Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1: So I've got some big news. The winner of the
Speaker 1: Fat Bear competition in Alaska has been announced and it
Speaker 1: is number thirty two, Chunk. And I love this for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. The first is that Chunk has
Speaker 1: been in this contest every year since it's begun eleven
Speaker 1: years ago, and he was runner up the last two years,
Speaker 1: but now this is his time.
Speaker 2: This Boad's well for Leonardo DiCaprio at the Oscars Nation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it does always there, but he never wins, just like
Speaker 2: Chunk's a win.
Speaker 1: And I have to say that I also specially love
Speaker 1: his name because my partner is trying to make the
Speaker 1: category of man chunky boss happen. Chunky bosses. Think Vince Vaughn, Yeah,
Speaker 1: think Jason Segual, Yes, chunky bosses, and so I think
Speaker 1: that in fact, this means that chunky bosses are now in.
Speaker 3: I will also say about Chunk, I have read a
Speaker 3: single detail about our French and that is that he
Speaker 3: has a broken jaw, and that to me signals he's
Speaker 3: commitment to eating salmon like I think he ate too
Speaker 3: much salmon broke his jaw. But he won in the
Speaker 3: end and his body on the line.
Speaker 2: He could still eat the salmon with a broken jaw.
Speaker 2: That is quite commitment. That is quite a commitment.
Speaker 1: Congratulations to our chunky boss Chunk.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Momma Mia out loud. It's what
Speaker 2: women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the first of October.
Speaker 2: I'm Holly Wainwright and I am trying to restrain any
Speaker 2: panic that it is Wednesday, the first of October.
Speaker 3: I am Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 1: And I'm Amelia Lester.
Speaker 2: And on our show today you might have heard, I know,
Speaker 2: maybe you've heard. I'm just a little bit of news.
Speaker 3: Holly just has been shrieking, running around, frazzled hot.
Speaker 2: I have been very very upset by this, very destabilized
Speaker 2: that's the word. Yeah, he stabilized that Australian royal uncoupling. Well,
Speaker 2: welcome to today's show, where we're going to decode the
Speaker 2: gossip and noise around the Nicole Keith divorceview.
Speaker 3: Plus it's time for us all to hold hands and
Speaker 3: climb Cringe Mountain together we discuss why this viral theory
Speaker 3: could change your life.
Speaker 1: And I went to Sephora this morning and waited until
Speaker 1: the door's opened to get in.
Speaker 3: I feel like you're going through something.
Speaker 1: I'm going through something. Women over forty are doing our
Speaker 1: makeup all wrong, and I'm here to tell you what
Speaker 1: we need to do differently.
Speaker 2: But first of all, I'm not going to say in
Speaker 2: case you missed it, because you didn't miss it. Now,
Speaker 2: nobody missed this.
Speaker 3: Except you for a few hours yesterday morning.
Speaker 2: It's true. In fact, we recorded a whole emergency meeting
Speaker 2: for subscribers about this yesterday, So if you need to
Speaker 2: go back to the beginning of this story, go and
Speaker 2: listen to that right But since then, there has been
Speaker 2: so much coverage, some of it reputable, some of it
Speaker 2: just very gossipy. And what we're going to do is
Speaker 2: do a bit of decode for you here about what
Speaker 2: seems to be true, what seems to be nonsense, what
Speaker 2: seems to be pure speculation. And we do need to,
Speaker 2: as we did in the episode yesterday, we need to
Speaker 2: lay the table to say we're aware that this is
Speaker 2: a non of our business, be some people's real lives.
Speaker 2: That is serious stuff. But I think that it is
Speaker 2: unquestionable that this is the biggest celebrity story in the
Speaker 2: world at the moment, and that we all have something
Speaker 2: of a connection to the Nicole and Keith situation, and
Speaker 2: it is unfolding in quite actually an unconventional way.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, yesterday the separation was reported. There has been no
Speaker 2: official confirmation from either party. And when we're recorded yesterday,
Speaker 2: we said probably in the next twenty four hours they
Speaker 2: will release or one or the other of them, or
Speaker 2: usually a joint statement will be released which will say
Speaker 2: something along the lines of what do they always say,
Speaker 2: Amelia those statements.
Speaker 1: Please respect our privacy at this time as we focus
Speaker 1: on our family and create beautiful separate journeys which are
Speaker 1: also together.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we respect each other and love each other
Speaker 2: and so on, and so.
Speaker 1: We'll always be friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's usually that kind of nothing to see here
Speaker 2: statement now that very noticeably has not happened in the
Speaker 2: last two days.
Speaker 1: So there hasn't been any statement.
Speaker 2: There has been no direct as we're recording now. Obviously
Speaker 2: that could.
Speaker 1: Change, but that is very unusual.
Speaker 2: It is very unusual because even if and we speculated
Speaker 2: about this yesterday, is that perhaps there was a leak
Speaker 2: they were preparing to announce this, but there had been
Speaker 2: a leak and so they were scrambling. But given the
Speaker 2: fact that today it has been officially reported that Nicole
Speaker 2: Kidman has filed for divorce, so it's definitely happening.
Speaker 1: Did she file in Tennessee?
Speaker 2: She filed in Tennessee, which is where they live, right
Speaker 2: their primary residence. So court documents obtained by page six
Speaker 2: reveal that the breakup was due to a reconcilable differences.
Speaker 2: We all that means too and its what does that? Well,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a pretty standard reason. Yeah, but it
Speaker 2: just means it broke down, it could not be saved.
Speaker 2: And listed their separation date the September the thirtieth, which
Speaker 2: is okay, yeah, right now, right now, Kidman requested to
Speaker 2: be the primary residential parent of her and Urban's daughters
Speaker 2: and to have custody of them for three hundred and
Speaker 2: six days.
Speaker 3: And out of the year fourteen and seventeen daughters.
Speaker 1: Right, that's not joint customer.
Speaker 2: That's primary custody to her. None of the rest of
Speaker 2: this is authorized what we're about to say. So the
Speaker 2: court documents are legal documents, so we know it's definitely happening,
Speaker 2: but there's been no official statement, as we've said, but
Speaker 2: what there has been is quite a lot of leaking,
Speaker 2: and the leaking seems to be coming mostly from Nicole's side,
Speaker 2: because one of the first things that we heard yesterday
Speaker 2: is that she had been trying hard to keep the
Speaker 2: family together. A family member who didn't want to be
Speaker 2: named told the Sydney Morning Herald because obviously Nicholl's family
Speaker 2: are Australian, that Kidman is heartbroken and that the actor
Speaker 2: had been attempting to keep the family together for several
Speaker 2: months for the sake of the kids.
Speaker 1: I thought that was so interesting that clearly her approved
Speaker 1: source leaked to the Herald, because that's a broadsheet newspaper.
Speaker 1: It's not a guy brag. So they wanted us to
Speaker 1: take that at face value.
Speaker 2: They did, absolutely, And to explain about sources, right, we
Speaker 2: often roll our eyes about celebrity sources sources say, but
Speaker 2: also in these kinds of instances, we know that sources
Speaker 2: close to the celebrity are a legitimate way that you
Speaker 2: get this kind of news out without making it seem
Speaker 2: as if it was you.
Speaker 1: You know, they're right, So.
Speaker 2: I mean, just ask Prince Harry. On one hand, you
Speaker 2: can say, oh, tabloids are full of moder named sources.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, he'll say, the sources that the
Speaker 2: Palace were leaking about me all the time. So you
Speaker 2: know that sources can be reached.
