Everything Is Content - Holding Space for a Wickedly Weird Press Tour

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

What is this feeling so sudden and new? Yes, Beth, Ruchira and Oenone saw Wicked and they're not afraid to report back. Welcome to a very special, very magical (and very juicy) Wicked episode. Listen to find out their review of the year's biggest blockbuster. There were lots of tears... from Cynthia and Ariana. How did the rollout for Wicked turn out so unhinged? Is this an example of theatre kid behaviour and unrestrained earnestness, or something darker? Also, could this set the new bar for what movie marketing looks like from now on? Say what you want but every minute of Wicked's BTS has gone viral. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. We especially adore those who tune in for our bonus eps, follow and rate us five stars. Is that you? Let us know on TikTok or Instagram as we'd love to virtually kiss you. ----------Logan Paul: Bad InfluencePandora Sykes' SubstackThe Most‘Holding Space’ for ‘Defying Gravity’: Viral ‘Wicked’ Journalist on Getting Recognized in Public, Selling Merch and What on Earth She MeantWe’re Holding Space for All the Very Best Wicked MemesWhat's Going On With The Wicked MovieThe Wicked Press Tour Was…a Lot. I Miss It AlreadyOzempic, eating disorders and the new era of commenting on people’s bodies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything Is Content, the podcast that wades into the week's biggest pop culture discourse. TV, film, books, celebs, memes, TikToks, we do it all. We're the yellow brick road guiding you through Oz, aka the land of content.

This week on the podcast, we're talking about the year's biggest film and the mad press cycle that's come from it. Yes, I mean, Wicked. Follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod. And make sure you also hit follow wherever you listen to us. And please, please, please, can you make sure that you've listened to our extra episode, which comes out on Wednesday. But first, what have you both been loving this week? I watched a documentary by Matt Shea, who I've mentioned on the podcast before. This one, he looked at Logan Paul and it was on the BBC.

Have you guys seen this? No. I've not heard of Matt Shea. Is he like an important person in documentaries? So he used to work for Vice and then he's been doing a few documentaries recently for the BBC. The last one he did was on Andrew Tate where he literally met Andrew Tate and became a bit of a villain in the Tate manosphere

where all of Andrew Tate's fans just basically like piled on him for like months and months and months, calling him a beater, just like essentially attacking him. It was an amazing doc because he looks not only at the kind of manosphere that andrew tate has created but also a lot of the illegal shit that andrew tate was doing on the side in open sphere of everyone but had gone undetected that's one doc that's on bbc3 this one

is on logan paul and similarly takes a really nuanced look at this guy who I think most people probably think of this guy as a bit of a dickhead, right? But it kind of goes beyond that. Not only is he just a bit of a weird guy online creating this audience of young men who are quite impressionable, there's some potentially illegal shit there as well. So this documentary looks at cryptocurrency and the fact that this guy's been shilling so many meme coins to his audience and running a pump and dump potentially multiple times getting his followers to buy these meme coins inflating his own investment in them and then just like chucking them to shit and losing people tens of thousands of pounds multiple times

across the world and various establishments that are meant to crack down on this because they have so much to do they just don't have time to crack down on it so he's able to run this shit again and again and again which he has allegedly done question is logan paul the one that was in the fight or is this a different because i only recently learned that there was two pauls two paul brothers i actually don't know if he's the one in the fight he's definitely they both fight they both do those really lame yeah the other one's called Jake years ago they lived in like a big content house with loads of other YouTubers didn't they but I actually I'd love to watch this I really don't know enough about him

even though I kind of understand his impact in the area that he sits in but I've never really engaged in anything he's done so it was Jake Paul that did the fight against Mike Tyson so his brother both of them together I don't really understand the differences between them but I just understand one of them was the one that filmed going to that forest in Japan where people had died by suicide and he filmed them I'm pretty sure that's Logan Paul but if I'm wrong I apologize this is definitely not my wheelhouse it's definitely like a male area of the internet I don't lurk on but what can be said and what Matt Shea does a really good job of looking at is these aren't just like losers on the internet they're very dark malevolent beings and it's really fucking dangerous actually I would really recommend

watching it what about you Anoni what have you been loving this week my recommendation this week and I don't know if this is like recommending wine to an alcoholic is that problematic thing to say oh god no I just mean because it's like in the context of this podcast and what I'm about to recommend I've been reading Pandora Sykes's Substack which I have been subscribed to for ages and have never actually really read anything but she did a post called I went on a Colleen Hoover binge where she reads seven of Colleen Hoover's books to try and understand like why do they do so well and it's such an amazing piece she's like let's be honest if this person's doing this writing which appeals to so many people that is actually an incredible feat and she says it's actually really easy to write something that's

super niche what's really hard is to make millions of people enjoy something so she's like she must be doing something right so she kind of unpicks what it is about the books, like what it is about the characters and the storyline that makes people want to keep going back. And it was quite a generous read. She doesn't shy away from looking at the flaws with the books. She also talks about how she's used Colleen Hoover as like a put down,

like there wasn't a Colleen Hoover on this list or whatever. And she's like, actually, we really shouldn't be doing that because reading is a dying art. Lots of people aren't readers. And if people are reading Colleen Hoover's books, that's great. She's a writer, they're readers. We shouldn't be doing that because reading is a dying art lots of people aren't readers and if people are reading Colleen Hoover's books that's great she's a writer they're readers we shouldn't be so snobby about books so I then went on to read some more of her sub stacks and it's very good. Ah I didn't even know she had a sub stack I'm really quite removed from Pandora Sykes content at the moment ever since the high low I've been yeah I don't know I've never really

gotten into her writing but I'll definitely I'll definitely give her sub stack a go now. Question about Colleen Hoover. Have either of you actually read any Colleen Hoovers? Because I've read one and I won't, I can't again. Really? Why? What was it? Just dreadful. It's just tripe. It's just unsexy shit. I did read one. I read one because we did it for my book club a couple of years ago.

I read It Ends With Us, the one that they turned the film with Blake Lively. It is abysmally bad in my in my mind I know I've just said a lot of stuff about not being snobby but like it's even her name is Lily Bloom and blah blah blah that being said I read it in a day it's quite compulsive reading and she says this as well it's almost like a soap opera or like a telenovela it's easy reading in a way and I wouldn't probably read any others but an interesting thing Pandora said is like the more you read them, the more you want to keep reading them because you get into the flow. And they all have the same beats and rhythm and similar stories of often working class people whose whole life revolves around their job, who have quite a small life. They don't have that many friends because they spend all their time working.

