathaniel, you got your part in it's a Sin. Which for people listening abroad was a real breakthrough TV series here in the UK that really reintroduced the conversations around, communities. The some of the first communities living with HIV, and surprised me that so many people within my own queer community was saying, oh, this is a this is an interesting learning curve.
::Dan Hall
And and I was just thinking, fuck me. This is really traumatic. And it took me quite a while to watch all the episodes because it was just really triggering and sort of felt too raw to watch back to back. But what I think was fascinating is that it did just start to introduce queer conversations and a very real kind of queer life.
::Dan Hall
And one of the things that frustrates me, and I have to say, I feel this way about heated rivalry. I think we need to be very careful as queer communities to not confuse visibility with acceptance, because I feared as time is going on, we are more and more visible for heterosexual audiences. And I don't see besides sucking dick, I don't really see my life or what or what queer life is like.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah, yeah, well, it's funny you should mention he's a driver because, there was a last of the last week or the week before a German football player. Maybe there is a public proposal to his partner on pitch. And then he's been at his address, got leaked, and he's been attacked in his home, and I was it was reading this the thing online, and someone had commented, yeah, there's like heated rivalries, not real life.
::Nathaniel Hall
And I thought, yeah, so true. Like, and that is the balance, isn't it, about projecting a world that we want to see to give younger queer people, you know, a hopeful future, but also not denying the reality. And we just know that our rights and, and our freedoms are under threat, as a community and, the way trans people, have and are being treated, you know, as the canary in the coal mine for the rest of us.
::Nathaniel Hall
So, so I think it's really it's really tricky. But going back to it's the thing that, you know, that was you said it was difficult to watch. It was difficult for Russell to write. And he was often criticised for not putting more about HIV in, it Queer as Folk, which was obviously the first of big, seminal TV series about queer gay lives.
::Nathaniel Hall
And and he very clearly said, I didn't want the first. That probably would be documented in history as the first show of this kind on telly for our lives to be all about, illness and death.
::Dan Hall
And I think he was absolutely spot on, actually. But Queer as Folk, I'd not even thought about that. But he was absolutely right. You know, I myself, I think I'm probably around the same age as him, but I something I've said in an earlier episode is I remember becoming aware of queer life and queer death as being exactly the same thing, and what he did with crews, with Queer as Folk going away felt like an antidote to that.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah, yeah.
::Dan Hall
Queer as Folk was filled with fucking and and and gossip. And that's what our lives are, and that's what our lives should be.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah. And I very much, felt the same, you know, when I reflected on why I actually was driven to write first time and tell my story because I went to university. You know, I'd been diagnosed for a few years, and I, I was a, you know, student theatre. And I was looking around at what stories were being told on film and, you know, around HIV, you know, Angels in America rants.
::Nathaniel Hall
Then sort of later on, 120 BPM and all these incredible stories, a Dallas Buyers Club, amazing stories. But they were all about illness and death and dying and, you know, and that stories that absolutely should have been told. But I just didn't see a story of living with HIV because it didn't exist.
::Nathaniel Hall
But I remember I was writing my second show, toxic, and one of the potential scrap lines I had for it was not another fucking Aids play.
::Dan Hall
But I genuinely hope that you continue to make content, because I do think you have an ability to ask difficult questions, and also you don't shy away from them. You know your documentary about bug chasing, you know, this is something which so few people know about.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah. Well, I was approached by, channel four. They said they were going they wanted to make this documentary. And I had a real dilemma about it, because I know a little bit about that subculture. I've been asked by myself. I find it very difficult to get my head around and understand, you know, and why you would want how this could be pathologies or how something that I carry could be, you know, sexualised.
::Nathaniel Hall
But in a way, they were like, it's going to be made anyway, this documentary. And so I sort of when I think like I, I think I can make it in, it's in a really compassionate way because I was worried that in the wrong hands it could be very and it was still channel four. It is still a bit of a shock dark, you know, in a way, and that's fine.
::Nathaniel Hall
But I wanted to try and explore that and understand, and again, it sort of all stems back. It all sort of comes back to shame, but it also comes back to the need for community and for want to be wanted and, you know, needed. And and that was it was a difficult documentary to make. And I got some criticism from the wider HIV community for making it.
::Nathaniel Hall
But I don't think if we see harm taking place in our community, I don't think we should look the other way. And that's a difficult conversation. I mean, it's a similar one around cam sex, you know, how do we how do we navigate that without further shaming people? But also have a realistic and adult conversation about like, what is where are we?
::Nathaniel Hall
Where are we still perpetuating harm to one another, and how do we address that?
::Dan Hall
And I think also maybe this is less relevant now with Prep, but certainly and I spoke about this in series two that I think a lot of the book chasing culture comes from a sense of inevitability and a sense of just wanting to take control of one's own situation.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah. And that was definitely there's a there's another documentary, this sort of on YouTube from, I think, the early noughties, and that very much feels like that's sort of, the people speaking there talk about it in, in, in those terms. So I'm going to get this anyway. I'm going to do it on my terms.
::Dan Hall
Another Nathaniel, this is the point in the show where we take a pause of remembrance. And I ask you if there's anybody that you would like to share who isn't with us anymore, who you would like myself in the audience, just to take a moment and remember.
