Zendaya's Secret Weapon

0:00The Restors Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, flowers, Richard, are a very important part of show business.

0:08Richard Osman:And there is a reason we're talking about flowers. As always with Octopus Energy, they do very interesting things with their customers. We will get to what they do with flowers. But yes, it's sort of the currency that runs everything. Yeah. I mean, in The Bachelor, it's actually part of the format, right? The rose ceremony. So that flower is really earning its money. Yeah, can you imagine the person, by the way, there will be a rose wrangler on that show who has to make sure that the roses are absolutely perfect. That's like a completely full-time job. Also a full-time job doing flowers for Elton John.

0:35Richard Osman:Oh my goodness. One of the great lines in a court case ever when one of his managers was accused of ripping him off. And they discovered in court that he'd spent£293 ,000 on flowers in 20 months. He was like, sorry, how's that possible? He said, I like flowers. Now, shall we get on to Octopus Energy? They have a sort of committed team who always look after your account. So if you get an email from them, it's the same people. But also they get to know you so well that sometimes they'll understand if you're going through a hard time. And what they will do is they will send you flowers. It's not an apology.

1:08It's just because someone was going through something and you get your flowers.

1:13Richard Osman:Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we feast. An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, mail, buy.

1:53Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

1:58Richard Osman:I'm Richard Osman. Hello, everybody. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? Yes, I'm good. I have a mea culpa to start with, but I think you might have one as well. I have one too, and I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but the QR code inviting people, just asking if they would like to sign up to pay the license fee that was shown during the World Cup. Which we talked about a while ago. Which we talked about. as the tournament went on has in fact been very successful. I'm not going to get into specifics, but it has been very successful. And I think it's interesting, the honesty box approach, as it were, has actually, which I felt created some friction in advance of watching a game.

2:37If you didn't really need to do it. I stand corrected. And I'm very pleased to say that many people have signed up for the license fee that way. So I stand corrected.

2:47Richard Osman:And it's worth it for Guy Mowbray every time just saying, and if you want to pay your licence fee, the QR code is there. And for the last time, please don't shoot the messenger. This is a guy who's just like, I cannot make it clearer. I'm live, so you can't stop me. I cannot make it clearer that I do not want to say this. But it works. Well, thanks for saying it, Guy, because it has worked. My mea culpa is, we spoke about reunions that didn't work, and I was talking about East 17, the documentary we made about them, and I said it's unbelievable they're not back together. Andrew Forecastle said, I have great news for Richard.

3:16Richard Osman:E17 are back. They performed recently at an annual pass holder event at Chessington World of Adventures. They were brilliant. Wow. Of course they were. They've got songs. Yeah, they have got songs. They've got like kind of eight songs that you go, oh, and this one. Yeah. And this one. Yeah. Okay. So very, very good news for license fee and E17 fans. Yes. Shall we get on to some questions? Please. I have a question for you. It is from Philip Sawyer. And Philip says, I saw the most incredible TikTok featuring a person called Law Roach taking a jet to Paris Fashion Week, grabbing an haute couture chaparelli gown from the runway, then taking a private jet to London immediately to dress Zendaya in the gown for the Odyssey red carpet.

3:57Richard Osman:First off, I like a question that has first off in it. First off, who the head is Law Roach? And when did Stylist become so powerful? Okay, this is a great question because he is absolutely amazing. He has been with her a long time. He calls himself an image architect. He is genuinely amazing. The Zendaya collaboration has made him famous. He was the one who actually leaked that her and Tom Holland, not leaked, but answered the question when someone said they're married. Only he could be so indispensable to that internal setup that it wouldn't even matter if he said that. Oh, that's law for you.

4:28That's just law for you, yeah. They started a long time ago in 2011 when she was still a Disney teenager, basically. A lot of big houses turned their noses up. And he, I mean, so confidently, he'd say, if it's a no now, it's a no forever. So much confidence that she'd be amazing. Okay. Now, what he has done, first, I think styling is so interesting. And you're so right, Philip, it's become a massive thing in a much different way than it was in history. He has really pioneered that theme dressing. In the old days, it was like a bit naff, like if sort of Kate Middleton went to Wimbledon, and she was in a white dress, or she got off a plane, and she looked a bit like an air stewardess.

5:05It's like, hmm. He has rescued this thing from taboo, along, by the way, with Andrew McComill, who's Margot Robbie's stylist, which you remember the Barbie tour, this theme dressing. Do I remember it? Well, you do remember. No, I don't. You don't? Again, well, she dragged that movie around the world. She was in a pink outfit for everything, and it was a huge, huge thing. It's a big part of the publicity. If you look at something like Challengers, like Zendaya was always in all this kind of tennis stuff, and instead of being naff, it was just kind of endlessly reinforcing. what he understood was how to go viral.