She was like, that's actually a massive part of it where so much of literature is like sad girl fiction about women who work in the media or the arts who live quite cosmopolitan lives and she was like there's something very appealing because everyone in her books has these quite traditional vocational roles and are constantly working worried about money they have kids quite young so that aspect of it I was like that's actually a really good interesting read of it but I'm not reading anymore. What have you been loving this week Beth? I actually had to dig quite deep for this because I got a recommendation last week from a very good podcast called everything is content from you actually Anoni it was breeders and I have done nothing but watch it because I absolutely adore it it's excellent but I was really stumped this week because I was like well I can't recommend that but I've got a book which I have started read maybe two chapters of

and I'm really enjoying. It is called The Most, and it's by Jessica Antony, and it came out this year, I believe. So readers will probably have heard of it. It was long-listed for some prizes. It's had a really good critical reception, and it's quite weird. It's all set in, I think, an eight-hour period, at least within the same day, set in the late 1950s in Delaware America it's an unseasonably warm November day and what happens is a housewife tells her husband she's not feeling very well so he should take the kids to church and then come home and they go off and when they come back she's in the pool of the apartment complex where they live and she won't get out of the pool it's about kind

of limits and marriage and I guess mental health as well. And just like what breaks a person like she to become a mother and get married to pursue this life gave up a potentially promising tennis career. But as a woman in the 1950s, was it ever promising? You learn a lot about him, you learn a lot about her, you learn a lot about their marriage. And it's really quite eerie. A lot of people on Goodreads were saying you should read this in one day, which I haven't been able to do. I haven't had time to kind of not break

this real-time narrative that's happening. It's frustrating. It's weird. I'm really actually enjoying it a lot. I know two chapters in, three chapters in. I'm going to tentatively highly recommend this one. Is it depressing reading books like that? Or do you feel like

you feel seen in those kind of fears and those anxieties? Because it feels like women really enjoy films and books that explore women who've got married and are maybe not feeling so fulfilled. And I wonder what it gives us. Totally. I think that's exactly it. I think it gives voice to a generation of women which were very real. And I guess in this era of the longing tradwife content, we're looking back longingly when actually we should be looking back in horror. Yeah, I think it is satisfying in a way that it does give voice to, I guess, a modern woman's anxieties of choosing one life, being a bit trapped in it, and then I guess what means of protest you have. That sounds right up my street. I also just love anything that's really about interiority. I don't necessarily love things that are full of plot. I really like it when nothing much happens in a book

and you're just getting inside someone's mind. It's exactly that. Unless you've been living under a rock and i know i say that every few episodes but genuinely is there a single person on this earth who hasn't heard about the wicked film we're gonna dive into our review but firstly for the uninformed maybe the 0.5 people out there wicked is a villain origin story for the wicked witch Witch of the West and is loosely based on The Wizard of Oz. Wicked comes from the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire. In it, Elphaba, a green witch, goes to university to be with her younger sister Nessa. But while she's there, she becomes a social outcast and in contrast meets Galinda, the popular girl who

later becomes Glinda the Good. The play offers almost a retelling and basically, like I said, a villain origin story for how the two characters become who they are when Dorothy arrives in Oz. The musical is one of the biggest musicals of our time and premiered in 2003 and plans for turning it into a film were announced in 2012, but faced huge delays because of COVID. So for Wicked Stands, they've been living with the fact that a film were announced in 2012 but faced huge delays because of covid so for wicked stands they've been living with the fact that a film was coming since 2012 they've been living with this for a fuck ton of time john m chu came on as director and cynthia arrivo and ariana grande came on as elphaba and galinda respectfully in 2021 the film is a two-passer and the first one dropped last

week the second one is coming a whole fucking year later in November. The first thing I want to ask you girls is what were your thoughts before you were going in? Were you theatre stands? Were you excited for the film? What was your pre-film opinion before you went in and what was your post-film reaction? I'm a musical theatre kid so I was such a big fan. I knew all of the music, but I'd never actually seen the musical. So I knew the story, but I'd never seen it on stage. And I remember my friends going to see it in the West End, and I would get so jealous.

But I've always loved those songs. I thought they were amazing. Ages ago, when they first announced it and I saw it filming, I wasn't that excited, weirdly. And then, in the last couple of weeks, I've been getting really buzzy about it, like so excited. Then when I watched it, I was blown away. I cried the the whole way through I can't believe I have to wait a whole year to watch part two I'm very glad that you outed yourself as a music theatre stan because

I wasn't sure if you're going to be brave enough I am the opposite of that I feel very embarrassed about that because a lot of people that I didn't know including you and Oney to be musical theatre what do we call you people stans yeah? Yeah. Theatre kids? Theatre kids. Sort of being like, yeah, I've been here all along. I've said it in previous episodes, I genuinely don't think anyone on earth knew less than I did and was excited, heard amazing things. Yeah, so going in, no expectations.

The first 25 minutes-ish, it's a bit of a culture adjustment, I will say, as someone who doesn't know this stuff it's a bit bubble gummy very sort of wonka I know that's stupid to say but like they go to a university called Shears University do you understand how someone of my ignorance might be like I can't get on board with this 20 minutes in a goat starts talking and I'm like I have to get on board or I have to get off board and I got on board and I absolutely loved it from then on but it took I will say it was like a bit of an atmosphere adjustment like entering the planet of Oz and Theatre Kids okay is that okay Anoni? That's absolutely nuts the minute it started I

started crying. Richer what did you what did you I was gasping and I went with my friend Livy that I went to school with and we were both in drama together I was Blousey in Bugsy Malone she we did all of the plays together in choir together we were holding each other's fingers we were gasping crying resting our heads on each other I can't believe it took you 20 minutes what about you Richa what was your reaction can I just say you coming out as a theater kid is the most unexpected thing that I could ever have thought would come out from this episode I had no fucking idea what reveal and secondly you were literally looking aghast when Beth was talking which I just want people to know I am not a musical theater stan I went in cynicism in full check five minutes sat down into the film they burst out into song and I was like oh god there's like two hours 40 of

this it took me a second to click in after that and I was just there for the whole thing I fucking loved it I was enthralled I was amazed I was obsessed with it I was laughing I was like cackling at various bits and being one of the loudest in the cinema I was just fully into it so quickly it was incredible I was just fully into it so quickly it was incredible I was obsessed do you know what else I think it might be as well part of the joy is when you're younger so much of the stories that you read or the films that you watch whatever is based around magic and magical world building and so infrequently as an adult do we get to indulge in that kind of thing and so the the ethereal world building, the nonsense words that they used,

the actual genuine magic, set aside the musicalness of it, but the actual world I just wanted to live in it, especially when the real world is so dystopian. It was lovely to be immersed in fantasy for that amount of time. I agree. It really reminded me of Harry Potter.

And I know everyone always compares like every film to that film, but the world building and the kind of childlike joy about it and obviously the fact that it's based in like a school college style setting it really did remind me of that magic of oh I wish I was there and the library scenes and all the like boarding room bits it just felt so fun yeah because it does invite you to suspend your disbelief and to just shed all cringe at the door. The words were my favourite part.

