Who Is The Most Powerful Person In Hollywood?

0:00This episode is brought to you by our friends at Octopus Energy. Some people in the entertainment industry are successful, but a much, much smaller number are genuinely admired. I was trying to think in TV, who everyone likes. I mean, Attenborough. In movies, Julia, Meryl, you will not hear a bad word said about any of those people. There are actually very few that no one is rude about behind their back, but those two are certainly two of them. Can I tell you about a company that no one is rude about behind their back and that people admire? Would it shock you to learn it is our friends at Octopus Energy Octopus Energy has ended up being named Britain's most admired company 2025 That's nice That's really nice isn't it I'm sure companies are like Hollywood just absolutely vicious behind each other's backs but to actually be elected most admired is pretty good All the other companies just sitting around going shall I tell you who I met the other day Octopus Energy actually you know what lovely bunch really really lovely bunch all of them The most admired company in the UK 2025, which is why we're very, very happy that they are our sponsors.

1:10Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restless Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. Ready for some questions? I'm really ready for some. Hit me with one. Ready for some answers, listeners? I'm not ready to answer. I'm just listening for the listeners saying, yes, we're ready for some answers. Yeah. And they are. It's mixed. It's mixed. Some are, some aren't. Mia G has a question for you, Marina. The famous rapper Mia G. She says, Margot Robbie was photographed wearing the late Elizabeth Taylor's Taj Mahal diamond necklace worth$8 million on the red carpet of Wuthering Heights.

1:44It was apparently on loan from the estate. How does the world of red carpet jewellery work and how do you go about ensuring that? Well, you can imagine I'm really into this question. It's a loan system, obviously. and it's pretty high stakes because these things are worth a lot of money. First of all, I'll talk a tiny little bit about how they did this because Margot Robbie's got a very distinctive way that she kind of honed with her stylist who does a guy called Andrew McCamall and they started it on Barbie and I think they call it method dressing. So for Wuthering Heights, the fashion has become a huge part of how she promotes.

2:18If you think of all the Barbie things that she went all the way around the world and they had a premiere everywhere and she had a different amazing pink outfit for all of that. And is that the idea also that Timothy Sanamay, when he's always wearing orange for the Martin Supreme and everything? He is becoming, because he's kind of immersive promotion, method dressing, they call it. Anyway, they even did a coffee table book of all her Barbie looks. It's called something like Barbie the World Tour. Anyway, so Andrew Mukhermere, he's a brilliant stylist, but he works with, he does lots of different people like Zoe Kravitz, Hayley Bieber.

2:49He works with Margot Robbie on these big tours for her movies. And he posts them all. So there's times like where she's wearing a feathered Victoria Beckham dress. And he's posted a bit of text from the original Wuthering Heights where Cathy sort of ends up biting her pillow and the feathers come out and she lays, you know, so it's all got this whole backstory to it. But for the world premiere in L.A., yes, she was wearing a chaparelli dress, a custom chaparelli dress and this Taj Mahal diamond, which is a heart shaped diamond inscribed. This is a bit for our colleagues on Empire. it's inscribed with the name of a Mughal Empress apparently it was given by Shah Jahan which Willie Dalrymple can do you a huge book about and it says love is everlasting on it and it was given by Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor for her 40th birthday in 1972 How do you inscribe a diamond?

3:38I thought they were famously Because of the way it's set it has to be set in metal So they were inscribed They didn't write on the diamond If I was Elizabeth Taylor I'd have gone inscribe it on the diamond. Oh, you can be sure they would have been having an around within about 14 minutes about getting that. But he'd been bought in 14 minutes, let's put it that way. And there's obviously some talk about the kind of cultural appropriation of all of these things and the cultural politics of it all. But anyway, she wore it differently in Margot Robbie. Like Elizabeth Taylor wore it much more like a medallion.

4:09She has it up here like a choker. That was worth a lot of money and we'll get to the expensive jewels in a minute and what happens with all those. Another thing she did was she wore a replica of a Bronte. She had this amazing dress It was all made out of, if you look really closely, it was all sort of weirdly corseted, but it was kind of the seams were made of hair or pretend hair braided. The bracelet she wore is a replica of Charlotte Bronte's morning bracelet, which had Emily and Anne Bronte's hair in. And the real one is kept at the Bronte Museum, the Bronte Parsonage Museum. And they wanted to borrow it, but it was just too delicate.