5:35He quickly saw that he did psychology at college. He comes from a pretty difficult background. He understood that to get the best clothes, you needed to create the greatest moments. And he has the most extraordinary process. Like he can spend over a year on an outfit, one outfit developing it. It's like the development of a script. For one of the Dune things, Zendaya saw this kind of corset, a molded corset, and said, could we do this bit in a dress? so they change the colour to a kind of sand dune colour he really only does her now he occasionally will do it oh really? yeah but you're really lucky with her because you've got an amazing principal who obviously is incredibly beautiful

6:12Richard Osman:and they must really trust each other but also sells it yeah and will do very very out there I mean really out there things she's been in sort of robotic costumes amazing things he has an encyclopedic memory for archives so one of the other things that you want stylists to do is like pull stuff out of nowhere and it's not like the thing that's just come down the catwalk and basically anyone can buy or get. And you're very right, Philip, to say that they've become much more powerful. There has been a huge shift in power from editors and magazines in general. These guys, these stylists, men and women, obviously, they control the narrative, they have the archival access, and they understand virality and the red carpet better.

6:49But you become a business brand in your own right. And as you say, this did not always happen. In the golden age of Hollywood, the studios dressed their stars, and that means that the wardrobe would, for their off-duty clothes, would make them things that Rita Hayworth looks good like this. She can go out in these clothes, right? Then eventually you get fashion houses getting interested in some stars. So Givenchy obviously has Audrey Hepburn, Bob Mackie and Cher, those kind of crazy kind of cobwebby costumes that she used to wear. Jean-Paul Gaultier and Madonna, all the conical bras, which become really iconic.

7:21But the Oscars and the awards season was not what it is now, which is this absolutely military fashion campaign where you've got to have, I don't know how many outfits for, if you're in contention for an award, you have got to have an unbelievable number of outfits. Stars would sometimes buy their own clothes. I think when Diane Keaton got the best actress for Annie Hall, she just got a blazer and a skirt out of her cupboard. We do not live in this world any longer. And then the 90s, which sometimes people say are just the absolute kind of desert of red carpet. People made lots of mistakes. And Jodie Foster just bought a dress on holiday when she was in Rome and then wore that to the Oscars.

7:55It's like, oh my God, this can't happen any longer. Now, none of this happens any longer. There are certain moments in styling that are so amazing that they lead to kind of almost, or they certainly precipitate technological advances. JLo, when she wears to the Grammys, this tropical print, green, plunging Versace dress, which you probably remember me just from me describing it. But that was the most popular.

8:20Richard Osman:I remember you describing it. You remember me describing it. But it was the most popular Google search ever at the time. in response to the fact that Google realized that people didn't actually just want to hear people like me describing it. They wanted to see it. They launched their image search function off the back of it. And then you get all these other stylists that come up and they become famous, like Rachel Zoe, who became this, that's a real white UK aesthetic, and she was doing like Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan, all those sort of things. But the best stylists understand what your screen persona is, and they understand how even in non-costume, you can reflect that persona.

8:57So it's more important than ever in the amount of noise there is out there to be on brand, to be somehow instantly readable as yourself, but also still to surprise. And the best styling, I've talked before, maybe I talked on Tuesday about Anne Hathaway and how actually the hate campaign against her was quite just an online thing and it wasn't, you know, she was in big movies at the time. But Erin Walsh really rescued her from even that online thing by putting her in these kind of really fierce outfits and she just sort of came back against the hate. The power of clothes can be absolutely amazing.

9:30Law Roach is at the absolute peak of his game. He's amazing. He's very lucky with who he dresses because she'll do anything and wear anything and they've been together forever. But it's such an interesting business and you're totally right. It has totally taken power away from those old legacy centres like magazine editors and so on. And it's very interesting. It's an incredible business.

9:49Richard Osman:Yeah, I find I genuinely, because, you know, fashion is not my, I will shock you to learn, not my kind of greatest love or something I particularly have a kind of fix on. If I see someone like this guy, Law Roach and Zendaya, you do think, OK, it's extraordinary what they're doing. Yeah. I get that that is an art. I get that that is. My only worry is, and also, by the way, I guess I know that that's a lot of fun. I know fashion is like incredibly expressive and incredibly fun. But if you are a Jodie Foster or a Diane Keaton, I worry that there is no room for that anymore, that you can just turn up in something you bought.