I can't think of any off the top of my head, but the kind of bending of the words together in a completely self-serious way, the names of all of the characters. Like, you cannot take yourself too seriously and enjoy a film like that. I guess any musical adaptation can be so silly because you're taking big risks.

You're imagining the world that people have been able to imagine just by watching a stage set, just by watching a few bits of props a few people being flung into the air they're embellishing the world that exists in the minds of the fans and i think that's a big risk could have gone the way of cats which actually i've not seen and let's be honest i'm never gonna see but i followed the audience reaction to that so closely beloved weird musical didn't work on screen a flop a weird flop but it's just it it feels like it's captured the magic of something like Harry Potter people are completely believing it and that many people want the story to go on so I yeah you've won me theatre people completely I know I know I'm resentful in a way but I feel

like this is what Taylor Swift fans must feel like it feels good to feel joyous doesn't it and to leave resentment at the door I'm kind of I'm kind of here for it but I also think having grown up with The Wizard of Oz as a film that I watch on repeat which I'm actually going to watch now because I want to remember the story it's the cleverness of this reinvention of this story it's the parable of the story. It's so smart. It's so prescient even now. I think the fact that Cynthia Erivo is a black woman playing this green witch is also amazing and added so many layers and so much depth to her character. I just thought, God, it's so clever. I just, I found it really inspiring. I love the unraveling. I love that someone took

a really old story that already existed, wrote it into a book and someone turned that into a musical and it all adds up and it makes everything make sense and I think that's really lovely when someone takes art and makes something new of it but can we quickly talk about Cats though because I didn't see it either and I just remember it being awful. Richa have you seen Cats? No I've never seen it I was obsessed with the memes and the culture around it but I've literally never seen that play or film oh see I saw the play I watched the play quite a few times when I was younger I used to love it I watched a VHS of the play once and my friend made me watch I was probably nine years old and I went into I could only describe it as a sort of waking coma I was so affronted I wasn't used to that kind of carry on at home and she was loving it and I was sitting there

I could feel every bone in my body I was like I've got to go I it was awful to me it was it was traumatic but I saw a clip of Taylor Swift who I'd completely blanked that she's in that film and I genuinely thought it was an AI generated clip because it was so bad like I thought someone had typed into AI make me like a parody of the cats I knew it was bad but I just never seen a clip and it's her singing even the sort of like CGI cat form that she's in looked terrible did you guys see that there was a petition to stop James Corden from being in this movie as well no it was signed by like two million people I think we should do that for all films because he's been in he was in he was in cats and he was in something else so everyone was like do not let James Corden near this movie and two million people signed it

I can imagine that they would have cast him as the goat or something. So yeah, it's a prescient fear we all have with every film. One of my crushes, Peter Dinklage, is the voice of the goat, which I didn't realize until I left the cinema. Because I didn't recognize his voice. I didn't know that. I didn't recognize it. Can we talk about what we thought of Cynthia and Ariana?

Because going into the film, one of my big questions was Ariana Grande is obviously a big point of this film the fact that she's a singer and she's not acted for a while going into this I wasn't sure what to make of her but I thought she was incredible and Cynthia Cynthia's her eyes I feel like was so emotive she had this kind of stoicism at various points but her eyes would just give way to this deep heartbreak whenever she was getting socially isolated or you know the trauma with her parents she was she was breathtaking. You know I agree and also Ariana Grande's comic timing is amazing. Incredible. She's so she brought so much to it I was a bit worried that we were so

overexposed to Cynthia and Ariana in the lead-up that I wasn't going to be able to see beyond them being Cynthia and Ariana in the film and oh my god was like could I not have been more wrong both of their acting is absolutely impeccable they both brought so much to the characters we're going to talk about the press in a bit but once you've watched the film you kind of understand why they're so obsessed with each other because you can just tell it means so much to them their chemistry is great and you can tell like it it doesn't work without the other i think cynthia was amazing because she's playing sort of weight of several worlds on her shoulders she gives away so much via her eyes and via her performance but she's also so guarded whereas galinda and i didn't know about these characters before going in i just

knew one was green one more pink galinda is very comic character it's very hammed up and i was like is she giving it too much and reading a lot i was like no she has to probably she just has to be this huge character she has to be really the hair flicks even the subtle like mouth movements i thought were just fantastic and i have only ever considered her a singer maybe as her own screen queens so it was it was so refreshing and i was so pleased i was was like, I'm seeing this as you are Galinda turned Glinda. You aren't Ariana Grande as pop star playing your favorite character. I was very pleased. Loved it.

I totally agree. It kind of made me remember in the mad year that she's had, which we will definitely get onto, don't worry. I forgot that one of the best draws of Ariana is that she has always been funny she's a funny person like whether she's on SNL or whether she's on another late night chat show and she does impressions or she does various voices she's always been fucking funny and I think in this role we've really got reminded of the fact that not only is she hard working to the point that she probably you know would commit to doing a role like this and I feel like she's changed her real life voice to be high pitched because of this kind of method

acting which nuts she never used to sound like that but I think in total even though she's been embroiled in scandal we can't help but love somebody who commits to the role who does a good job and also is fucking funny because did you also see they were saying that like initially they were going to try to get Ariana to sing the songs in a more like hip-hoppy way no yeah they were like they kind of wanted to modernize it and Ariana said no I do not want to sing like Ariana I want to be Glinda because she is a theater kid so this to her is like the role of a lifetime I was also kind of worried about that but you're right I also then remembered that she's so good at mimicking other people and she can do everyone's voices and she can do like Celine Dion and Chaz. So of course she was always going to have the capability to sing

like a Broadway singer and like a musical theatre singer. Also the side cast, Bowen Yang is the kind of bitchy best friend. I would cackle every time he did like one word answers, he did a side look. He was doing the most with the least script, like Jesus. I think that was when i was still in my unsure phase because i'd only know bernie young from snl i was a bit like oh okay is this a sort of like cameo moment is this and then i came all the way around and i thought god he's really brilliant glinda has her two sort of besties slash sidekicks and there's bernie young as as one and then a woman who i don't recognize but she was also very good very kind of physical expression based performances by both of them and just really

