Bill Nighy Doesn’t Want to Be Mistaken for Someone Who Knows What to Do

0:00Getting the girls trip out of the group chat just feels right. The Fort Myers area delivers the memories, bonding, and let's-do-this-every-year energy. Start planning at visitfortmyers.com.

0:21This is The Run-Through. I'm Chloe Mao. And I'm Cheminardi. Today on the show, Bill Nighy came to the London Podcast Studio to chat with Choma about his personal style and give our listeners some end-of-the-year advice. Choma, I want to hear everything. I love Bill Nye. I know, I know. Bill was an absolute dream. He came in one of his beautifully tailored suits with a John Smedley knit that he designed himself. Underneath it, he's very precise. I love that he's never worn sneakers in his life and he wears suits on a plane and he's just kind of an example of someone who has really kind of amazing, amazing style, but also like their style is kind of like a part of how they live their life.

1:11Everything is precise. Everything is pared back. Apparently his home is really Spartan and has very little furniture in it. And he just has a really wry sense of humor. And I loved talking to him. He has a great new podcast called Ill Advised. And to be honest, I would take any of his life advice because I think he's just full of little funny piles of wisdom. I'm really excited to listen. Now, Choma, it was a big week at Vogue because it was the Met Gala exhibition announcement. I know. I think everyone is quite excited about the new exhibit. Tell me everything. Well, what was exciting about this Monday's announcement was that it was not just the announcement of the exhibition theme, which is costume art, no subtitle.

2:10It is about the way the body is clothed throughout art and especially looking at the Met's collection and the way clothes define the body and accentuate the body. but it was also the announcement of the new Condé M. Nast galleries at the Met which are really going to be monumental they are taking over what once was the gift shop at the Met and it is a huge enormous space and in honor of them being named after the late founder of Condé Mr. Condé M. Nast. His daughter, Lady Leslie Bottom Carter. Yes, she is related to Helena. She is 95 years old and she came from the UK for the opening. So that felt very fun and special.

3:02Did you meet her? I did meet her. And Laird did an amazing piece on her with these incredible archive images of her from like five years old. Wow. So that was really fun. Well, I'll have to look that up. I'm quite curious to see what her style timeline looked like. Yeah, the new galleries are really going to be incredible because they speak to the original architecture and really are going to feel like an extension of the Great Hall entryway, but have been completely reconceived to stand on their own. And it's the architects, Marianne Peterson and Nathan Rich. This is actually Andrew Bolton's first exhibition that has no subtitle.

3:47It's very dramatique. And the simplicity of the show name really adds to the point that he's trying to get across, which is that fashion should be on the same caliber and plane as any type of fine art. and I've seen Andrew's pinned sort of you know not mood board but it really is sort of the mapping out of the show in the bowels of the Met which is one of my favorite places to go because it's where all the conservation happens and it's so fun to explore down there and be able to sort of peek into what's happening behind the scenes but he has broken the show into different sections that That speak to different types of bodies from the anatomical body to the classical body, the corpulent body, the aging body.

4:43And there are really beautiful dichotomies and sort of diptychs that he's created between fine art from the Met's collection and costume art, as we'll call it. but different fashion moments that speak to those pieces. It's super exciting. And I'm sure there's already chatter around what this will mean for the red carpet. Well, yes, but Anna's extremely focused on the fact that this is not a show about naked dressing. This is about the clothed body. Come as you are, literally. Yeah, exactly. Choma, big day at Vanity Fair on Tuesday. Mark Radici's first issue. I thought it was so fun, so joyful.

5:30It just felt like an old school magazine romp that you wanted to jump into. It was so, so, so fun. And it created so much conversation on my feed. I think that people were very invested in which internet boyfriend was featured on the cover because there were so, so many great guys. I mean, the list is endless. There was Jonathan Bailey, Austin Butler, Glenn Powell, Michael B. Jordan, Halem Turner, Harris Dickinson, Nakee Stanfield, Riz Ahmed, Paul Mascow. Oh, my God, I can't. I don't think I'm going to be able to take. I need to take a breath. Andrew Garfield, Jeremy Allen White and our fave A$AP Rocky, who looked, I think, particularly good in the pictures on the beach.

