Fake Drugs, TV Babies and Hulk Hogan

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0:40Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt, and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co-design their latest drop. I work with designers to create high-performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. shop YPB by Abercrombie in-store online and in the app because your personal best is greater than anything hello and welcome to another edition of the rest is entertainment questions edition questions and answers edition hello I'm Richard Osman and I'm Marina Hyde how are you yeah I'm All right.

1:25I'm still in Manchester filming House of Games, so we're still a long way apart. I'm just, I can see you on a screen. We're parted and not happy about it, quite frankly. Next week we'll be back where we belong. Can I start with a mea culpa, some any other business? I would love you to. Last week when we were talking about Meghan's new brand and Gwyneth Paltrow's brand and brand slaps and things, I was talking about Hulk Hogan was originally offered the George Foreman grill and turned it down. And Colin Kelly says, in regards to Richard's passing comment that Hulk Hogan was the original name attached to the George Foreman grill, it appears that unfortunately Richard has fallen for one of the Hulkster's notorious lies.

2:04Other falsehoods include the wrestler director Darren Aronofsky offered him the lead role multiple times. Hogan said he turned it down as he didn't deserve it. Aronofsky has said Hogan was never even considered. That he partied with John Belushi after WrestleMania in 1986. John Belushi died in 1982. he said he wrestled 400 days in one year since he travelled so much between Japan and the USA adding up the time differences made it possible according to Hulk Hogan but absolute nonsense so Hogan, listen, that's okay you're allowed to lie but oh he got me, he got me Marina yeah, you can't bend time I tell you what, it would have been different in the ring he was always scared to face me it was terrifying to face you you were getting the better plot lines off Vince McMahon you see, so he felt like he could never Yeah, he would never have faced you in that.

2:53Can I ask you a question, Marina, please? Well, it's not me who's going to ask. It's Mary Sampson. Thank you, Mary. Mary says, I've been binge-watching the full back catalogue of Call the Midwife on iPlayer, and it's got me wondering, where are they getting their supply of newborn babies from? Is that something you can answer? Do they get paid? How do they source them? Do they spray them with red goo, Mary asked, to give them that newborn look? Mary, this is very good. the sourcing of newborn babies for Call the Midwife is a big thing because they need a huge number of them per series. And they have to be newborns because of the nature of the show.

3:30There are specialist talent agencies that deal with this, but there's one particular one, which is called JAM 2000. And they really, I think, provide so many TV babies and TV newborns. To be a TV newborn in our country, you can start working as long as you've got the paperwork within a few hours of your birth, which is quite interesting. In America, I think you have to wait 15 days. I was speaking to someone about this. But you know that thing that people tell you, the camera adds 10 pounds. This is even true for babies. No way. What they want is small newborns because otherwise the camera apparently adds quite a lot of pounds even to a baby that probably weighs a lot less than 10 pounds.

4:09So they look for sort of two-day-olds, four-day-olds. That's where a lot of the babies in Call the Midwife are. And what they want is that the agencies, particularly because they think it's helpful is twins because then they are normally smaller. And also twins is great because you get to have double work. They can only work for 15 minutes at a time, the babies. And they're the biggest divas. The people who've worked with them joke about it, saying the babies, like everything gets ready in the scene. They rehearse with something called a jelly baby, which is a silicon model of a baby. So the actual real life baby goes in at the very last minute, does 15 minutes work, a bit like sort of Liz Taylor in the heyday, then goes away.

4:48And there's a chaperone always on set to check that the mother and the baby are not being exploited in any way. Sometimes you've got a really good baby, and the woman who runs the agency, I read an interview with her, and she said that, you know, sometimes you've got to get a baby and it's a really good baby, but then that will just be the day that it has a meltdown and there's nothing you can do about it. They now have robot babies, animatronic babies. Animatronic babies obviously are great because they can work as long as you like and they don't have any labour laws protecting them. But you do need a crew to operate them.

5:17They're really expensive. You are seeing more weight robot babies, but your production is going to have to have a lot of money because you've got a crew to operate them. They're expensive. And most productions can't afford this. So they go with a real newborn. But you need a performance license. So you can't just take your newborn along to the set. And apparently a lot of people do write in to Call the Midwife saying, I'm about to have a baby. I really want it to be featured in Call the Midwife. And they have to say, look, I'm really sorry, but we can't really fit in with your schedule because you don't know when it's coming.

