The Oscars: Drama, Fallout and Chalamet’s Shocker

16:51But that lie that Conan O 'Brien said again in the opening monologue, a billion people are watching, a billion people are not watching.

17:00Richard Osman:I mean, that's one in seven people in the entire world. It's a nonsense and it's not true. It gets around. If it does well, it keeps getting about 19 million viewers in the US. Okay, say it gets 20 million. There are 340 million people in the US. It's the equivalent of getting about 4 million people in the UK. It's the equivalent of what the BBC London 6.30pm bulletin gets any given weekday in our country. So what is it? Is it a broadcast at all? Because it's actually a sort of weird cultural event that, as we say, has been running for what feels like very, very, and has been running for very, very many months.

17:38There are whole newsletters that come out every week that do a lot of business on who's up, who's down, which the big plays are, where it can see the tracking going. There's an unbelievable amount of money. Bet on it. I think the last count they said a couple of days ago was 120 million on Calci, Polymarket, those kind of prediction sites. It will be a lot more now.

18:01Richard Osman:Most of it will be. We've talked about Calci and Polymarket being real two-screen things. And if you're watching the Oscars, it's so long. It's so interminably long that actually betting on it, having something to at least look through is one of the few things you can do. Betting on the Oscars, you know, you're not going to make any money from it. But, you know, listen, if it gets you through the Oscars, all one and good. But nothing gets as much coverage for as long in almost our entire culture. And it amounts to 20 million US viewers on a very good day. Okay, so where is the event actually happening?

18:37That's why I think it's good that they've gone to YouTube. They've gone to some of the places that the conversation, the buzz... Because right now, the buzz is not happening within the ceremony itself. And, you know, we've said it before, it's difficult.

18:48Richard Osman:And the buzz is not happening on the TV stream either. Not at all. The buzz is happening around it. Around it. And it's difficult because it's much easier when it's the Grammys or anything like that, or the Brits. The art that you are celebrating handily comes in a three-minute long thing, and it can be performed on the night and it's quite exciting. And it's okay not to hear from the person who did it afterwards. Yeah, absolutely. So the buzz is happening on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube. So they'll be able to collaborate. They've already brought in for a long time Amelia de Moldenberg, who does the red carpet things.

19:21They've tried to do things, but ultimately it feels like a very sort of 1.0 thing still, this long, long, long telecast. And it will be much better to see what they can do with it. since they only have this one thing i don't think everyone putting all their content on youtube is a great idea but for the academy who have one shop front they may as well because also and this

19:41Richard Osman:is the reason it's so long and this is the reason why something has to be done is because there's so many stakeholders in the oscars the channel who make it the academy themselves and then all the different studios and all the different movies and then all the most famous people who are going to the oscars all of those people have a view as to what the most important thing about the Oscars is okay and the most important thing about the Oscars for all of them is their selves or their organizations or or whatever it is so if you're at the academy they need things to be done in a respectful way that's what they need and they need you know the academy to be held above all things if you're any of the actors if you're any of the people they need to be respected they need to be given their time they need if they want to take a long walk up to the stage they're going to take a long walk up to the stage because they're like super super famous and it has become so calcified over years and years and years and years that the thing that happens in television all the time is if you've got a show with lots of moving parts which this has a whole bunch of different awards um it's every time you add 30 seconds to each of them suddenly you're you've added another 20 minutes to your whole thing and if you add another 30 seconds you've added another 20 minutes and the whole point of these shows is everything has to be brutal and if you're youtube they're the first people who would be able to say oh no this is sorry this is not going to be three hours and 30 minutes long but everyone's gonna look here's the numbers this this is when people are going to switch off this you've got one minute for speeches we can do in a way that we'll stick them in a different room and we'll play them as an insect while you're doing something else we are not going to sit and have that attention span but you'll be You'll be able to go to the sidebar the entire time the minute you're not interested in something.

21:21Exactly. And that will be a bit that you are interested in.

21:24Richard Osman:Like a sporting event. The whole point about those things is there's people in the audience, there's people on the stage, and there's loads of people backstage who've just won or are about to win. So you can hear from all of them all the time. If you want to do three and a half hours, you've got to give people three and a half hours worth of content. And if you looked at that, maybe you've got an hour and 50 of content in three and a half hours. And it's just that's not going to wash with people. But I think it's because when you've done something for so long and there's so much money and so much art and prestige and ego involved, nobody wants to give away their 30 seconds.