6:18And it just felt like, I don't know, you sort of wanted to be part of their of their beach picnic. whatever they're doing. It was a real like. Yeah, it was like washed up at shore, all the best boys of Hollywood. It was fab. It was so fab. Shot by Theo Wenner, whose work I really love and styled by Tom Guinness, who is the husband of a longtime Vogue contributor and friend, Tish Weinstock. So it was really cool to see our friend and colleague Mark Guaducci bring his vision to life. I was so exciting. And joyful. Joyful is what we really needed. Like a little bit of a pick-me-up. And that's exactly what I think that I want from a mag like Vanity Fair.

7:06I know. And all the cover lines and the collages of the different moments. I just thought it felt old school heyday of magazines was what I found. But it did make me laugh. the idea of celebrating the internet boyfriend. Because boyfriends were embarrassing. Or have been embarrassing. Right after Shante. We've turned the corner. We're really whiplashing over here, Conde Nast. I mean, people are back. You know. Boyfriends are back. They're no longer embarrassing.

7:41Well, speaking of men or boyfriends, yesterday night I went to the GQ Men of the Year Awards in London. Oh, yes. Which was super fun. Boys are back. Boys are back. What did you wear? I always like to hear about your event dressing, Choma. Oh, sure. I can tell you. I can unpack that for you. So I actually, Charlotte on the team is one of the wonderful women on the fashion team who has been helping dress and style me. Thought it would be nice if I wore a suit, which I thought was great because any opportunity to wear a suit, I'll take it. and there's a young designer in London called Aaron Esch who I'm a huge fan of who's been kind of bringing this very like I guess this a little bit of the indie sleaze skinny suited vibe back and he has um Savile Row training so his suits are really precise so I was I was I was curious to see what the suit would feel and look like in person because actually I've only ever seen his his clothes on the runway, never up close in person.

8:48And he had this fabulous suit, which we called in that I wore, that double-breasted suit, which by the way, is really hard to wear open. Oh yeah, that's fair. But his you can wear open. It was just so beautifully tailored. I wore it with this really feathery scarf that he had accessorized in the show. And I wore it with a sort of simple tanked up underneath and it was just was so effortless I hate to use the word effortless but it really was and I just felt really perfectly right for the occasion I saw all of our faves Gwendolyn Christie I was I was texting with Cynthia Erivo all night being like I'm gonna see Wicked this weekend and I can't wait like I just can't wait like are you gonna go I'm I am 100 % gonna go I've been like looking forward to this I love that in theaters like it is so like I think I cried last time.

9:43I'm such a, you know, you know me. I'm a big emo mess. So I'm very excited to see it this weekend. And yeah, no, it was a really star-studded room. Skepta is who I imagine most of our American listeners will know is a huge, huge rapper in the UK and is also a designer in his own right. Daniel Lee gave a really touching speech for Skepta, who was one of the men of the year. And it was just great to see him dressed in actually in his own designs. He has a line called Maine and he was he brought his mother and father and he was talking about what it means to be an immigrant in London and how important that is right now, given the political climate.

10:29And his speech was really touching. Piers Brosnan was also honoured, who was fab and looked completely dapper. It was a great night. It was a really fun night. Oh, I love that. Choma, what else were you up to this week? It's been quite a busy week in London. I felt really energised. On Monday night, a group of us from the British Vogue offices went over to see what Marco Capaldi, who is the creative director of 16 Arlington, was up to for a collaboration he did with Anthony Price. And Anthony Price hasn't showed in London for, I mean, decades, but he is kind of a living legend. He's most known for the work that he did with Roxy Music in the 70s and 80s.

