Writer April Salazar tells the story of how she told her conservative Mexican-American father about her abortion after her unborn child was diagnosed with an incurable birth defect.

Telling My Father About My Abortion

What We Seee Presents Episode 1 of That Scene, That Song featuring Eliza Butterworth. 

That Scene, That Song is a conversation about two songs and two films that have shaped Eliza, her outlook on life, work, or that have profound personal meaning.

\\The Star

Lincolnshire-born actor Eliza Butterworth stars in Netflix’s Saxon-age drama series The Last Kingdom. 
 
The only actor in her family, Butterworth describes herself as arriving to her craft “late in the game”, aged 15. She went on to land a place at RADA, where her lack of acting experience made her – in her words – “a blank canvas”. 
 
Four months after graduating, Butterworth bucked the struggling actor trend and scooped a role inThe Last Kingdom. Now in production for Season 4, the series follows the life of King Alfred the Great.
 
Butterworth plays Lady Aelswith, wife of King Alfred, in turn played by Butterworth’s real-life husband, David Dawson. Aelswith is a Lady Macbeth-esque lover and confidant who challenges Alfred. 
 
Here, Eliza takes time out from filming in Hungary to talk about the films and songs that have made a profound impact on her. 
 
\\The Scenes 
 
First up from the big screen is what Butterworth calls “a two-minute long scene of utter joy” from Tom Ford’s 2009 debut A Single Man, which sees a British professor “lose all sense of containment” with his lover. 
 
Second, a moment in 2002’s Amélie,Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s love letter to the quirks of Paris and its inhabitants. In the scene, a painterly figure becomes a metaphor for the movie’s lonely protagonist. 
 
There’s a cohesion to Butterworth’s choices, with both scenes hinging on a brief human interaction and the power of a kind gesture. 
 
\\The Songs 
 
In her musical selections, the 26-year-old proves herself to be an old soul. Small wonder, perhaps, given that she’s currently playing a woman almost twice her age. 
 
She picks Maurice Ravel’s impressionistic piano movement, Une Barque sur l’Océan(1904-05) a sea-faring composition that “goes from twinkling, light waves to a thunderstorm” before sailing “back out into the beautiful calm of the ocean”. 
 
And, by way of contrast, the opening bars of George Benson’s infectious 1980 funk classic, Gimme The Night. 
 
\\The Summary
 
Whether she’s talking 70s disco or the vocals of Billie Holiday, Butterworth takes a magpie’s approach to culture, and her passions rarely derive from her generation. 
 
Along the way, the young actress talks characterisation, overcoming vulnerability, and her desire to go back to the classical texts that RADA gave her a love for.

Episode 1: Eliza Butterworth

A conversation about the culture that has shaped our lives

Episode 1: Eliza Butterworth

What We Seee Presents: THAT SCENE, THAT SONG

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