5:45We have to have babies that will fit in with our schedule. But the woman who runs this agency for newborn babies says she does actually, if she sees pregnant people in the street, give them her card. No way. Yeah, she needs babies all the time. I mean, that's a sort of a weird job, isn't it? But, you know, that's a job that sounds dodgy. But you go, actually, I think it's okay. Years and years ago, I worked on a sitcom for Channel 4 called Boys Unlimited. And there's a... Oh, about the band. About the band, yeah. And there was a scene in a national childbirth NCT class with pregnant women. and then there was a scene when a baby is born.

6:16And the baby, maybe it was different back then because we just had the receptionist at Hattrick, which was the production company, had just had a baby, Sue Gosby, and she brought her little baby Mitchell and he played the baby. Terrifying to think he must be 25 years old now. But I remember in the NCT class, I've got various people I knew and various people other people knew who were pregnant who came in and played that. So when you're an extra, you get paid a certain amount at a daily rate. but what I hadn't realised was if you are a pregnant extra you're a speciality extra and they got paid a fortune really?

6:52it was amazing, it was great they sat around, it was a nice fun day and yeah, they got like a grand each or something just for Sydney because they were pregnant which would have been much more than the base rate yes, I didn't know that, that's interesting I'm going to look up Mitchell Gosby now and see what he's up to it might be in an actual show, another show exactly, I've heard he's in the running for the new bond yeah this is definitely a question from you from sam taylor i recall seeing a tweet that said that the majority of the pre-recorded laugh tracks we hear in american sitcoms were recorded in the 1950s meaning that we are in fact somewhat morbidly hearing the laughs of a room full of dead people is this true or would the laugh tracks have been re-recorded using better quality microphones etc oh goodness me i often read people talk about canned laughter and say they've ruined this with canned laughter, but almost always, if you're hearing laughter on a sitcom or a panel show or anything like that, it's the laughter that was in the room at the time.

7:47I've certainly never worked on a show where you've sort of got a library of laughter and put it on. If you do a show like If I Got News For You or 8 Out Of 10 Cats, something like that, you've got the entire audio recording of the audience, all of whom are mic'd up, and you'll go through the edits and someone will do a joke and you'll get the laugh off that joke. and it will always be that specific laugh. Now, sometimes someone will do a joke, it'll get a laugh and someone else will have said something else which you want to get rid of in the edit or there'll just be an extraneous noise. If that happens, you have to take the beginning of the laugh that really happened, you then have a catalogue of laughs from the same show, always from the same show and you will put a tail on that laugh so that you can go into the edit for the next thing that's on screen because you can't always use a whole laugh because if you're not using the thing that happened directly afterwards as well, then you'll lose the tail of that laugh.

8:40But you can only use native laughs from that show. That's hilarious. Certainly, I've never been in a room or an edit where they've used a laugh from a different show, ever. Sometimes if you're recording a panel show or a game show or something like that, someone will say something quite quietly that was very, very funny. The audience didn't really pick it up. But in the edit, you see it. You go, oh my God, that was brilliant. I didn't even notice that happening. And you want to put it in. It is very peculiar for everybody if you put in something that's very, very funny, and nobody laughs. So on that occasion, you might go, do you know what, that person got this laugh for a very similar joke.

9:20Let's put that laugh on. But you are trying as much as possible to show what really happened in the room and what the audience really, really responded to. Interestingly, since COVID, now there are no audiences for most shows, most game shows anyway, there are no audiences. And so you want to have a sort of atmosphere track for that sort of thing. And so the cheat that will happen there is, if you have no audience at all, it sounds haunting. And you're sitting in an edit and just go, people will not be able to handle this. Britain will be plunged into crisis if they have to watch this sort of, the silence around this.