I think it felt like every detail had been considered with with these side characters as well I guess in a 2 hour 40 run time you can play with that but I was kind of longing to see him again it was so funny. The only member of the cast where I was like was actually Michelle Yeoh I thought she was so powerful so graceful but I thought her singing it really wasn't great and I know that not everyone in a musical has to be a really strong singer but I did feel a bit sad about that no but even though she was beautiful amazing she was so powerful as that character but yeah I was a bit like I do agree with you and I had a chat with a friend about this exact thing I think because I was so in it and she only had one song it didn't bother me at the time but it definitely was a weak point

in the film because all the other songs obviously Cynthia and Ariana they would belt their hearts out and you would just be floored like I would get a physical reaction every time they sang like a soaring feeling in my chest I did not have that with Michelle Yeoh admittedly but I think she just passed it getting through that song and I think it was fine it didn't detract but it definitely wasn't the best point I think it could have been a bit more powerful if they did get a different singer but I love Michelle Yeoh so I don't want to hate on her no I love her too I know I thought you were gonna say Jeff Goldblum is a sort of iffy moment because I'd love him love to see him but I was a bit like well there's just Jeff he did he was just sort of Jeff but that's why I thought he was he's such an uncanny person anyway that as the wizard this

kind of fraudulent secretly malevolent character I actually thought he was perfectly cast because he's kind of like you're you're right but I didn't see it as a weakness I just thought he is just naturally like the wizard rather than like oh he's just playing himself he's having a great year playing Zeus in chaos and then now the wizard of Oz he's just playing almost the exact same character just across various like fables and folklore and mythical lands I've heard from two people though that I've heard from two people though that I've spoken to in the last couple of days that apparently, allegedly, don't sue me,

he's a bit creepy. Nothing nefarious, just like people that have interviewed him are like, he doesn't, he's not great. Speaking of the few men in the film, Jonathan Bailey, I know he's in his 30s playing somebody at school, but I thought he was so well-cast

as almost this prince charming, slightly deeper character, but superficial on the outside. I have never fancied someone more. I know. I wanted to cry out of just sadness that he won't be with me only because he's gay. Because obviously if he wasn't gay, he would be with me. I also, what I loved is that when he does his big dance number, is that he's flirting with everyone and everyone wants to have sex with him I loved that so much that was

the best it's like sexually democratic he's just sort of like looking everyone with just such kind of playful lust in his eyes and I was like that is what an audience needs a potentially bisexual pansexual male lead who's a bit of a diamond in the rough he's like not set in his ways he's not a full arsehole but he's like you could you could fix him do you know what I mean you could fix him if you were just green enough yes he could honestly have chemistry with like a piece of wood like he's so amazingly engaging I've never seen him on screen not be just entirely captivating and also he looks so young but it is funny because they are all grown adults like how old is Cynthia Erivo I think he's 36 she's 37 yeah I mean I didn't understand when

they're at school I was like oh okay they're meant to be school children but it's like a university of shiz so it sort of made sense and she looks very young yeah because she said we met at school but then is that because in America they say school for uni oh college is uni right where do you go to school I went to Harvard law school I think oh god can any of our few American listeners explain to us is school college and uni all the same thing and then what do you actually call school then so Anoni earlier you said it's such a prescient film and actually I didn't know to expect that this would be so political which is so ignorant because musical theatre often is. But watching it, it's like a film about propaganda. It's a film about a group of people essentially consenting to,

I don't want to say fascism when we're talking about the film Wicked, but it does feel like that kind of creep of fascism. And I'm really surprised actually that the right wing, especially in America, hasn't attempted some kind of boycott of this. I know it's a very old story, but it feels so parallel to what's going on in America. And people are already calling Donald Trump the wizard. People are already drawing those parallels. I found it so powerful and also so fascinating that this has come out at this time after all of this planning. And it's just lined up so

tragically with the American election that there is this kind of figure in charge who has no business being in charge, who's kind of trying to sow dissent. And as this was happening on screen, I was like, huh, this isn't as escapist as I was hoping. Well, I think with films and with musicals and books as well, using animals rather than humans almost like shields it from people who don't care to engage with the media itself so I think they can get away with this because many of the people who are probably like the arsey right wing are not going to watch this and they're not going to think too deeply about it but for all of us in the know who want to engage with it we can see beyond the symbolism and also I think because Wicked

obviously has such a large queer fan base such a a large female fan base. I think it's almost just like kind of derided by a lot of right-wing people and a lot of like grown-up people as well because I've seen so many male columnists bitching and shitting on it but also just like getting really annoyed at this whole discourse of people singing in the cinema which we will go on to I promise I promise but I think that's a big reason why they probably just don't consider it a threat in any way I also think what's often interesting with any kind of media books tv film that's created for a younger audience they often have that fable parable moral thing sewed into a story which makes it more digestible understandable which is why it's also interesting because a lot of the people going to see wicked are fully grown adults people in their 30s and

40s and i think we forget that so many of these stories that are for children use animals and magic to explain things like totalitarianism and fascism and racism because we're so used to watching obvious things as adults because you can tell that those realities through stories which are very realistic it's almost weirdly more powerful when it's through that like the bit with the animals when they're losing their voices and they're losing their rights and then when she does the spell on the monkey and then they all got wings and then they're saying they're using the spies I mean there was just so many bits and also that horrible feeling when Michelle Yeoh's character's on the microphone and she's going she's evil she's wicked and and how quickly everyone can

descend on her and suddenly everyone's views of her has changed it's like being cancelled there's just so many bits in it that I was not only watching like a feast for my eyes I really felt like I was 16 15 16 again when I was watching it and also there was all this other layered heaviness to it I just think it's brilliant yeah just for anyone who hasn't watched it yet there is a moment where michelle yo turns on elphaba and it's so interesting to see how quickly once you have certain you know leaders of power they can completely flip the script flip the narrative change a whole town a whole world's impression of one person and it becomes villain and hero despite the knowledge and the facts that we can see on screen so it's yeah really interesting metaphor for misinformation and the times we live in I guess one thing I really want to know from you guys is there were so many accusations that the film would be so bloated

from the sheer fact it's 2040 which is a long long time did you think it felt bloated did it feel like the right amount of time what were your thoughts on that it was not bloated because I had to break the news to my mum that we were going to watch a film that was started at 7 15 and finished gone 10 and she's not really a musical person and I was like well I've booked the tickets now we're going to see it because I wanted her to drive me because I don't like driving in the dark and so I was dreading that it flew by like a flying monkey it was so I cannot I genuinely think something happened to like the temporal orbit of the cinema I was in it went so so quickly mad what was interesting was it wasn't pacey like they gave the songs space they held space for the

songs there was time but it moved in such a beautiful way I was so in the universe I could have sat there for another five hours so what I liked was that it was long it could have been shorter but I'm glad that it wasn't you know I mean they they allowed it to have room to breathe which I thought was beautiful you could have cut some of them songs I wouldn't have before anyone gets across me I wouldn't have cut the song I wouldn't have cut them but you could have which one name them oh I think the songs they just sing about going places. That library one went on and I wanted it for John and Bailey, but I was like, what are we doing?

But I will say that because it was very long, because they didn't cut the songs, it felt like it was a film for the fans, not for the film critics. And we'll get onto the criticism of the film and it's mostly centred around the length. The fans have not got a single complaint about the length. I think because the filmmakers have gone,

we're going to give the girlies and gays everything. Film critics, sorry, you've got to sit there a bit longer. So sorry to play devil's avocado. It was long. I like the songs. Were they all necessary? I don't know. One slight haterade comment that I do have.

