Sydney Sweeney's Bathwater Bonanza

0:00This episode is brought to you by our friends at Sky. Now, they really know how to put on a show and to make it easy for us to enjoy them. Everything is just there. No digging around, no endless scrolling. Absolutely. And here's the magic. If you know what you're in the mood for, just say it into your remote. You want something specific, say sweet pea, and sweet pea will appear. If you want something, a genre, just say show me horror, and your sky will show you horror movies, horror TV shows, anything in that genre. It really is magic. It's not magic, it's technology, but it feels like magic. It's like having a shortcut to your perfect evening.

0:31You speak, it listens, and suddenly you're three episodes in. A feast of entertainment right at your fingertips. Feast, smorgasbord, banquet. Which makes me very hungry. Yeah. I wonder if you can get snacks from your remote. Try it. I'm being told you can't. It's just the world of entertainment at your fingertips. The world of food, you have to go elsewhere. So if you're ready to dive into top-notch entertainment, just head to sky.com to learn more. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Got a car to sell, but no time to waste? Hop onto Carvana.com to get a real offer for your car in seconds.

1:06All you have to do is enter your license plate, answer a few quick questions, and if you accept the offer, Carvana will pay you as soon as you hand the keys over. They even offer same-day pickup in many cities. Save your time, score some cash, and sell your car the convenient way to... Carvana! Pickup times vary. These may apply. This episode is brought to you by Diet Coke. You know that moment when you just need to hit pause and refresh? An ice-cold Diet Coke isn't just a break. It's your chance to catch your breath and savor a moment that's all about you. Always refreshing, still the same great taste.

1:41Diet Coke. Make time for you time.

1:50Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello, everybody. Hello, Richard. Hello. I'm very pleased we're together. We're in the same room. Thank God. Long may this continue. After years apart. Yeah. It's felt like a long time. Has felt like a long time. How's your week been? It's been a brilliant... I've been in New York. I went to New York. You went to New York City? I've been in New York City, which I believe you've heard of. Yeah. And I've had a brilliant time. I've seen... I've taken one of my children and I've seen every possible tourist attraction, every museum, every kind of major site, and it was brilliant.

2:28Did you have a cronut? I did have a cronut. Yes, I did have a cronut. I had many different items of food at a considerably higher price than the UK. And yeah, I had a brilliant time. It was wonderful. I've been having, because as we approach the longest day of the year, I've been having what is traditionally in British television, it's Christmas week. so I did oh my god you're doing Christmas right now I did the Christmas wheel which is great fun which I'll talk about more nearer the time suffice to say somebody fell asleep during the recording that's all you need to know about that and tomorrow it's the House of Games Christmas special oh this is just so seasonal and it's great because everyone's got their Christmas jumpers all the crew are talking about the earliest so I think Catchphrase went earliest this year I think Catchphrase went in May Catchphrase Christmas but no it's absolute Christmas season Well, pour yourself a glass of eggnog and, you know, light the fire, because this week we're going to be talking about Sydney Sweeney, who I have a huge amount of time for.

3:31She is the star of our era and she's launched a new bath soap, which contains elements of her own bathwater residue. I don't know what to say. More on that later. We're going to talk about arguably the greatest video games console in history, the Switch. And the Switch 2 came out this week and has been a huge phenomenon. And again, it's eating up an enormous amount of hours that traditionally would have been spent watching television. We're also going to pose the question, where are all the humans in movies? I'll just leave that one and explain it once we get to it. But also during that thing, I think we've both been to see a particular movie this week.

4:06I think it might be one of the best movies of the last 10 years, certainly one of the best British movies. and that's going to be my big recommendation for the week. An amazing movie, which I think 95 % of our listeners would love to see. Absolutely. I agree with that. Let us begin, Richard, with Sydney Sweeney. Sydney Sweeney. She's a TV star. She made her big break in Euphoria playing Cassie. There's something about her which is she's treading her own path in many ways, which I think is quite interesting. In quite an impressive way, I think. Actually, she was in New York. I didn't see her. I should have just found out what hotel she was because I tell you, every day she came out of that hotel, it was like a catwalk.

