Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking
Speaker 2: about on Monday, the nineteenth of August. I'm Holly Wainwright.
Speaker 3: I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 1: I'm mea Friedman. No, no, I'm still at the logis.
Speaker 3: What time did you have to get there? Yesterday?
Speaker 4: God?
Speaker 1: I got their hat. The red carpet started at three
Speaker 1: point thirty, so we got there at four. I left there.
Speaker 1: I was the first one in Anoba, Brunna and I
Speaker 1: and that was midnight, just after midnight, maybe quarter past twelve.
Speaker 2: I'm justay. So the outlouders are aware. Mia does not
Speaker 2: generally do long long events. That's an absolute marathon for
Speaker 2: event friend events at all. Anyway, on the show today,
Speaker 2: as already discussed, Mia is going to tell us about
Speaker 2: the logis. She's very, very tired, as she said, but
Speaker 2: she's a professional, God damn it, and she's going to
Speaker 2: push through. Also, why is absolutely everything suddenly Blake Lively's fault?
Speaker 2: The anatomy of a mighty backlash and why five people
Speaker 2: have been charged with the death of friend's icon Matthew Perry.
Speaker 2: But first, Jesse, in case you missed it, today, the
Speaker 2: three of us are looking very demure. We're being very mindful,
Speaker 2: very cutesye and if that doesn't make sense to you,
Speaker 2: welcome to the Internet. A TikTok trend has thrusted the
Speaker 2: word demure back into the lexicon, even though I'm fairly
Speaker 2: certain that most people don't actually know what it means.
Speaker 2: It all started with a TikTok creator named Jules Lebron
Speaker 2: posting a video with tips about managing you know, your
Speaker 2: makeup and your mustache sweat, how to deal with it.
Speaker 2: Here's what she said in the og video.
Speaker 4: Very demure, very mindful. I don't come to work with
Speaker 4: a green cut crew, don't look like a clown. When
Speaker 4: I go to work, I don't do too much. I'm
Speaker 4: very mindful while I'm out. See how I look very presentable.
Speaker 4: The way I came to the interview is the way
Speaker 4: I go to the job. A lot of you girls
Speaker 4: go to the interview looking like Marriage Simpson and go
Speaker 4: to the job looking like Patty and Selma, not demure.
Speaker 4: I'm very modest, I'm very mindful. You see my shirt
Speaker 4: only a little chi chio, not my be mindful of
Speaker 4: why they hired you. Here's your reality check, diva. What's
Speaker 4: the name you'd like me to make it out to?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 5: It's the context to this is that Jules Lebron is
Speaker 5: a trans woman, and so there's something very ironic and
Speaker 5: she is being sarcastic with a raised eyebrow speaking about
Speaker 5: femininity and gender in a way that's actually very cool
Speaker 5: and very transgressive.
Speaker 1: It's like a bit and she's really lent in. Since
Speaker 1: it's gone viral, she's lent in. And now if you
Speaker 1: go to her account, there's like twenty different reels of
Speaker 1: her at the airport. How to be mindful at the airport.
Speaker 1: It's like, I just have a soda at the airport,
Speaker 1: very mindful, very demure. I'm not like you other girls
Speaker 1: who do.
Speaker 5: Shut because demure means reserved and shy.
Speaker 1: And kind of feminist.
Speaker 5: Femin and the trend then, you know, took on a
Speaker 5: life of its own. And you see women going, see
Speaker 5: how I'm eating this donut, very demure, and they're just
Speaker 5: like eating a donut like a mad person, or like
Speaker 5: having a diet coke fountain in my house is very demure,
Speaker 5: which it's not. That's the opposite of So that's why
Speaker 5: it's funny. Have you guys heard this everywhere?
Speaker 4: Look?
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 1: And the thing about the internet now, and I know
Speaker 1: that some out louders are like, well are you talking
Speaker 1: about things that are on TikTok? The thing with TikTok
Speaker 1: is that it is dictating culture. And I like that
Speaker 1: there are just random, weird, funny things, but it can
Speaker 1: often feel like the culture has become a joke that
Speaker 1: you're never in on. It's an inside joke, and by
Speaker 1: the time someone explains the joke to you, it's not
Speaker 1: at all funny. And also it's over and there's another one,
Speaker 1: And so you can have that constant feeling like you're
Speaker 1: always just out of the loop, or that you've sort
Speaker 1: of come in halfway through a conversation. And even if
Speaker 1: you're fluent in TikTok and the Internet, which we all are,
Speaker 1: it can be really hard to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of what it actually is. Like I remember we slipped
Speaker 1: back bun and whatever that thing was when we did
Speaker 1: the stupid dance. I had to google what it means
Speaker 1: and then you go down this rabbit hole and then
Speaker 1: you're like, I have a life. I have a mortgage
Speaker 1: of responsibilities. I can't be playing CSI TikTok every three days.
Speaker 2: Also, the speed is remarkable, right because I'm probably quite
Speaker 2: basic when it comes to this stuff, and I open
Speaker 2: probably my Instagram on Saturday, and suddenly everybody's demule, like
Speaker 2: suddenly just everything, and then the Logi's red carpet last night,
Speaker 2: and Tony Armstrong and his girlfriend are making a joke
Speaker 2: about being demure, like it's just super super quick, and
Speaker 2: then it will be gone again in a day, as
Speaker 2: you say me. So by the time my children get
Speaker 2: home tonight and I asked them about being demure, they
Speaker 2: will think I'm the most embarrassing thing that ever lived.
Speaker 5: And what's hard to is that it's really difficult to
Speaker 5: determine where any of these things start.
Speaker 3: I always want to go back to the start.
Speaker 5: I think it was like Friday night and I was
Speaker 5: in the depths of TikTok, being like, where did demure start?
Speaker 3: Was it a Kardashian thing? It used to be that.
Speaker 5: It was some massive cultural icon who would start a
Speaker 5: trend like jewels.
Speaker 1: Well, like raygun you could see, like the internet was
Speaker 1: doing all these memes and takes on ygun, but you
Speaker 1: could see that was an actual thing that happened, that
Speaker 1: had global significance and everyone could go and see it,
Speaker 1: and it was all just versions of that. But sometimes
Speaker 1: it's like the vernacular where you just don't understand it
Speaker 1: and you always feel like you're just a little bit behind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, look, headline is the three of us not very general,
Speaker 5: not very.
Speaker 1: And the Gold Logi goes to Larry MD.
Speaker 5: Last night was the sixty fourth TV week Logi Awards,
Speaker 5: and Mia Friedman, who was sitting in the front row,
Speaker 5: somehow cried three times and clapped too loudly once. If
Speaker 5: you squinted, you could see her dancing to the John
Speaker 5: Farnham tribute and maybe also darting to the bathroom every
Speaker 5: fifteen minutes, not to do illicit substances, but because her
Speaker 5: bladder can't hold much these days. There's so much to
Speaker 5: unpack and we haven't spoken properly about it yet, so
Speaker 5: we thought we'd do our catch up on the show. Mia,
Speaker 5: Can we please start with what you wore? Was it demure?
