The Melania Doc: Hit or Flop?

3:56Marina Hyde:It's called What a Time to Be Alive. You can pre-order it now. Because last time I did a book, Liz Truss had just been triumphantly installed as Prime Minister. And very recently, Brooklyn Beckerman had Mama's Boy tattooed on his chest. So update needed. Yeah, it's got, you know, there's a lot of Lauren and Jeff in it. Everything from the space trip, the wedding in Venice. The Gwyneth Paltrow ski massacre trial. A lot of no drama, Starmer. I hope you can hear my sarcastic air quotes.

4:24Richard Osman:Marina High's greatest hits.

4:25Marina Hyde:Jeffrey Epstein and his many, many friends. Don't worry, we can still take in columns till... Quite late in the year.

4:31Richard Osman:24th of September.

4:32Marina Hyde:24th of September. Anyhow, what are we talking about today?

4:35Richard Osman:We are talking about, do you know what? We've got three absolute Bobby Dasleys this week, I think. We're talking about the Melania movie. Are we not?

4:42Marina Hyde:We are.

4:42Richard Osman:Talking of America.

4:43Marina Hyde:Yeah. We are talking about Ryan Reynolds' text messages, which are amazing in the lively Baldoni saga.

4:54Richard Osman:Yeah. We're also talking about, I think it's the single biggest entertainment story that's probably come up since we've been on air pretty much. And it has not been reported in the media at all. A billion dollar deal that has not been reported anywhere. You'll find that exactly.

5:09Marina Hyde:Not in the mainstream. There's like in niche sort of, you know, specialist publications and things. But it's odd not to have seen it anywhere. But anyway. Yeah, exactly.

5:18Richard Osman:So you'll be learning all about Kabi Lame later on and his billion dollar deal. Also, by the end of talking of Beckham, there was an article in the Mail about Goalhanger and the fact that I'd refused to take part in your Brooklyn Beckham emergency podcast.

5:35Marina Hyde:Don't say emergency podcast.

5:37Richard Osman:We'll go through that article line by line and say exactly why it's wrong. But should we start with Melania?

5:42Marina Hyde:Let's start with Melania. Obviously, I've seen it. I saw it on Friday afternoon. Of course you have. It's interesting now because we've got some numbers. I have to say the reporting on this has been a bit hit and miss, but it's the biggest documentary opening in a decade, excluding concert films, which are not really the same thing. It took$7 million in the US. What we know about them is the audience was female and the vast majority were over 55.

6:05Richard Osman:I think 75 % over 55, isn't it? Which is good. You've got to super serve an audience.

6:10Marina Hyde:Oh, God, I completely love all their data. Regrettably, our own data is far less granular and it's not really made public until later. and we will know something later in the week. But let's face it, this film is not for us, okay? It's not for the people outside the United States particularly. It's on a par with something like Am I Racist, which I think in the end ended up with, which was the anti-DEI documentary, which got to about 12 million in the end. But remember, this thing cost Amazon$40 million and they spent$35 million on marketing, which is obviously unheard of in the documentary space unless it's something like Fahrenheit 9-11.

6:44Marina Hyde:Having seen it, you know when people say it's all up there on the screen. Oh, I mean, it's all the money's up there on the screen. Okay. None of the money is up there on the screen. It reminds me of one of those aid programs, you know, and they raise millions. And then someone goes a couple of years later to the area and it's just totally desolate. Hold on.

7:02Richard Osman:You don't appear to have built that school.

7:03Marina Hyde:Yeah. Did the kids get none of the money? Where did the money go? Now, obviously, Amazon would say that the 40 million is to license the documentary. But the effect of that is to, as you watch it, is to make you feel that you are watching something for which the only rational explanation at that price point is that it is a political bribe or a ludicrously lavish political gift with the hope of mutual benefits.

7:29Richard Osman:And by the way, this is a company, Amazon, who just fired 1 ,600 employees in the States as well. So they appear to not have a lot of money. So to be splashing 75 million on something that only made 7 million, It's certainly an interesting business decision.

7:45Marina Hyde:It's a totally worth it business decision. Think about it. Of course it is. This is the thing, that these things are reported as a sort of entertainment things. And unfortunately, we live in a world where all sorts of things have bled into one another. Even Elon Musk, spending$44 billion on Twitter at the time, people are like, oh, you know, he's ruined the business. No, he hasn't. You know, look at the influence he's got. Now Grok is like being, I think this week or something, going into all the Pentagon systems. Okay, 44 billion was worth it for him. You don't think for a trillion dollar company that like 75 million is worth it for Amazon?

8:15Marina Hyde:Of course it is. Of course it is. However, we'll talk about blowback later in this thing. Okay, let me just talk to you about this piece of work.

8:22Richard Osman:Yes, great, please.

8:23Marina Hyde:Because I have seen it, okay.

8:24Richard Osman:When you say piece of work, are you talking about the film?