11:20So all of those wonderful Robert Palmer moments that you can think of, like he dressed those women. And so it was just the most glamorous thing ever. London isn't a place I normally associate with like high, high glamour. But he made a collection that was basically Democriture. It's all made to order and extremely glamorous evening dresses. And the casting was just to die for. Everybody loves Marco. So Marco basically assembled all of his like best model girlfriends, including Lily Allen, who made her runway debut. And everybody was. I know. I couldn't believe that was such a get. It was an amazing get.

12:14And she killed it. Her walk was incredible. She came out smoking, which I thought was heaven, even though we do not encourage smoking on this show. But I did think it kind of went with the vibe. and everybody instantly connected the dress that she wore which was this velvet midnight blue form-fitting strapless divine kind of hourglass dress to diana's revenge dress and obviously very apropos for her who is in her revenge dress era and is looking amazing um and i just can't wait to see her in concert like it's going to be the hottest ticket in town when it when she does those shows in March were all kind of eagerly awaiting for them and then besides that it was all of our favorite models Paloma was there Adjua who looked divine and her sister Kesha were Laura Stone Lila Moss um uh and then Edie Campbell who looked incredible it was it was it was a really fab moment in an in a kind of really cold miserable week and and was off schedule but managed to get the entire fashion crowd there and he showed in his studios it was really intimate and even though you know traveling to east london can be a bit of a drag if you're based in central like we are but it was well worth the journey and it was such a fab start to the week so i'm excited i mean it's kind of like a taster of maybe what the what the the sort of pre-collection shows are coming up Oh, and I saw and actually I ran into Hamish Bowles at our beloved colleague at the show.

13:53And he was actually pretty much like packing for Doha because I think this week there's this huge gala honoring Franco Satsani, the Franco Fund Gala. And so he was very excited. So I'll be catching up with him hopefully in the hallways here to get a download of what that was like. You can also read about it on Vogue.com because he will be covering for us. But yes, it's a big hullabaloo. This Weekend in Doha, Francesco Carazzini, Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayasa, Bint Hamad Al-Tani, and Anna Winter are hosting the first ever Franca Fund Gala, which honors Carazzini's late mother, obviously, the legendary Italian Vogue editor Franco Sozzani, and raises money to support ongoing research in preventative genomics.

14:50And the run-through will be back in a moment with my convo with Bill Nighy.

15:00You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

15:34And we're back.

15:40Bill, thank you so much for joining the pod today. My pleasure. Yeah, we loved having your advice on our Agony Uncle series. It was wildly successful. And obviously now you've got your own podcast in advice. How's that been going? Because we've been loving it. I think it's been going okay. I mean, I'm not out there in the world too much in terms of cyberspace, but I'm reassured by my, what I like to call my team, that we're doing okay. I tried not to have a podcast and I was quite uneasy about it and I withdrew at the last minute like three times because I thought I'm not really that, I'm not in the world in that way, you know.

16:19I just go to work and I do press and stuff for work but beyond that I don't really want to comment but then I got persuaded into it and it was quite good fun and people seemed to like it. Well, I think it can be quite daunting, but I think you've settled into it very quickly. And as we enter the holiday season, we thought it would be just the right time to get some of your wonderful advice. So we've had some holiday-related questions in the mix. We've gotten so many great questions from Vogue readers and listeners. And it's clear people are very, very excited to get your help. it's a difficult time of the year for many people but before we get into question i think it's so amazing that you've um you've dedicated your whole show to helping people through the quandaries of their life like what excites you about helping people navigate their problems i put enough kind of waivers in place like you know when you get to my age the risk is you're mistaken for somebody who knows what to do which is true because you only have to look on the internet or in your newspaper if you still read one and see how well that's going with old men roaming around the world, you know, making various kinds of mess of everything.

17:34It was an invitation to squander time and that I will help you waste some time. It's a cup of tea with me. And, uh, I like the idea of it being sort of inconsequential, but in the meantime, yeah, there are, we do smuggle in some advice, but I don't want to be, if I, I don't want to, I really don't want to be mistaken for anybody who knows what to do but I but because I got most things completely around the wrong way when I was younger then my only value really is that I'm quite good at what not to do I'm not necessarily great at knowing how to proceed you know in a positive fashion but I know kind of I've been I fell in enough traps to know that where they might lie well is there a question you get asked again and again?

