You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Momma Mia out loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the twelfth of August.
I'm Holly Wayne Wright.
I'm mea Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stephen.
And on the show today, the Olympics is over and we have a lot to unpack. Notably, the entire world is talking, laughing and meaning about one Australian woman.
We decode the ray gun phenomenon.
Plus more athletes have asked their other halves to marry them at this Olympics than ever before, and I have questions for the marriage, about it all, the Tom Cruisners of the closing ceremony and why we all care just so damn much. Also, you can't turn around at the moment without Blake Lively whipping you in the face with that gorgeous hair. So what's all this about a rift derailing? It ends with us, but first me a freedman.
In case you missed it, women are filming themselves getting their IUDs inserted and removed and posting the videos to social media to highlight how much it hurts. Now, we're not going to play you anything because it's just women basically screaming in it. Is it? Yes, it is for though it's not familiar with what an iud actually is.
It's a type of contraception. It's about three centimeters long, and it's a T shaped plastic device with a vertical stem and two horizontal arms, and sometimes it has a copper coil or a hormone sort of reservoir, and it's got a thin string that hangs from the bottom of it.
It's like a fish hawk.
Thank you, it does. It's inserted inside your uterus, now, not your vagina, your uterus, so female anatomy. There's the opening bit, then there's the vagina, then there's the cervix, and then all the way through the cervix, which is usually closed quite tightly. Is the uterus.
Your cervix should be closed until better baby pat is coming out.
Is very closed. It's got quite far to go. It's got a long way. It's got a really really long way, and then the string kind of hangs out the bottom of your cervix. Now, most women aren't offered any form of pain relief during the procedure, and are often shocked and distressed by how much it hurts. I had been forewarned before I got mine, about ten years ago or so, and I had friends who said it was so painful they actually vomited on themselves. It was more painful than childbirth.
I did a story from Mamma Maya about this, maybe six or so years ago. There are a lot of women who went to get it inserted and they caught the bus and they walked out the appointment and they went, I can't catch the bus home. I'm throwing up. Someone fainted, like they really really found it painful. And with any of this stuff, there's such variation in individual experience, in
your experience of pain. And also I've always had very painful perhaps mere or cervical screenings because some people have like a bit of a tilted uterus, So it hurts some people more than others.
And some medical practitioners, bless them, are better at it than others because an IUD is something that it sounds quite full on, and it is full on. But you GP can do it now. It's not something a GP does every day, so they might be skilled at it. They might not be skilled at Oh, you've had it at the GP. I went and got it at the guy. No, no, with a local anesthetic.
Lays just gone to the GP with all these things.
You've raw dogged, You've raw dogged your ig raw dogged.
Dee. Use about this story. I have to examine my reaction to it, because you're very strong, be honest, you said, Maya, you're a big fat was fact. But also I'm like, really, women are all filming themselves while they're getting it done, and then me, it was like I did that, Oh my god. And the thing is is.
That I remember the first time I had an IUD and said it, I went to my GP. Actually I couldn't get into my GP, and so I went to another GP in that practice. And he was a relatively old dude, relatively close to retirement like and a lovely man, very experienced.
But possibly a little shaky. Little Joe Biden was like having IUD inserted by Joe Biden. And it took him several goes and it was not fun. But here's the interesting thing about this story and many many stories like it, is I remember at the time just like it wasn't fun. But I just went, well, that's it.
It made me think about all the experiences I've had, whether it be cervical screenings, various kind of pelvic examinations, all that kind of stuff. Internals when you're pregnant, it's never fun, right, and sometimes it really hurts. Sometimes it doesn't. And I think the thing is we've just been conditioned, or certainly my generation is conditioned to like, it hurts,
it's not fun, get on with it. But now, which is so good, as the medical profession is more and more female informed, because also there are many, many more female practitioners everywhere. They're like, ah, actually, why should everything we do have to be.
Why should this offering pain?
It's not going to get a filling. It's not like, all right, this is a terrible experience. Like dentists have done a fantastic job at their rebranding, but.
No one would ever consider getting dental work. It's only when it comes to the pain experienced by women that we think that there's some nobility in it, or that we decide that it's not worth pain medication. But medical authorities in the US have actually this week released new guidelines that say doctors must inform patients about pain management options before they stick it up there.
That's really good.
Yeah.
So basically we are saying, if you are going to get an AD, don't let this put you off having one, because it doesn't hurt everybody, like also just most people, but.
On a scale, because as Jesse just said, like our anatomies are all a bit different. Yeah, so some things down there are more painful for some people than others, and our pain thresholds are all different too.
But there's options, is the points. So just remember to ask about those options, and if you've got a friend getting an AD, just say, hey, maybe ask If I was a.
Doctor, I don't think i'd love that. Everybody's filming everything now.
Well, when I wonder that when I was filming, I didn't film her. I was filming it. She goes, are you filming.
Out loud?
