God Awful Movies - 538: Diana: The Musical
Episode Date: January 6, 2026This week, we kick off Secular Movie Month with cohost of The Know Rogan Experience Michael Marshall joining us for the atrocity that is Diana: The Musical.To see us live in San Francisco, click her...e: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/god-awful-movies-live-in-san-francisco-california-tickets-1976632374642Check out more from Marsh on Skeptics with a K and the Know Rogan ExperienceIf you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawfulCheck out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus.Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/
Transcript
Discussion (0)
It's so bad.
Her big empowerment moment is wearing another dress.
This isn't a feminist story that I think it is.
And she's like just coming from going across the stage in a different dress.
It's trying to as many dresses packed into this small thing as possible.
And the overall effect, because she's wearing so many, like, layered costume to get in as many dresses at once,
the overall effect is to make it look like Dana spent half her life in ill-fitting dresses.
I did nothing to flatter her at all.
One out of four dresses will look face.
God-awful movie.
Movies.
Welcome back to the GameCast,
where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema,
except when he finally gets the secular movie month
that he's been pining for since before the pandemic.
I'm your host, No Illusions,
and Heath is off this week,
but sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend, Eli Bosnick.
Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir?
But what a gift he has left behind.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
You know how movies will do that thing
where there's like a shitty parent?
I'm not comparing Heath to a shitty parent.
Stay with me.
And then at the end, it turns out they kept the snow globe all along.
that's how I feel about Heath's 10-year fight
for a secular movie month
and this is the parting gift
to you see what you could have had all along
or we open up a box and it's got 40 years
of the love letters he's been writing us
right there you go
and of course we're excited to welcome
in everybody's favorite substitute Heath
co-host of the No Rogan Experience
and Skeptics with the K-Michael Marshall Marsh
welcome back
oh thank you very much
I know you can't hear it but during that introduction
I changed my outfit.
Oh, good, that's important.
And, yep, there's another one as well.
So I'm going to be doing that throughout this recording,
just constantly cycling through outfits.
You might have seen me in a picture in at one point in my life.
That's what's going to be happening here.
A lot of bare shoulders on Marsh this episode, everybody.
If ever there was a point where you were missing out
on a video version of this podcast, it's this week.
I've got to show every one of my exes what they're missing.
That's the whole thing of an outfit change, obviously.
All right.
Well, now that we've got everybody's curious,
curiosity peaked. Tell us, Marsh, what will we be breaking down today?
We watched Diana the musical. It is the West End musical about the life of Princess Diana,
as told by people who had only passing familiarity with the life of Princess Diana. Clearly.
Oh, my God. Honestly, this is such a mess. I would say it is by far the biggest car crash
associated with Diana Spencer.
And Eli, how bad? How bad?
was this movie.
Well, if you love Princess Diana
and you love
musicals, you're
going to hate this movie because it's bad
at both of those things. Do you remember
in Galaxy Quest how the aliens
had modeled their society
after old episodes of their version
of Star Trek? Yeah, yeah.
That's what Princess Die
the musical video. It feels like the aliens
got their hands on
like a memorial copy
of the Princess Diana,
EPO magazine, like not a good one, right?
And they just sort of took it from there.
Yeah, or like one of those like memorial plates
you get in the back of really cheap magazines.
Yes, there's after Dione died.
And they were like, okay, that's it.
Her Jubilee coin.
Right, gets launched into space somehow.
All right, so is there anything you guys want to nominate this one
for being the best, at being the worst at?
Yeah, I'm going to go straight in with best, worst,
understanding of the British upper class system.
This is in your notes an awful lot.
Oh, so much all the way through.
They will emphasize that she was just an ordinary girl.
elevated to the level of princess.
She was just working in a kindergarten.
She was barely educated.
She was the daughter of an earl who was
privately educated and went to a Swiss
finishing school. Her marrying
Charles isn't like the plucked out
of the crowd to marry a prince.
It's more plucked out of the small room
filled with people who might marry a prince
in order to marry a prince.
And that room also happens to be a family reunion.
Oh, yeah. Well, no, that it is.
Exactly. All right. So I'm going to go
with best, worst, echoy,
silence.
Okay, so what we're watching here, we're watching this play, like, before it debuts on Broadway,
we're watching it being played to an empty house.
Yeah.
Probably because they recognized, right, that if they had an audience, they would still just have
echoey fucking silence, so there might as well be a reason for it to be there.
So over and over again, you hear that, like, these people, like, drop jokes and they pause
to no laughter, they end the big musical number.
and nothing happens, and nothing should happen.
It's a great punctuation to how awful this fucking show is.
Yeah, no, it's amazing.
I assumed that this was filmed, like, during the pandemic or something like that.
I know it was released not long after the pandemic, kind of,
or was kind of going on around about the start of the pandemic.
Yeah, I think it was 2021 when they released it.
So, yeah, it would have been right then, you know.
Given it was filmed during the pandemic,
I assumed that the audience wasn't there for pandemic reasons,
but it's just so much funnier if it was just, oh, no, we shouldn't have
an audience in here because that will really shock how bad this is.
No.
Hey, guys, did you all ask your friends and family if they want to see the Broadway show for free?
We did, yes, we did.
Did they all say no to?
Yeah, yeah.
I'll tell you what, we'll leave the doors wide open while we're shooting and just hope people
selling copies of big issue and less than we'll wander in from the warmth.
And I'm going to go with best, worst, understanding of the best.
the queen. Now, if you are a regular listener to our program, you know that I am a hard core supporter
of the monarchy. And I would never badmouth the monarchy except for right now. There is an
image, largely created by Diana's death, that the queen was sort of this super controlling,
conniving genius who sort of was running the whole show behind the scenes. And this portrayal
of her is so removed. This musical specifically is sort of
so removed from the truth of that very lovely inbred pug of a person, that it is truly
indecifference. She might as well do karate. And that's when she fought a bunch of ninjas.
I mean, there is a point at which the actress playing her will come on as Barbara
Cartland. And that Barbara Carlin is about as close to the real queen as the depiction of the
queen is in this movie. Yeah. All right. Well, obviously, Marsh needs a minute to emotionally
prepare himself for this journey.
So we're going to take a quick break,
but we'll be back in a minute
with all the catterwalling that is
Diana.
The musical.
People's princess.
Dude, you're going to make yourself sick.
Yeah, sick, nasty.
Hey, fellas, what are you doing?
Eli,'s back on another fad health diet.
It's not a fad, Noah.
It's the way our ancestors ate.
Our ancestors died of their teeth.
Yeah, he's right.
They did.
Look, Eli, if you want to eat right in the new year, why don't you try Green Chef?
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All right, Marsh, thanks.
Hope my ancestors liked Greenshift.
Your ancestors would have worshipped a refrigerator as a god.
Nope, that's fair.
That's fair.
All right, all right, I call to order this meeting of British homosexuals and
Oda-Aunts, who for some reason think Princess Dye's story is about them.
You may be seated.
The people's princess.
Yes, quite. Now, I have absolutely scrumptuous news. We have been commissioned to write Diana
the musical. A musical, but we've never written one of those before. I mean, how hard could
it be? I'm singing a song, won't you sing along? Oh, that was right, good. Oh, that's what all
musicals sound like to mean. At last, we will tell the heartbreaking tale of a girl who rose from nothing.
Well, I mean, she was the daughter of an earl.
Nothing but being the daughter of an ear, almost.
To queen.
I'm sort of.
She was in the line to be queen if the right number of people died.
Look, the point is, we should use this show to tell her story and talk about her greatest contribution.
Her charity work.
The stuff she did about AIDS.
No.
Wearing clothes from the decade she was alive during.
That was the most important
So brave
Sorry, is this the meaning for people who think Charlie Kirk is a hero
Because he got shot in the neck while saying something racist
No, that's down the hole
We should get a sign
Should
And we're back for the breakdown
And we're going to open up on Diana in Silhouette
Always proud of myself when I spell silhouette
Right on the first try
And the thing that is going to be hard to explain to you
about how good, bad this is,
is that almost everybody in this show can really sing.
Yep.
Oh, yeah.
Right?
No one in this show is executing poorly.
They've just been given a map to the hole at the bottom of the sea.
Okay, so first of all, every rhyme in this goddamn show is fifth graderly in its stupidity, right?
Yes.
Everything ends with 8 or OST or E or something like that.
And almost all of them are single syllables as well.
There are no complex rhyme structures here at all.
Yeah, it's infuriating.
Also, you say that we open up with a silhouette of Diana.
When the lights come up, are we sure it's Diana?
Because I thought for a while it was Hillary Clinton.
She looks exactly like Hillary Clinton here.
All right, so, Marsh, I saw that in your nose.
And then as I was reading through the notes before we recorded,
I saw that at one point I had unironically written,
The Lady playing Hillary Clinton says whatever.
All right.
So, but we open on Diana.
She stepped out of a party and now somebody comes to fetch her.
Now, it's not just anybody.
It's Prince Charles's sidepiece Camilla Parker Bowles, right?
Yes.
She's come to fetch Diana because the prince would like to flirt with her.
Yes, that is it.
And Diana is being like as naive as possible here.
Like the way they portray her, this is the first time we get the sense that they have no idea who Diana actually was before she met Charles.
Because she's saying, oh, you know, it's such a posh part.
I'm used to talking to five-year-olds.
It's like, your dad was a fucking earl.
You were already nobility.
You've been to some posh parties.
She's 19.
She got engaged to Charles at 19.
Oh, wow.
She left her private school at 16 and was in a Swiss finishing school for a little while in
between.
So it's not been that long since she's been in a very, very posh room.
It really hasn't.
Even the fucking five-year-olds were probably all nobility anyway.
Right.
Yes.
And it's not like the Swiss finishing school was just bust.
with lawyers and doctors.
That is a one day you might end up the queen school.
Right.
Yes.
Also, we have to point this out.
The songs in this goddamn show are so forgettable
that not only are none of them stuck in my head
after watching it yesterday,
but I cannot recall a single tune from it.
This movie doesn't have earworms.
It has ear like birds, right?
It's the closest I can come to the opposite of a worm.
I should know the opposite of a fucking worm.
That's my whole thing.
There is no department of Diane.
of the musical.
Yes.
Yeah, and it's genuinely tricky
because I actually watched this
more than a week ago.
I think I watched it
before Christmas even as a recording.
And I was thinking, oh, it's fine.
I'll remember all of what my notes
were referring to as we go through.
I think because it's so forgettable,
I'm going to really struggle to know
which song this is about.
I'm lucky that I've written the note
she is smugly singing
about how underestimated she is.
That reminds me this of the song,
underestimated, and I've written that
this is happening in a movie
that wildly overestimated itself
and its appeal.
Right.
So it's also like a weirdly triumphal song
for the first song of your musical.
Right?
It sounds like you're closing the first act here.
We're just introducing shit.
