Adolescence, Harry Potter & Doctor Who: 2025 BEST OF

0:19This episode is presented by EE. Marina, are you hosting or guesting for Christmas this year? normally every other year i am a very grateful guest but i'm now a slightly trepidatious host yes it is me in the apron having a meltdown over all the cooking no i don't think i'll have a meltdown i it's a lot isn't it yeah but you have to just keep saying to yourself it's just a big chicken just a really big chicken it's just a really enormous chicken we are also hosting this year looking forward to it very much if you are hosting and e has the best broadband technology if you are guesting then e has the best mobile technology and my goodness you need it at christmas right yes the third babysitter the distractor just when the family walk into the house is hello grandma hello granddad what's the wi-fi password i might need that yeah get the best connectivity for your home and your phone with ee and if you're guesting lucky you ee has the best mobile network to keep you connected to music, maps and backseat streaming for the kids when you're travelling.

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1:29Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osmond. It is the 25th of December. We are live in central London. Of course we're not live, we recorded this months ago. It is currently June the 17th. It's actually quite near to Christmas when we're recording this but of course we are not recording on Christmas Day. Sorry, happy Christmas, I think you were trying to say. I think I said happy Christmas on the 23rd. Oh, you've done it now, have you? No, but people are going to listen to this on the 26th, and we'll be going to be saying happy Christmas.

1:58They go, what do you mean happy Christmas? You're always imagining exactly when things are going to happen. Just say happy Christmas and cover yourself at this time of year. Happy Boxing Day, everybody. The bit between Christmas and New Year, which is when people are most likely to listen to this. Oh, where do you stand on people saying things like Twixmas? The merineum, I believe it's called. Yeah. Right. Merry Christmas, everybody. No, I don't think people... If you are listening on Christmas Day, then that's grand. It's a Q &A episode because quite apart from being Christmas Day, it is, of course, a Thursday, which means Q &A episode.

2:28So this is like... If you are listening on Christmas Day, I will be cooking. And just a shout out to anyone who's listening to this. I worry if you're listening to it to keep you sane while you're cooking. But if you are, I'm with you. I understand and I'm doing the same thing as you right now. Don't forget the pigs in blankets. But maybe you're listening for a little bit of peace and quiet as well, which is a nice thing to get at Christmas. whether you have family around or whether you don't. Just some highlights of our Q &As from across the year, some questions that we loved answering. Do keep your questions coming in, by the way, next year as well.

2:58But yes, whether you're listening on the 25th, the 26th, 27th, 28th, then merry whatever day it is. But please accept my Merry Christmas from our episode on Tuesday as my Merry Christmas. I really, really didn't want to be remiss. I'll say it as many times as you like. Merry Christmas, everybody.

3:21Marina, are you ready? I'm as ready as I will ever be. Excellent. Zalini Beck, a couple of weeks ago, her and her husband argue about what's A-list or not. We had a little chat about it, but I said I'm going to set you a challenge. You said you could tell me if anyone was A-list or not. I wish I had a gavel. I've just realised, but never mind. Everyone at home, see if you agree or disagree with Marina's options. So I'm going to give you a list of actors. You have to tell me. And I just say. Say A-list or not A-list. I'm going to say what strikes me in the moment. This is like one of those things where you just have to react to pictures or whatever it is.