Speaker 3: And I suppose as well that not all sources are
Speaker 3: created equal. So you know, the other gossip, I suppose
Speaker 3: that has been coming out. Every possibility, every rumor that
Speaker 3: could surface about this relationship has surfaced over the last
Speaker 3: twenty four hours. So it was always going to be
Speaker 3: discussions about Keith. Urban has had a history with addiction,
Speaker 3: so that becomes a question. So it was inevitable that
Speaker 3: there would be speculation about infidelity. Hollywood, we make of
Speaker 3: those rooms.
Speaker 2: Some of the signs that you know something feels a
Speaker 2: little off is that the reputable sources like page six
Speaker 2: and people are now saying so as we're recording this,
Speaker 2: people are saying the split is turning dramatic. Nicole's hurt
Speaker 2: and feels betrayed. Now we've heard that part. This next
Speaker 2: part is the part that's a bit new, which is
Speaker 2: that she wanted to save their marriage, but it seems
Speaker 2: he's already moved on. I think that he's already moved on.
Speaker 2: Is the bit that blends a little bit of weight
Speaker 2: to the rumors of infidelity. Clearly, what is coming out
Speaker 2: here is that the side of the story that we
Speaker 2: are seeing is that this was not Nicole. This is
Speaker 2: to do with Keith. She was spending the summer with
Speaker 2: her daughters. He's been on tour and something has happened.
Speaker 2: That is the vibe of what is being put out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the speculation is coming out because
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a vacuum because there was no
Speaker 1: official statement proclaiming to still be friends. Because we've seen
Speaker 1: leaking to reputable sources like The Herald and like Page six,
Speaker 1: which is where sometimes supporting came from, and People magazine.
Speaker 1: So that's why we're seeing so much speculation. But I
Speaker 1: think that the big takeaway is that Nicole's camp wants
Speaker 1: us to understand that from her perspective, she did everything
Speaker 1: she could. She didn't want this to happen, and her
Speaker 1: filing doesn't negate that. It means that she tried everything
Speaker 1: and she just couldn't make it work. That's what her
Speaker 1: camp wants us to understand from this.
Speaker 3: The other piece of material we're getting from sources is
Speaker 3: regarding intimacy. I'm saying, the word intimacy come up a lot,
Speaker 3: and it's about how there had been a breakdown in
Speaker 3: an intimacy because Keith Urban had been traveling a lot,
Speaker 3: she had been traveling a lot, and basically they never
Speaker 3: saw each other. And it was the nail in the
Speaker 3: coffin when Keith Urban basically moved out, is what it
Speaker 3: sounds like, and that that happened at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the US summer. So that's sort of the other piece
Speaker 3: of the puzzle, which you were saying yesterday, Holly on
Speaker 3: the subscriber episode. Is this going to become a narrative
Speaker 3: about how hard Nicole works?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm interested because obviously all the things we just
Speaker 2: said that the sources saying, particularly the stuff about Keith
Speaker 2: and whether or not there's somebody else involved that is
Speaker 2: scorellous gossip at this point definitely is as you've very
Speaker 2: clearly stated, Amelia. What doesn't seem to be beyond question
Speaker 2: is that this was his call and that Nicole has
Speaker 2: been blindsided, in verted commas by this news. But it's
Speaker 2: interesting because now all the takes start coming out, and
Speaker 2: right now that's very much where the story sits that
Speaker 2: what did Keith do right? But the story will probably
Speaker 2: turn a few more times in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: And what we're seeing too are some angles about Nicole's
Speaker 2: ambition in inverted commas in terms of lots and lots
Speaker 2: of work, lots and lots of quite. I've seen some
Speaker 2: not so veiled references to the fact that she keeps
Speaker 2: picking these sexy parts that she's choosing to get naked
Speaker 2: a lot. I've seen some mean reporting about oh, he
Speaker 2: was so obsessed with his youth and beauty regime and
Speaker 2: he couldn't Basically, the undercurrent is like that two vain
Speaker 2: people couldn't survive in this marriage. All of that feel
Speaker 2: mean spirited. But what do we think about why we
Speaker 2: project so much and need to dig into all of
Speaker 2: this so much?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the projecting, because there's been as Amelia was saying
Speaker 3: about the vacuum, I think that's a really good point
Speaker 3: because then there's just a whole lot of think pieces
Speaker 3: or heart pieces that are sort of saying There was
Speaker 3: one I was reading that was saying, oh, well, we
Speaker 3: were lied to, like because that was the thing is
Speaker 3: that he called her baby girl. And they were always
Speaker 3: so publicly affectionate. People are now looking at their relationship
Speaker 3: through the lens of being quite performative, which to me
Speaker 3: is just such an absurd claim. When a couple has
Speaker 3: been together for nineteen years, things can just change. It
Speaker 3: doesn't mean they were lying three years ago when they
Speaker 3: were hooking up on the red carpet, like go for it.
Speaker 3: That relationship has just evolved, like so many do well.
Speaker 1: I also think that there's a parallel here. There's inescapable
Speaker 1: parallels with Nicole's divorce from Tom Cruise. The idea that
Speaker 1: she was blindsided, and again that's fairly well sourced reporting
Speaker 1: that she felt sort of very surprised by the turn
Speaker 1: the marriage took, and then also the idea that it
Speaker 1: was very much even though Nicole was this instigator of
Speaker 1: the divorce, it was something where she felt unable to
Speaker 1: do anything else about it. We also need to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that both of them were going through a
Speaker 1: lot of personal change over the last year. Nicole has
Speaker 1: written very beautifully in the Australian press about how hard
Speaker 1: it was to lose her mother in October of last
Speaker 1: year and how that really occasioned a big rethink for
Speaker 1: her of what her life was about and what she
Speaker 1: wanted to do with her life. Keith earlier this year,
Speaker 1: just before his tour began, fired a number of his
Speaker 1: band members, and people didn't really understand why that was.
Speaker 1: He'd been playing with them for a long time. He
Speaker 1: spoke at the time about how he was sort of
Speaker 1: reorganizing his life and rethinking how he wanted to do things.
Speaker 1: And then their children are growing up and one of
Speaker 1: their daughters has become a model and is getting some
Speaker 1: fame in her own right, So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: change there separate from the marriage.
Speaker 2: They're entering a new era. And we talked about this
Speaker 2: a little bit yesterday. Is that a midlife marriage collapse
Speaker 2: is very common, you know, and very often it's instigated
Speaker 2: by the woman, to be honest. Is that we talked
Speaker 2: also about how after losing a parent often that destabilization
Speaker 2: can cause you to make big changes in your life
Speaker 2: when you look around and go, this is this it now?
Speaker 2: And I agree with your point, Jesse, that I think
Speaker 2: the narrative of like, oh, they were faking it all
Speaker 2: this time is nonsense because you can't fake it for
Speaker 2: twenty years. And although some people were always sniffy about
Speaker 2: the PDA, and to be fair, Tom and Nicole were
Speaker 2: also known for their PDA. Like there are some very famous,
Speaker 2: very gorgeous red carpet shots of them from you know,
Speaker 2: the nineties and noughties where they were all over each other.
