I Am Greta: talking to Barack Obama and the Pope may come naturally to Greta Thunberg – but Hulu documentary reveals the climate activist once didn’t speak to anyone outside her family for three years
Greta Thunberg suffered from selective mutism before becoming a famous climate activist, almost starved herself to death with worry about the environment, and dreams of screaming at Jean-Claude Juncker
Greta Thunberg, one of the world's most prominent climate activists, has spoken at United Nations summits and addressed parliaments in the UK and France. She's even discussed the issue with Barack Obama and the Pope. But a new documentary called I Am Greta reveals that Thunberg didn't speak to anyone outside her family for three years.
“They call it selective mutism,” Thunberg's father, Svalte, says in the film, which came out on Hulu on November 13. “She didn't speak to anyone but me, my wife, and her little sister maybe for three years.”
Thunberg has Asperger's syndrome, which she calls her “superpower”. Young children with Asperger's may develop selective mutism, speaking only to people they are comfortable with, like their families, but not strangers.
“I don't like making small talk with people or socialising,” Thunberg says in the documentary, adding, “sometimes I go quiet for hours simply because I can't talk.”
“I was sick – I almost starved to death”
For more than two years, Thunberg has been the face of a youth climate movement more than four million strong. She started the Fridays For Future movement, or “School Strike for the Climate”, as it was written in Swedish on the now-famous sign she sat outside Swedish parliament with back in August 2018. In March 2019, Thunberg led more than one million students around the world in walking out of Friday classes to protest inaction on climate change.
Then in September of that year, she led a worldwide climate strike that included four million people across 161 countries – the biggest climate-change protest in history.