4:44So they asked if they could borrow it to have a replica made. and an amazing sort of Yorkshire heritage weaving company has made one. That's so cool. And then, of course, the director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum gets to talk to the press and, you know, it's really wonderful how these kind of things, and you can see the level of detail and thought that goes into all of these kind of particular outfits. Okay, let's get back to the jewels. Why do jewellery houses lend these things? Obviously, they do it for marketing. So there are lots of, you know, lots of different ones. Lorraine Schwartz, Cartier-Caupin, Boucheron, Tiffany, Harry Winston, all the sort of big people.

5:20Stylists have a relationship with them. And also some stars have ambassador deals and then you have to wear those, that particular house. So some people might be an ambassador for Tiffany, in which case you're always going to be wearing Tiffany things. That's a hell of a gig, isn't it? It is. Yeah. You know, you've got the Oscars coming up and what they kind of do a lot of the big houses is think, OK, well, I'm not going to commit to anything before we see who's nominated. Because if you're not nominated and you miss out. so they bring out the big guns for the big guns so when lady gaga was nominated in 2019 she was wearing a huge 128 carat yellow diamond and the only other time that thing has been seen in public was on the um was on audrey hepburn during the press photos for breakfast at tiffany's yeah she was uh 58 years before so you how much stuff do they have in their vaults it's So it's literally they've just got that in their vaults.

6:13And so they're not. And that hasn't been seen in public for 58 years. But they wouldn't sell it. Well, that's the thing. As I told you, it's for marketing. And before then, I think the most expensive thing that had been out on the red carpet was Gloria Stewart, who played the very old version of Kate Winslet in Titanic. She had a 20 million dollar necklace on for that, which was not which had a blue dark thing on. But it wasn't the same as the one in the movie. Anyway, she didn't win. she was up for best supporting but the logistics of it all is huge every single one of those things that gets lent has its own security guards armed security guards that are not allowed they it is put on the last thing when you've done all the makeup all of everything it's put on from that moment the security guard always has sight on them so a huge part of the red carpet which by the way one time if you ever see what a red carpet looks like you kind of have the idea that it's a little bit of an entrance way to something it is vast there's this huge huge geographical area and the guy who is the security guard or in some cases multiple security guards for what you're wearing is watching you the whole time and if you win and you go to the party and you're still wearing it they come to the party with you and they're around the whole time if i was a security guard okay no keep it on yeah are you going to elton john's party keep it on honestly keep it on i'll be no honestly i'm right behind you yeah but you have to get temporary insurance for them And sometimes even the temporary insurance can go into six figures because these things are worth so much money.

7:39And you can see that the night is, to some extent, whilst very controlled, also mildly chaotic. So I guess what you're saying is, what is the point? Does it translate into sales? Yes. Are there enough high-end clients out there who are not famous who see, I don't know, Charlize or Julien Maud or someone wearing an amazing thing? And the answer is yes. First of all, very occasionally someone connected with the star who wore it will buy it. Gwyneth Paltrow the necklace that Gwyneth Paltrow was wearing when she got the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love her father Bruce Paltrow then bought for her wow but people often try to buy the piece that they have seen on the red carpet and they will know it's you know because all the designers and the stylists tag who it is and they'll think that's Tiffany and then a week later it will sell to a private client it is extraordinary but as you say to have the idea that there are just like random 20 million, 30 million dollar necklaces sitting in vaults that you don't see for six decades at a time.

8:39There is a huge amount of it and it does all sell to private clients and it's used as a massive marketing thing. So who owns the Taj Mahal diamond? We don't know. An anonymous person who wanted to buy it. As I say, there's a lot of very, very private high-end clients out there who owns the Taj Mahal diamond but has lent it for use in these circumstances. It's a little bit like having an amazing art painting and lending it to a museum when they have a sort of retrospective show of whoever it is. Well, firstly, you love it and you want people to see it, but secondly, the value goes up. Yeah, maybe.