Speaker 2: Like I think that is maybe who she is, and
Speaker 2: that's okay, right, Like I don't think that means that
Speaker 2: anybody's acting there. But over twenty years, so much in
Speaker 2: your life shifts, and I think there are some celebrity
Speaker 2: relationships that, because they've been there for such a long time,
Speaker 2: feel they reflect something about either your own or your
Speaker 2: own life or chapters in your life. Then that's why
Speaker 2: you're so obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: And yet those parallels are striking because remember how with
Speaker 1: Nicole and Tom, there was that same line that Nicole
Speaker 1: was too ambitious, Nicole was working too hard, Nicole took
Speaker 1: her clothes off in a London production of the play
Speaker 1: The Blue Room, and she did, and there was also
Speaker 1: eyes White Shut, which of course they weren't together, but
Speaker 1: there was also this narrative that Nicole was putting herself
Speaker 1: out there too much.
Speaker 3: I think what we can probably conclude at this point
Speaker 3: is that the split is acrimonious like that.
Speaker 2: This is quite because if you can't get your lawyers
Speaker 2: together in a room and your pr people together in
Speaker 2: a room to settle on a statement that you can
Speaker 2: put out to put out a few fires.
Speaker 3: And if you're hearing that one party feels betrayed, it
Speaker 3: is going to be I just keep thinking, that is
Speaker 3: a lot of time with lawyers that they've got ahead
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: If you do want to go back to the beginning
Speaker 2: of this story, if it is obsessing you, I know
Speaker 2: it isn't obsessing everybody, but it's definitely obsessing. My group chats,
Speaker 2: my GenEx group chats are going off with this story,
Speaker 2: different levels of devastation about it. You can go and
Speaker 2: listen to our subset that we were talking about. There
Speaker 2: is a link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Go do that in case you missed it. If you
Speaker 1: are a woman over forty, you are doing your makeup wrong.
Speaker 1: This is the confronting truth that I learned from a
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram personality called Erica Taylor. She is an
Speaker 1: American makeup artist who has over ten million views on
Speaker 1: YouTube for a video called common Mistakes Which Age Your Face? Now.
Speaker 1: The premise of This is that she puts one hand
Speaker 1: over half of her face and she shows you her
Speaker 1: makeup done according to the way millennials have been taught
Speaker 1: for time immemorial to do their makeup, and then she
Speaker 1: reveals the second half of her face. She takes her
Speaker 1: hand away, and you suddenly see how much younger she
Speaker 1: looks when she follows her own tips on how to
Speaker 1: do your own makeup.
Speaker 3: And importantly, it's the same products. It's not even that
Speaker 3: she's using different products, it's just the great page is different.
Speaker 1: Yes, she's using the same products. Let's have a listen,
Speaker 1: because she's really interesting the way she talks here she
Speaker 1: is on eyeshadow.
Speaker 4: If we're in our forties and up even later thirties,
Speaker 4: and you've been doing the same makeup that you learned
Speaker 4: in high school or in your twenties for the last
Speaker 4: twenty to thirty years, forty years, possibly this is for
Speaker 4: you what we did with our shadow and what we
Speaker 4: should do with her eyeshadow.
Speaker 1: Let's go. And what I found so confronting about this
Speaker 1: and why I ran to Saphora this morning is because
Speaker 1: I thought I had a pretty good handle on how
Speaker 1: to do my makeup, because I am a woman in
Speaker 1: my early forties who read women's magazines religiously all through
Speaker 1: my teens. I know to put the little bit of
Speaker 1: white eye shadow underneath my brows for a bit of pop.
Speaker 1: I know how to do the lining of my lips.
Speaker 1: This is what I thought. No, I was wrong. I
Speaker 1: was wrong about all of it. Would you like to
Speaker 1: know the specific ways in which I've been doing my
Speaker 1: makeup wrong? Number one, you press your eyeliner. You do
Speaker 1: not pull your eyeliner, so you don't think about that.
Speaker 1: First second, pull your.
Speaker 2: Eye out to do this.
Speaker 1: You don't touch it because you're distorting the eye shape.
Speaker 1: Then you just need to let your eye be and
Speaker 1: then you need to press in your eyeliner like it's
Speaker 1: a little stamp.
Speaker 3: I've seen makeup hardist do that.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: I can't do it. It's definitely pul I definitely that's
Speaker 3: what we.
Speaker 1: Were taught to do. Secondly, you need to extend your
Speaker 1: eyeshadow up to your eyebrows.
Speaker 2: I'm not doing that. That's that's crazy, Like.
Speaker 1: That's what she says. That's what she says. Your blush
Speaker 1: it needs to go even higher than you think, even high.
Speaker 1: I don't think my blush.
Speaker 2: Could go high because I've been I've been hearing this
Speaker 2: advice about like we used to think, smile, put it
Speaker 2: on the apple of your cheek. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I've
Speaker 2: been hearing this advice for a while now on Mama
Speaker 2: Mea whenever we do, you know, make up advice for
Speaker 2: over forties, over fifties, it goes not and they're like
Speaker 2: high high. My blush at this point is kind of
Speaker 2: somewhere here, somewhere. I look like it's on your scalp exactly.
Speaker 2: And then finally, don't extend your lipliner to the edges
Speaker 2: of your lips because that will make them look bad
Speaker 2: or something. You just have to like stop halfway interesting
Speaker 2: because that's the opposite for your eyes. They say that
Speaker 2: your eyes.
Speaker 3: I was saying that if you stop kind of bluntly,
Speaker 3: because if you don't know how to do a wing,
Speaker 3: let's be honest, most of us are not good at
Speaker 3: a wing. Then we stop, and apparently that makes our
Speaker 3: eyes look smaller. So we've got to just kind of
Speaker 3: do a little flick to have them look up.
Speaker 1: A little flick, which felt crazy to me, but then
Speaker 1: I tried it today and I got about two hours
Speaker 1: sleep last night, so I think I look better than
Speaker 1: I would have looked without the flick you look.
Speaker 2: But question at this point, if I started coming in
Speaker 2: with a Wingland highlighter, would you think Holly has finally
Speaker 2: lost it? It's just lost. The highlighter is not gonna
Speaker 2: save your sister.
Speaker 1: It does feel crazy. I think this is all in
Speaker 1: service of an idea that I read about, which was
Speaker 1: that babies and children have extremely wide faces. They're very wide, yes,
Speaker 1: and then as your age, it sort of just turns long.
Speaker 1: And so all of these tips are in service of
Speaker 1: making your face look as wide as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and apparently the big thing I remember Maya writing
Speaker 3: about this that the thing that ages you is uneven
Speaker 3: skin tone. So what you have to try and do
Speaker 3: is get completely even skin tone. It's like one of
Speaker 3: the first things, that's what things.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, that seems easy to do underneath the harsh
Speaker 1: Australian sun. Thanks me for that very practical tip.
Speaker 2: No powder only creams. Yes, So if I haven't put
Speaker 2: a powder on my face for a long time, but
Speaker 2: if I am now extending.
Speaker 1: My eyes, yes, my brow yes, with your fingers, she says.
Speaker 2: Dark brown like up to here with the This is
Speaker 2: going to be very exciting for you all next week.
Speaker 1: The idea is, you know how we were taught to
Speaker 1: put a sort of gentle fawn color on our lids
Speaker 1: to make it pop. When you get older, you don't
Speaker 1: want it to pop because it looks swollen. You've got
Speaker 1: to use a medium colored eyes shadow on it.
Speaker 2: I feel victimized.
Speaker 3: In a moment the importance of cringe and why gen
Speaker 3: Z in particular have a phobia of it. Friends, it's
Speaker 3: time to put your hiking boots on and climb up
Speaker 3: cringe Mountain. Let me explain. The phrase cringe Mountain comes
Speaker 3: from an Australian creator consultant named Erica Mallett who coined
Speaker 3: the term in twenty twenty three. And she was part
Speaker 3: of a hip hop duo and she was also like
Speaker 3: a radio host on Triple J. All these career pursuits
Speaker 3: were very public, and when she was on Triple J,
Speaker 3: she would get messages through the text line calling her cringe.