10:26Richard Osman:I worry about the pressure that because some people are so unbelievably brilliant at it that everyone feels they have. There's a huge amount of pressure to dress up for these red carpets now. And just, I just. Well, because fashion has become, the business of fashion is led by these sorts of things now. It's not really led by what's in vogue or whatever. it's led by these viral internet moments that people see things and they have a trickle that we talked about it when we talked about jewellery and lending jewellery to stars it's amazing but I feel like if ever I have to go somewhere where I'm going to have a photo taken or something I feel like two hours beforehand I think oh my god what is this suit and I'm a man so I can just wear a suit and like a tie but I think that's a real power move just turning off in whatever you like no but can people still do that is my worry I don't want people spending a whole day if you're Britain's best-selling author and you wrote the book no not me yes but you can though you can do that because, and the powerful people just wear whatever they like.

11:17I've got a friend who's really, really powerful, and she said, I'll wear a T-shirt and skirt on the red carpet at Canon. I don't care.

11:22Richard Osman:Okay, that's good. You can still do it. But you know that you're like a backstage, you know, she's taking four films there, whatever it may be. The powerful people don't have to be like that. If you're front of house, yeah, it's hard. I mean, I'm always glad. If you love it, I absolutely see, if you're Zendaya, I 100 % see that is like a huge positive, a lovely way to express yourself. but I do think oh my god it's hard to be a celebrity it must just be so well it just takes so long I remember when we talked about the devil wears pride thing like there were so many women there who I just thought my god this has been your whole day getting ready and I'm so glad my face isn't my fortune because but it's such a lot for you to do but it is you know it's part of that is your business and it's uh yeah it's tricky I mean I'm glad it's I'm glad it's not me I agree oh this is a very good question Richard Ellie Stanhope says I saw in the Guardian that nine of the ten best-selling fiction paperbacks in the UK last week have one thing in common a woman is murdered does UK publishing have a female violence problem I saw this as well and it's and had a huge amount of response and I am aware that a male author talking about this is not the best but I do think there are issues with that contention I would say that if you look at the top 10 books this week, I mean, there's a lot of crime fiction in there.

12:39Richard Osman:And definitely women get murdered in crime fiction, men get murdered in crime fiction. You know, what was the gender split of people who were murdered and then there were none. So definitely that there is definitely a sub genre of books which are written by women for principally for women readers that are about, you know, women in peril. That's for sure. But you actually look at the list. It's slightly disingenuous to say it. Firstly, I mean, I'm on the list. I'm in the top 10 and a woman isn't murdered in my book. So factually, I can't speak for everyone else, but there isn't one in my book. So I'm fine.

13:14Richard Osman:There's Robert Galbraith there, you know, JK Rowling, and she's murdered so many different people in her time. There's Claire Douglas. I mean, almost all these books are written by women, by the way, they are predominantly read by women as well and then I keep seeing comments that say yes but who but who is commissioning them who are the editors okay well I'll tell you now it's usually women I said publishing is very very unusual in it's an incredibly female friendly industry all the way up to the top these days as well all the way up to the very very top it has female consumers it has you know all the biggest writers in the world now are women if you look at this top 10 as well I mean the big story in this top 10 is you've got Florence Knapp with the names you've got Virginia Evans with the correspondent again you always say how hard it is to make it as a writer these are two people who did not have a name and have written a brilliant book and are now selling millions of copies of books around the world one of the books is freedom of fadden again somebody who was just self-publishing and has become one of the richest women in the world just through the you know her enormous readership so i think there's lots of stories in this top 10 quine fiction is very very popular are women killed more often than men i suspect in female written books maybe they are but i wouldn't have the numbers to back it up is there a misogynism issue in british publishing i don't think there is because it's i don't feel like there is whereas in in a lot of tv drama yeah tv drama i'm so sorry i find it there is so when i was growing up there were like very few shows or anything that or films that dealt with rape at all and you'd see there'd be something like the accused or there'd be deliverance and these were just kind of they were kind of like monolithic awful things because it they did and they did it brilliantly by the way both those things but the amount of tv dramas like just throwaway stuff that start with rape yeah and it's like a late or something just these incredibly baroque things being done to the female body when you know when it's just been done so lazily and it's just a way to make you instantly invested in the story because it's so horrific a woman in peral trope.