I'm filming me. I was filming.
Yeah, but I see it on TikTok like people in the middle of a console and a very private context. I fully support and endorse this. I know what they're doing and they're making a really important statement, and good on them for going This shouldn't hurt. But generally the filming, like I see people do it all the time, and I think if I was the doctor, I go focus focus on me.
It's also true.
First, let me say, anyone on that stage is the decision and responsibility of the governing body for a committee from each country just to stand up and say, hey, like this girl doesn't reach qualifications of someone who should be performing on that level, protect hip hop culture.
I think today might have been the first time that she breakdas no Olympics. She's like some own bios doing her own thing.
This is a disrespect to order athletes who have come to Olympics compete.
There is no way that there isn't a better breakdancer that's on the street dancing right.
Now than her.
A viral performance, a cruel backlash, and a swift reclamation. Big Girl raygun was the Olympic story no one saw coming. Breakdancer and academic Rachel Gunn represented Australia at the first and probably only competitive breaking event at the Olympics. Did she win, No, Did she score a point?
Absolutely not.
Did she deliver the most iconic performance of the Games without a doubt. If you haven't seen it, ray Gun bat other bee girls pulling out a kangaroo hop, a bit of a windmill maneuver, a backward summersault. It's impossible to describe the rest, but it's fair to say it wasn't what anyone expected. And the uniform also attracted some commentary. It was a bit cricketer, it was a ball person.
Well, the other be girls didn't wear their national uniforms.
No, she didn't get the memo. And she had a hat on and looked she look very sun safe, but she didn't necessarily look like a breaker. I first saw the performance on Saturday morning, and the commentary was ruthless. People were saying, how did she get there? If any of my taxpayer dollars went towards that performance, I'm angry.
Some people were angry, which I couldn't understand.
It was the initial It was not.
One of my feelings, but I sailed through.
There were theories that she was trying to make a statement. Over the weekend she posted on Instagram, don't be afraid to be different, Go out there and represent yourself. You never know where that's going to take you.
Is it true that she has a PhD In breakdancing and no, she has it in dance theory with a specialism in breaking.
And cultural studies from Macora Uni, which is where I got my masters. So me and Raygun were probably studying at the same time.
I just when it went from breakdancing to just breaking.
Apparently that's what it originally was started there, and then it became break dancing and then they were being very authentic. But just as quickly as snarky opinion columns were churned out, I was looking at them on Saturday. There was one that argued that Raygun had no business being at the Olympics and if this happened in any other sport there would be a Royal commission into the selection process.
My goodness, definitely there should be.
But no.
Imagine getting that call we need you to do a job.
No sooner had that happened that the tide turned. Prime Minister Albanezi said good on her and a big shout out to her. That is in the Australian tradition of people having a go. She had to go representing our country. That's a good thing. The Olympics is about people participating in sport. That's a good thing. Gun had a crack.
I agree with Albow.
Then there was Adele Adele had something to say. She paused her concert because she was overcome by her feelings regarding Ray Gun.
It's all that me and my friends have been talking about last night, after the show and today, and I'm not saying anything. I'm you know, I think it's taken out. I think it's the best thing that's happened in the Olympics the entire time. Did anyone see the breakdancing.
Lady, it's all from the Olympics.
Now. I didn't even go to break dancing with the eve Olympics thought these days, I think that's fantastic. I really really do. I knew that skateboarding had become an Olympic one. I can't work out if it was, but either way, it has made me very very happy, and me and my friends have been ourselves laughing for nearly twenty four hours. But I just wanted to know if you've seen it. If you haven't seen it, please eat the show and google it because it is flah It
is so funny. It's it's my favorite thing that's happened in Olympics this whole whole time.
Adele just got engaged. She know I'm mad, She yeah to her boyfriend he's a big agent. Ah, there's sports stars. Maybe you're so reagun. Maybe now she's going to get Imagine all the opportunities she will be flooded.
There's a video of Raygun being shown a guard of honor by the Aussie athletes at the closing ceremony, and even though she didn't score a point, she probably became the most famous Olympian of them all. Holly over the weekend, did we see the Internet at its best or it's worst?
It's so funny because both one hundred percent both, and the emotions that I cycled through so quickly in those hours trying to figure out how to react to Reygun just say everything about the times we live in, right, Because first of all, I was like, oh.
That's uncomfortable. There's like a white Australian woman apparently making a hash out of an art form created by black artists on the streets of New York City.
That felt weird for a start, right. Also being a kangaroo and a goanna, But.
Even that I was a bit uncomfortable with because I've seen lots of First Nations traditional dancing that references kangaroos and go on, think of that and so there was another bit of me that went, oh is.
It appropriation well or is that part of it? And is that part of her heritage?
Like you know, all these things that go through your mind of like what am I looking at here?