Yeah.
And the spirit of the song is like,
I'm such a normal person,
which we've already talked about.
I'm such a humble nobody.
But, you know,
I'll give marrying the crown prince of England to try.
Yeah, sure.
The way that we are supposed to believe
that Diana approached
marrying the future king of England
it was like, I mean, the med school exam seemed tough.
So I think, yeah, you know what?
It's one hand to the other.
But again, it probably was that
because she was bred to be in that world.
This was like if she went to the careers advisor
at her incredibly posh private school,
marrying the future king was probably one of the options
she would presently.
Like, you've not got the math to do more than that,
but have you thought about marrying the king?
Well, also like, the way that she...
Social work.
Well, the way that she describes it in song is, quote,
why not have a go at marrying the king?
All right, I'll be the queen of England, I will.
That's not the queen mum.
You would have been eventually.
No, she gets it eventually.
She stabs her and then she takes her powers.
What do you think the queen mum is?
I see, you lost me and think.
I don't.
I heard those words once, and now that.
they are in my mouth.
Do you think he's just like, when the queen is a mum,
she's the queen.
I think that's what I think that's what I think.
He's talking about the maternal aspects of the queen.
He just says the queen mother.
The mumminess, if you will.
So, okay.
So, but then the queen, just, the queen shows up.
And she's there to complain that her playboy son hasn't settled down yet, right?
He needs to up his PR game.
Yeah.
And the line in there is, it was fine when you were new, but God, you're 32.
Oh, fuck me.
We're in for a long old.
ride here. We're in for a long old ride.
Speaking of the Queen Mum, this is when
I wrote for the first and not the last time
in my notes. Don't you portray the Queen Mother
like this, you ungrateful.
I even wrote on my notes, on
the notes, not the Queen Mother. I wrote that
next to that. Okay. That did not
dissuade me from writing. The Queen Mother, just to be
absolutely clear, does not appear in this
entire thing. The Queen Mother is not in this.
She might as well not exist for the purposes
of the next hour and a half, but
you will carry on. That's the spider
underneath the castle. The other thing is
the queen says that there's a trust issue with the public, and that's why Charles needs to get
married. And I think the trust issue might be more Andrew's fault than Charles's. And then I wrote,
oh man, where's Andrews musical? Can we not have that instead? Yeah. So, okay, now the whole thing
that they start a fucking song here, because of course they do. And the whole bit of the song is that
the queen is going to sing the upside of Diana, you know, marrying her son. And then like the chorus behind them
is going to sing the downside.
Like, that's the construction of the song.
They will call being princess
the worst job in England
multiple times throughout the song.
Yes.
And, like, look, I've never been a princess,
but I assume there were child sex slaves
during this period of history.
I mean, yeah, Andrews.
Yeah, exactly, right.
In the same castle, there were worse jobs.
Jesus.
That's who was singing that the princess is the worst job.
Like, all the sex slaves were the,
the chorus in the background.
Right, right, yeah.
I don't fancy yours much, love.
That's what that's basically your line from.
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want to fuck Prince Charles.
I get it.
I get it.
But yeah.
And speaking of the chorus, because they're doing the, as you say, the downside to it,
they're doing the sort of the dancing thing.
At one point, they all, the entire backline chorus start thrusting their crotch at our queen.
And that's the closest I've ever got to being offended on behalf of my monarchy.
That and when I use the queen.
mother wrong. Those are the two lines that March
has left. I mean, I really want
the queen to turn around to them and say, could you stop
saying bad things about Marina?
Yeah, right. Exactly. I have a fucking point here.
My son is, God damn it.
So, okay, so then we cut to Diana
chatting with her sister about
whether or not she should, you know, date
the prince and marry him or whatever.
And the very small moment here,
this is the first time we see what would become a running
theme throughout this entire musical.
Diana is wearing, first of all,
an incredible jumper. It's like this red jumper. It's like,
with like white kind of sheep on it.
That is a genuine jumper that she wore.
There's an entire BBC article about her in that jumper.
And that's because they will try very,
the only thing they'll get accurate throughout this entire thing
is the clothes that Diana wore,
and they really want you to know that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's very obvious that whoever wrote this libretto slash musical
slash whatever the fuck it is was really a visual learner,
if you know what I'm saying.
There's a lot of attention to outfits,
not so much on the rhymes.
Yeah.
So they also imply at this point that Princess Diana grew up with like foldouts of Prince Charles taped to her walls a la like, you know, the teen magazines or something.
Teen Beat had British Teen Beat had.
Please tell me Charles was in the center of Tiger Beat in Britain.
You know, I didn't look that up.
I assume not, but it was a weird time.
It would have been like the late 70s.
It's a weird time.
I don't know.
I wasn't around for that bit.
Sure.
Andrew's copy was the only one that had 15-year-old Charles.
Okay, but this is again
where they sort of go against their own narrative, right?
Because Diana is supposed to be
this simple kindergarten teacher
plucked from obscurity and then married to the prince,
except in this scene they admit that he dated her older sister first.
Yes.
Was she just also plucked?
What kind of random job was she supposed to have?
Yeah, a masseuse.
She worked for Jeffrey Epstein.
It's just, it was in the family.
It was in the fact.
Well, there's also a point here where her sister says to her, she goes,
and you're still a virgin.
And I'm like, hey, the play, what the fuck?
Were you just complaining how people were going to sexually objectify her in the last fucking song?
And the thing is, Jesus, that was real.
The press did do that.
They did talk about whether Diana was a virgin, because that at the time wasn't in,
was still anachronistic country that we are.
That was still a big part of the conversation.
That was a part of the conversation up until Kate Middleton married
Prince William, and then the palace kind of obfuscated around that.
So, yeah, this play is going, oh, and you're a virgin, but it might as well, they might
all, every actor turn to the audience that isn't there and go, wink, wink, wink, you know,
D.S. It's a virgin. A wink. Yeah. So then Prince Chuck Yee sends her a really nice necklace,
and then he calls her to ask her about the necklace. The second the box gets opened,
like he put a GPS tracker inside of it. Yeah. Right, yeah. So, but he, he wants to
to make a date, he wants to take her
to listen to a cellist play Bach,
right?
She accepts and then he gets off the phone
and he's talking to Camilla.
Right? Camilla was like
there with him. I guess she's like advising
him the whole time on how to date
Diana. Well, and they're
fucking, right? This is part of what we're supposed
to see. And honestly, I find
it hard to either dislike or blame
his relationship with Camilla through any
of this movie and any of his actual life.
He wanted to just be with Camilla.
and it was bullshit that he wasn't.
Like, there was an entire bullshit thing around him
not being allowed to marry someone who was divorced.
Right, like she was divorced or something before.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
And all of the bad things happened because of that stupid rule, first and foremost.
And like, just let the guy have the lady.
It's fine.
Don't worry about him.
Yeah.
I find it she's going to be the bad guy here,
and I find it hard to see her as a bad guy.
Right.
Yeah.
But so Camilla and Charles are now talking about Diana
and they're like making fun of what a simpleton.
She wanted to go see some pop band
instead of a sophisticated cell.
playing Bach.
Yeah.
He also invites Camilla to join him on their date.
So woof.
All right, so now we're going to get the...
This was the first scene where I was like,
you guys knew you were making shit.
You had to know you were making shit when you did this scene, right?
Because this is the scene where they're going to watch this cellist play Bach,
but she's going to spend the whole time wishing they were at a rock concert.
And so they, like, flip back and forth between rocking out and listening to Bach.
Yes.
And so this is a problem for a lot of reasons.
First of all, being they're making it seem
like she wouldn't know anything about classical music
despite being the privately educated member of British ability
whose dad wasn't Earl.
She'd be very familiar with Bach.
Yeah, I think she'd heard a cello before.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, we'll find out she can sort of play the cello.
I mean, probably not.
But then it has the lines in this song.
Oh, God, this is, I think, where we get a hint
of how bad the lyricism of this is going to be.
One line I wrote down, the Russian,
because it's a Russian guy playing the cello,
the Russian plays on and on
like an endless telethon
how I wish that he were Elton John
and that really had to go all the way around
not just around the houses, around the palace for that rhyme
telephone.
In what way is this like a telethon
prince and there's, I don't want to watch.
I say this with an open heart
because she spends so much of this song
describing how she's too stupid for fancy music
you got to stop letting gay men write for women
Okay, I get it, straight people.
We're like, I don't know any women
and I don't want to let them write any of their own musicals.
What's the closest to a woman I know?
My gay writer friend.
I'll get him to do it.
But they are, in fact, different.
Cis gay men and women are actually different species.
Species, huh?
Yeah, different species.
So, yeah, so they're both the queen mother.
They do all of this.
You got to follow my chart.
So, yeah, but so they do this whole big, long,
rock-bock thing.
I don't even think they ever
fucking rhyme rock and
Bach. They're so fucking stupid.
Jesus, I don't think they do.
Oh, my God. They do rhyme rocker with
Charles saying he'd like to sock her.
Yes, right.
Right. When she says it, when she says,
oh, I'd really like to sock her, you're like,
oh, God, what are you trying to set up here?
You're fucking idiots.
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's
it's down it to Camilla. Sorry, yeah,
you're right. And then it's just fucking rocker.
Yeah. Yep.
But yeah, so everybody walks off.
Camilla sings a little bit about how
she fucking hates Diana.
is jealous of her.
And then we get our paparazzi chorus for the first time, right?
Oh, yeah, the Dick Tracy's.
Yes, exactly.
And at one point, one of them went, hey, guys, we can twirl our trench coats in
they're like, fuck, that is literally all the choreography we need, right?
Oh, they love these little boy twink dancers.
They have a love twirled trench coat in this film.
Yeah, they really do.
I'm surprised neither of you have picked up too much on the line that paparazzi say about
taking pictures of Diana, better than a Guinness,
better than a wank, snatch a few pitches and it's money in the bank.
Oh, my God.
I did write down better than a wamp.
Nobody involved this musical can ever have talked to an actual British person
to think that is a normal thing to have, for anyone to say.
Better than a wank.
Okay.
Yeah. I mean, she's changed outfit again in this as well.
And she is just powering through the outfit changes.
I can only assume that she starts off the start of this play in about eight layers of
clothing and just keeps peeling them off like an onion because I can't think of any other way
to be done.
And to be fair, that would have mirrored the weight loss she experienced you to believe you.
So maybe it was method.
It's a twofer.
It's perfect.
Oh, there you go.
So yeah.
Also, during the song, one of the paparazzi says to another, I hear she's still a virgin.
But again, the newspapers were actually writing that as headlines.
So like, because I thought, God, that's fucking weird.
And I looked at up and I was like, oh, yeah, we're weird.
What a weird country we are.
So, yeah.
All right. So, and then at the very end, they all, all of the paparazzi assemble at the end as though to say, yes, this was choreographed.
Otherwise, how would we all not hit each other just now?