Speaker 5: Because everyone saw demure that you threw out and then
Speaker 5: everyone was just sitting there on Instagram being like, oh,
Speaker 5: Maya will post what she's wearing. And then we waited,
Speaker 5: and we waited and we waited, and then Larry Emda
Speaker 5: won a go logan. Wait did she even show up
Speaker 5: the next day?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 3: Where's your dress? What was it? What do it look like? Please?
Speaker 1: I have a thing where I don't get excited about
Speaker 1: event dressing. I love clothes as our ladders. No, I
Speaker 1: love clothes more than anything, and yet anything red carpet
Speaker 1: it just doesn't feel interesting to me because there's no
Speaker 1: styling involved. It's just like one dress and a shoe,
Speaker 1: which to me is not very creative. So I think
Speaker 1: that's at my heart of complete apathy about.
Speaker 3: These were you not?
Speaker 5: Holly and I were in the depths of panic on
Speaker 5: Sunday morning when we woke up and we saw that
Speaker 5: people were getting their hair and makeup done. They were
Speaker 5: walking down the street in their ballgowns. Sarah Harris looked stunning.
Speaker 5: We saw Laura Byrne and Britt Hockley, they were just
Speaker 5: in these dun downs and we were going, me out
Speaker 5: is woefully unprepared hair, yet.
Speaker 2: It's trying down to get really worried about her when
Speaker 2: it was mid morning on Sunday and I messaged and
Speaker 2: I was like, baby spiraling, spiralingly.
Speaker 1: You could feel it. I wasn't spiraling.
Speaker 2: Two hours away, I could sense it. I'm like, why
Speaker 2: isn't she dressed? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I wasn't spiraling. I just was like not being able
Speaker 1: to summon myself to care, because I mean to say
Speaker 1: that I was a side character last night is a
Speaker 1: gross understatement. I was there because Strife, of which I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer, was nominated for Best Comedy. I was
Speaker 1: legitimately invited, but I get very intimidated by those things.
Speaker 1: And I until about two hours, three hours before, I
Speaker 1: was still considering not going because I've also been sick,
Speaker 1: and I was just like I could ostensibly get away
Speaker 1: with chucking Asiki.
Speaker 5: I think where you were at on Sunday. I've had
Speaker 5: nightmares about being in that situation. And it's like my
Speaker 5: school formal and all the other girls were getting their
Speaker 5: hair and makeup done, and they had bought really fancy
Speaker 5: dresses and I'd gone with mum, and my dress was
Speaker 5: secondhand and didn't fit.
Speaker 3: That's what I was worried about.
Speaker 5: Well, you're not worried that everyone else was getting their
Speaker 5: hair and makeup professionally done and you had you and
Speaker 5: your ghday.
Speaker 1: Yes no, and then yes no. I was all confident.
Speaker 2: You're confident in your offering, right Maas I.
Speaker 1: Know I would say I'm lazy and I couldn't be bothered.
Speaker 1: So I was offered by Binge a slot at eight
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning, and I was just like, lull,
Speaker 1: it's already going to be a marathon. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: going and getting your hair and makeupsne? I just don't
Speaker 1: care enough. And I also quite like the getting ready part.
Speaker 1: That's actually more of my favorite thing is putting on
Speaker 1: the makeup. I'm not very good at putting on a
Speaker 1: lot of makeup, but I always just like to look
Speaker 1: like myself, and I feel like when you get your
Speaker 1: hair and makeup done, you've got to make a lot
Speaker 1: of small talk. And also I just don't ever quite
Speaker 1: feel like myself anyway. Bloody, first world, lovely problems. So
Speaker 1: I also knew that I had a number of things
Speaker 1: in my wardrobe because I wear kind of things that
Speaker 1: most people might wear to on a red carpet, like
Speaker 1: just to work on a Tuesday, right, So it's not
Speaker 1: like I was like, oh, I don't have anything fancy.
Speaker 1: I've got so much fancy stuff, and so I knew
Speaker 1: that what I wanted to wear was probably in there,
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't, that was kind of exciting because
Speaker 1: I'd have to make it work. You're looking horrified.
Speaker 5: I am, Okay, tell us what you chose, because I saw,
Speaker 5: I actually liked of all your options that you shared
Speaker 5: on Instagram, you had a few suit options, you had
Speaker 5: your bratsuit, and I went, that's kind of cool, because
Speaker 5: but then what did you choose?
Speaker 3: Please tell us?
Speaker 1: Okay, was it something you know quite well? Because I
Speaker 1: wore it to your wedding, so.
Speaker 3: I knew you'd wear the dress. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's a good story behind this because I bought
Speaker 1: this skirt from a lady startup called Jumbled, which is
Speaker 1: a brilliant boutique in Orange, and we were there for
Speaker 1: a show quite a few years ago, maybe three years ago.
Speaker 1: Time is slippery to me. But and then I really
Speaker 1: liked it. It was kind of sequined, but muted sequined,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. And so then I went online
Speaker 1: and found a matching top, but the top was like
Speaker 1: a bit cropped, so I wasn't gonna wear a crop top.
Speaker 1: And this was years ago. And so then for your wedding, Jesse,
Speaker 1: when I went through a similar thing and tried on
Speaker 1: eight billion dresses, I took the top and the skirt
Speaker 1: to my alterationist. Is anyone still listening? This is so boring.
Speaker 1: I took it to my alterationist and got her to
Speaker 1: turn it into just one dress, and so I had that,
Speaker 1: and I tried on a bunch of stuff, and in
Speaker 1: the end that worked for the same reason that it
Speaker 1: worked for your wedding, because it was me in that
Speaker 1: it was. It was fancier than I'd usually wear because
Speaker 1: it was like a dress, and yet it was like
Speaker 1: muted sequence. It didn't feel attention grabby.
Speaker 2: The thing that's interesting about this whole thing, and we
Speaker 2: have to find out if there was anything fun about
Speaker 2: the logis is that this kind of stuff is your
Speaker 2: worst nightmare. You have anxiety around going to these kind
Speaker 2: of big social things, don't you. I want to give
Speaker 2: some context that when I used to work at TV Week,
Speaker 2: who obviously organize the logis it's a big thing. Some
Speaker 2: people are so desperate to go to that event. I
Speaker 2: remember the year I was working at TV week one
Speaker 2: down the list. Celebrity was so desperate for a ticket
Speaker 2: and the editor was like, no, you can't have a ticket.
Speaker 2: Were full that She said, if I shaved my head,
Speaker 2: can I come?
