¶ Intro / Opening
Hello, and welcome to MoMA Mia out loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the eighth of April.
I'm Holly Waynwright, I'm.
Amelia Leicester and I'm Kles Stevens.
First time we have gathered since the Long weekend. Yeah, yes, fine, it was.
It was eventful and in terms of the.
World, in terms of the world and chocolate. Here's what's made our agenda for today. A Hollywood elder has unloaded his unflattering opinions on everyone from Margot Robbie to Johnny Depp and we want to know where are where are the grumpy old women?
Plus Donald Trump keeps saying horrifying things, But we might have a bit of an antidote for you.
And the rumor mill is on fire with Taylor and Travis's wedding plans. But what's true and more importantly, what do we think is true?
Some predictions, yes, some random and rogue predictions. But first,
¶ Savannah Guthrie's Brave Return
Savannah Guthrie went back to work this week. She's the Australian born American TV host. She hosts The Today Show in the US, and her mother disappeared in really shocking and distressing circumstances several months ago now and now Savannah has finally gone back to work.
She said.
She sat down at the desk and she said, here we go, ready or not, Let's do the news. She was wearing yellow, which is generally seen to be a symbol of, you know, waiting for missing people.
To come back.
Her co hosts were wearing yellow ribbons, which is the same. There were yellow flowers, and there were people outside the studio who were all holding up signs and wishing her well, and she went out at one point of the broadcast to greet them.
And this is a little bit of what happened.
And these signs are so beautiful. You guys have been so beautiful. I received so many letters, so much kindness to me and my family, and we feel it, we feel your prayers. So thank you so much. Every day every day.
There have been no leads in that case since that really shocking vision that we reported on at the time of a masked man being caught on the ring camera of Savannah Guthrie's mother's door. No leads at all, and so Savannah Guthrie like, after two months, going okay, I'm going back to work. It's incredibly brave because there's so much attention piled on her and you can only imagine
the conversation she's having constantly. But it made me think of how many people when you go through something awful, whether it's an illness, treatment, loss, grief, like there is a point at which you have to go back to work, Like you have to go back and you're not going to get a ticker take parade for it, and you're going to have to deal with the sort of sympathetic looks from your coworkers, and you're going to have to
push on through. And it just made me think, like she kind of it's so brave to what she's doing. And some people have said, oh, well, you know, did she have to go back and all those things, but it just made me think that's what people do. You have to get on with it, right, and we just want to say enormous love to you if you're going through something shitty at the moment. I think Savannah Guthrie shows an extraordinary amount of bravery that actually lots of us have to exhibit every day.
¶ Taylor Swift Wedding Frenzy
There's a lot going on in the world right now which we will get to, but I think it's important that we pause and acknowledge a water tight and high stakes news story. There are rumors that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's wedding will take place in the middle of the year, which is the US summer, specifically on June thirteenth. Where do these rumors come from?
I mean, we know they're getting married, right, I do know.
She told us she posted the picture the English teacher, Yeah, the pe teacher or whatever. It was something something, Yeah, in the school cafeteria.
We assumed, Yeah, we've assumed it's twenty twenty six. You assume you might have a summer wedding. Rhode Island's lovely in June.
She's got a holiday house. Yeah.
Yeah.
So there have been headlines all over the place in the last few days, predictions about bridesmaids and esthetics and the wedding dress designer. And you'd hope with all those headlines that there would be some solid information that it's based on. I mean, I did so. I did a bit of a deep dive.
Well.
An Instagram account called Wedding Chicks that links vendors, planners, and locations together for people's weddings, posted a carousel a few days ago and the first slide reads save the date, Taylor and Travis are getting married on June thirteenth. The next slide reads date significance, but it's missing a C, so it really says date significance, which is how we know this is an excellent source. It turns out the entire already of the evidence for this claim is thirteen is Taylor's lucky number.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of numerologies.
Yeah, the Kansas City Chiefs are not playing on that day.
That's I mean, well that is important.
Yeah, he does need to be there.
He needs to be there, and probably so do his teammates. In fact, they have a mini camp from June nine to eleven. How convenient because it will be over by the thirteenth. Guys, this is all the evidence.
