From Orange is the New Black to Edinburgh: Julie Lake and Annie Macleod on Music, Motherhood and Messy Truths

Best known for her role in Orange is the New Black, two-time SAG Award-winner Julie Lake has teamed up with award-winning musician Annie Macleod for Forget-Me-Not, a raw and resonant new musical play debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Based on their real-life friendship, the show explores the emotional cost of caregiving, the complexity of female relationships, and the courage it takes to reclaim your voice - especially after motherhood. In this candid conversation with Hinton Magazine, the duo reflect on writing through exhaustion, repairing a broken bond, and why telling the truth on stage might be the bravest thing they’ve ever done.

Forget-Me-Not is based on your real-life friendship. What made you decide to turn it into a theatrical piece?

Over the last five years, we both went through seismic life changes—COVID, moving, divorce, loss, the suicide of a loved one—and all while becoming new mothers. Somewhere in that chaos, our friendship fractured too. For Julie, motherhood swallowed her creative voice. She was writing music in secret, convinced her days as an artist were behind her. For Annie, she struck out of her domestic life to chase her artistic dreams, surprising and hurting those closest to her. But when we reconnected, something cracked open. We reminded each other that our voices mattered—and that our stories were worth sharing. That’s where Forget-Me-Not began. We thought: what if telling the truth, together, could be part of what heals us? And what if taking it to Edinburgh was our way of reclaiming our creative selves?

In what ways do you think society still underestimates or simplifies the emotional labour of motherhood and caregiving?

Motherhood is still so heavily romanticized, but the truth is, it can be isolating and identity-erasing—especially when the emotional labour goes unseen. Society assumes caregiving just comes naturally to women, but most of us are running on fumes. We’re not just feeding kids and cleaning up—we’re their emotional anchors, their physical safety net, their everything. And in that process, our own needs, dreams, and identities can quietly disappear. There’s still this unspoken expectation that moms should always put themselves last. But the cost of that invisibility is enormous. This show is, in many ways, a refusal to stay silent in that role.

What do you think people need to go through as a process that can mean a friendship survives a real rupture?

We believe a friendship can survive even a major rupture—if both people are truly doing their own healing. Ours unravelled when Julie was pregnant and Annie questioned her decision to have a second child. At the time, it felt personal. Later, we realized it was rooted in Annie’s own trauma from early motherhood. Julie, meanwhile, pulled away when Annie left her marriage to pursue music—partly out of envy. She was buried in diapers and nausea, while Annie was reclaiming her art. We actually have a phrase for this now: “She’s in adult diapers”—code for when someone is deep in the weeds of her own limiting beliefs and fatigue and can’t see clearly. Repair came when we stopped blaming each other and started taking responsibility for our own wounding and sought support from each other to heal out in the open. That’s part of what this show is about.

What did writing and performing this together teach you about each other? Anything surprising?

We learned our friendship can survive the real truth—spoken aloud, owned fully, and received with love. Collaborating on this taught us just how strong we are as a team. Our skills complement each other in ways that make impossible things—like taking a two-woman original musical to Edinburgh by ourselves—actually doable. We also discovered how deeply we trust each other creatively. 

One surprise? Annie’s super-nerdy, Type A Capricorn side. She’s suddenly the queen of logistics, which was not the case in high school when she skipped class and avoided homework at all costs. But that rebel spirit? It’s still there—and it fuels her brilliance. Another surprise? Julie’s courage. She is a secretive motherfucker by nature - a shield behind which she has historically hidden her vulnerability. She had to face her fear of being really and truly seen and risk possible blowback for those closest to her in order to tell the heart of her story in this show. I couldn’t be more proud of her. 

Female friendship often gets reduced to either support or rivalry. Was it important to show something messier, more layered?

Absolutely—it was essential to show the complexity. Female friendship is so often flattened into either sweet support or toxic rivalry, but real relationships are way messier than that. From the beginning, we were committed to telling the truth—no gloss, no sugarcoating. Every moment in the show actually happened. And while that level of honesty felt scary at times, it’s also what gives the piece its power. 

There’s a deep thread of loss in the show – not just people, but missed paths. How do you both relate to the idea of “the unlived life”?

We’ve both felt the ache of the “unlived life.” We each gave up parts of ourselves—music, art, expression—to take on roles that felt necessary at the time. Annie became a nurse practitioner and mother; Julie pursued acting but set music aside. Life took us down different roads, but the longing to create never left. When Annie left her marriage to pursue music again, it was a bold reclaiming. Julie, meanwhile, was navigating motherhood and grief after losing someone she loved. That loss became the spark that brought music back into her life. Reuniting through this project allowed us to reclaim those lost parts of ourselves—and turn them into something alive. The show is the result of that transformation.

Can you talk a bit about the role music plays in the show and why it felt essential for the story?

Music is the soul of this show. It carries the layers that words can’t—grief, longing, tenderness, healing. We each wrote and sing three original songs, but we harmonize on all of them. Our voices blend like our friendship—two distinct lives that lift each other up. The music creates the emotional and vibrational landscape of the play. It’s how we tell the truth between the lines, how we process what we’ve lived through, and how we invite others into that experience.

What do you hope audiences, particularly women, take away from Forget-Me-Not?

Our biggest hope is that women will see themselves in this story—that it will awaken something tender, buried, or brave inside them. Maybe it sparks a memory, a longing, or a truth they haven’t yet voiced. We want them to feel permission to take one step—however small—toward their own freedom and self-expression. Judgment, especially between women, is what keeps us trapped. But when we meet each other with love, when we really listen and speak our truths, we create space for transformation. That’s the power of storytelling. That’s how we begin to free ourselves—and each other.

Forget-Me-Not will be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at 11:40 from 1^st-9^th  August at the Greenside venue

For tickets and more information: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/forget-me-not