Speaker 3: Oh wow?
Speaker 2: And the editor said yes and she did. That is
Speaker 2: how desperate some people are to be on that red
Speaker 2: carpet because it's about and probably less so now, but
Speaker 2: it's the attention economy, right, And if you're trying to
Speaker 2: get somewhere, if you're trying to be noticed, if you're
Speaker 2: trying to meet the right people, it's a really big deal.
Speaker 2: But all of that kind of stuff, that networking kind
Speaker 2: of stuff is your worst nightmare, right manea. But had
Speaker 2: a thing fun about being there, do you know what?
Speaker 1: I had a really fun time, apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that it was so long. It was like being on
Speaker 1: a long haul flight.
Speaker 2: Why but then you got off.
Speaker 1: And you were still in the same place. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But by the time we sat down. So some people,
Speaker 1: who do they talk to kateline Brook she just had
Speaker 1: to do three hours on the red carpet. It was
Speaker 1: funny because we walked up and down the red carpet.
Speaker 1: Brunner and I It looked like we were trying to
Speaker 1: get interviewed, but we were just looking for the mum
Speaker 1: and mea people who were interviewing people in the red
Speaker 1: carp We thought, we've got to talk to them. We
Speaker 1: couldn't find them, so it looked like we were doing
Speaker 1: desperate laps. We eventually found them how to chat with them,
Speaker 1: how to chat to news dot com who made us
Speaker 1: read at Tongue Twister. You know, everyone needs their content right,
Speaker 1: And it was just quite surreal, like it was very intense.
Speaker 1: And then you go inside and it's just like a
Speaker 1: ballroom if you've ever been to any kind of black
Speaker 1: tie thing, and you sit down, but then it was
Speaker 1: two hours until the ceremony started. It fed us, which
Speaker 1: is good because we sat down up.
Speaker 2: For nice food.
Speaker 1: Bruna pap Andrea, who is the main producer of Strife
Speaker 1: and the producer of everything Big Little Eyes and you know,
Speaker 1: she's big time. She's one Golden Globes and Emmy's and
Speaker 1: all of those things. She's been to all of those
Speaker 1: awards ceremonies. She said it was the best food of
Speaker 1: any awards ceremony she's ever been to.
Speaker 3: Was she just being polite?
Speaker 1: No, she was so into it. It was really funny.
Speaker 1: So the other shock was that we were not just
Speaker 1: in the front row of tables, but in the front
Speaker 1: row in the middle of the table, so we were
Speaker 1: practically directly in front of where the people were on.
Speaker 2: That because Asha Keddy was on your table.
Speaker 1: Correct, it wasn't because of my dress. So we were
Speaker 1: on the table with Asher and so she was a
Speaker 1: Gold LOGI nominee, so she's a big deal. And that
Speaker 1: was really interesting too because I've been to the Logis
Speaker 1: one time before, but I was like in the absolute
Speaker 1: bleaches and I was, you know, not really part of
Speaker 1: it at all. It was when I was doing a
Speaker 1: bit of work for the Today Show, so I just
Speaker 1: felt like I was on someone else's ride, which I
Speaker 1: absolutely was. We had a really funny table. It was
Speaker 1: like me Bruna Ash's husband, Alex Demitriardi's Emma Lung Matt Day,
Speaker 1: whose wife is the EP of sixty Minutes and she
Speaker 1: actually won a LOGI I saw that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it was just it was a lovely and
Speaker 5: what outfits did you like as someone who was there?
Speaker 3: Like what stood out to you all?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: Like there were so many great looks. There was one
Speaker 1: person who was a publicist for Channel nine who I
Speaker 1: just loved her dress. It was like I went and
Speaker 1: tried to buy it. It was from the curve range
Speaker 1: that aesos do and it was just like head to
Speaker 1: toe bright blue sequence and just like she just looked
Speaker 1: so comfortable, and she was wearing like matching glittery blue trainers.
Speaker 1: But you know, like Sonya Krueger always looks incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone just tried hard, which was so lovely. Julia Morris
Speaker 1: looked beautiful, she was in this huge gown. Kate Langbrook
Speaker 1: looked phenomenal. Lisa McCune's gown was beautiful. I only saw
Speaker 1: her at the end when she was giving the Gold Low.
Speaker 1: And there were lots of people that you just don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, because a lot of shows were nominated, and
Speaker 1: there was the crew and the cast from all of
Speaker 1: those shows, so a lot of behind the scenes people
Speaker 1: were there looking just stunning, like people went to so
Speaker 1: much effort and that was just interesting to look at.
Speaker 1: And then the other highlight was the John Farnham tribute
Speaker 1: with Guys Sebastian and Jessica Mawboy that was so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Were on and I cried lots.
Speaker 1: I didn't expect to cry, but there were lots of
Speaker 1: speeches that men made and boys made about mothers and
Speaker 1: about their mothers. And that fifteen year old guy that
Speaker 1: won the two big awards, the way he spoke about
Speaker 1: his parents and how he cried.
Speaker 7: I'd love to thank my friend's family, my brother and
Speaker 7: my sister, and my mom and dad, and I love
Speaker 7: to thank my drum turg Ninia Townsend.
Speaker 3: Couldn't die it without you.
Speaker 1: I always find it when people are emotional, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to be emotional back. Like it's easy to sit
Speaker 1: at home and be really cynical about the logis and
Speaker 1: I've done that every single year, but when you're actually
Speaker 1: in the room, it's very moving. Like the amount that
Speaker 1: people care to be nominated or to win, like Rebecca
Speaker 1: Gibney was stunning, like Amda was really moving. What Trent
Speaker 1: Dalton said about the mums watching at.
Speaker 6: Home, I just want to send a shout out to
Speaker 6: all the mums who are a bit like Frankie Bell
Speaker 6: and they're out in the suburbs tonight and they're feeling
Speaker 6: a bit lost in the darkness, and I just want
Speaker 6: to tell you, like, please believe me when I say
Speaker 6: that when your children look at you in the darkness,
Speaker 6: all they see is your light.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of stuff that was just beautiful.
Speaker 2: I cried all those things on the couch, so I'm
Speaker 2: not at all surprised that you were a puddle. I
Speaker 2: were like, they were really lovely. I wanted to ask you, though.
Speaker 2: One thing I always wonder about the room is so
Speaker 2: Sam Pang was the host, and he is quite roasty,
Speaker 2: and this is the second year he's done it, which
Speaker 2: means he must be good at it, right, because it's
Speaker 2: hosting any awards show is the job that nobody wants,
Speaker 2: apparently because you get so slammed for it. But he
Speaker 2: gets up and he does the roasts in the room.
Speaker 2: Does that go down?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Because I've read commentary before that says one of the
Speaker 2: reasons why awards show hosting is so hard is you've
Speaker 2: got to offend all the people who are right there
Speaker 2: to appease the people at home who want to feel
Speaker 2: good about not being there.