Is it okay? Basically this is what you're doing. You're like, is it okay? What she's doing? I don't know if it's okay. And then also you realize that the trolling she would be getting would be unbearable, so you also want to kind of lull and slightly disapprove for a while.
But then you're like, oh, no, that would be bad. So no, good on, Raygun, good on you having a go. And then you kind of want to see if she's in on the joke or not, because then if she's in on it, it's okay to laugh.
And then you saw.
Her at the closing ceremony, as you reference to this morning Jesse, like on the shoulders of the athletes, loving it, sick, doing her kangaroo moves, and she is clearly going to be on every American talk show this week coming.
And so you're like, I didn't really know. I just didn't say anything. I'm just not going to say anything.
Until the internet's worked out this is okay. But mostly I think we all just so needed a laugh, and once we were given permission to laugh at it, it was okay.
You know what I mean?
Maya?
What was your take?
Was it as exhausting for you as it was for me? Yeah? I cycled through all those emotions too, because I was like, I want to share it, but then everybody was sharing it, and then I thought, oh, I'm worried about her. Yeah, and then I didn't want to share it, and then there were people who were angry about it, which I couldn't understand the anger, but yeah, you're right about the taxpayers dollars or somehow making a mockery like people who've
really just sat on their ass watching the Olympics. Suddenly, I mean, I know we're all experts on every sport, but like, how is that even loud? Then I decided to understand a little bit more about breaking because people were like, why is it in the Olympics. And it's in the Olympics because because the IOC has been trying to make the Olympics more relevant to young people. So that's why things like BMX and skateboarding and breaking is
in there. So all the sporting organizations try to get their sport included in the Olympics because it's really beneficial for the awareness about their sport and it can lead to big sponsors and all of those kinds of things. So everybody petitions to get their sports included. I've never understood when netball's not there, but apparently not enough people play it.
America doesn't play it exactly.
So there's a lot of politics about what sports are included and what's not included, and some people can be real purists about oh but how can that be in the Olympics. Some people like that about skateboarding this year as well. So what happened is that the International Dance Federation was saying, we want a dance included, and we think maybe ballroom might be good. Oh wow, and.
Ray gun is a ballroom dance.
Well, the IOC said, no, no, ballroom is not going to help us with the gensds. We need a funky dance. Should have had TikTok dances, maybe that'll be Yeah, we need a more funky street dance, So bring us your youth and bring us breaking and the breaking community were a bit like, what really we don't know. And then it's not like she just went I'll do it and rocked up in Paris. So Adam he is, who's the chef de Michau, basically the boss of all the Olympians and the Olympic team said.
What I can say is that I love Rachel and I think that what has occurred on social media with trolls and keyboard warriors and taking those comments and giving them airtime has been really disappointing. If you don't know
Rachel's story. In two thousand and eight, she was locked in a room crying being involved in a male dominated sport as the only woman, and it took great courage for her to continue on and fight for her opportunity to participate in a sport that she loved and that got her to winning the Olympic qualifying event to be here in Paris. She is the best breakdancer female that we have for Australia.
I think that says it a lot. Really, she used the best and so it's true wasn't just her idea.
But the thing that's interesting about this because yeah, I went and watched a lot of the other breakers, right, it is very strange to see an art form that started on the streets in this arena, even the coolest of the cool, and it's an American sport comes from it literally was born in New York. Even the coolest of the cool people that looked kind of daggy doing it in that circumstance, you know what I mean. It's
a strange sort of transplant from there to there. But I can see that a lot of the purest, as you were saying, Mia, a lot of the purest of breaking don't really approve of it being in this in the Lames either. So I imagine because there are breaking competitions all over the world, Red Bull of run one for decades, and Australia has lots of semi professional and professional breaking cruise. You'll see them breaking through breaking through all the time
on like talent shows or whatever. But I imagine that the people who want to go and do this is a relatively small group of breakers.
Yeah, and as you say, I think I've read that when you're hosting, you get to choose a few, you get to pull a bit of rank and go we're going to do breaking this year. And so in LA they're doing cricket, which Australia is very excited about Yeah. A lot of people going why is they're breaking and not netball? But I think that what made this so funny was that I knew the breaking was on and I didn't have high hopes for Australia. I went, this is I don't think we have an enormous amount of context.
It's not like swimming that we have it, you know
as cannival at every school. But I read an article by Peter fitz Simon in the Sydney Morning Herald and it was called I am Reygun, You are Reygan, We are all ray Gun and he basically argued that he saw the memification and things getting cruel and whatever, but he went in the context of the Olympics, which has been about excellence and precision and high stakes, to have Australia get behind someone who did her own thing, tried her best, was an underdog, didn't win, has been actually
quite a uniquely Australian experience, Like we got very much behind her quite quickly, and I really appreciated.
The vibe of Reygun.
Yeah, and that we could produce someone like that and just as quickly be like, yeah, no, we stand behind that performance.
We love it.