No, but I also heard that there was a rumor that she had had to pay someone who was having a wedding at the fancy Rhode Island place that she was having the wedding on the same day.
Well, on that post, there was a comment from a wedding planner who said, I'm the wedding planner for the rumored.
Place where she's getting married, and there.
Is a bride and it ain't Taylor, and I thought, but that's something you'd say if your bride was Taylor.
It's true, don't We're going to have to put up this.
If you're a wedding planner for Taylor Swift sweating, you're really like just posting red herrings in Instagram comments.
But then a photographer commented and said that the whole area is meant to be shut down for that weekend.
About Taylor Swift is she commits to a bit right. We all know that she likes to drop red herrings everywhere. Easter eggs, as I think we call them these days, are like clues and trails to things, and she's got decoys and there are pretend Taylor's and she famously arrives at a concert in the back of a bin like she knows how to decoy. So I reckon she is sending us to that location.
Exactly, and she can keep a bloody secret. She can do something, so.
Can her friends.
Yes, what I've heard is that she and Travis have really slimmed down the guest list and it's now down to only one hundred and fifty Grandma they.
Originally want to wait, do you think, well, I'm just saying she's famously invited him and said We're not having one of those little ones.
I'm inviting one.
I like, it's like, you know, until you start seeing it all coming in and then like maybe one hundred and fifty maybe Graham not.
Who were the bridesmaid discussions? Okay, Selena?
The rumors about bridesmaids were Selena Gomez, which absolutely, yes, Yes, Taylor was a bridesmaid for Selena, wasn't she.
I think she was kind of like an unofficial Yeah. I don't think they were wearing matching dresses, but.
She was featured heavily. The is it Ham Orheim?
Oh I don't.
Sisters mates?
Yeah?
And then another prediction from this random wedding website was gig had Did And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no, we need to differentiate between who is seriously in Taylor's in a circle and who is just a modelg Did is a model who is friends with Taylor, but no.
She has famous.
Used the question is Blake going to be a bride?
I know, I know because I reckon pre all the controversy. Yes, but now Taylor's just a little bit too savvy.
I think went through focus.
¶ Celebrity Weddings: Public vs. Private
I want to know.
I want to know what we think with all our wisdom about how much we are really going to know about this wedding when it happens. Because we've just seen an excellent example of a very high profile couple just sneaking off and getting married. Tom Holland I always getson and I love him. I don't know why Tom Holland and Zendaya. There doesn't seem to be any doubt about it.
They've been married. We don't know when. We don't know where, we don't know what was worn, we don't know who went, We don't know what kind of pace they had.
We only found out that they were married because law Roach, a stylist, happened to drop the news that they were married on a red carpet.
And she's wearing a ring and whatever.
And she's been wearing like something old, something new, something borrowed, something blues right. Her press to her for the drama.
But she They have illustrated that two very high profile people can pull off a completely secret non like not even paparazzi outside wedding.
But that's Taylor's worst night.
That's what I want to discuss is she's rich enough to do that. She could get married in a hermetically sealed bubble in space, like she's a billionaire, she'd do what she wants?
Will she do that?
No, she wants. The whole point of this is that we all know she's getting married. She's made that very clear. Her entire herve to this point is arguably about getting married as the end point of the narrative. Wouldn't you say yes?
Since love story it really has been.
But you could let people know that you're getting married on your terms. Like a lot of celebrities, the only way you find out they got married is because they drop the pictures after the event. And then there are other celebrity weddings that you know it's happening because they are a helicopter circling the island. They're a paparazzi everywhere, all the famous people are arriving.
Like which version of that is Taylor going for?
And Selena Gomez, for example, did kind of keep her a wedding largely under wraps. There were helicopters circling, but they didn't get many photos. The photos that we have are the ones that Selena wanted us to see.
Yeah, she did a fun Taylor will definitely do that, right, She's an absolute master.
Think about when Jack Antonoff got married, her longtime firstwhile producer got married to Margaret Quali and they got married also in New England. But the problem was that Taylor just completely ended up dominating the proceedings. Her fans were there, they were taking photos of Taylor. It kind of, by all accounts ruined things for Margaret on her big day.
Unfortunately, Taylor has to be at her own wedding.