Speaker 1: That's so true. And he nailed it, and the room
Speaker 1: laughed and they were with him, I think because his
Speaker 1: jokes felt pointed, but they didn't feel mean, and so
Speaker 1: the people that he was most funny about, like Andy
Speaker 1: Lee making jokes about Habish and doctor Chris Brown making
Speaker 1: jokes about Robert Owen getting his job and then being
Speaker 1: nominated for Gold. A lot of them were his friends
Speaker 1: and so they're fun. They're you know, comedians, a lot
Speaker 1: of them. So I remember Asha said, oh, I feel
Speaker 1: like Sam was too easy on me. That can't be
Speaker 1: the end of it. You know, she didn't. He didn't
Speaker 1: take me out, So I think it didn't ever feel
Speaker 1: like he was punching down. It felt more like he
Speaker 1: was punching up. He punched up at the networks a lot,
Speaker 1: which everybody really laughed at the room was very much
Speaker 1: with Sam.
Speaker 5: We should probably ask as well, you were nominated, strife
Speaker 5: was nominated.
Speaker 1: We did not win.
Speaker 3: Okay, you didn't win.
Speaker 5: How do you feel about that? Because we are closet competitive?
Speaker 5: But how did it feel to lose?
Speaker 1: A LOGI it never feels good to lose anything. Like
Speaker 1: everybody says they don't care until they win, and then
Speaker 1: they care a lot. Yeah, Like that was what was
Speaker 1: so lovely about when debraah Mammon got up and she
Speaker 1: won Best Lead Actress in a Drama for Total Control
Speaker 1: and that wasn't expected that she would win that, and
Speaker 1: she got up and she just said, I really wanted this,
Speaker 1: And everyone in the room really like laughed in a
Speaker 1: sense of we get it because she said, what you
Speaker 1: meant to be so cool and be like, oh, I
Speaker 1: was fine, it's whatever. But everybody in the room really
Speaker 1: wants to win.
Speaker 3: Like everybody wants to win.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't want to win?
Speaker 5: I am incredibly competitive. But when I saw that we
Speaker 5: were beaten by Utopia, I could sleep. I could sleep
Speaker 5: at night. Yes, I do love Utopia. I think it's
Speaker 5: a great show. We're going to be beaten Utopia, I accept.
Speaker 1: And that was their last season, so and we were
Speaker 1: also saying, look, it was our first season of strife
Speaker 1: in the starting to in the middle of making our
Speaker 1: second season. Maybe by the time we've got third or
Speaker 1: fourth or fifth or sixth seasons, sometimes it takes a
Speaker 1: while to gain that momentum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the first time it's occurred to me that
Speaker 2: you're going to have to go to the logis every year.
Speaker 1: That hasn't occurred to me that as long as we're nominated.
Speaker 2: Okay, out louders, if you've got more questions for Mia
Speaker 2: about her big night at the Logis or anything Logis related.
Speaker 2: Jump in the Outlauders Facebook group and ask them now,
Speaker 2: because we're going to be recording a special subscribers episode
Speaker 2: all about the Logis for those who still haven't got
Speaker 2: enough of me A's debilitating wardrobe.
Speaker 3: My time going to be this Guss. If you want goss,
Speaker 3: That's what I'm.
Speaker 5: Going to be asking about. I need to know who
Speaker 5: you talk to, I need to know precisely what you ate.
Speaker 5: And the other thing is the.
Speaker 1: Poet doing drugs in the toilet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're going to be telling us about that in
Speaker 5: tomorrow subscriber episode.
Speaker 1: In the same way that the Internet has a new
Speaker 1: joke every week, as we discussed at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, it can also feel like every week the
Speaker 1: Internet chooses someone, almost always a woman to pylon, and
Speaker 1: the force of that can totally dominate the culture, well,
Speaker 1: certainly the media and social media. A few weeks ago
Speaker 1: it was j Loo, and last week it was Raygun,
Speaker 1: and this week it's Blake Lively, who has a new
Speaker 1: movie out called It Ends with Us that we spoke
Speaker 1: about on last week's show. And in the same way
Speaker 1: that the demure jokes and means can be really hard
Speaker 1: to understand. It can also be hard to understand the
Speaker 1: source of the intense hatred and criticism that engulfs these
Speaker 1: people at the center of these storms. You can find
Speaker 1: yourself wondering, but what actually did she do? Because there
Speaker 1: is so much noise that the storm itself becomes the story.
Speaker 1: And so it is with Blake Lively. This week you
Speaker 1: may have seen her being roasted everywhere, but particularly on
Speaker 1: social media, where she is the villain of the week
Speaker 1: in a huge way. Now, it's important to note that
Speaker 1: we don't like to participate in these pylons or in
Speaker 1: cancel culture, but what we do do on this show
Speaker 1: is to try and get some perspective about what's really
Speaker 1: going on so that we can understand the biggest issue,
Speaker 1: why are people so mad with Blake Lively. So the
Speaker 1: criticism initially came with some drama between Lively and the
Speaker 1: director and co star Justin Baldoni of this movie, but
Speaker 1: since we last discussed it, the tide has seemed to
Speaker 1: turn from criticism for the film's marketing and potentially of
Speaker 1: Justin Baldoni, to a direct attack on Blake. The film
Speaker 1: has so far brought in one hundred million dollars US
Speaker 1: around the world, so people are going to see it,
Speaker 1: and Justin Baldoni has reportedly hired a crisis pr manager.
Speaker 1: Now this bit is important, Melissa Nathan, who specializes in
Speaker 1: publicity and reputation management. She previously represented Johnny Depp during
Speaker 1: the Amber Herd trial, and the shift in the perception
Speaker 1: of Blake Lively has really turned the algorithm on TikTok
Speaker 1: and another social media against her. The criticism is directed
Speaker 1: at the way she's chosen to market the film, people
Speaker 1: saying she's been too glib and chatty, and her outfits
Speaker 1: have been too cheery given that the theme of the
Speaker 1: film is about domestic violence. And then over the weekend, mysteriously,
Speaker 1: seemingly randomly, an interview from twenty sixteen resurfaced by a
Speaker 1: journalist who said it was the interview that made her
Speaker 1: want to quit her job. Here's a little bit of
Speaker 1: that interview.
Speaker 3: First of all, congrats on your little bomb. Congrats on
Speaker 3: your little What about my bum.
Speaker 7: We've got two nice ones and they are kind of bumps.
Speaker 7: They no not bumps. The Lovely Lady lumps.
