Finding the LIGHT

Kimberley Crossman’s crazily busy international career looks like every actor’s dream. But she opens up to Emma Clifton about the flipside – depression, her therapy journey and facing her fears to launch a new mental health podcast.

- Emma Clifton

Look over to the right, and look thoughtful,” instructs our photographer. “Should I look like I’m thinking about my depression?” Kimberley Crossman deadpans, then adopts a dramatically furrowed brow. It’s a moment that beautifully sums up the dual nature of the exuberant 29-yearold and the complexities of mental health. Kim, sunny and radiant in a peach-colored dress, couldn’t appear more removed from the damp, grey cloud that can be the reality of living with depression. And yet, like so many New Zealanders, keeping her thoughts on track is a daily process. It’s this dichotomy that Kim is aiming to address in her new podcast, Pretty Depressed, where she talks to well-known people about their mental health.

The need to look after her own mental health became a pressing reality for Kim halfway through last year. Like so many people (and, in particular, so many women), Kim has always seen being busy as a matter of pride. For the past few years, she has been based in Los Angeles, working both there and back in New Zealand as an actor – she took 17 trips home in 2019.

But the wheels were starting to fall off. “I’d been trying for nine months to get my headspace right,” she says of her decision to see an Auckland-based psychologist last year. “I wasn’t very well physically or mentally and I knew that because my thoughts had changed, my behavior had changed… I thought I’d go and get some help. And then I was diagnosed with being burnt out and also being pretty severely depressed.”

“I didn’t quite know how to receive that information, because I’m not a sad person. It just highlighted my lack of knowledge about what depression is.”