She does.
She does.
And something that actually got me thinking because on kind of on the record a publicist.
It was probably a publicist.
Somebody spoke to people in August last year and said it would be a private, low key event, right, And the more I think about it, the more I'm like, absolutely not. And I read this article in New York magazine about how having a Vogue cover so good for your wedding is more prized every Yes, and the theories about why are so compelling. So one quote from a luxury event planner says, the new social currency is much more about showing that you're a creative person than that
you're a rich person. I think Taylor wants to create something, it'll be your work of art.
Oh, it will be full of Easter eggs, and it'll be full of little nods to this and that. The thing that was great about that article is so celebrities have a few choices when it comes to how public to go. So back in my days of being tabloid magazine lady, we did loads of weddings. We did Carl Sanderland's first wedding, we did Nat Bass's wedding, Ricky Lee's wedding. We did weddings all the time. And obviously you pay money for that. So you do a deal where you say,
we want the engagement, we want the wedding. Honeymoon would be great, you know, but that comes with cash. But what you get for that cash kind of ruins the wedding in lots of ways. And for a start, you have to have journalists and photographers at your wedding that you didn't choose. You have to be approving pictures on your wedding night, you have to agree to do all that. You have to do an interview on the day, you
have to do all that stuff. So that kind of old school selling your wedding is obviously way below Taylor's pay grades. She ain't doing that, but the Vogue version of selling your wedding is similar, probably though you're paying Vogue rather than the other way around. Because in that article Chloe Marle, who's the editor of Vogue, but she's worked there a long time, and she is credited as bringing the weddings back to Vogue as being a big
selling points, as they're often their top stories. She said, we run it like a military operation, and we will have those pictures up within hours. So she talked about Venus William's wedding. I think that no one knew it was happening. It got married on the Friday, The pictures were up by the Sunday, So again somebody in your party has to spend that time photo approvals, back and
forth with your publicists. We like that, we like that, but to have your wedding in Vogue is massive status and loads of celebrities do that and non celebrities too. Do you think that Taylor will do that the Vogue wedding as as the vehicle to get the fans the pictures or do you think she'll go directly.
I think she'll go direct but I do think that what Vogue has tapped into in terms of wedding content, and I guess the resurgence of how important it is for identity and how it's an extension of personal brand. I think Taylor will be tapping into all of that, because there was a quote that said, the wedding planning process can bring up that little girl in the cafeteria who really wants to be seen. This is the ultimate
version of that. And I think there's a little bit of Taylor Swift who's like, I'm marrying the jock and I want everybody to see.
But there was also I just had to add this tidbit that was in the article.
A woman in the fashion industry apparently tried to get her wedding in Vogue and got rejected, and apparently she burned bridges with a lot of the friends who participated in her wedding, blamed the fiasco on all her guests, and then she checked herself into a trauma retreat.
So this guy in there is quite just saying, we don't do lake Como passe. If you get Marion like Coma, you won't make it into Vogue anymore.
We don't like it.
I didn't exactly we don't like castles in Scotland. We don't like anything that ordinary people have started doing.
You're not going to get it.
They're like, if we've done the Cotswolds six times, I'm not going to do it at seventh.
Gosh.
But no, I think Taylor will come direct fans. I think that there will be some great Instagram content, but I think she'll keep it a secret until it happens.
I think they should live.
You know how, every time there's a royal wedding, the argument for why the nation is paying for this so like obviously Harry and Megs, William and Catherine is like, you know, the security and the flowers in London's closed down, and it is always it's great for national morale and it's always like things have been tough lately, there's been a recession. Whatever, it brings everyone together for a reason
to be happy. What could be better at this moment of global international crisis than for Taylor and Travis to just throw it open live stream?
Come on in?
Did you see that? In the gatest round of royal revelations, apparently the Queen said that she thought Megan's dress was too white. Yes, yes, So what Hugh White will tailor dress.
I know she'll, she'll bloody get it right. I mean, she's worn so many designers, and she's worn quite a few wedding dresses in her film clips.
Because she's dressed up as a bride many times. But me, Oriel exactly, Taylor Swifts not like me Oriol don't come out.