::Nathaniel Hall
It's sort of a person that exists, but also slightly fictional to stick with me. So I am currently writing or attempting to write my first novel. And it's inspired by true events. And my great uncle, died, about five years ago now. And he was the last of that. My son, my grandmother died, like.
::Nathaniel Hall
And his sister died my great aunt. So he was the last of that generation to to pass away. And he never married. And he lived in a council house and within. So, like on a council estate, his whole life quest small like simple little life. He loved cricket stories, softly spoken. He was very witty and he liked a glass of wine.
::Nathaniel Hall
And I always sort of suspected that he potentially might have been, gay. But I never really asked until pride. And, when he died, there was a significant amount of money in his bank account. Like. Like for someone like you. Just that letter. Simple. Like like a very significant amount. And so we were sort of, sort of through this, like cat amongst the pigeons in my family, that it was all kind of like, oh, what's this?
::Nathaniel Hall
How who's inheriting this? He didn't leave a well. And I just started thinking and it sparked this whole story of like, what was his story? Because I didn't really know that. Well, I saw him at Christmas and, you know, at how many weddings and parties and stuff. So in a way, I'd like to remember him because the story I'm writing re-imagines his life.
::Nathaniel Hall
And his life as a gay man lived in secret, whether that's the truth of his life or not, I don't know. But I know that there were so many men before our time who lived, you know, before decriminalisation, and carried that shame and the trauma of that and also then the trauma of HIV. So in a way it's to remember him.
::Nathaniel Hall
But all all those men who couldn't live openly.
::Dan Hall
So then, Nathaniel, before we wrap up this episode, what have you got coming down the line?
::Nathaniel Hall
Yeah. Wow. It's a year of change for me. So the company that I set up, is coming to a close stay, and we produced, my two shows for that company and another show prior to that. But, with, the people running it, we've all got different kind of futures ahead of us. So that's, that's, you know, we're sort of celebrating what we've achieved.
::Nathaniel Hall
Well, moving on to pastures new. So, this year I'm in a bit of a transition. I'm trying to write more. I've just mentioned the novel that I'm trying to write. We'll see where that goes. And, I am in the process of developing my third show. I sort of a trilogy. I think I told Lorraine Kelly I'll make a trilogy when I went on that show.
::Nathaniel Hall
So I feel like I, you know, Lorraine would be very upset if I didn't make the third show. So I'm making my third show, which is called a whole, and it is, a, salacious dive, downstairs to explore society's hangups about anal sex and asks the question, how do you find. Yeah, how do you find true pride?
::Nathaniel Hall
to premiere in, Manchester in: ::Dan Hall
And I remember that gMSA in the 90s used to run US workshops.
::Nathaniel Hall
Yes. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah.
::Dan Hall
And I love it for that.
::Nathaniel Hall
There was so much in it. So there was so much kind of, creative, sexual health, campaigning back in the 90s and noughties. I remember as I sort of came into my sexuality in the LGBT Foundation in Manchester, just had some really read like out there posters, you know, about fisting and all sorts of stuff, really kind of, pushing the boundaries and the pushed the envelope.
::Dan Hall
So then, Nathaniel, if you could send a postcard to the world, what would it saying? Why?
::Nathaniel Hall
Oh, that is a big question, isn't it? I think it just at the minute it's a everybody calm down, you know, and everybody plays. Feels like the world's got quite shouty. And, Yeah, I feel like, we all just need to take a minute to remind ourselves that, like, we're all on this crazy journey together.
::Nathaniel Hall
But if I was to make it specifically about HIV, a friend of mine, an amazing activist called Ellie, he. It's just an amazing thing. She's speaking about, being a young woman living with HIV. And talking about that. She did a post yesterday. And it was about removing the shame of saying HIV publicly, and we all do it, but I can I live with I've lived with HIV for more years than I haven't, you know, is 20 or 23, four years now.
::Nathaniel Hall
So, and even then, you know, I can feel myself stopping or getting anxious if I just tell someone I'm HIV positive in passing conversation. So. So Ali was said in this post, we're going to we should commit to saying it louder and broader. And so so that's my the thing is to say HIV with your whole chest like and not hesitate.
::Nathaniel Hall
So that's that's also on my post card as well. But everyone more widely, everyone just calm down a little bit. And bit more, a bit more love and kindness and compassion for one another.
::Dan Hall
Nathaniel J. Hall, thank you so much for guesting on HIV the morning After. It's been great to have you and for your openness and your honesty. So thanks ever so much.
::Nathaniel Hall
Thank you so much for having me.
::Dan Hall
If you were moved or informed by what you heard today, please help spread the word. Subscribe to HIV the morning after and leave a rating and a review. It makes a huge difference in helping others to find it. Your support helps to amplify these experiences. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email me at [email protected].
And remember, if you encounter HIV stigma and a bar, call it out. If you encounter it at work, call it out. If you encounter it online, call it out. Because if you don't, you're part of the problem.
The theme tune is by Paul Leonidou at Unstoppablemonsters.com, and many thanks to Moray Laing for his continued support. And thank you for listening. Join me next time for another important conversation on HIV the morning after I've been Dan Hall.
