Voiceover:

Welcome to The Raw Nerve, the official podcast of MS Australia, a conversation space for all things multiple sclerosis. Join us for news and views on the latest research, treatments and advocacy efforts, as well as candid and informative interviews with our community, those living with MS and their families and carers, together with leading clinicians, researchers, and advocates.

Jeremy Henderson:

Welcome to the Raw Nerve podcast. My name is Jeremy Henderson and it is my great pleasure to welcome our guest, Cassidy Krygger. Cassidy is a young Australian actor, screenwriter and producer, and the founder of a viral Instagram account, Hollywoodland Photos. Cassidy was diagnosed with MS in 2018. That challenge has ignited in her passion, not just to live full life with a disability, but to educate, support and inspire other young people newly diagnosed with MS. Cassidy, welcome. To start with, I wonder if we can go right back to the beginning, and if you can indulge me, and I understand you’ve been acting since you were six years of age. I wonder if you can tell me how you got your start.

Cassidy Krygger:

I have, which is crazy, it’s been a very, very long time. So I was six years old and my mum took me to go see the movie Moulin Rouge, which I actually have a poster in my office of Moulin Rouge to remind me of my beginning, my start. So I went and saw the movie Moulin Rouge at six, which I question going to see that at such a young age, but I remember so vividly sitting in the cinema at such a young age, sitting in a cinema and looking up at the screen, Nicole Kidman, and just the spectacle of Baz Luhrmann’s film, and just being like, that’s what I want to do. That’s who I want to be. And it was, they say, there’s an acting bug that bites you, and it’s true. And literally bit me and I have not looked back. So I’ve been doing acting classes, been on stage, done it all since I was six, so I haven’t really looked back since then.

Jeremy Henderson:

So you seem very confident. Are you somebody who loves the limelight and loves that attention? Is that something you’d always sort of been naturally drawn to, or off the stage are you shy and introverted?

Cassidy Krygger:

Yeah, I’m a very anxious person, surprisingly. I did Neighbours when I was 15, and I remember, I have really bad social anxiety disorder, surprisingly, and it actually kept me home from high school. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder at 12, and the head of psychology at the Royal Children’s Hospital said to my mum, “I don’t think Cassidy’s going to live a normal life, keep her home and work on her anxiety.” So the thing that got me through that time when I couldn’t leave the house, when I was stuck at home, was my passion for acting, and my passion for film and watching movies. So at 15, I got really lucky. I had a chance to be on Neighbours. I was a mean school girl, and I remember I had such bad anxiety. I felt so sick, I don’t think I’ve ever felt sicker in my life.

I was sitting out in the front of the studio in the car, and I was saying to mum, I can’t go in. I just can’t do this. What am I doing? I can’t go in. And mum’s like, “You just have to go. You can’t back out of this. You need to go do it.” So I got out (of) the car and I walked in, and it was like all this anxiety and all this fear kind of just dropped away. I am like, this is where I’m meant to be. Outside of acting and in life I’m a very anxious, shy person, but in the acting sphere I’m like, this is where I’m meant to be. This is where I shine. So yeah, it’s a strange thing, but most actors you’ll find are quite shy creatures. We get to, I think we can put a facade on and play somebody else that kind of gives us our confidence.

Jeremy Henderson:

So when you’re on the stage or when you’re filming, when you’re on a film set, that really does become your safe place.

Cassidy Krygger:

Yeah, it really is. And it’s a place where you can explore things that perhaps you’re too scared to do in life. And I’ve played so many different characters now, whether it be an acting class, or on stage, or in film. I’ve lived many different lives, things that I possibly couldn’t do in real life. So yeah, it’s definitely, I think it’s a form of therapy, I guess in a way too, to really go into understanding yourself and your psyche so you can play these different characters.

Jeremy Henderson:

So if we just pivot now, you were diagnosed with MS in 2018, so just for the audience, how well established were you in your acting journey at that point?

Cassidy Krygger:

It’s funny, because I had actually quit at that point. I decided when I was 21 that it was all too hard, and I was like, this is not what, I can’t keep getting rejected. There’s a lot of rejection in acting. So I just gave up. I was getting somewhere, but it wasn’t where I wanted to be, and I quit. So I went and got a diploma in marketing, and decided that’s what I was going to do with my life. So when I was diagnosed, I actually wasn’t acting at all. And the trauma of the diagnosis and the life-changing diagnosis is, we all know it’s a massively life-changing thing to happen. I always knew life was short, but I didn’t realise how precious it was, and how quickly our lives can change and our health can change our lives in an instant. And I realised that why was I wasting my life not following my passion, not following my love. So I went back into acting after my diagnosis.

