You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the nineteenth of August. I'm Holly Wainwright.
I'm Jesse Stevens.
I'm mea Friedman. No, no, I'm still at the logis.
What time did you have to get there? Yesterday?
God?
I got their hat. The red carpet started at three point thirty, so we got there at four. I left there. I was the first one in Anoba, Brunna and I and that was midnight, just after midnight, maybe quarter past twelve.
I'm justay. So the outlouders are aware. Mia does not generally do long long events. That's an absolute marathon for event friend events at all. Anyway, on the show today, as already discussed, Mia is going to tell us about the logis. She's very, very tired, as she said, but she's a professional, God damn it, and she's going to push through. Also, why is absolutely everything suddenly Blake Lively's fault?
The anatomy of a mighty backlash and why five people have been charged with the death of friend's icon Matthew Perry. But first, Jesse, in case you missed it, today, the three of us are looking very demure. We're being very mindful, very cutesye and if that doesn't make sense to you, welcome to the Internet. A TikTok trend has thrusted the word demure back into the lexicon, even though I'm fairly certain that most people don't actually know what it means.
It all started with a TikTok creator named Jules Lebron posting a video with tips about managing you know, your makeup and your mustache sweat, how to deal with it. Here's what she said in the og video.
Very demure, very mindful. I don't come to work with a green cut crew, don't look like a clown. When I go to work, I don't do too much. I'm very mindful while I'm out. See how I look very presentable. The way I came to the interview is the way I go to the job. A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marriage Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma, not demure. I'm very modest, I'm very mindful. You see my shirt only a little chi chio, not my be mindful of
why they hired you. Here's your reality check, diva. What's the name you'd like me to make it out to?
Oh?
I love it.
It's the context to this is that Jules Lebron is a trans woman, and so there's something very ironic and she is being sarcastic with a raised eyebrow speaking about femininity and gender in a way that's actually very cool and very transgressive.
It's like a bit and she's really lent in. Since it's gone viral, she's lent in. And now if you go to her account, there's like twenty different reels of her at the airport. How to be mindful at the airport. It's like, I just have a soda at the airport, very mindful, very demure. I'm not like you other girls who do.
Shut because demure means reserved and shy.
And kind of feminist.
Femin and the trend then, you know, took on a life of its own. And you see women going, see how I'm eating this donut, very demure, and they're just like eating a donut like a mad person, or like having a diet coke fountain in my house is very demure, which it's not. That's the opposite of So that's why it's funny. Have you guys heard this everywhere?
Look?
I have.
And the thing about the internet now, and I know that some out louders are like, well are you talking about things that are on TikTok? The thing with TikTok is that it is dictating culture. And I like that there are just random, weird, funny things, but it can often feel like the culture has become a joke that you're never in on. It's an inside joke, and by the time someone explains the joke to you, it's not
at all funny. And also it's over and there's another one, And so you can have that constant feeling like you're always just out of the loop, or that you've sort of come in halfway through a conversation. And even if you're fluent in TikTok and the Internet, which we all are, it can be really hard to get to the bottom of what it actually is. Like I remember we slipped back bun and whatever that thing was when we did
the stupid dance. I had to google what it means and then you go down this rabbit hole and then you're like, I have a life. I have a mortgage of responsibilities. I can't be playing CSI TikTok every three days.
Also, the speed is remarkable, right because I'm probably quite basic when it comes to this stuff, and I open probably my Instagram on Saturday, and suddenly everybody's demule, like suddenly just everything, and then the Logi's red carpet last night, and Tony Armstrong and his girlfriend are making a joke about being demure, like it's just super super quick, and then it will be gone again in a day, as
you say me. So by the time my children get home tonight and I asked them about being demure, they will think I'm the most embarrassing thing that ever lived.
And what's hard to is that it's really difficult to determine where any of these things start.
I always want to go back to the start.
I think it was like Friday night and I was in the depths of TikTok, being like, where did demure start?
Was it a Kardashian thing? It used to be that.
It was some massive cultural icon who would start a trend like jewels.
Well, like raygun you could see, like the internet was doing all these memes and takes on ygun, but you could see that was an actual thing that happened, that had global significance and everyone could go and see it, and it was all just versions of that. But sometimes it's like the vernacular where you just don't understand it and you always feel like you're just a little bit behind.
Yeah, look, headline is the three of us not very general, not very.
And the Gold Logi goes to Larry MD.
