When Amy Huberman was writing and then filming the second series of Finding Joy, a comedy about a woman who inadvertently becomes an inspirational health vlogger, she had no idea that the show itself would land smack-dab in the middle of a time when the entire world was also constantly searching for joy. On the phone from her home in Dublin, Amy tells Capsule that being on month 2.5 of a Level 4 lockdown, in the very heart of a UK winter, feels like “the longest hangover of all time.”
“At least we’re starting to come into spring now, and even having that change of season with the days getting a little bit longer…” she says in her wonderful Irish lilt, then pauses. “Although, actually, even that’s not as great because in the middle of winter, when the sun goes down at 4.30pm, you can at least be like, ‘Ah well, that’s it – I’m done. No more questions for me because I’m off to bed,” she laughs. Her own viewing habits throughout this time have mirrored a lot of us – “I mean, true crime has been HUGE all over the world this past year, but then I need comedy as well, I need a laugh. So, it’s really just jumping between hard-core murders and then something a bit fun,” she laughs.
The basic premise of Finding Joy centres on a 30-something named Joy who gets suddenly promoted from proof reader to vlogger star at the newspaper she works at, where she has to trial a bunch of different wellness activities in an attempt to help the readers find joy. It’s a little bit Bridget Jones, a little bit Insecure and an absolute delight of a series. Season One followed Joy’s “accidental journey” through all things wellness and Season Two kicks off with her believing now that she’s got life sorted, it’s time to teach other people.
The whole thing takes a loving jab at our obsession with perfection and wellness but the deeper themes that run through it are a lot more profound – how do we find our purpose, especially if it’s not always our work, and how do we find things to smile about when life is really, really hard. So yes, it’s inadvertently perfect for the time we find ourselves in now, with a lot of people now re-evaluating large parts of their lives.
“We have been forever altered in a way that I don’t know if we fully understand yet,” Amy says of Covid-19. “I know it sounds very clichéd but I am so appreciative of friends and family and freedom and all the things we have. I mean, I always knew they were important but our lives were so busy and we were so distracted all of the time; you never really sat in one place for too long, to really know what you had. All of this has been so hard – people are lonely, there’s massive job loss, there is a mental health tidal wave coming and people are already dealing with that.
“It requires digging deep, like, the deepest anyone has had to. So, having that appreciation for things like happiness and joy, when they come up, is so important – and that’s what the show is about. Finding out, at the core of your life, what are the things that bring you joy.”
“Joy is very different from happiness; joy is that feeling that you can’t supress, like uncontrollable laughter, and it’s such a feeling when you do feel it, that you need to focus on the things that bring you joy and just cut out the other stuff that takes up so much of your time, unnecessarily.”
One of the other equally profound themes that runs through Finding Joy is the sense of loneliness that runs through Joy’s life as well – in her early 30s, recently single, she’s in the kind of limbo so many of us have been through when you don’t fit into the married/baby genre of womanhood. A lot of her connection is therefore down to social media which is, again, something that has sprung up as a result of lockdowns around the world and people no longer being able to be close to each other. “Loneliness is something that all of us are dealing with at the moment, even if we’re living with family or friends,” Amy says.
“Everyone is sharing this collective loneliness, because we can’t see each other – we can’t travel, we can’t see all of our friends and family and there is that sense of longing. It’s a new kind of loneliness we haven’t seen before… we’re looking at technology as a way to stay in contact and while technology is great, people really need each other.”
We both bemoan the fact that, on opposite sides of the world, our social media presence is less about travel and more about ‘what is my pet doing today?’ “God, I have put up SO many dog photos…” Amy laughs. “What I’m really missing now is that feeling of being at a restaurant and drinking prosecco. That giddiness, that feeling in the air where people are like ‘Woo, we don’t want to go home yet.’ Once we get out of here….” She sighs. “I’m just going to have to get constant babysitters. We’re all going to go absolutely mad, aren’t we?”
Unlike her single 30-something on-screen counterpart, Amy is married to rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll and the pair have three children. But she can relate to the fish-out-of-water mentality of Joy, especially because this series is the first that she’s done as writer, star and creator. It’s a mixed bag, she jokes. “You get more of a sense of control UNTIL it ends up on television and then it’s just, ‘Oh my god, is somebody allowing me to do this?’” Amy laughs. “I never thought I would get to do this – I didn’t study as an actor, I didn’t study as a writer, I do pinch myself and I do also have massive imposter syndrome all the time.”
But the best part is helping bring to life a character who feels so relatively flawed and happy and struggling, all at once. “Season Two is about her having to embody all the things we want from a woman on the screen – “I have to be girly but I also have to be confident” – all those contradictory things. And Joy is initially like, ‘Great, don’t worry, I’ve got that sorted,’ but sometimes you don’t ever get there and you’re just figuring it all out as you go and that’s fine because… ah look, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say to wrap all of that up,” Amy laughs. “But you know, something along those lines. Well, that was just perfectly articulated, wasn’t it?”
Finding Joy is screening on Acorn TV now