18:20Well, luckily, I generally get asked questions about trousers or socks. Let me just say that Bill's wearing the most exquisite suit right now with a John Smedley sweater of his own design, which I would like to steal for myself because it looks very beautiful, fine knit, which they're known for. Before we proceed, I just needed to put that in. Thank you. I'm sure that a Smedley of your choice would be on its way to you within seconds should you glance at the catalog. Well, I mean, the one that comes to mind is, is it ever acceptable to go out sockless in public? Oh, yeah, I'd love to know your thoughts.

18:59Well, I mean, you know my response to that. The only remarkable thing is that anybody bothers to ask me. It's like Miranda Sawyer in The Observer who lied to me and pretended that these were questions that had come from elsewhere. But actually, they were her questions that she designed solely to wind me up. And the first one was, is it ever acceptable to go out for a man to go out sockless into the world? And I said to her, you can consider my mouth. You can say his mouth fell open because obviously there is never an acceptable time unless he's, I don't know, unless he's been rushed release from hospital or something.

19:38I don't know. It's become insane. No, I don't even want to sit or stand near a man who's not wearing any socks unless he's on a beach. I'm with you. I'm totally with you on that. Oh, good. Is there anyone that you go to for life advice? For life advice? Yeah. Yeah, I do have a couple of friends that I would, if there was something that I was really struggling with, I would run by them. my daughter actually is um better at everything than i am and i'm not being cute she's just better at everything than i am and she's always been in a better shape than i than i am and she's she's a very i would i would completely rely upon her um and she uh she can talk to me in a way that nobody else can talk to me you know so it's uh it's very uh i know that i'm going to get the facts well i think i mentioned this earlier we talked about your suits earlier but you've actually been crowned a menswear king by gq i know you have seven suits for every day of the week maybe you can expand on that and describe them and what what your favorite is well i i used to have a friend called john brown when we were young mods and he was he used to work at a store called that was There was a high street chain all over the UK called Dun & Co, D-U-N-N, no longer exists.

21:03And it's where your dad went or your grandfather went. But young mods would go there to ironically dress like their dad. And we would wear pleated trousers, generous wide trousers with a turn up. You know, the kind of stuff that would make girls, you know, just it was just like, really? You know, and a John Smedley leisure wear polo with the three buttons done up to the top. none of that other you know undoing the top button and we would and he worked there so he would get a discount so he had a three-piece suit for every day of the week and i vowed that if i ever made any money i was going to be like john brown and i have made some money and i i've got more than seven suits but it's not right yet it's not right i want to open my i love the idea of having, I do like the idea of having seven suits exactly the same.

21:56That's one idea, but I think it's just an idea. I think in reality, I would need them to be two different colors. There's only two colors. One is dark gray-ish and the other is navy, obviously, but they would all be similarly constructed. And I love the idea of limited choice and they're all being exquisite. I mean, nothing fancy. They don't have to be that expensive. They just have to be put together properly. And they have to have a single vent, a single pleat. It can be double pleat, actually, these days. And pleats are back, by the way. I've waited about 15 years for that to happen. I've never stopped wearing pleated trousers because I can't bear flat front trousers and they have a turn up or what the Americans call a cuff and they would be a proper pair of trousers not those kind of tight things which make me very uneasy What advice would you give to someone who's struggling to find their personal style you have such a great sense of what you like and what you don't like where do you start if you're sort of like I don't know where I fit fashion isn't my thing I think, you know, you just keep it simple.