Jeremy Henderson:

Wow, that’s really interesting. So rather than actually being sort of a setback, it was almost something that sort of ignited that passion. I wonder if you can tell me about the diagnosis. How were you diagnosed, Cassidy?

Cassidy Krygger:

So the story goes, the life-changing story goes, it was Grand Final Day, AFL Grand Final Day, 2018, which I think is the best day of the year. I’m a massive footy nut. So it was grand final day, and I was making sausage rolls, my usual, and I remember looking across the TV and feeling my left eye begin to ache. And I was like, this is strange, but when you’re young and you don’t have any health issues, you kind of ignore it. So the day went on, it was slightly getting worse. I kept ignoring it. Then that was a Saturday. Then by the Tuesday I was beginning to lose vision in my left eye, and I was like, this isn’t good. And my mom, God bless her, was like, “You need to go to the doctor.” And I was like, I don’t want to go to the doctor about this.

They’ll laugh at me, tell me to go home. She said, “No, you need to go to the doctor.” So I went to the doctor expecting to be told to go home. But no, he sent me straight into the emergency room and I was like, oh, this is serious. Okay, what’s happening here? And I remember I went to the emergency room thinking I’d be waiting for hours, but now I was put straight in. I was like, okay, whoa, okay.

And I had an ophthalmologist come down to speak to me, and it was him for the first time that said, “Does MS run in your family?”

And I was like, MS? No, I knew nothing about MS beyond Susan Kennedy, on Neighbours. And I was just in shock. I was like, what do you mean? So they put me in an MRI machine, because it wasn’t life or death I got sent home, and then a couple of days later, I was back in the hospital seeing my ophthalmologist, and I remember it so vividly. I went into the appointment and it took him so long to open up the scans. He kept getting distracted by people. He was talking, I’m like, please tell me what is wrong with me? What’s happening? I just had this feeling something was wrong, and then my eye was still really bad.

So he opens up the scans of my brain and he goes, “So there’s lesions on your brain. It looks like you’ve got MS.” And I was like, where does this come from? What do you mean? So it was a Friday afternoon, and he goes, “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything beyond that. That’s all I know. I’m an ophthalmologist, you need speak to a neurologist, have a great weekend.” It’s just like a week ago, MS wasn’t even in my sphere and all of a sudden I’ve got MS? It was just the biggest traumatic life-changing experience ever. I know people really fight for a diagnosis. It takes them years. For me, it was in the space of a week. It was just unbelievable.

Jeremy Henderson:

Cassidy, I wonder if you can tell me about the impact of your MS in terms of your day to day. One of the issues with MS, or one of the realities of MS rather, is the fact that so many of those symptoms are invisible. And for many, people can look at people with MS and perhaps incorrectly think there’s nothing wrong with them, or not really fully appreciate the struggles and the obstacles they’re having to overcome, and the challenges they’re having to overcome. What does MS look like to you? And obviously it doesn’t look the same on any particular day.

Cassidy Krygger:

It does change every day. You’re right. My main symptom is chronic fatigue, and I think it’s the main symptom for a lot of people. For me, it can be debilitating. And you’re so right that it’s probably one of the hardest things to come to terms with, is that people don’t understand. And I often have this, I feel very lonely in it. I sometimes feel that, because people don’t understand, they kind of get sick of hearing you talk about it. And I’m like, no, I’m not well, and that you don’t understand because I look well, you automatically think that I can go do these things. If I say I can’t, you think I’m being rude or you don’t take it as seriously. It’s what this disease is. It’s a very serious thing to live with.

But my main symptoms are chronic fatigue. I get achy muscles. So I’m in a lot of pain actually at the moment. My legs are very, very sore, but they’re my main symptoms. My vision, my optic neuritis healed itself. It came back. I didn’t want to take steroids. I didn’t know about steroids, so I said no. So it took a couple of weeks after diagnosis, but my vision ended up coming back fully. But yeah, as much as I try not to let it impact my life, I try and live a really full life. I do have to limit. So say if I am going out one day and I’m going out on a Friday, I’ll give myself the weekend to recover from it. I just know the exhaustion is just going to hit. So it’s mainly the fatigue for me that is, I liken it to the worst jet lag you can imagine that never leaves.

Jeremy Henderson:

How hard was it to turn something that is so challenging into a positive mindset when you are very positive? Obviously it’s easier said than done. Obviously it’s not something you overcome in a short period of time. How did you deal with that challenge and find a way to pivot that into something that you could sort of challenge positively?