8:26Marina Hyde:And the director and the subject. We open and it's like Gimme Shelter playing over a drone, drone shots of Mar-a-Lago, okay? Now, first of all, don't forget, Brett Ratner, I'm just talking about it as a technical piece of work now. That's the only thing. And then we'll move on to the rest of it. Brett Ratner has never made a documentary before. He makes things like Rush Hour and X-Men movies and things like that. Okay. So it's a mess. But there's sort of weird things like about halfway through the movie, like this grainy footage starts being dropped into it. And you're like, what's this? And then there's an explanation that, you know, and you think, oh, I see it's like Super 8.

8:59Marina Hyde:And she says, my father always used to shoot family movies. but then the Super 8 is most of the film and you're like, hang on, this is an inauguration date. This is like miles outside the security cord. No way is like Melania's dad there. Brett Ratner has got someone to shoot second unit on some Super 8 just to pad it all. It's ridiculous. I mean, for me, the most unforgivable, there are many unforgivable things. He's constantly sort of shooting behind a pillar or behind a door. But to me, the most unforgivable thing is obviously because they're the president, the first lady, the security things, they have to leave always via like service exits and entrances.

9:32Marina Hyde:And so it's after the inauguration and they have to not go quite through the kitchens, but they have to go down and walk into an underground car park.

9:39Richard Osman:Like Spinal Tap.

9:40Marina Hyde:He does it as a one-er to the crystals, then he kissed me. Okay. It's like, okay, Brett, you can't do that. You can't, you know, one of the three most famous one-ers in the entire cinema. One-er is a one-shot. Is a one-shot, right? The three most famous like steadicam shots like that in the whole of cinema, one of them is Martin Scorsese when Karen and Henry arrive at the club in Goodfellas and it follows them all the way through right and it's to the crystals that make it stars like you can't do like a 38 second one or when that one's three minutes what are you thinking of unless it's satire which having seen the rest of the movie it isn't it's like it's an interminable thing you have to hear all about the place settings what dress she's going to you watch these couturiers like fit her for the inauguration outfit and the inauguration dress and then you realise about half of it, oh my God, he's going to have to pay all this off again.

10:31Marina Hyde:So we're going to have to see her going to the inauguration, the rest, going in the outfit. You're going to see the place settings actually in the thing. It is so unbelievable. This film is the most boring thing in the entire world. Now, obviously, I have to try and find interesting things because I knew I was talking about it. And also, I have to make an hour and 44 minutes go amusingly. The things that I do think are interesting are just on a sort of meta level. This is a documentary about someone who wants to completely obscure themselves. Okay, if you wear sunglasses indoors, I'm sorry you're a twat.

10:58Marina Hyde:But if you wear them in a shot where you're the only person in shot and it's a documentary about you, I mean, sorry, can I see your eyes, please? I don't mean to be rude. Can I see your eyes, please? Do you want to look at the camera for a second? It's sort of unbelievable. But then you see, and she has that hat fitted. Do you remember the hat for the inauguration that completely covered the eyes? And there's a really funny South Park episode where she just keeps materializing like something in a horror movie. She just keeps turning up like that in the corner of the room wearing that outfit. Again, she doesn't want to be known at all.

11:25Marina Hyde:So it's very, very boring. The bits that I found like sort of interesting for just to kind of on a wider thing is Trump having any moment he's in it, having to be not the main character. You've never seen an effort like it. You've never seen him try as hard as this than anything. It's so difficult for him not to be the main character. I found it genuinely hysterical. It's incredibly boring. And I mean, I saw someone say it could become a classic. No. It really can't. The voiceover is totally sort of effortless. She's always talking about, you know, I honour the interior of the White House and I completely respect it.

12:05Marina Hyde:Now, if Bretton Ratner had any balls, he would have cut to that backhoe just knocking down the entire East Wing. Which is, by the way, her bit of the White House in order for Trump's ballroom project that's currently in construction without permits as far as I can work out.

12:18Richard Osman:Do you get to know an awful lot about her through it?

12:21Marina Hyde:The one thing that you learn is that she's incredibly scared of them being shot. and that she's incredibly scared of being in any outside space in an exposed thing. She's really happy that the inauguration, you know, goes inside because of the weather. And she's really happy that their sort of rally on the night, you know, and that with all the sort of MAGA faithful or maybe the EVOV or whatever it is, is inside as well because she's just terrified. She doesn't want to get out of the car. But the way they talk about their son is so odd. Trump's on the phone to her and he's like saying, yeah, we have these sort of cute conversations.

12:54Marina Hyde:I have cute conversations with him. She's like, yeah, no, I know. I love him. He's got such a... It's like they've sort of vaguely... I mean, it's just so... Everything is so emotionally dead and sort of like hollowed out. But it's as though they're talking about sort of a vague acquaintance, even though clearly they aren't. It's very, very odd.

13:12Richard Osman:And that's not what Ratna's going for.