Speaker 3: That was the number one piece of feedback. She got
Speaker 3: your cringe. An article in The New York Times by
Speaker 3: Gilander Mizzizzi says this idea of stumbling publicly enduring judgment
Speaker 3: and finding resilience in the process isn't new. What's new
Speaker 3: is the language. The phrase cringe is distinct of the
Speaker 3: Internet age, born of comments sections and meme culture to
Speaker 3: describe acute awkwardness or social embarrassment. Now, rather than get
Speaker 3: hurt by the cringe comments, Mallet decided to embrace the word.
Speaker 3: She decided it meant that she was taking risks, that
Speaker 3: the audience could hear, that she had not yet arrived
Speaker 3: at a place where she was clear and confident, and
Speaker 3: she acknowledged that witnessing that makes people very uncomfortable. Here's
Speaker 3: a little bit of how Erica explains her concept of
Speaker 3: Cringe Mountain.
Speaker 5: People who hate on you for climbing Crench Mountain are
Speaker 5: never the ones who have climbed Cringe Mountain themselves. They
Speaker 5: are never hating from the.
Speaker 1: Land of cool.
Speaker 5: They are always hating from base Camp. So this is
Speaker 5: Crnch Mountain. This is you climbing Cringe Mountain. Everyone has
Speaker 5: to climb Crunch Mountain to get to the land of cool.
Speaker 5: This is base Clamp where everyone starts, and this is
Speaker 5: where the haters live. Nobody who has ever been through
Speaker 5: the climb will hate on someone who is still climbing. Ever,
Speaker 5: because they know what it's like to climb crench Mountain,
Speaker 5: they would never laugh at you.
Speaker 1: They know it's hard.
Speaker 3: Now, this is proven very hard for gen Z in
Speaker 3: particular to do because they live in a culture of
Speaker 3: total digital surveillance, and that has made them a lot
Speaker 3: of research into this hesitant to try new things because
Speaker 3: they don't want to be seen as being cringe. Cringe culture,
Speaker 3: some creative say, is holding these young people back. And
Speaker 3: as Mallett says, you can't reach the land of cool
Speaker 3: until you have climbed your cringe mountain, Amelia, Cringe was
Speaker 3: definitely a thing for me growing up. It was a
Speaker 3: term we threw around. But do you think that there
Speaker 3: is a greater fear now, given that the Internet doesn't
Speaker 3: exist in your home study it exists in your pocket
Speaker 3: all the time, that we're more afraid of looking embarrassing online.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I just did a segment on a podcast
Speaker 1: about how I'm now trying out winged eyeliners. So I
Speaker 1: think I speak from a position of real authority from
Speaker 1: the very apex of Cringe Mountain, and the view from
Speaker 1: up here is good, honestly, Like I'm at the top,
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with this idea because I think it almost
Speaker 1: gives us permission to try new things. It almost gives
Speaker 1: us permission to lean into that embarrassment that we feel
Speaker 1: when we're trying something outside of our comfort zone. And
Speaker 1: the first thing that I thought of when I came
Speaker 1: across this concept was whether it's applicable to book writing.
Speaker 1: This is an achievement that I have not fulfilled in
Speaker 1: my life. I would love to one day. Did you
Speaker 1: feel you were climbing cringe Mountain when you go first
Speaker 1: wrote your books?
Speaker 2: Holly, one hundred percent, like one hundred percent. So much
Speaker 2: of writing is trying to get over your own cringe
Speaker 2: because I don't know who said it, Jesse you might remember.
Speaker 2: But there's some really good writing advice, which is, you
Speaker 2: know your ambition for what you're writing isn't yet matched
Speaker 2: by your skills, particularly when you start like You've got
Speaker 2: some talent, obviously, but in your mind, the thing you're
Speaker 2: going to write is this amazing.
Speaker 3: You know what good writing looks like, and you know
Speaker 3: that what you've done.
Speaker 2: Is yeah, and you're cringing through it, but it's also
Speaker 2: probably far worse in your mind than it is. So
Speaker 2: it's somewhere in the middle, but the cringe of it
Speaker 2: and the how dare you? And the who do you
Speaker 2: think you are? And people are going to laugh at
Speaker 2: that and all of those things. Yes, And then the
Speaker 2: other thing that is enormously cringe about writing a book
Speaker 2: is promoting a book because self promotion. And I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting because you're so right, Jesse, that generations that
Speaker 2: have grown up with internet surveillance are very sensitive to cringe.
Speaker 2: But gen X is very sensitive to self promotional cringe
Speaker 2: because we grew up being told that selling out is
Speaker 2: the worst thing you can do, Whereas if you've grown
Speaker 2: up with Instagram and people basically selling things to you
Speaker 2: all the time, everywhere you look, in every format, you
Speaker 2: kind of take a certain level of self promotion and
Speaker 2: selling on board. But gen X's we were told that's
Speaker 2: very uncool, and then suddenly you have to be out
Speaker 2: there all the time self promoting, and the cringe is real.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think with any creative process there is
Speaker 3: certainly an element of cringe. And I always think that
Speaker 3: the most ruthless reviews are written by people who have
Speaker 3: never written the book they want to write, Like I
Speaker 3: think Goodreads is full of peace, people tearing apart books
Speaker 3: with a sense that they could do a better job,
Speaker 3: and they might be able to do a better job,
Speaker 3: but they've never written the book. Like cringe is real
Speaker 3: in that there's this vicarious empathetic embarrassment that we see
Speaker 3: for people, even someone doing something embarrassing online or making
Speaker 3: a mistake or whatever. You go, oh, and that's a
Speaker 3: deeply psychological, just true emotion. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: I think there is a sense even online of who
Speaker 3: do you think you are? With people who are either
Speaker 3: publishing anything, their ambition is worn on their sleeve. Like
Speaker 3: in some ways gen Z are able to throw off
Speaker 3: those shackles because the content creator is something that never
Speaker 3: would have existed among say boomers. But then on the
Speaker 3: other hand, I was reading that there is this fear
Speaker 3: among I think it was Tyler, the creator was talking
Speaker 3: about how young people are scared of dancing now, like
Speaker 3: they'll go out and they he was in some situation
Speaker 3: they weren't dancing and he was like, why aren't you dancing?
Speaker 3: And they were like, I'm scared someone's going to film me.
Speaker 2: Like, but this is so real because I think about
Speaker 2: this for my daughter's generation, well, but not only, but
Speaker 2: they've literally grown up knowing that, and maybe millennials did too.
Speaker 2: You tell me, but that whatever you're doing, even in
Speaker 2: your friend group, even in your school, even in your life,
Speaker 2: somebody somewhere is probably bitching about it on the internet,
Speaker 2: as in I don't mean publicly shaming like we do
Speaker 2: with a celebrity, but in negative chat, in a group
Speaker 2: chat that is a side chat to the one that
Speaker 2: you have with your friends in the dms that you're
Speaker 2: not invited to, that someone will be going did you
Speaker 2: see that picture that so and so posted? Who does
Speaker 2: she think she is? Or did you see that thing
Speaker 2: that they tried to do on the football field or
Speaker 2: on the stage at the school musical or whatever, And
Speaker 2: who do they think they are? That is a very
Speaker 2: different experience than the one that I had growing up,
Speaker 2: for example, where of course people bitched about people. I'm
Speaker 2: not pretending that's a new invention, but there were so
Speaker 2: fewer forums and public places to do it. So if
Speaker 2: you literally grow up knowing that everything you're doing is
Speaker 2: being there's a commentary to it somewhere, and it will
Speaker 2: probably be mostly negative. It takes a very particular type
Speaker 2: of strengths to push through and climb cringe Mountain.