3:50Are the following actors A-list, B-list or C-list? Let's go. Your first actor is Idris Elba. B. Cillian Murphy. Oh, B. Come on. Florence Pugh. B. And that's, yeah, B. No, she's B. Yeah. I hope this is not just Marina saying B the whole time. No, okay, no, no, carry on. You get that from a Chris Packham podcast. Zendaya. A. Can open a movie. Don't worry, carry on. Jennifer Lawrence. A actually Falling but she's had two very big franchises A Pedro Pascal B TV star mainly Barry Keoghan Fantastic Four could change it oh Barry Keoghan no B come on Ayo Adeburi no B if that um also be an interesting one Vin Diesel A sorry it's a massive franchise you don't make the rules right and if I did anyway I'd put him in come on what are we talking about uh Rachel Zegler oh no I mean B and Falling I'm afraid Dev Patel what no I mean I love very nice but B C here we go friend of the podcast Glenn Powell B rising strongly rising still B though still B yeah come on a couple of years time they'll be going I can't remember when Glenn Powell was B list it won't be through Wands of Trying if they aren't let's put it that way talking of Glenn Powell Sydney Sweeney again B rising both of them you know but they haven't yet got those kind of open movie roles we have to see if they can do it on the cusp cuspy Tom Hardy B Al Pacino oh come on okay A but heritage I mean he's not opening a movie now is he I mean yeah heritage A A heritage it's a special category if you hadn't said A at that one well that's A star oh come on A heritage yeah yeah Don Cheadle no we're not even giving him a letter he's getting a B Dustin Hoffman A heritage come on okay Saoirse Ronan I love her but B I mean you know yes I mean it's art house isn't it Natalie Portman used to be A now B okay Viola Davis A maybe A maybe B right yeah A this guy's got a clue in his name Michael B Jordan R A Michael A Jordan you're saying wow Michael A Jordan I think so yeah definitely Olivia Colman sorry I mean amazing but B amazing but B well because you know she's not of course she should win all the awards and the Oscars or whatever but I don't think of her as a sort of A-lister in that sense so you think she's many things but she's not Sylvester Stallone yeah and I think she probably loves that yeah Sylvester Stallone oh A heritage Amy Lee Wood.

6:15What? I mean, it doesn't rate. Sorry, I know she's had a terrible week, so I don't mean to add to it. But no, I mean, she's a part in an ensemble on a television programme. Okay. The end. Robert De Niro. Heritage. Seen them all so nice. Andrew Garfield. I love him, but B. And we're going to end with this one. Interesting one. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Both A. Both A? Yeah. But would they be A without the other? Does a rising tide raise all ships in that relationship? That's difficult, isn't it? I don't know yes they're sort of somehow have been greater than the sum of their parts I think it's a double A I think they're both overrated no listen it's good I don't think he's a good guy at all actually but yeah I don't think I don't get a good vibe off him I don't mean that kind of also just like a celebrity monster you know I think when you become very very famous I think that's the problem with those two but yeah they're very very famous you did that very quickly I got through the entire list of people that's very very impressive I mean some of those I honestly think in retrospect I didn't know who was coming next So I was trying to sort of always calibrate against the ones before.

7:15So I never knew who was coming next. You know, I could have definitely had a couple of C's and D's in there. But that doesn't mean that, you know, I don't love them as an actor. But you have to, we have to be honest about what type of star they are. Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock. Oh, I mean, well, Sandra Bullock. I mean, I love her, but yeah, I mean, she's heritage A now. Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks are still A. Aniston. Well, I mean, Aniston's A. I should think she could open movies still. Yeah. She just likes doing, you know, brands now, as far as I can work out. fitness brands and things like that but listen it's less easier than acting isn't it yeah i think so um leonie thank you so much for a question from two weeks ago and marina congratulations that was very very good we've got a question now which was from my interview with the wonderful chris columbus one of my men of 2025 who i loved working with and loved speaking to as well so you had to cut down um the first two harry potter books into shorter films when you look at people making these big hbo series who can sort of cover every piece of dialogue on every page are you jealous of that or do you think that's less fun oh i've not no jealous no i'm sort of like i'm so beyond it i i did it my feeling is okay i've done that it's time to move on i've always had issues with fran idea of franchise franchise when we did gremlins and goonies and those films people were That's why I never did the second Gremlins film.

