She said the traumatic experience — as members of the cult surrounded her and chanted, “Be gone, evil spirit in Hannah” — was like “giving birth through my skull.”

Game of Thrones’ Hannah Murray had psychotic episode during time in wellness cult, was rushed to hospital

She said the traumatic experience — as members of the cult surrounded her and chanted, "Be gone, evil spirit in Hannah" — was like "giving birth through my skull."

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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May 23, 2026 1:29 p.m. ET

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Hannah Murray in 2019. Credit:

Roy Rochlin/Getty

- *Game of Thrones* star Hannah Murray opened up about her time in a wellness cult after an experience with an "energy healer."

- She said that In her worst moment she had a psychotic episode that felt like "giving birth through my skull" and was rushed to the hospital.

- Murray chronicles her traumatic experience with the cult in her upcoming book, *The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness*.

Hannah Murray is reflecting on her traumatic time spent living in a cult.

The English actress, best known for portraying Gilly in *Game of Thrones*, detailed being drawn into a wellness cult in her late 20s in a new interview on Saturday in support of her upcoming book, *The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness*.

"It's easy to go, 'Well, that would never happen to me,' but we do ourselves a disservice when we start saying that, because you don't know," Murray told *The Guardian* of her intense experience. "I had no idea I was going to go through any of the things in the book. I would've assumed I couldn't, that I was safe. I was well educated, from a middle-class family; everything should have been fine. I thought, 'I'm smart. I make good choices.' Well, I made terrible choices."

She added, "It's important to understand why people do these things, rather than going, 'Oh, they must be idiots.' Or, 'How stupid could you be?'"

Hannah Murray on 'Game of Thrones'.

Helen Sloan/HBO

Murray explained that she was originally drawn to an "energy healer," whom the article refers to as Grace, who helped her process the difficulty of shooting 2017's *Detroit* though a $150 "healing" session. The session was a positive one, which led Murray to a mystical class that in turn led to more classes with more members of the organization. "I wanted to go further and further, as far as you could go," the actress said.

She eventually met the man at the top of the group, whom the article refers to as Steve. "He exuded power in a way I had never known anyone to exude it," she said. "Magical power … I knew I was in the presence of a magician."

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Murray noted that she felt predisposed to believe in magic because of her love for the *Harry Potter* series as a child. "The most appealing thing was the idea that you might discover this whole magical world just under the surface of our world. As a kid, I desperately wanted that to be true," she said. "When I was going through psychosis, my brain was a cocktail of those stories, this idea that I had discovered the truth, which was that I had this incredible destiny. I was going to save the world. I could fly."

She added that she felt strange sexual overtones in the organization, though those feelings were never consummated. "My own experience felt highly eroticized, without anything explicitly physical happening. There was just this charge to the energy in the room. I think there often is in these hierarchical spiritual organizations." When she suggested that the organization was some sort of "sex cult" to one of its teachers, they replied, "That’s hilarious. No, [Steve is] just really good at breaking down your ego and so a lot of sexual stuff might come up."

Hannah Murray in 2019.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

The worst moment came when she was attending a five-day course in a London hotel. She was talking at "a million miles a second," seeing signs and symbols everywhere, and feeling incredibly happy. One night, Murray found herself hallucinating and hearing Steve's voice in her head. She recalled taking refuge in a locked bathroom and experiencing a painful psychotic episode in which she felt like she was "giving birth through my skull." Members of the organization then surrounded the stall with bronze tools, chanting, "Be gone, evil spirit in Hannah."

Someone eventually called for help, and after she was pinned to the floor by a group of men in uniform, she was rushed to Gordon hospital in Bloomsbury, London, where she was detained for 28 days under the Mental Health Act.

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Murray was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has now retired from acting. "I hear so much, 'We need to talk more about mental health,'" she said in the interview. "What they mean is, like, anxiety and depression. We're all happy to talk about that. But there's such a taboo around the idea of people who are sectioned. They are beyond the pale."

"It felt really important to say, 'I went through this,'" she added. "Lots of people go through this. That doesn't mean they are bad or f---ed up forever."

*The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness* is out June 23.

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