Rose McGowan: We escaped the cult when they started advocating child-adult sex

Back to Yours: Róisín Ingle talks to the actor and activist Rose McGowan

Actor and activist Rose McGowan: ‘I never had a stable home growing up, so there was no family home.’ File photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage
Actor and activist Rose McGowan: ‘I never had a stable home growing up, so there was no family home.’ File photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage

"The commune I grew up in, a thing called Children of God… I was definitely a thorn in their side," says actor and activist Rose McGowan about the religious cult in Italy where she spent her childhood.

“We left because they started advocating child-adult sex and that was too far for my father, so we escaped,” she tells Róisín Ingle, in the latest episode of a new podcast by The Irish Times, Back to Yours.

In the podcast, Róisín talks to well-known people about their houses, snoops in their drawers and finds out all about the homes they’ve lived in throughout their lives.

In this episode, Rose talks to Róisín about running away as a teenager and becoming an actress as a way to get out of homelessness, the Me Too movement and why she won't speak about Harvey Weinstein anymore.

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They also talk about her partner Rain Dove, her complex relationship with the idea of home – "I never had a stable home growing up, so there was no family home" – and why she owns a quarter of a cemetery in Seattle.

In the first season of Back to Yours, Róisín speaks to Amy Huberman, Dermot Bannon, Marian Keyes, among others.

Listen to Back to Yours wherever you get your podcasts.

Jennifer Ryan

Jennifer Ryan is a former audio producer at The Irish Times