Last night was the sixty fourth TV week Logi Awards, and Mia Friedman, who was sitting in the front row, somehow cried three times and clapped too loudly once. If you squinted, you could see her dancing to the John Farnham tribute and maybe also darting to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, not to do illicit substances, but because her bladder can't hold much these days. There's so much to unpack and we haven't spoken properly about it yet, so we thought we'd do our catch up on the show. Mia,
Can we please start with what you wore? Was it demure? Because everyone saw demure that you threw out and then everyone was just sitting there on Instagram being like, oh, Maya will post what she's wearing. And then we waited, and we waited and we waited, and then Larry Emda won a go logan. Wait did she even show up the next day?
Yes?
Where's your dress? What was it? What do it look like? Please?
I have a thing where I don't get excited about event dressing. I love clothes as our ladders. No, I love clothes more than anything, and yet anything red carpet it just doesn't feel interesting to me because there's no styling involved. It's just like one dress and a shoe, which to me is not very creative. So I think that's at my heart of complete apathy about.
These were you not?
Holly and I were in the depths of panic on Sunday morning when we woke up and we saw that people were getting their hair and makeup done. They were walking down the street in their ballgowns. Sarah Harris looked stunning. We saw Laura Byrne and Britt Hockley, they were just in these dun downs and we were going, me out is woefully unprepared hair, yet.
It's trying down to get really worried about her when it was mid morning on Sunday and I messaged and I was like, baby spiraling, spiralingly.
You could feel it. I wasn't spiraling.
Two hours away, I could sense it. I'm like, why isn't she dressed? What's going on?
I wasn't spiraling. I just was like not being able to summon myself to care, because I mean to say that I was a side character last night is a gross understatement. I was there because Strife, of which I'm an executive producer, was nominated for Best Comedy. I was legitimately invited, but I get very intimidated by those things.
And I until about two hours, three hours before, I was still considering not going because I've also been sick, and I was just like I could ostensibly get away with chucking Asiki.
I think where you were at on Sunday. I've had nightmares about being in that situation. And it's like my school formal and all the other girls were getting their hair and makeup done, and they had bought really fancy dresses and I'd gone with mum, and my dress was secondhand and didn't fit.
That's what I was worried about.
Well, you're not worried that everyone else was getting their hair and makeup professionally done and you had you and your ghday.
Yes no, and then yes no. I was all confident.
You're confident in your offering, right Maas I.
Know I would say I'm lazy and I couldn't be bothered. So I was offered by Binge a slot at eight thirty in the morning, and I was just like, lull, it's already going to be a marathon. Can you imagine going and getting your hair and makeupsne? I just don't care enough. And I also quite like the getting ready part. That's actually more of my favorite thing is putting on
the makeup. I'm not very good at putting on a lot of makeup, but I always just like to look like myself, and I feel like when you get your hair and makeup done, you've got to make a lot of small talk. And also I just don't ever quite
feel like myself anyway. Bloody, first world, lovely problems. So I also knew that I had a number of things in my wardrobe because I wear kind of things that most people might wear to on a red carpet, like just to work on a Tuesday, right, So it's not like I was like, oh, I don't have anything fancy. I've got so much fancy stuff, and so I knew that what I wanted to wear was probably in there, and if it wasn't, that was kind of exciting because I'd have to make it work. You're looking horrified.
I am, Okay, tell us what you chose, because I saw, I actually liked of all your options that you shared on Instagram, you had a few suit options, you had your bratsuit, and I went, that's kind of cool, because but then what did you choose?
Please tell us?
Okay, was it something you know quite well? Because I wore it to your wedding, so.
I knew you'd wear the dress. Yeah.
So there's a good story behind this because I bought this skirt from a lady startup called Jumbled, which is a brilliant boutique in Orange, and we were there for a show quite a few years ago, maybe three years ago. Time is slippery to me. But and then I really liked it. It was kind of sequined, but muted sequined, if that makes sense. And so then I went online and found a matching top, but the top was like a bit cropped, so I wasn't gonna wear a crop top.
And this was years ago. And so then for your wedding, Jesse, when I went through a similar thing and tried on eight billion dresses, I took the top and the skirt to my alterationist. Is anyone still listening? This is so boring. I took it to my alterationist and got her to turn it into just one dress, and so I had that, and I tried on a bunch of stuff, and in the end that worked for the same reason that it worked for your wedding, because it was me in that
it was. It was fancier than I'd usually wear because it was like a dress, and yet it was like muted sequence. It didn't feel attention grabby.
The thing that's interesting about this whole thing, and we have to find out if there was anything fun about the logis is that this kind of stuff is your worst nightmare. You have anxiety around going to these kind of big social things, don't you. I want to give some context that when I used to work at TV Week, who obviously organize the logis it's a big thing. Some people are so desperate to go to that event. I remember the year I was working at TV week one
down the list. Celebrity was so desperate for a ticket and the editor was like, no, you can't have a ticket. Were full that She said, if I shaved my head, can I come?