21:58Richard Osman:Nobody does. And if everyone wants to keep their 30 seconds, then it's really, really long. So hopefully YouTube will be able to say, we do this quickly now. We do it multi-camera. We do it multi-site. We do it, you know, multi-feed. And we're going to absolutely race through it. And then if you want to do a seven-minute speech, by all means do it. And then look at your numbers the next day to see if anyone had migrated backstage or if anyone was at the kind of watch-along party. If your agent is worth anything, they will find a way of burying and hiding those numbers for you so that you never find out that actually people don't care about this stuff.

22:32Richard Osman:No, but your agent is getting thanked in your speech and your agent will see those numbers. So your agent knows if you give a seven-minute speech, I know they can't give long speeches now, but if you give a long speech and nobody is watching, If you give a really cracking, funny 30-second speech with one absolute big soundbite in the middle of it, everyone's going to watch it. It's going to be clipped everywhere, and everyone's going to hear their name. That's the key. I think it will shake it up in a way that it definitely needs to be. Something we talked about last year, and sadly we have to talk about it each year because it does matter, what tells the biggest truth is what advertising is bought in supposedly this event where everybody's watching.

23:11There was one movie, yes, again, one upcoming movie, Project Hail Mary, the thing where, for reasons not at all clear in the trailer, Ryan Gosling is going to space. I will watch it next weekend. It does look great, to be fair. I'll have a look. That's one advert for a film about to come into cinemas. There's lots of adverts for things on streaming. There's lots of TV adverts.

23:30Richard Osman:And by the way, there's no adverts from the big tech companies. So during the Super Bowl, which is something that people actually do care about. And watch. And a lot of people watch that. A lot of people watch it and people who don't like the thing that it is about, which is American football, they will still watch the Super Bowl. That had all of the, you know, your AI companies and the people with all the money. And on the Oscars, no, they're not spending that. It's not an audience that they're particularly interested in. Maybe they try and keep them out. We just don't know. But they'll certainly be having a few adverts from, what's the Google, Gemini AI next time, won't they?

24:05Was it on YouTube? I think they will be. Yes, that's true. But yes, but I think they are sort of kept out. And the people who are watching, I can assure you, are 20 million movie fans, people who have gone out and bought the tickets. So thank them more. Let it not just be Michael B. Jordan's job to thank the people who actually go and leave their house and pay to see things. But also, maybe you'd like to advertise some upcoming attractions to them. Or why are you advertising things that are on streaming?

24:35Richard Osman:Even during the ceremony, turn it into a celebration of movies. And, you know, the orchestral sting, lighting change. I mean, just... It's desiccated, isn't it? It is old and boring. But of course it is, by the way, because that's how my generation grew up making those shows. You want to... The idea of it is you make it grand. The idea of it is you do have these incredible lighting changes and you do have these incredible orchestral stings because that was the language of television and you wanted it better than anyone else. And often better means longer. And so you can see why it got that way, but there is a new generation who watch television differently and you are in the business of storytelling and by the way there will be lots of people behind the scenes of the Oscars who know this but because of the idea there are so many stakeholders it's going to take them a couple of years really to persuade people that maybe they you know if you have to persuade a room of people my age that you have to make it quicker and you can lose x y or z that take that takes a couple of years I would say but uh you know you could see the Oscars being unbelievable entertainment You know, absolutely full of clips, absolutely full of upcoming things, absolutely full of outtakes, you know, full of, you know, little remixes of movies, actors talking to each other, you know, behind the scenes, you know, the sort of stuff that people have shown you time and time and time again.

25:47Richard Osman:They want to watch. That's the stuff about movies they want to watch. And I know you want to make it feel incredibly blue chip and incredibly important. And you do have to do that. That's a balance you have to strike. But you do not do that by making it three and a half hours long. I think they know that. I think they know that by now. But the Oscars could be unbelievable. I think they don't know what to... I mean, honestly, that's what I said at the start of this. I find it an elegiac event to a huge extent. It is... They are not quite sure what to do. And for many years, even though lots of the Best Picture nomination, you know, nobody had really seen them and all of those sorts of things.

26:23And there was a sort of bombast to it all. I didn't detect that at all this year. It's like they now know. They can't say the bit about Irrelevance Out Loud. but my god it hung over it it really did and i i feel that it is there in the room now and people know and they don't really know what to do about it so it is going to take some quite significant

26:42Richard Osman:disruption they've got a great host by the way now conan you could take straight to youtube and would be absolutely accepted i like the cold open the weapon stuff all of that that was great as you say amelia de moldenberg absolutely you know that's a youtube native all the all the pieces are in place for someone just to go we just we are absolutely you know the running order that we start to start from each year and we fill in the gaps we get rid of that running order this year we just do we're going to do it completely differently and you would think that maybe the youtube move will be when they can do that big thing i was thinking about because of wumi masako and this is the i haven't seen a lot written about this certainly in the american trades is whether there have been more actors who've appeared in Casualty who've been nominated for Academy Awards or more actors who've appeared on the bill.