13:14Marina Hyde:No. Well, Ratna's just going for the payday and now going for Trump, lobbying for him to make Rush Hour 4. It's incredibly poorly made. and he's just you hear his voice from behind the camera but it's honestly i would have thought it's

13:29Richard Osman:almost all the footage they shot it's that boring and so where's that 40 million gone i've read

13:34Marina Hyde:reports that said 28 million went straight to her i don't know i you know i obviously they have to pay they have to pay crew they have to pay someone to hold the super right i can't you know it's not an expensive piece of filmmaking at all yeah that's where it's gone and they and the marketing So yes, the reporting of it, I think, has been quite hit and miss because people have said, oh, it doesn't matter how many tickets it sells in the UK. That's not what it's for. As I say, it's a political project. It's obviously done much better than people thought it would do. I personally think it will consolidate quite well in their sort of heartlands over the next week.

14:10Richard Osman:And also on the Rotten Tomatoes, I think the critics score is 11 % and the audience score is 99%. That's exactly that. Again, it's super serving an audience, and it is that thing of everything is culture war, so of course it gets an A score. But talking of super serving audiences, in the same weekend, so the Melania thing took in 7 million, the YouTuber Markiplier, who does all sorts of playthroughs on horror video games and things like that, but also acts and does all sorts, he has funded, directed, starred in, and produced his own movie, which is called Iron Lung, set in a kind of imagined future.

14:46Marina Hyde:it's uh based on one of those kind of niche based on a game yeah where he's he's piloting a

14:51Richard Osman:submersible through an ocean of blood on a moon that took 18 million dollars on the same same weekend as melania 18 million dollars super serving an audience 75 percent of people were under 25 watching that movie his movie did not cost 75 million dollars to make his movie which took 18 million dollars cost three million dollars so he's i mean that is a huge success for him a huge success for young people going to the cinema and a huge success for cinema i mean that's yeah

15:26Marina Hyde:it's a totally different avenue yeah opens up if you think that creators from those platforms can come in and bring an entire fan base into theaters if you think that that can happen it's failed before by the way yes but he really tried but he has not failed he has he has really hit a huge home run as the americans call it yeah and what this might bring about is really really interesting the idea that he can open a movie wide a wide release and have it on i think they had in the north america 2500 screens or something incredible like which is a really wide release and i thought but it was completely fascinating what he's done.

16:05Marina Hyde:You know, he wrote, directed and acted in this movie and it's based on a sort of, you know, online, as you say, horror, sci-fi.

16:13Richard Osman:Set in a submersible, in a far off.

16:16Marina Hyde:In a lake of blood on a moon, I think. In a lake of blood, yeah. I mean, to think that creators, content creators from those platforms might be able to make things that could get those people out to cinemas is actually great and really exciting, an exciting sort of shot in the arm for the market and opens the idea that maybe we can do something

16:36Richard Osman:completely different here they bring huge fan bases and also they bring back fan bases they bring the sort of people to the cinema who we say don't go to the cinema anymore you think well i mean they will do if you do that and they're both about super serving audiences in the same way where we've talked about religious movies before which will play you know to 90 of people will not be interested at all the same with melania same with with markiplier but if you can really get that audience invested then there's a lot of money to be made and again if you spend 75 million like amazon have done then that's that's a completely different thing but if you can do it spending three million then it's it's you know makes the future of cinema look rather rosy i would say

17:13Marina Hyde:it is interesting though the sort of backlash to it all yeah that the documentary the weekend before had a screening at the white house and there was one picture that made it online of uh tim cook the CEO of Apple, posing with Brett Ratner, you know, clinking glasses at this kind of screening. That's the same day that Alex Preti was shot in that morning in Minneapolis. And there was such a lot of blowback against that. That was the other thing I thought, oh, I can't remember Tim Cook being on Oligarch's Row at the inauguration. But of course, when I went, because I ended up sitting, he is literally behind Melania.

17:51Marina Hyde:He's not with Zuckerberg and Bezos and Lauren in that incredible outfit. And now he's felt he's had to issue a statement. And there's been a massive backlash from within Apple. And, you know, people who work on Apple shows, Olivia Munn, who is in Your Friends and Neighbours, which is a hit for Apple, might say, well, you know what? She has accused Brett Ratner of behavior, which he denies, which is that she was once summoned to his trailer or sent to his trailer. And he was furiously masturbating with one hand and holding a prawn cocktail in the other. But remember that Apple and Amazon are not the same as entertainment companies.

18:25Marina Hyde:So it's kind of pointless reporting them as though this is like, I don't know, Sony or Lionsgate or whoever it is who's made this documentary. It's not the same as that. We're talking about companies for whom the metrics are completely different. And 75 million is absolutely nothing. However, it's how much blowback there is. And I think actually for Tim Cook, he will be thinking quite carefully about how he's pictured.

18:50Richard Osman:Yeah, because Apple still ride the coattails of cool. They still have, you know, the very beginnings were quite counter-cultural and they've always lent into that.

19:01Marina Hyde:That's an interesting point. I don't think they do anymore. I think they have become part of the Dark Lords now.

19:07Richard Osman:Oh no, they definitely are part of the Dark Lords. I agree. But I think in terms of their marketing, I think they still like to imagine themselves as that. So there is still, it feels like you can push back a bit more against Apple than you can, that you could push back against, say, Philip Morris.

19:22Marina Hyde:Yeah.

19:23Richard Osman:Or BAE Systems.