Oh wow?
And the editor said yes and she did. That is how desperate some people are to be on that red carpet because it's about and probably less so now, but it's the attention economy, right, And if you're trying to get somewhere, if you're trying to be noticed, if you're trying to meet the right people, it's a really big deal. But all of that kind of stuff, that networking kind of stuff is your worst nightmare, right manea. But had a thing fun about being there, do you know what?
I had a really fun time, apart from the fact that it was so long. It was like being on a long haul flight.
Why but then you got off.
And you were still in the same place. I don't know. But by the time we sat down. So some people, who do they talk to kateline Brook she just had to do three hours on the red carpet. It was funny because we walked up and down the red carpet. Brunner and I It looked like we were trying to get interviewed, but we were just looking for the mum and mea people who were interviewing people in the red carp We thought, we've got to talk to them. We couldn't find them, so it looked like we were doing
desperate laps. We eventually found them how to chat with them, how to chat to news dot com who made us read at Tongue Twister. You know, everyone needs their content right, And it was just quite surreal, like it was very intense. And then you go inside and it's just like a ballroom if you've ever been to any kind of black tie thing, and you sit down, but then it was two hours until the ceremony started. It fed us, which is good because we sat down up.
For nice food.
Bruna pap Andrea, who is the main producer of Strife and the producer of everything Big Little Eyes and you know, she's big time. She's one Golden Globes and Emmy's and all of those things. She's been to all of those awards ceremonies. She said it was the best food of any awards ceremony she's ever been to.
Was she just being polite?
No, she was so into it. It was really funny. So the other shock was that we were not just in the front row of tables, but in the front row in the middle of the table, so we were practically directly in front of where the people were on.
That because Asha Keddy was on your table.
Correct, it wasn't because of my dress. So we were on the table with Asher and so she was a Gold LOGI nominee, so she's a big deal. And that was really interesting too because I've been to the Logis one time before, but I was like in the absolute bleaches and I was, you know, not really part of it at all. It was when I was doing a bit of work for the Today Show, so I just felt like I was on someone else's ride, which I
absolutely was. We had a really funny table. It was like me Bruna Ash's husband, Alex Demitriardi's Emma Lung Matt Day, whose wife is the EP of sixty Minutes and she actually won a LOGI I saw that.
Yeah, So it was just it was a lovely and what outfits did you like as someone who was there?
Like what stood out to you all?
Right?
Like there were so many great looks. There was one person who was a publicist for Channel nine who I just loved her dress. It was like I went and tried to buy it. It was from the curve range that aesos do and it was just like head to toe bright blue sequence and just like she just looked so comfortable, and she was wearing like matching glittery blue trainers. But you know, like Sonya Krueger always looks incredible. I mean, everyone just tried hard, which was so lovely. Julia Morris
looked beautiful, she was in this huge gown. Kate Langbrook looked phenomenal. Lisa McCune's gown was beautiful. I only saw her at the end when she was giving the Gold Low. And there were lots of people that you just don't know, you know, because a lot of shows were nominated, and there was the crew and the cast from all of those shows, so a lot of behind the scenes people were there looking just stunning, like people went to so much effort and that was just interesting to look at.
And then the other highlight was the John Farnham tribute with Guys Sebastian and Jessica Mawboy that was so beautiful.
Were on and I cried lots.
I didn't expect to cry, but there were lots of speeches that men made and boys made about mothers and about their mothers. And that fifteen year old guy that won the two big awards, the way he spoke about his parents and how he cried.
I'd love to thank my friend's family, my brother and my sister, and my mom and dad, and I love to thank my drum turg Ninia Townsend.
Couldn't die it without you.
I always find it when people are emotional, it's hard not to be emotional back. Like it's easy to sit at home and be really cynical about the logis and I've done that every single year, but when you're actually in the room, it's very moving. Like the amount that people care to be nominated or to win, like Rebecca Gibney was stunning, like Amda was really moving. What Trent Dalton said about the mums watching at.
Home, I just want to send a shout out to all the mums who are a bit like Frankie Bell and they're out in the suburbs tonight and they're feeling a bit lost in the darkness, and I just want to tell you, like, please believe me when I say that when your children look at you in the darkness, all they see is your light.
There was a lot of stuff that was just beautiful.
I cried all those things on the couch, so I'm not at all surprised that you were a puddle. I were like, they were really lovely. I wanted to ask you, though. One thing I always wonder about the room is so Sam Pang was the host, and he is quite roasty, and this is the second year he's done it, which means he must be good at it, right, because it's hosting any awards show is the job that nobody wants, apparently because you get so slammed for it. But he gets up and he does the roasts in the room.