¶ Trump's Rhetoric and Competency Porn
In a moment. Is there anything hotter than someone doing their job really, really well? Australians woke up this morning to the news that Donald Trump had said something even more upsetting than usual. He said, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. His threat of mass destruction and more crimes was of course directed towards Iran, which two days ago on Easter he'd also
threatened with total destruction and hell. By the end of the day US time, and by the time we're recording this, it looks like the immediate crisis has been averted. Trump has said that he and Iran's leaders have agreed to a ceasefire, and the terms of that are being clarified. It does look like the Strait of Hormoots, which is where all the where twenty percent of the world's oil is being held up. It looks like that will be
opened under Iran's control for at least two weeks. A lot of other details being worked out, and you can
hear more about that on today's Quickie. But I guess I just wanted to say that it's really hard to know what to say when someone says something like this, When someone threatens mass murder and war crimes, and he is, rather than your very looney Tunes relative, the most powerful person in the world, and I don't have anything profound to say about it, except for the fact that it really makes you feel upset and scared, and like, if this was someone who was in your life saying these things,
you would probably look into getting them some sort of professional help.
It's sometimes worth remembering. And I know this is, like, you know, not an original thought, but that this is not how leaders used to speak, you know what I mean, Like tweeting out capital letters. There were lots of swear words in the last lot over Easter. There are just all these direct threats, and the thing that's tricky about it is you kind of get a bit blind to
it in a way. I woke up to that this morning and I was just but I also thought, well, I know he's going to back away from it because he always does, like he says outrageous thing. And then you pointed out to me that no, he doesn't always, and the chaos is the point. But it's this foul mouthed diplomacy, whatever you want to call it out, what it's just, it's not. It's so disturbing because it's just reset the way that all of the things work.
And it reminds you that other politicians had very different strategies for very good reason in the past, because that maybe a world crisis would happen, or you'd start a walk.
They tend to think through the consequences. They tend to use measured language. They'd be careful about threatening entire populations with mass murder.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
But we don't live in that world anymore.
No, And I think Trump's general vibe at the moment has us turning towards competency pawn.
What's that so?
A couple of months ago, an article in The Guardian introduced the term, writing, when it feels as though the world is moments away from any number of disasters, there is nothing hotter than watching someone do their job really, really well. And this particular article referenced the Pit, which has a massive invested audience. It has won so many awards.
Hospital drama that stars the er guy.
Correct, Yes, and I cannot turn away from these doctors in Pennsylvania who doing their jobs to a high degree of success. And you should just like the way that they talk and they know and it's it's science and there's they're making decisions based on thought.
It's so hot.
They might not even be the best doctors that ever existed. The point is that they approached their job with a level of seriousness that feels devoid in real life.
This is like the outlauder who said in the group the other day that they'd started watching the West.
Wing, and I used to. I was an obsessive.
West Wing fan for a period of time when I was on maternity leave. It was my breastfeeding watch. I know you're supposed to be communing with your baby, but I was communing with Jed Bartlett and watching those pretend politicians and pretend you know, back roomors like walk and talks.
Of these crises.
Everything was quicker, but they were serious people, the best and brightest. That used to be a given.
Well, it's probably part of the appeal of Taylor Swift as well, because, in addition to writing amazing songs and performing them and doing a sold out, record breaking world tour, that recent documentary that took us behind the scenes of the Era's tour was really designed to impress on us how much work goes into making it look effortless and making the audience have a fun time. And Taylor Swift is someone who has given us competency porn.
Really, it really has.
And Julia Baird wrote an article for the Sidney Morning Herald earlier this month and the headline was I'm hooked on competency porn.
I wish our leaders were.
Too, And it was basically about watching the frustration of watching politicians make some terrible decisions as opposed to when you come across in life an efficient nurse or a council worker, or a banker or a baker who just knows what they're doing, and it just really Oh.
But the other thing that has.
¶ Artemis Mission: Scientific Excellence
Me thinking about competency porn at the moment, and I think that it is a reason why the world has tuned into it so hard, is the current Artemis mission, and they're just casually traveling deeper into space than anyone has ever been before. It's humanity's first journey towards the
Moon since nineteen seventy two. And I think it really is for me in a world where, especially in American politics, there has been such a rejection of science, of objective truth, You then watch something like that and think, so many things have to go right, and so many people have to be patient and put their egos aside, and you can't be a narcissist, and you can't do anything rogue.
