The Oscars, Ryan Gosling, Self Esteem performs

You're listening to Front Row with me, Samira Ahmed. Hello, tonight Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka Self-Esteem on starring as a troubled rock singer in David Hare's play Teeth and Smiles, and she performs for us live in the studio. Hollywood star Ryan Gosling tells me about being a reluctant hero in Project Hail Mary.

We explore the winners and surprises at last night's Oscars and can Claudia Winkleman succeed with her late night chat show? We'll be discussing the challenge of the format with the producer of Clive James, Michael Parkinson and Jonathan Ross.

But first, Rebecca Lucy Taylor is one of Britain's most successful pop stars under the pseudonym Self Esteem. Stop it, don't I can do this all the time from self-esteem's twenty twenty-one album Prioritize Pleasure. She's also an acclaimed stage actress, winning praise for her performance as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Now she's combining the two sides of her performing in her latest role in a revival of David Hare's 1975 play, Teeth and Smiles, about the pressures and struggles of seeking fame.

Taylor plays Maggie, a not so young singer still gigging with her band and desperate for a breakthrough. Set in 1969, the play reflects on the self-destruction of stars such as Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and features original songs performed during the concert sections of the drama.

Earlier today, Rebecca Lucy Taylor came into the front row studio to perform a song that she's written specially for this new production and to talk about fame, fictional and real. But first, here she is in the role of Maggie. This is all real, you know, kids. None of the others can say that. I've never had a nose job or a facelift. Or my jaw pushed in and my chin straighten, no paraffin wax, no mud pack These are all my own teeth. This is it. The real thing.

We have a lovely full house in the front row studio today, the cast of teeth and smiles. Uh Rebecca Lucy Taylor who is playing Maggie. Welcome. Hello. And we have the actors and the musicians who are the band on stage and off who are with you in the studio. Hello. Hi, how's it going? I'm Giorgio Macari. I play uh Peyote. I play the bass guitar in the The Skins.

I I'm Michael Ababak, I play Wilson and Teeth and Smiles and Wilson plays the keyboards. I'm Samuel Jordan, I play Smegs, who plays guitar. He does that every time he comes on. Right. Rebecca, it was such an interesting Choice of play. This is the fiftieth anniversary of Teeth and Smiles.

Was it a play that you had come across before and what made you take on the role? I'd not come across it before. Uh Daniel Raggett, who's the director, got in touch with me when I was doing cabaret and uh was sort of like I'm not weird, but I think this is the right play you should do next.

And then we kept meeting and chatting about it and I read it and we talked about it for about two years really. But after Cabaret I knew I wanted to do another theatre job and I'd wanted to take my time and make sure it was the right thing and that kept being the th one I kept coming back to. Well it's interesting because it's about a woman who really wants

fame as a rock star and she slogged hard for a decade and proved elusive. You've broken through. You're the woman Maggie, the character you play would aspire to be. I wonder what it's been like stepping into her shoes.

Yes, I've sort of become successful, but I still have struggled with you sort of you get somewhere, you get to the place you always wanted to be and then there's a whole new influx of people expecting you to be bigger and better and wider and more global and So the similarities between me and her are quite sort of harrowing at times and there's like a whole new wave of sadness I get about

Maggie sometimes where I think, Yeah, but even if she got what she wanted it's still not what she thinks it is. What are those harrowing things that you see parallax? Uh the slogging away for decades. Uh being in a very male dominated industry I mean th this is all really reductive'cause there's there's loads of layers to it, but She is the problem in this play, like and the lads want a good time, they just want to play their music and it's sort of ruined by her.

Which is how I felt for a lot of my career, it feels like, because I'm so serious about it, the art is so important to me and it's life or death for me. And that's been difficult for other people to be around over the years. Certainly men who kinda can't understand my needs. So yeah, it's been triggering for want of a better word. But also really healing'cause the boys in the cast are being beautiful to me and really like looking after me and caring about me.

which is quite healing in the grand scheme of my life. Well I was thinking back to when um Helen Mirrin played Maggie in the original production back in nineteen seventy five. She said she based performance on Janice Joplin, who was a woman of huge talent, who who was self destructive, as we know. Did you base your performance on anyone?