8:37I said, my attitude then was, I've done it. It's time to move on and do something different. Same with Potter. I feel like I've done it. I'm really proud of those films, the first three that I was involved with. And I'm moving on. So now it's interesting. As of yesterday, I think, I looked online and there were photographs of Nick Frost as Hagrid. Yes. Along with the new Harry Potter. Now, that's not Nick Frost. That presumably is still Martin. I don't remember his last name, a rugby player who played. Martin Bayfield. Yes, who played Hagrid with a giant sort of fake rubber Hagrid head that we sometimes replaced with CGI.

9:16So I'm seeing these photographs of now it looks like Martin, I could be wrong, wearing a Nick Frost head walking down the streets of London. And I'm thinking, and he's wearing the exact same costume that we designed for Hagrid. Part of me was like, what's the point? Part of me is like, OK, great. You're doing, I thought it was going to be, I thought the costumes were, I thought everything was going to be different, but it's more of the same, which is interesting. It's very flattering for me because I'm like, that's exactly the Hagrid Pa costume that we designed. So part of it is really exciting.

9:47So I'm excited to see what they're going to do with it. Part of it is sort of deja vu all over again.

9:58Marina, a question for you from Harriet Bateson. Harriet says I'm obsessed with Stranger Things I was wondering what happens to the money child actors get paid do their parents get the money who are the best paid child actors oh right well I mean we know from entertainment history that sometimes their parents take the money whether they should do or not the Stranger Things children the sort of quartet of the boys Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnapp and Caleb McLaughlin for seasons 1 and 2 which, you know, you do your deal for seasons one and two, they got$25 ,000 per episode. By season three, this is a real entertainment story, by the way, always, if you get to season three, everyone's contracts go nuts in American television.

10:44And they then were earning about$250 ,000 an episode. So it was 10 times as much. That is a lot of Panini stickers. It's not clear how much exactly Millie Bobby Brown gets, but I think she was on a million an episode. So she's got some sort of overall deal with Netflix. So it's not entirely clear how the money works there. And they're very, very secretive about what they pay her. But she's a huge star for Netflix. But then, you know, there are all those stories where Drew Barrymore got a million for E.T. And by the time she was about 14, she was earning millions. That little boy in Young Sheldon, he got$30 ,000 per episode for season one.

11:22But by the end of season five, I think he was on much more than a million per season. But there are laws to deal, which, by the way, are not at all always observed in the US for dealing with child actor fees. Children have to get a minimum of 50 % of all adult minimum fees and payments rather than saying, yeah, we're going to give Winona Ryder this. She's in it a lot less than you, but sorry, boys and stranger things. Here's some pocket money and an ice cream and some, you know, panini stickers. So I think that it's 15 % or something has to be put into something called a Coogan account. Oh yeah, I would never put any money into a Coogan account because I'd never know what it would get spent on.

12:00You have no idea what it could be spent on. But anyway, that's a special trust account and it's supposed to be held till the child turns 18. Yes, that come from Jackie Coogan. He played alongside Charlie Chaplin and I think even in those days he had earned$4 million and it was all spent by his mother and stepfather and he had absolutely nothing left. There are all sorts of rules, by the way, governing child actors and they have to have chaperones and they have to have certain breaks built in that you wouldn't necessarily have to have with adult actors. And if your school attendance is affected by work, then they've got to put a tutor in place.

12:32By the way, another reason we should be talking about this anyway because it's really interesting, is that they've got their three children for the HBO Harry Potter. They've announced the casting of Harry, Ron and Hermione. Now that production, everything I'm hearing about it is absolutely crazy. They're building effectively pretty much a school because there's so many children on set for something like that. And as I always say, you can expand Leavisden seemingly infinitely every time I ever go and work on a new thing there. It's a former airfield and they just like double it in size. So I guess, yeah, they're going to have a school.