What was up with the colour grading? Why did it look like that? I feel as if it looked like AI was on the board of creative design and was whispering in their ears make it look like AI make it look like me they've obviously spent so much money on these sets but even Cynthia and Ariana look like AI because of the way that they graded it or I guess had filtered it or I don't know what it looks so much less expensive than it so clearly was. The director John M2 actually responded saying I mean there's colour all over it I think what we wanted to do was immerse people into Oz to make it a real place because if it was a fake place

if it was a dream in someone's mind then the real relationships and the stakes that these two girls are going through wouldn't feel real but I agree with you Ruchira I think especially because it's based on the Wizard of Oz which famously is so technicolor and it's magical I would have liked it to have been a bit brighter because did you see they literally built Emerald City that wasn't green screen they actually built all of that that was real and when you see the pictures of it it's so rich it's beautiful so I agree I think it felt a bit unsaturated and actually a bit like depressing do you remember when the Harry Potter films got later on and the color went all a bit funny it did it was giving that a little bit I

agree it could have been brighter you know what's ironic he says he wants it to be actualized and less dreamlike I would say that what they have done to it has made it feel more dreamlike. It feels less clear. It feels foggy. And yeah, that crystal kind of clarity is gone from it. Especially if you do go and look at, I know we don't do Technicolor, we can't do Technicolor anymore. But if you go and look at a film like The Wizard of Oz, it is a feast for the eyes.

Everything looks drab in comparison. I think there's one scene in Wicked that I was like, God, this is gorgeous. It's when Fiyero and Elphaba in the woods and it's this sort of enchanted woodland scene it's so rich and I was like maybe being greedy but I was like god I wish a little more of it was a bit more like this and just so rich in colour but they're quite backlit as well I wasn't too fussed because you know I didn't have high expectations I didn't have any expectations but I'm hearing and I'm holding space for the criticism I also just wanted to say one other thing about the film my favorite thing actually was Glinda's costuming

I thought every single one of her outfits was breathtaking that dress that she wears to the ball again my childhood kind of wonder came back for those outfits like if I had been a little girl how much would you want to have a dress-up outfit like the one she wears the ball that also kind of reminded me as well of Harry Potter and the dance in the Goblet of Fire and it's like oh I just loved all of her outfits I thought she looked amazing and like all of her bits and bobs all of those boxes those like what do you even call them those like beauty cases they're like fashion um what are they called the like boxes trunks vanity boxes maybe vanity boxes trunks and all pink and just like all bursting out and these pop-ups it was yeah so magical my only thing that actually I found quite distracting was

why did Glinda not have a uniform and why did Elphaba not have to wear a uniform and then when she like got hotted up when she had her glow up she then started wearing uniform but Glinda was just wearing pink I don't understand why she was allowed to do that it was like Blair and Serena almost like why do you two I guess because they're the main characters of the film is the answer yeah it was a little bit anachronistic if it was like centurions where everyone has a uniform but they've all sort of like customized it I love that but it was the fact that everyone had a uniform and then Glinda just wore pink and it wasn't a problem like why is everyone wearing the uniform then you guys are like the grumbling school friends on the corner of the library being

like why do they get to not wear the uniform she's rolled her skirt up loads miss oh my god we used to get so told off for rolling our skirt so then my friend's mom just like went and got her skirt took up so short so they tried to tell her for rolling it but it literally just been taken up to like an inch cool mom so she couldn't get told off I know such a cool mom I tried to ask my mom she said no yeah I would roll it as soon as I left the house and it would be like a belt like literally just about covering my crotch it was it was not good but also the roll would be like a rubber band around your stomach it would look like I had a muffin top I had floor-length gray skirts so I can't even slightly relate

to this and what we would do is bring them really low down on the kind of hips because you couldn't couldn't bring them up to what to be like a three-quarter length that's even worse so I can't actually relate and I don't feel sorry for you but also I was thinking about this the day because I saw a picture funny enough literally the friend I went with shadow picture sent me a picture of us when we were like 15 and our skirts were so low and I remember that back then it was really embarrassing to have like a high-waisted thing and then suddenly when I got to 18 high-waisted started to get into like fashion and I remember having a high-waisted skirt and thinking that was like really cutting edge oh my god I'll never go back I can never do a low

waist never I think you would both fit in at gigs and shits and gigs university cheers I'm taking this very seriously both fit in at Shits and Gigs University. Cheers. Cheers University. I'm taking this seriously. I'm taking this very seriously. Okay, so I wanted to ask you both if you are holding space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity. Of course, of course. It's so powerful. Let me hold your little finger as I say yes.

Yes, please do. You're not alone. A couple of other people have also been holding space for the lyrics. According to the journalist, Tracey E. Gilchrist, in a now viral video, which I'm sure all of you have seen, Tracey reports this to Cynthia and Ariana, who immediately have a completely emotional response to the news, which left everyone quite bamboozled because she didn't really say anything. And then in a piece for Variety, Tracy explained that the interview was actually like a couple of days after the US presidential election. And she said that the Trump administration is targeting LGBTQ plus people via Project 25. So when Cynthia sings, I'm through accepting limits, there's power in that. But Tracy never actually got to get to that point because Cynthia and

Ariana were so overcome by her saying that first bit that to most people just didn't mean it was just completely nonsensical that that ended up being the whole interview and so they're just like absolutely bawling Ariana's holding Cynthia's singular finger with her really long nail and they're just they're like this is all I've ever wanted that's exactly what I wanted to happen everyone's like what are you talking about this doesn't mean anything. But they have been doing this the whole press tour. The pink and green pair have been welling up on the red carpet in interviews, literally for the whole of the press cycle.

Some people have been quite mean in saying they're ill. Other people are saying that this is just like the final frontier for theater kid behavior. And in a piece for Vogue, Raven Smith said, these days we're used to seeing staunchly media trained actresses dole out polite platitudes about their acting roles, nothing burgers that fans gobble up as the rest

of our eyes rolled. We're so inured to this glamorous pantomime, this Hollywood colleague politesse, that watching Grande and Erivo gently caressing hands and openly weeping because of their parts in a film felt unsettlingly unreal. We saw these high emotional intensity interviews, this deep intimacy unreal we saw these high emotional intensity interviews this deep intimacy

before we saw the film and the yellow brick road that led to their closeness while these two witches weren't in Kansas anymore the rest of us were still family rooted to the ground and I really loved that I thought it was actually really sweet reaction to it I wanted to say what have you guys made of the press tour what have you made of all the crying did you find it heartwarming or you fed up? It's funny because I definitely have a pre-watching the film and an after watching the film. So pre-watching it, I was absolutely exhausted. I was so media drained, interest drained, engagement drained from all of this. It feels like the press tour has been sucking the life out of the internet's air for months. But after the film, I kind of get it, to be honest. I kind of get why there's an intensity to it. Not only is the film really