19:24Marina Hyde:Although I see smoking school again. They've all made deals with the devil, and they've all been plausibly deniable. The minute that they start thinking this is actually harmful in some way to our core business will be the minute that it is actually a sort of tipping point. I think it was difficult for Tim Cook for definite, for sure, last week.

19:43Richard Osman:My sense in America last week was that a tide was turning. and listen it's it's I I would be 0.8 percent more optimistic than I was before I went there which which is not which is not a lot but you know something is in the air and understandably so and this Melania thing coming out exactly when it did and the money of it being so obvious and the director of it sort of there's there's there's slightly a perfect storm around this where you see an unacceptability so this documentary is called Melania and it simply follows her around for sort of the 20 days around the inauguration do you think it is worth people going to watch as a cultural artifact or just so they can have an opinion on it or or should people save their

20:27Marina Hyde:one hour 44 minutes oh my god under no circumstances waste your money it is incredibly boring if you want to watch it when it comes on to streaming in like three or four weeks or whatever it's going to be we don't know the exact window but really no under no circumstances i couldn't you just

20:41Richard Osman:can't it's not even a camp classic so it's not like an irony watch listen if anyone could get

20:46Marina Hyde:an irony out of anything it's me but i i struggled i really struggled it's incredibly boring shall we

20:52Richard Osman:go to a break let's afterwards we have three fun things well we have ryan reynolds emails we have the story of uh carby lame which has i'm gonna submit been underreported i think it's the most extraordinary entertainment story of the last couple of years uh and also we'll be chatting through that um daily mail article as well see you after the break

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22:30Richard Osman:Add a touch of pistachio, a hint of strawberry, or vanilla, or make it a spring classic with lavender. Because this season, there's endless ways to chai at Starbucks. Welcome back, everybody. Now, I know we've spoken about the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni saga before. We're going to talk about it again, but through the lens of Ryan Reynolds, because a lot of his emails have been released.

22:55Marina Hyde:And his texts.

22:56Richard Osman:And his texts. I'd say he's quite a wordsmith. Just to put it in context, 2023, Ryan Reynolds had 80 % positive public sentiment across all social media. In 2025, he has 20%. Blake Lively went from over 80 % to 10%. percent justin baldoni went from 64 to five percent so this is a fight that everyone has lost but we can focus now on ryan reynolds and his entry into the fray okay well first of all you're

23:25Marina Hyde:probably thinking how is this case still going on and i get that the movie we're talking about is it ends with us which was an adaptation of the colleen hoover novel um it was a big hit it was released by Sony and it came out the weekend after Deadpool and Wolverine. Dollar earned for dollar spent, It Ends With Us was even more successful than that. Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds should really have been at a sort of new peak. But Blake Lively took a real pasting on that press tour and she took a real massive groundswell of hate for her online. Anyway, that all exploded months later with a New York Times article which suggested that the dark carts of publicity had been employed to kind of do an astroturfing hate campaign against her.

24:07Marina Hyde:She sued him for sexual harassment. He countersued. His case has been thrown out, but hers remains. And it is under this still very much alive lawsuit that all these messages and emails and so on have had to be entered into filings as part of the discovery material. Ryan Reynolds' text messages and emails with various players, including Colleen Hoover, including Justin Baldoni, Sony, and his agent at WME and the chairman of WME, but not the super big boss of WME who gets a lot of mentions, but we'll talk about that. Before they start shooting, these are some of my favourite messages. This is so dark.

24:44Richard Osman:The very first one, Ryan Reynolds is trying to get Baldoni to move the production two weeks forward. Which is huge, by the way. I can't even explain. But because for family reasons, he wants it moved back moved to uh two weeks forward so sends him a this email and and says if there's any way your line producer could make this happen i will have her face tattooed on my

25:06Marina Hyde:perineum yeah i completely understand how big of an ask that is but the perineum is one of the most nervy parts of the human body to expose to trauma so and then he signs off i happen to adore you justin yeah i happen to and also he said he also the worst thing he says in that email where it's about if you can do this, it's how to win us.

25:23Richard Osman:It's like, ooh, this is, ugh.

25:26Marina Hyde:Okay, because I thought we, you know, he says you've been a great collaborator. Are we collaborating? Because it seems like I have to win you and you are starring in my movie, okay.

25:34Richard Osman:So it's a very, it is definitively, if you got that email, you go, I have to move my production two weeks forward, which as you say, is sort of impossible.

25:42Marina Hyde:The reason why we're talking about this today is because it's so interesting and revealing, very rarely revealing about how power genuinely works in Hollywood. The reason Justin Bale McDonough's movie can even get made, even though he's got this tech guy backing it, and even though he's got the rights from Colleen Hoover, is because Blake Lively is in it. She is the star. Once she's attached to it, the movie is getting made. And that's why Ryan Reynolds, her husband, who has nothing to do with the movie, remember, he doesn't even have some vanity EP credit. So the next messages we see are with, well, not the next messages, but there's so many messages.

26:12Marina Hyde:We can see that the next messages are with a Sony executive. So we can see that Blake Lively got a final cut of the film. Remember, she is the star of this film, gets final cut of it, which is...