27:29Why wasn't that whole section?

27:31Richard Osman:I haven't seen it at all, but I've done that. I've run the numbers. You'll be absolutely delighted to hear. You surprise me. Yeah. So people who've appeared on the bill have been nominated for Oscars and won some of them. Olivia Colman has been on the bill. Yeah. Pete Postlethwaite. Wumi Masako. Yeah. Who I thought was amazing in Sinners. Ron Moody who was nominated for his role as Fagan he's been on the bill Daniel Kaluuya and Keira Knightley so they've got six on the bill Casualty okay well Brenda Fricker who of course was big on Casualty for a long time and then won the Oscar for My Left Foot Kate Winslet Orlando Bloom Emily Watson Riz Ahmed so we've got five there don't forget we had six on the bill so we've got five but there are two people who'd have been on The Bill, who've also been on Casualty.

28:20Richard Osman:And they are Daniel Kaluuya and Keira Knightley. So Casualty has seven against The Bill's six. So seven people who've appeared in Casualty have been nominated for an Oscar. It would have been nice if they'd said thank you to both those shows from the stage. Well, can I tell you... Did you even say thank you? I'm the J.D. Vance at this Oscar. Did you even say thank you? I was tweeting nonstop and then I forgot that no one could see it. I'll tell you the show that's coming up on the rails, though. They've only got two at the moment. Then that's Silent Witness. So Silent Witness has got Cumberbatch and Daniel Kaluuya, who's doing a lot of...

28:54Richard Osman:Daniel, thank you for doing a lot of heavy lifting. But also in Silent Witness, as you can imagine, all of these... I had to look through to check the couple of these hadn't ever been nominated. Idris Elba's been in it. Jodie Comer has been in it. Daisy Ridley, Nicholas Holt, they've all been in Silent Witness. So you would think maybe they could give Casualty a run for their money. But Casualty keeps going. yeah yeah but that feels to me like a real missed opportunity for calci for polymarket for conan i mean i would have done almost all of the you know i would have almost all the monologue about silent witness casualty and the bill and then my closing remarks would have been about michael b jordan being um having a surname as a country and that's how i would have done it and youtube you have made a come and get me plea today for hosting duties in the future can you imagine anyone less suited to doing the Oscars on YouTube.

29:45Richard Osman:It is me. Can I just say that I find this very interesting? You'd be saying. That is all I'd be doing. I'm not even going to go into this, but people with middle initials in their names as well. But I cannot because, listen, I know it's Monday morning, everybody, and we all have lives. My favourite fact, though, is Michael B. Jordan is the first person to win an Oscar for playing multiple roles since Lee Marvin in Cat Baloo. and yes I double checked and Eddie Murphy did not win an Oscar for Norbert robbed robbed absolutely robbed so congratulations to Sinners if you were choosing the best picture winner what would you have gone for it's never going to win I absolutely loved The Secret Agent yes I you know what I would have gone for one battle after another by chance it ended up being about its times and I thought it was very well done I appreciate that it is an art house film.

30:42Bring it in for 90 or 100 million dollars, then we're not having the same conversation.

30:47Richard Osman:Yeah, which you shouldn't ever say, but he was due a win. I mean, genuinely, if Paul Thomas Anderson has not won an Oscar, it's crazy because he's made some of the best Hollywood movies there are. I wouldn't have given it this year, but again, you kind of go, yeah, but what if he's always done the second best every year and he never wins one? So I'm very happy that he won it. I would choose between Sinners and Marty Supreme I really liked Marty Supreme Oh my god why didn't I even say that I should have said Marty Supreme I absolutely by the way yeah you're right what on earth okay it disappeared it disappeared I'm so sorry my actual answer is Marty Supreme I don't know how I forgot yeah it disappeared poor the secret agent no the secret agent is brilliant but it's an arthouse movie but I loved Marty Supreme I love a young star But one of the reasons I don't think they like Timothee Chalamet to some degree is that there's some, that's part of the whole calcified thing.

31:40You've got to be a certain age to get an Oscar. You can't want it too much. You can't, you know, he's very hungry. He's very obvious. He says what he wants. But he's a young star that young people are excited about. And they should be thrilled they have someone. By the way, this is not taking away from Michael B. Jordan at all. But the amount of opprobrium heaped on Timothee Chalamet, I thought he was extraordinary. You know, I thought the movie, I loved the movie. Yeah, okay, I would have picked that. I'm sorry.