You just have to be.
Careful and a team player and a team player. And without all of the science, the rocket does not go to the moon.
It just doesn't.
And I thought that the fact that Trump has been distracted by other things might have been good for our spaceship, because I reckon he would have come and he would have said, let's put a sticker on it, and they would have said, yeah, so everything has to be really and he would have been like, no, I have some rogue ideas of how to.
Let's paint it goal.
Yeah.
I think one of the reasons he hasn't come is he possibly doesn't really approve of it, right. I think that it's what it's been interesting. I've surprised myself about how much I've loved watching the vision coming out of this this space mission, the plant, Like if you've got a kid in your life who loves space, and lots
of kids do. When the pictures of the planets in the in our galaxy are so beautiful and it is so hypnotic, and seeing the pictures of the Moon out of the window and the Earth from the window, I've absolutely loved it. I found it very soothing. If I was a completely different person with a different brain and like thirty years that would be my I would love to be on that spaceship. But it's so hypnotic and gorgeous. But it is costing something like one hundred billion dollars.
But better spending it on that than.
Well, here's the thing is is this?
The other thing that's really kind of interesting about this is obviously this has been planning for a really long time. Nine years for this particular ship to go up?
Is that right? I was wondering why it was happening now in Trump's second time.
Exactly, so nine years for this particular ship to go up. I don't know if you call them ships. I'm just doing that craft, not like a cruise liner. But I don't think there's a bar cocktails with umbrellas in them.
But you know, nine years for this particular mission, but actually the whole thing has been in train for nearly twenty and it's got these serious missions about like trying to maybe make Moon a landing place to go further and all this stuff, and so they're doing lots of science, even though we just like the pretty pitch and the stories about the toilet. But it is costing a lot of money. So some people are saying, well, you know, that money better spent elsewhere. We've got a lot of
issues on Earth climate change, dada da. I understand that, but there's something about that or yeah that I don't know, it feels really necessarily.
Yeah, it's a good point, Holly. But then again, independent analysts have said that by day six of the Iran War it was costing eleven billion dollars already.
Yeah, I've got some audio of the moment that the spacecraft actually went further than humanity had ever gone before.
Yeah, from cabin of integrity here as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth. We do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration, but we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation in the next to make sure this record is not long lived.
¶ Frustration's Ripple Effect
They're just so reasonable.
I would, as I say, I would take that challenge if I was twelve. I just need to sidebar on one thing that trickles down from what you started off by saying, Amelia, which is how unsettling and stressful the Trump rhetoric is. I guess yesterday morning, I filled up my car really early. I was coming up to Sydney for work and I had to use the car, and I filled my car up really early at this little petrol station near me. There's a woman who manages that station.
She's always there, she knows all the locals, she's really friendly, and when I pulled in there at five thirty yesterday morning after the long weekend, she was already visibly upset by the amount of abuse she had copped from people pulling in and filling up and seeing the petrol prices. And I just think that it's so understandable. As we talked about last week, it's so understandable how stressed and
anxious we all are. It's so understandable, how you know, coupled with the human awful, humanitarian cost and then the very literal cost on our back pockets and what's going to happen, and we don't know what the future is and how long. It's really understandable that everybody's so stressed. But I just seeing the embodiment of that in this woman who's just doing her job, who's getting yelled at by frustrated people every day.
It just feels like something we've just got to not do.
Yeah, you see it in It's a big plot point in the pit, the fact that people take out so much of their anger towards the health care system, on healthcare workers who are so competent for the most part. But of course people are furious about the fact that they can't afford healthcare or that they have to wait a ridiculously long time because there aren't resources. But it's the same thing. It's the channeling of our frustration it incompetency at the wrong people.
That's true. And also maybe we just have to somehow channel our energy and attention less towards the people who are tapping out true social posts on the toilet, and more towards the people who are literally going where no humans have gone before.
Yeah.
¶ The "Chicken Ick" Phenomenon
Yeah, look, I suggested that you should go to the quickie if you want more on what Trump said today, But if you want more on a phenomenon called chicken.