23:02If you want to dress casually, if you were to buy a pair of Levi 501s and a pair of DM shoes in a dark brown, not the boots, don't be ridiculous. You know, already you're feeling, and if you had a jacket not unlike the one you're wearing or a Harrington, you know, the Harrington, which John Simon made famous. John Simon, do you know about John Simon? No. John Simon has a shop now run by his son, Paul Simon. He is the modfather. He is the godfather of mod. And in the 50s, he went to New York and he went to Brooks Brothers and he said, can I buy all your seconds, all the stuff you can't put in the store?

23:43And he brought it back to his shop then in Golders Green. And he sold it to young working class boys who would wear it on a Friday and a Saturday night. And the definition of mod, which Martin Freeman, who is much more of a sincere mod than I am, And Paul Weller, for instance, they are kind of third generation. His definition is mod is anything I say it is, which is my, I borrowed that definition. But it's basically, it was, it was a working class phenomenon. And, and the other definition is clean living under difficult circumstances, which also makes me laugh. And it's about, you know, you do a job all week, which might involve you getting dirty.

24:19And then on a Friday night, you are pristine. But if you, if you had a jacket and a pair of jeans, I, you know, a dark jacket and a pair of 501s. and you're already there in a button-down shirt, you can't go wrong, you know. And you'll be fine on the plane, in the airport, wear jeans on the plane maybe. I've taken to dressing up for the plane. Oh, my gosh, I love that. That is so, you're going in the other direction of whatever else is doing. Exactly. What is your uniform for the plane? Well, it's just a suit and tie. You wear a suit and tie on the... I love getting onto the plane. And real shoes, you don't wear trainers on the...

24:53I have never worn trainers in my life. I wore trainers once on a comedy show because I had a girlfriend who was in the show. I had a girlfriend who was much younger than me and she tried to dress me young for a laugh to comic purposes. And they put me in a huge pair of trainers. It was very, I felt very lonely. And they kind of added us something. And I looked very, very sad. I was then 50 something. But that's the only time trainers have ever touched my feet. For our American listeners, trainers are sneakers. um but yes yeah most people have worn them or wear them but no i never got around to it's like a laptop i never i never saw what was it you know it's like enumerating your friends on you know facebook it's it's it's a generational thing it's too late i'm i was too late for trainers and i'm happy about that i love shoes i mean i'm not what's your shoe of choice well i'm not a big actually i'm not a huge what shoes are you wearing now they're great are they churches These are churches.

25:55Yeah, well spotted. These are a classic pair of black Oxford, I think they're called Oxford, churches shoes. I go to Cheney's or Cheney's. I still don't know how to say it. And German Street. And they do a very good loafer. Love a loafer. And they also do a very good shoe, you know, a lace-up shoe. So really between those two shops, Cheney's or Cheney's, I must find out how to say it, in German Street. They're my go-to at the moment. I have a writer who's working on a, who's tired of his sneakers and is writing on a story about what he should wear and he's just completely stuck because he's had this wardrobe of trainers his entire career.

26:39But yes, I'll direct him, I'll point him in that direction. Yeah, no, you can't go wrong. You shouldn't economize on shoes really because you're going to end up buying, if you buy cheap shoes, you'll end up buying three pairs. Just one good pair. You might as well just get one good pair, you know. What about glasses? You've got really great, you're wearing this really great olive frame. Yeah, these are my newish glasses. I used to wear very black, thicker, much thicker glasses. They all come from Cutler & Gross. Oh, I love them. C-U-T-L-E-R and Gross. Because I remember when glasses became necessary and I went to the shop.

27:18I went to Cutler & Gross shop opposite Harrods, and the girls in there put a big pair. I had no idea about glasses. I had no understanding of what you did, you know, what you wore, how you would choose, because it's a big deal what glasses you wear. And they stuck a big black pair of thick glasses on me, and they said, those glasses look like I wear glasses and I don't care. So somehow I ended up at the till. and I wore those for a long time and I wore them also because American listeners maybe not be familiar with Eric Morecambe but Eric Morecambe used to wear them and he used to wear them like that famous comedian very famous, very beloved comedian and I do it obviously for my grandchildren because I can see round corners but that always gave me pleasure well tis the season for holiday movies and I feel like we can't talk about holiday movies without talking about love actually in which you play a washed up rock star, Billy Mac.