26:22Richard Osman:So Justin Birdenny, who's the director and co-star, he cut a version of the film. Blake Lively was unhappy with it. She did her own version. Sony allowed her to do her own version of it. So there are two competing versions.

26:33Marina Hyde:And they go with hers.

26:34Richard Osman:And Sony goes with hers, yeah.

26:36Marina Hyde:Ryan Reynolds then writes to Sony, You have a lifetime supply of admiration, respect and friendship for me. If there's any way I can pay it forward any time, say the word and I will show up for you. Try me.

26:45Richard Osman:Such a power move. And by the way, who wouldn't do that for their wife? I mean, that's the thing that shines through this all the way. It shows us about Hollywood power dynamics. But also, if you're Ryan Reynolds, that is what you would do because it's your wife, don't you think?

26:59Marina Hyde:I would try and help my wife. We'll get to the end and see whether he has helped his wife at all.

27:04Richard Osman:Yes, I imagine when he was writing every single one of these messages, if you'd said to him, before you press send, just so you know, every single person in the world will see this message, he would have written different messages. But that's not where he is. They're very well written.

27:17Marina Hyde:And I have to say, people often say about actors, oh God, that's so boring. It's only when they're speaking someone else's lines. These messages are better than 90 % of lines I've ever seen Ryan Reynolds speak on film. By the opening of this movie, Ryan Reynolds is not happy. There's a sort of whole groundswell of hate. And Blake Lively is getting dragged online all the time.

27:36Richard Osman:No one quite knows where this campaign of hate is coming from at that point. But clearly, Ryan Reynolds gets wind of it.

27:44Marina Hyde:Then Ryan Reynolds writes to WME, to his agent at WME.

27:47Richard Osman:Mega, mega, mega agent. I mean, about the most powerful force in Hollywood, pretty much.

27:52Marina Hyde:Presided over at the ultimate apex predator level by Ari Emanuel, who originally Ari and Andrade is based on. But he's the final boss now, Ari, anyway. Ryan Reynolds says to WME that that statement we just heard to the Hollywood Reporter is a joke. He then insults the executive producer, the Sony executive. He calls them fucking textbook, ineffectual elderly people with no ideas or thoughtful communication skills, just blunt instruments with six catchphrases and about five keywords. They're like two years older than him or something.

28:24Richard Osman:They would have been at high school together.

28:26Marina Hyde:Yeah.

28:26Richard Osman:Yeah.

28:27Marina Hyde:Okay. So then he complains to Patrick Whitesell, who's the executive chairman of WME. There's a lot of names here.

28:33Richard Osman:But no, we love Patrick Whitesell because he's formerly Mr.

28:37Marina Hyde:Lauren Sanchez.

28:38Richard Osman:No way. Did you not know that? I didn't know that. Oh, my God.

28:42Marina Hyde:He then writes to Patrick Wightsell, the thing I believe that my wife and I are missing in this debacle is your rage. I have never had anything but an intense love and admiration for WME and the entire company, but I've also never needed WME like I do at the moment. So then he goes back to his agent. He's lower down at WME, but obviously one of the most very senior agents at WME. This is the most disturbing thing I've ever seen in this business. Sony needs to step up for real. Enough is enough.

29:09Richard Osman:So again, this is all because this online rage against Blake is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I suspect at this point Ryan knows where it's come from and what have you. But at the moment, this is just he needs a lid put on this kind of campaign that seems to be waged against his wife.

29:26Marina Hyde:Then he goes back again to the agent and says, any update on Sony? And can Ari go full Ari on Tom, who's Tom Rothman, who's the film head of Sony? The agent says he will willfully go full R.E. on all of them, but we want to know what we're trying to have him accomplish. It's like, yeah, if you want a negotiation, you need to tell me what you want.

29:46Richard Osman:So after the R.E. Emmanuel bit, the kind of full truth of what's going on becomes apparent.

29:51Marina Hyde:It doesn't come out for quite a few months, actually, that New York Times thing. But when it does come out saying this dark publicity campaign was launched, she also sues him for sexual harassment on set. If there's any sense that that sexual harassment as a sort of play came later, then what on earth have you been doing? Because this is so completely damaging, as you've seen. It is so damaged, their public images. For me, that rule of never litigate, which I've talked about before, but litigating in a polarized culture. By the way, this has become completely part of the culture wars. Megyn Kelly talked about it on her opening speech at the CPAC, the Conservative Conference.

30:35It's become weaponized, this battle completely by the culture wars.

30:40Marina Hyde:I just think litigating, in the old days, you could have done this and it would have worked out exactly as you planned, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. but nowadays unless it is really extreme what happened to you i hate to say it but it could destroy you even more than the original scene but you know and as you say it's it's it's the

31:00Richard Osman:the whole story is indicative of how soft power works in hollywood how big stars are how big agents are um but you know yeah listen the one the one good thing about it for ryan reynolds is as you say comes out of it as a as a great writer yeah but i think that in speaking of screen personas all of this now affects Blake Lively's screen persona I don't think she can

31:23Marina Hyde:go back to being the slightly kind of wounded bird you know Serena Vanderwood's and girl you know this affects the roles you'll be offered from now on in my view because and I just think this is another you know this is another instance of it just being so unpredictable in an on an extremely online world and what people will now accept her on screen as and I think that that shifts for me.