Speaker 1: You've just made me realize that cringe is basically doing
Speaker 1: something in the view of the Internet, which these days
Speaker 1: means everything. It's different from embarrassment. When Jesse and I
Speaker 1: were younger and we were growing up as millennials who
Speaker 1: maybe didn't even have smartphones yet, embarrassment was when you
Speaker 1: did something and you felt a little bit embarrassed. Cringe
Speaker 1: is when someone's watching you and they cringe. It's a
Speaker 1: different thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as you say, Amelia, it's like, if you
Speaker 3: want to launch a new business central to that strategy,
Speaker 3: we'll probably be making an Instagram page, and then whether
Speaker 3: that page grows or not is in public view. And
Speaker 3: maybe you get a new job. Do you post it
Speaker 3: on LinkedIn? Do you then do a few posts about
Speaker 3: your successes there and image of you at a conference?
Speaker 2: And what's the line?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, I see these people over here sharing their
Speaker 2: successes in a very proud way and it seems to
Speaker 2: be working for them. Can I do that or does that?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: What's the line? And sometimes you're gonna.
Speaker 3: Do you think that success hinges on a high tolerance
Speaker 3: for cringe? Do you think that people who climb the mountain.
Speaker 3: So this woman who does the videos, she found an
Speaker 3: old clip of post Malone, and post Malone is, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the most successful recording artists currently and this
Speaker 3: first film clip could only be described as cringe, which
Speaker 3: I'm sure if you went back to early Taylor Swift
Speaker 3: or if you went.
Speaker 2: Back Taylor Swift is a very good example.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you just have to greet your teeth and
Speaker 3: go call me cringe. I'm on my own journey. Do
Speaker 3: you think that the more tolerance you have for cringe,
Speaker 3: the higher you'll climb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tailor Swift's a great example. Another example is Robin.
Speaker 1: Think about the fact that in the first part of
Speaker 1: her career, Robin was really seen as a somewhat embarrassing
Speaker 1: pop artist, and then she comes out with a single
Speaker 1: that's probably one of the greatest songs of all time,
Speaker 1: Dancing on my Own, and she's not cringe anymore. But
Speaker 1: both Taylor and Robin did many years in the cringe trenches.
Speaker 2: But there are plenty of people who still would call
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift cringe right Like, I'm not one of them.
Speaker 2: We're not bashing her. Let's face, She's going to own
Speaker 2: the next few days. Out louders. As we know she's
Speaker 2: got an album dropping on Friday, you'll be hearing about it.
Speaker 2: But there are people who I watched one of her
Speaker 2: videos this week. It was like for kmart or something,
Speaker 2: and she was directing a version of her self target.
Speaker 2: She was directing a version of herself in this video,
Speaker 2: and one Taylor was dressed as the showgirl and was
Speaker 2: a bit wobbly on her feet and like looking wrong,
Speaker 2: and the other Taylor was the director. Now there was
Speaker 2: something a little bit cringe about that video, right, But
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift owns the universe, So who cares if there
Speaker 2: are people cringing about her? And cringe is to do
Speaker 2: with cool. Cool people don't like to ever be seen
Speaker 2: to try anything, and at some point you have to
Speaker 2: try to succeed anything. And it sounds like such a
Speaker 2: very cliched little mantra, but I think about it with
Speaker 2: my daughter, who not to turn this into a parenting conversation,
Speaker 2: but she loves football, she loves NFL. Sometimes on the
Speaker 2: field she'll make a really embarrassing mistake, like try and
Speaker 2: run and bounce the ball and it gets out of
Speaker 2: her hands. And it's more she's mortified because she knows
Speaker 2: her friends have seen it. She knows she tried to
Speaker 2: do something cool and she fucked it. Yeah, and the
Speaker 2: cringe is all part of it. And she'll come off
Speaker 2: and she's like, I shouldn't have even I'm not good
Speaker 2: at bouncing, I shouldn't have tried to bounce.
Speaker 3: And it's like, so it's a cringe about really the
Speaker 3: fear of trying. And if you've got a whole generation
Speaker 3: who is internalized the fear of trying.
Speaker 2: Being caught trying try in private is okay. But as
Speaker 2: you just said about cringe being trying something in the
Speaker 2: view of the internet, that's so true.
Speaker 3: Eventually you've kind of got to be seen with most
Speaker 3: of what you do, and failure is obviously in terms
Speaker 3: of growth, mindset and getting to where you want to be.
Speaker 3: Failure is one thing, but cringe is a whole other.
Speaker 3: There's shame and embarrassment just tied up with that that
Speaker 3: no one wants to feel.
Speaker 2: And it's why this analogy is great, right, because it's
Speaker 2: the idea you could now go, you know, I'm pitching
Speaker 2: my tent on cringe Mountain for six months, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like, yeah, I've got to cringe all out.
Speaker 2: I know I'm going to make some mistakes in however
Speaker 2: I talk about this thing or do this thing.
Speaker 3: Cringe isn't going to kill me.
Speaker 1: It's inherent to any creative endeavor. In twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: I think about an acquaintance of mine who has recently
Speaker 1: become somewhat incongruously a musician. She was always a musician,
Speaker 1: but she's now trying to make a niche in music
Speaker 1: for the dom and sub community, and so she just
Speaker 1: sort of like came out as a member of that
Speaker 1: community who was also a musician who writes music about
Speaker 1: it on Instagram exactly. And she I've watched her career
Speaker 1: kind of develop and really take on a lot of
Speaker 1: momentum in the last year or two on Instagram, and
Speaker 1: I think about how much cringe she must have felt
Speaker 1: coming out to everyone in her life about the fact
Speaker 1: that she was in this community and that she wanted
Speaker 1: to write music about this community. But if she wants
Speaker 1: to succeed as a musician these days, you just got
Speaker 1: to climb cringe mountain.
Speaker 3: Question, Actually, is it only worth climbing cringe mountain if
Speaker 3: you do land in the land of cool? Because I
Speaker 3: think I've had moments of climbing Cringe Mountain I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of I have an acquaintance who was doing something on
Speaker 3: the internet, very specific thing, and all of us were going,
Speaker 3: what the hell is she doing?
Speaker 1: Like this is mother in law?
Speaker 3: Yes it was me, as she was doing something that
Speaker 3: none of us understood. This niche has blown up to
Speaker 3: such an extent that this person is the most successful
Speaker 3: person any of us know. Most people will have heard
Speaker 3: of them. They have this incredible profile. It's amazing. And
Speaker 3: now all of us look at each other and go,
Speaker 3: we were wrong.
Speaker 2: So she's in the land of cool.
Speaker 3: She's absolutely in the land of cool. And we now
Speaker 3: look retrospectively on cringe and go, we were cringe for cringing.
Speaker 3: But if that person stayed at two hundred views, if
Speaker 3: there is no growth like that does happen for a
Speaker 3: lot of people, And then us a board mission.