4:44She had a whole look. She was in New York. There was the premiere of a new film that's coming out, which has got her, Julianne Moore and Kyle McLaughlin. And honestly, they're standing on either side of her at the premiere, just like spare parts. She's in this unbelievable red dress. It's just a sort of throwback to complete glamour. and she sort of, in the dread parlance of our times, broke the internet because she released... Dr. Squatch, the sort of affordable men's grooming brand, released a soap that they said contained traces of her bath water because I think she'd done a photo shoot for them before.

5:26She had it in a bath, yes. Yes. Which broke the internet beforehand. Now she's broken it again. We've literally only just fixed it. Now she's broken it again. Oh, you haven't. That's so frustrating, is it? Sydney, I have. Oh, my God. I swear to God. If you break it one more time. One more time. I'm taking it away from you. And anyhow, so there was a sort of, there was an immediate backlash and people said, this is completely unfeminist. This is what I don't even know. She said, what are your fans for in your bathwater? Can't keep asking for your bathwater. What are you supposed to do? I mean, it's not so much how she, it is obviously she's got a particular look, but it's more the things that she says or does that grab headlines.

6:06And I think she's interesting because I think that her and her people are positioning her in a very, very particular way. She also, by the way, seems to be someone very much in control of her own image and in control of her own business interests. We were always told years ago that certain high-profile women were businesswomen and they were in charge. And actually, you look back and there were various shady men. But Sydney Sweeney seems to have, right from the, straight out the gate, seems to have had some control over what she does. Very interesting human being. Although part of her sort of origin story is I didn't have any control and people sexualised me and said whatever they liked about my body and now kind of I have monetised it and I'm doing it and now I'm in control.

6:51But stardom has always been about telegraphing who you are and before we had managers and brand managers and all those sorts of things. you know we had the studios who decided who a star would be um what their screen persona would be and how they were going to be presented to the outside world um and actually it's funny you know when they when they deviate from that often it's sort of ridiculous the only sort of ridiculous thing I can think that she's done recently is when they cast her in Madame Web which is you know I sat through um and Sidney Sweeney in that movie plays a nerd and there were so many people in the industry I spoke to who said, sorry, I don't understand.

7:30Sydney Sweeney is hot. Why have you put her in a pair of thick glasses? This is, no. Did she not even play hot nerd? So like later on, she took, like plain Jane. No, there was no like, why you're lovely. In Neighbours, who was clearly beautiful, but wearing glasses. And like, then Guy Pearce took her glasses off and went, whoa. You're not playing Jane the Superboy. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. That's a quite ancient reference for those who are 27 years old, like Sydney Sweeney. But I like that. It's like watching The Simpsons and they mention something you don't know. I'm like, oh, I wonder what that is.

8:01So I listen. Yes, absolutely. I'm always very comfortable throwing in... And I think they all came back for the final episode of Neighbours. Neighbours, yeah. Plain Jane Superbrane. In the hiatus, in fact, of Neighbours for about 15 minutes. Yeah, Guy Pearce. Anyway, that really is a sidebar. That really is a sidebar. Anyway, but she's a sort of... She's had lots of backlash and people... She seems to sort of welcome backlash. I've seen pictures of her. She put a picture out of herself not that long ago wearing a sweatshirt saying sorry for having great tits and correct opinions. There's something very, I don't care what you say about me, about her.

8:39But equally, she's very, very careful about talking to you about her origin story. As we say, she says she's working class, she's five generations. Rural. Yes. Rural. Key. Makes a difference. I was on every sports team, those sort of things. She's like a rocket scientist. She was on the maths team. She speaks Russian and Spanish, I think, something like that. She was absolutely accomplished. But she wants to tell you about her financial anxiety. And she spoke a lot saying, I don't even know if I can, you know, it's very different once I pay my manager and all those people. For a long time, she said, you know, I can't really, I don't have any connections in the business.

9:14This is a very important part of the sort of story. I'm an outsider, you know, I don't have any connections. It turned out she bought a$13.5 million house in Florida on a private island. She's got a wine cellar, an aquarium. She's actually got a$6 million house in Bella. I think she's got sort of much upward of$20 million. Well, I was reading, I was reading, there's a lovely story that said that her family had grown up in the same house for generations, some rural house. And there's a lovely story on one of the American chat shows saying that they had to give up this house. They couldn't afford it anymore.