28:20I think people just, it's just one of those films that people love and I can't believe it's been 20 years since its first release because we still watch it again and again. What do you think it is about love actually that people love? You know, it's like Richard Curtis who wrote it and directed it said, you know, that some films are often described as, the films that are described as searingly honest, you know, like words get married. and Honest is sometimes married to Searingly, are always films about how bad things can get and how terrible human beings are. And he's always said, why can't a film about how good things can be and how remarkable people can be, why can't that be Searingly Honest?

29:01Anyway, that's slightly not the answer to your question. But I do think it's because it does, you know, it's about love and people love to be in love. and it's about people, you know, for the most part, looking out for one another and behaving, you know, decently. But it's funny and it's romantic. I mean, it's properly funny. Yeah, it's really funny. And it's properly romantic. So we have a film-related question from a listener. Okay. I'm trying to decide what movie to take my mum, dad and siblings for a family outing. How do you decide on a movie we'll all like? Should we go to a theatre or stay in?

29:41you should probably stay in and play charades i love this you know what i mean and you could do all kinds of movies um but if you're going to go to the movies well i think you know there's lots of movies now aren't there that that people that everyone can love i've been in several of them you know the pirates movies you know everyone from nine to 90 likes the pirates of the caribbean so you famously don't watch the films you're in i've heard no because it's very because i find it very very very upsetting and i tried it when i was young and i hated it and i uh and you know i don't have i have probably some kind of overall dysmorphia um i don't like uh looking at myself and i don't like the sound of myself particularly um i don't it's the acting that gets to me because i know too much and i know all those little bits where i bits of cowardice where i couldn't quite pull it off and I did that default thing that I always do when I can't pull something off and it's often unconscious and I don't really want to see it people say you should watch in order to learn stuff I'm never going to learn anything except do something else for a living you know it's quite extreme um I'm just not wired that way I mean does that the same go for your animated roles because I feel like you've done no no I'm happy I'm happy watching I don't mind watching cartoons and I and I did also I was a squid and I you know in I was a squid man in Pirates of the Caribbean and then I was that was quite liberating because I could just I could watch it because what you're going to say you don't like my squid well get over it you know so I did actually watched it I watched it at Disneyland in Anaheim with everybody else I sat there quite happily that sounds like fun that was actually very good fun because the creature I had no idea what the creature was going to look like and when I finally saw the creature I mean they did such a good job when they presented it for the first time to the director Gore Verbinski he said get your acceptance speech ready and they won an Oscar oh my goodness they did so great well I have another question from a listener this one comes from Rose which is about family right what do you get a dad who doesn't drink alcohol or care about tools for the holidays?

32:02You buy him a book. Because I'm a father who doesn't drink alcohol and doesn't have a toolbox. What I always want is socks, but nobody really believes you that that's all you want, but I love. What are your socks of choice? Because I'm sure you're particular about that. You have very nice fine gauge socks on, ribbed socks on right now. Thank you. You've been paying attention. she's been looking at my socks pantharella is the word and I've recently been buying the very long pantharellas which if you pulled them all the way up they would go to your knee but I quite like them I remember getting older I was probably in my 50s and I did a job and I had long socks and the young women in the wardrobe department laughed at my socks they didn't mean any harm by it they just my socks made them laugh because they were so long and I thought, oh God, I've got to the point where young women laugh at my socks.

33:02You know what I mean? It was like it was a moment. But I do like Pantharella and I like the long ones. Also, I have recently purchased some winter weight socks from Sunspell. Oh, I love Sunspell too. Reaching out for sponsorship. And they're in dark grey and dark blue because there's only two colours and they have other colours as well. And they're very, very nice too. Nice. I love Sunspell too. Any advice on how to not lose your mind over the holidays of your in-laws? Maybe try asking questions about their early life. You might, you know, you might find some surprises. You might open them up in a way that they haven't been opened up before.