9:57oh no it was like the football in the pandemic I always put the crowd noise on everyone everyone only animals watched it without always don't write it yeah but all yeah always with the crowd noise and so in there you'll have the floor managers and you have the crew and they'll applaud where they would naturally applaud they'll laugh where they'll naturally laugh and you you will boost that in the edit you will absolutely just go that's the guide uh and you won't boost it a huge amount you're not suddenly having huge guffaws but you know you just go this this have a little smattering applause when that smattering of the applause happened in the studio i see a few things now that are clearly um recorded without an audience which put laughs on and you just think ah i don't know well firstly i don't know where you got that laugh from and secondly it's certainly not a normal response to the thing that was just said on camera so i think since covid there's more sort of shenanigans going on but by and large in terms of those panel shows and in terms of british sitcoms certainly the laugh you're hearing is the laugh that was in the studio at the time if it can be the exact laugh it always is if you've had to do an edit then you might hear the start of one laugh and the uh the end of another here's one thing whenever you're in a studio everyone like every single time you record there's someone who at the end of like a laugh or a laugh applause will wait an extra second and do an extra clap because they're thinking oh my god this is brilliant that means i'm going to be i'm going to hear my clap when i watch this on telly i'm going to hear it and of course you'll never hear it because you're never going to leave that in all it does if you've ever been in the studio audience and done a late clap then all it means is you've made the editor's job so much harder because at the end of every single laugh applause they've got to chop that out they've then got to rebuild the beginning of the next bit so all you're doing there is is is making someone's life much much harder but you're never going to hear it have a heart have a heart late clappers don't do it anymore don't do it anymore oh another sort of filming behind the scenes question here marina from andy bywater andy asks what is substituted for drugs in scenes if an actor is doing 10 takes of snorting prop cocaine up their nose i expect that has to burn after the first couple no matter what substance it is that they're snorting?

12:15That is a very good question. And I have asked some props people about this. What they tend to use is a substance called inositol, which is actually real drug dealers sometimes cut pure cocaine with it. But it's a sort of, it's a kind of vitamin B complex, or maybe was it vitamin? No, I think it's vitamin B. Now, the trouble with it is that it also has a slight laxative effect. Oh, wow. I love where this is going. This is like the babies all over again. Yeah. Well, Ray Liotta and Debbie Mazar, do you remember she plays Sandy, his mistress in Goodfellas, and they really run the coke business together.

12:54She said it had a real laxative effect and he said it really cleans you out. But you do actually snort the substance. But the props department said what they want is you to get as little as possible in your nose or whatever it is, because it does obviously have an effect, as you say, Andy. So they put Vaseline inside the rolled note or the straw or whatever you're using to snort it so that as much as possible sticks to the inside and doesn't go up your nose. That's clever. However, Jonah Hill was actually hospitalised on the Wolf of Wall Street. He said, I was basically doing fake cocaine for seven months and even though they do all these tricks and they have the Vaseline and all the stuff, he still ingested quite a lot of whatever this inositol is and he got bronchitis from it and was hospitalised from the fake cocaine.

13:38So, you know, don't try any of it at home. So the message to kids is don't even do fake drugs. Don't even do fake drugs on a multi, multi-million dollar production because you could still end up in hospital with bronchitis. This is a good one from CJ Cordes. What makes a celebrity? And can you leapfrog celebrity and go straight to national treasure status? That is, yeah. CJ Cordes is a good name, by the way. Yes, celebrity. I think we used to know what a celebrity was. Funnily enough, on House of Games yesterday, we had a question about the 2012 Olympics, people who'd won gold medals, and Phil Daniels was on.

14:12Phil Daniels was saying, in the 80s, we only ever won like one or two. You know, so in the 80s, the only people winning gold medals were Duncan Goodhue and Daley Thompson. So everyone knew who they were immediately. So you immediately become a celebrity. These days, we had like, I think there's about 40 gold medalists from that Olympics. So even winning an Olympic gold medal doesn't automatically make you a celebrity now. But finally, I think about House of Games because that's what we're just doing. and you think about the lineups of people that are coming on. And you look through them and you think, okay, so the other day we had Michaela Strachan on, right?

14:45So Michaela Strachan has been famous since the 90s. Everyone has seen her on something, whether you know her from Hitman and Her or from Springwatch. She's done enough things for enough years that everybody knows Michaela Strachan. So Michaela Strachan is an absolute sort of solid gold celebrity. if you've got a younger stand-up then I would essentially go down the list of stand-ups and I've seen them all and if someone if I think someone's brilliant I say book them on the show now that person is not a celebrity necessarily that probably person probably will become a celebrity because they're very funny and they'll do lots more telly but so long as I've got two people on there each show that my mum knows then I can have two people that my daughter knows you know so celebrity means different things to different people yes it means a different thing to me, I would say.