9:47And that the moment she became successful, she went to the new owners and bought it back. And I thought, well, that's genuinely a lovely story. because that's the dream. But then you start looking into it and you go, I think it was quite a nice house. And her mum still lived next door to that house. And it had been in the family for generations, which is not the sort of thing that happened. Maybe in America that happens. But yeah, I started thinking, oh, I wonder if your origin is slightly less. It's quite what it was. Sure. But if you want to be a star of the time, and I think she 100 % wants to be a star of the time, we'll come to that in a minute.

10:22telling a story about financial precariousness to modern America is clearly, has been quite successful in the field of politics. My struggle. And perhaps of showbiz. And I think it's interesting. She's got huge commercial instincts. So much of politics or whatever in this polarised world has been how we see stars like, you know, either you're Kid Rock or you're George Clooney, even the stars who for a long time didn't really like to talk about politics. and that's the sort of history of entertainment. We didn't... Over the past decade, pretty much everybody polarised or it became quite obvious.

10:59There was a party she threw for her mother where people were wearing MAGA-ish hats. I think they were saying make 60 great again and there was someone in a Blue Lives Matter T-shirt. Blue Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter. It's a sort of police thing. I thought it was an avatar thing.

11:20And so there's someone like Jennifer Lawrence who grew up in a conservative family and is one of those stars who's not a lot older than Sidney Sweeney, but has said, oh, I can't really talk to them. You know, it's a huge riff. We can't really discuss politics anymore. And we all know, like, you've read a million of those articles, particularly in US publications, those kind of slightly pathetic, now seem incredibly dated articles about, like, you know, how to survive Thanksgiving with your politically diverse family. and Sidney Sweeney's not really about that at all and I think that she has scented something wherever she sits politically, she's scented something on the wind that we've all felt since the Trump victory, which by the way wasn't the cause of it but reflected it, everything's changed and the rules are not the same and five years ago a very commercially instinctive Sidney Sweeney would not have sold soap with her own bathwater.

12:09She would have done some sort of feminist stunt because that was where the eyeballs were. And it's interesting. Did you see that story about, there was a film producer called Carol Bam who was a sort of famous development executive and developed things like Working Girl, Officer and a Gentleman. She produced Father of the Bride, Dead Ringers. And she made some public comment on stage saying, oh, you know, I watched this movie with her and Glenn Powell and I don't understand why everyone, she can't act and she's not hot. Now, Sydney Sweeney came out and said that it was really disappointing. But then she did a full interview saying that Hollywood feminism is bullshit and women supporting and empowering other women in the industry is fake.

12:52I mean, I slightly agree with her. She said this entire industry, all people say is women empowering other women. None of it's happening. All of it is a fake and a front for all the other stuff they say behind everyone's back. I think you're probably right. Yeah, there's some truth in that. But another product she's done is she likes to tinker with cars, okay? Oh, yeah. What could be hotter? And the other thing she did, apart from the bathwater soap, was a limited edition Ford Mustang. Now, it was so limited that I think she had one and one was on display at some sort of Ford showroom. That's very, very limited.

13:28Yeah. But the point is, it's a sort of whole big branding exercise and it's very much the Sydney Sweeney vibe. But obviously what we've seen since the Trump victory is all these entertainment studios making a big play of having had a big wake up and saying, oh no, they're going to row back on what's perceived as extreme wokery or whatever it is of the last 10 years. And so her positioning herself as this type of person, I mean, who is going to get the big roles in the franchises? Are you going to hire her or are you going to hire Rachel Zegler? I mean, it's not really out there, is it? It's not a decision.

14:07She really wants it. There's something about watching someone just come out in the big red dress, coming down the hotel steps every single day like it's a catwalk with a whole different look. She really, really wants it. The return of stars. Yes, but she wants to be a star and she wants to be a particular kind of star and she wants to appeal to people who lots of other people might have thought appealing to them was slightly beneath them or whatever over the past decade of cultural philosophy. And she has positioned herself squarely in the market to appeal to them. And as a result, I think she's going to get huge numbers of roles.