This was the first time that I realized there wasn't an audience there because they do this extremely long pause at the end of the dance number for what they are sure is going to be the two standing ovations of the following night.
Yeah.
I mean, it could have been that the entire audience was still Dunstruck trying to work out better than
a Guinness better than a wank?
That's what you went with?
Just like, yeah, for being.
All right.
But so now the Queen thinks Chuck should
fucking put a ring on it already,
right? Because she
wouldn't want Diana to be mistreated
in the press. Yeah, because
the Queen was very famously, very sympathetic
to how Diana was treated at any given
point. That was a very famous part of their
collective story. She loved
Diana. Really wanted things to
go well for old Diana. And then they
have this stupid conversation where Charles, like,
were you certain when you were married?
And I wrote in my notes,
well, you know, my uncle was trying to solidify his power
by joining up with Hitler.
So I was pretty sure.
But it's not just that like, yeah,
she was certain, the queen was certain when she married Prince Philip.
But that's because she'd known him a while.
He was her cousin and they met in a family wedding.
Jesus Christ.
So yes.
Well, and Charles, though, is like, well, okay,
but theoretically, what if I wanted to live as a tampon
in somebody else?
Okay.
So, but then they have this fucking half-ass song where, like, I shit you know, this is one of the lines, okay?
This is where I just basically had to, like, tell my wife to hide the rope.
She says, he got down on one knee, he did it properly, and that was enough for me.
It's almost like the queen is kind of taunting you to answer her riddles so that you can get her possible.
Yes, exactly.
So that you could become the queen.
Exactly.
Like I wrote in my notes at this point,
the tunes are so forgettable
that you forgettable while you're listening to him.
Right?
Like the second verse,
you're like,
fuck, was that the two?
So, okay.
So now Diana shows up,
and this is where she starts telling her backstory
about how her mom ran off
and that's why she loves Barbara Cartland romances.
Okay.
I cannot emphasize to our audience enough
how central a figure in Diana the musical
Romance author Barbara Cartland is.
Yes.
And for those of you who aren't British,
it's like chicken soup for the soul,
but lady porn,
you have to imagine that there was an entire musical
about a modern American historical figure
and the only literary reference
made in the entire thing
were Dave Barry columns in the newspaper.
That's how weird it is.
is to constantly use Barbara Carlin as a literary device in this show.
It's like in Hamilton, the writer of Twilight had her own song in the middle of Hamilton.
Yeah, it's amazing.
And so I don't know whether Diana was a massive fan of Barbara Carlin's books.
I looked it up because, as you say, Barbara Carlin appears in this scene.
Yeah, she just shows up.
The actor, the actor playing the queen, put on a big pink dress and comes on as Barbara
Cartland.
I was like, why is Barbara Cartland gate crashing this?
And I looked up, it's because Barbara Cartland was her step-grandma.
So there's a real thing that the writer was, like, married into Princess Dana's family on a dad's side.
So that that is real, which then just makes it weird that Diana only ever refers to her as Barbara
Cartland and not like step-bramma.
Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah.
So, yeah, but so we have this scene where she shows up and Diana asks her about romance and she says that
Romance is bullshit.
And then speaking of which, then we get Chuck's proposal, right?
Which is very afterthoughtly.
By the way, just for those of you who haven't gone down a Barbara Cartland rabbit hole, again,
this is like such insider humor for fucking British great-grandmas.
But they all had this baby blue cover with identical fucking artist plates from like
fucking little women, the musical on them.
and every title feels like something
you would make up in a comedy
about romance novels, right?
The bored bridegroom,
the impetuous Duchess,
the magic of Paris.
Those are all real Barber Carlin books.
Yes, oh, 100%.
I was about to make a reference
that, it's like Jilly Cooper,
but worse, but I thought,
I don't think Jilly Cooper is a reference.
Nope, they don't know, no, American audiences either.
But, yeah, anyway.
The four Brits and me loved that, though.
Just know, the four,
if Dr. Alice is listening to this one,
you fucking out of the park.
So, okay. So Chuck proposes. She's like, do you love me? And he's like, yeah, whatever. And then we cut to, like, him telling Camilla that he's proposed to Diana, but he would dump her for Camilla in a second. I'm like, that's a pre-proposal discussion rather than post.
So, okay. So now we've got the press comes in again and they're hounding her about the engagement now.
Yep, they say the line, she was common, she was dim. And again, no, she fucking wasn't. Dad.
Earl, not common.
And also, this is the first of many times
where they call her stupid, right?
Like, she was coming.
So many times.
And also, I have to point out the rhyme there is
she was far from worthy of him.
And this is where we meet like her guy,
Paul. I don't know who this is.
Okay, so this is Paul Burrell.
Okay, Paul Burrell was her assigned butler
and would be her butler throughout her time at the palace.
I think he even went with her when she got divorced.
awesome Charles and was around her and stuff.
So, like, he will be a central figure as he's like, as her savior, her rock.
But he betrayed her quite badly.
He was, like, leaking a lot of information to the press.
And I think also stole quite a lot of her dresses after she died.
So he's, oh, wow.
This is very much Paul Burrell as told by Paul Burrell is what we're seeing on screen here.
So, okay, so, yeah, so we meet him.
He'll be importantish later.
We get Chuck and Camillas singing at each other a bit.
And then everybody la-la-la-la's into the wedding.
Yes.
And very minor nod, but Camilla enters to the wedding here,
while Dretters, I can only describe as Liz Truss the Naval Aircraft Carrier.
That's what she looks at.
And so, okay, so they're going to do this, a couple of times in this show,
they're going to do magic tricks just to piss Eli off, just to really dig in.
Fuck, yeah, they will.
And this is the bit where fucking David Copperfield sword fights himself, right?
Yes.
It takes the mask off at the end, and it turns out it was him the whole time.
and so they have like Charles and this bride walk out
and it's obviously I mean I don't want to give away how this trick is done
but like like the suit is so wide right
it's like so wide there are at least three Diana's worth of space
in that wedding dress and she isn't even one of those three Diana's
sure is it right yeah because we see her instead like pre-wedding
getting cold feet with her sister right we have a quick scene there
yes she looks at her dress she goes well
it'll make me look fat.
And I'm like, well, only because you have to climb in it after it's already.
Only because it's a wire frame meant to fool absolutely nobody with object permanent.
I know because it was designed to hide the toilet roll in your nun's house.
Let's visit his thing.
There's a toilet roll in that.
All right.
But yeah, and also, by the way, whoever the fuck tried to rhyme I can with demand didn't consider
that it was going to be sung in a British accent.
Yeah.
We get some really quality rhymes in this one.
Represent the crown.
No time now to back down.
Yeah.
It is beautiful.
There's also a line in it where they say,
well, how did she get this far?
It's like, yeah, she got here all the way
from her 900-year-old 13,000-acre stately home
to marrying someone who was already within her social circle.
Right.
Yes.
And family bloodlines.
Yeah, exactly. Right, right.
But at the end of this scene here, there's something very controversial that happens
that I need to know if this is true.
She says, when they get to the end of the marriage ceremony,
she says, I will instead of I do?
Do the Brits say I will instead of I do during weddings?
We don't, but she did.
Because I had to look that up as well, because I was like,
really?
But yeah, that Princess Jenna, her wedding vows were I will.
And I think he did the same.
And I think she also fucked up his name.
Which I don't know if that means she got the order of his names wrong.
when you had to because I take,
because he's obviously his name's fucking mad
because he's an inbred book of a human being as Eli.
He's got like 18 different names,
and she gets the order wrong.
Sure.
But I don't know if that means they weren't legally married,
like the time that Obama had to retake the author of office
because he hooked a little bit of it up.
Yeah, exactly.
The next day.
So maybe they were never married in the first place.
Oh, interesting.
But no, she said, I will rather than I do.
All right, well, as indelicate as this is to say
about a Princess Diana musical,
I fear that this play is moving too fast and erratically.
So we're going to take a minute to fasten our seatbelts,
but we'll be back in a minute with even more of Diana, the musical.
It's fine.
The director was drunk, to be honest, but I might find had dosed up his drink.
It's weird that the cameras were off for this part, though.
That's why there was no audience there.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
Oh, and people are going to start living up to my expectations of them.
That is a huge one.
Right. Hey, guys. What's with the list?
Oh, hey, Noah. I'm just having Marsh read my New Year's resolutions.
Oh, how's that going?
Yeah, so he's got a lot of resolutions for other people.
I do, I do. Like, Marsh is going to be more appreciative of the websites I build for him.
I'm sorry, your resolutions are for other people.
Yeah, that's what's always making me angry.
Right. You know, Eli, it might be a bit better for you to focus on your own thoughts and your own behaviors.
How can I do that, Marsh?
A thought-a-matic?
Because if that's real, I haven't seen it.
Now, Eli, you can do that with therapy.
Therapy?
I thought therapy was just for people who go...
Not at all.
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All right, Noah, thanks.
All right, you guys ready?
I don't want to miss any more football.
Oh, you're going to care about football
way less this year.
Yeah, again, not doing other people.
Right, sorry.
Sorry.
Fucking playoffs, by trash.
Hey, Chris, do you have a second?
Why, of course, gentlemen.
How go rehearsals.
Right, so about that.
I know you've written the musical
as a tribute to Diana.
The People's Princess.
Right, right.
So we were just...
You'll just say it, say it.
I'm sorry, say what?
Say the People's Princess.
I said the People's Princess.
Oh, the People's Princess.
Anyway, we were actually worried that the show might make her look bad.
Oh, bad?
How?
Well, you do call her stupid quite a bit.
What? I would never.
This foolish girl, this unsublished girl, this unsubes.
schooled girl, simple, dim.
Yeah, stupid.
Like, literally the word stupid.
Oh, no, you fools, don't you see?
That's all a setup for when she shows them all at the end.
Yet, by describing her sex life on the phone?
Yes.
Okay, I mean, if you say so.
The people's princess.
The people's princess.
Yeah.
And we're back for more of this shit.
We're going to rejoin the action with Camilla and her husband, who we haven't met yet.
He's going to sing a love song to her now, damn it.
He has not earned a refrain to any of these songs.
No, like just stay out of this.
You're not needed to hear.
You're not in the sketch.
Okay.
I love Camilla's husband, one, in real life and also in this musical so much.
Because that dude, everyone was like, huh?
Your wife?
Fucking another guy.
And he's like, yeah, no, I get to like go to royal shit.
It's fucking awesome.
Yeah.
You can run her through with a.
rocking horse if he wants to. Do you know how awesome it is to be this rich? You guys know I have to go to a
palace now, right? I go to a palace. Someone's fucking your wife and all you get to do is kill them
both while they're asleep. This is fine. I don't care a little. So, okay, and then they have this
scene, and I love this scene so fucking much, right? Because this is the song about how Diana's all
nervous. She has to make her first official appearance and she's so nervous. It's going to be so
hard, but, like, her job is
just a smile in kind of way.