Does that go down?
Okay?
Because I've read commentary before that says one of the reasons why awards show hosting is so hard is you've got to offend all the people who are right there to appease the people at home who want to feel good about not being there.
That's so true. And he nailed it, and the room laughed and they were with him, I think because his jokes felt pointed, but they didn't feel mean, and so the people that he was most funny about, like Andy Lee making jokes about Habish and doctor Chris Brown making jokes about Robert Owen getting his job and then being nominated for Gold. A lot of them were his friends and so they're fun. They're you know, comedians, a lot of them. So I remember Asha said, oh, I feel
like Sam was too easy on me. That can't be the end of it. You know, she didn't. He didn't take me out, So I think it didn't ever feel like he was punching down. It felt more like he was punching up. He punched up at the networks a lot, which everybody really laughed at the room was very much with Sam.
We should probably ask as well, you were nominated, strife was nominated.
We did not win.
Okay, you didn't win.
How do you feel about that? Because we are closet competitive? But how did it feel to lose?
A LOGI it never feels good to lose anything. Like everybody says they don't care until they win, and then they care a lot. Yeah, Like that was what was so lovely about when debraah Mammon got up and she won Best Lead Actress in a Drama for Total Control and that wasn't expected that she would win that, and she got up and she just said, I really wanted this, And everyone in the room really like laughed in a sense of we get it because she said, what you meant to be so cool and be like, oh, I
was fine, it's whatever. But everybody in the room really wants to win.
Like everybody wants to win.
Who doesn't want to win?
I am incredibly competitive. But when I saw that we were beaten by Utopia, I could sleep. I could sleep at night. Yes, I do love Utopia. I think it's a great show. We're going to be beaten Utopia, I accept.
And that was their last season, so and we were also saying, look, it was our first season of strife in the starting to in the middle of making our second season. Maybe by the time we've got third or fourth or fifth or sixth seasons, sometimes it takes a while to gain that momentum.
Yeah, that's the first time it's occurred to me that you're going to have to go to the logis every year.
That hasn't occurred to me that as long as we're nominated.
Okay, out louders, if you've got more questions for Mia about her big night at the Logis or anything Logis related. Jump in the Outlauders Facebook group and ask them now, because we're going to be recording a special subscribers episode all about the Logis for those who still haven't got enough of me A's debilitating wardrobe.
My time going to be this Guss. If you want goss, That's what I'm.
Going to be asking about. I need to know who you talk to, I need to know precisely what you ate. And the other thing is the.
Poet doing drugs in the toilet.
Yeah, you're going to be telling us about that in tomorrow subscriber episode.
In the same way that the Internet has a new joke every week, as we discussed at the top of the show, it can also feel like every week the Internet chooses someone, almost always a woman to pylon, and the force of that can totally dominate the culture, well, certainly the media and social media. A few weeks ago it was j Loo, and last week it was Raygun, and this week it's Blake Lively, who has a new movie out called It Ends with Us that we spoke
about on last week's show. And in the same way that the demure jokes and means can be really hard to understand. It can also be hard to understand the source of the intense hatred and criticism that engulfs these people at the center of these storms. You can find yourself wondering, but what actually did she do? Because there is so much noise that the storm itself becomes the story.
And so it is with Blake Lively. This week you may have seen her being roasted everywhere, but particularly on social media, where she is the villain of the week in a huge way. Now, it's important to note that we don't like to participate in these pylons or in cancel culture, but what we do do on this show is to try and get some perspective about what's really going on so that we can understand the biggest issue,
why are people so mad with Blake Lively. So the criticism initially came with some drama between Lively and the director and co star Justin Baldoni of this movie, but since we last discussed it, the tide has seemed to turn from criticism for the film's marketing and potentially of Justin Baldoni, to a direct attack on Blake. The film has so far brought in one hundred million dollars US around the world, so people are going to see it, and Justin Baldoni has reportedly hired a crisis pr manager.
Now this bit is important, Melissa Nathan, who specializes in publicity and reputation management. She previously represented Johnny Depp during the Amber Herd trial, and the shift in the perception of Blake Lively has really turned the algorithm on TikTok and another social media against her. The criticism is directed at the way she's chosen to market the film, people saying she's been too glib and chatty, and her outfits have been too cheery given that the theme of the
film is about domestic violence. And then over the weekend, mysteriously, seemingly randomly, an interview from twenty sixteen resurfaced by a journalist who said it was the interview that made her want to quit her job. Here's a little bit of that interview.
First of all, congrats on your little bomb. Congrats on your little What about my bum.
We've got two nice ones and they are kind of bumps. They no not bumps. The Lovely Lady lumps.