emotional, not only is their performance fucking incredible and some of the best performances of their lives, to audition for this, the audition process took months. There were so many people across Hollywood, across musical theatre land, who were vying for these spots. Already, before they even approached set, the amount of energy they've put into these roles is giant. So I kind of get it, to be honest. I kind of appreciate it and I kind of respect it. I do get it and I do appreciate it, but it did feel a little bit like the apex of just sort of madness that had come into making the press tour and the film. I think no one was being normal about it. So it was normal that they weren't

being normal about it. And I just wonder at their relationship. And I think it's a choice to behave the way they're behaving because they're so media trained. They can switch it on, switch it off. And the fact they're letting it all show, holding hands constantly, letting themselves cry, letting know express the depth of their feeling i think it's a really interesting choice that they didn't switch it off and i wondered one whether they were so bonded so sort of soul tied because of this experience that they were like well let's show the world or whether it was a choice to not filter it because actually it does really drive people to the cinema i was like i have to see what has made these two behave in

this way I don't know whether it was a sit-down meeting of like go ham go all in don't hide it you love each other this is going to work really well or if they just went in there and just started clutching fingers and and crying I you know I think it's so fascinating can I quickly interject it just reminds me of do you remember Anne Hathaway after Les Mis? And she cried at the Oscars and she got so much awful Hathaway. And years later, she's reflected on that time and said, I was in a state of trauma after filming that musical. I was not totally okay. And I hadn't really separated myself from the role. I kind of feel like there's a mad amount of trauma into just doing a musical and a musical film.

I think so. I think it's so high energy. It takes so much from you. Singing is so emotional anyway, and it actually takes up so much energy. But also in that piece by Raven Smith, which I just loved, I love him anyway, but he said, I assume being a woman in the public eye can weigh heavily on the shoulders. Despite the inner cynic telling us to scoff, perhaps we really should, dare I say it, hold space for these women at the top of their games, defying the gravity of a truly gargantuan despite the inner cynic telling us to scoff perhaps we really should dare i say it hold space for these women at the top of their games defying the gravity of a truly gargantuan project actresses and all women to a degree are constantly being yanked off their pedestals and back down to earth and what you said about the audition process as well with chira and getting through that like i was someone that was in plays at school and even like auditions were gone for

ages they'd put the list on the theater and you'd find your name and it's like it's if that's what you do it is amazing and especially if you've grown up loving this musical I can't actually begin to imagine it makes me want to cry thinking about it like because it's it's fucking insane and when you're so connected to those songs they I do also agree with you on the other edge of it Beth you're like does seem a bit like they're not that well and Ritua you're saying like Anne Hathaway said she wasn't that well it does seem like it obviously has taken a lot from them but I do think some of the emotion is what Raven's saying is like perhaps they genuinely are just like this is my dream job and we just fucking did it and we did it so well and they have also filmed the second film as well so it must have just been the most

mammoth project and to know that it's all done and they'll get to enjoy in quotation marks who knows they're enjoying it enjoy this all again when the next film comes out but they're done filming i i would probably be hyper emotional and if you can't give yourself permission to be blubbering with the only person in the world who actually understands what you've been through while promoting the film then when can you i just can't actually look away from it especially since the holding space which with context it makes more sense but just that moment I was watching this video and I watched it a few times I went this really funny I want to see the original now and it took me a few scrolls to be like oh this is the original this isn't a skit

this isn't someone else pretending to be the interviewer she really does react by saying I didn't know that was happening and then sort of almost breaking down with the like I can't tear my eyes from it I did this I thought someone had cut it so I thought there was loads missing and she was reacting to something else so I thought we would cut it together so that it made no sense I read every single quote to me I saw it like straight away when it first got posted I was like what is this I was trying to find an answer no one was like what does this mean it's the way that Ariana and Ariana look at each other she was like I didn't know that was happening oh my god that's exactly what I wanted I was like what do you mean it's the way that ariana and ariana look at each other she was like i didn't know that was happening oh my god that's exactly what i wanted i was like what do you mean that's what you wanted what what is happening i don't know what that means we had the whole thing with

ariana is now in a relationship with one of her cast members there was a whole ferrari about that there was lots of misinformation as to whether or not they'd had an affair or not apparently they were both separated when they got together so So Ariana, that's obviously quite a big traumatic, life-changing thing to go through. But also for Cynthia Erivo, there's been quite a lot of racism towards her, first from like the moment she got cast to even have you seen that like loads of the posters and stuff

and like when people do articles about it, they just don't show her in lots of it. And an amazing interview, Jonathan Bailey, again, someone's going to him, how does it feel? It's a bit like that Andy Murray moment when he goes first male player. Someone's interviewing Jonathan Bailey and they go, how was it singing in front of one of the greatest singers of all time, like Ariana Grande? And without missing a beat, he goes, and Cynthia. Yeah. So there's been a lot of erasure for her from that. And I think privately,

I wonder if it's the impact of doing something like this in the public eye and the reaction to that. Have you seen that side of things as well? So I haven't seen too much of it. And I think that's a testament to just not being part of crap online circles, which is great. I did have a chat with a friend about this months before the film came out. She was observing the press tour and the media side of it. And she kept commenting actually, that she kept seeing Ariana's face plastered all over it. And she was really kind of horrified that Cynthia had been erased from the press tour. So I was aware of it.

And also, I mean, I know what the internet is like and I know what fandom is like. I knew that there would be a huge amount of racism directed towards her because it's just, it's inevitable, whether it's Star Wars, whether it's Harry Potter, the theatre show. Fandom can be fucking horrible, and especially when it comes to a woman of colour. But I'm glad to have not seen it personally, thank God. Munya Chihuahua, the comedian, did a great skit on this, and it was basically about the British press finding it so difficult to just spotlight a talented black woman. I mean, she's the star of the film. She's the leading lady. Ariana Grande is the excellent supporting actress. But if you were to look at the papers and to look at the coverage you would think it was the other way around and

it's a great skit but it's also not at all funny what's happened and it's i think it was after the london premiere all the british papers had this shot of ariana grande as if there wasn't so many of them together or just cynthia was so blatant in a way which of course is the case a lot of the time it's so depressing and so i don't blame her actually if she's in an interview with someone who is really getting it and really praising that she is like well I can be vulnerable and I can be earnest because I saw the Dax Shepard interview that she did I didn't listen to the whole episode the arm chair expert and Dax Shepard is a comedian comedic actor married to Kristen Bell and he asked her just a really vulgar question about how she wipes her ass with long nails and she can already tell it's coming it's absolutely disgusting he

pushes it he says can i ask you a really crazy question that's inappropriate when you're wiping your butt and she's like i know you're gonna say that and she's she's handles it she never should have handled it but you know she handles it with aplomb she is like well i don't use my fingernails i know how to wipe my ass don't if you ask that question of someone who's like one of the most famous people in the world at the moment get your head checked and I think if that's the media landscape then find moments of peace where you can I think that was a real shock because maybe I don't listen to those kind of commentators at the moment I just forget that they're out there and they haven't learned their lessons and they