Speaker 2: The narratives that you'll try, and you'll try, and then
Speaker 2: one day you will see like it just isn't true
Speaker 2: for everything. Very many of us never achieve our dreams,
Speaker 2: as they say, so I think that's fine. But if
Speaker 2: your friend had stayed on two hundred views, how long
Speaker 2: would she have slogged up Cringe Mountain four before she'd
Speaker 2: chosen a different path to really talture this analogy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was on Saturday night. I went to see Ben Lee, right,
Speaker 2: iconic Australian musician, and he was playing through an iconic
Speaker 2: album of his that's twenty five years old now, right,
Speaker 2: And one of the songs on the album is We're
Speaker 2: all in this together all yea, And he before he
Speaker 2: sung that, because he sang those songs in order, and
Speaker 2: it gets towards the end before he sings that song,
Speaker 2: he basically apologizes for it. He basically says, everybody thinks
Speaker 2: this song is cringe.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: He basically was like, it is cringe, but funnily enough,
Speaker 2: Australia or the world seems to find this song again
Speaker 2: at particular moments when they need it. But he basically
Speaker 2: sort of said, I'm sorry that this is cheesy and
Speaker 2: some of you find it embarrassing.
Speaker 1: He sort of said sorry, not sorry. Yeah, he did,
Speaker 1: And that brings me to I think my proposition to
Speaker 1: the two of you about Cringe Mountain, which is this
Speaker 1: is something that we've talked about how jen Z in
Speaker 1: particular is struggling with the concept of Cringe Mountain. I
Speaker 1: think as you get older, you realize that you can
Speaker 1: just keep climbing the mountain and that you just surrender
Speaker 1: to the cringe. It's not about the destination, it's about
Speaker 1: the journey.
Speaker 3: You feel less observed and you just say, I'm fed,
Speaker 3: and you know what, no one cares about me, and
Speaker 3: no one is looking at me as much as I
Speaker 3: think they are.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about something that I deeply love
Speaker 1: and it's something that I do when I'm feeling sad.
Speaker 1: That's what I do is I pull up my phone
Speaker 1: and I start watching the Jennifer Hudson show Spirit Tunnels.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what the spirit tunnels are if
Speaker 1: you don't know about them. So, Jennifer Hudson is an
Speaker 1: Egot winner. She's won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar,
Speaker 1: and a Tony. She now has a talk show that
Speaker 1: is pretty not particularly acclaimed or particularly widely viewed. But
Speaker 1: the Spirit Tunnel, which is what guests do before they
Speaker 1: come on the show, has in fact gone viral worldwide.
Speaker 1: And what happens is the guests before they come on set,
Speaker 1: they walk down a very normal corporate looking corridor which
Speaker 1: is lined with the staff of Jennifer Hudson's show, and
Speaker 1: the staff sing and they clap, drawing on the soul
Speaker 1: train tradition, and the guests engaging in singing and dancing
Speaker 1: and clapping, and really what happens is you watch their reactions,
Speaker 1: and in their reactions, you learn everything about that person.
Speaker 1: So there are two very best spirit tunnel performances, and
Speaker 1: the first is from Aaron Pierre, who voiced Mafasa in
Speaker 1: the Mafaser movie. This next spirit tunnel rock the Jinsennet.
Speaker 4: I'm not even sure I need to set this clip
Speaker 4: up at all. I'm gonna just let.
Speaker 1: Y'all watch, Okay, So I know that this is in
Speaker 1: a visual medium and you won't be able to fully
Speaker 1: appreciate this until you watch it. But Aaron Pierre, who
Speaker 1: no one had heard of before this spirit tunnel performance.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear, he was not a famous actor, but
Speaker 1: now he is famous because of how unbelievably smooth, appealing
Speaker 1: attractive he is as he walks down this spirit time.
Speaker 3: I'm going to share it on our Instagram story so
Speaker 3: everyone can find it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you are confused about spirits, Chunnles full Stop.
Speaker 2: We shared yesterday the top five, So get your phone,
Speaker 2: go to Mama Maha out loud Instagram and look at
Speaker 2: those and you know exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: The second spirit tunnel that I have to mention because
Speaker 1: I think about it, it's my Roman Empire. I think
Speaker 1: about it a couple of times a week. It's Michelle
Speaker 1: Obama who bought a certain confidence and an ease which
Speaker 1: I just aspire to having in everyday life, not just
Speaker 1: in spirit tunnels. Everybody that was her going uh oh.
Speaker 1: That was sung to the tune of Stevie Wonders I Wish,
Speaker 1: and it's just a delightful thirty seconds. There are other
Speaker 1: great ones. Gwen Stefani Usher came in on rollerblades. Chelsea
Speaker 1: Handler was an interesting one because she's obviously not comfortable dancing,
Speaker 1: which maybe puts her a disadvantage in spirit tunnel terms.
Speaker 1: But she was very endearingly awkward and she kept walking
Speaker 1: down the tunnel saying I wish I could dance better,
Speaker 1: and it kind of softened her image because I think
Speaker 1: of her as someone who's quite brash.
Speaker 2: I have a question, so I love your theory that
Speaker 2: how you react to a spirit tunnel reveals who you are,
Speaker 2: because it's kind of like when everybody sings happy Birthday
Speaker 2: to you in public.
Speaker 3: Or something exactly like that.
Speaker 2: But how comfortable you are with that, and Australians and
Speaker 2: English people like we were not not comfortable reveals a
Speaker 2: lot about you. But also this has become, as you said,
Speaker 2: like the Jennifer Hudson show, maybe successful, maybe not, but
Speaker 2: just like James Cordon's carpool Karaoke or so like, this
Speaker 2: has become the social play for that show. And so
Speaker 2: now if I was ever in vite to go on
Speaker 2: Jennifer Hudson, I would have to prep with my team, right,
Speaker 2: I would have to be like, how should I react.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to dance. I'm not talented, I
Speaker 2: don't know much the bet.
Speaker 1: Would it be.
Speaker 2: Better for me to just like high five people as
Speaker 2: the tunnel or should I try and do a bit
Speaker 2: of a shimmy or should I just pretend I'm not
Speaker 2: there choreographs? So now there must be strategy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well it's interesting because only one we only know
Speaker 1: of one person who's simply abstained from the Spirit Tunnel,
Speaker 1: and that was Noah Wiley from the Pit and obviously
Speaker 1: from Er and I actually kind of love that move.
Speaker 1: It's like he knew it wasn't going to do him
Speaker 1: any favors, so we just said, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: He says in the interview. He was like, I refuse
Speaker 3: to dance in public. And I was like same, Like
Speaker 3: I didn't know we could just range Mountain, Jesse range mountains.
Speaker 3: I was so indeed. I saw that, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I have never related more to anyone because the other
Speaker 3: one that I saw that I highly related to was
Speaker 3: Simon Cowell.
Speaker 1: Oh, dear, let's talk about Simon kaw.
Speaker 2: Kind of why this really got into psyche this week.
Speaker 2: He didn't know what he should.
Speaker 1: Have abstained is. I think I guess he figured, look,
Speaker 1: I'm in the music industry. It would be churlish of
Speaker 1: me not to get involved in the Spirit Tunnel. But
Speaker 1: let's just say he did the Nicole Kidman seal clap,
Speaker 1: if we remember that, where the fingers sort of display
Speaker 1: outwards and he just looks intensely uncomfortable. Here's a question
Speaker 1: for you, Holly, do you think any english person could
Speaker 1: ever do the Spirit Tunnel? No?
Speaker 2: I think that English people are not well plased. Oh no, no, no, Actually,
Speaker 2: he would be endearing in how grumpy he would be
Speaker 2: about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But it's just he would do finger guns.