Nick, I need you to stick around for out loud day.
Right here.
A phrase has been coined for this very familiar phenomenon where you're eating some chicken and all of a sudden you are utterly repulsed by it. Have either of you had this experience? Yes, I think it's a universal non vegetarian human experience to have. People are taking to TikTok because that's what you do. You have to take to TikTok to emmortalize the exact moment that they experienced. Chickennick. Some of them have even extended it to egg ick. Sorry poultry. Not having a good week here.
These are two of my main protein sources. Do you know how I'm protein maxing.
Every now and then you just get a little bit of egg and you go, oh, this is egg.
It really hits you that it's egg.
Well, sometimes someone puts chicken and egg together in a salad and you just, you know, like some kind of channibal or something. Look, the good news is you can do something about it. Professor of psychobiological psychology in the UK. His name is Lorenzo Stafford, and he's got an action plan for you. He says that the ick is a disgust response which can be reprogrammed, So don't worry if you get the chickenick. Here's what you got to do. First,
try preparing a chicken a different way. Lorenzo. That's not easy to say if I'm halfway through a sandwich, but okay, I'll take that on your advisement. He says, use breast instead of sighe for instance.
Oh my gosh, I so agree thighs always.
Do you think thies are more chickenick? Yeah?
Yeah, but they got more pink.
But foodies will tell you they they always always taste better.
Yeah. The Japanese love their chicken with a bit of pink. Chicken SMI is also a thing.
Anyway.
The second thing Lorenzo says is avoid having to deal with rod chicken. I love this tip from Laurenzo. He's basically saying, have someone else make you did and then you won't get chicken.
How's the chicken getting cooked?
If you never coming to my house on a Tuesday night, make the noodle soup.
He says, you'll be back to enjoying chicken in no time. But this just got me thinking also about ick in general, because this was a plot point in season two if Nobody Wants This. You might remember there was an episode where Noah, who was Adam Brody, was trying to be a little bit too charming and then Kristen Bell's character Joanne all of a sudden decided she couldn't stand him. It's funny because season two of Nobody Wants This, I think gave us all the ick. So that's sort of
a bit matter, isn't it. The Daily Mail put together a list of other things which give people the ick. According to TikTok, some of these include calling wine veno, which, yeah, running after a ping pong ball, which I take offense because I'm very good at ping pong, and an awkward bowling technique. Yeah.
To add well, I think in terms of the ick, i'd extend that to anyone wearing bowling shoes.
You know, when you go bowling, it's never it's always.
And just putting your foot into the ball.
And it's warm and you don't know who's worn it before. It just it's just not it. Jesse's husband, I'm sure she's brought up on this show, he says, chow.
And I used to work with someone, a guy who used to call everyone a chum, and I'm just excentral.
You know, on the chicken for a second, is I make a lot of chicken at home, and you know there is with breast, as discussed the white there is a very fine line between like dick and chewy as hell, and you've got to hit that right on. And you know who knows how to do that? The patrons say of this show's recipes, Nagi following I made a naggy chicken recipe the other week. It was like one with
the crunchy sauce or whatever. And she was like cook for exactly three minutes on each side and then resting for two and I was like three minutes on each That's very specific, but I decided to do exactly what I was told, absolutely perfect juice.
Wow.
See, I live in fear of the chicken neck, I'll be honest. It kind of dictates my life. Choices, and I will never get a chicken salad because you never know did they prepare the chicken in.
A way that avoided right because during during pregnancy, I'm not meant to For example, cafe downstairs has chicken sandwiches, I'm not meant to eat one of those chicken sandwiches because the chicken's been sitting out there for ages. Maybe something she would listeria. I'm going to be real, guys, I've been pretty fast and loose, and then I did end up in hospital food poising and I know it was chicken, and I know where it was from, and I knew the moment I bid into it and I kept it.
Oh, the didn't put you off.
It didn't ask too hungry.