15:15It's to make you care because you can't be bothered to write it any better so that people do care. I think it's amazing how desensitised to seeing really horrific things on crime TV that we have become. So I was speaking to an actress recently who'd been offered a part on Law & Order SVU, Special Victims Unit, and she said, make of this what you will, the opinion amongst her and lots of her active friends was that it's a rape show and it is true that an extraordinary amount of violence is visited upon women in that particular show. Most of it is about absolutely horrific things, often plucked from recent news stories or whatever, happening to people.

15:58Richard Osman:I think in publishing there used to be much more of that issue. I think now there are very empowered authors out there. If you read those top ten books, by the way, I don't think you will come away thinking that publishing has a misogyny problem. I do see gratuity on TV a lot. I think that's right. I think authors worked out a long time ago that that was a trope being used by certain authors, maybe in the last decade, and people have gone in a slightly different direction. You look at a writer like Claire Douglas. I mean, she's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant crime writer. If you're a crime writer, you're going to write about murder.

16:33Richard Osman:But when I started writing Thursday Murder Club books, the one thing I really understood, and this is why you should never write for the market, you should never think what's selling, the stuff that was selling, there was a lot of blood and gore and violence and all this stuff. And I didn't like it. It's not what I wanted to read. I want to write about crime and I want to write about wrongdoing, but I'm not interested in that side of things at all. And I think almost all the writers on this list are not interested in it either. You know, they're just not. So it's a really, really good discussion to have.

17:03Richard Osman:Lots of factual inaccuracies about it. As I say, you know, I'm on the list and a woman isn't murdered in my book. That's absolutely by the buy because it doesn't take away from the thrust of the discussion. But I think if you look at that list, it is an extraordinary celebration of what a powerful industry publishing is for women and for different voices of women. I mean, it's skewed, of course, because crime books are very popular. This is, I take issue with the maths. So nine out of the top bestselling books have a murder for women. There's eight because mine doesn't, and I can't speak for anyone else there.

17:35Richard Osman:So of the 98 ,000 books sold that week in the bestseller list, 81 ,000 had the woman being murdered as a central to the plot. So, and this is the maths, 84 % of the books people bought and read in the UK this week involved a woman being murdered for entertainment. You think, I mean, if you think, I mean, the top 10 is not all the books being built and women are not being murdered for entertainment. There's lots and lots of reasons to write murder mysteries, lots of reasons, lots of motives, lots of people who are doing the murdering, lots of victims, lots of investigators, and everyone is playing with gender in all of those roles.

18:07Richard Osman:That's the interesting thing. If you're a crime writer, you've read a lot of crime. You understand, you know, and crime again, in the 1920s, 1930s, what other industry was absolutely dominated by women? Yeah. You know, and this was Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tay, all of these people completely dominated. And every crime writer understands that lineage, they understand where they come from. And you play, you can play with gender in all sorts of ways if you're interested in writing about the world as it is. And it is a very primal fear of women's that you are prey. Exactly that.

18:36And so this is why women know that they walk with their keys in the hand and do all those things that we know that we do. So I think, yes, I agree.

18:45Richard Osman:And there are plenty of female writers who write those books and plenty of female readers who will read them. But there are also plenty of female writers who are writing very different books, who are writing about something incredibly different. So I think I would be surprised if the author of that had read all of those books. The point is interesting. I think your point about TV is incredibly powerful. and it's definitely been a trope for a long time. I don't think that's a lesson we take from that top 10. I think that top 10, I think, tells us a very different story. I agree. Now, shall we go to a break?

19:15Richard Osman:Let's do that.

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19:54Richard Osman:I mean, it felt a time of absolute optimism, but at the time you just assumed that was the way that the world was going. A very British type of optimism. Yeah, but part of the optimism, of course, is that mortgages were more affordable. And that is what Lloyd's is dealing with right now. Yep. Last seen in 1996, Lloyd's are now offering 5k deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. Search 5k first-time buyer. 1996 average first-time buyer deposits based on ONS data. Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply. Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon. I'm here at the office and we just dropped some really fun new summer colors in the Flow Y styles.

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20:59Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Marina, a question for you from Mickey Baxter. That's a good name. Yes. That's a good, like, kind of Cockney villain name. In my new book, I've got, like, a gang who pulled off, like, a heist, and I had such fun coming up with the names, but Mickey Baxter could have been in there. Anyway, hello, Mickey. Mickey says, returning to the era of MacGuffin's and Chekhov's gun, things we've spoken about before, could you explain what deus ex machina means and give your favourite examples? Okay, that's a good question. It means God from the machinery, and it's from ancient, it was actually started in ancient Greek drama, but it carried on through in ancient Roman drama.