Speaker 2: We don't know what to do, Like, it's just not
Speaker 2: in us. It's just not there. The other thing I
Speaker 2: always think about the Spirit Tunnel, and maybe this is
Speaker 2: just because of my workplace, is I don't know if
Speaker 2: the people who are doing all the singing clapping are
Speaker 2: really the crew, but those poor people have to learn
Speaker 2: us off rehearse it, presumably, and then they're having a
Speaker 2: busy day and they're doing all their things and Jennifer's like,
Speaker 2: get up, its Spirit Tunnel time. And you know, for
Speaker 2: Michelle Obama that corridor is packed, but for some other
Speaker 2: people it's a little light on. And it just reminds
Speaker 2: me of sometimes we've had like politicians into Mama Maya
Speaker 2: and you know, we're like, everybody look like really happy
Speaker 2: to see them.
Speaker 3: Come on.
Speaker 2: We need everybody for the social videos, and some people
Speaker 2: are like, I think I've got a headache or like,
Speaker 2: and then other people come and they're like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: I would also be really insecure about how many people
Speaker 2: turned up from me.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly vulnerable and there is no where to hide.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: It is the epitome of my worst nightmare.
Speaker 1: Like but that's why it's telling of personality. Because Aaron Pierre,
Speaker 1: no one showed up, no one knew who Aaron Pierre
Speaker 1: from The Fasta was, and he still bought his A
Speaker 1: game and it's a fun game to play. A parlor
Speaker 1: game in your life is to think about who in
Speaker 1: your life would do a great spirit tunnel and who
Speaker 1: just because I got to say, Maya, we're doing an
Speaker 1: amazing spirit tunny annoying.
Speaker 3: My Roman empire has been. There's a band called role
Speaker 3: Model and they are performing this song you will have
Speaker 3: heard it called Sally when the wine runs out live
Speaker 3: and every time they do it, there's a bridge, there's
Speaker 3: a really catchy bit and a really famous person gets on.
Speaker 2: Stage and down seas again another great social place.
Speaker 3: Yes, so you've got Kate Hudson, you've got Olivia Rodrigo,
Speaker 3: You've got I think Renee Rap came out, But the
Speaker 3: best one so far that I have watched on repeat,
Speaker 3: and I think it's always when it's someone you don't
Speaker 3: really expect to be amazing was Natalie Portman. She came out,
Speaker 3: she was so confident, so uninhibited, had incredible rhythm, and
Speaker 3: I was just like, what can I do in my life?
Speaker 3: I'll climb any fucking cringe mountain to look like Natalie
Speaker 3: Portman in my mid forties or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was a black Swan training?
Speaker 2: I was very rat there was something very she sold
Speaker 2: her soul to the devil about that particular appearance because
Speaker 2: she looked twenty and she was having the best time.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing cutoff jenim Shwe.
Speaker 3: It's like, you just can't learn it, and that's why
Speaker 3: it's so revealing him a person?
Speaker 1: Is it? You go?
Speaker 3: It really says something about who you are.
Speaker 2: We should share the little internet clips that we watch
Speaker 2: when we're sad, because Is and I do this quite often.
Speaker 2: Is Timothy Chalomaye on Saturday Night.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: He is exceptionally good, particularly the sketch she does with
Speaker 2: Pete Davidson called Eat Skirt, which every time I see
Speaker 2: it I have to love so hard. Share out that
Speaker 2: is with the things that just lift your spirits when
Speaker 2: you watch that.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love it.
Speaker 3: After the break, the actress who refuses to promote her
Speaker 3: new TV series or pocket any money from it, we
Speaker 3: unpack a scandal unfolding in real Time.
Speaker 2: One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday
Speaker 2: and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers. Follow the link
Speaker 2: of the show notes to get us in your ears
Speaker 2: five days a week. And a huge thank you to
Speaker 2: all our current subscribers.
Speaker 3: An actress named Natalie Dormer is refusing to promote her
Speaker 3: latest TV series and has donated every last cent of
Speaker 3: her salary to charity. This was not originally her plan.
Speaker 3: If you don't recognize that name, you will probably know
Speaker 3: her face. Natalie Drmer was in Game of Thrones, she
Speaker 3: was in the Hunger Games franchise, who popped up in
Speaker 3: Captain America. Anyway, this year, she's got this series coming
Speaker 3: out called The Lady, where she plays Sarah Ferguson, Duchess
Speaker 3: of York, and she says that after learning new information
Speaker 3: about Sarah Ferguson's behavior after filming had all wrapped up,
Speaker 3: she will not promote the project and will donate all
Speaker 3: earnings to the National Association for People Abused in Childhood
Speaker 3: and the Center of Expertise on Child's Sexual Abuse. Holly,
Speaker 3: I've seen some headlines Sarah Ferguson, Jeffrey Epstein leaked email
Speaker 3: something something, What is actually going on there?
Speaker 2: So an email has come to light recently in reputable
Speaker 2: British newspapers about an email that Sarah Ferguson sent to
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein all the way back in twenty eleven. Now
Speaker 2: most people know that Prince Andrew has had a whole
Speaker 2: Epstein related crisis and that the late Virginia just Frey
Speaker 2: accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was a minor,
Speaker 2: allegations that he denied, but he still reached a settlement
Speaker 2: with her. It was sealed, so we don't know exactly
Speaker 2: how much it was, but it's estimated to have been
Speaker 2: somewhere between three and twelve million pounds. Right, But this
Speaker 2: isn't about Andrew. This is about Fergie. What came to
Speaker 2: light via these emails, although this part of the story
Speaker 2: was well known already, is that Fergie borrowed money from
Speaker 2: Epstein in twenty ten. And I want you to all
Speaker 2: remember that everybody knew by twenty ten that Epstein had
Speaker 2: already been found guilty of sexual charges around a minor
Speaker 2: and had actually served time for it, So that was
Speaker 2: already on the table. It's not that people didn't know
Speaker 2: that right. In twenty ten, she borrows fifteen thousand pounds
Speaker 2: from him. That might seem like a small ish amount
Speaker 2: of money, but it was allegedly to pay off one
Speaker 2: of her personal assistants. And then she gave an inn
Speaker 2: where she publicly distanced herself from Epstein. So she said
Speaker 2: in that interview where she was brought up, you borrowed
Speaker 2: money from him? Is he one of your friends? She
Speaker 2: condemned pedophilia's sexual abuse, basically distance herself from Epstein, But
Speaker 2: the email which is the new part, was sent to
Speaker 2: him after that interview, basically apologizing for writing it. In
Speaker 2: the email, she writes, I know you feel hillaciously let
Speaker 2: down by me, and I must humbly apologize to you
Speaker 2: and your heart for that. She called him a steadfast,
Speaker 2: generous and supreme friend, and she assured him that she
Speaker 2: never used the P word her words about him. Now
Speaker 2: you might be wondering why a duchess would need to
Speaker 2: borrow fifteen thousand pounds from a dodgy billionaire.
Speaker 1: Couldn't you borrow it from the queen?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 2: You know, I wonder, because so this is what's really
Speaker 2: interesting about all this. I don't want to disappear down
Speaker 2: a tunnel. But we imagine that all the royals are loaded,
Speaker 2: and obviously compared to ordinary people, they are, but at
Speaker 2: unless you're one of the very top tiers. Most royals
Speaker 2: are asset rich but cash poor. So they might get
Speaker 2: given here's an estate to live in. It's got a
Speaker 2: crumbling beautiful estate house on it. It's got staff who
Speaker 2: need to be paid, it's got grounds that need to
Speaker 2: be maintained, it's got blah blah blah blah blah. But
Speaker 2: they're not allowed to earn money in traditional ways very often,
Speaker 2: and this is changing a bit over time as the
Speaker 2: rules have changed about who's on the public person who isn't.