¶ Brian Cox: Hollywood's Grumpy Elder
Okay, you either know who Brian Cox is or you don't. The defining factor will be whether or not you are a succession person. Probably because he is most famous for being the seventy nine year old Scottish actor who plays Logan Roy. Not true Rupert Murdoch at all, certainly not Rupert Murdoch at all. He obviously has done loads of other things, but he is that catapulted him from respected character actor to super famous. Always interviewed and asked what
he thinks about everything actor? Right, And he was all over the internet this past weekend because he did a Sunday Times interview in the UK. And to be honest, actually when you read the interview, he didn't say all these things in the interview. It's just that the journalist was like Brian Cox says what he thinks and went and trolled trawled his memoir and every interview and he has said a lot of things and then he added to them in the interview, So it wasn't like the
interview was all of them. But what did he say? I just want you to imagine while I'll tell you what he said, these words coming out of the mouth of like a female equivalent to him, So like a respected elder actor like say Helen Mirren, Johnny Depp is so overblown, so over range. Edward Norton is a pain in the ass. Kevin Spacey's a stupid, stupid man. Ian McKellen, that's Gandolf people. His acting is not to my text.
And did he say that when he was like co starring.
Yeah, he doesn't care what he has said oftentimes about Jeremy Strong, who obviously is in succession his very respected actor, but famously method, and Brian Cox has no time for method. He said, it's fucking annoying and it's American shit.
Yeah, all right, that's what he said about that.
In the Sunday Times piece, he was asked about Wuthering Heights, which he hasn't seen. He likes the old version with Merle Oberon, but he hasn't seen the latest Woman Jacob and Margo. He went into a fake Australian accent, he said, and I'm going to do this terribly. Basically, he went into a fake Australian accident, went.
Keith Cliff, it's me, Kathie.
How are you doing? Keith? Alright, yeah, I'm all right.
And then he said Margot Robbie is far too beautiful for that role. I mean, I think there should be something more of gipsy about her, but it's wrong of me to judge. It may have been a brilliant film too late, Brian, it's wrong of.
Me to judge anyway. I all Australian, so what.
I need to know because like this is just like the classic grumpy old man in inverted commas, who's like he says himself, I mean, my wife is always saying to me, Brian, be careful, be careful, But I think, fuck it, I don't want to be careful anymore.
I'll be eighty this year.
I'm going to say what I want. Can we imagine a world where a Helen Merren, a Meryl Streep, a Dame Judy Dench just unloads on all her female contemporaries like this? Can you imagine what would happen?
Never?
Like it just would never ever happen. The other thing is like those are kind of openly controversial, Like a lot of those are a little bit funny. Like I remember seeing what he said about Jeremy Strong and the method acting and thinking that's hilarious because that is the difference between Americans and Brits, that Brits are like, stop being so wanky.
It's just a job.
That is honestly a funny observation. However, he has in that there's a line about Kevin Spacey being an idiot. He's defended Kevin Spacey a few times, and like he said, he's an old friend of mine, all right, Kevin did certain things. He also did a lot of extraordinary work, and I find that really petty. I just don't like it basically criticizing all the I guess me too stuff against someone who seems to have done some pretty disgusting things. And I reckon if that you're right, if that was
a woman, totally different story. I also think if it was a younger man, Remember when Matt Damon kept being slammed for just saying slightly the wrong thing about me too. Like we seem to have moral standards for men who I guess are middle aged, and as soon as they get old, we go no, no, no, you're good. You can be a crazy old grandpa.
¶ Women and the "Grumpy Old" Standard
I think that's such an interesting point about the double standard holy and like, what would happen if Meryl Streep said these things? Because last week Meryl Streep's obviously on her press tour right now for Devil Wears prior two, for which I've already purchased my ticket, and she was in Mexico, and I don't know if you saw this, but she went a little bit viral because she and Anne Hathaway were being interviewed outside and I guess a worker had been tasked with holding an umbrella up to
deflect the light for them. Meryl stops the interview, turns around, pats this man on the shoulder and thanks him for his service. That's so different from what we are different.
And also it made me think because I was like, because we're seeing a lot of merrill and this today this morning, I woke up to see the Vogue cover she's done with Anna Winter, right, so heaven they've done all this content for Vogue where they're like in a lift together and all this stuff. Obviously promoting Devil West too, Anna win Tour. They're both seventy six. Anna Wintour is generally considered and discussed all the time as being an
ice Querrel's streep is seventy six. They are both seventy six. In mind, they are, and Anna Wintour is always discussed as being a ice queen, a queen bitch, all these things. Actually go and try and find her saying something horrible about another person.