31:48Richard Osman:I also think that it is an indication of why people usually do not complain and why people do not come forward and why there is silence in industries where there shouldn't be silence. Often when they come forward it does them more harm than good and that's not the way that it should be.

32:03Marina Hyde:Not because of things with inside the industry but you can't complain because of the

32:06Richard Osman:public right let's move on to uh from former hollywood power to the new entertainment power this story as you say has not really been reported in entertainment media a guy called carby lame who you may know your kids may know he is a tiktoker he's an italian tiktoker in fact he's the biggest tiktoker italian senegalese in the world yeah he was he was working in a factory in 2020 he lost his job yeah got fired and thought i'm going to start doing some tiktoking starts tiktoking in 2020 a manager signs him up when he's got a thousand instagram followers now the biggest tiktoker in the world even by 2022 he was making 75 million dollars a year this guy if you've never seen him his shtick is sort of he's sort of mr bean-esque a lot of it is quite physical comedy

32:51Marina Hyde:silent comedy it's that's the key to a lot of it it's silent so you don't have to just be working in the angus field in his case he's italian he's not limited it's not amazing but it's absolutely

33:02Richard Osman:fine. I mean, he's a physical comedian. He's very, very charming. His personality is charming. He is himself, and authenticity, as we know, is the most powerful thing you can have. He was a refugee from Senegal, which is how he came to Italy in the first place.

33:16Marina Hyde:He's a first-generation immigrant to Italy.

33:18Richard Osman:So if someone's going to end up being an entertainment billionaire, quite a good person to have done it. And that is exactly what he has just become, Carby Lame. And because he has signed a deal which i think is genuinely extraordinary it tells you everything about where entertainment is going a billion dollars he's just been paid by a company called rich sparkle rich sparkle are a corporation based in hong kong all they did was produce financial reports that was their job i mean that was their job and they they decided we're going to branch out into digital what they have paid in this money for and this is only a three or four year deal They have paid him a billion dollars for...

33:56Marina Hyde:900, to be super accurate, 975 million.

34:00Richard Osman:975 million. But they have paid not only for him, but they have paid for his likeness, his physical likeness, his voice, his mannerisms. They have also paid for the AI rights to his face, his voice, his mannerisms. and they're paid for those to be used in live commerce streaming you know they've paid to create an ai version of him yeah live stream e-commerce is what we would have thought 20 years ago is um uh you know um qvc yeah you know it's it's selling you know stuff on tv so this is tiktok's uh live stream e-commerce is influencers brands all sorts of people doing tutorials vehicles doing kind of walkthroughs doing kind of behind the scenes at factories and you being able to buy something straight away immediately from them they say by 2026 the literally just the live stream e-commerce industry it is due to be worth over one trillion dollars by the end of the year and that's mainly just china by the way in the states it keeps growing and growing it's going to be about 70 billion in the in the states this year i mean technically how they're going to do it

35:11Marina Hyde:is really interesting because they can if they can have an ai version by the way they've only brought these rights for three years or something okay and it's a billion about half what comcast are going to pay for the whole of itv forever yeah it's about an eighth of what like skydance paid for paramount mtv all the cable networks i mean three years of kabilame and what they're going to be able to do is obviously if you've got the ai rights to someone then he can live stream all the time in any language.

35:42Richard Osman:Yes, they've got multilingual rights. That's very, very important.

35:45Marina Hyde:You're not cursed by the human's ability to need to sleep or recharge or anything.

35:49Richard Osman:He can be live streaming 24 hours a day in every territory in the world.

35:53Marina Hyde:This is a totally sort of new frontier in image rights. And his AI avatar is basically going to do all of this. But I think it's also ethically a new frontier because this is a completely new model that you now can't ignore because someone's paid so much for it for leveraging like digital identity. Someone else's digital identity is now like a business asset for a business. For me, I don't feel totally sure that as always with these things, the law is anywhere near catching up with these things. If humans can become everlasting assets or whatever, or you hear so much about authenticity, but this is like a science fiction thing.

36:33Marina Hyde:What if you could separate that authenticity from the actual human and then treat it as a commercial asset that you could exploit all the time. And the human didn't need to be involved, really.

36:43Richard Osman:Because that's how he's grown what he's done so far, by himself with his own personality, because of the authenticity, because he's very believable, because he is real. So they are giving him a billion dollars to create a simulacrum of his realness. They go, this guy is so real, we need to produce an artificial version of him. there'll be acres of press when you know claudia winkelman is doing a new chat show on bbc one

37:07Marina Hyde:which by the way is a story that which we're 100 here for absolutely right but this is beyond

37:13Richard Osman:enormous i mean this is where everything is going this is the future you know live stream e-commerce is where the world of entertainment is sort of this it's absolutely morphing into that and when this thing's like oh should sky and itv be allowed to team up should so and so be able to by so-and-so, you know, surely that's a monopoly. You think, have you lost your mind? There's a trillion dollars going into live stream e-commerce. And all of this is time spent by people and money spent by people and advertising money going into, you know, this is where the industry is. And if you're in broadcast media at all, then this is your opposition.