Speaker 5: To context for that interview is that Blake Lively had
Speaker 5: publicly announced her pregnancy beforehand, and when she sat down,
Speaker 5: the interviewer said congratulations, and then she said congratulations on
Speaker 5: your bump. To clarify the interviewer was not pregnant. It
Speaker 5: was a strange way to react. And then the interviewer
Speaker 5: asked a question about costuming and what they wore, and
Speaker 5: Blake sort of said, oh, would you ask a man
Speaker 5: what he wore. There was something quite off in the
Speaker 5: dynamics of the interview, and even I thought Posey Parker,
Speaker 5: who was beside her, was doing her best to try
Speaker 5: and keep all parties happy. That interview is uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cringe to watch, but often those junkets, press
Speaker 1: junkets can be really awkward because because the stars are exhausted,
Speaker 1: they're they're having to see maybe fifty people in a
Speaker 1: day from all around the world an answer the same questions.
Speaker 1: So clearly she was she was over it. I agree,
Speaker 1: and she was a bit snarky, but you know, yeah.
Speaker 5: And look, I see both sides, right, because yes, you
Speaker 5: have to sit there and rumin answer questions about the
Speaker 5: film you made to fifty people. I would hate to
Speaker 5: do it. It's not that hard to be polite like,
Speaker 5: that's part of the job, right, You get paid a
Speaker 5: lot of money to be nice to people on camera.
Speaker 5: There's a camera there, so I agree with that.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, that woman saying this made
Speaker 1: me want to quit my job, like that was just
Speaker 1: a shameless grab for relevance and attention and follows.
Speaker 5: Initially I thought when this video was published and it
Speaker 5: started doing the rounds on YouTube, and then it got
Speaker 5: picked up on TikTok very quickly, I thought, oh, this
Speaker 5: is a Dustin Baldoni move.
Speaker 3: This has been from camp.
Speaker 5: This PR team has gone through the archives and unearthed it.
Speaker 5: And then I actually listened to an interview with the
Speaker 5: journalist who said, that's not what happened. She had seen
Speaker 5: a bit of commentary about that it ends with us
Speaker 5: pressed to her, and she thought, I'm going to share
Speaker 5: this interview I did with Blake Lively. So it seems
Speaker 5: it was organically shared by the journalists who had never
Speaker 5: published it before.
Speaker 2: Well, and also, when you're a journalist and you interview
Speaker 2: famous people, and sometimes those famous people, it doesn't go
Speaker 2: exactly how it did in your head, which is she's
Speaker 2: gonna love me and it's going to be great and
Speaker 2: I'm going to make this joke and she's going to
Speaker 2: laugh so hard. Like a lot of journalists, most of
Speaker 2: us actually have a story like that where the connection
Speaker 2: was somehow disjointed for all the reasons that Mia said before,
Speaker 2: but also they just weren't up for playing that gag
Speaker 2: a million times. And clearly it seems in that instance
Speaker 2: Blake Lively was very and she's always been very boundaried
Speaker 2: about talking about her private life, and clearly she was like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to talk about bumps. I don't want
Speaker 2: to talk about fashion. She was like in one of
Speaker 2: those take me seriously moods, and it came across very
Speaker 2: strongly right. And if I was the journal I know
Speaker 2: knows who've held grudges against celebrities who are route to
Speaker 2: them in interviews. Yeah, I'm not saying that that's a
Speaker 2: professional way for the journalists to behave either. This is
Speaker 2: the moment to unveil that interview if you've got it
Speaker 2: in your pocket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing is that this interview resurfaced, but
Speaker 5: so have a lot of interviews, interviews where she is
Speaker 5: sitting beside America Ferrera, who eye rolls when she's giving an.
Speaker 1: Answer America Ferrera, I rolls at Blake, Yes, in an interview.
Speaker 1: Sorry I didn't understand.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there's a viral moment that you know was
Speaker 5: like I reckon ten years ago. It was a sisterhood
Speaker 5: of the Traveling Path.
Speaker 1: But Jesse, I need you to explain to me what's
Speaker 1: the They're there? Okay, like what did Blake do? The
Speaker 1: villain of the internet.
Speaker 5: All right, here's where it started. So we knew that
Speaker 5: there was tension between her and Justin Baldoni, which we
Speaker 5: talked about last week. People are seeing clips on TikTok
Speaker 5: where she's talking about where your florals, Grab a girlfriend,
Speaker 5: go and see this movie, and people are angry because
Speaker 5: they're going, this is about domestic violence, which Justin Baldoni
Speaker 5: is making a point of every time he talks about it.
Speaker 5: He talks about domestic violence. So people are going, Blake
Speaker 5: Lively is really undermining the themes of the movie, and
Speaker 5: she's trying to sell her haircare brand and blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: When this comes up, it has started to feed a
Speaker 5: narrative that Blake Lively is a mean girl. That's what
Speaker 5: they've decided, and even Blake Lively not talking about the
Speaker 5: domestic violence themes has become a bit of a trend
Speaker 5: or a myth being perpetuated around the Internet. There was
Speaker 5: something that Vox a quote I read in a Vox
Speaker 5: article that said, while tabloids like TMZ are reporting on
Speaker 5: a behind the scenes pr war between Lively and Baldoni,
Speaker 5: this part of the backlash, what we're talking about comes
Speaker 5: from Lively, all on her own, answering these questions the
Speaker 5: way she's chosen to. I could not disagree more. Because
Speaker 5: they will cut an interview that's fifteen minutes. They will
Speaker 5: cut thirty two seconds where she says something that looks
Speaker 5: insensitive or silly and post it and be like, look,
Speaker 5: she's not talking about domestic violence. Well, actually, if you
Speaker 5: were to extend that clip out, she does answer the question, and.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how the internet economy works. The people
Speaker 1: who are cutting those clips for their media companies or
Speaker 1: for their you know, the people who are doing the interviews.
Speaker 1: Guess what, if you get to talk to someone for
Speaker 1: three minutes, the bit that you're going to cut and
Speaker 1: use is the bit where she talks about having just
Speaker 1: had a baby, or about her husband, or about something
Speaker 1: that is not domestic violence because it is more marketable
Speaker 1: and more people will click on it. That is not
Speaker 1: her fault.
Speaker 5: And now it's like we've written this story, so we're
Speaker 5: looking for evidence to perpetuate the story. And what we
Speaker 5: do when we cancel people, we do it broadly, but
Speaker 5: we do it in a very specific way to women
Speaker 5: is then we start to dig. And the dig has begun.
Speaker 5: So the dig is about how Ryan Reynolds allegedly cheated
Speaker 5: on Scarlet your Hansen with Blake Lively. We are talking
Speaker 5: again about their twenty twelve wedding, which was twelve years ago,
Speaker 5: which was on a plantation, and so Blake Lively also racist.
Speaker 5: The part of the story that they're not talking about
Speaker 5: is that they didn't know. They came out and apologized,
Speaker 5: they donated thousands of dollars to Black Lives Matter, and
Speaker 5: then they got remarried because they.