Yeah, that's why I got annoyed with a lot of the commentary and the snarky. There are a lot of opinion columns that I went, oh, I know you wanted to bash something out quickly, but like, I really liked that. It was a moment of joy that kind of brought everyone together, and once we knew that she was in on it, Yeah, he gave us all permission to be like, this is just a bit of fun.
There have been historically some of these kind of characters that have broken through in other games. There was Eddie the Eagle, the English skier who wasn't very good, And there was Eric the Eel. He was from Equatorial Guinea and he couldn't swim very well, and he became absolutely iconic at the Sydney Games. I remember him so well, and I just think sometimes when that happens, I love being reminded that the Games is about trying. It's not just about winning. And I know people say, but it's
also about the best in the world. She is the best that we've got who wanted to go to the Olympics.
It's interesting too that actually America didn't win. The female beagle was Japanese and the American male place bronze. So you know, it may have originated their breaking, but it has long since jumped.
The shark and gone all over the world.
It reminded me in the eighties when breakdancing was becoming big in England. My brother, who is a skinny, ginger white dude and has always been cooler than me, started breaking seriously and he made my mom put a six foot square of lino in the basement for him to practice on.
What I remember the most that.
Is that when we took that line, I like years later, there were two squashed frogs underneath.
My brother had spun on the frog. Do you remember Cool Running, the movie that was made about a true story of the Jamaican bobsled team. Now there's no snow in Jamaica, so they had to like practice in like shopping trolleys and again, like to me, that's what the spirit of the Olympics is.
And there was something about Snoop Dogg's presence at the event that just made it all the richer.
Oh good vibes, great? Why what a great time time for more Olympic vibes, because this is our last Olympic roundup. No doubt we'll have some things to talk about when the Paralympic starts on August twenty eighth. But Australia finished up at these games with an all time record of eighteen goals and fifty three medals and fourth place overall on the middle Telly, which is just extraordinary, best ever.
It's our best ever performance. A recap of what you missed at the after party, which is the closing ceremony. Ray Gun was the life of that party. If she pulled out some of the moves, as you said, she came in on the shoulders of a rower, there was a guard of one and four.
They're also loose on the They're like blasting Taylor swift and clearly seem a bit dry.
I wonder if Raygun was a few days earlier, if she could have got a closing ceremony flag bearer looking I.
Think people would have been upset about that because the people who did carry the Australian flag were gold medalists Kaylie McEwan and Matt Werne. Then there was the Tom Cruise of it all. Lake Snoop was at the Olympics and fairly beiquld as Tom Cruise was a little bit as well, and I couldn't quite work it out until I saw him perform stunt. He loves stunts. You can't stop him jumping off things.
That's all.
He's doing his own stunts. He just won't sit down and think. He didn't feel young. He's sixty two now. And he leaped from the roof of the stadium for the ceremonial Olympic flag handover because I couldn't work out what cultural relevance Tom Cruise had. But as you said, Jesse,
it's being handed over to La. So what happened is that at the end of the ceremony, the people with the flag have to hand it to the next people, and so he took the Olympic flag and he attached it to the back of a motorcycle because he's always on it motorcycle after he jumps out of things, and he sort of cruised through the crowd with the It was very random and kind of I quite.
Very movie star, which is probably the theme of LA.
And then they flashed to LA because I'd also forgotten about that. The people who get it next get a little bit of time in the closing ceremony to sort of do their thing and showcase their future weares and that was just really it concept. It looked like it was maybe at Venice Beach. Snoop was there, of course, how did he care for me? Very quickly drop it like it's hot.
He was there with Ray Gun and the next Name.
The Eilish was there, and also the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Doctor Dre.
I've seen a lot of tiktoks from grumpy athletes. They were like, we were told that Billie Eilish and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were performing at the closing.
Ceremony and they were on a zoom call.
I got up this morning and just put on the closing ceremony and suddenly I'm watching a Snoop dog concept because they were.
Working from home. Yes, I was like, this is just they weren't about them. They were like, we'll dial it in.
No, Snoop was so passionate about the Olympics.
He got paid a lot of money by NBC to go. He really embraced it.
Though they got their money's worth, the outfits, the coordination to.
Martha Stewart of it all. Yeah, I have no idea, but he really proved them right. I want to ask you to something because another record that was broken at the Olympics this year, which is very fitting for Paris because it's the romantic place, right, was the number of proposals. So seven different athletes got proposed to or proposed at the Olympics, and so much so that it actually got referenced in the closing ceremony by one of the French
officials saying, this is a record. We're very proud to have more proposals than ever and you're like, well, I don't know, that's what we were here for. But they included French track and field athlete Alice Finot and she proposed to her boyfriend by the track side, an American shot putterer he proposed and American rower proposed in fact,
and this is another whole layer to this. This American rower just invest proposed live on the Today Show to his girlfriend in the presence of family members who were holding two thousand, seven hundred and thirty eight yellow roses, a symbol of every day the two have maintained their snapchat streak.