Like, sort of exist in
space is the job there.
So, like, even the song can't pretend
that's hard. Yeah,
it's not even like the rule is just don't
say anything racist, because Prince Philip
short, that's not a rule.
You can say what you like. It's absolutely fine.
Charles, too. Everyone in that family
at some point has been like, so
are you dirty or
brown? I don't get it. What's fucking
going on? The whole song is like,
she hasn't received the training to say hi?
Yes.
Right, exactly.
Maybe she hasn't received the training to talk to an average person
because they weren't any of those at her Swiss finishing school.
Oh, there you go.
So yeah, but she has to stand and bask in all the free money built from the nations.
It's going to be really difficult.
So now we're in Wales.
And we know that because it's got the word Wales written in big block apples like it does
whenever you're in Wales.
If you're in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, it just says Wales.
across the sky at all times.
Well, you'd never guess it from the fucking accents,
so they had to do something.
There's a weird...
There's a weird Wales racism to this scene, right?
Because the whole point of this scene is
she didn't just walk by, she shook
the hands of the Welsh.
The Welsh, I tell you.
Have you ever met a Welshman?
She's willing to touch an AIDS patient and a Welshman.
Never threw up.
Not even a hit.
Didn't have gloves on or anything.
This would have been the early 80s as well.
So those Welsh people, they would have still had coal dust on their hand
because Thatcher hadn't closed the minds yet.
So there was still coal in them there.
Look them right in their far apart eyes.
No problem.
Yeah.
So she gets there's a really tough crowd because, you know,
the Brits in the 1980s sure hated the royal family and everything.
I mean, the Welsh might, I'm not sure.
The Welsh are pretty socialist.
I reckon the Welsh, if there was enough of them to work a guillotine towards London,
I think they would have operated it.
And I'd have been well on their side as well, to be honest.
Yeah.
Okay, so, but then, but they in...
But can you buy a
Keatine on credit?
I was too busy laughing at my own joke.
I'm sorry.
So, okay, I'm not laughing at that
because I can see whales from my house
and I know self-preservation.
So, but then, like, the song itself
undercuts this whole idea of like,
oh, you know, they're going to be really hard to please
because she doesn't do anything, right?
She just shakes their hand and they're like, wow, she touched me.
The song literally says,
will you please take my hand
I am now your biggest fan
yes and also
take this rose take this bouquet
Diana make my day
how their Welsh accents go
oh it's so bad that's all it takes
and then all of Wales fell in love
right there and then
yes not so much with Charles
though and I'm like it's probably the ears
I was comforted though
because I have gotten slack from our British listeners
for how my British accent is
but the moment these West End actors
were asked to do Welsh.
They all sound like fucking
Little Britain's cuts
from the cutting room
from the more problematic parts
of Little Britain
and Mighty Bush.
So, okay.
So, but the point here, though,
is that Charles gets really jealous
of how well received Diana is.
So we get a scene
where Camilla is trying to console him about that.
Yeah, and again, like,
and they talk about what's kind of
going on with her husband and stuff.
Camilla and a husband,
they come across to the own,
like, exclusively as people
who are pretty comfortable.
with who they are and what's going on their lives.
This musical may as well be a Camilla propaganda piece.
Honestly, yeah.
Because I don't think she was queen at the time that this,
she wasn't allowed to be queen at the time that this came out.
And I think we changed the rules on that since.
So I think this might have been part of her PR push
to be allowed to become queen by renovating her reputation here.
Oh, there you go.
But at this point, she tells Chucky that she needs to break it off with him
because it's ruin and stuff with her husband, right?
Yeah.
And so right on the heels of that,
Diana comes in all bubbly and in high contrast with Chuck's sudden sadness.
So he gets all snippy, right?
And, of course, this actress plays Diana is like perpetually on the edge of a breakdown.
So as soon as he's like, you know, hey, I'm upset right now, not in the mood for your good news.
She completely loses it, right?
Yes.
And tells us about how it's really hard to do no work and be a publicly funded billionaire.
I mean, genuinely, like, I'm sure she had a very hard life at this point.
I know she tried to kill herself several times
and had Bolinian. I'm sure it was like
really actually very difficult for her
at this point, but it's still kind of fucking
hilarious to watch this person go like, it's so
hard to have so many billions of dollars
to worry about. Yeah. I mean, like
she had the hardest job in England
and that is because at the time
the country is going through a mass unemployment crisis
that was leaving people destitute.
So a lot of people didn't have jobs,
but yeah, you have it hard. A lot of those Welsh
people were free all day.
That's why they were there with the flowers. They were going to eat those
flowers after she left.
This is where he says, I love you,
I think we're supposed to think for the first time, right?
And he says it, like, when you realize
that this is your favorite tie place
in town, like, you know what?
I love you. Yeah, right, right.
I love you, in a way.
Yeah.
And she says she's pregnant as well.
I've got to me tell you, it's a baby, Charles, and he says,
what? It's like, she can't say
it much more clearly than that. I mean, she's holding
a stomach and saying, I've got to me to tell you, it's a baby
Charles. You can put the pieces together here.
Right. So, but he sure hopes it's a boy. It is. Then we get her singing to baby William. At this point, she's got to, like, sing extra syllables so that the rhymes catch up with each other, you know.
Again, we get some hard gains in again here. Yeah, they struggle so hard to think of rhymes. It's too much to the point where at least are really odd situations. Like at one point during this song, she wonders if she dare call her baby her own. But like, it's obviously your baby. It might have been, like, it's obviously your baby. It might have been, like, it's.
could have, there's questions of a parentage,
but normally on the dad's side,
not on the mum's side.
And we rhyme like,
air is in heir to the throne with their,
and we rhymed B with family.
And it's like, oh God,
it's every single one of them is such a dull rhyme.
And I think,
I think we haven't expressed sufficiently
is there's almost no spoken words
in this entire two hour long thing.
Oh no, yeah, it's almost an opera.
Yeah, it's every, every thing,
crashing into song, crashing into song.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In all the words.
worst ways, yeah. But Charles is impressed with the kid's possession of a penis, and then he gets
a call from Camilla. And, you know, he sings about how he loves Camilla more than Diana, and
Diana overhears it. Right. So she says, hey, did you just say something about being her
tampon? And he goes, no, I said, I felt tramped on. Trampton. But then he leaves, and she sings a
song about how he totally said tampon. I could use a prince to save him.
me from my prince is one of the lyrics
in that song. Yeah, it's
bad. It is so bad.
We get the famous wall punch.
Again, so for those of you who didn't
follow fucking British tabloids
when I was 10 years old and Noah
was getting married to Lucinda,
this was a huge, this got leaked
from the palace that she punched a window
and it broke and she cut her hand.
Oh, gotcha. I didn't know that.
This is a huge, oh yeah,
because they turned it into like
she's a homicidal maniac,
who pulled two panes of glass free from the royal windows
and held someone at, you know, a fucking glass to their throat
and was like, bring me the blood of a Welshman.
But what actually happened is she like slammed something too hard
and it cracked or whatever.
But this is, it's such a perfect representation
of this musical taking like a weird tabloid detail
that only four people were obsessed with
and turning it into the throat slitting scene from Sweeney Taw.
Yeah.
Like, she just turns to a bathroom cabinet
and just like a Diana smash.
Like, yeah, she might as well, like, Diana smash,
Coo!
Oh!
So, okay.
So now she's, she's on bed rest after a suicide attempt, right?
They've only got one wrist wrap.
Like, she gave up halfway through.
And then she conversed,
she's talking with her sister at this point.
And her sister's like,
I think you're only trying to kill yourself for attention.
I'm like, oh, don't just say it like that, man.
Fuck.
the musical hedges its bets
way too much on like
she might have just been dramatic
like let's not necessarily assume
she was in psychological torture
she might have just been doing it being
we want to be fair
on how we portray this mentally ill woman
also it does this annoying little winky thing
to the future as well she says well
I'm not going to get a divorce what am I going to do
rent a flat in Kensington
because she did do that
That's the joke is that
she did get a flat in Kensington
is the joke
and it's like when they do stuff like that
it's so beautiful that they have no audience
right and it's just a echoing silence
echoing back to him.
So good.
So okay so but then just as the sister is saying
what a piece of shit Charles is he shows up right?
Yes, so I hope you don't mind
I've arrived mid-sentence about me.
Yeah, so let's carry this on.
He shows up and she's like,
how are the boys?
He's like, I don't fucking know.
Neither of us know we did not race them.
It's insane that this musical thinks we have anything other than a passing handshake relationship with either of them.
Yeah.
So, yeah, but he's very put out by all her suicide attempts.
But at this point, he tells her he says he wants to make the marriage work for the sake of the media, right?
For the sake of you stopping doing this.
Yeah, right, right.
So we don't do this ever again.
Yeah.
How do we cut this out?
Huh?
Yeah.
When we cut this out?
Right.
So, but she decides she wants to do more charity work.
And then the queen cuts in to sing us a song about how hard it is to be a good billionaire leech of the public coffers.
And I genuinely couldn't tell if the queen was entering the same room as that scene was happening in or not.
Because the direction is everything just keeps flowing around so much that they're still on stage while the queen's singing.
I mean, you're not going to address the fact that your mom just walked in singing.
No, okay.
But she does
That's what she's famous for
She secretly smokes and sings
Wherever she goes
Yeah so but she sure is jealous of die
And so is Camilla
Every other woman in this play
Talks about how jealous they are
Of Princess Die
Every single one at all times
Yeah and her startling beauty
Yep
Totally came in right women
Sorry guys
You want to cut that
I had a little cough
Oh yeah yeah no
I'll cut it out
So then we get Diana meeting
Cancer patients
and Charles wishing he was more beloved.
Oh, she loved hanging out with cancos.
That's what Marsh calls him, cancos.
We're extending it to cancer patients now.
I'm just going through everything you've ever said is skeptically bad,
and then whatever the subject is, you hate those people.
I thought he's going through anything anyone my family's ever suffered with.
Yeah, that's just, I thought it was, I think it's a good crossover.
So then we cut to the Royal Ballet Gala, where we're going to spend some fucking time, right?
This movie has fast-forwarded through the birth of her kids
and her multiple suicide attempts
and her bulimia to really dig in
on the Royal Ballet Gala.
Which was a thing.
It was a scandal.
You simple whore, if you only knew
what a scandal this was, no allusioned.
You red-cheeked rub.
You don't understand the tears that were shed.
She danced with Wayne's sleep.
Yes.
Volga.
Yes.
It was,
she essentially shoved the prima donna of the English ballet up her vagina in right in the queen's face.
That's basically what she did, Noah.
So, okay, so the scene starts off with Charles sitting down and he's like,
hey, where's my wife?
And the assistant goes, well, I believe she's still in the bathroom, sir.