Speaker 3: Were so horrified.
Speaker 5: So they're going through now and finding every bit of
Speaker 5: evidence they can that Blake Lively is the devil, and
Speaker 5: the TikTok algorithm is just getting very excited about that.
Speaker 5: Claire and I are doing a bit of work on
Speaker 5: TikTok at the moment around Canceled the other podcast we do,
Speaker 5: and we've done an episode on Blake, an episode on Ryan.
Speaker 1: And explain that Canceled is a comedy podcast, so you're
Speaker 1: not actually canceling.
Speaker 5: No, it's a comedy podcast. The whole reason we started
Speaker 5: it is for moments like these, because it's.
Speaker 1: Satirical about how insane this situation.
Speaker 5: Is and how seriously we take it, and how now,
Speaker 5: for any other crime, you sit there, you get a
Speaker 5: charge and a sentence and we move on with our lives.
Speaker 3: But for Blake Lively, we.
Speaker 5: Just throw and throw and throw, when if you look
Speaker 5: at it, the no they're there thing is what exactly
Speaker 5: are we accusing her off? And that's what the podcast
Speaker 5: tries to do. On TikTok, where you know, doing a
Speaker 5: few videos, and we noticed that if we blatantly defend
Speaker 5: Blake Lively, which is our general position, the reach on
Speaker 5: those videos is minuscule, right, even if there's engagement, it's
Speaker 5: like the reach is being limited. Then there was one
Speaker 5: video that went off about Blake Lively, and when I
Speaker 5: had a look at how we'd sold it, I went, Oh,
Speaker 5: if I was the algorithm, I would probably think that
Speaker 5: we were going to add a little bit of fuel
Speaker 5: to the fire. Now, there are a few things going on.
Speaker 5: The first is that it's a self fulfilling prophecy. People
Speaker 5: want bad things about Blake. I also think something is
Speaker 5: happening with TikTok. You spoke before about Justin Baldoni and
Speaker 5: he's pr Crisis team who won the Johnny Depp amber
Speaker 5: Herd trial. Holly you recently recommended who trolled Amber, which
Speaker 5: looked at how you can basically get bots to win
Speaker 5: your affection in the public narrative. Something is going on here.
Speaker 5: I feel that very strongly.
Speaker 2: I also just think, though we all need the perspective
Speaker 2: that this movie is a big success. It was an
Speaker 2: indie movie that didn't cost very much money to make.
Speaker 2: Everybody is going to see it. All of this attention
Speaker 2: is also making more and more people see it. And
Speaker 2: the thing that's interesting to me is that all of
Speaker 2: this Blake Lively stuff comes down to something that we
Speaker 2: talk about all the time, which is successful woman and
Speaker 2: having a very successful moment. She must be awful, she
Speaker 2: must be a terrible person, she must not be likable,
Speaker 2: and they're digging up everything that makes her seem like
Speaker 2: a bit of a bitch. Basically so that then everyone
Speaker 2: can go Blake Lively bit of a bitch and clearly
Speaker 2: doesn't like women because she doesn't really care about domestic violence,
Speaker 2: and all of those things are so subjective and so nonsense. Also,
Speaker 2: the idea that Blake Lively and Blake Lively alone decided
Speaker 2: how this movie was going to be marketed is so
Speaker 2: stupid that I can't bear it. Yes, of course she
Speaker 2: has a lot of power. She does because she's got
Speaker 2: a producer credit, She's married to one of Hollywood's most
Speaker 2: powerful men, no questions, She's got loads of power. But
Speaker 2: this is not the first film that is about a
Speaker 2: serious topic that has been marketed in a frivolous way.
Speaker 2: It happens all the time, and it particularly happens when
Speaker 2: you are talking about violence against women. It's interesting because
Speaker 2: Colleen Hoover so who wrote these books, and they are
Speaker 2: enormously successful. We touched on this last week, but not
Speaker 2: just a little bit successful, like world headlines successful. She
Speaker 2: is one of the best selling authors in the world.
Speaker 2: So everybody knows what this book is about, right because
Speaker 2: twenty million people have read it. And she also marketed
Speaker 2: the books with pretty flowers on the cover and in
Speaker 2: a particular way. And I spoke a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago about how the last book that I wrote, which
Speaker 2: is termed commercial women's fiction, which is what Colleen Hoover
Speaker 2: is certainly termed as is generally seen to be frivolous
Speaker 2: and silly and you've got to put stripes or flowers
Speaker 2: or pink on the cover, but actually very often deal
Speaker 2: with serious, gritty things that are part of women's lives,
Speaker 2: are always sneered at and always looked down upon when
Speaker 2: actually women love them, like the women who are flocking
Speaker 2: to see this film and the women who read Colleen
Speaker 2: Hoover books. You know, there's snobby attitudes about those books.
Speaker 2: And I want to be really clear that I haven't
Speaker 2: read them, because when we talked about it last time,
Speaker 2: a couple of people said, oh, Holly sounded snooty about
Speaker 2: those books. I haven't read them. But people who are
Speaker 2: very serious about literature in inverted commas look down enormously
Speaker 2: on the Colleen Hoovers of the world because she started
Speaker 2: off self published. She writes books about women's lives that
Speaker 2: women want to read, but she doesn't come from a
Speaker 2: storied literary background. It annoys a lot of people. It
Speaker 2: probably also annoys a lot of people that this movie
Speaker 2: that you know, a powerful woman has helped promote and
Speaker 2: make is doing really well. And I just think we
Speaker 2: need to really examine what we're being sold here. If
Speaker 2: you want to go and see.
Speaker 3: This movie, who cares.
Speaker 2: Whether Blake Lively sometimes is in a bad mood, rolls
Speaker 2: her eyes like have you never been in a bad mood?
Speaker 2: And rolls her eyes like are we what is this about?
Speaker 5: Well, that's a great irony, right is it? Yes, people
Speaker 5: are going to see it, and it's making a lot
Speaker 5: of money, so you go is a success? Who even
Speaker 5: cares about the backlash if people go and see a
Speaker 5: movie that's about domestic violence and about gendered relationships and
Speaker 5: power in those dynamics and they walk out of that
Speaker 5: film going I liked the film, but Blake Lively is
Speaker 5: a bitch. There's a great irony there, which is that
Speaker 5: we are still perpetuating this hatred of women, and we
Speaker 5: can't see that that's a problem. The way that I've
Speaker 5: seen TikTok in particular interpret this is that everything bad
Speaker 5: about this project is the fault of the women. So
Speaker 5: Colleen Hoover in Perfect Story, Blake Lively in perfect marketing,
Speaker 5: and anything good about the film is the work of
Speaker 5: the man. And if you can't see that entrenched within
Speaker 5: that is misogyny, which is the same route that perpetuates
Speaker 5: domestic violence. I think you're missing something. And that's not
Speaker 5: to say that Blake Lively is perfect or that she
Speaker 5: doesn't want criticism. I'm sure that she does.