32:06Richard Osman:Marty Supreme, yeah. Yeah, either Marty Supreme or Sinners. I really, really liked Sinners. What I will say... I felt it was quite three and a half star for me. Really? I really liked it. I know it was roughly from Dusk Till Dawn, but there was something about it I loved. I think that what I will say is if you have not seen a lot of these 10 movies, you genuinely have a treat in store, and that's not the same every year, but I think Sinners is a really enjoyable watch. I think One Battle After Another is, Marty Supreme is, Secret Agent is, Train Dreams is, you know, I haven't seen Frankenstein, even though I sat next to Guillermo del Toro on a plane, as we've discussed.

32:45Richard Osman:But of the movies on that list, there are some actual fun evenings to be had. And how lovely that we can say that at least. And yeah, and Michael B. Jordan, I thought was just class personified. Yeah. So nice to see that. thank the fans always thank the fans and congratulations to Casualty of course of course yes right shall we go to a break after the break we are going to be talking about the huge hit love story the Ryan Murphy series about Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr which has caused some significant controversies oh you're going to love it am I going to put a jacket on because I'm quite cold are you not cold?

33:24I'm going to go

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35:08Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Now, we are talking about the strange case of Daryl Hannah. And the basic question in this story is, what do you do when the biggest TV show in the world portrays you as yourself, but completely misrepresents you, which is what's happened here. She's become embroiled in a scandal not of her own making. Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Love Story, which is the story of the fact or fiction story of Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. It's the most watched limited series now ever on Disney. Hulu, it's not even finished yet. It's Ryan Murphy. Yeah, it's Ryan Murphy.

35:46Richard Osman:Friend of the podcast. Yeah, and of course it's triggered, re-triggered everyone's complete style obsession with Carolyn Bessette. There's been a huge halo effect. All these, even just the chemist that sells the tortoiseshell headband that she wears has had greater sales than ever and it's sort of 188 years straight. Yeah, I know, it's absolutely mad. Yeah, it came from a sort of, you know, fancy New York chemist. They call them drugstores, surely. They do, don't they? They don't have chemists over there, do they? Yeah, I don't know, but I don't want to confuse it with the drug elements of Daryl Hannah's story.

36:19Let's put it that way.

36:20Richard Osman:Do you know what? That's so clever. Thank you. I'm learning from the best, aren't I, Richard? Now, I think it's eight one hours, basically, or nearly eight one hours. And you need an antagonist in a story like that, considering we know they got together and they married and then they tragically died. For those of us who know very little about Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr., what's the basic story before we get into what love story shows us? He was JFK's child who we saw at the funeral. That I worked out. He's American royalty, you know, the tragic son of Camelot. He falls in love and marries Carolyn Bessette, who's incredibly stylish.

36:58One time he's piloting them down to the family compound on Martha's Vineyard, and they die in a plane crash. And it's a tragic love story. She's actually relatively little photographed compared to any single woman on the planet now, including people you've never heard of because everyone has their own paparazzi now and photographs themselves all the time.

37:18Richard Osman:So who was she? What was her background? She's a fashion sort of, she worked for Calvin Klein. She was a sort of fashion icon, but she's particularly become a fashion icon after her death and most particularly over the last few years. Ryan Murphy always knows how to tap into these zeitgeist things slightly before they hit the absolute mainstream zeitgeist and he's done it with this again. So you think, So you've got an idea for the story. JFK Jr., Carolyn Bissett, as you say, comes from a certain era, which he knows is going to look amazing. It's based on real people, which is, you know, a classic Ryan Murphy playbook.

37:54And a genre all of its own now, which we will certainly get to in this discussion.

37:59Richard Osman:But then you have to expand the story out a little bit, which is what he's done. And he previously, John F. Kennedy Jr., had had a relationship with Daryl Hannah that was a bit on again, off again. And anyway, she was the actress who we remember from the 1980s from Splash and all that kind of stuff. She's huge, wasn't she? I mean, absolutely huge. I think these days, perhaps there's a generation who might not know who she is quite so much. Yeah, she's sort of withdrawn from that kind of world particularly. But all of these stories kind of need an antagonist once they stop being real life and become something that you watch on TV.

38:30Daryl Hannah last weekend published this op-ed in the New York Times, an opinion piece, which I have to say seems to me like it was really written under the advice of lawyers. And it's headlined, how can love story get away with this? It's a completely searing attack. There are too many quotable bits, but...