And he goes, fucking bitch, I was going to fucking piss on every god game.
The servant is going, oh, she's, um, she's busy pissing, sir.
I believe she's in the middle of a piss.
She's doing one of those long shits where you feel.
bad but not like you know that if you can just get the whole shit out you'll be fine but it's a real
journey so then they're like you know here comes the ballet dancer inside this moustachio
ballet dancer comes on and then diana comes out and dances with him and yeah right and like
apparently charles and his mom hate dance like john lithgow and fucking footloose oh my guy they
according to this musical they then banished everyone from this public he just stands up and he's
like, everybody out.
Yes.
Out to the Royal Gala immediately.
And Diana says to him, I did it to make you proud.
But if Diana did do that in real life to make him proud,
she actually is an idiot because he's been quite clear.
He'd hate that so much.
Yeah.
It's a really stupid thing to do to make him proud.
And the scene that takes place afterwards is,
and I really need you to internalize this podcast listener,
the confrontation from Le Miz,
but it's Charles and Diana having a fight about her doing a little ballet.
Yes.
And him, every rhyme ends with.
her name.
Every one of his lines is Diana.
At this point, the fucking writers
discovered that, right?
They're like, hey, guys, guys,
you could just end every line with the same word
and everything rhymes
because they do that like four more times in this fucking movie.
Okay, can I give you guys my favorite lyric
from this confrontation scene?
Oh, please, yes.
Stop being a martyr, Diana.
Why can't you be smart, Diana?
We should also point out that this song,
has a distorted guitar
desperately trying to convince us
that it fucking rocks.
He's trying to shred so hard
and it is failing at the shred.
It also has some distorted pronunciation
because at one point Prince Charles
says the word,
be practical to her.
I don't know what that's meant to be.
Yeah.
But yes, she sings about how sad it all is
and I'm like, oh, that must be why
it hurts so much to watch.
And then she has this fucking song
that she sings where the chorus of
is her going, Te Amo, Te Kiro, I'll say it every way I know.
But then she doesn't say it any other ways, right?
And she just repeats.
Yeah, well, she comes back to it one other time and I'm just like, well, say, like,
if you're going to do that, then you have to say I love you in like 10 different languages
is a big part of the song.
But no.
I want to going through like Mandarin.
I want to going through Klingon, just like some of those weird ones from Lord of the Rings.
Like really go deep.
Right, right.
All the pigeon Englishes.
Yeah, so, yeah.
She's not allowed to do those voices.
Not when there's royalty on stage.
You can't put those voices together with royalty.
Fun fact, still what my BBC is set to and we'll never change.
Lovely stuff.
Sure, sure.
So, okay, so then Charles shows up at Camilla's place, right?
Her husband answers the door and he's like, let me get my chair, you know.
And then they sing maybe my least favorite song in the whole fucking show, this I miss you most on Sunday's song.
It's certainly the most boring possible hook for a love song
is that I miss you most on Sundays.
That is the most boring sentiment you could possibly address.
Yeah, except perhaps Tuesday afternoon
because there's half-price apps at the Applebee's.
You know when your buddy has gone through a breakup
and you're comforting him, you're at his house and he's crying,
and he thinks he's telling you something really deep and meaningful
he and his ex used to do, he's like,
and then we would watch stranger things
and you're not allowed to say
a lot of people watch that show
together and separately
and it's not your thing.
This is that monologue, the song.
It's that song.
The song has them going from like,
oh, something about passions of blaze.
And the next line is like,
lazy walks and silly talks.
You can't have silly talks
and lazy walks as your thing.
That is not your thing, Camilla.
Yeah, that would be like your song
being shaving a haircut.
Can't do that.
That's not fair.
But the point of this,
seen, though, is that Camilla is pretty
sure that they can still make the tampon
thing happen, so they decide to just
fuck on the side.
At, their solution is to conduct
their affair in their friends,
plural, castle's plural.
Yes. Relatable stuff. Relatable
drama.
The Polly members of our
audience get it. You got to use the occasional
buddy castle.
Hey, you're not going to hear me
until the commercial break is over
because I'm doing that noise in the background
and no one cut it.
So then we cut to Diana being mad about this
to her sister, right?
But this is where she decides she's got an idea.
She's going to take control of the press herself.
And again, the lyrics are so bad.
There's one line in this song.
too many smiles, too many yeses,
too many dreams which Charles depresses.
Oh my God.
Is this translated from a different language?
Has this been through several different translators
to get back to this?
Because that's not an English sentiment.
Ah.
And of course, we're like desperately trying to get to dresses there
as I'm sure the audience already knew, right?
Yes, yes.
The chorus of this song is a pretty, pretty girl in a pretty dress.
And I just wrote in my notes,
Gloria Steinem is so proud.
this is the first time
we get the magic wardrobe change
right to further bastard days
Eli's heart only slightly belied
by the fact that she is wearing a circus
balloon in the first half of the scene
she explains that too many of the dresses
in her wardrobe have too many
frilly frumpy fruffles
you didn't have to rhyme yourself
into that corner you wrote this
it could have been something other than an uffles
to rhyme with that
they didn't know about delete did they yeah
so
also also
by the way, this song
has a distorted guitar
and a harpsichord.
Like, okay, so, like,
like, okay, everything sounds like shit
with a harpsichord, because a harpsichord sounds like shit,
but nothing sounds worse with a harpsichord
than a fucking distorted guitar.
Yeah.
So, okay, so, but during this song,
Charles realizes that he needs to pick a worthy cause,
right? That's why Dai is getting all the good press
and he's getting shitty press,
is because she's got the AIDS and the cancer patients or whatever.
And I'm like, oh, please,
don't pick homeopathy, but no, he picks
architecture. Yes, because he gave like a public lecture
on architecture in order to try and find a way
to, like, renovate his own public image.
And obviously, he did actually do architecture, so they went with
architecture to rhyme it with lecture, but also
because there was no way they were going to find a rhyme for
biodynamic agriculture, one of his other big passions.
Honestly, they would have just rhymed bore, right?
They don't care. They don't care.
To be fair, of all the things Charles decided to speak out
openly about. Architecture
is the only one he was kind of
sort of right about.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And some
stuff around the environment he's not bad on. He's like,
hey, he shouldn't destroy the environment,
please. Okay, you stick to those two topics
and say nothing else ever again, please.
Have you considered how easy Indians
are to kill? No, we're doing architecture? All right,
fine. But of course, he's trying to do his lecture
on architecture, but everybody
is focused on Diana's
dresses instead. And the Queen's
is embarrassed because
Diana's
wearing too many dresses
wearing the wrong dresses
I don't know the dress wearing is bad
yeah it's so bad it's so bad
like her big empowerment moment
is wearing another dress
this is the feminist story
that I think it is
and she's like just coming from going across
the stage in a different dress
she's wearing a hat at one point in that oh
it's not her because she's coming from the other side
it's a different body drovel in a dress
to try and there's many dresses packed into
this small thing as possible.
Then the overall effect, because she's wearing so many
layered costume to get in as many
dresses at once, the overall effect is
to make it look like Dana spent half her life
in ill-fitting dresses.
That did nothing to flatter her at all.
One out of four dresses
will look great. And it has
a line which again, this is
one of the most perfect lines to sum up this
entire fucking musical.
The stories girls are taught
to believe are not the
stories that a girl should believe.
Nails it, everybody.
Let's head to lunch.
What could rhyme better than believe and believe?
It's a perfect rhyme.
All right, well, it looks like Diana has a plan,
and that plan is to wear, dresses, and be pretty.
So we get to take a break.
But first, let me give Act 3 the hard sell.
Will the play examine the deep psychological harm
the public dissolution of their parents' marriage
must have had on William and Harry?
Would doing so underscore how fucked up it is to make a musical
about it. Will they just devote an entire musical number to that time she wore an overly cleavagey
dress instead? Find out the answers to these questions and more. We'll return for the discordant
conclusion of Diana. The Musical. Hey, podcast listener, by now you probably already know that we'll be doing
god-awful movies live in San Francisco on April 3rd. And most of those tickets are sold out,
but there are still a few general admission tickets left, and we've got just the news we need to sell them.
We are pleased to announce that we're going to be joined on stage by our very own guest masochist,
Kara Santa Maria for the live show.
Really, guys, right in front of me.
But you can't come to America, they'd throw you in a gulag.
Still!
That's right.
Kara will be live on stage for all the shenanigans you've only ever heard.
But act fast.
There are less than 100 tickets left, and we have a feeling they're going to go pretty fast.
Okay, has Kara ever paused to read a fake newspaper?
Never.
She hasn't.
So grab your tickets where you can at godawfulmovieslive.com.
That's godawfulmovieslive.com.
Have I mentioned how close I've grown to Cecil since we started doing a show together?
It's almost like we become best friends.
Too far, Mars!
You started it.
All right, gentlemen, I call to order this meeting of the evil British elites
who will kill Princess Diana.
Now, as you know, we're planning to kill Diana as revenge for embarrassing the crown with her affairs and philandering.
It's perfect.
Sorry.
Yes, Reginald.
Right.
Is it perfect, though?
Of course it's perfect.
We're going to kill her.
Right.
It just seems like that would just make her a national martyr rather than a...
fading in popularity tabloid subject.
Oh, yes, it might do that.
Also, also, if we're killing her for having affairs,
are we killing Charles, too?
Or Andrew, I mean, Andrew did kids even.
No, no, I think he's on our side, is the thing.
Is he? Because he shouldn't be.
Look, look, we're going to kill Diana,
and it's not going to make her a martyr or anything.
Everyone will be like, whoa, Diana's dead.
I better not embarrass the queen ever, ever,
again. Okay.
Okay. So, I feel like we're just going to end up with a very expensive Beanie Baby.
I don't even know what that means.
I'm not sure that I do.
The most expensive Beanie Baby is the Princess Die commemorative Beanie Baby.
Really? Oh, Jesus Christ. Yep.
I'm surprised that everyone in England doesn't know that.
I assume you have one. It's your legacy.
Right.
And we're back for more of this shit
and we're going to rejoin the action
with Barbara Cartland showing back up
like she's from Tony D's house of side pieces.
It's so great.
You did not think Barbara Cartland had more in her in this,
but she does.
She's back surprised Baba Cartland, bitches.
I guess.
And what's so weird is that she's here to introduce
Diana's Affair, Singular.
Yes.
We'll go with Singular for now.
Yeah, certainly in the musical.
But the thing is, like, Charles's affair has been this marriage-destroying, first act creating, suicide-causing problem.
And her affair will be this one burlesque number.
And that is, like, they will barely talk about it for the rest of the play.
They'll just be like, oh, she fucked a guy too.
Right, yeah.
So now this is James Hewitt, and yes, that does rhyme with Do It.
they will get almost no use out of that.
Almost no.