37:47Richard Osman:And if all the broadcast media tomorrow joined together, it would not be a monopoly because this is what it's up against. So anyone who's telling you, you can't team up certain entertainment propositions with each other it's it's gone the that world is already gone and this i will be interested in the reception

38:04Marina Hyde:to it because obviously people do feel they have an authentic connection with a fan base and they're sort of buying his fan base they're you know buying his live stream buying all of that stuff but i do think once you know that it's an ai version of the guy that you started watching in his bedroom in the pandemic i think it will be interesting to see how people react to that

38:27Richard Osman:who have been used to the real but if i'm carby i'm immediately doing a lot of tiktoks which are me if you're a billionaire now so yeah yeah yeah like like i'd be here yeah uh if i if i was carby i would be doing interviews with my with japanese carby you know i'd be doing live stream video i would be really immersing myself with these various avatars of me and so so even if they're all endorsed by me if that makes sense and he would say you know i'm constantly updating the algorithm myself and you know i was chatting to my german carby the other day and we said x y or z so i there's ways and means of keeping control of it but i mean god that idea of just i mean talk about money when you sleep i mean that's amazing it's not even you but and yet it is now we promised you at the beginning there was there was an article in the mail we wanted to do a little

39:16Marina Hyde:right to reply to marina the article i am reading about this podcast richard and i hear that gary Lineker has ruffled feathers inside his own company. Oh, Gary. Some members of the team have accused him of cynically exploiting his fellow English footballer, David Beckham, and his family crisis. Because I did, I'm not going to call it an emergency podcast. Although it was. It was a reaction episode to Brooklyn Beckham's Instagram post. You had a reaction episode. You should go see your doctor if you have a... According to Katie Hynde in the Daily Mail, you felt uncomfortable about participating in.

39:52Richard Osman:And who did you get that from?

39:52Marina Hyde:a close pal a bystander i am an insider an insider an insider yeah hasn't been inside my whatsapp messages to you if which i've scrolled back by the way we send a lot of whatsapp messages to each other i scroll back about 900 pages and i found the day all right ryan yeah yeah i know

40:09Richard Osman:they're all very well but it's interesting isn't it because it's the only reason we're talking about it is because there's a million articles like this written all day every day oh so-and-so has fallen out with so-and-so oh a rumor of this i have an insider told me this and so it's interesting when something like this comes up so we can definitively talk you through it and say well this didn't happen this didn't happen and she said i've got insiders at goal hanger who have said this who have said x y and z and we know it's not the case so they said i was uncomfortable with doing it i wasn't we i messaged you on that morning said well god we really should do this brooklyn beckham thing and i said no i i can't i'm i'm literally i'm physically not around today would you be able to do it by yourself you said of course i wouldn't actually it's perfect for you to do anyway so i had no discomfort we can't we be hypocrites if we didn't talk about it because we talk about this stuff all the time and culturally it's interesting you want to write a story about this we'll tell you whether it's bullshit or not well so either she has goal hanger insiders and in which case katie they don't all the way through this article everything you've said is wrong it's all completely no but it is all but it's worth saying it's all incorrect okay and if they said you i'm uncomfortable that's incorrect as well so either you've got insiders they are wrong or you haven't got insiders and you've you've made it up because let me tell you but i get it what we call in the business and it's fine to do it because we're all we do listen what are we doing now it's it's nonsense what we all do but i hope you don't mind katie we're allowed to say we're allowed to say here next time then i won't have to do it this way but listen

41:33Marina Hyde:can i just say something yeah this is my favorite bit of it this is the nub of this whole article This is the most nuts bit of this whole thing. It says,

41:58Marina Hyde:Oh my God. That's my favorite bit of the whole thing. You cover entertainment. You can't think that's how it works. You can't. You don't genuinely think it's possible that a 90 odd billion deal in the United States is going to founder on anything Gary Lineker says on his Instagram. Like, OK, we also cover entertainment on this podcast, but regrettably, we have to cover entertainment as it is, not as we might wish it to be.

42:26Richard Osman:I'm sure if Peter Beardsley said something, there might be an issue.

42:31Marina Hyde:Please tell me you don't cover entertainment and actually think that. because let me tell you what might actually cause the Warner deal not to go through. It's predominantly antitrust in the streaming market. Sorry, I know it's not as fun as Gary Lineker's tweets. The biggest streamer acquires the third biggest streamer. They might have vertical integration concerns. They might think, oh, there's preferential treatment for Netflix originals and they're using Warner assets. There might be market foreclosure concerns. Yes, there is also an element of Trump. He will become involved. And if he thinks the Ellisons, who, as we know, are also bidding for Warners, if he thinks he can leverage his much closer relationship with them for more personal gain, then that might have something to do with it.