No, I I think it's just me really. Honestly, I'm sort of like when I'm struggling with a thought I'm like, It's twenty eighteen, it's twenty eighteen. It's my brain in twenty eighteen would feel like the 'Cause I'm sort of in a bit of a happier, nicer place now. But um it's not that long ago. I was feeling pretty similar to her.

Well you see you were feeling similar to her. When we first encounter Maggie, she's drunk, she's slung over someone's shoulder, carried onto the stage. It's quite an entrance. I can imagine in the seventies that kind of self destructive behaviour was seen as quite romantic. I don't think it still is. What do you think? I'm so interested about this'cause I think it still is for men.

For me, my Maggie's drinking is not because it's self destructive. That's not the headline reason. I like to think she's drinking because she's so bored of being around these people that don't get it like she gets it. That's what I was drawn to about the play in a way is that she's not the most destroyed person there. I don't think. I think she's the most resilient. She's the strongest.

Well it's interesting you say that because David Hare has always said that he's most interested in courageous figures, people with strong convictions, which sounds like you and the way that you see Maggie. And how did he feel? How did you talk about you stepping into Maggie's shoes? It's been really lovely. It's like been a few years of meeting and chatting and

David's found it quite exciting how I'm a musician before an actress so and and the sort of parallels of my life. When the acting m and the truth meet within her, it's quite fun, I think, as a writer to see it. Like acting pivot for the pop star not always a great idea and like I didn't want it to just be because doors were opening for me. I wanted to make sure it was like really good work and really worth it and really saying something and

So it's been a pleasure for me to work like alongside him to make sure that it has my agenda through it as well. It's really l quite an uh experience. Yeah. Well the song that you and the band are gonna perform for us is a song that you have written, a new song you've written for this show. Can you tell us about it? And where it's placed in the show. Yeah. In the original, it kinda kept feeling like it needs to have Maggie's journey needed to have some future where she does it herself.

But I just kept feeling like she needs a song that she's written herself because the whole point in the play is that Arthur, who is her ex boyfriend, has written all the songs and she sings them every night and the sort of happy Not happy ending, but the future for her felt better for me if she'd figured out how to write her own stuff. I love it when I write songs sometimes and they come out really quickly. That's when I know it's like

truthful and uh I've connected to the divine and it's come through really quickly. Sometimes I'm like, I can't rhyme that word and it takes like three weeks but this one c happened in like ten minutes. You're gonna p pump for us now? Yes. Got the boys? Let's go for it.

Ah, Rebecca Lucy Taylor and the cast of Teeth and Smiles performing Maggie's song. That was just beautiful. And your voice what's really struck me watching you on stage is how you were able to Inhabit a personality big enough to be credible. And you obviously have really found yourself on stage as a musician and a songwriter. I was interested in how easy it was then to bond with your yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n

and actually you've been brought together for this play. So how easy was it to build that dynamic together? I mean, really, really easy. The casting is just wonderful. It's everyone is a really It's been re it's been real loving. I don't know why this happens but on cabaret I was the same. I just love actors. They're just a lot more fun. Didn't you originally plan to act? Did you apply to drama school? Oh yeah.

Twice, didn't get in. And I'd started the band by then. So the band kept getting sort of people saying, Do you wanna come on this tour and do that? and drama school was very like, You don't have it, so no um and the sort of impatient, lazy part of my brain said, I'll go and do the one where they seem to like me.

But I think it's very interesting that the stage has found you, hasn't it? Because you obviously always had that theatrical ability inside you. You just didn't have the opportunity to show it at drama school. Yeah, in the film of my life. It's quite lovely, really. I think about my nan and grandad a lot and how They um thought I was gonna be a big like actress and they used to take me to shows and things and

There started the band and I was touring in a band and you know, I was in the back of a van for a decade going. And they they were always really supportive, but I it wasn't like getting there, do you know what I mean? And Were they around to see you in Cabaret? No, they never knew I got there, yeah. But I you know, I think they know somewhere along the line. My granddad was the dame in the panto, right, every year in the village. Like I'm not from a performing family at all.

We see there's something about the personae of a pantomime dame and That's the bigness that you need as a woman to step into owning a woman's persona on stage, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, very much. It's a good point. Interesting insight. I did not know about you. Um I was thinking there's a lot of interest now, including this a whole new book, uh history about the era of bands in the seventies.

ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw Mae'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud? I recognise the relentless playing in the van, New City, New City. You don't really notice where you are. And it's not been hard to remember the

'Cause in music now you don't get make any money from the sale of your art. I still uh self esteem I'm saying yes to gigs that make me feel pretty rubbish about myself, but I need to pay my bills. What sort of like corporate jobs and things like that and I won't I don't wanna name it'cause I'd like they paid me a lot of money and I don't mind doing it again. But um one audience I played at was is a particular inspiration for my um Maggie.

'Cause you play six thousand sort of faces looking at you like I hate this. What is it and when is it stopping? Character building though, and it'll all go into the movie of your life as well. Got a lot of that. Yeah. Um but I was also thinking, have you must have thought about this? You know, if you had been starting your career then in the seventies, what the experience would have been like for you. Have you tried to connect to that

Fictional Maggie. I'm so sick of hearing myself talk about money and music. But w something I think about so often is Me as an artist now, I've got tons of ideas. and I can't indulge myself in them because it's now you have to keep going, you have to keep

being relevant, you have to keep getting on X, Y, and Z or you or Social Media gone. Yeah, it could be gone. And what what I do think about those times was if you sort of if I was as as successful as I am now then I would have made enough money to survive and therefore can artistically indulge in the things that might interest me and not necessarily have to have them succeed. I I I don't know if I'm rose tinted glasses ing this.

But all that's told me is do that anyway now. Rebecca Lucy Taylor. Teeth and Smiles is on at the Duke of York's Theatre in London until June.

Sometimes it's nice to wake up to widely expected news, and that's part of the story of who triumphed at the Oscars last night. Jessie Buckley's barnstorming performance in Hamlet made her the first Irish winner of a leading acting category award, and director Paul Thomas Anderson's film One Battle After Another took an impressive haul of six awards. Here's a flavour of Oscar's night. One battle after

What a night. You guys, let's have a martini. This is pretty amazing. Cheers. Thank you very much. Thank you. Michael B. Joel. Thank you everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me over my career. I feel it. It's Mother's Day in the UK today. So I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart.

Well, to talk more about the wins and some surprises too, I'm joined in the studio by critic Boyd Hilton. Boyd, it wasn't a surprise, but tell us about Jesse Buckley's win for Hamnet and that speech. Yes, she had won pretty much every single award going in the build up to the Oscars. So, you know, co

starting with the the various the SAG awards or the actors' awards as they're now known, um Golden Globes, etcetera, etcetera. So she had won all of those, but still there's something you you never know in the end you know, the the Academy could make a maverick choice. and ignore everything that everyone else has said. So it was a fantastic win for her. And I think she's just so loved and she's so likable and her speech was so endearing.

that it felt like a a great moment for her. Yeah, absolutely. So one battle after another, the big winner last night, winning Best Picture and director for Paul Thomas Anderson. That is really significant, isn't it? Tell us what you make of those wins. I think one battle after another, yeah, it was an interesting i it was kind of the big battle was between that film um and Sinners.

and all the way through I think as soon as one battle after another the Paul Thomas Anderson film debuted last autumn in right in the middle of the Oscars the awards season if you like, everyone who saw it kind of thought, Oh, this is a front runner, this is the new front runner.

um for best picture and possibly best, etcetera. And Sinners remember came back Sinners came out about a year ago, uh April last year, so that's a long time and that I think built up ahead of steam as time wore on. And I was thinking particularly about

Uh Paul Thomas Anderson's is that he's not won any of these offerings before. And he's been nominated a lot. He has been nominated a lot, and I think he is one of the foremost um directors of our time. And so yeah, it was definitely a feeling that he deserved recognition for his work. And I think this is one of his best films. So sometimes when

The Academy Awards, famously Martis Corsesi, you know, For the Departed, which I I love the Departed, by the way. But people it's not considered A grade. It's not good fellas, exactly. It's not taxi driver. Um so yeah, directors can wait a long time and Paul Thomas Anderson had waited a long time. So but I think it i it i think the film deserved it. The Oscars did well this year in recognising pretty much I think the best films of the year, which isn't always the case.