13:04So that's interesting. Anyway, but the first Harry, Ron and Hermione, I think they got a million dollars each for the first Harry Potter movies. But obviously it does go wrong and people's parents ripped them off like Jackie Coogan's parents did. Macaulay Culkin took his parents, from Home Alone, he took his parents' name off his trust and found an executor. And then everyone said he's divorced his parents, which I think he felt was not technically what had happened. Many of these children end up absolutely hating their parents. Aaron Carter, I think he'd made something like$200 million before he was 18.

13:38But he owed a huge amount of taxes. He was declared bankrupt. His parents didn't put the required amount of money in his Coogan account. There's so many dreadful stories. I don't know if you've ever seen this thing my daughter's watched this a load of time she was in iCarly yes I remember iCarly very well from my children's upbringing well Jeanette McCurdy who was one of the people in that her book is called I'm Glad My Mum Died there's a picture of her on the front of it she's holding an urn and it's like confetti's coming out of it anyway she said it was absolutely dreadful that her mother just forced her to work the entire time she didn't want to do it she had terrible eating disorders she made a show about it So there is terrible resentment among some people.

14:19Will Wheaton, do you remember Will Wheaton? He's in Stand By Me, Star Trek, Big Bang Theory. But he said, I remember telling my mother every day that I just wanted to be a kid and how she'd dismiss it and come up with these ways of saying, well, no, but actually you love doing this. It really reminded me actually when I was watching that documentary about Piper Rochelle, the young YouTube star. I mean, you know, we're seeing it now and you can see it happening almost. I mean, you can see it in these family YouTube things all the time, that the children are the most kind of winsome aspect of it, but the parents, the ones who really want the money, they should be putting that YouTube money nowadays in a Coogan account, whether or not they do, as we've seen lots of people, it doesn't always happen.

15:00But there are supposed to be laws governing it. But the thing about something like YouTube, which, sorry, I've gone all around the houses now, but that is so unregulated and it's just not really watched over. The actual sort of legacy entertainment industry is pretty well regulated but you can never legislate for the fact that these parents want to put their children on the stage when they probably ought not to be and they want to do it for their own financial benefit but the basic principle is they will get roughly half what an adult actor will get and that that's at least good money and obviously the second something is actually a hit and you are a star in it then actually you're just you're treated like an adult you'll get you know whatever money you can get and to bring it back to stranger things the show is all about the kids without them it's absolutely nothing and they're remunerated accordingly and no matter how quickly they how much they grow up because there's three years between series i mean they'll be about 30 when we see the next season but if you look on the sunday times rich list and you see you see now what what daniel radcliffe emma watson and rupert grint are worth that you you can work out what they were getting paid by the uh by the final harry potter movies yeah it was good money deservedly so and their parents didn't rip them off which is great yeah absolutely That's what we like.

16:09Okay, today my 13-year-old son Rex, amazing name Rex Reynolds, told me that by the time the much-delayed GTA 6 is released next year, it will have cost more to make than the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai. Surely not, says Richard. No one is spending billions on creating a video game, are they? He asks leadingly. Oh, Richard. Hello, Rex, by the way. Of course Rex is right. Richard, of course you know your son is right. He's absolutely right. I mean, there have been very, very expensive video games before. I think Spider-Man, that was like about 400 million. Cyberpunk 2077 was 400 million. But yeah, this is costing around about 2 billion.

16:44And the Burj Khalifa itself cost between 1.4, 1.5 billion US dollars. So Grand Theft Auto 6 is more expensive than the Burj Khalifa. But I tell you what... But it's built by slaves? I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm kidding, of course I am. I always kid. What, Grand Theft Auto 6? They call it crunch culture. Crunch culture? What's crunch culture? In the gaming industry, where they make them work absolutely round the clock, and they just try and iron out everything, and people are just not sleeping at all. It's got very dark very quickly. Yeah, it did. But it seems, I think, worth spending. So it's coming out, and we've got a definitive release date, which any gamer will know is 26th of May, 2026.