Cassidy Krygger:

Yeah, so I pre-MS was a bit of a negative person. I was a bit of a negative Nancy. I kind of saw the wrong in everything. And with my MS, I kind of felt like I had to quickly find positive in things or else I would go down a dark hole. I’ve always struggled with my mental health, so it could have taken me in a different way. I always say I remember I was driving, it would’ve been probably about two months after diagnosis, so I was still in that kind of shock and trauma of it. I was driving down a road, and I was driving, and I just couldn’t stop crying. I just couldn’t believe that I was so young and this was happening to me.

And I remember it felt like a fork came in front of me, like a fork in the road, and I had a choice to let MS take over my life and let it become who I am, or I would fight for my life and fight for who I want to be. So I kind of felt in that moment I had to make a decision who I wanted to be and where I wanted to go. So I decided I’m not going to let this beat me. I’ve been through so much in my life already. This isn’t going to take me down. So I chose the more positive way to go.

I’m very lucky that I’m very close to my mum, who is a very, I guess, positive spiritual person. She tries to find the good in everything. She’s had a lot of trauma in her life too. She had a lot of death when she was younger and stuff like that happened to her. So her outlook on life really impacted how I decided to live with this, with my trauma. And I just, I’m not toxic positive. I know things are really crappy and sometimes I have days where I just can’t stop crying. This is really, really hard. But I just know that the next day will get better and you just have to look for the positive in things. There’s something good in every day. If it’s just that your dog looked at you today, there is something good to be thankful for in every day. So I try to be live in gratitude.

Jeremy Henderson:

In terms of support, what kind of support did you have access to when you were diagnosed in terms of that sort of broader MS community and helping you navigate those challenges?

Cassidy Krygger:

It’s so funny. When I was diagnosed, I had my doctor, my GP, and my neurologist, and my MS nurse, who are all incredible human beings. I thank the Lord for them every day, but I couldn’t deal with the fact that I had MS, so I didn’t want support. It is funny talking to MS Australia today, because if I heard the word MS Australia back in 2018, I would’ve been like, oh, I can’t listen. Oh my God, that doesn’t exist.

So that first year, I kind of pushed anything away when it came to some sort of support network. I was told there was MS groups in my area that I could go to or chat to, but I literally just couldn’t do it. The thought of it made me anxious. But now I actually have a couple of friends who have since been diagnosed with MS, so I can talk to them. And also the community that I have, because I’m quite open and vocal about my MS on Instagram and stuff like that. I’ve grown a following of people that live with MS, so I can talk to them, and they understand what I’m going through and I can understand what they’re going through. But yeah, when I was first diagnosed, as much support as there is out there and there is, and if that’s what you’re looking for, it’s definitely there. I couldn’t do it.

Jeremy Henderson:

Look, you mentioned before how that diagnosis, that your MS diagnosis reignited your creative passions. I wonder if we can talk now, you’re not just a successful actor, but you’re also a successful producer. And I wonder if you can tell me about your decision to create Daisy Productions. Tell me about Daisy Productions.

Cassidy Krygger:

Yeah. So Daisy Productions came from, actually, it was during COVID lockdown that I had this idea to kind of maybe create my own work. I was always a writer when I was a kid. I loved to write, but as I got older, it kind of fell away. But during COVID lockdown, you had no other time but to do something. So I thought I might start maybe writing my own films and creating my own work. So Daisy Productions, Daisy is named after my great-grandmother Daisy, who passed away at 23, 1930 from pneumonia. I was always impacted by her story. I just always thought that she was just, it was just so sad that she died so young and I just always had a connection to her. So my first film that I released was called Enigma, which was a period drama set in 1915. That was incredible. It did really well.

And then my passion project and what’s been on the go for many, many years is the film called Daisy, which is about my great-grandmother’s story. So we filmed that short film in November last year, down at Barwon Park Mansion in Winchelsea, which is a beautiful National Trust property. It’s incredible, built in 1800s. It’s incredibly stunning. And we’ve just, in the past two weeks, started to enter it in film festivals, and we’ve already won two international best short film awards. And I can’t believe I am saying this, I just won best actress at a film festival. I can’t believe it. I still am on a high from, like that really happened. Are they sure? Are they sure they meant me? So it’s been such an empowering, incredible experience to take control of my own career. It’s been wonderful.

Jeremy Henderson:

Well, I imagine you might now have to be travelling around the world promoting that film, or going to various festivals, or what does that look what the next few months look like for you?

