Adam Kay Creator of ‘This Is Going To Hurt’ Reveals He Was Raped
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Writer Adam Kay, author of the bestselling This Is Going To Hurt and creator of the subsequent hit series adaptation talked to the Sunday Times of London about going from a straight marriage to a gay one, leaving the medicine field, and “the traumatic event he buried for years.”
He was raped at a bathhouse in New Zealand where he was cheating on his wife at the time.
I was clear. I said no when it became obvious he wanted this interaction to go a lot further than I did. I said no again when he started. I said no when he overpowered me and pushed my head into a wipe-clean cushion that stank of antiseptic. The smell took me out of the moment and briefly back to hospital — being transported away was no bad thing.
I tried to scream, knowing even in that moment that I wouldn’t be heard — not by this man who didn’t want to hear and not by anyone else, thanks to the rhythmic pounding of the music. The inconvenient clarity of hindsight makes me wonder if the fact I stopped saying no and screaming acted as implicit consent. Signalling that he was right to carry on, that I’d been just playing hard to get, that I loved it really, that I was just like all the rest. And there had to be others, didn’t there? He was too blasé, too confident to be new to this.
He peeled himself away from my body and muttered “Thanks” before leaving. Thanks. You don’t say thanks to someone you’ve just raped, do you? Was coming here in the first place my consent? Not pulling my hand away when he took my arm — was that a way of saying yes in a language I’d never been taught, negating everything I would say afterwards?
I got back into my clothes. Through reception, then out into the night. Everything I knew about rape came from watching TV dramas: you get straight into the shower and scrub and scrub and scrub yourself clean before sliding hopelessly down the tiles to the floor and sobbing into your bruised knees. But I couldn’t face seeing myself naked.
Contacting the police and putting this nightmare on public record was unthinkable. Saying it out loud would make it real — I would never be able to deny it or pretend it never happened, which already felt like my only way of getting through it. Plus, of course, it would launch me into a spiral of bureaucracy that would see me miss my gig, delay my flight home and eventually find myself explaining everything to H. She could never find out, especially now there was so much to hide.
I told myself my case was flimsy anyway — the police, probably puritanical straight men, would tell me you can’t get raped if you go somewhere looking specifically for sex. What was I expecting to happen in a place like that — a round of backgammon? And as for the man who attacked me, what were the realistic chances of finding him? Did I even want them to find him? What if he told them I was begging for it, putting words into my mouth to fill the silence of my own making? Besides, if I could lie about my name and fake my voice, didn’t that make me the most unreliable witness?
And so I lay there staring at the ceiling of my hotel room, acting as police, judge and jury, and coming to the decision that I should somehow just draw a line under things. Lifting the rug and sweeping as much as possible under it — it was in my doctorly DNA.
And then I had to make people laugh for money. The gig went remarkably well, in that I made it to the end without breaking down in tears or announcing that of the five people I’d spoken to in their country before getting on stage, 20 per cent of them had sexually assaulted me. The jokes tumbled out of me on autopilot.
Thanks to everyone for your kind comments about the extract from Undoctored in today’s Sunday Times. I can’t reply to everyone, partly because this degree of attention makes social media a difficult place for lots of reasons, so forgive me for sending a general one.
— Adam Kay (@amateuradam) August 28, 2022
He also talks about his relationship and marriage to his husband J.
Kay recently planted a long-awaited tribute tree at Ealing Hospital.
“The Shruti tree is the first national memorial to health workers. A plaque at the west London site says: ‘In memory of healthcare professionals who have died by suicide.’
It adds: “Take care of those who take care of others.”
It was named after the character Shruti Acharya, a junior doctor who took her life in the series, which drew millions of viewers on BBC One in February. Mr Kay joined NHS leaders, charities and bereaved families to plant the first official memorial, after an estimated 300 nurses died by suicide in the seven years to 2017.
Read the full Sunday Times story here.
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