are just really stupid ugly boys I remember reading a quote from him where he said that he doesn't shower his children every day so let's just get that out there to push the narrative out there that whatever this man's questioning is about hygiene is going to be fucking disgusting yeah the smell's coming from inside the house I also saw that clip but and then people quote to it with that article where him and Chris and Bella like oh we only really watch our kids when they like start to stink basically but also do you remember the whole thing where people re-edited the poster of her and Ariana because they wanted it to look like the original kind of like theater poster which in that Elphaba has her hat covering her face yeah and Cynthia responded to it being like please don't edit me out don't erase me and this became quite a lot of meme fodder because people were like oh

my god this is so ridiculous but now with all of this context and seeing more I'm like god it's obviously come from a deeper place because she was really being erased in the press I completely agree because her reaction it wasn't tonally right for that situation. I think that was a really, you know, sweet just kind of gesture of fandom. It wasn't attempting to erase her or to diminish her excellent fucking performance in this film and her contribution to the wicked fandom. But I completely understand why you'd have a response like that. Because she's already facing mass amounts of shit from the media. This one situation would just touch a nerve and it would just feel like too much. Her cup fucking runneth over with hate at the moment,

like that's so shit. And the other thing that she did call out, which I think was just maybe a misunderstanding was there's a meme that's been going around for about 10 years where someone on the original poster had scribbled the words, is your pussy green? Which is so silly. And also people are sending that to her. It doesn't matter that it was around for 10 years previously. That's revolting. But I think, you know, the sensitivity is evident. And I couldn't believe I was reading those words in sort of like a broadsheet newspaper. Is your pussy green? I mean, you would just be like, grow the fuck up. But the question has not been answered and nor will it.

Can we break newspapers and make them report on all of the nonsense online things so that they have to respect us as internet freaks please should we talk about the memes because there's been a lot my favorite is gay linda galinda galinda which is this idea that glinda is maybe a little bit fruity and then kristin chenoweth who played the good witch on stage someone had posted it and she replied to it going I thought so too way back when and I have to say Glinda's definitely gay oh my god I think Elphaba might be a bit Elphaba's bi yeah yeah what we what favorite memes yeah definitely okay we've got to fix that thank you next I'm scrolling my brain archive I can't actually think of any I can kind of just come up with like the cold hard facts of what's happened because the real stuff is so memeable. It's actually not memes. The real stuff is kind of wacky and funny enough. I have the same thing. I feel like the

interviews have really dominated my mental space and I haven't really seen anything that's like genuinely strictly a definition of a meme from this. I do have one which was a quote tweet of someone tweeting like Wicked Part 2 is already filmed. Oh my God. It's the clip from Christian Stewart as Diana and she's sort of staggering through a hallway and she's sort of very bereft. It's such a moving scene in the film,

but in this it has been repurposed as someone's written, me sneaking out of Universal Studios with the Wicked Part 2 hard drive up my ass. And I will send this to you and it's so inappropriate and I just chef's curse I guess yeah the biggest meme is really just like Ariana holding Cynthia's finger yes the holding space has just taken off it's just amazing the funniest thing as well is there's then Jonathan Bailey has been paired with Jeff Goldblum and they're just like singing and

like laughing doing these really silly interviews and it like cut to Cynthia and Ariana just bawling and being like to the interviewer we're so grateful that you've just lit up this room you've literally made our day and you can tell they're being completely sincere to some young interviewer who thinks this is my first ever press junket imagine them saying that to you and then it just cuts back to Jeff Goldblum and Jonathan Bailey who are like just pissing about. Have you seen the interview where an aeroplane is going above them as they're shooting and then Cynthia gets quite emotional and Ariana does the classic oh oh oh no and then is just like comforting her and it appears as if they're crying because there's a helicopter or

aeroplane going above. That is so funny but but you know what i'm sort of almost disappointed that so i read that they courted like 400 different brands and i i'm sure you've both seen like they've partnered with like every product out there i'm like actually i didn't need wicked mac and cheese i didn't need wicked crocs i didn't need wicked stanley cups i could have just watched the strength of the press tour alone would have taken me gleefully and openly to the cinemas the press stuff they've done that like media circus the collaborations have been absolutely bonkers kind of unnecessary remember mattel barbie taking us to a porn site on the back of the boxes of the dolls it's all just been a bit of a mess i mean obviously that was unintentional but what a mess

i find all of that the hyper capitalism and the all of the junk that comes with that it makes me feel sick I absolutely hate just all of that stuff I just think it's so useless one thing I do want to circle back to as well is just I feel like in a don't worry darling post media landscape the messy rollout of a press tour is just one of the most surefire ways for a film to go viral and I don't think this press tour was intentionally billed by everyone involved, you know, the stars involved. I don't think they had a blueprint to do this kind of messy madness. But I think the impact is we can see it's the only way to kind of get people talking about a film, just to have these mad moments where the actors are

not super media trained, where they say these kind of unhinged things. And just to get all the fandoms like, you know, retweeting, clicking, cutting the clips and just like sending them viral. So there was a piece in PR week that said defying gravity, the Wicked Press Tour has set a new standard in PR with its lead stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Arriva at the helm. Wicked's Press tour is a masterclass in how talent-led campaigns can ignite global excitement and set new standards for PR and marketing and entertainment, which I agree with entirely.

However, there is also the other thing that's happening, aside from these two women being decidedly quite unhinged and crying everywhere, is quite a lot of backlash from people making a lot of comments on the way that they look and

their bodies and how slim they've got. And that has been almost as big a talking point as the actual film itself. It's almost been inescapable. I'm sure your timeline's full of that too. Yeah. And even private conversations like offline, it definitely has been a big talking point in all honesty. Yeah. It's interesting because my timeline has been full of it, but very few articles have gone there. And I think the only one that I've read, which I read today, article for The Standard, it came out a couple of weeks ago, I just missed it. And the writer India Block talks about the concern about weight loss and she confronts it head on,

which I've not seen anywhere else and how thin they appear to look and how the discussion is about how we shouldn't discuss it and and she writes i am aware that i am breaking the emerta around discussing women's bodies in the press after journalists disgraced the professions in the 90s and noughties with their red circles of shame and hounding of already thin women feminist writers have rightly attempted to course correct but as a zempic bulldozes its way through the body positivity movement and heroin chic sneaks in again we can't let uncomfortable levels of thinness go unremarked upon they're selling mattel dolls modeled on these women to children the number of children and young people in the uk seeking treatment for an eating disorder has more than doubled between 2016 and 2023 it cannot be normalized to be this underway i mean i think it's brave to raise your head above the parapet the pulpit whatever it is when having these discussions i don't know how far