Speaker 1: But not like this, the volume compared to the crime.
Speaker 1: And I say crime like rolling my eyes, because everybody's
Speaker 1: just looking to hate. And you know, I even read
Speaker 1: a quote that someone had said in one of these interviews,
Speaker 1: if you have a message for victims of domestic violence,
Speaker 1: what would it be? And she said, you should just
Speaker 1: know that you are not defined by what's happened to you.
Speaker 1: You are more than your worst experience, which is something
Speaker 1: that's fairly anadyne to say and is lovely and seemingly inoffensive.
Speaker 1: It's spun into oh, she doesn't care and she doesn't understand,
Speaker 1: and it's just like everyone's just looking to pile on.
Speaker 1: And it's what you say, Jesse. I can't think of
Speaker 1: a time recently when it's been a man like you.
Speaker 1: Look at j Lo, it was similar, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's Meghan, and perhaps we're also guilty of it on
Speaker 1: this show. It's about Meghan, not Harry, Jlo, not Ben.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. I was thinking at the logis last
Speaker 1: night when Larry Emda won. The men always win and
Speaker 1: are nominated. Carl won gold, Lisa was never not even nominated.
Speaker 1: Larry one gold. Kyler Gillies, who he also sits next
Speaker 1: to you on the couch every single day, you know,
Speaker 1: is not even nominated.
Speaker 2: We do have to look at ourselves about this a
Speaker 2: little bit. I know that you'll tell me I'm finger
Speaker 2: wagging mere and you're probably right, But why can't we
Speaker 2: watch a woman she's having a big pr moment because
Speaker 2: she's got some big to sell. For nine of the
Speaker 2: last ten years, you wouldn't have heard from Blake Lively.
Speaker 2: You know, she's off doing her stuff. She's out there,
Speaker 2: putting herself out there to sell something that she believes in.
Speaker 2: And all any of us want to do is scratch
Speaker 2: away at the surface. There must be something wrong here,
Speaker 2: there must be something bad here, there must be something
Speaker 2: dodgy about her. And it's like, why are we surprised
Speaker 2: that women don't want to put the heads above the
Speaker 2: parapet and put things out there and talk about them
Speaker 2: when this is what will come your way.
Speaker 7: If you do.
Speaker 5: Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of Mummy
Speaker 5: A out Loud just for MUMMYA subscribers. Follow the link
Speaker 5: in the show notes to get your daily dose of
Speaker 5: out Loud and a big thank you to all our
Speaker 5: current subscribers.
Speaker 2: Five people, including two doctors and his personal assistant, have
Speaker 2: been changed in connection with Matthew Perry's drug related death.
Speaker 2: Matthew Perry was so open about his history of drug
Speaker 2: abuse that he wrote an entire book about it. It's
Speaker 2: a really good book. We've spoken about it on the
Speaker 2: show before, published before his death, about the fact that
Speaker 2: he had been so addicted to payingkillers for decades, was
Speaker 2: so deeply entrenched in his battle with addiction that he
Speaker 2: had spent something like nine million American dollars on trying
Speaker 2: to beat it over the years. Of course, Perry was
Speaker 2: the very, very successful Friends star who died last October,
Speaker 2: and many reports said that when he was found on
Speaker 2: responsive in his hot tob and his La home that
Speaker 2: it was a shock but not a surprise, And those
Speaker 2: were actually the words that he used in his book
Speaker 2: about how his own family would have felt at various
Speaker 2: stages of his life if he had overdosed. So, if
Speaker 2: his passing was a case of self inflicted OD, why
Speaker 2: have five people now been charged over his death. Last Friday,
Speaker 2: the news that police had arrested one of Perry's doctors,
Speaker 2: his personal assistant, and a woman widely referred to as
Speaker 2: the Ketamine Queen made headlines around the world. The fact
Speaker 2: that he died of an overdose of ketamine, which is
Speaker 2: a powerful, short acting anesthetic, was widely greeted with some
Speaker 2: surprise in Hollywood last year because that drug has been
Speaker 2: in the headlines a lot as a therapeutic treatment for
Speaker 2: anxiety and depression among sort of Silicon Valley tech bros.
Speaker 2: And there are in American this is certainly not true
Speaker 2: in Australia. It is legal to be used in therapeutic
Speaker 2: settings outside of hospitals, so it was once used as
Speaker 2: an anesthetic and a tranquilizer, a horse tranquilizer, yeah, a
Speaker 2: horse tranquiliser, but also by surgeons as a very effective
Speaker 2: anesthetic for operations and very serious things. You know, I've
Speaker 2: listened to podcast hosts talk about their therapy with it.
Speaker 2: It had become sort of mainstreamed, right, But apparently what
Speaker 2: had happened with Perry is is that his doctor first
Speaker 2: prescribed him ketmine for depression. But as a man had
Speaker 2: fought addictions to painkillers for decades, it's not surprising that
Speaker 2: his use spiraled, and by the time of his death,
Speaker 2: his assistant police alleged was injecting him many times a
Speaker 2: day with dangerous levels.
Speaker 7: Of the drug.
Speaker 1: It was so sad reading about that. It was in
Speaker 1: his doctor tragedy.
Speaker 2: And the woman who was the dealer it seems here,
Speaker 2: who they largely call the ketamine Queen, who apparently deals
Speaker 2: with a lot of very high end Hollywood clients, were
Speaker 2: convinced that they could get Perry to pay almost anything
Speaker 2: for this drug. There was a text from the doctor saying,
Speaker 2: I wonder how much this moron would pay, and the
Speaker 2: answer was a lot. He apparently was paying more than
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty five times its price by the
Speaker 2: time of his death. Jesse, do you think that this
Speaker 2: story will derail that changing narrative about drugs like ketamine
Speaker 2: being used in therapy or is it just a story
Speaker 2: about a celebrity who was able to push all the guardrails.
Speaker 3: I don't think it will.
Speaker 5: The more I rare about this story, the more I
Speaker 5: realized that it was about someone who was in such
Speaker 5: a position that no one could say no to him,
Speaker 5: and that's the most dangerous position anyone can be in.
Speaker 5: There was a great column by Marina Hyde who said,
Speaker 5: getting yourself into a position where people can't deny you
Speaker 5: of what you ask for is where things get really scary.
Speaker 5: I think Michael Jackson was in a similar position. It
Speaker 5: kind of clarified, and I think that this is more
Speaker 5: the case in the US, and it is in Australia.