Cassidy Krygger:

Yeah, so we’re going to Los Angeles in June. We got into a really good festival over there and I’ve spoken to the festival head of the festival and he loved Daisy so much and he wants us to come over. And I was like, oh, okay, let’s go to LA. So, I mean, that’s a dream for me. I love Hollywood. Hollywood and film has been my saving grace all my life. So, to now have a chance to go over to LA and show people in Hollywood my film is just, I don’t think that my brain’s quite computing it yet to be honest. My brain’s still going, this isn’t quite real.

Jeremy Henderson:

You must be enormously proud and delighted to have not just produced something creative, but also something that is so personal to you. And just because something’s true doesn’t often make it a great creative piece, but for you to marry the two and do that so successfully, you must be incredibly proud.

Cassidy Krygger:

I am, and that’s so tricky for me to say. I am always so hard on myself, but I am really proud of this, because I’ve been thinking about it for such a long time, and Daisy’s story is so fascinating. I didn’t have to make it up. It was just so fascinating what happened to her and who she was as a woman in 1930 was so fascinating to me. And she died at the same age that I got diagnosed with MS. I always felt like there’s just something between us. Are we connected in some way besides being great-grandmother and great-granddaughter? So it was an honour to write her story. It was an honour to tell her, and it was an honour to play her. It was a bit weird at times to be playing a woman pregnant with my grandmother. But her journey, and her story, and who she was, I felt is a common story. And still, even though it’s nearly a hundred years later, it’s still happening. And I felt it needed to be told.

Jeremy Henderson:

You mentioned just a few minutes ago about COVID, and I’m just curious to know how difficult and tricky was that for you, navigating COVID with MS? What were the challenges you had in that space?

Cassidy Krygger:

When it first happened, I’m sure like everybody else in the world, I was petrified. And especially because I do have a autoimmune disease, I thought, oh, what happens if I get COVID? And there was really no, at the beginning, we didn’t really know what was going to happen, so it was frightening. I am in Victoria, so we had lots of lockdowns, so I was kind of hidden away from the world for those two years. It is funny in a way, I found, because COVID happened really a year after my diagnosis in a way. So that first year of 2019 was just really frightening and really scary, and just getting my understanding of what MS was.

But I feel like 2020 when the whole world stopped and I was just stuck at home with my mum and my auntie, people that were mostly impacted by my diagnosis, it gave us space to kind of sit, and be quiet, and accept this disease and accept my diagnosis. So I’m really kind of, as much as I wish COVID never happened, and it’s a horrific thing on the world, that time when it was just quiet and we couldn’t go anywhere, and we just had to sit with ourselves, I think it helped me come to terms with my diagnosis a lot more. So I’ve had COVID three times now. I had COVID two weeks ago, and I feel like, yeah, I know. I feel like COVID is okay for me. I do all right with it. I am fine. Yes.

Jeremy Henderson:

I’d like to talk to you about your other passions, podcasting and together with your successful Instagram account. But before we do that, I just wanted to ask you, by using your own lived experience as an informal advocate, what do you hope to convey and demystify about MS? What would you like to achieve?

Cassidy Krygger:

I really want to, because when I was diagnosed, I struggled to find anything positive online about MS, and I really struggled. I had to really fight to find something good. And I was diagnosed the same week that the actress, Selma Blair came out with her diagnosis of MS. So everything negative was kind of hyped up more, because clickbait, MS is bad. Everything was everywhere. I’m like, oh my God, what is this? Oh my God. So I think with the platform that I’ve built with my online presence, I guess I want to show the world that it can be a young person’s disease. People are diagnosed quite young. I was surprised at that. I always thought, I hate saying this, an old person’s disease. I was like, I’m so young. What do you mean? So I want to share that it is quite common to be diagnosed quite young if you are lucky.

And also that, sorry, I’m having a brain blank. It’s an MS thing. You guys understand. I think that’s the main thing. And it’s a young person’s disease, and to raise awareness about people living with it. Because I was out with a friend the other night and she said to me, because I always post about the positive things happening in my life at the moment, with my film getting more and more successful. And I posted about it, and she said to me, “Your life’s just going so well. You must feel so amazing.” I’m like, yeah, it’s amazing. And my life’s really, really good, but I’m also really struggling with my health at the moment. I’m really tired. And so, I guess kind of raising awareness about things can look really good on the outside, but if someone says they’re not well, listen to them.

Jeremy Henderson:

Now, I wonder if we talk about your involvement in podcasts, and two podcasts in particular, Chronic Convos and Hollywoodland. Firstly, what do you enjoy about the podcast medium? You’re obviously enjoying being on this podcast.

