Screenwriter Abi Morgan on writing a ‘love story’ about partner’s coma

When screenwriter Abi Morgan penned her memoir, she wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out.

“I feel like I wrote it when I was drunk, and [had] that feeling when you wake up in the morning after you’ve had one too many at a Christmas party, you think, ‘Oh god, what did I say? Who did I offend?'” says the screenwriter.

She wrote This Is Not A Pity Memoir in “the fug of Covid”, after a particularly traumatic few years.

In the summer of 2018, Morgan’s partner, actor Jacob Krichefski, 50, who has MS, collapsed and was then in a coma for seven months. The memoir follows Morgan, 54, and her family coping with his illness – including when he wakes up and doesn’t recognise her – and through his rehabilitation.

The subject matter is grim – just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, Morgan is diagnosed with breast cancer – but she deals with these heavy topics with a lightness of touch and sense of relatability.

Originally released in May 2022, This Is Not A Pity Memoir has just come out in paperback – and the positive reception it received has shifted Morgan’s perspective.

“What was incredibly reassuring was people saw – and I didn’t realise myself when I was writing – that it was a love story,” she says.

“It’s a very ordinary love story, in many ways. It’s the love story of not only me and Jacob, but the love story of a family – both mine and Jacob’s – and of a community, and a love for and appreciation of the NHS and everything they did for us.

“I really did write it in those dark nights of the soul that I think many of us experienced during the Covid pandemic. For me, it was as if I were talking to a friend, in many ways. There’s always a fear when you put that out in the world, but actually, I was really moved and touched.”

Some of the first people to read the book were Morgan and Krichefski’s children: Jesse, who’s now 21, and Mabel, 19.

“I waited with trepidation as they read it,” Morgan remembers. “My daughter read it incredibly quickly and the next morning was silent, but mainly, she said, ‘Mum, it’s right’. One of the most powerful things my son said was, ‘It’s really painful, Mum, but it’s the truth’.

“That was the most important thing, because you can never capture everyone’s truth, you can only capture your own. So it was a real validation, that my kids were comfortable with me putting [it] out there.”

The book is punctuated with Morgan’s observations as a screenwriter. She’s penned TV shows like The Split, as well as movies like Suffragette, Brick Lane and The Iron Lady, but writing a memoir was a different endeavour.

“Scriptwriting is so much about structure – I always feel it’s like a mathematical game,” she says. “Writing a memoir – I genuinely had that experience of writing pouring out of me…

“One of the comments I hear is, ‘My God, there’s a sense of chaos and anarchy’, certainly in the first 100 pages. I think that’s true, because not only was I writing it from that place, but I also wanted to try and capture what it’s like when your world is turned upside down. Life doesn’t necessarily follow the same rules as it does in a movie – things are chaotic.”

The memoir ends nearly three years after Krichefski’s collapse, and Morgan is keen to share updates.

“Jacob’s amazing. I think he’s surpassed all of our expectations – none of us expected him to get to the place he is now,” she enthuses. “He’s doing incredibly well. We let go of the last carer 10 months ago, and he’s starting to recover and re-find himself.

“He’s in a really good place and getting back to doing all the things he loves – he loves choir, he loves ukelele, he loves travel, he’s reconnecting with his friends again.

“Very much for us as a family, he’s back. He’s obviously still coming to terms with physical and cognitive change, which I think will never go away, and also coming to terms with the experience he’s gone through – but I think we’re all absolutely overjoyed that he is doing as well as he’s doing.”

While Morgan says she’s “hugely grateful” for the response to the book, and it’s been “a real privilege to be able to talk about it”, she adds: “I like the fact the story is still having resonance with people, but I’m also reflecting on how we bring the story forward to where Jacob is now.

“Also, I’m still a screenwriter at my heart. It’s been a wonderful, really refreshing chapter to be able to write a memoir, but I’ve gone back to screenplay writing now, and I’m very immersed in my next project. It does feel like a lifetime ago now, and the more I write other work, it’s been really good to be able to sink myself into other characters and other lives that aren’t my own.”