15:34When I think about it, because I don't have a popular quiz show to produce, I think of celebrities... Not yet. Not yet. I think Clive James said Elizabeth Taylor was the first celebrity. Even though she was obviously very good at something, in her acting, she was more famous for being famous than she was for the thing that had got her famous in the first place. I often think that anyone can attain a form of celebrity nowadays, but something that's very different. I'm not sure that you leapfrog celebrity and go straight to national treasure status, or perhaps you do. But something that I think is very different is a star.

16:07Now, there are a lot of celebrities, but there are an incredibly small number of stars. There are very few people. There are people who are in movies now and who can command many, many millions of dollars per picture. I would still not call them a star. I don't think of them as a movie star. And some people will still say to you, Tom Cruise is the last movie star. He's the last real serious movie star. I actually think that when I saw Barbie, I remember thinking, there's something about Margot Robbie, she is a star, there's something about her, she is a star. And there are other people who can helm really quite big franchises who I don't think are stars in the sense that I would understand the idea of stardom, which I think is something an incredibly small number of people actually have.

16:48Oh, this is good. Okay, Ryan Gosling? Yes, he's a star, but he's still, to some extent for me, a B-movie actor. So Ryan Gosling star. I know, I know, I know. But I'm, you know, he's not Gary Cooper, is he? He's not John Wayne. He's not Tom Cruise. He's not the absolute kind of the top of the firmament. No, he isn't. He's on a rung or two below that for definite. He's a minor star. Yes, what would I say? He's in the supporting category on that movie. Julia Roberts. Star, without any question. Obviously, star. Jennifer Aniston. She's a television star for me, even though she makes huge amounts of money in movies, as we discussed, but mainly on streaming services.

17:27But yeah, she'll always be an unbelievably mega TV star for me, but I don't think of her as a movie star. She's more like Michaela Strachan for you. Yeah, she's on a par with. Everyone's seen her in something. So that's fascinating, the Hollywood thing. I always think on a slightly more parochial English level, who you can book on TV shows and who you can't. An interesting sort of ladder is, by and large, you can't book someone on TV show if they haven't been booked on another TV show before. Right? That's the difficult rule of television. If you're Last Leg or if you're Have I Got News for You or any of these shows, if someone hasn't already been on something, it's very hard to get the channel to agree to them to be on your show.

18:08The lovely thing about House of Games is we can book whoever we want. Because we've got the same people on for five days, and because I always make sure there's somebody there who's a proper kind of someone everyone knows, we have a lot of freedom to book people who wouldn't be booked on other things and book people who haven't done other shows. So the end of Five Days with you, you have incubated a new TV celebrity. Yeah, exactly that. What a service. Yeah, sometimes you see it. Sometimes you put people on and you see how much people love them and you think, well, this is great. And immediately afterwards, I used to work for the company Would I Lie to You?

18:43And often after a week on House of Games, I'll say, look, we had this new young comic on or we had a guy called Mike Bubbins on recently. he was great and I said he would just be great on what I lie to you and because that person's just been on house of games they're sort of there's another box that's been ticked and they can immediately be booked on what I lie to you and once you've been booked on what I lie to you you can be booked on anything you know that's the uh and that that's that's how celebrities are the flywheel effect are grown eight out of ten cats which we made for years you know you would we would have tryouts all the time with incredibly new comics who've never been on anything and then you'd give them the first chance on telly and once they've had their first chance on telly the ones who are going to make it absolutely make it and then make it very very quickly so you know there are certain nursery slopes where you can turn someone from an unknown into a celebrity uh to speak to the question uh to go immediately to national treasure status the last person i can no the last two people i can remember that went from zero to national treasure immediately very different uh ends of the age range they would be luke littler the 17 year old darts player yeah and captain tom you know both of those two came straight out the traps they didn't they didn't waste time with sort of mini fame they immediately became massive uh and they both would have been welcome on House of Games at different times.

20:11But I think you can absolutely burst onto the scene and be huge immediately. Can I ask you something, just a very quick process thing? Does the presenter of the show, if they're not also a producer or an exec on the show, as you are on your show, do they have any say on who's booked or do they just have to take what they get? It's tricky. If you're a comedian and you're doing a show with other comedians, you will probably have a view on people. So some hosts definitely will say yay or nay to people. Something on pointless celebrities, because you film so many, I wouldn't know who was on until I walked onto the set on that.