38:49Richard Osman:So how can they get away with what? Let me just do some quotes from Daryl. A recent tragedy exploiting television series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette features a character using my name and presents her as me. The choice to portray her as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident. And then she cites one of the producers of Love Story who'd said, given how much we're rooting for John and Carolyn, Daryl Hannah occupies a space where she's an adversary to what you want narratively to the story. Wow, why did you say that out loud, even though that's obviously what you've done?

39:22Okay, she even says there's a gender dimension to this. It's always, you know, there has to be a bad woman and all of this. But here's a paragraph that I find particularly would be quite hard to swallow unless you're Ryan Murphy and you literally don't have to do even your own swallowing. The character Daryl Hannah portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John. The actions and behaviours attributed to me are untrue. I have never used cocaine in my life nor hosted cocaine-fuelled parties. I have never pressured anyone to marriage.

39:50I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded on anyone's private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Anasas' death to a dog's. Oh, yeah. Anyway, and what she does say, though, as well, is that when so many people watch a dramatisation, real-life consequences follow, and she's had threatening messages from people who believe the portrayal is factual. And she says when entertainment borrows a real person's name, it can permanently impact her reputation. Now, oh my goodness me.

40:23Richard Osman:I mean, what a thing to have done. I mean, you know, very famously people's lots of his shows with, you know, real people from history. And I'll go on to a particular example in a bit. But in this case, it's absolutely picked on someone who is still very much alive and kicking, very much out there and has used her likeness, used her name. You know, you portrayed a living person as something that they're not making her do illegal things, for example, certainly making her do morally questionable things. and as you say when you go to such trouble to make everything else in your drama look so real and look so vivid then as a viewer why would you not think that this is true for instance the original when they put out some original publicity shots of this thing and because everyone's so obsessed with the details of her style everyone's like oh my god this looks so awful the hair's too blonde so Ryan Murphy sort of swooped in and got rid of that costume designer I should say we should say that there is another showrunner for this project, a guy called Connor Hines.

41:24And all of these things kind of happen, just to give you the background to how Ryan Murphy's unbelievable factory of content works, because he's got huge numbers of shows on at any one time. Connor Hines is a showrunner, but clearly it's all under the aegis of Ryan Murphy. He does these huge deals. His last deal was with Netflix. He got$300 million for, I think, a five-year deal for them. The new deal is with Disney, which they say is for less. But, you know, he's almost like, is he inching towards being the first billionaire screenwriter? You know, he's part of the most sort of valuable showrunners or people who have lots of different shows on American TV are, I guess, for me, they would be Taylor Sheridan, who does all the Yellowstone and various other spin-offs, and Shonda Rhimes, who has Bridgerton Gray's Anatomy, all those sorts of things.

42:11Ryan Murphy, for me, is much more of a, I mean, he's obviously, it's much more splashy in some ways, but he's much more of a liability. But he has so many more shows in some ways than them. And he is brilliant at capturing, you know, where the puck's going to go. He understands the zeitgeist in a way that he's sort of got, there's a show coming out before you've even quite realised that this has become mainstream.

42:33Richard Osman:There's also another part of the zeitgeist, which is not just what are people interested in. It's how is the culture thinking about things. And one of the ways the culture thinks about things is facts are very movable and changeable and narratives are very movable and changeable. And actually, you can remix history all you like. So he's sort of ahead of the curve on that. But then you get to a situation like this. You think, well, that's great. But the fact you understand the zeitgeist and you understand how people sort of look back at narrative and look back at how the world is. You have therefore ended up with a show where you have portrayed a living human being who's just written an op-ed in the New York Times as a cocaine-fueled monster.

43:12Richard Osman:And what happens next? If you're Daryl Hannah, where do you go? If you're Ryan Murphy, how do you defend it? We can talk about how the success people have had, the people versus Ryan Murphy. We can talk about that. Let's talk about that real-life genre, though, because that has become so huge. And all of these, you know, things that are true stories or based on true stories didn't used to be. You know, we had biopics, but they were kind of like they were looked down on, really, to be perfectly honest with you. And turbocharging events, in my view, happened in 2016. Ryan Murphy brings out the People vs.

43:46O.J. Simpson, which, by the way, is quite prestige because everyone sort of remembers this thing. It happened, but it's long enough away, you know, at the O.J. case. And he's able to go back and excavate it in quite an interesting way. The other thing that happens in 2016 is that The Crown starts airing. And that obviously is a sort of, again, it's got real people and it's telling real stories. But is it, you know, they haven't bought any of those people up, as we would say. The Crown grew out of The Queen and even that maybe even out of The Deal, both of which were actually directed by Stephen Frizz.