Cassidy Krygger:

Yeah, I think it’s another way of storytelling. I am a storyteller, and so I kind of want to find any way I can to tell stories. And what I also love about podcasting, listening to podcasts is that you don’t have to be tied down to watching TV, or tied down to reading a book. You can be on the go. And so, it’s a new way of, I guess, consuming storytelling and a new way of getting information out there. So I’ve loved podcasts for years, and I never really thought I would get into podcasting, but it kind of happened naturally. It snowballed. So here I am.

Jeremy Henderson:

Tell me about Chronic Convos.

Cassidy Krygger:

So Chronic Convos actually is my very good friend and executive producer partner. It’s her podcast that I’ve come involved – I’m executive producing with her, and it’s all about raising awareness about chronic illness. So this season, which is our first season, we talked to somebody living with a chronic disease. So she’s spoken to me with MS, my friend Zoe with her epilepsy. We have people talking about endometriosis. So we interview people living with the disease, and then we also interview people that are experts in the disease. So whether they’re doctors, researchers, anyone in the health field trying to help these people. So it’s been, I don’t want to take any credit for Mia, it’s Mia’s podcast, and she’s the brain behind it, but it’s been an honour to be producing it with her, because I’m such a believer in getting chronic conditions and getting their stories out there, and really raising awareness for all of these things that we live with.

Jeremy Henderson:

You have your own podcast, Hollywoodland, but I take it the Instagram account came first.

Cassidy Krygger:

Yes.

Jeremy Henderson:

So I wonder if maybe we can start with the Instagram account. Tell me about what inspired you to create Hollywoodland, the Instagram account.

Cassidy Krygger:

So my little Hollywoodland, yeah, I started that probably about, well, probably 10 years. I just started it, because I wanted to be on Instagram, but I was too anxious and too shy to show my face. And I love Hollywood. I love Old Hollywood. So I started to just post pictures of Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn, thinking that it was just for me and my friends, but it grew quite rapidly. I had 40,000 followers within four years, and I was like, oh, actually there’s people here that actually enjoy what I do, and what I have to say, and love Hollywood like I do.

So we’re now at 128,000 followers, which is just insane. I have people like Ariana Grande following me, Sharon Stone, Tatum O’Neal. I have all the old Hollywood Estates, so like Betty Davis Estate, Marlon Brando Estate, Humphrey Bogart’s Estate. They all follow me and they all interact with me, and it’s so crazy, and especially when I was diagnosed, I threw myself into it even more. So I really pushed it and got it out there. It was kind of like a thing to distract for myself, a happy thing. And yeah, it’s just been unbelievable. So I post mainly about old Hollywood films and old Hollywood stars. There’s so much content in that. It’s a fascinating time period. And yeah, it’s been a really incredibly happy thing that’s happened to me in my life. It’s been really wonderful.

Jeremy Henderson:

How do you find that content? How do you choose that content?

Cassidy Krygger:

That’s a good question. I watch a lot of old Hollywood films. One a day, I’ll be just having it on in the background. So I’m watching, there’s so much, so many films in that era to watch that I haven’t even seen yet, and I’ve watched a lot. I read a lot of biographies about old Hollywood stars, so I’m constantly learning about them. And I do a lot of research. So I just, I find out, I have a book full of old Hollywood star’s birthdays, so if there’s a birthday coming up, I’ll make a post about them. And yeah, I guess I also know what people like and I know what I’m passionate about, so usually what I’m passionate about, people are going to like. So if I have some understanding about Marilyn Monroe, I’ll post about Marilyn that week, and Marilyn will do really well. So yeah, it’s purely just passion, passion-based.

Jeremy Henderson:

Passion’s a great place maybe to wrap up this chat, and thank you so, so much for your time.

Cassidy Krygger:

Yes.

Jeremy Henderson:

And speaking of passion, I think that really brings it full circle. I described you as a storyteller and someone who connects so well with audiences through a range of different mediums, but you’re clearly passionate also about leveraging your profile to increase awareness about MS, and you’ve spoken about how important that is to you. So I just wanted to say thank you for that work that you are doing, and thank you very much for giving us your time today. Great to talk to you.

Cassidy Krygger:

Oh, thank you. Thank you. This has truly been, I mean this from bottom of my heart, it’s an honour to talk to MS Australia about this. It’s wonderful. Thank you.

Voiceover:

Thanks for listening to The Raw Nerve, the official podcast of MS Australia. To hear more, subscribe to our podcast today at msaustralia.org.au/podcast.