Yeah, interesting. Well let's talk about who someone who didn't win. Uh Timothy Chalamet didn't win best actor. What happened? Well it's an interesting case because he was definitely favourite for a while. This is Marty Supreme. Marty Supreme, the the table tennis film. Um and he did a long campaign of um appearances, in person appearances and Q and A's after screenings. I was invited to quite a few of them. here um in in town.

and watched him do one of them and I think th as as time wore on I think people became became slightly irritated by him possibly. Um I th I think he's great, I think he's a breath of fresh air and it's great to have actors who are outspoken and say say interesting things rather than any old nonsense. But But I think it has harmed his his chances, whereas Michael B. Jordan I think has a dignity to him and he's you know, seems to be a more a more mature

possibly a slightly more likable and in in the end it often is a popularity contest, it has to be said. But Michael Spee Jordan absolutely deserved his award. But it's interesting that Chalamet didn't I just want to play that bit of uh there's a bit of Conan O'Brien the host. um making a bit of fun about some comments that Chalamet made recently that uh got him in trouble.

Security is extremely tight tonight. I just gotta mention that. Yeah. I'm told there's concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities. Thank you. They're just mad you left out jazz. Uh Conan O'Brien there making reference to Chalamet's recent interview where he questioned the relevance of opera and ballet. Those comments came quite at the end of voting days. Tell us about its wins and a bit more about why this film has cut through, with audiences as well as critics.

Well Ryan Ryan could go on for b um uh uh best uh screenplay, original screenplay. uh Michael B. Jordan won Best Lack. And that was a big you know, beating Timothy Chalamet was a was a big achievement there. I think it was a fifty fifty race in the end. And I just think the film really landed it's i it is in many ways a traditional horror film. It's about spoiler alert of vampires.

uh essentially, but I think it had s such an interesting angle on on the classic story of vampires and the element of it the musical element of it. There was a lot of stuff about the folk music um and how that the impact that that had on communities. So they kind of had this interesting uh uh underlying theme that most normal horror films don't necessarily have to be what Ryan Coodley did with um

Black Panther, isn't it? Absolutely. I forgot to mention the first female cinematographer to win an Oscar was for Sinners as well. Yeah, which was a fantastic moment. I mean extraordinary to think how rare it is to see a female cinematographer, let alone a black female cinematographer. And her win I think was hugely um popular.

And she did a brilliant job on Cinners because Cinners looks fantastic. It's got different aspect ratios. It's quite technically difficult um uh story to film I think. And it was f it looked phenomenal. And so everyone everyone was thrilled that she won and her speech was fantastically inspirational as well. Excellent. Now it

some weird news. It was very rare to have a tie at the Oscars. I've never heard of one before, but there was one for the best short film category. Yes. What happened there? It was interesting. Well Kumeo Nangiani, the comedian, was um introducing that category. And he I think he wanted to make it absolutely clear that this was a genuine thing. There was a tie between these two films in that category.

And he said this isn't a joke'cause I think everyone probably would have assumed it was a joke'cause he's a comedian and he's presenting this award. But it's happened apparently it's happened six five I think six times before. Apparently it happened Katherine Hepburn and Barbara Streisand one were both joint winner of Best Actress in nineteen sixty eight.

So, I mean that would have been amazing for for that category to be come down to a tie. But when you consider there are I think ten thousand, eleven thousand Academy members voting, that's pretty extraordinary for it to come down to a tie in the end. And at a time when there's great anxiety about talking politics at the Oscars.

It's interesting to see the documentary win was that was um Mr Nobody Against Putin which is a B B C backed documentary from the story of Ilstrand. Yeah, I think you can watch it on iPlayer right now if you want to. um his classes, his students being kind of told the propaganda that Russia was putting out after the invasion of Ukraine.

Um but it's an example of that I think I think because it's such a political um film, I think it made sense for the director to talk about politics to be political in his acceptance speech. I should say, the cinematographer who won, the first woman to win cinematographer at the Oscars, was Autumn Archibald. Congratulations to her. Thank you, Boyd. And do stay with us, as we will be reviewing The Claudia Winkleman Show a little later in the programme.

