Talk Therapy
The New Yorker|November 21, 2022
Sarah Polley, a former child star, has made a searingly frank film about sexual assault.
By Rebecca Mead
Talk Therapy

When Sarah Polley, the film director and writer, was in her twenties and early thirties, she entertained friends at dinner parties by telling a story about her worst date ever, which she went on at the age of sixteen. Polley had become famous as a child actor—by her early teens, she was a household name in her native Canada, starring in Road to Avonlea,” a nostalgic television series inspired by the beloved children’s books of L. M. Montgomery. In 1995, a year after she left that show, she was asked out by Jian Ghomeshi, a CBC radio broadcaster and a well-known Canadian cultural figure a dozen years her senior. They went on a date and returned to his apartment, where he played her songs recorded by Moxy Frtivous, a satirical folk-pop band that he had co-founded. So far, so cringey. He kissed her, then informed her that he was into pretty weird stuff.” Polley, who is slight of build, with a quick, exuberant laugh, would finish her tale by describing how Ghomeshi had run his hands all over her still-clothed body at speed, while repeating a peculiar incantation: You're in Hell! There’s Devil hands all over your body!” The encounter that followed, Polley told her amused, appalled listeners, put her off one-night stands forever.

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