9:12It becomes, the iconography, it's further invested with something. But yeah, it's a huge business for all of the jewellery houses and it's kind of, along with like the Met Gala and things like that, these are the times when you see this sort of jewellery on people at all because otherwise it's culturally worn by people who don't go on red carpets. My only two experiences really with security guards in the world of entertainment were firstly, whenever they bring the FA Cup anywhere, there's always a security guard. But then when we did million pound drop and part of that was we really had a million pound in the studio.

9:47So the money was real. And that was just, you know, because any studio day, you always think about, oh, then we do that. And then the contestants are turning up and we'll rehearse in the afternoon and then question cards. And then, you know, we do, you know, the computer stuff and just make sure that's all working. But that one was also, oh, don't forget the armed guards have got to leave in the armoured truck at 4.15 and then they turn up here. But just these guys, the four guys, they were armed with the money at all times. That was, I was going to say stressful, but actually it was cool. It was exciting.

10:20Yeah, it was really, really great. And you absolutely didn't need it to be real money, but there's something, it made it much more fun. Yes. But it really was, that you literally put a million pounds in front of people. But yeah, the logistics on that were more complicated than you might imagine. Come on, just give us a million quid. Come on. No one's going to steal it. A question from Mari about gladiators. Do they do doping checks on gladiators? Are we talking about the new gladiators or the old one? Let's talk about the new one. Yes, they do. They absolutely have to. You know, that show is a BBC show.

10:55it's incredibly family focused as well um and there have been i know giant who's on that show i know he'd he'd admitted previously in the past that he'd taken performing enhancing drugs as a lot of people in in the worlds of you know um weightlifting and bodybuilding you know there's a thin membrane between legal and illegal videos i reckon he did some videos and he said if you these you'll get masters of gains right back in a long time before and obviously he hadn't removed them from wherever he posted them exactly and the BBC have stood by him because he gets tested all the time so he's not doing them now and the contestants do as well and the contestants are absolutely dope tested too so yeah it's back in the early days of American Gladiators again that documentary about the very early days of American Gladiators which I've now seen in is brilliant is amazing I would say eye opening there isn't a drug that they didn't take I mean yeah there really really wasn't It doesn't have to be performance enhancing.

11:52But, you know, I can exclusively reveal to everyone who was at the Royal Albert Hall to see our Christmas show that when Nitro was carrying Marina on his shoulders, it was done entirely naturally. That's why he's out for the next season. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you were absolutely out of your mind on everything. But Nitro. I was high on Nitro. Clean as a whistle. So, yeah, they are tested. As you say, the contestants are contested. And you couldn't not these days. You know, we live in a world in which you have to be squeaky clean on that show. But it does, I mean, Nitro, you've seen him up close.

12:31And I've seen a few of those gladiators up close. Now, Giant, famously shorter than me. That's the stat that comes up every time he turns around for the camera. Shorter than Richard Osmond. He looks amazing, doesn't he? Nitro. Is that the word? Oh, Nitro, yes. Yeah. Sculpted. Yeah. Sculpted. Yeah. Well, you saw them on Strictly. I mean, yeah, it's extraordinary. But yeah. We've had a few gladiators on House of Games. Yeah. And on there, we always drug test. And I would say they're pretty much the only people to pass. Yeah. Right. On that bombshell, let us go to a break. Yeah. And we have a question about stand-up in the second half, which the lovely John Bishop has answered for us as well.

13:27Welcome back, everyone. This is a proper business of entertainment question from Rhys Matthews for you, Marina. With Josh DiMaro winning the succession battle at Disney, where does this put him on the Hollywood Power ranking? Who are the most powerful people in the industry now? Ah, OK, that's a very good question. I think I said on this podcast that I thought he would win it. Well done. And he's the guy who, they had four people come from four different parts of the business, but he was the guy who runs parks, which is, by the way, as we've seen just from, I think it was last week, they had another sort of earnings call.

13:59Disney make the vast amount of their profit off from parks. And you can't have parks without the entertainment business to back it up. One of those four candidates, by the way, I thought was interesting, was animated, right? Which absolutely makes sense. That's who I would have given it to. Jimmy Pataro is just, the ESPN guy is just like a little avatar. but the parks make something like 3.3 billion profit and entertainment all of the disney entertainment makes 1.1 billion profit so the vast majority of their operating income i'm just going to do this as a top three you've got three phones that are ringing and you can see who each of them are that's clever who's called you take a fast okay this is controversial in some ways why are you not putting them at one but at three i'm going to put neil mohan the ceo of youtube oh yeah And YouTube are regarded as such outsiders.