To context for that interview is that Blake Lively had publicly announced her pregnancy beforehand, and when she sat down, the interviewer said congratulations, and then she said congratulations on your bump. To clarify the interviewer was not pregnant. It was a strange way to react. And then the interviewer asked a question about costuming and what they wore, and Blake sort of said, oh, would you ask a man
what he wore. There was something quite off in the dynamics of the interview, and even I thought Posey Parker, who was beside her, was doing her best to try and keep all parties happy. That interview is uncomfortable.
Yeah, it's cringe to watch, but often those junkets, press junkets can be really awkward because because the stars are exhausted, they're they're having to see maybe fifty people in a day from all around the world an answer the same questions. So clearly she was she was over it. I agree, and she was a bit snarky, but you know, yeah.
And look, I see both sides, right, because yes, you have to sit there and rumin answer questions about the film you made to fifty people. I would hate to do it. It's not that hard to be polite like, that's part of the job, right, You get paid a lot of money to be nice to people on camera. There's a camera there, so I agree with that.
But at the same time, that woman saying this made me want to quit my job, like that was just a shameless grab for relevance and attention and follows.
Initially I thought when this video was published and it started doing the rounds on YouTube, and then it got picked up on TikTok very quickly, I thought, oh, this is a Dustin Baldoni move.
This has been from camp.
This PR team has gone through the archives and unearthed it. And then I actually listened to an interview with the journalist who said, that's not what happened. She had seen a bit of commentary about that it ends with us pressed to her, and she thought, I'm going to share this interview I did with Blake Lively. So it seems it was organically shared by the journalists who had never published it before.
Well, and also, when you're a journalist and you interview famous people, and sometimes those famous people, it doesn't go exactly how it did in your head, which is she's gonna love me and it's going to be great and I'm going to make this joke and she's going to laugh so hard. Like a lot of journalists, most of us actually have a story like that where the connection was somehow disjointed for all the reasons that Mia said before, but also they just weren't up for playing that gag
a million times. And clearly it seems in that instance Blake Lively was very and she's always been very boundaried about talking about her private life, and clearly she was like, I don't want to talk about bumps. I don't want to talk about fashion. She was like in one of those take me seriously moods, and it came across very strongly right. And if I was the journal I know knows who've held grudges against celebrities who are route to them in interviews. Yeah, I'm not saying that that's a
professional way for the journalists to behave either. This is the moment to unveil that interview if you've got it in your pocket.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's the thing is that this interview resurfaced, but so have a lot of interviews, interviews where she is sitting beside America Ferrera, who eye rolls when she's giving an.
Answer America Ferrera, I rolls at Blake, Yes, in an interview. Sorry I didn't understand.
Yeah, So there's a viral moment that you know was like I reckon ten years ago. It was a sisterhood of the Traveling Path.
But Jesse, I need you to explain to me what's the They're there? Okay, like what did Blake do? The villain of the internet.
All right, here's where it started. So we knew that there was tension between her and Justin Baldoni, which we talked about last week. People are seeing clips on TikTok where she's talking about where your florals, Grab a girlfriend, go and see this movie, and people are angry because they're going, this is about domestic violence, which Justin Baldoni is making a point of every time he talks about it.
He talks about domestic violence. So people are going, Blake Lively is really undermining the themes of the movie, and she's trying to sell her haircare brand and blah blah blah. When this comes up, it has started to feed a narrative that Blake Lively is a mean girl. That's what they've decided, and even Blake Lively not talking about the domestic violence themes has become a bit of a trend
or a myth being perpetuated around the Internet. There was something that Vox a quote I read in a Vox article that said, while tabloids like TMZ are reporting on a behind the scenes pr war between Lively and Baldoni, this part of the backlash, what we're talking about comes from Lively, all on her own, answering these questions the way she's chosen to. I could not disagree more. Because
they will cut an interview that's fifteen minutes. They will cut thirty two seconds where she says something that looks insensitive or silly and post it and be like, look, she's not talking about domestic violence. Well, actually, if you were to extend that clip out, she does answer the question, and.
Let's talk about how the internet economy works. The people who are cutting those clips for their media companies or for their you know, the people who are doing the interviews. Guess what, if you get to talk to someone for three minutes, the bit that you're going to cut and use is the bit where she talks about having just had a baby, or about her husband, or about something that is not domestic violence because it is more marketable and more people will click on it. That is not her fault.
And now it's like we've written this story, so we're looking for evidence to perpetuate the story. And what we do when we cancel people, we do it broadly, but we do it in a very specific way to women is then we start to dig. And the dig has begun. So the dig is about how Ryan Reynolds allegedly cheated on Scarlet your Hansen with Blake Lively. We are talking again about their twenty twelve wedding, which was twelve years ago, which was on a plantation, and so Blake Lively also racist.