17:25I saw a recent thing saying they reckon in the first 60 days, this is going to gross over$7 billion. Grand Theft Auto. It's one of the great works of art of our time. That's more than 70 % of the entire Hollywood box office. Well, you said before, Hollywood needs to break about$9 billion a year. To kind of stagger on in its current form. Yeah, and this itself in 60 days will make$7 billion. Isn't that incredible? Rex, because you won, you're allowed to call your dad Ryan for the rest of the week. So yeah, Ryan, I'm ever so sorry. Rex is absolutely correct there. It costs more than the Burj Khalifa, but it is going to make an awful lot more than the Burj Khalifa as well.

18:00Although actually I don't have the receipts for how much money Burj Khalifa makes, presumably with high occupancy. The developers don't either. Yeah, presumably. I understand it's something of a Wild West out there. And even, I mean, TV's got very expensive. Certain bits of TV that the streamers have... I mean, The Lord of the Rings, that was so expensive. That was something like 58 million rings of power per episode. Wow. Stranger Things has got very, very expensive. That's about 30 million per episode. I mean, lots of Taylor Sheridan things are sort of 22 million an episode. which is becoming quite expensive.

18:32The most expensive movie that we know of, but remember there's all these accounting fiddles, is Jurassic World Dominion, which cost 453.6 million. But actually I think one of those late stage Avengers won a huge amount. I think maybe Age of Ultron cost a lot more than they ever said. And I think it was sort of terrifying that they couldn't actually say it out loud. But in these years where we're obsessed with the budgets for movies and the take of movies, the idea that a video game of all things has a$2 billion budget and is going to make$7 billion. And we still don't really know how to talk about them, which I find so interesting.

19:06We don't have proper... Criticism of them isn't given anything in a tenth of the highest status as movie criticism. We don't really understand how to talk about things that don't have stars necessarily. Traditional forms of media have just completely lost this medium. A different form of criticism or not, which is watching some people you like play it on YouTube or on Twitter, whatever it is, By the way, if I was Rockstar Games and I was listening and I still had time, I'd get a character called Rex Reynolds in there. It's quite a Rockstar Games name. It could sort of be anything, right? I mean, listen, a wrong-un, but it could be any sort of wrong-un.

19:49This episode is brought to you by Disney+. Christmas is a time to tell stories. It's part of the festive tradition. and with Disney Plus you can enjoy the work of master storytellers across a huge range of genres. You're a fan of the classic Christmas movies? Oh, you know I am. Okay. I love a Christmas movie. Oh my God. We both love these so much. There's certain ones that I literally have to watch every single year. Home Alone 1 and 2. That might be controversial to some but it's not... Not to me. No. Miracle on 34th Street. Ah, yes please. Always. It's a Wonderful Life. Muppet Christmas Carol is non-negotiable.

20:25It's simply non-negotiable. You know that bit in between Christmas and New Year? It's actually the perfect time to watch the big blockbusters or hit shows like the new season of Percy Jackson. Between Christmas and New Year, it's got various names. What are you doing? What are you streaming? What are you watching? Well, I actually will catch up on family things that, for whatever reason, I didn't see at the cinema. So I will this year watch Lilo and Stitch, which I didn't see, which was massive. And I will watch Elio because I want to watch I'm a Pixar completist and I want to watch everything that they do.

20:54Whatever's on your list this Christmas, you can be sure a lifetime of great stories awaits on Disney+. 18 and over. Subscription required.

21:24All-Tägliche Mobilität. Jetzt reinhören. Auf Spotify oder unter zukunftnahverkehr.de slash podcast.

21:37Shall I ask you a question? Please do. And it's a question, we've had lots of versions of this question, but Rob McGough, you are first out of the trap, so I'm going to do your version of it. Rob asks, Disney have ended their much criticised co-production deal with the BBC to make Doctor Who. Will Disney consider the whole ordeal a mistake? Okay, clearly Disney have ended the deal, so they certainly consider it something they want to get out of. It's strange because it sort of happened quite late. It happened almost after the era of what we remember now as the lovely co-production money era where basically streamers were trying to sort of build scale and get a hold on various markets.