But I almost went with best best, best entrance
because he enters this entire thing.
On the back of like, was he like a fake,
like a pommel horse basically,
but shirtless in Jodhpahs or insane, insane decision.
Yeah, he's shirtless on a saddle.
Singing his name of like, James Hewett.
Yes, exactly.
Like announcing himself like a Pokemon.
Well, okay.
And the other thing, too, that makes this so fucking weird
is that we meet him long before Diana shows up.
So it's just Barbara Cartland singing about how fuckable this young man is for a really long time.
And it would have been great if that was the entire number.
And then we go back to Dinah's song.
Barbara Cartland was an absolute cougar, man.
Sorry.
James Hewitt paid a lot in the Kickstarter for this music.
It's always said to a number about how far.
Fuckable, yes.
So, yeah, but then Diana shows up
and they have some really strained innuendo.
We're in a horror sequel's a penis.
Mm.
And then the old lady sings about how the two of them fucked, right?
Yep.
Yeah.
While every time his name gets said,
the backing women keep going,
oh, oh, James Hewitt.
He did go around with a crowd of women
that every time he flirted in real lives,
his backing women,
uh, oh, oh, James Hewitt.
It's so hard to remember throughout this entire thing
that it was done in earnest, right?
Like, that it wasn't just setting us up, yeah.
But, okay, so we should probably address that,
like, most of this movie is just an argument against monogamy, right?
It is, it is.
Are you about to accuse me of writing Diana the musical?
For the last time, no comment, no illusion.
And how do you follow up a song with such a profound name as Pretty Girl in a dress?
why with a song called
There's Him, There's Her
where the main refrain is
there's him, there's
her. Yes, and then it
rhymes with There's Him
and Her. It just
keeps going, there's him and her, and
him and her, and then there's him and her.
It's like, the 60% of
this song is the words him and her, and it
is not interesting. Even Barbara
Cartland looks like she is not interested
in selling this. And we've
seen some of the stuff Barbara Carlin sold,
in her books
and this is
she is looking down
on this song
that's how bad it is
yeah
so that we get
that song
and then we get
Chuck and Die
together
at a formal event
and they're singing
this song
like where
Dai is trying to
say stuff
and he doesn't
want to listen to it
so he just keeps
saying just dance
and she'll like
say something
and he'll be like
just shut the fuck up
all right
yeah and he's got
a point here
like stop
backstoring so
aggressively
Diana you're in public
just have a dance
like just quit
for old Mormon
just have one
evening, please. But she explains
that she really wants to make her marriage
work with him, even though
she's fucking her jockey guy or whatever
the hell he is, cavalry officer guy.
Yeah, there's one fantastic
moment in here where Charles
is considering running off to Camilla
the way that she wants to run off with her guy
and he says, maybe I'll run away to France
like my uncle did for love.
And just a quick reminder, it was not
for love. His uncle ran off to
France. It was picked the wrong
side in World War II.
Just a quick history lesson.
So, yeah, but so, and then we get the scene where, like, Chuck's, like, spy or whatever
tells him that, that his wife is fucking James Hewitt.
Yeah, who the fuck is that knock?
And why does he get a song riff right now to nowhere?
Right.
But, yeah, then he runs off to Camilla and he's like, you know, I would give up the crown for you.
Never happened.
He never said that.
He suggested he'd not be king over Camilla.
At all.
So, yeah, but then Chuck and die
We see they're on either side of the stage
Leaving their side pieces or whatever
And then after they're gone
The side pieces sing for a little while
As though the two of them are gonna fuck now
Yes, that's what I wrote
Oh, Camilla and Hewitt are gonna run together
Yeah, it's like James Hewitt
He's done Dana, he's at a pop of Barbara Cartland
He's moving on to Camilla
Like, oh, you go, James Hewitt
Just fucking his way through the whole cast
Oh God, it's the queen next
If this is the queen, James Hewitt as king
Perfect. Perfect.
And equally historical as the rest of the music.
Yeah, right.
Yes.
It's okay.
But when that song finally releases us,
we get a scene where Chuck confronts her
about being so damn charitable all the time, right?
Yeah.
This is the one time that we can all agree with the movie
where she's like, well, but Thatcher sucks.
Right?
And we're like, yeah, okay, yeah.
No, Thatcher did suck.
Yeah, I've got fuck you, Thatcher in my notes as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yep, there you go.
It's nice that we can all.
all be united, right?
Us, the royal family, the musical.
Just everybody can all sit down to the table and agree that Margaret Thatcher fucking sucks.
Yeah, everyone but my parents kind of agree that Margaret Thatcher is.
Yeah, there you go.
Well, so, okay, and then this is, so this is where we can really kind of see, I think,
where the inspiration for this whole musical comes from?
Because this scene is actually good, right?
This song is good in my mind.
And it's celebrating the actual, like, you know, probably best thing that she did, right?
This is the scene where she goes to visit with AIDS patients
and they tell her, oh, you should put on gloves.
And she's like, fuck you, I don't need to put on goddamn gloves.
I'm not fingering them, right?
Yes.
And so she, like, got photographed, you know, hugging and embracing these
and shaking hands with these AIDS patients at a time
when, like, everybody was scared to even be in a room with an AIDS patient, right?
Yeah.
But to be fair, Charles has got a point, because he says you should wear protection
to avoid getting AIDS.
And he's got a point, like, bag up down,
and you don't know where Jim's he would spin.
I bet you, I heard you foot bar with Carter.
So, like, you do need to have protection.
She's quite the cougar, yeah.
I'm surprised, I mean, I'm not surprised Charles is saying that about AIDS
because the only HIV that Charles recognizes is Henry the 4th.
This entire review was worth it for that line.
I saw it in our notes and I was like, I will grind this review to a halt
and be like, what other things do you have to say, Michael Marshall?
There's also a great moment here where, you know, he's like, you know,
people are going to say you're an opportunist
and she's like, oh, people
badmouthed Mother Teresa.
And I'm like, well, yeah, because Mother Teresa was fucking wrong about that.
She was a terrible human being.
I know you're just using a conversational convention,
but I do need to point out every time someone mentions that lady
that she tortured children for fun.
Yeah, she did.
And I wrote, oh, God, that line didn't age well,
even though it was written well after we knew she was a terrible person.
Right.
So yeah, exactly.
Yep, yep.
It was already that bad when it was born.
Yeah.
So she goes off to, and he's like,
try not to catch AIDS while you're at the thing.
So she goes off to the thing.
And then we actually have, like I said,
the only good song in the entire thing
where she's talking with the AIDS patients.
There is something like pretty fucking awkward
about the dying AIDS patient musical number.
Yeah, that really.
But it is the high point of the movie.
And it's, here's the thing.
Like, this is really genuinely
one of the most wonderful things that Diana did,
such a humanizing and important thing.
During the 80s,
it's sort of to the peak of,
homophobia along with the AIDS crisis.
Yeah.
This scene is a little much, right?
They all kind of turn into little orphan Annie sort of clinging to her legs.
And you are my pet homosexuals who I will always remember.
Yeah, giving her proper little lines, like reviewing her outfit and stuff.
Oh, yeah, apart from your fashion sense, Diana.
It's like, okay, that's a bit of a catty thing to say,
given that's the one thing that Dana is claimed to be empowered by is her fashion sense.
and these gay guys are having a pop at it.
Like, oh, come on, guys.
Have some decorum.
So, yeah, so she's like, well, we should all get our picture taken together.
And they're like, oh, well, you know, there's a huge prejudice against, you know, people with AIDS and gay people.
And we probably don't want to do that.
And she's like, oh, come on.
And they're like, oh, shucks.
Yeah, let's do that.
Fine, okay.
But if I get fired, I'm going to die from AIDS way faster.
Okay.
Oh, why not?
So, but again, like, yeah, absolutely go.
I love to take risks.
What did I say?
Yeah, right.
So, God.
So then, okay, so then we get Diana talking to her sister about how, you know, her privilege is so very problematic, which I'm sure she talked about a lot.
She's like, oh, our problems are so minuscule.
It's like, yeah, Diana, your problems were so minuscule.
Like, yeah, you're right.
Absolutely correct.
Yes.
Yeah.
Small problems.
Also, maybe you don't know this, but your problems have been what the first half of the musicals about.
You can't really shit on them now.
I also don't know if this moment was on purpose, but this is what happens in the musical.
She's like putting it on her earrings.
She's like, oh, I don't know.
Just sometimes I feel like our problems are so small.
Where's my fucking dinner?
I feel like that wasn't on purpose.
Yep, but that actually is the sequence.
And she's like, well, I don't know.
You know, maybe I'm overblowing this.
I don't even think he's still fucking Camilla anymore.
And her sister's like, well, no, no, no.
He's going to a fucking Camilla party tonight.
Right?
And then Diana's like, oh, well, then I'm going to a fucking Camilla party
so then we go to the party
and Diana like surprises her way in and everybody gasps
before they gasp like they're expecting this to be
talking about how this is a boring party
because it's such a kind of an upper class kind of party
it's got a line from the crowd
they're saying nights like this
I envy the poor
their parties can't possibly be such a bloody bore
oh fuck you
it was probably great being baby Marsh at this point
right you got to fucking
you and your fellow smudgy-faced orphans
were just checking chimneys for bits of goals.
Yeah, mid of the minor strike on the doll.
Yeah, exactly.
Just a bunch of people being like,
all right to be Princess Diana and confronting my husband's mistress right now.
I tell you that for sure.
Oh, I've been shot.
Yeah.
But then the very boring party gets super exciting.
It gets to be, quote,
the thriller in Manila between Diana and Camilla.
that is the only clever rhyme in the entire goddamn play, right?
I think it's the rhyme from which this musical was birthed.
Yep, yep.
They've seen the rap battle scene from Hamilton and thought,
I think we can do that.
We've got one line.
I think we can vamp the rest, actually.
I think he did it.
He just had one good line and he vamp the rest and it came out well,
so let's go for it, guys.
Yes, they have a fucking rap battle.
Like, Diana and Camilla go downstairs into the basement to rap battle each other.
Oh, and I really wanted it to devolve into a basement fight club
or possibly evolve into a basement fight club.
Yes, right?
Now, and I don't want to get you too excited when I say it becomes a rap battle.
Here is one of the actual lines, which I think we all wrote down in our goddamn notes.
Oh, oh, oh, you're completely mad.
Such delusion and confusion.
How bloody sad.
Oh, yeah, it is.
It is really bad.
It is really bad.
I just complimented in my notes.
I had, like, the ink had not dried on my compliment about the fucking
Thriller and Manila rhyme.
And then they did that to me.
I'm like, oh, dude, come on.
But yeah, so Chuck shows up to break up their rap battle.
Does he come in with a bat out of hell reference?
I swear he comes in with a like, you better stop right there.
I've got a no right now or something like that.
Oh, had I just gone mad by this point?
Oh, okay.