Wow, okay, that's so. The snapchat streak is considerable, But do we love love the athletes taking this moment to be all about their love or is it kind of like jumping in on a big moment for them? What do we think married people?
It's a city of love you've forgotten. And Olympic proposals have been on the increase since about twenty sixteen, since the phones and the phone the contest situation. I loved the woman who did it. I thought that was really cool.
I didn't see a single proposal. Are these athletes proposing to other athletes.
Or their partners in the crowd?
Some some are But the French athlete came fourth and then she went up to her partner who was in the crowd, and proposed and kind of got down on one knee. It was really cool.
But I always get it. So not on podiums, no one interruptedly, like often after their final thing, so whether they won something or whether they didn't win something like but you know, their girlfriend, boyfriend whatever is by the side of the track and they run over and drop to one and all the cameras are there.
Right, your body is probably coursing with endorphins and adrenaline. You're in a foreign city, You've got cameras on you.
You want to do something memorable.
Yeah, and you've also like been in this training hole, and I reckon that most people where there's like a proposal, there's an understanding that you either were or weren't getting married, Like it's probably been discussed, and there's a lot of people who were like, oh, you put them on the spot. They can't say no.
Did you have that understanding?
Yeah, like proposed, there's still like a surprise element of I didn't think it was going to happen today.
When I was wearing these socks and shit.
Yes, yeah, but this concern trolling of going, oh, that poor woman, she can't say no. It's like I'm sure her fiance knows her better than I do. Like if that's it's not something I would.
Like policing people's proposals.
Policing proposals, So I don't mind it.
I'm not policing them, but this is my issue with it. I like as many.
Little treats as possible.
So I'm like, would you not maybe want have the moment of the I made it to the Olympics and I've finished and that's something to celebrate, and then the proposal is something to celebrate. But I think you've nailed it Jesse. I think the adrenaline, the excitement, like you probably have never loved them more. If they've been driving you to the pool every day, or they've been cheering you on at the sidelines all the time, or you know, whatever it might be, you probably have never loved them more.
So you're just like, let's.
Do it, and let's make sure we've got two thy seven hundred rose. I also think that you have to be so single minded to be an athlete at that level, that the sacrifices that your partner would have to make, and how boring you would be for a really long time, and the highs and the lows that they would have to endure. So to me, it's almost like a thank you and an acknowledgment. And also if it's the end of your Olympic journey, it is a little treat. It's a little treat.
I want to talk about the Olympics more broadly as we come to a close. I mean said I had it on this morning and hearing the Australian commentators all say au Revoir was just particularly beautiful because none of them could still say it, And did you see the my Way performance The woman at themar she was singing my Way, and I was thinking about Reagun and I was like, this is the most did We still had the Paralympics, as we say, and Australia is very good there.
So I highly recommend people watch because we're going to win a lot of gold medals. But I wanted to talk about the last two weeks because I was speaking about this morning and she was saying, they're handing over to la was Harris. There was someone there to kind.
Of a presidential receiving.
The same way Macron was there, and I was like, oh, I'd forgotten that the US team, like the Simone Biles, the US athletes, had any relationship to this presidential race happening on the other side of the world. Like it really took us out of that.
That's true, because it was we've come to see America as being so divided for so long now, like ever since Trump, which is what hundred years ago, it feels like, and there was none of that. No, I know, you're not allowed to wear a MAGA hat if you're competing, you're not allowed to have any kind of political protest or political statement at all. Yeah, it was almost like this magic window.
The Olympics is also the US at their best, like they really they just do such a good job. And we talk about how divided we are, and you know, seeing the worst in humanity at the moment projected on the news. And there are the riots in the UK, as you talked about last week, Hollie, an assassination attempt in the US. It's easy to feel nihilistic and disillusioned, but the Olympics pulled us all in one direction.
Do you know what?
It was a reminder of about the beauty of not just a monoculture, like when the whole world experiences something, and we had that in a negative way with COVID, but in a positive way. And there's no division about
the Olympics apart from Rackham. And there's also no different truths and different facts like when you look at true other news stories, you've got in many cases two polarized sides who don't even acknowledge that each other has any humanity, that they're working with the same facts, but that all gets swept away.
It's so simple being like let's say who can run the fastest, and then you watch people run, and then one finishes the fishline and you're like, oh, my brain can comput.
I want to agree with you so badly because I agree that's not entirely true. I saw a lot of headlines on the weekend, including in The Australian when Amani Khaliff won the boxing gold medals, saying that the Olympics was a joke over this gender stuff, and there's been a bit of it bubbling away. I don't think you
can entirely escape the culture wars. Interestingly, Simone Biles no political statements allowed, but she donated a million dollars for each of her gold medals to Kamala Harris's campaign, So she just waved million dollars to Kamala. One of the things that's wonderful about the Olympics is it's optimism pushes through all our snaky, very online informed pessimism. And I think it happened every time.