22:14And so lots of things were co-production and lots of very expensive things and lots of, you know, this was the peak TV era, but people were, you know, losing money, huge amounts of money, but they wanted to build scale. So someone like Netflix was just spending enormous, unsustainable amounts of money trying to do these things. So we had all these shows. This actually came later than that. They didn't even put out a statement, Disney, saying that, you know, it was... the statement came from the BBC saying that this was a... they had been a great partner and so on. I mean, clearly they're disappointed.

22:45I don't know if they've been a great partner. No. Listen, I'm sure they've been, you know, they're no David Harbour, but I don't know if they've been great. Obviously they put it on Disney Plus and what they... it's quite tricky. We know what it is because it's very sort of idiosyncratically british it's a sort of tea time family drama thing that's sci-fi as well to them it might have been like well is it ya is it like or is it you know is it like percy jackson which has done a show that's in that kind of space that's done much better for them and you know is on the second season and all of that certainly i'm never sure they quite understood they certainly didn't promote it in lots of ways like their native shows, as it were.

23:22And also, by the way, because Russell T. Davis was such a big part of that deal and is such a big part of Doctor Who, I think they accepted that he was going to have creative control of what it looked like. So Disney executives were not able to say, I wonder if we can make this a bit more Disney, which of course was the thing everyone was terrified about. And a bit more categorizable for them in their much more set categories. And he is idiosyncratic and a maverick and all those sort of things. He's obviously brilliant and amazing and we love him. And so I think in some ways, I mean, as I say, what they want is they want there to be awards and nominations and it didn't have those apart from, you know, there might have been a technical award or something.

24:03But I've seen different estimates on the episode cost and I think there's kind of north end of them where people were saying that it's 10 million pounds an episode. Russell T Davies was like, oh my God, I would literally be talking to you for my moon base if that was the case. having said that it massively and by multiples increased what the budget was before on the BBC whether you need that or not you know there'll always be people saying oh we like cardboard sets and just great stories I personally and this is nothing from anyone on the show but I think they had a problem with the casting of the lead character I think Shuti Gatwa I am told he didn't particularly love doing it and it's not for everyone that role and you are so much more than the lead in a particular drama.

24:45When it came back and under Russell T Davison there was Christopher Eccleston who did it for one season and it clearly wasn't for him either. David Tennant revolution, you know, brought it, he grew up a - It's fair to say it was for him. Yeah, it was for him but he was a Doctor Who obsessive, so was Peter Capaldi who came next but one and they fully understood what the nature of that role is. You're not just the lead in that thing, you are an ambassador, you do all sorts of other things and it all feeds back but it's a really, you know, it sort of occupies a role in the life of the nation to some degree.

25:16Matt Smith, who was so young, who is absolutely one of the most amazing Doctor Who's of all time. I think he's incredible. Sorry, one of the most amazing doctors of all time. I think he's incredible. And it's extraordinary that he played it with such sensitivity and he was both old and young at the same time. He did it amazingly. But he also understood that you're a form of ambassador. I didn't get that at all from Shuti Gatwa at all. I think he had other projects. He wasn't that committed to that thing. I definitely think that the Americans thought that he wasn't necessarily 100 % available there to be a kind of...

25:48He's definitely in demand for obvious reasons. Yeah, and he's done lots of different things, and he's done theatre, he's done two plays and whatever in the time of all of that. He said, you know, I'm getting old, I'm 33. Hmm, okay. As I say, it's a failure to call someone who fully understood the full implications and weight and responsibilities of the role. And also, actually, I think if you are the lead in a big American TV show, and this purpose is both, there are certain things that might be expected of your time. And perhaps that didn't occur. And it's absolutely a deal that made sense for the BBC and made sense for Disney.