And was, like, picturing meatloaf, like, injected into this.
I don't know.
But I swear that was a bad out of hell reference.
It would have been the right time, culturally.
Sure.
But he didn't know meatloaf.
So, like, watch it again.
Find out.
See what you think.
Not a chance in hell, Marsh.
So, yeah, but also, I want to point out here,
because this is, like, the 15th time this movie has had Diana stop
and, like, look right at the camera and go,
I want to make this marriage work.
It's entirely because of the kids and my response.
for the traditional family,
I have nothing else to gain from this.
I want it to work, right?
But yeah, so she does
her, like she goes after all as enablers
in her song, and then she does
a mic drop and she leaves.
I think as she leaves, one of the last lines
is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.
That's where we're going with this as well.
So she rhymes fun with fun with fun, sorry,
she rhymed fun with fun with done, and then
with fun again.
With fun, yes.
It was fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.
It was not fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.
None of that was fun, fun, fun.
But if you don't say fun, fun, fun,
it won't catch up with where you need the ride
to be Mars.
Come on.
Don't be a dick.
So then we, like, we have this after battle,
after rap battle drive home, right?
Yes.
This is where she accuses him of spying on her.
And as someone whose mom followed all of this drama
when it was happening,
this was a huge part of the Diana drama
is who was spying for who
and who was spying on whom.
But just, I want to remind everyone
that everyone involved in this
is a member of the royal family currently, right?
It wasn't so much spying as,
well, my royal retinue drove me over to here
and we are aware of that.
Right.
I mean, not everyone's currently a member of the royal family.
Famously, at least one person in Diana the musical
is no longer a member of the film.
At this point in the muse.
Okay, okay, fair.
So, yeah, but she goes,
three, two, one monogamy starting now,
and he's like, no, no, let's just both fuck around.
Damn, all right, let's just do that.
which is great, right?
So she goes to James Hew
and she says, hey, I have permission
to like fuck you as much as we want
but this is when he tells her
that he's been transferred
to Germany, right?
Yes, he's like, I got transferred
to which she responds,
if you leave, you and I are no more.
And I wrote my notes, yes, that's how it works.
That's how leaving works.
Yeah.
But she's like, well, I can make your transfer
not happen.
You know, you're in the military.
I'm the fucking princesses.
and shit. And he's like, no, I must go to Germany for my honor. And I'm like, you're not at war
with them. This is the 80s. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, he's been assigned to Germany for two years.
That's 40 years too late. Germany legitimately isn't far enough for this to be that much of an
issue. No. It's fine. We can still see each other a weekend. It's like, yeah, your, your royalty,
you can probably hop a plane on the hour and a half it takes you to get to Germany. You'll be fine.
It's just, that's just like, that's across the state in many states here and
U.S.
Yeah.
No, don't you understand.
I hate to fly easy jet.
Oh, okay.
Well, yeah, we should probably break up.
So, but he doesn't want to be her sidepiece anymore, so he storms off.
And thus ended all her infidelity, okay?
So, okay, so she's singing to herself again.
And then we all get excited for a moment because she calls somebody on the phone and she
goes, Andrew, I must speak to you.
And we're like, oh, what?
He was so excited.
The jokes are about to get so much easier.
But no, it's a different, Andrew.
I'd forgotten about the Andrew Morton,
Andrew Morson, I forget the guy's name,
the book that he'd written about it.
I completely forgot about that.
But yeah, I was so excited when it was Andrew for a moment.
And they do a weird thing here,
which, again, as someone whose mother
obsessively followed all of this,
they make it seem like she chose
to do the Andrew Morton book
because her affair was over.
Like, she was like, well, now that I'm not cheating on anyone,
the truth must come out.
And she had been working on that book throughout,
like whatever motivations you want to give to Diana
and I think a bunch of them are actually kind of sexist
but like whatever motivations you want to give to Diana
writing that book and leaking those tapes
it's not that she was like well my affair's over so fuck it
now we're no cheating allowed
right right so yeah but so this is where she decides
that she's going to fight him heroically in the tabloids
so what she's going to do is this guy who's writing a book about her
she's going to like record tapes of herself
answering all his questions and then send those to him
Yeah, this is so fucking stupid
She doesn't want to give him anything on the record
So she's dead dropping him audio tips
So now there's audio of her saying these things
With zero deniability
She might as well have offered to have the tapes
Notarized and then sealed with her specific wax seal
When you give them all that
I need to be secret so you can only have my thumbprint
Yeah, right, right
And all my passwords
So but he writes her story
They do this song where the refrain is like
that the words come pouring out, right?
And then it's the something else comes pouring out
and then the hate comes pouring out or whatever.
They really tried very hard to make
and then the guy with the typewriter
type down the words that she said
seem really urgent and exciting.
Yeah, but everybody rushes to read the book
the prince sees it and he
and finds out what's in it and he is not pleased at all.
And the thing is the only reason we know that this happened,
like the whole thing with the tape recorder
is because after Diana died,
Andrew Morton, the writer,
republished the book as a second edition
with all of the third person bits
turned into first person bits
to make it clear that,
oh no, she said this to actually to me directly
to capitalize on her death.
Because it was like,
well, people have said that this is what's happening with Diana
and then they change that to
this is what's happening with me right now
and published that after she died,
very soon after she died.
This is a find and replace job.
This is excellent.
Yeah, 100%.
All right. So then we cut to Charles
talking to his mom about the book, right?
And she's like, is it true?
And he's like, I don't, why you got to bring it up old shit?
Yeah.
He's like, do you want to meet my mistress, mom?
And she's like, no.
No, man.
I believe that happened.
I do believe that.
Yeah, that's probably real.
I just want to have a moment of sympathy for the queen mother here.
This is the queen.
Not the queen mother.
Again, to be clear, who's different lady.
As a child was brought by the hand out during the bombings to show solidarity with
their people.
And now her 30-something-year-old son is like, yes, I have it tough too, mother.
I'm cheating on my wife with my mistress.
There had to be a moment where Elizabeth was like, could you all just fucking tighten it up?
Could we all just sort of chuck it in a little bit?
I know you guys aren't doing the Nazi thing,
but I did the Nazi thing.
So if we could all just sort of tuck it,
just tuck it in.
I would agree,
except she may have said,
why aren't you more like my very famous
favored of my children,
Andrew?
Yeah,
that's possible.
So if she had been trying to modify
the behavior of the others,
I don't think it's modifying it in a better direction.
He's hanging out with kids all the time.
He loves charities.
Oh, no.
So, okay, and then we get this scene,
I love this so goddamn much.
So Charles is, he's painting a landscape that they're going to use on a stamp.
On a stamp.
I can't do this right now.
I've got important stamps to design.
Yes, right.
He's got to say they have to present all the hard stuff he has to do as prints.
But on the stage show, they've set the easel way too low.
Right?
So he's like trying to paint right around the area of his penis.
It makes no fucking sense.
If he turned it and it was a self-portrait of his penis, it would make sense.
Right.
Yeah.
Right, well, so they don't want to cover the man's face while he's trying to sing and do his stuff.
So they've put this easel, like, tiny, like smurf-sized or whatever.
It's fucking hilarious.
So, yeah, but this is where he says he's got an idea.
He sends his guy out of the room, right, his security guy or whatever.
The guy's name is William.
Why not just give that character a name that isn't one of your kids' names?
Yes.
But anyway, he sends that guy away and he's like, I've got an idea.
Well, specifically what he says, there is one thing I've been considering, but it's rather drastic.
and I wanted him to say,
I know a guy in Paris.
What if we get her driver drunk?
He goes, what do you think?
And he goes, I think a song.
And I'm like, God damn it.
Fuck.
But what he thinks is that he should go on TV
and admit that he's fucking Camilla.
Right?
Because that'll help.
Or at least that he tried super hard
not to fuck Camilla
and just fell short of that high standards.
Yeah.
Guys, this really has.
And it is one of the most excruciating things that has ever happened in world history.
If I could undo Charles' weird interview where he admits to his affair or the Holocaust,
I'd pick the Holocaust, but I'd pause for long enough that everyone would be mad at me.
You know what I'm saying?
I don't think this is that bad in the sense of it's not even the worst interview.
A child of the queen has given to a British new year.
You can't just always go back to the fact
that Andrew is an unrepent pedophile,
March, okay?
No, you can go back to the fact that he felt that interview
helped clear his name from being an
unrepentant paeophile
because he said it was impossible for him to sweat
and that he was in a pizza express at the time.
Yep, I did forget that.
I still feel like the Charles...
I'm going to say, I still feel like the Charles one of his word.
And then he's like, I think that went well.
I thought that was good, guys.
Mum, yes, I just wanted to let you know
I've cleared everything up.
No, I told them I don't sweat.
Yeah, no, don't worry.
So, okay.
So, but now he's going on TV and Diana's got to figure out what she's going to do when Paul has an idea that is a song.
Paul is her manservant or whatever.
No small parts, Paul.
Fuck yeah.
And his idea is her tits.
Right?
Yes.
The revenge dress.
The revenge dress.
And I think this again comes from Paul Burrell's side of the story because he's making up.
that he came up with the revenge dress.
I think the revenge dress
is one of the dresses he stole after she died.
There was definitely a series of dress
that he'd left to die. I wouldn't be surprised
that this was one of them.
Oh, wow.
Okay, but Marsh, just follow with me here.
Okay.
The revenge dress in your house
was a nuclear bomb had been dropped on London.
The amount of photos of a revenge dress
that showed up in my life
after she wore this
slightly revealing shoulderless
unspeakable, unspeakable.
Yes, no, this was
everywhere, and that's why it gets
an entire ridiculous song about it,
including the line,
a bitch on wheels in six-inch heels.
And I thought, that sounds like a really
precarious get-up for
her revenge dress. Like, if
only her revenge dress was for her
to be on wheels, to be, like, wielding
like siege equipment. Yeah.
Oh, like Hannibal Lecter. Now there's
revenge dress, right? Yeah.
Yeah, but she wears the revenge dress.
Or, as they say in this song, the F you dress, or no, the feck you dress.
The feckity, feckety, fecky, fecky, fecky dress.
That's the dressing question, yes.
And they say that like eight times.
So then we have the queen like, she sits down Chuck and die for a stern talking to, right?
Sorry, as they're setting up this scene, the disservants chastise us for being interested in this play.
For a second.
going to do.
Right, they look right at it?
All you sods can't get enough.
Have you got no shame?
It's pretty fucking preachy Western musical about her affairs and her tragic death.
Yeah.
Also, like, there was an actual war of the roses.
Relax.
Okay.
So, yeah.
But then the queen talks to him and, well, first she talks about how much she wishes
she could behead Diana.
Right.
Yeah, just casually referring to how much easier it would be if the queen could have Diana
killed.