Now Ryan Gosling has been a Hollywood A-lister for a while. Think of his Oscar-nominated roles in Half Nelson and La La Land, but it was his scene-stealing performance as Ken, Barbie's pretty but dim boyfriend in two-2023 that really proved his comedy talent. Now he's bringing that screen charm to save the world in his new film project Hail Mary, but not in a wham bam superhero way, rather as a reluctant astronaut.

Gosling plays a disillusioned scientist, turned school teacher, drafted in by the government on a one way mission to a distant star, tasked with finding a solution to an interstellar infection that's killing the sun and threatens Earth with an ice age. In deep space, Gosling finds an alien creature on the same mission, a spider-like entity made of rock, and the two forge an unlikely friendship. Here is their moment of first contact. I don't understand. You want me? To go back in my ship?

But I just got here. What was it about the Project Hail Mary book that appealed to you as an actor? And was it a role that you knew you wanted from the start? Yeah, I was blown away by the book. And I feel very lucky I had got to have a unique experience because it hadn't been published yet. It was just in manuscript form. So I didn't have any opinions to to color it for me. I just went in completely blind. So

Most people now who would read the book they would at least read the like the jacket or have heard something about it, you know, they know a little bit about what they're getting into. But I I I knew nothing. I woke up in the spaceship with this character. I got to experience it I think in a way that almost like like the character does, like uh you you know, without any context, just piecing it together i i a as he does. And so when it was finished I felt like

Okay, if I can honor this experience I just had. I mean I always had that to draw from as we were going forward. I was like just trying to remember what it felt like to read it for the first time and captured that on film. Interesting. Was there as much humor in it as you brought

to the finished film. Because there's a great amount of warmth at the same time as there's a huge amount of jeopardy. This is I think what's partly so special about Andy's work is like the humor helps you d digest so much of the h the hard science and some of the things that are harder to

understand. But it's different, you know, because we were we had to personalize the humor and make it our own sense of humor. And then once James Ortiz became Rocky and we had a puppeteer there, then it was a combination of our sense of humors and of course Chris and Phil are hilarious and they have their own sense of humor. So yeah, it was

It became its own brand, I think, by the end of it, but through a sort of melting pot of humor. Excellent. Uh watching this film, I was thinking of a number of modern sci-fi classics such as contact yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n

in comparison to those filmic heroes had gone before.'Cause it feels like they inform the background to this film. I thought what was so compelling about him is that he doesn't know wh who who he is and that he's not a natural hero. He has no

fantasies of being a hero. He's not like a typical movie hero or one that you would find in a story. He doesn't want to be one. And I mean, yes, the reluctant hero is not a new character, I guess, but he finds his bravery in a really interesting way because he's had amnesia and he's able in a way to kind of f forget who he was.

Because he wakes up uh in the mission, not having been in cryogenic deep sleep, yeah. Yeah, and he's given this opportunity to sort of be who he wants to be and not who he was. We have about 250 words. Let's find you a voice. Why is a school teacher in Try this. I am Rocky. I like. In many ways, this is a one-man play of a film. For much of it, you're alone in the spaceship until you encounter an alien creature on a similar mission to yours.

Felt very believable and indeed moving. Tell me a bit about how you created it on set. Presumably it's puppetry. It is puppetry. And I think that's the secret sauce of the movie. It really would have been a lot easier and a lot cheaper to do it another way. It was quite difficult to do it this way. I mean, five, six puppeteers Just all of that entails having it work properly, work properly on camera.

creating space in the in the set for all of that was something I don't think we anticipated, you know, like I don't think anyone told our production designer that this set didn't have to actually function in space. It was also credibly done. Uh that it was very hard. But what was great about that was that it's hard earned relationship in the story. I mean they can't be in each other's atmosphere, they can't communicate. I mean everything is difficult.

And so we were living that on set and it made it all kind of meta and real and became a part of the magic of the film. You've spoken, I think, of how your own daughters have helped you prepare for this role. Can you tell us how so?