And you can't.
She's made like declarations about like, you know, if your competition is better than you, just stress better or whatever. And obviously the stories a legendary of the way she might treat assistance.
That's why Devil was prior to exists. But she is not.
She is generally considered to be a pretty awful person in inverted commas, and yet she is not sitting around saying.
She's not Carl Lagerfeld, who started around saying all sorts of offensive things about fat people and people who we didn't like the way they dress.
Because women know intrinsically that if you are caught bitching in inverted commas about another woman, that story has such legs it will follow you forever, like you cannot be seen to criticize other women.
Okay, Devil's advocate, I reckon our Gwinny as she ages, is going to lean into speaking her truth and leaning into her power, and maybe she'll be a grumpy old woman.
Well she used to come she would. I would really enjoy that era.
Because she look she's pretty upfront now about For instance, when she started joining the press jo for MRDI Supreme, she told people that she claimed not to know who Timoth they shallam before they started filming.
Yeah, wonder if you can say I wonder if the rules are that you can say it about men like you know what I mean. I wonder if like as women get they can say, I worked with this guy and he was rude to me. I worked with this person and they were dismissive. But I wonder if you could say about a contemporary of your lives, I don't think she's very talented well, or one of the many things that Brian said.
Yes, because I always think we did an episode of canceled about Catherine Heigel, and I think about it all the time.
But she's the only example.
Oh, she was so brutally canceled literally for being honest for five minutes she said a few honest things, so.
There was a profile.
And I always find it so interesting that the cancelation of Catherine Heigel happened at the exact same time that Woody Allen and Harvey Winstein were thriving. But anyway, she was asked about the decisions for her character Izzie Stevens in Gray's Anatomy, and she basically said that a particular storyline was a ratings ploy and it shocked people. It wasn't predictable, people didn't see it coming. But she said business like, it didn't make sense, and business is business.
I understand it, but I want there to be some cooperation between the business end and.
The creative end.
So people saw that as her criticizing Shonda Rhymes. Then in the same interview, she was asked about her two thousand and seven film Knocked Up, directed by jud Aptao, and she said it was a little sexist and outrageous that she said that. And she said, it paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun loving guys stoned.
And I don't know, I think you're overstating a because I got another example that's going to ruin this argument. Oh, you great Martha Stewart. She has said things about other women and we love her for it. For instance, she actually criticized Gwyneth Paltrow and said that she was basically muscling on it in an area that she didn't know about when she is trying to become a homemaking expert.
Yeah, that's not bad.
But Martha is a grumpy old woman. She sends it, and please don't at me. I know that old woman, you know, But like, in the context of this conversation, that is not a bad one.
She says what she thinks allegedly.
Now, I don't think that Brian Cox is going to be on the cover of Sports illustrated his kiss your face anytime soon. So maybe if you are a quote unquote grumpy old woman, you also have to be attractive enough to cover sports illustrations.
But with that said, I do think culturally we have a soft spot for a certain type of woman who's older and who will tell you like it is, don't tell it like it is. There's something really comforting about that about a woman who will sit you down and be like that that.
Does nothing but tell it how it is.
These days, Yeah, but she doesn't. She doesn't criticize her peers.
No, she criticizes Donald Trump.
Yeah.
And I think Maria Margleis is another one, like who is her whole person?
Like I just say it, And I think that she's obviously an example of that, But I just think, I don't know.
I I not that.
I'm encouraging people slagging off their contemporaries. I think it's probably better to have a respectful.
Silence. But it's just an interesting thought experiment.
I think it's about the level of pettiness too, Like Ammartha Stewart, she's Yeah, she's occasionally said somewhat disparaging things about people who she doesn't think of as her peers or contemporaries. But there's a level of pettiness to where Brian Cox has taken it that I think you're right. I don't think women are allowed that.
¶ Podcast Wrap-up
No, And apparently Jeremy Strong has said to him, please.
Stop, please stop slagging off my method acting, and he just can't help it.
I have such a soft spot for Jeremy Strong.
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