14:46Yeah, I agree. And it's interesting, the idea of now you have to be in a slightly different political space as an actor, culturally political. And we talked last week about the cultural becoming very, very political. And, you know, Hollywood's always going to be a politically progressive place just because the talent pool of writers and producers tend to come more from the left than from the right. Although loads of executives vote Trump. Oh yeah, of course they do. But it would be interesting. My view on these things has always been if you want to use art to further progressive politics, don't tell anyone, just do it.

15:24And the last 30s of actors constantly telling us what they're doing and why they're doing it, You think that's the thing that people, you know, just do it, just show it. You know, the first rule of Hollywood, show, don't tell. Always, always, always. So do that with your politics. Show, don't tell. Just do the stuff you believe in. Make the projects that you believe in. You don't have to spend your entire time telling the whole of America what they should be doing and what they should be thinking. You can telegraph your own place in the firmament, though, and I think that's what Sydney Sweeney does very well.

15:53She hasn't told anyone anything, but she is. She is showing, not telling. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely the key thing. And, you know, as you say, she makes an interesting pairing with Glenn Powell too. And, you know, we've talked about there being no stars left. And it feels like almost week by week, those two are becoming, you know, Burton and Taylor all of a sudden. You know, a Burton and Taylor for our time. I can't take it seriously. I can't take him seriously. But he wants it so much. No, no, no, I know. I know, I know. If we were doing the rest of his... A Burton and Taylor for our times. If we were doing the rest of his entertainment when Liz Taylor was just breaking out on the scene, we wouldn't be saying, oh my God, she's iconic.

16:31Oh my God, she's incredible. The things she's doing, we'd be like going, okay, who's this? We wouldn't go 50 years later. I would immediately be, like, Sydney Sweeney is iconic. And I think we would have clocked Taylor pretty fast. But obviously she'd started as a child. But yes, I think they're not the stars in the same way that they used to be. Stars aren't the same at all. And, you know, part of this is a hankering for a time that you can never get back to. Yeah, like a monoculture. Yes, and a huge part of Glenn Powell's career is like people saying to him, is going on films with people like The Expendables or whatever, which one he was in.

17:05I can't remember which iteration of that particular endless franchise he was in. But where Harrison Ford and all those people said to him, oh, it was amazing, you know, we were the biggest stars. And he wants to kind of tunnel his way back into a world where, you know, a Glenn Powell movie opening is the only thing that anyone in the culture is talking about. I absolutely see it. I see it in television as well. You know, I'm from a generation that grew up with, you know, if you had a hit, that was a show that everybody was watching. And you can see the whole of television really hankering to get back to that.

17:33And you can't. I mean, you can have a Strictly and stuff like that. But even that is incredibly siloed. It's the same with books. Books, people say, you know, if you listen to people like Brett Easton Ellis or Jay McEnany talking about when they had a book out in the 80s, it was like the most enormous sort of cultural event. it would happen and you'd have this sense that everyone was reading it whether or not that was actually true it felt that to them that everyone mattered and it was like having a giant movie opening or something like that which of course is not the case anymore i often think i i talk to all sorts of creators about this and no one has yet disagreed with me when i have like a new book out there is a large bit of me that thinks right could everyone else not have a book out for the next two weeks yes no one else should be allowed to have a book out or a film out the thing when my thing is out this year we just have two weeks where we everyone can focus everyone can focus i feel like we do have that with your books but it's amazing you want more but everyone wants more that's the point you know you talked to yeah i was talking to someone who's in a very very very big band about this and he was saying yeah when our new album's out i want every i want the clocks to stop i want everyone else to go no no one else is like the radio is not allowed to play anything else you know no one else is allowed to release a record there are no everyone goes you know what we're not going to do gigs for a few weeks because this new thing is out so that's all i want yeah i i can understand that and i it you can never have stars like that again because the culture has become so much more atomized and that people can't be although we hang on we've said that before and then i think taylor swift is bigger than anybody um and she's bigger than maybe even madonna was at the time it's hard to well that's it you're either everything or you're a small yeah yeah but this is sydney swiney wants to be everything and i'm here and i'm here for it She wants to be the Walmart of actors.