I remember.
London was the same, Sydney was the same. Even when people are all going wood, it's really expensive to have it and it's so inconvenient for everyone who lives there, and the IOC is really corrupt, and there's this and there's that, and dah dah, da da dah. But then when it happens for those two weeks, it's almost as long as nothing terrible goes wrong, of course, and this was also true the last one, Tokyo was very different because of COVID, but a lot of people were watching
it in lockdown, so that gave it another meaning. And it's like our sort of optimism, immunity like pushes through all that sort of snark and pessimism for just a week or so, and it's it is lovely.
It felt fun and it felt relevant. You're right. I barely even remember the Tokyo games. They were very different games. There were no spectators. Everyone had to wear masks so you couldn't see people's faces a lot, and the humanity and everyone was living in their own bubbles quite literally. But this just felt incredibly joyous and you could talk to anyone about it. It was lovely to not have a sense of dread when you went on a news site in the morning and to just think, oh, I
wonder how many medals we want overnight? It was very simple.
I wonder, you know, Adele getting up and talking about Reagun.
Yeah.
Other than literally a story of assassination or COVID, what story could anyone talk about on stage that is light, that is fun, that's unifying, that everyone would know, that everyone would reference. I mean, Taylor Swift is probably the only other example of something that brings everyone together that yeah, isn't depressing devastating News.
One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers.
Follow the link at the show notes.
To get us in your ears five days a week. And a huge thank you to all our current subscribers.
We all have an idea of what life can be. I want to see you again. Now you see me. You know what I mean, that special connection you feel that first kiss for fifteen seconds. That's how it teakes.
To completely change everything.
Rift, feud Fight, three words that guarantee clicks and views if they're put next to a famous woman's name.
And here we go.
Welcome to the latest Blake Lively headlines accompanying the unavoidable promotional onslaught that the release of It Ends with Us, which came out this weekend, has been enjoying. By the way, the sound you can hear right now is Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively just popping bottles and burning mountains of money for good times in the backyard of their New York State mansion. Because that couple owns the mainstream culture
right now. His movie, his Deadpool sequel, Deadpool Versus Wolverine, has broken more than a billion dollars, is a huge hit and is everywhere you look. And her movie It Ends with Us, which is the adaptation of Colin Hoover's best selling book, is number two in the box office. It pulled more than fifty million over the weekend, and considering the movie only cost twenty five million to make, it is considered a bona fide gold star smash.
We haven't had Hollywood royal couple like this since Brad and Angelina, really have we Also, Angelina wasn't box office.
They were very famous, and they were so you can't even remember his office John Kraginskysnski.
But they're not.
They're not.
And the thing is one of the things that marks out Reynolds and Lively, and we're going to get to this with what the gossip is here is that they also own everything, so they're not just movie stars. Like Reynolds is an ep on Deadpool. It's made him so much money the three movies that have already been made because he's got a massive back end deal. He also controls production like it's his it's his thing, right, so
he's also the business person behind that franchise. Blake Lively was a producer on this right, So they've got a lot of class and so and so it seems was Reynolds by stealth. Ryan Reynolds also owns lots of businesses, owns a football team like he is an absolute empire. Now he's a mogul and yet his persona online. They're very very good promoter as a pair of them. He in particular is very funny self deprecating all that stuff anyway, bit daggy dad, bit daggy dad.
But also hot because they've got four kids together.
I didn't realize four kids, and the most recent of them is quite young. And they're also as you would definitely know in the tailor verse. Anyway, back to the feud.
So if you've been paying attention to any celeb news lately, you would have seen Lively selling the hell out of this film by wearing fancy floral dresses that get ever more glamorous than floral as the promotional campaign has gone along because the character she plays, it's called Lily Bloom, and she's a florist, so yeah, seem dressing.
Is it a comedy?
No?
God no.
So here's another thing that's interesting about this. It Ends with Us is a story of domestic violence, so it follows Lily Bloom. Colin Hoover wrote this book based on her own parents' marriage and relationship, and it became this massive bestseller, and then she wrote sequels and it sold more than eight million copies.
Is a good moment.
It depends what kind of things you like. But it's a very very very popular book that was diplomatic.
I'm going to say, but I don't think have any of us read it.
I have not read it, but I actually feel embarrassed that I haven't read it because it's so it's culturally dominant. I should have read it, but I just haven't.
In the same way that Fifty Shades of Gray was the last book that was just so yeah. Back to that, she's written of the.
Books and she's self published and she's a ma sive deal, right, And so Colleen Hoover sold the rights to It Ends with Us to this guy, well sold them to him, but he optioned them to a guy called Justin Baldoni. Now he has made it ends with us as the director and one of the producers, and he co stars in it with Blake. So I've never heard of him.
You know his faith if you've ever watched Jane the Virgin. So I watched Jane the Virgin. He was the sexy guy and.