In so many ways I couldn't even list them all. Uh I think part of why I wanted to make the film was because of them. I just wanted a film I wanted to make a film for them and for their generation, I guess. A kind of an E. T. or something that w could be a core memory type of movie for them that wasn't animated, that was made by the best film craftsman in the business, that was just like incredible filmmaking, storytelling.

that had a message that said that the future isn't something they need to fear, but maybe something they just need to figure out. And then, you know, they're just so funny and helpful and smart. And so anytime I have for instance, I was playing around with the character and trying on stuff and I put on glasses just like as a joke almost'cause it felt cliche to wear c glasses to play a scientist, you know. And then my daughter came by and she was like, You look smarter in glasses.

I was like, well, then, I'll wear them, y'know? ET is a very interesting comparison that was in your mind, because the film's directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, have really made their mark with animated films, especially Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Spider-Verse films. There's a real combination of rich animation with humour and yet real threat. You feel something real is at stake, and I wonder how it felt for you being at the center of this world.

Quite something to be carrying that as the only human really in mu much of the adventure. Yeah, to be representing humanity. Uh But you know, he's such a relatable character in the way that he like he's I think appropriately afraid of the task at hand and would rather run away from the responsibility than towards and so Course there are people that are like that, but I I don't relate to that and I I definitely more relate to his reluctance and his um

feeling overwhelmed and uh not feeling like he has it in him, you know. But I think what he learns and I think what Andy reminds us of in in his work is that we're capable of more than we think that we are and we're capable of more than we're being told.

Well Andy Weir, he just mentioned that the author of the book and who've also written The Martian, there's so much detailed science discussion in the film. And the film celebrates international collaboration for a common good. And I have to say, watching this. I realised it feels quite at odds with the time we're in. Did that strike you? Was it something you discussed with the screenwriters, the production team? In what sense?

Just so that it feels like there's a lot of anti science out there in the world right now. Well I I like what Andy chooses to focus on. I've done some interviews with him now and he he uses this example which I think is nice and and oddly enough I just saw it like yesterday on the street in New York. He says, you know, the bad things that people do is what makes the news, but the good things that they do is not what's reported and he says, you know

For instance, every day someone falls down in the street, you know, and somebody a bunch of people around them help them up and make sure they're okay. You know, he's like that's what he believes our nature is as human beings and that's what he writes for and towards. And I've heard him say that many times and then just yesterday I watched it happen and I I think like he encourages us to look for that, to notice it. Ultimately the film really works because I think we connect

with uh Ryland and your genuine I'm gonna be honest and say your genuine warmth and charm come across on screen. I it's something you got a lot of acclaim for, as Ken in the Barbie movie. Are you drawing on something? Do you know where this comes from? Yeah, I think my kids. They've like changed my life. And is is it having daughters that's made you Yeah, I just yeah, I think it's just made it's just like made my work

A lot better. You must be modest. No, I th I think I mean that. Interesting. And what are your hopes for this film? Are you gonna do more like it, do you think? Like this film? Yeah. Oh, I'd love to. I mean they don't come around like this very often. I'll wait for Andy to write another one. Ryan Gosling. Project Hail Mary is in cinemas from Friday, certificate 12A, and it is a warm-hearted and visually dazzling big screen experience.

Now chat shows have long been a staple of British TV and an obvious vehicle for a much loved performer. Well, Claudia Winkleman, fresh from leaving Strictly, and with the huge success of traitors under her belt, launched a six week debut run of the Claudia Winkleman Show on BBC One on Friday night.

It went out in the t same time slot as Graham Norton, and is produced by the same production company. Claudia's first episode even drew two hundred thousand extra viewers compared to Graham's last episode. Let's hear a flavour of that first show. Here's the comedian Tom Allen. You know what? Buying a mattress is complicated.

Have you ever bought one? I bet you've not bought one. You're a Hollywood star. You don't buy furniture. Buy mattresses. You have to buy a mattress for lifetime. That's what they say. Always invest in a good bed or good shoes. Yeah. Because if you're not in one, you're in the other. Not that Tom Allen there with Vanessa Williams, Jennifer Saunders and Claudia Winkleman and Jeff Goldblum was the fourth guest.

Well, to review it and discuss the art of the chat show. Boyd Hilton is still with us and of course um when I'm also joined by Bee Ballard, who is a TV executive who produces Jonathan Ross. and has worked with Michael Parkinson and Clive James. She was also a past creative head of BBC Entertainment. Welcome to you both. Uh Boyd, could you describe what the show was aiming for? The look, the structure, the mood of it?