i agree with it i don't know where i sit i think the fame machine is so bizarre i wouldn't comment on a stranger's weight but are they strangers how far are they strangers and i read this and i thought i haven't actually seen anyone else in the press put such a fine point on the concern i have found it quite kind of brain melting I don't know what the right thing to say or do is there was a piece in dazed as well as mpc eating disorders and the new era of commenting on people's bodies and actually they in that piece shared a quote from moya loathing mclean friend of the podcast because she tweeted warped ass culture we live in where famous women look violently thin and ill but it's unkind to note that and in this piece it examines that same thing like should we

talk about it should we not talk about it it was a lot about everyone saying that they're on a zen pic or that they're really unwell i tend to think that you shouldn't comment but it's such like a russian doll of things because on the one hand we never know what someone's going through thinness can often be a signifier of ill health it's really none of our business but I guess the tricky thing is we've spoken about this so many times when we did our beauty episode as well about like people getting treatments is when you are in the public eye existing in a certain type of body is there then a responsibility to explain and say look I'm desperately thin but I'm not advocating for this I'm not saying it looks good it's because of x y Z. I think you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

I personally feel quite uncomfortable saying things. Some of the images I have to say, at one point I almost sent one to the group. Then I was like, shit, no, I shouldn't. I then felt worried about doing that too. So it is just tricky, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, that impact is so real and it's obviously not isolated. The fact that we're having this conversation, multiple people are feeling that. So we can't deny a fact that would just be stupid. But I agree, it is a tricky one. You know what it feels like to me? Talking about her individually feels really, really difficult and not a comfortable place to go. But the problem is, as a pebble, there are multiple pebbles and the collective weight of all of that at the moment with the zempic with various models and high profile figures whittling away in front of us

is that it collectively feels very upsetting and very distressing to observe that media so it is really difficult i don't want to come for them specifically but it is really hard to not have that conversation at all and we can't ignore the fact that one of the biggest blockbuster films of the year the fact that these two women are on screen and we can see a pivot back to a time where it's getting normalized to see smaller bodies on screen again and it's unfortunate that those two women are having to kind of take the brunt of it but also at the same time we can't not have that conversation it's a very significant pivot in the media that we're consuming and that young people and young girls are consuming it's really fucking scary actually

thinking about that exactly because we have to have the conversation about thinness we have to have the conversation about the lure of thinness the cost of thinness and the cost of seeing and wanting to emulate very thin bodies. I guess we're all just reworking out the etiquette around that because I think it's concerned that people are talking about specific celebrities, but the point of the conversation, because we all have bodily autonomy and you would hope people around us in our personal lives look after us. But I guess the point is when you're exposed to this many celebrities it doesn't all happen in a vacuum if a lot of them are very thin if we're seeing a return to a culture of thinness we have to have

these conversations do we just pretend that it is happening in a vacuum do we just sort of discuss anorexia nervosa do we discuss disorders or do we say well in the past we've had very famous women who have died or very famous women who have 20 years later come back and said, yeah, I was absolutely starving. It makes sense that we don't have a script around this because this level of celebrity is relatively new. And we waver between politeness and just allowing people their humanity. I mean, it's a disgusting thing to do to pick apart other people's bodies, but also care and concern for young fans. I mean, yeah, I'm talking in circles because I just don't have the answer. And I feel frustrated that I don't have the answer. And it doesn't seem like

a lot of the feminists I read have the answer either yet. So in that piece by Days, which was by Makala Jamison. So she speaks to Emma Spector, who's the author of a forthcoming book called More Please on food, fat, binging, longing and the lust of not enough. She says that we shouldn't talk about it. She says, though she understands the frustration of seeing razor thin celebrities presenting the public eye as standard bearers for what women are supposed to look like, she doesn't believe that by noting it, it's going to be helpful because it just causes more shame. And ultimately, she says that the best solution to this one that seems unthinkable to many people is do not publicly talk about anyone's body ever and worry about yourself and that does feel tricky because we want to say that it's coming

from a place of care but when you think about Chadwick Boseman and he was he was really really thin and then it turned out obviously he was desperately unwell with cancer and again it's like I think we maybe haven't quite learned our lesson and it's coming from a place of compassion and care and fear and we've all spoken about this privately but also the amount of stuff I see even people saying like the reason they're crying so much is because they're starving like they're so emotionally volatile because they're not eating blah blah blah it's a very fine line between care and actually you're just saying things on the internet to make a point you also do it because also people with eating disorders you don't want them to them feel ashamed it's such a complex mental illness when you're

struggling with a eating disorder it's not just you should eat more it feels like there's almost like a competition to having the best take on this sometimes which is just how often you know twitter and x and hopefully not blue sky not our blessed blue sky but all of these platforms often feel if we're going to have the conversation we have to be the most compassionate we can and we have to remember that these are people if the worst case scenario they were struggling would it fucking help having people do takes and takes and takes on their bodies or if we're going to have the conversation is there a way that we can do it with compassion lean in with kindness but also try and talk about the fact that we're racing back to the bottom of a potential size zero trend which is horrific

from what we've spoken about nothing has indicated that we're doing it in the right way as it is so I completely get why maybe for now we need to just step back and not have that conversation if we can't do it properly so the reviews and the responses to the film have been dropping thick and fast since its theatrical release on the 22nd of November and so far it's looking pretty good. At the time of recording this it's currently at an 89% score on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.2 out of 10 on IMDb. So to compare that with its release buddy Gladiator 2 that has got 7 out of 10 on IMDb and 71% on Rotten Tomatoes. Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw described the lead actress as a blast in sugar rush Wizard of Oz fantasy. The Verge has called

it a dazzling reminder of how good movie musicals can be. Empire has awarded it four stars and Variety says that it's the year's must-see musical. There were some slightly more wicked responses, with the most common critiques of the film focusing on its so-called bloated runtime, and the decision to split the narrative into two parts when the entire stage show was only two hours and 45 minutes with an intermission, plus the colouring and lighting of the film. My own timeline has been full of praise for the film. Maybe that's because I'm in queer media or maybe it really is just a fan fave that the critics don't quite get. But however you measure it, the film has already been a box office smash and the biggest opening in history for a Broadway to film adaptation, grossing $112 million domestically over opening weekend

and around $162.5 million globally. We we loved it it's a full six out of five stars from us but we want to know what you thought of both the film and the surrounding media circus so do let us know everything's content pod on instagram thank you so much for listening this week and thank you to everyone who listened to our newest episode of everything in conversation which came out on wednesday it's one of our favorites i think that's fair to say so please please please please give it a listen this is all happening on instagram at everything is content pod so if you want to be involved and part of the conversation go ahead and follow us over there and also on t at the same handle. And just a little note that next week is our first birthday.

So for a gift, if you've enjoyed the podcast, we would love you so much if you gave us a little rating or a little review on your podcast app. We read them all and we love everyone who has taken the time to do so. See you next week. Bye. Bye.