That so Blake's the female lead, the florist Lily, and he's the male lead, the bad guy in a neurosurgeon Ryle. Right, so they're playing this couple in this abusive relationship in the movie. Now, usually, especially if the male actor involved is very involved in the production. He's the director, for God's sake, the two of them would be on every red carpet together, right, You would see them everywhere together. Think of like Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt when they're
promoting The hit Man. Think of pretty much any you know, like our mate Glenn Powell and Daisy Egga Jones have been everywhere.
To Queenie Julia rob There.
You know the two if you are normally read carpet banter interviews, have not done one piece of joint promotion. They have gone out of their way to not be photographed together. Ever, at the big premiere last week, none of the rest of the cast was photographed with Baldoni. None of the rest of the cast now, including Colleen Hoover, who's the creator, is following Baldoni on Instagram anymore.
I went on Instagram to double check this because I check my facts, and Colleen Hoover, Blake, Lively, Ryan Reynolds none, and they follow people. They do not follow Baldon.
And they at the beginning of all this, she was posing for lots of selfies with Baldoni on set with the headphones in the camera. So the theories go, and this is all room and rumor room.
But one of the.
Theories go that our Hollywood power couple Reynolds and Lively were getting a bit too interfery in it, right, So Reynolds apparently rewrote some of Lively's scenes, which Blake has said herself, she said, oh, he really helped me with this scene. He writes some things for me, I write on things for him, or a team we work on everything together, which is lovely but probably a bit annoy for the people who.
Oh.
Actually, screen writer found that out about an hour before they told the press, and she did not know, not thrilled.
And also the rumor goes that Lively had her own cut of the movie made after shooting had stopped. Now apparently that's not that unusual, although it sounds terrible. And then they have gone with Baldoni's cut, but he presumably did not love that.
That makes sense of an interview I read with him in the Hollywood Reporter where he was asked if he would direct the sequel, because there's a sequel to this, and he said, no, not my jam I think Blake should direct. She's ready to direct. And now I understand the subtext of that, which is very passag as you would say whole and that is very She was trying to direct this film and I was actually meant to be the director.
Reynolds and Lively have started the pr machine just a little bit slightly like a little sort of backgrounding pass agnes with rumors saying, and this may be why some of the other cast have unfollowed him, that Baldoni made Blake feel very uncomfortable on set.
That's all you need to say in twenty twenty four, isn't it. So it's a little bit like, I want to ask you wholly about the strategy behind this, if there is one, And I'm always more believing of it's a fuck up, not a conspiracy, because when everyone goes, oh, they're doing this on purpose to get people talking about the movie, and look, yes we are, so I guess
it worked. But I want to ask about the last time we can remember this happening was with Don't Worry Darling, the movie that Olivia Wilde directed and Florence Pugh and Harry Stiles was in. And do you remember Spitgate? It can when.
Someone Harry, Yeah, he didn't, but that was what he.
Thought anyway, So that I still haven't ever watched the movie, but certainly everybody was talking about it. Is this a marketing thing? Like would would the marketers of this movie be going, oh, this is good for us or this is bad for us?
I'd love to know Jesse thinks about that, because a lot of these rumors have blown up on TikTok. Right, So there is the indisputable fact that they are not promoting it in a conventional way.
You could argue generous read why is it not conventional?
Well, because normally they'd be together, Oh and so the red carpet, all the things they'd be together. He's the director, he's her star that you know, but generous read is well, Blake Lively's the star, she's the drawer, and she's the only face on the poster. And he does play an abusive man in this movie. So you could argue, no, it's a Blake Lively vehicle. We focus entirely on her.
But what I'd love to know from my TikTok expert Jesse Stevens, because everybody's analyzing everything to the nth degree for content, Now, do we need intrigue plot, you know, scheming strategy to keep the momentum going of this movie to an extent.
But then Blake Lively in Floral's was also a story, you know what I mean. It's not like there was a shortage of publicity. There's what's happening on Tick and then there's what's happening with sources in the Hollywood Reporter. According to quite reliable sources.
Are the sources TikTok No.
They said the Hollywood Reporter is a very reputable publication.
I was reading that at the premiere. They didn't even sit in the same theater they're in separate theaters watching with like family and friends or whatever. What TikTok can't stop talking about is they feel like Ryan Reynolds came on and has done more press for this movie than Baldoni has, even though he's not in it. He's not
a producer, he's not a director. And what they're trying to do is a Barbie Heimer thing with Wolverine with Wolverine, and they're trying to basically get all of this, which is probably partly true. The other creative difference that TikTok sleuths think they've noticed, which I think there might be some truth too, is that the movie that Lively is promoting and the movie that Baldoni is promoting are two
different films. So Baldoni always wanted to do a really deep, complex story about domestic violence, and that was something that really spoke to him. And when you see him interviewed, he's very serious and he's saying he's like in tears talking about what it took from him having to act like that and how he made sure there was an intimacy coordinator, and what he's actually said has been he's getting very good advice Lively. I think her pr brain has gone, we need to sell this as a rom com, yea,
and people aren't going to see it. And in Lively's defense, I'm not critical of that because Hoover did the same thing, and in fact, that's part of what the text is about. That dv's stories begin as a rom com like they begin with.