43:13Marina Hyde:But if you think that any of that with those mega power players is going to hang in the balance over anything Gary Lineker says on his Insta, wow. I mean, maybe look up from your small pond for a second. It's going to blow your mind how the world works. It's going to blow your mind.

43:28Richard Osman:But he's not at the BBC anymore, so they can't have a go. It also says that Gary wanted us to do the Brooklyn Beckham podcast. I mean, God bless Gary. I love him. He does not day to day give us an awful lot of...

43:41Marina Hyde:The only people who decide anything that you hear on this podcast are me and Richard. The only people ever.

43:46Richard Osman:Literally our poor producers. We come in and like one minute before we start, they go, any indication of what you're going to talk about this week, guys?

43:53Marina Hyde:Yeah. We have a WhatsApp with Gary. The last message he posted on it, I hope you won't mind me saying is, please don't anybody spoil the traitors final for me. because I can't watch it live. I hope you won't mind me invading his privacy by saying that.

44:03Richard Osman:But listen, again, there are far worse things in the world, but Katie, genuinely forgive us. But you know, you can write that stuff and I get it and that's the angle. No, I won't accept it. I won't accept the Warner Brothers stuff.

44:17Marina Hyde:I will not accept that anyone who covers entertainment thinks that. I just will not accept it. And if they do, I'm stunned.

44:24Richard Osman:But again, just to say, I wasn't uncomfortable. This is absolutely what we do. So if you do have sources, they're incorrect. They've been incorrect about every single factual detail in this, by the way. So if you do have sources, change them. If you don't have sources, come on, that's all I think about that. Do you have any recommendations this week, Marina?

44:41Marina Hyde:I have a recommendation for a thing you can do, and you can only do it every 10 years, which is the government's got its consultation out on the future of the BBC, because of the new charter next year. And you can actually have your say. The last time, it was under the Conservatives, and they'd made lots of moves on sort of encroaching on or limiting the BBC in various ways. And it was actually the public response that stopped that. Reform have obviously said that they wish to destroy the BBC. Now, whether they are in power next time, who knows? My view is that the BBC should be made completely independent of government, like New Labour did with the Bank of England.

45:15Marina Hyde:But listen, your view may be completely different. You may wish to destroy the BBC, but either way, this is the time you can say what you think and your views may be completely different to mine. If you search BBC consultation, I've done it. It takes like 20 minutes. We'll put it in the show notes.

45:30Richard Osman:And is it a government thing? Yeah, it's the only chance that you have to respond to this

45:35Marina Hyde:ahead of the charter of New Orleans next year. So it's a really interesting thing. And you can participate. And the public response genuinely matters. It really changed things last time around. And I think it's very interesting. As I say, you could have completely different views to me. But just, you know, why not make them heard? So I recommend having your say. What do you recommend?

45:51Richard Osman:As I say, I was in the States last week. And so I want to recommend a whole genre, really. I was in the States last week. And I was in Palm Springs. I'm going to set a bit of the next We Solved Murders book there. And there's a renovated theatre and I wanted to go in and have a look because I thought I had an idea for a scene in there. And it wasn't open. So then we looked at what was on that week and Don McLean was playing on the last night we were there.

46:12Marina Hyde:Of course, you had a full immersive Parfumet Springs experience.

46:15Richard Osman:Yeah, so book tickets to go and see Don McLean. And when he's 80, Don McLean, and sat in this theatre and he's got this amazingly tight band. He's got a pianist he's been with in 40 years. He's got this like cool young new guitarist and they just do him loads of rock and roll classics. And then they're doing, you know, he does Vincent, The Place Goes Mad. He does American Pie. And genuinely as people crying, I think whether it's because God, is this the end of something or we're thinking, oh, this is something that's going to last forever. And we get to see the guy who did it. It's like watching Mozart play one of his symphonies.

46:45Richard Osman:Is that a thing? So it's a very moving experience, but it just reminded me, and I know we say a lot that there is something so incredibly special about going to see live music. and there's live music in your town, at theatres, little clubs, whatever it is. Just go and see, just people coming out, just thinking a communal event, you know, and I just thought this is absolutely why AI will not win. This wonderful thing that we can do and it's tough being a musician in this country at the moment. So just go out and see live music. But what a treat to go and see Don McLean. Listen, he's very irascible, but very, very funny.

47:19Richard Osman:He really put on a show.

47:21Marina Hyde:That about wraps us up for today. We will be back, of course, on Thursday with a Q &A.

47:26Richard Osman:I might not be because in case there's something I feel uncomfortable about.

47:29Marina Hyde:Oh, yeah. Unless Richard feels uncomfortable about any questions.

47:32Richard Osman:Or if Gary decides there's stuff he doesn't want us to do. Or Peter Beardsley.

47:36Marina Hyde:And for Friday for our members, which you can join at therestisentertainment.com for free listening and bonus episodes, etc. Ahead of Valentine's Day, we are doing Hollywood's most sinful couple.

47:48Richard Osman:Wow.

47:49Marina Hyde:Yeah. Promising lots of drama there. Anyway, see you on Thursday.

47:53Richard Osman:See you on Thursday.

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