20:49Really? But House of Games, because you're spending a whole week with people, you make sure that it's people who are going to get on with each other. Some hosts will just talk to whoever you put in front of them. Some hosts, like Michael McIntyre on the wheel, he will definitely reach out to people. He would love to be on that show. you know he would definitely say i think i could do a good job if this person was uh on the wheel so if you've got a presenter who is a who is a decent producer and michael mcintyre clearly is um then yes of course they're going to have a view uh on who comes on by the way this is a subset of celebrities but all of the gladiators are instantly celebrities now okay all of them they instantly all become celebrities um and you know if you have nitro on house of games everyone's like I know exactly who that is.

21:37Okay, that's Nitro. That's a proper celebrity. And that sort of thing is a dream when suddenly someone gives you ready-made, you know, 16 brand new celebrities that you can book on any show that you want. And believe you me, that's what we're doing. Thank God we talked about Gladiators because I realised we hadn't for a second this episode. So we have to cover it on absolutely every single thing. Without Gladiators talk. Are you able to reveal which Gladiator or Gladiators are on House of Games? We've got two gladiators coming on. I'm not going to tell you who they are just now because I know your daughter listens to this podcast and I want to keep it as a surprise for her.

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24:25Welcome back. Kieran Garland has a question. Marina, how significant are the recent tax cuts for the independent film industry? Oh, that were announced in the recent budget. They are very significant, actually. And we should say that so much stuff gets made in the UK. I was speaking to a big producer this week who was like, yeah, like literally nothing is being made in LA. And she was slightly exaggerating for comic effect. But really, so many things are being made in the UK. The studio I'm currently in at the moment leaves, and they made Wonka there. They made Barbie there. Shepparton has just announced it's become the biggest studio in Europe.

24:59And I think it's really second as a hub, but only to sort of Hollywood. Yeah, Pinewood is expanding. Pinewood is huge. Amazon and Netflix are in at Shepparton. Now, Hollywood studios can claim 25 % tax relief on a production in the UK, which is, and a lot of stuff is, as I say, a lot of stuff is made here. The recent budget have said 40 % tax relief on movies under£15 million. So that's basically relatively small independent films. That is huge. It's a lot of money if you're involved in one of those films and it's the difference between being able to make them and not. So that is actually rarely quite a good support for the creative industries from this particular government.

25:37They've also done some stuff for VFX because what happens is a lot of stuff now has VFX post-production and it tends to go to Canada, India, even France, I think, had better incentives. that was also addressed. Even France. Even France had better, yes, tax incentives. And high-end television tax relief is also very big. But what you have to understand about incentives, because you think, well, why should these things be incentivised? Film is such a difficult, and television, it's so difficult to get things made. They really chase the incentives. Around the US, part of the reason that people aren't making so many things in Hollywood is because certain states like Georgia made it hugely attractive to make their films there, and Marvel were effectively working out of Georgia.

26:21Then there are other states that, I mean, Cleveland, there's a lot of interviews you'll see about Cleveland where people will let you shut anything. They'll let you shut a freeway for two weeks and say, yeah, no one really ever goes there anyway or whatever. They prostrate themselves before these industries in order to get them to come and bring their business there. So in order to be competitive in those things, you really have to offer a system of tax incentives. Somebody else, I think, previous week, someone wrote in and asked and said, you know, what are you supposed to do if they're going to close up all these tax loopholes.

26:49Well, first of all, if you want to give your money away tax-free and you're a funder of these sort of things, you can always sell your art to a museum or a gallery or something like that. But in general, I would say that you have to incentivize this business. And it's something that we do very well. And more and more things are being made here. And fewer and fewer things are being made in Los Angeles and places where you might expect them to be made. So that is definitely very significant for independent film, the thing that happened in the budget recently. And it's been really welcomed in the industry.

27:16Yeah, pretty much any big project, because film especially and TV dramas are hugely expensive to make. And I've very rarely been involved in a project that didn't at some point go, we're 10 % off what we need. We just need another 10 % and actually the tax incentives can do that. And it keeps work in this country. It keeps work for all the different trades that work around drama and entertainment. It keeps that in this country. I think it adds an enormous amount of money to the economy as well. We really are some of the very, very best in the world, in the world of entertainment and in drama. Yes, and as a form of soft power, it obviously has always made sense for the government to back these kind of industries because there's a great reputation for them around the world.