I think it was looking for a slightly more intimate feel than maybe most chat shows. So it w I think the look of it the set had a kind of almost private members' club, jazz club kind of vibe with lots of velvet going on, the the much discussed dark teal colour of the velvet sofa.

etcetera. And interestingly there was a kind of cold open where we cut to Claudia chatting to her studio audience in a kind of you know, kind of underlying the the fact that I think They wanted it to be have an informal air, the whole thing, much less kind of rigid maybe.

than most chat shows. So I quite liked the attempt for it to be freewheeling and have a different kind of uh quality to it than th than other show shows. It definitely wasn't brightly lit, to put it that way. Yeah, and is now would you say the right time to be launching a new chat show?

Well it's interesting. Some people have said that, you know, th that no commissioners d aren't interested in new chat shows. But um I th I I it's a f it's a genre I really like. I mean I going back to, you know, the American giants like David Letterman and Jay Leno that whole period. So I think it's interesting. I think Claudia

um absolutely deserves the chance because you get vanishingly few female chat show hosts down down down the years. So I think and she's brilliant, let's face it, and she's fantastic a natural treasure now after um doing Crofts and The Traitors. And I think to giving her the chance to have her own show

is a brilliant thing and I think she p she pulled it off pretty well. B, she has had big hits with strictly traitors and she's just done crufts as we heard. What work do you think went into constructing the ingredients of this show? Um First of all, let me say I think it's great that, you know, Claudia's doing a new chat show. Um

Partly because I think she's very talented and um I believe she's always wanted to to do one. Um but also, you know, there aren't that many new chat shows being commissioned now. So I I welcome it. Um, for me, um, I think the thing that I struggled with was the um audience participation. And I think um that was like I felt like someone had sat down and said, Right, how can we make this chat show different? Okay, let's have this sort of structure where we have

uh people planted in the audience and we will gear the conversation around, you know, getting the guests to come up with sort of connections to those people and I felt that was the wrong way round. You know, I felt like the guests are there and you want to ideally draw out the best interviews with them and the best stories with them and for me, the fact that we kept being interrupted and going yeah to finding people in the st in the in the audience and You know, often those

often we weren't hearing anything really revealing, you know, so a guy that was from Wolverhampton and that was, you know, brought in because Jeff Golblum mentioned he was going on a tour and would be visiting Wolverhampton. It wasn't you know, it wasn't sort of showing something really no exciting or revealing. And I I felt that as a general thing, it it it rather strangled. It felt overproduced in a way, do you think?

In a way, yeah, I think it's again, like I say, it's I think it's a sort of attempt to come up with something new and I think it's over formatted. And I think Claudia herself is is is terrific and she's very warm She's um you know, as we know, she's very self deprecating. And I find her quite witty and I think it would be lovely to play to her strength. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Boyd, I think it's fair to say most critics have felt quite divided. A lot of emphasised how much they respect

Winkleman's ability. But Lucy Mangan and The Guardian, for example, described the show as an unholy mess. too many bland non anecdotes and worst of all, um as B was suggesting, the the audience participation which breaks up any flow. Um and I'm I'm guessing they overthought it. What did you think about the guests? You know, they are they're all big names.

Yeah, I thought the guests on it was fine. I wouldn't say it was uh the the problem they've got w in terms of competing with not competing with but reminding us of the Graham Norton show which is normally in the slot, as you said, is that Graham Norton is is renowned now for getting A lusters and sometimes he'll have three or four A listers on one show. And this didn't feel like necessarily a an A list lineup apart from maybe Jeff Goldblum. But

I actually liked the fact that th that she bounced off the people in the audience. I thought and I thought it rather than just coming up with a random way of doing something different, I think that was a an attempt to But to to play to Claudia's strengths with Charles I think she loves bouncing off normal people in quotes, members of the public.

And the woman who dis who d picked the sofa colour, I thought she was hilarious. Did she? Slightly pompous and and and patronising, but a a real character and I thought that interaction worked very well.

