Actress Ruth Wilson has said she “can’t bear” going to church after becoming disengaged with Catholicism while growing up.
She said she “hated” going after she got older and learnt more about the religion’s teachings.
The actress, who starred in the Northern Lights television series, made the comments during a conversation with Sir Philip Pullman, the author of the novel the programme is based on.
Wilson said: “I am Catholic, but don’t go any more.”
She said she would go to church as a child and “just sit and listen to the stories, and as a young kid you like the stories”.
“But then you start listening to the lectures as you get older and become more conscious and self-conscious of everything they’re lecturing about, you start listening to actually what they’re lecturing about and then I started hating going.”
Wilson said she “can’t really go in a church anymore”, adding: “My dad still goes and when I go with him, for him, I just sit there and I can’t bear it.”
Sir Philip, who is re-releasing an audiobook of Northern Lights, also discussed his experience of catching coronavirus during the interview.
The author said him and his wife were “tested and were found guilty and sentenced to solitary confinement”.
“I got bad rheumatic pains in my hands and all those sort of things, so it affected me physically,” he said.
“Mind you, that might be age, age and decrepitude.
Sir Philip said that while he has been “interested” in the events surrounding the pandemic “that doesn’t mean I want to rush out at once and write a pandemic novel”.
The full interview between Sir Philip and Wilson is featured as bonus content on the audiobook edition of Northern Lights by Sir Philip, re-released on Thursday by Penguin Audio and available from all audiobook retailers.