It's like, okay, we know what you do.
here. We know what this musical is
alluding to here. One person
in that writer's room was like, so we're just going to
hide the truth. We're just going to hide
the truth. This is a reason that Heath is off
this week. Honestly, I left a gap in my
notes because I thought Heath would be beyond this.
There's going to be like a 15-minute bit where I have to
talk Heath's down from this conspiracy theory
as well. Yep, yep.
But yeah, but Diana explains that she wants
a divorce. Well,
the queen has a song for
her.
So now the queen is going to sing her bio to us.
Well, not her real bio too.
No, the version of the queen where she was just the wife of an officer.
That's all she ever was.
Look, I don't, like, she's saying, oh, I was just like Diana once.
And she wasn't anything like Diana once.
She was always one in line to the throne.
You know, that's all, that's what that was.
And it's not like she married.
It wasn't ever that her husband was the one in line to the throne.
It was the queen who was in line to the throne.
It was the queen who was in line to the throne.
I have got zero respect for the monarchy,
but do not do the Q Dog Dirty like this song.
You're so dirty.
It's fucking.
So this is a thing that she mentioned one time in one interview.
It's the most PRE of PRs.
She didn't even bother sticking to it, right?
They were like, hey, you and your husband lived on this island for a little bit.
And she was like, oh, yeah, I loved being poor.
Being poor, it's the fucking best or whatever.
And they were like, hey, guys, we need to talk about the queen's deep, deep, deep
desire to just be an officer's
wife. It needs an entire
musical number. An entire fucking song.
Where she longs for the
fucking sea. Yes, exactly.
But in the middle of her longing,
suddenly everyone around her
in a voice way too loud for the moment
sings, but then the king
died. But then the king
died. I genuinely
spat out what I was drinking.
It's the funniest. The funniest part
of the musical. There's no words for how
loud and how sudden it happens.
Imagine telling the story of the actual fucking queen
by leading with the man she was married to.
That's what we're doing here.
Yeah.
But she says,
she got pops rotsied too,
damn it.
And she didn't go fucking James Hewitt about it.
Right?
But then...
That we ever found out about it.
Well, that we know about, right.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, we've seen how James is with this cast, you know.
I never fucked him except for when I was dressed as Barbara Cartland.
But then,
but the queen says that they can get,
divorced, right?
Yeah.
And then Diana says about how,
well, you're going to have all of your
bodyguards.
And I says, I don't want the bodyguards.
That's going to be people who are like going to be spying
on me at all times.
And the queen does this like, well played.
Yes.
Yeah, well, no.
I was totally.
Like she's already mentally on the phone to a drunken
French chauffeur, show for while,
uh, while Diana is saying this.
Like, Ory, I've got a mission for you.
Yeah.
So, no.
So, yeah, but she's like, well, you'll need the,
the security because the,
the paparazzi will be hounding you
and driving really fast behind you and stuff
and she's saying, no, no, no, I'll be fine, I'm sure.
And can I say like, look, this musical is by no means
tasteful, but it gets really weirdly not tasteful
in this moment, right?
When she's like, what's going to happen?
I'm so dead.
Come on.
Be chill.
I also, I want to draw your attention to one other line
in this song that the Queen sing.
as Diana leaves and she's singing
to herself. She's singing about
herself in the third person here. She says she never
complained.
What the fuck did she have?
She's the Queen of God damn
England. Yes.
Yeah.
So, okay. So then
Diana comes out for a swan song, which is
awkward because the queen actually owns all
of the swans. I don't know.
Just to do a goose song.
But yeah, but she's singing about how
great it's going to be to be a regular person
again? And my opening line here is
just die already. Come on.
We know where this is going.
I'll be a regular person. I can
stand in a queue again. It's like, yeah,
like you're just going to be a regular lady in the queue
at Starbucks at any point in the rest of your life.
Ridiculous. I've got
a regular latte for a lady
Diana Spencer, daughter of Earl, Spencer
formerly Prince. Actually, can we make it a large
I can't fit all the titles on the side of the call?
We gave you a Trenta so we could do
all your titles. It's only
half full though. So yeah. Oh, and then
Camilla does meet the queen
after all. And we learned that Diana
auctioned off some of her most famous dresses.
Yep. We learned that from Paul Burrell. Yeah. No, he's
announcing that smuggling, knowing he's already lifted
the best ones from a war before the auction takes place.
Oh, look, to your credit, she did auctioned those off for, like, cancer
and apparently a landmines crisis march? Was there a
landmines crisis in England? And can I make jokes about a
And she, was it Mozambique or I forget where it was, but she walked through a landmine, like a field of landmines, like to bring awareness to the fact that there were shitloads of landmines lying around in countries.
And that was another, like that, that and the age thing, like those are the two, like, she really did use her image for a good thing there, like the drawing attention to the fact that landmines were like a terrible thing and we should.
Man, I was picturing baby Marsh just hanging out on a big sea mine, you know, come on, Cheryl, not free and I'll give you me lunch money.
Honestly, a musical, well, not a musical, but a West End show.
that spent quite a lot of time
around Princess Diana
doing the landmine advocacy
anti-advocacy, she wasn't pro-Latman
She was pro-Latman, she was commercial
in a place to make it across this fucking field
I should be toothpaste right now
A play about how much time she spent
preparing for that, that would have been genuinely
there's some interesting to fare
it's one line.
Her landmine stuff gets one line.
They don't even show her wearing
the visor that she wore at the landmine thing
which is one of the most iconic images
of Princess Diana.
I don't think we see that.
Right, you're right.
But yeah, so, and then we see Camilla, like, and Charles together going like,
well, I sure hope the queen doesn't live to be 116, right?
Well, that would sure fucking suck.
And then all of a sudden, the chorus just goes, breaking news out of Paris.
And we're like, already, okay, fine, I'll take it.
Yeah, it's the AIDS guy announcing that she's dead.
It is.
I'm glad that guy did all right, actually, he came through.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it lived her anyway, yeah.
So, yeah, they confirmed that Princess Diana has died, which is awkward because she's still
on stage at this moment.
She is. They're breaking the news to her that she's died.
She acts like she's hearing it from them.
She's like, well, fuck.
Have I been a ghost this whole time?
Is that why she like awkwardly shuffles off stage?
Because as she leaves the stage, she's walking so carefully like she shit herself.
And all I can assume is that the stage wasn't deep enough for the amount of walking she needed to do by the end of the song.
So she had to make every little step last.
I had to make it milk that 14 bars of final.
And these are the last signs of this musical.
I want to be very clear.
Yep.
The last line of this musical songline is,
the people who will change the world
are not the ones you think will change the world.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Incredible last line.
They wrote that and said, fiend.
It's unreal.
All right.
Well, Marsh, it takes a lot to make an American living
under the second Trump administration feel superior
to any other nationality.
but this play has managed to do it
at least for this fleeting moment,
my sympathies to you.
You know what?
No problem at all.
This is genuinely the fourth time.
I've watched this and I guarantee it is not the last time.
Not the last time.
Coming back for another hit.
All right.
Well, that's going to do it for our review of Diana the musical,
although Marcius might be ongoing.
But that is not going to do it for the episode just yet
because we still have a whole more month of secular movies to go.
So, Eli, tell us what's on deck?
Well, Noah, to continue Heath's secular tackleer,
we will be talking about one of the best, worst, good, bad movies ever made.
We will be watching Nicholas Cage's face off.
Oh, God, I hope we'll find something to make fun of.
I love that movie so much.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, me too.
This is going to be a problem.
But with that to look forward to it, we're going to bring episode 538 to a merciful
close once again, a huge thanks to all the Patreon donors that help make the show go.
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And if you enjoyed this show,
be sure to check out their sibling shows
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If you have questions, comments,
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Our theme song was written
and performed by Ryan Slatnik
Vivile Javs on Mars.
All the other music was written
and performed by our audio engineer
Morgan Corkin was used with permission.
Thanks again for giving us to check your life this week
for Heath Enright and Eli Buzziag.
I'm no Lucian's promise to work hard to earn another track next week.
Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti clothes.
Everyone involved in this musical
had their fingers crossed that they get to do a sequel
when things end up tragically from Megan.
Oh, God.
England would continue to do the monarchy thing
for decades after this.
The queen wanted Diana's face off.
I'm recording.
Recording.
I'm read.
One.
One, two, three, four.
Full five.
Eli, are you there?
I forgot to count.
Okay, one more time.
One, two, three, four, four, five.
I also didn't hear you say I'm back, so I thought maybe we had lost you, but no.
No.
Just quite forgetful.
Twice in like the last four days.
I was, I'm being honest with you.
I was trying to figure a smooth way to work into the conversation that I'm on GLP once.
I wanted to break about those.
and that focus
meant that I completely stopped thinking about
our
TLC1, 2, 3
that's the right, it's a perfect way
All right, here we go
Got certain the boundaries
Yeah
Recording
I'm read
Push
None of the fucking buttons
Required of me
It was insane
Are you on now?
How much I failed at that
Yes, I'm on now
But there are no words
For how badly that went
All right
Well, I'm going to do the five counts, so we'll correct it.
I started off in the gay voice, and I realize, I'm not the posh gay anymore.
I've got to turn it back, but...
Turn straight, like Tommy Robertson.
Any posh voice, it can go...
Alice and Warren have this thing walking down the street of gay, posh or foreign,
as to the person who's walking down the street, is that guy?
Is he gay? Is he posh or is he foreign?
And it's actually quite difficult to tell.
That's tricky.
You can have that.
Sure, sure.
Eli, it's a real shame that nobody has come to you
with the kind of money it would take
to really just develop the podcast-averse
in the way that you see it, right?
Just with full, like, computer animation and shit like that.
Right?
It's a shame.
Fucking, who's so...
I feel like Amazon Prime, they did the Santaverse.
They owe me.
Right? Yes, exactly, exactly.
You're just deeper.
It's more thought out.
Podcastiverse.
So, Eli, you'd lose it any weight yet?
No. Not yet. How long before you'll be losing weight you think?
Probably tomorrow morning. Probably wake up. 20, 30 pounds down, 40, 50 pounds. I'd like, can I say? So here's the problem, right? If I just get a little thinner, right, and a little healthier and I'm just sort of back to being like a chubby dude, that's not funny. I need to go like full ozempic skin hanging off so that whenever anyone sees me, right? You remember how Toby got cancer.
in the office, and then that actor was like,
oh, I'm just not going to tell anybody I had cancer.
No one will notice.
And then there's just a season of the office
where that guy's like, hello, welcome to the guru bound.
I want to be that and I want,
because our audience is woke,
I know how many of our listeners
I will trap in literal hell,
just being like, hey, how's you going?
How's your summer been?
And they've been like, you are a skeleton.
Talk about why you are bones.
You are bones now.
Where is your body?
It doesn't work on Brits.
I'll get off the plane and be like,
that fella used to be fat, he did.
Look at him.
Get my sandwich.
All right.
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