44:22And I've talked to him a lot about using real people. He's done lots of things that use real people. Norman Scott's still alive. he did the Jeremy Thorpe Very British Scandal quiz about the coughing major all those sort of things so he's very you know he says normally you have to sort of sit down and talk to people and say ultimately we are making a sort of piece of art here as well so it may not be but equally people do sometimes feel introduced in The Lost King the one about the finding of the Richard III in the car park the university professor has successfully won some money for being made to look like he was just a sort of sexist person who didn't care about the woman who eventually did find Richard's there in the car park.

45:02Richard Osman:What's behind all of this is any screenwriter will tell you, any channel will tell you, people's lives are not lived in the order of a movie. We tend not to live our life with a neat first act, second act, third act, with inciting incidents and beats happening exactly when we want them and adversaries popping up where we want them and a clear delineation between good and evil. So whatever story you're telling, be that entirely fictional, or, you know, a mixture of both, you are always manipulating people's emotions. You're always manipulating the order of events and making sure that things happen in the exact order that's going to give an audience the most satisfaction.

45:39Richard Osman:So that's just, that's how you write any screenplay, any book, with obvious exceptions. But the second that this genre becomes incredibly popular, and there's huge amounts of this, you know, stories from the news. I mean, it's the new IP, isn't it? Yeah. Stuff that happens. Baby Reindeer. Yeah, baby. Well, we haven't we must talk about baby reindeer because that that I want to know how has impacted exactly. But the second you start writing in this sort of genre and the second people go, oh, but it's you know, that actually we can you know, we can be a little bit loose with the truth and we can change things and we can sort of, you know, kind of mold two characters into two.

46:15Richard Osman:Absolutely inevitable that, of course, you change the lives of real people and you change the personalities of real people. And you've certainly changed the personalities of people who come into the story. And they happen to be real as well. So this story is not about Daryl Hannah. But as you said, we need an adversary and she fits it perfectly. So you see how it happens. But I don't think, to me, it is acceptable. Completely. Is it not also a function of this type and this era of long-form television? OK, when we had biopics, they were two hours long. With US ad breaks, that's 90 minutes. So you can sort of do the love story of two people and they're very, very ancillary characters.

46:52TV eats plot. You cannot get eight hours of television out of two people. You need eight characters. They all need to have very significant arcs. A whole lot needs to have, you know, I mean, just I'm putting a number on it, eight. Not necessarily, but maybe actually, I think you do. And in order for all of this stuff to happen, it would be rich enough to sustain. And actually lots of these things you think, God, in the old days, this would have been a lot shorter and you strung it out over an hour. Fine. But in order to sustain effectively eight hours of television, you need a lot more. And this is why you end up bigging up these people who are really just completely, as I say, I mean, that they would be answering nothings in their life.

47:30Richard Osman:Yeah, and it's very hard to sit in a writer's room and go, oh, my God, that would be amazing. Oh, but it didn't happen. Is that OK? I think maybe, but, you know, you're always going to pitch the story. But it's fine with the royal family because they can't answer back. Well, that's it. They were lucky with that. I was looking at the people, you know, who have tried to sue and couldn't. And, you know, you can get away with the crown because the principles are not going to sue in that case. And, you know, Oliver Dowden, who was the culture secretary at the time, told Netflix you have to write parts of this are fictionalized.

48:01Richard Osman:And Netflix didn't because, yeah, I mean, who's going to go to court? Sort of nobody. Eduardo Saverin, who was, you know, one of the co-founders of Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg. he took great exception to the social network and said look this is nothing like our relationship you know Andrew Garfield plays him in the movie he didn't sue but because he'd already reached some sort of enormous financial settlement with Mark Zuckerberg anyway so they can sort of say what they're like about Eduardo Severin because he's unbelievably loaded the crown you get away with Jeffrey Sarver who's the guy who the hurt locker is based on he tries to sue as well but they changed his name and sometimes that's all that's all you really need to do so you could say well look it's obviously me and the judge in that case goes well it's not obvious to almost anybody you know but the public don't know so you know you can't sue either the closest to to this one would be olivia de haviland so ryan murphy's the feud which is 2016 which was joan crawford and betty davis it was about their feud and olivia de haviland is in it and olivia de haviland sues and she says look you have katherine zeta james plays her and there's a scene where she calls her sister a bitch and Olivia de Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine famously had a very fractious relationship but she said I never called her a bitch you made me out to be something I'm not I'm a real human being she was 101 years old at the time where she sued lived till 104 Olivia de Havilland she was see Ryan Murphy's thinking with that every single person in this is no longer with us you know Sinatra's in it there's loads there's loads of people in that but you know no one can sue I can tell this story Olivia de Havilland of course is still with us because she's 101 years old.