14:44I think maybe he's number three in terms of who's call you take, because what are they really giving you? It's almost like they exist. They exist in a world. This is why Hollywood is so scared of them, because even Netflix, they think, this I understand, but they've got this kind of remote thing that's just creeping up and eating everybody's lunch. They don't know quite what to do with it. So he's going to be the richest guy ringing you, but maybe he doesn't have the most opportunities for you. Two is Josh DiMaro from Disney. and number one is Ted Sarandos. You're taking his call first. He's become, he's the entertainment guy they think they understand better than the YouTube guy who they're really scared by.

15:23But yes, I think number one, that's the call you take. Is Ted Sarandos. So if he was to ring you, what would be? I would say, Richard's really sorry about the way we roasted you because we didn't realise you were in the room still when we did it at that conference. It's amazing we're still on air. But I'm not, but I'm not sorry, Ted. Yeah, I'd do it again. I'd do it again right now. I'll do it for you right now. Here's a nice one on crowd work from Nadine Johnson. She says, how do comedians pick audience members to speak to when performing crowd work? Are there immediate red flags for standouts when looking across the front row that they know not to pick on?

15:56How do you think Nadine Johnson, thank you for your question, Nadine, felt when Nadine Dorries and Boris Johnson were absolutely at the forefront of news? It'd be like now being called Melania Epstein. Do you know what I mean? There must be one out there. There must be one out there. Nadine, thank you so much for your question, and I'm glad that Nadine Dorries and Boris Johnson have faded from the scene a little bit. To answer this question, we asked our old friend, John Bishop. Well, Nadine, the thing is, stand-up is now, on social media, people think that's all stand-up is, talking to people in the front row, and it's not.

16:35To be honest with you, it's a bit of a contrivance and it's a bit of a trick, because most comedians, you start doing open spots and then someone gives you a job to be the compere. And the compere, you do it because that gives you more time on stage. But the compere's job is to set up the room. So you talk to people in the room to get them settled and to get them focused on the acts that are coming. And so often the compere would be the person with the least amount of jokes, as it were, the least amount of material, but would work with the audience. and it's now, it's a thing that people clip up on social media and so people think, oh, that's part of every comedy show.

17:18The hardest part of comedy is writing a joke. It's not hard to say to someone on the front row, you're a dickhead and that shit's shit and look at that haircut. That's not hard. And so what you do as a comedian, you walk on, if you've got a front row within a venue, you might pick on someone to settle them down because they look agitated. They look like they're the one who is likely to ruin it for the comics coming on. So you might do that. You might pick on someone because it's obvious. You've got a guy on the front row who's 6 '12". Everyone can see he's 6 '12". It's obvious, so you might say something to him.

17:56But the reality is it just becomes an unlearned skill in the fact that When I say an unlearned skill, a skill that you can't teach unless you do it, you just do it. You just be able to see who to talk to. The red flag are the people who don't laugh. So you walk on stage and you'll see some people and there'll be some people clapping, some not clapping. Some people, you say something, they laugh and their face doesn't crack. Not everyone, you've got to remember, not everyone in a comedy club wanted to go. people don't buy their own individual tickets some of them went because the person they live with wanted to go and because they like sex they've gone that's that's that's the deal they've gone well if you want to go i'll go because it's what you want to do and some of them sat there so if they're not laughing and they're not looking like they're enjoying it you don't chat to them because what's the point i've done that by the way i have done that where i've cracked somebody on the front row who's not been laughing I'm going what is wrong with you?