Speaker 2: But broadly speaking, you're a bit restricted in what you
Speaker 2: can do for money, but your lifestyle might be quite expensive.
Speaker 2: And Prince Harry wrote about this in Spare and a
Speaker 2: lot of royles have sort of muched about it. Is
Speaker 2: that they perceive to be living the life of the
Speaker 2: extremely privileged, and they are, but their actual resources are
Speaker 2: not that deep, which is why your Prince Andrews of
Speaker 2: the world, well, I mean one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: the Prince Andrews of the World was traveling around the
Speaker 2: world staying in Epstein's house in Florida, staying in Epstein's
Speaker 2: house in New York, and various other high profile business
Speaker 2: people who want to associate themselves with royalty. It's funny
Speaker 2: because when I've said this before, but I was just
Speaker 2: sick and I was watching the Gilded Age and all
Speaker 2: the way back then. So in New York in the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, they were kind of buying dukes, you know,
Speaker 2: to marry into their families because the Americans had money
Speaker 2: and the Brits had status. And it's kind of like,
Speaker 2: why do you think, oh, I need to get back
Speaker 2: to Fergie, don't I?
Speaker 3: Yeah, why do you think that she's now been cast
Speaker 3: as such a villain in this story.
Speaker 2: So that email leaked a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 2: since that happened, a lot of charities in the UK
Speaker 2: have dumped Fergie, so they, you know, even though she's
Speaker 2: not an official royal anymore, she still is the patron
Speaker 2: of a breast cancer charity, and she still lives quite
Speaker 2: a public life, and she's still in the royal family,
Speaker 2: to the point that at Princess Michael of Kent's funeral
Speaker 2: recently she was there. She was quite prominent at it
Speaker 2: with Andrew. But since that email leaked that showed that
Speaker 2: she apologized to Epstein sort of cozied up to him
Speaker 2: after the fact, it's really trashed.
Speaker 3: Share commented or apologized about that. Has there been any
Speaker 3: comment from.
Speaker 2: Fergie not Since then, she hasn't made any official comment.
Speaker 2: But I think that what's happened is that people are
Speaker 2: conflating rightly, So I guess people are conflating the fact
Speaker 2: that you know, you pretended. And this is also what
Speaker 2: Prince Andrew got sort of skewered for in that famous interview.
Speaker 2: You pretended that as soon as you knew that Epstein
Speaker 2: was who he was, you backed off. But then, funnily enough,
Speaker 2: a year later, here's a photo of you at his
Speaker 2: house in New York, and Prince Andrew was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I just want to tell him that we couldn't be
Speaker 2: friends anymore, and like this is a similar thing.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. You just wonder what Epstein's dynamic was
Speaker 1: with these people, because the British ambassador to the US
Speaker 1: was just fired a couple of weeks ago for doing
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing as Fergie, publicly disavowing his relationship
Speaker 1: with Epstein. His friendship with him and then writing him
Speaker 1: an email saying, don't worry about everything I said in public.
Speaker 1: I actually think you're the best friend ever. Yes, So
Speaker 1: to go back.
Speaker 3: To Natalie do What I find interesting, right, is that
Speaker 3: in five minutes there will be a film about Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Epstein with let's go Sean pin Choice play Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 3: He'll be paid a bunch of money and he will
Speaker 3: be on every show promoting his movie about Epstein. Probably
Speaker 3: won't donate that money to charity We've got. I mean,
Speaker 3: Taika Waititi has played Hitler, like you know, people play
Speaker 3: bad in adverted commas characters all the time. For Dormer,
Speaker 3: do you think it was that she played a character
Speaker 3: who she thought she knew and understood, and now she
Speaker 3: feels like she hasn't presented an accurate portrayal because she
Speaker 3: didn't have this piece of information.
Speaker 2: Look, it's hard to know without seeing the project, right,
Speaker 2: but let's imagine, because that Fergie is one of those
Speaker 2: people who lives in the British imagination as a bit
Speaker 2: of a joke. Right, So, even though she was also
Speaker 2: busted by an undercover reporter soliciting access to the Prince
Speaker 2: for money for fifty pounds, like, oh, I'm sure I
Speaker 2: could get your business proposition in front of them, like
Speaker 2: she has been done for a few dodgy things over time.
Speaker 1: Has she ever considered a job?
Speaker 2: It is a very good question. One of the things
Speaker 2: she said in the Epstein email is that because she
Speaker 2: writes children's books, right, And she said, that's why I
Speaker 2: had to say those things, like she's very dodgy anyway,
Speaker 2: But she even with that knowledge, the space she occupies
Speaker 2: in the British sort of culture is a bit of
Speaker 2: a joke and interesting. Who knows how Natalie Dormer plays
Speaker 2: her because maybe it's quite light And what I wonder
Speaker 2: about that because I think you're so right, Jesse, like
Speaker 2: the Sean Penn will just throw him under the bus.
Speaker 2: Sean Penn is playing Jeffrey Epstein in the arm in
Speaker 2: it is taking the millions. But you know that when
Speaker 2: that project comes out, every press interview that Dorma does,
Speaker 2: she would be asked about this now because the Epstein
Speaker 2: email has changed the way people see Fergie. I think,
Speaker 2: at least for now it might blow over. But she
Speaker 2: would be saying, how do you feel about portraying somebody
Speaker 2: who was you know, an apologist for a pedophile or whatever.
Speaker 2: And does Natalie do normally want to put herself through
Speaker 2: that this show? I think that actually it's quite a
Speaker 2: small part in it. It's not about Sarah Ferguson, but
Speaker 2: Sarah Ferguson appears in the story do you want to
Speaker 2: put yourself through that?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, she thought she'd be like answering questions
Speaker 1: about the toe sucking that fergue in the eighties, not
Speaker 1: about pedophilia exactly.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the things that it brings
Speaker 2: up that's interesting to me is that we've always touch tutted,
Speaker 2: and rightly so about how much public money royals get.
Speaker 2: But one of the things about them not having an
Speaker 2: income stream and not being allowed to earn money, which
Speaker 2: is what Prince Harry has complained about a lot. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons why he and Megan wanted to leave
Speaker 2: is it does actually open them up to being quite corruptible.
Speaker 2: And Andrew isn't the only royal who that's been the
Speaker 2: case for and so it kind of makes you think
Speaker 2: we ask all the time, why doesn't King Charles cast
Speaker 2: Andrew like properly out like publicly humiliate him, kick him
Speaker 2: out of the family and Fergie, and some of the
Speaker 2: speculation I've seen around this reporting has been that they
Speaker 2: might be more detrimental outside the tenth and inside the tent,
Speaker 2: as in they'll just start talking they know like harsh yep,
Speaker 2: they know too, like exactly like Harry, he's you know,
Speaker 2: from outside the tent. He can say all these things.
Speaker 2: They know a lot of things, they can reveal a
Speaker 2: lot of things, and so that actually what the Lion
Speaker 2: King Charles is trying to walk is like.
Speaker 3: Keep them onside.
Speaker 2: I don't approve of my brother and his wife, but
Speaker 2: they're not completely kicking them out because they might be
Speaker 2: more trouble outside. Out Louder is a massive thank you
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