B, you've worked with Clive James, Jonathan Ross, both of whom had a background in comedy and entertainment. Michael Parkinson came from more of a journalism background, and I wonder if that helps explain why so many hosts have struggled unless they have a strong comedy or a very strong journalism background. Yes, I mean, um I I think it really matters. I think I think the best talk show host

have either got a very strong comedy back background, and we see that in America too, or they have got a journalistic background, which is what Parkinson had. Um and I think in Michael's case, um you know, he did a lot of of research beforehand and, you know, we had a very um in depth research team as well and he approached those interviews

uh you know, w with with the eye of a journalist. He was always looking for the story, n not in a sensationalist way, but he wanted to sort of get to know the guest and draw them out. And Does writing the script yourself make a difference, do you think? Because obviously they would have writers. I mean America will have writers. I was a journalist before I became a producer, um before I joined the BBC. And I think that sense of what is a story, you know, um

you know, I think that's about narrative and about what what um makes someone interesting and, you know, getting to that sense of the story is is very important. So yeah, journalists I think make very good talk show hosts. Boyd, like you, I've always been fascinated by chat shows and I've always followed the short lived attempts at female fronted talk shows by such successful broadcasters as Davina McCall, Nigella Lawson,

And I was thinking, you know, loose women. I know it's technically not a chat show, but it's got a load of women talking in front of an audience. It's got quite a racy theme with their celebrity guests. I'm interested that Claudia is the first such evening chat show for a woman for years and and whether there is some kind of hurdle that

That seems to be presented to them. It feels like there is a her I mean, I think she's just proved herself to be such a brilliant presenter of all kinds of shows that it wasn't necessarily a particularly a risk. I think I think everyone welcomes the idea. of hanging out being able to hang out with Claudia on a weekly basis for for six weeks. I think it seems great. But

What I would say is I think the Parkinson form of chat show it's almost a different genre to this, isn't it? I think the Jonathan Ross show, Graham Norton, now Claudia, these are light entertainment kind of showbiz celebrity chat. You know, it's a I think it's very feels very different to what Parkinson was doing, whereas he would have Muhammad Ali on for an hour or something. That's something completely different. I don't think

this kind of chat sho is trying to get any great revelations out of the guests. It's kind of just being about having a bit of fun forty minutes. And I think she pulled that off really well. there's all these different outlets be and I wonder if if it then it's all the more reliant on letting your presenter loose and relaxed. I wonder do you think they'll tweak the formula? Yeah, I mean just going back to Parkinson for a sec, um I know I know what Boyd is referring to, but actually

you know, three, sometimes four guests per show. And actually the kind of casting and the mix of guests was something we put a lot of care and thought into. And I think also with it being a Saturday night show, you know, the we wanted it to be really entertaining. And I think, um

panorama or news night, um, you know, it w it was to entertain people. Yeah. It's an interesting question about tone, because it is late at night. There was a bit of sweariness and a bit of sexual innuendo. And I remember being quite surprised because the sh the content felt quite Tame overall. I don't know what you felt be about that. You know, it didn't feel like Graeme Norton and it always felt edgy. I I think the thing is, I I I think if you're talking about sort of

pencil museums and sofa colours. Um uh you know i it it I mean That to me feels like kind of more like daytime subjects in a way. Um So yeah. Okay. Um, Boyd, I can remember how quickly commercial T V has dropped formats. I can remember David Williams' T I T V late night show a few years ago lasted a couple of episodes, I think. Felly, sut ydych chi ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n ddyn nhw'n mynd.

kind of four or five story views as well. I j I just think um as a s the opportunity to see Claudia uh doing what she does really well, I think people will like that idea. And I would I would presume that when Graham's off on his, you know, holidays every year that Claudia we'll we'll get a c chance to see Claudia doing this show instead. I think that makes perfect sense, really. Yeah. Well we should all see how it goes. Sorry B, very briefly. I'd like I'd like to see her

succeed. I think the format just needs to be modified. Yeah, I think we all want to see it succeed. Thank you so much, B. Ballard and Boyd Hilton. Thank you both. On tomorrow's front row, Gentleman Jack the Ballet, and as the band BTS Reform we'll look at the current state of K pop. Join Nick.

Thanks for listening to Front Row. I'm Samira Ahmid and the producer was Harry Graham. The production coordinator was Lizzie Harris and our studio manager was Emma Hart. And you can discover all our previous front rows on BBC Sounds.