Kathryn Tse-Durham: What I Have in Common with Emily Blunt

Yes, dear reader, you’re probably rolling your eyes and wondering: what could Kathryn possibly have anything in common with Emily Blunt? I mean, Emily is this famous, gorgeous, amazingly talented actress from London whose name is synonymous with the formidable, umbrella-wielding Mary Poppins. Though Anne Hathaway was hailed as the star in The Devil Wears Prada, to this day I still think that Emily was the one who stole the film as the snobbish, poshly-accented wannabe assistant to Meryl Streep’s titular devil of a boss. Then I developed a bit of a crush on her after watching The Edge of Tomorrow and A Quiet Place, and it was only recently that I learned what Emily Blunt and I have in common – we both grew up struggling with a speech impediment, and eventually we both found ways to overcome it. That’s right – Emily Blunt had a severe stutter as a child and struggled with it well into her teens. It had such a huge impact on her that she’s become deeply involved in the American Institute of Stuttering. In a recent interview with Marie Claire, Emily talks about how her stutter ultimately led her to forging a successful acting career. https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a30729273/emily-blunt-stutter-interview-2020/

There is so much misinformation out there about what stuttering is. But due to the limited scope of this blog, it is neither the place nor the time to delve into the science and research behind the baffling speech impediment that plagued the likes of King George VI (Queen Elizabeth’s father as portrayed in The King’s Speech), and even celebrities such as Joe Biden, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and James Earl Jones (aka voice of Darth Vadar). Stuttering as a speech disorder is not psychological. It’s not that you’re insecure or feeble, it’s not that you’re unintelligent, it’s not that you don’t know what you want to say. It’s actually neurological with something to do with how the motor-speech pathways are wired, and it can be exacerbated by stress. It can be managed and controlled, but it takes a lot of hard work and discipline.

What in the world does my stutter have anything to do with my love for writing? Oh, it does. Very much so. It is interesting how hardship shapes us and leads us to develop in ways that we would not have seen whilst being mired in it. Because, you see, growing up I came to realize that I could express my thoughts much, much better in writing than when speaking. I learned that words have incredible power, and so I used the written word to compensate for what I couldn’t verbally express. As a child, I dreaded reading out loud in class. I was seen as the shy and awkward one, when beneath that my real self was screaming to be let out. “This isn’t me!” I wanted to shout, but I just shrunk into myself. It was when I was 16 that I met a speech therapist named Fran Logan who changed my life. My stutter and my eventual overcoming of it inspired me to become a Speech and Language Therapist, too. That became my profession. And writing became my true passion.

It is with hindsight that we see how everything happens as a chain-reaction. Back in my teens, because of my stutter I became very shy and reclusive for a long time, and I learned to turn to books for solace. Just before my final year in high school, I was in a really dark place. It was during this year that my stutter got really bad, and I withdrew even more. The future looked bleak to me. It is because of my extreme shyness and aloneness that year that I often went to the school library by myself, and that is how I stumbled upon The Lord of the Rings, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s magical world sort of saved me. His words put colour back into my monochrome life. To me, stories are powerful because they can open up your world in some indiscernible but life-changing way. It is because of Tolkien that I was inspired to write The Ellanor Chronicles. Perhaps, some things are meant to be.

I think some people might be shaking their heads in disbelief as they read this. Kathryn, shy and quiet and reclusive? No way! Many people now see me as an extrovert, bubbly and energetic and annoyingly optimistic. Recently, I reacquainted with a high school friend in Seoul, and as I guffawed loudly at something, my friend marveled, “You used to be so quiet and shy. But now you are so noisy! What happened to you?” I laughed and said, “I’m just a late bloomer.”

My stutter helped me grow as a person and become a better writer in more ways than one. This has been articulated pretty much perfectly by Emily Blunt herself: “I think in some ways, when you go through something like having a stutter, you become a really good listener. You absorb the world in a different way. Because you’re maybe less inclined to talk when you’re going through it. You become really conscious of a lot of stuff going around you, so I think I was a really observant kid. I was a really empathetic kid and still feel that’s something I try and lead with. And I encourage empathy in my kids and embracing differences and not being scared of them, you know?”  

Empathy. My struggles with having a stutter and my overcoming of it helped me become a better listener and observer, and I truly believe that to be a better writer you need to be these things. You need to try to understand people, their thoughts and their plights, and what motivates them to do, or not do, certain things. That’s how we craft characters in our stories. Everyone is flawed. We all have baggage and thoughts we would rather keep private, and many of us are fighting some sort of silent battle we never reveal on social media. I think writers need to capture all these character nuances, and as writers I believe we should try to inspire empathy and kindness, too. Because stories can be the most powerful way to say something important.

One fine day, I shall tick this off my bucket-list: I will meet Emily Blunt at an American Institute for Stuttering conference and shake her hand and thank her for giving hope to so many people out there who dream big dreams but may be too scared to do anything about it. That’s really what we all have in common, isn’t it? We are all flawed and broken, but in our own imperfect ways we try to make a difference and leave the world a slightly better place.

Kathryn Tse-Durham
Author of The Ellanor Chronicles
28th March 2020

This blog post is also posted on Kathryn’s Facebook Page. Visit here.