The part of the story that they're not talking about is that they didn't know. They came out and apologized, they donated thousands of dollars to Black Lives Matter, and then they got remarried because they.
Were so horrified.
So they're going through now and finding every bit of evidence they can that Blake Lively is the devil, and the TikTok algorithm is just getting very excited about that. Claire and I are doing a bit of work on TikTok at the moment around Canceled the other podcast we do, and we've done an episode on Blake, an episode on Ryan.
And explain that Canceled is a comedy podcast, so you're not actually canceling.
No, it's a comedy podcast. The whole reason we started it is for moments like these, because it's.
Satirical about how insane this situation.
Is and how seriously we take it, and how now, for any other crime, you sit there, you get a charge and a sentence and we move on with our lives.
But for Blake Lively, we.
Just throw and throw and throw, when if you look at it, the no they're there thing is what exactly are we accusing her off? And that's what the podcast tries to do. On TikTok, where you know, doing a few videos, and we noticed that if we blatantly defend Blake Lively, which is our general position, the reach on those videos is minuscule, right, even if there's engagement, it's
like the reach is being limited. Then there was one video that went off about Blake Lively, and when I had a look at how we'd sold it, I went, Oh, if I was the algorithm, I would probably think that we were going to add a little bit of fuel to the fire. Now, there are a few things going on. The first is that it's a self fulfilling prophecy. People want bad things about Blake. I also think something is
happening with TikTok. You spoke before about Justin Baldoni and he's pr Crisis team who won the Johnny Depp amber Herd trial. Holly you recently recommended who trolled Amber, which looked at how you can basically get bots to win your affection in the public narrative. Something is going on here. I feel that very strongly.
I also just think, though we all need the perspective that this movie is a big success. It was an indie movie that didn't cost very much money to make. Everybody is going to see it. All of this attention is also making more and more people see it. And the thing that's interesting to me is that all of this Blake Lively stuff comes down to something that we talk about all the time, which is successful woman and
having a very successful moment. She must be awful, she must be a terrible person, she must not be likable, and they're digging up everything that makes her seem like a bit of a bitch. Basically so that then everyone can go Blake Lively bit of a bitch and clearly doesn't like women because she doesn't really care about domestic violence,
and all of those things are so subjective and so nonsense. Also, the idea that Blake Lively and Blake Lively alone decided how this movie was going to be marketed is so stupid that I can't bear it. Yes, of course she has a lot of power. She does because she's got a producer credit, She's married to one of Hollywood's most powerful men, no questions, She's got loads of power. But this is not the first film that is about a serious topic that has been marketed in a frivolous way.
It happens all the time, and it particularly happens when you are talking about violence against women. It's interesting because Colleen Hoover so who wrote these books, and they are enormously successful. We touched on this last week, but not just a little bit successful, like world headlines successful. She is one of the best selling authors in the world. So everybody knows what this book is about, right because
twenty million people have read it. And she also marketed the books with pretty flowers on the cover and in
a particular way. And I spoke a couple of years ago about how the last book that I wrote, which is termed commercial women's fiction, which is what Colleen Hoover is certainly termed as is generally seen to be frivolous and silly and you've got to put stripes or flowers or pink on the cover, but actually very often deal with serious, gritty things that are part of women's lives, are always sneered at and always looked down upon when actually women love them, like the women who are flocking
to see this film and the women who read Colleen Hoover books. You know, there's snobby attitudes about those books. And I want to be really clear that I haven't read them, because when we talked about it last time, a couple of people said, oh, Holly sounded snooty about those books. I haven't read them. But people who are very serious about literature in inverted commas look down enormously on the Colleen Hoovers of the world because she started
off self published. She writes books about women's lives that women want to read, but she doesn't come from a storied literary background. It annoys a lot of people. It probably also annoys a lot of people that this movie that you know, a powerful woman has helped promote and make is doing really well. And I just think we need to really examine what we're being sold here. If you want to go and see.
This movie, who cares.
Whether Blake Lively sometimes is in a bad mood, rolls her eyes like have you never been in a bad mood? And rolls her eyes like are we what is this about?
Well, that's a great irony, right is it? Yes, people are going to see it, and it's making a lot of money, so you go is a success? Who even cares about the backlash if people go and see a movie that's about domestic violence and about gendered relationships and power in those dynamics and they walk out of that film going I liked the film, but Blake Lively is a bitch. There's a great irony there, which is that we are still perpetuating this hatred of women, and we
can't see that that's a problem. The way that I've seen TikTok in particular interpret this is that everything bad about this project is the fault of the women. So Colleen Hoover in Perfect Story, Blake Lively in perfect marketing, and anything good about the film is the work of the man. And if you can't see that entrenched within that is misogyny, which is the same route that perpetuates
domestic violence. I think you're missing something. And that's not to say that Blake Lively is perfect or that she doesn't want criticism. I'm sure that she does.