49:36Richard Osman:And they said, well, did you not, when you're representing her, did you not go and talk to her and say this is happening? And he said, I didn't like to intrude. That was his reason. She, by the way, did not win her lawsuit. Because in America, it's very, very, very hard. You have to show that someone intended malice. Yeah, well, that's why we can get away with the crown in this country because the royals won't sue. Anyone else, it is very, very difficult and you can sue for libel. But Conor Hines said, he's the showrunner of Love Story, said that they didn't want to talk to the Kennedys because it allowed them to be objective.

50:11So they're always doing this. I tell you, he has had success. But this is ages ago as well. And by the way, this is quite a good precedent, though, because this was in 2013. VH1, that takes you back, which is at the time owned by Viacom. Again, that takes you back. One of the many previous owners of Paramount. Perry Reid, who was nicknamed Pebble, she was a manager of TLC. And they did a biopic of TLC, the girl band, and it's called Crazy Sexy Cool, which is also the name of one of their albums. But she managed them in the early 90s and they portrayed her as completely sort of manipulative and villainous and someone who withheld all the money from them and all of this.

50:47She sued Violet Conn for absolute years. She asked for$40 million. I don't know what she got because she settled and it's never, ever been revealed what she got, but she would have got a lot for that. So there is that. A comparable case may be Rachel De La Rose. She was the Vanity Fair journalist who's shown as Anna Delvey, the sort of scammer's friend. And then she sort of falls out with her in Inventing Anna, Netflix's series about that. Now, she did sue and she settled with Netflix for quite a significant amount.

51:15Richard Osman:There's Albert Friedman, who was the TV producer who's portrayed on Quiz Show and portrayed as being part of the scandal. And he sued. There's Vincent DeSimone, who was one of the lawyers in the Ruben Carter case. So in that movie, Hurricane. he is shown as deliberately using falsified evidence so in both those cases they won it's very very very hard and I've looked everywhere to find anyone who's won but of the few cases where they have won is where people have been deliberately named named as themselves and they've been shown doing something illegal which they can prove they did not do well I mean that's why Baby Reindeer the character that Martha the stalker is based on he's played by Jessica Gunn well the actual person that Martha the character is based on yeah the actual person I'm afraid his name is now so ubiquitous that I forgot that the character was called Martha.

52:03She is suing Netflix for, I mean, I can't remember, it's more than 100 million. It's a huge amount of money. Okay, she's not going to get that. But they've allowed this case to proceed at every point they could have stopped it through the American cause. Netflix will settle with her, I think. Okay, if they don't, then I'm wrong. But my feeling is they will settle with her and she will get millions. A lot of money.

52:22Richard Osman:Like a lot of money. And you know what? Because they say that she goes to prison at the end of it, and that doesn't happen, and they've made her identifiable. And a large part of the marketing for that show is, this is a true story. Well, I mean, obviously... The one defence they will have is that they didn't give her the same name as the person, so they could say, well, we hid her away. But in a court of law, she was so readily identifiable, like screenshots from, you know, tweets and things like that, that Gossamer sort of screen between, you know, her fake name and her real name is pretty much non-existent.

53:01I think Daryl Hannah might sue because the way she, maybe she'll just think, I can't, it's so, I mean, as I've said before in this podcast, don't litigate unless you really can't not. And she, I would have thought that that was written with a lawyer, a lot of that, I think. It comes across, it's so well done. And maybe she, maybe she will sue. Certain people have sort of felt, it's like Pamela Anderson felt it was a sort of violation, but she didn't sue. I do really the Pam and Tommy thing I think that is harder this one is quite easy because it's showing her involved in illegal activity and she can just say you do prove it

53:36Richard Osman:yes it may be that she doesn't want to go down that road for all kinds of reasons and lots of us would not just really want to have to go through the whole it's tricky though because if a version of yourself has been given such a huge platform which it has then your real self maybe wants a platform that size which a lawsuit might bring. I mean, I absolutely agree with you. These things never work out as intended. It's definitely worth reading. And by the way, the journey of Ryan Murphy in this direction, I think is really interesting because, as I say, he didn't start off like this. If you look at that original...

54:11Richard Osman:You can see how he ended up there. You can see how he ended up. But if you look at that original People vs. OJ, which was very good and which really takes care with all the different people and really humanizes people, the prosecutor in that, Marcia Clark, who was, oh my God, the subject of such vitriol because, You know, it just became this complete kind of cultural obsession while it was going on the court. You know, it really humanizes her and shows her having to go through all that. It was really well received, that series. But as it's progressed, one of the ones he did recently was about those Menendez brothers who murdered their parents.