Speaker 5: But if you have enough money, the hippocratic oath of
Speaker 5: do no harm can be absolutely ignored. There are people
Speaker 5: at all levels in medicine who have studied this because
Speaker 5: reading this from the outside, you would go, oh, he
Speaker 5: had a drug dealer, like a street drug dealer, but
Speaker 5: you go no. These were people in white coats who
Speaker 5: had an absolute responsibility to him and his health to
Speaker 5: not give him as much as he wanted. Because the
Speaker 5: doctors who had initially prescribed this or his mental health
Speaker 5: issues they were allowed to do that, did so in
Speaker 5: small doses. He felt it wasn't enough for him and
Speaker 5: so he was going.
Speaker 1: And the clinic I think ended up refusing to treat
Speaker 1: him because he was wanting more and more.
Speaker 3: But they were doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: This is the problem with not everyone can take drugs
Speaker 1: and have the same effect. I don't just mean the
Speaker 1: effect of the drugs, I mean how they feel about
Speaker 1: it afterwards. So Holy, I've listened to some of the
Speaker 1: same podcasts as you with people that we both know
Speaker 1: who've tried ketamine therapy, and they literally, because these are
Speaker 1: people who don't take drugs or don't have problems with addiction,
Speaker 1: they go to the clinic, they take it, they go, oh,
Speaker 1: that was interesting, and either they liked it or they
Speaker 1: didn't like it. But then that's the end, right, It's
Speaker 1: like having a one time experience. But people who have
Speaker 1: addiction issues, or who are prone to addiction, who have
Speaker 1: a history of addiction, they can't. So there is no
Speaker 1: safe way. There was never a safe going to be
Speaker 1: a safe way for Matthew Perry to try ketamine.
Speaker 3: And this is what's confusing, right, because I was looking
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 5: Ketamine isn't addictive, but the feeling you get from the
Speaker 5: ketamine is likely addictive to someone who has had a
Speaker 5: history of an addictive so I think that the doctors
Speaker 5: who initially prescribed did it in a controlled way were
Speaker 5: probably doing the right thing. And there are doctors who
Speaker 5: are exploring this and doing research papers, and I encourage that.
Speaker 5: I think the more research we do about treatments for
Speaker 5: anxiety and depression and pain and all of it is
Speaker 5: really good.
Speaker 3: But to me, this.
Speaker 5: Became about wanting more and having the means. But I
Speaker 5: suppose that if you're someone who is an addict, whether
Speaker 5: or not you're Matthew Perry, and you have all the
Speaker 5: money in the world, the lengths you'll go to to
Speaker 5: get what you want are pretty extreme, which is what
Speaker 5: we saw.
Speaker 1: His personal assistant had been working for him since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four. I also have read the book, and you
Speaker 1: know clearly he was had a lot of drug problems
Speaker 1: through that whole time. He really struggled with addiction. So
Speaker 1: this is obviously someone who has been and it's hard
Speaker 1: to say whether he was enabling Perry. I mean he was,
Speaker 1: but also he needed a job presumably, or was he
Speaker 1: exploding Perry. Was Perry exploiting him. It's really hard to say.
Speaker 1: And that's why when he died suddenly, and all those
Speaker 1: people rushed out to say, no, there were no drug
Speaker 1: paraphernalia found in the house. That's because the assistant who
Speaker 1: had injected him that morning more than once, came home
Speaker 1: found his body quickly before calling nine to one one
Speaker 1: after he'd pulled him out and established that he couldn't
Speaker 1: be arrived, went and cleaned up all the drug paraphernalia,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't found. But then so much catamine was
Speaker 1: found in his system that it started this investigation. But
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone who was following him on social media,
Speaker 1: all these claims, Oh he was sober, He was so
Speaker 1: but he wasn't sober, and you could tell that by
Speaker 1: looking at his social posts.
Speaker 5: There were also they were able to look at the
Speaker 5: Google searches of the ketamine Queen as they called her,
Speaker 5: who had very quickly googled if ketemine can be cited
Speaker 5: as a cause of death, and then in the group
Speaker 5: text were saying delete these threads, delete these threads. I'm
Speaker 5: ninety percent sure we're not liable that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: So there was obviously some understanding of how dangerous these
Speaker 5: levels were. They just didn't care because of the money
Speaker 5: they were getting. I think they said, like twelve US
Speaker 5: dollars for a vile of kenemine. They were selling it
Speaker 5: for thousands.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why I really I think about
Speaker 2: Matthew Perry's book a lot is because I think it
Speaker 2: is one of the most honest and visceral descriptions of
Speaker 2: addiction that I've ever read. Because I think from the outside,
Speaker 2: it might be simple to dismiss, you know, his struggles
Speaker 2: as well. He was a man with too much privilege
Speaker 2: and too much access to everything, But he often talked
Speaker 2: about how, you know, other people he knew could walk
Speaker 2: away from things that he absolutely couldn't, which is back
Speaker 2: to what you said mea. The thing about it is
Speaker 2: really good, Jesse, that all these different kinds of drugs
Speaker 2: that are illegal and now being re examined in a
Speaker 2: way because there's also lots of hallucinogen research about whether
Speaker 2: that can help with anxiety and depression. But you'll often
Speaker 2: hear addicts say, people who are sober and in recovery,
Speaker 2: that's just not an option that I can take because
Speaker 2: I know what will happen. And Matthew Perry was in
Speaker 2: that camp, and he would have known that too, And
Speaker 2: it's just so heartbreakingly sad that there's a little industry
Speaker 2: there that were just so ready and eager to exploit
Speaker 2: that and call the man a moron and give him
Speaker 2: as much as he could physically, well not even that
Speaker 2: he couldn't physically take. It's just kind of devastatingly sad.
Speaker 2: I think for the people around Matthew Perry who just
Speaker 2: can't understand why this could never be beaten for him.
Speaker 1: Last week, em Rada needed our help, didn't she.
Speaker 3: She did just.
Speaker 5: Because she's divorced, and in a recent interview she opened
Speaker 5: up about what became of her marriage, how the dynamic shifted.
Speaker 5: And there's also a viral video going around talking about
Speaker 5: this theory that no marriage can sustain to big jobs,
Speaker 5: and we discussed whether that's true. We looked at how
Speaker 5: em Rata kind of fell victim to a lot of
Speaker 5: the gendered dynamics that a lot of women do, and
Speaker 5: it made for a very interesting conversation. A link to
Speaker 5: that subscriber episode will be in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Thank you out Louders for being with us on this
Speaker 2: post logis Monday. I don't think that Meo did too
Speaker 2: much of a carl, did she really? She backed that
Speaker 2: up pretty well. We will be back in your ears
Speaker 2: tomorrow and thank you to our fabulous team for helping
Speaker 2: us put this show together.
Speaker 4: We'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 7: Bye bye.
Speaker 2: Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening. If you
Speaker 2: love the show and you want to support us, subscribing
Speaker 2: to MoMA Mia is the very best way to do it.
Speaker 2: There's a link in the episode description.