But not like this, the volume compared to the crime. And I say crime like rolling my eyes, because everybody's just looking to hate. And you know, I even read a quote that someone had said in one of these interviews, if you have a message for victims of domestic violence, what would it be? And she said, you should just know that you are not defined by what's happened to you.
You are more than your worst experience, which is something that's fairly anadyne to say and is lovely and seemingly inoffensive. It's spun into oh, she doesn't care and she doesn't understand, and it's just like everyone's just looking to pile on. And it's what you say, Jesse. I can't think of a time recently when it's been a man like you. Look at j Lo, it was similar, you know, whether it's Meghan, and perhaps we're also guilty of it on this show. It's about Meghan, not Harry, Jlo, not Ben.
And it's funny. I was thinking at the logis last night when Larry Emda won. The men always win and are nominated. Carl won gold, Lisa was never not even nominated. Larry one gold. Kyler Gillies, who he also sits next to you on the couch every single day, you know, is not even nominated.
We do have to look at ourselves about this a little bit. I know that you'll tell me I'm finger wagging mere and you're probably right, But why can't we watch a woman she's having a big pr moment because she's got some big to sell. For nine of the last ten years, you wouldn't have heard from Blake Lively. You know, she's off doing her stuff. She's out there, putting herself out there to sell something that she believes in. And all any of us want to do is scratch
away at the surface. There must be something wrong here, there must be something bad here, there must be something dodgy about her. And it's like, why are we surprised that women don't want to put the heads above the parapet and put things out there and talk about them when this is what will come your way.
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Five people, including two doctors and his personal assistant, have been changed in connection with Matthew Perry's drug related death. Matthew Perry was so open about his history of drug abuse that he wrote an entire book about it. It's
a really good book. We've spoken about it on the show before, published before his death, about the fact that he had been so addicted to payingkillers for decades, was so deeply entrenched in his battle with addiction that he had spent something like nine million American dollars on trying
to beat it over the years. Of course, Perry was the very, very successful Friends star who died last October, and many reports said that when he was found on responsive in his hot tob and his La home that it was a shock but not a surprise, And those were actually the words that he used in his book about how his own family would have felt at various stages of his life if he had overdosed. So, if his passing was a case of self inflicted OD, why
have five people now been charged over his death. Last Friday, the news that police had arrested one of Perry's doctors, his personal assistant, and a woman widely referred to as
the Ketamine Queen made headlines around the world. The fact that he died of an overdose of ketamine, which is a powerful, short acting anesthetic, was widely greeted with some surprise in Hollywood last year because that drug has been in the headlines a lot as a therapeutic treatment for anxiety and depression among sort of Silicon Valley tech bros. And there are in American this is certainly not true
in Australia. It is legal to be used in therapeutic settings outside of hospitals, so it was once used as an anesthetic and a tranquilizer, a horse tranquilizer, yeah, a horse tranquiliser, but also by surgeons as a very effective anesthetic for operations and very serious things. You know, I've listened to podcast hosts talk about their therapy with it. It had become sort of mainstreamed, right, But apparently what had happened with Perry is is that his doctor first
prescribed him ketmine for depression. But as a man had fought addictions to painkillers for decades, it's not surprising that his use spiraled, and by the time of his death, his assistant police alleged was injecting him many times a day with dangerous levels.
Of the drug.
It was so sad reading about that. It was in his doctor tragedy.
And the woman who was the dealer it seems here, who they largely call the ketamine Queen, who apparently deals with a lot of very high end Hollywood clients, were convinced that they could get Perry to pay almost anything for this drug. There was a text from the doctor saying, I wonder how much this moron would pay, and the answer was a lot. He apparently was paying more than one hundred and sixty five times its price by the
time of his death. Jesse, do you think that this story will derail that changing narrative about drugs like ketamine being used in therapy or is it just a story about a celebrity who was able to push all the guardrails.
I don't think it will.
The more I rare about this story, the more I realized that it was about someone who was in such a position that no one could say no to him, and that's the most dangerous position anyone can be in. There was a great column by Marina Hyde who said, getting yourself into a position where people can't deny you of what you ask for is where things get really scary.