19:00what is wrong why have you come here? what's wrong with you? and then they say my mum's just died and then you go now that's killed the gig hasn't it? thank you so much John and funnily enough you recommended a movie that's based on his life story is this on? it reminds me actually a lot of parenting everything he was saying there also applies to parenting multiple children I don't want to say it's deciding which one to pick on it's deciding which one to single out sometimes for praise sometimes for something different Marina Vince Melia has a question for you Marina who would be your dream narrator for your forthcoming book in audio form that's good because you get a chance to talk about your book Vince says I vote for Glenn Powell well he could do it like I always say he could do could he do the voice I'm actually doing it myself which I didn't do for my last book it's a book of columns right this new book what a time to be alive Richard it's coming out in September your previous book was a book of columns and you got someone else to read it yeah because I did the introduction but I just thought oh I'd be so bad this is really weird it's before I did this podcast and I thought I just couldn't do that I couldn't you know and actually now look at you now because I talk out loud on this podcast all the time I thought I can do it I have to do it in an order oh you're doing that in another top three yeah I can't stop doing enough if this ends as well with Ted Sarandos he's going to he was great in the studio yeah alright number three Connor Story he's the Russian he did rivalry I just want him to do all the things connected with my book for me.

20:26That'd be cool. How do you think he'd be with some of the references to Paula, Venels and stuff like that? Listen, look at the Russian accent. He can do anything. He can do anything. Catherine Hahn, the marketing psycho from the studio. But I want her to play Catherine Hahn as that character in the studio. But it would be so remorseful if all my columns read in that voice. That's how I read your columns. Yeah, I hope so. She's my internal monologue. and this is so niche my number one but I just I love it so much if you've you you probably saw this last year but it's so far it's so funny on TikTok or either on YouTube Sydney Jo Robertson the group chat and she plays all the seven girls in a group chat it's hysterical I haven't seen that oh my god it's so good okay I want to be the one who is always throwing open the door of her roommate's room and she begins almost all of the episodes because it's just like what the hell she's brilliant the whole series is brilliant if you haven't seen it what's she called again?

21:25Sydney Jo Robertson Sydney Jo Robertson and I just feel that that particular one of all the girls she plays has the vibe of like what the hell has just happened that I think would be good for voicing my book what a time to be ever live that's an amazing recommendation though because now anyone who has not seen that has to watch it because they want to hear who you're talking about there's more seasons of it and each episode is like two minutes it's so good she worked on it for a long time when she did it. She worked on it for maybe a year. And it's just those people who think that those kind of videos are kind of dashed off.

21:57It's so well done. It's so well written. And it's just hysterical. That's like my, have I recommended that guy, Tommy Stewart, who does the recreational golfers did press conferences. You haven't recommended it. So please recommend it. Yeah, that's amazing. It's just like a weekend golfer talking to journalists as if he was, you know, Tiger Woods. It's very, very funny. Such a good thing. Yeah, it's really good. Okay, very good. Question for you, Richard, about the highly contentious subject to fonts luciana says richard what font are your books in do you get a choice and have you considered requesting a more accessible font for people with eyesight problems it's a very good question firstly it is in um garamond which is the garamond yeah yeah i mean fine uh which is like nail polish colors yeah but all those are always slightly better i've also got my hallway done in garamond as well and that's the penguin random house font but they do show you you know galley proofs and all those things beforehand and as i'm sure you know i have visual difficulties and i've always been comfortable with garamond they showed it to me they show me other yeah but i also you know none of them are particularly more useful than any of the others for me um but so i always make sure there are large print versions of all the books as well in all the different territories um that's important to me that's why i listen to a lot of audiobooks anyway and i know exactly what you mean some fonts it's the size of font really but garamond is is sort of fine for me i'll say that in america they use adobe jensen pro that's the fonts they make everything so poetic yeah don't they just um but yeah so me i'm always make sure every territory there is a large print um copy as well large print version i was at a friend's house the other day and they had they'd accidentally bought the large print version and we were all passing it around going oh my god this is great because we're all in our 50s yes and we can't see anything everyone's coming towards me now yeah oh absolutely nobody can see and i'm like yeah this is what it's been like for my whole life um so yeah it's yeah you if i wanted a different font i could i could definitely ask for a different font but garamond is chosen because it's fairly clear to um read and if you do find it difficult there is a large print version available as well that about wraps us up we will be back tomorrow for our members uh with a bonus episode about hollywood's worst couples yes worst weirdest best all sorts of things lots of great stories in there for everyone else though we will see you next tuesday see you next tuesday

24:39Amen.