Course, they don't begin as DV story.
They begin with like incredible sex and what you think is a romance. And from the perspective of the protagonist, as I understand it, she only realizes part way through what she's got herself into.
And that she's in this abusive cycle, which is why it's called it sentence with Us because of her parents. And the thing is that might also be interesting from a marketing perspective in this moment we just talked about
how much everybody wanted Joy in the Olympics. If you, in this moment, were deciding how to market a movie that is unquestionably about domestic violence, and anyone who's read the book knows that, and eight million people have read the book, would you go with nobody's going to come if we make it look like a dark, grim movie, or but if we put Blake Lively in a whole lot of flowers, and we keep focusing on this lovely, wonderful relationship she has in real life with her power husband.
Then people will come as a marketing strategy that seems to be clever, wouldn't you say?
I do? And Blake Lively famously doesn't have a stylist. I actually forgot that she was an actor. And it's interesting. She's on the cover of the September issue of Vogue, which tends to be a big deal, well not so much anymore, but is the most big deal cover of the year, and it is very strange. Shoot, it's with her and Hugh Jackman in these characters inspired by To
Catch a Thief, and it's directed by bas Lerman. You know what, when I saw that, because it's like there are pages and pages, I was like, I thought, there's no money in magazines anymore.
Well, and here we are with bazz Lerman and ten million dollars worth of diamonds and Lively and Hugh Jackman.
The thing is whole sidebar. It was not filmed on location. It was filmed with just a big pretty much on green screen because you know, nobody could afford to fly anywhere anymore because of these budgets. And also Hugh Jackman, Black Lively and bas are all very good friends of any Winters, so mate's rights. But yeah, I think it's interesting. She's obviously stepping into that frame of being a movie star. But I couldn't tell you one movie she's been in.
She was a simple Favor, she was in that great one movie. She was in Sisterhood of the Trust.
She was in the Town with Ben Affleck that was great. I don't know any of those.
She hasn't made these pages because she's been having all the babies.
Of course she's got fun.
She also because she her and Ryan Reynolds are the power couple. She also in the middle of the promo for this launched around.
Hair care brand. Yes, and she's like Brown.
She has a drink label too, Betty's Buzz, so she's like they are. They're very savvy taking which is great the world.
And the similarity between this and Don't Worry Darling is that the actors aren't just actors. So I think that's when things get complicated. So Olivia Wild it wasn't that they were all on set together, it was that one had more power than the others, and so you see the power dynamics and the creative differences leak out into the press tour, because this is really about different visions, and where a director sits and a producer sits is.
Just workplace politics, right. Well, I mean there was a story about me being unhappy with strife the first season, but it didn't really go anywhere. I mean, I do plan for season two, let's have a few yeah. So I remember reading it and going really like, really, but you know, maybe we need to lean into that Jesse and just.
Yeah, you too should definitely have a feud for season two. Although you know, I was thinking that the don't worry Darling thing didn't really work for the movie, as in that movie was considered a flop, whereas this is working for this movie. I mean, not just this, but it's going to keep the momentum going for a few more weeks and it's considered a hit.
So what I don't want is for this film that's got a very powerful message about DV to become about two bitches being mean to a man. I would rather that not be the story, because he's being framed as a bit of a victor.
Maybe he's not a nice guy. It used to be the suggest Colin Hoover.
So this is what TikTok will tell you. That Colin Hoover wants her other books made into movies, right, so she's looking at who's got more money to make them. If there's creative differences between Blake Lively and Baldonie hitching your wagon, then I'm going to hitch my wagon too, Lively. And so these creasy, little bitchy women are over here, and poor Baldoni just wanted to make a very serious film about DV And look at Blake Lively with her hair. That's how the story goes.
Okay, out Louders, you might have someone in your household that was at a Bucks weekend over the weekend, because that's what Bucks weekends are. They're not nights anymore, they're weekends. We answered a dilemma about a particular Bucks weekend and an escort and a text message, and it's quite juicy. We gave our thoughts. To listen to that episode, you can follow the link in the show notes.
A massive thank you to all of you out louders for being with us through this exciting journey through Paris. Our non expert journey through Paris, just pointing at stuff and going that was weird, wasn't it.
Oh we like that anyway. Thank you for.
Being here with us as always, and thank you to our fabulous team for helping us put the show together.
We will be back in your ears tomorrow.
Bye bye.
Shout out to any Mum and Maya subscribers listening. If you love the show and want to support us as well, subscribing to MoMA Miya is the very best way to do so. There is a link in the episode description.