I think Michael Jackson was in a similar position. It kind of clarified, and I think that this is more the case in the US, and it is in Australia. But if you have enough money, the hippocratic oath of
do no harm can be absolutely ignored. There are people at all levels in medicine who have studied this because reading this from the outside, you would go, oh, he had a drug dealer, like a street drug dealer, but you go no. These were people in white coats who had an absolute responsibility to him and his health to not give him as much as he wanted. Because the doctors who had initially prescribed this or his mental health issues they were allowed to do that, did so in
small doses. He felt it wasn't enough for him and so he was going.
And the clinic I think ended up refusing to treat him because he was wanting more and more.
But they were doing the right thing.
This is the problem with not everyone can take drugs and have the same effect. I don't just mean the effect of the drugs, I mean how they feel about it afterwards. So Holy, I've listened to some of the same podcasts as you with people that we both know who've tried ketamine therapy, and they literally, because these are people who don't take drugs or don't have problems with addiction, they go to the clinic, they take it, they go, oh, that was interesting, and either they liked it or they
didn't like it. But then that's the end, right, It's like having a one time experience. But people who have addiction issues, or who are prone to addiction, who have a history of addiction, they can't. So there is no safe way. There was never a safe going to be a safe way for Matthew Perry to try ketamine.
And this is what's confusing, right, because I was looking it up.
Ketamine isn't addictive, but the feeling you get from the ketamine is likely addictive to someone who has had a history of an addictive so I think that the doctors who initially prescribed did it in a controlled way were probably doing the right thing. And there are doctors who are exploring this and doing research papers, and I encourage that. I think the more research we do about treatments for anxiety and depression and pain and all of it is really good.
But to me, this.
Became about wanting more and having the means. But I suppose that if you're someone who is an addict, whether or not you're Matthew Perry, and you have all the money in the world, the lengths you'll go to to get what you want are pretty extreme, which is what we saw.
His personal assistant had been working for him since nineteen ninety four. I also have read the book, and you know clearly he was had a lot of drug problems through that whole time. He really struggled with addiction. So this is obviously someone who has been and it's hard to say whether he was enabling Perry. I mean he was, but also he needed a job presumably, or was he exploding Perry. Was Perry exploiting him. It's really hard to say.
And that's why when he died suddenly, and all those people rushed out to say, no, there were no drug paraphernalia found in the house. That's because the assistant who had injected him that morning more than once, came home found his body quickly before calling nine to one one after he'd pulled him out and established that he couldn't be arrived, went and cleaned up all the drug paraphernalia, so it wasn't found. But then so much catamine was
found in his system that it started this investigation. But I mean, anyone who was following him on social media, all these claims, Oh he was sober, He was so but he wasn't sober, and you could tell that by looking at his social posts.
There were also they were able to look at the Google searches of the ketamine Queen as they called her, who had very quickly googled if ketemine can be cited as a cause of death, and then in the group text were saying delete these threads, delete these threads. I'm ninety percent sure we're not liable that kind of thing. So there was obviously some understanding of how dangerous these levels were. They just didn't care because of the money they were getting. I think they said, like twelve US
dollars for a vile of kenemine. They were selling it for thousands.
One of the reasons why I really I think about Matthew Perry's book a lot is because I think it is one of the most honest and visceral descriptions of addiction that I've ever read. Because I think from the outside, it might be simple to dismiss, you know, his struggles as well. He was a man with too much privilege and too much access to everything, But he often talked about how, you know, other people he knew could walk away from things that he absolutely couldn't, which is back
to what you said mea. The thing about it is really good, Jesse, that all these different kinds of drugs that are illegal and now being re examined in a way because there's also lots of hallucinogen research about whether that can help with anxiety and depression. But you'll often hear addicts say, people who are sober and in recovery, that's just not an option that I can take because
I know what will happen. And Matthew Perry was in that camp, and he would have known that too, And it's just so heartbreakingly sad that there's a little industry there that were just so ready and eager to exploit that and call the man a moron and give him as much as he could physically, well not even that he couldn't physically take. It's just kind of devastatingly sad. I think for the people around Matthew Perry who just can't understand why this could never be beaten for him.
Last week, em Rada needed our help, didn't she.
She did just.
Because she's divorced, and in a recent interview she opened up about what became of her marriage, how the dynamic shifted. And there's also a viral video going around talking about this theory that no marriage can sustain to big jobs, and we discussed whether that's true. We looked at how em Rata kind of fell victim to a lot of the gendered dynamics that a lot of women do, and it made for a very interesting conversation. A link to that subscriber episode will be in the show notes.
Thank you out Louders for being with us on this post logis Monday. I don't think that Meo did too much of a carl, did she really? She backed that up pretty well. We will be back in your ears tomorrow and thank you to our fabulous team for helping us put this show together.
We'll see you tomorrow.
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