54:39But there's a whole sort of counter thing that they were being abused. And it's very, but they're in prison and they were sort of distraught. and all people around, many of their family members who believe that they were being abused and that this was a sort of form of self-defense or whatever it is, really couldn't stand him for the way he portrayed it. And he didn't care remotely. And he was quite obviously, every time he went on the record, he didn't care. And I will say that the journey from him for doing things much more like People vs. OJ to much less defensible stuff, we actually ended up doing, do you remember we covered it?

55:14We did it on three bonus episodes sitting on our three of them his arc is quite big it's suddenly not over we'll probably have to go back and do a fourth but there are three bonus episodes sitting on our archive about that because I think that's been such a journey for him and it's really he's really gone over to the dark side

55:31Richard Osman:but the problem is he's so talented that if he tells your story then a lot of people will watch it certainly if he said oh Marina I'm going to do your life story you would be like this is a nightmare because you know it's going to be big and you know you're going to have no control over it at all. No, he's certainly not going to come to me about my life story. I mean, that's the last thing he'd want to do. You never know. It really gets in the way. Although if he hears this. But he doesn't want to, as we've said, they don't want to go to the people who are involved because it gets in the way of their much clearer vision as to what actually happened.

56:00So anyway, I think that that's sort of one to watch. Maybe she'll see.

56:04Richard Osman:Yeah, but certainly the person I'm more interested in is the baby reindeer. Well, we'll keep an eye on that one because that's continuing to go through the courts um i don't think you'll ever get a day in court because that will be settled but yeah then somebody will become a millionaire that will be an interesting story as well i mean it really would there's a there's a documentary series two i mean netflix probably won't make it actually they probably would that's the way our culture's going netflix will say either you can be 20 million or you can have 15 million plus your own documentary about how you spend that 15 million but we are seeing more and more of it i think in the end and with all of these things because real life or supposed real life has become this absolute runaway genre and it's regarded just by saying this is a true story this is based on a true story gives you a massive viewership bump just by claiming that yeah i'd like to see what daryl hannah does next certainly and we wish her very very very well and i hope she can get her story amplified as much as possible because that must be that must feel powerless any recommendations richard yes i want to recommend the the three-part documentary on channel four about tony blair which i thought was yes fascinating really really interesting Tony Blair talks you don't always get as much as you want out of him Alastair Campbell talks almost everyone involved talks Bill Clinton they got really really good access to people Jeremy Corbyn talks it's kind of the rise of Tony Blair then Iraq and then you know post Iraq but it's really beautifully made made by 72 films David Glover and his team and it's just one of those things again that doesn't hammer home what you should think.

57:36Richard Osman:It asks questions. It puts the camera in people's faces. It lets them answer at length and lets you make your own mind up about what you think, which I've found incredibly refreshing. Documentary not commissioned by its own subject, Richard. I know, right? Could it catch on again, please? Wow, but also, like someone agreeing to do a documentary made by someone else they didn't have greater control over. Could that catch on? How about you? I would like to recommend The Last Kings of Hollywood by Paul Fisher, which I think came out last week, which is a book about Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.

58:08Oh, my God, it's so well done. Some of the stuff is sort of covered in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. But if you're interested at all in that period, he's talked to so many people. It's beautifully written. The story is, you know, I mean, it's so interesting to think of how these guys, you know, they're the absolute anti-Hollywood. They set out to be anti-Hollywood. They kind of make their first films as sort of these weird tone poems. They wonder if they can continue to do that and retain their integrity and just kind of be outside of the whole system. And yet each of them makes the most successful film of all time.

58:40You know, Coppola makes the Godfather, then it's Jaws, then it's Star Wars. And it's interesting how they sort of diverge. You know, Spielberg and Lucas become obviously the most commercial possible filmmakers you can possibly imagine. And yet Lucas doesn't even really want to make films anymore, you can see. and Coppola just he can't quite I mean he is the soul of the true artist really it is so well written and it's so interesting the stories and some of the details are just amazing and a perfect read for Oscars week as well yeah it's a really good read I loved it and that's The Last Kings of Hollywood by Paul Fisher

59:14Richard Osman:excellent Thursday we will have a Q &A episode thank you very much by the way for all your feedback on Tim Davey the DG of BBC for our Q &A with him and thank you for your questions with that as well that was fascinating but we're back to your questions this week and for our subscribers, for our members We have the second part of The Village People The second part? It's such an insane story The first part was great It takes an even weirder turn If you want to be a member and sign up for ad-free listening and so on, and the bonus episodes it's therestosentertainment.com Otherwise We'll see you on Thursday

59:56I love you.