19:15Yes. Now, after the break, we're going to talk about the switch too. I'm going to ask you questions about it. Yeah. And you're going to answer them. And we're also going to recommend a film which everybody who hasn't already seen it is going to enjoy. Which I love. Yeah. All right. Shall we go to a break? Let's do that.

19:36This podcast is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch season three of And Just Like That, the next chapter in the Sex and the City story. What is Carrie Bradshaw up to now, Marina? Well, she has said goodbye to her beloved apartment. She's moved into a townhouse in Gramercy Park. New chapter, new book. She is writing, you'll love this, she's writing romanticcy, Richard. Yes, that genre we have already pretended to understand for this podcast. Just romance and fantasy. Listen, it's what I'm doing next. The Thursday Romanticcy Club. Now, Miranda's adjusting to post-shay life. Charlotte is navigating family life while reliving her 30s alongside younger colleagues.

20:11and Carrie, she is still catastrophically allergic to stability, but trying. Watch the brand new season of And Just Like That, available 30th of May on Sky.

20:26This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Got a car to sell, but no time to waste? Hop onto Carvana.com to get a real offer for your car in seconds. All you have to do is enter your license plate, answer a few quick questions, and if you accept the offer, Carvana will pay you as soon as you hand the keys over. They even offer same-day pickup in many cities. Save your time, score some cash, and sell your car the convenient way to... Carvana! Pickup times vary. Bees may apply. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills.

21:10Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

21:23Welcome back, everybody. Now, we're going to talk about the Nintendo Switch 2, which was after a very long way, I think about eight years, was released last week. And this is the sort of home console, but it's also portable. So it's both. Richard, you have one. Yes, I do. Why is it important, you ask? I think Nintendo might be the great geniuses of our time in the world of entertainment. I know we talk about Netflix and YouTube, but Nintendo are so incredibly brilliant at what they do. And for a very specific reason, which we'll get to, which is something that we talk about an awful lot. So the original Switch has sold 150 million.

21:58We have one of those. Yeah, exactly. And listen, it's great, right? It's terrific. The only consoles in the whole of history of video games that have sold more are the PlayStation 2, that's how long ago that was, and the Nintendo DS. So Nintendo have very, very few rivals. So it's come out this week, the Switch 2. It's not enormously different to Switch 1. It's bigger, the technical specifications are better. It's got live chat, but any big gamer can do live chat anyway. So it's not hugely different, but it's just an update on what they do. and most importantly, it launches with Mario Kart World.

22:32And Mario Kart and the Switch are almost interchangeable in some ways. There's loads of other great games, but Mario Kart is always the launch game. And in fact, it's one of the few Nintendo titles that actually is available for this new Switch. And Mario Kart is one of the great pieces of art of the 20th and 21st century. And the reason it's one of the great pieces of art of the 20th and 21st century is the thing we bang on about a lot, which is it's just fun. It isn't anything other than what would people like to play. I taught my son, he's the one who's got the Switch 2 and he absolutely understands video games in the way that hopefully I understand TV.

23:11And he said, well, look, the reason that people go crazy for Nintendo is they're not doing some big blockbuster game that eight years ago they say they're going to do and bit by bit it comes out and then it's a year late. They're not doing some open world that's stuffed with micro transactions. they're just doing a great version of a game you've already played and they just make it a little bit better you know increase the playability um you know the new mario world you can that you can play with more players there's elimination modes there's all sorts of things but it is just a great playable game that hardcore gamers love because you can go really really in depth like if you're a chess player and that you can pick up with any member of your family who wanders around everyone can play mario kart immediately and nintendo have consistently done that this new Switch that's come out is£395, I think, over here, which is an awful lot of money.

24:01And I think a lot of people will hold off buying one because, weirdly, the Switch 1 still works so brilliantly that it will take a while to invest in a Switch 2, even though Walmart in the States had to change their opening hours last week. Well, they did some of that, which you don't see anymore, which was a real, since everyone's gone over to, well, not completely, but to digital games, those big openings you used to get for a new game where people used to queue at midnight and it was kind of like a real gamer thing to do don't really happen in the same way anymore. Those kind of huge hype things where they dress the outside of the store or whatever because people have transitioned to buying digital games.