Reply All - Big Lives: Emmanuel's New Show

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Emmanuel has a new show out, Big Lives, and we're excited to share a preview of it! Alongside acclaimed journalist Kai Wright, Emmanuel digs into the BBC archive to examine the sensational stories, messy feelings, and enlightening questions surrounding the icons who have shaped our culture. From musical trailblazers like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse and Tina Turner to stars of the screen like Richard Pryor, Meg Ryan and Jane Fonda, Emmanuel and Kai see these icons in a new light and learn how each legend set the stage for our contemporary cultural landscape. In this preview, they unspool the emotional arc behind George Michael, from teen heartthrob to grieving partner to gay icon. If you like what you hear, find Big Lives wherever you get podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi guys, this is Emmanuel. It has been a very long time. I'm here today because I have a brand new podcast out. It's called Big Lives and the way it works, each episode, me and my co-host, Kai Wright, trying to figure out some of the questions and messy feelings that we've always had about some of our biggest cultural icons. And we do so every week by taking you on a journey through the BBC's vast archives. Like basically anything recorded on TV or radio on the BBC in the last hundred plus years. And we get into all kinds of interesting moments that you might not have seen or heard before or in some cases some really wildhouse stuff that you've never seen because it was never aired. And we just have this unbelievable tape from all kinds of people.

From Muhammad Ali to David Bowie to Amy Winehouse. Anyways, I'm going to stop yapping now. And I'm just going to play one of these. episodes for you. I really hope you like it. And if you do, head over to the Big Lives feed and subscribe. Okay, uh, let's get to it. From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lives. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. We are both journalists and cultural obsessives. And we just love trying to understand the world through an individual person's life. And by individual person, we're talking about folks who are the architects of our culture.

people who have a huge impact on the way we live now, but often you've been kind of flattened to this single image or to a single moment. We're diving into these complicated, big lives of these icons, and to do it, we are using the treasure trove of the BBC archive. Turns out the BBC has been interviewing and covering cultural figures for over 100 years, and they still have the tapes. What do you think is the stock caricature image of George Michael?

I think most people the stock image is like weird washed up pop star. And if you ask most gay men, you would probably get like fabulous diva. Yeah, I think that's accurate. And honestly, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. And just to say like, you know, George Michael, it's a massive pop star of the 80s and 90s. He started his career in this band called Wham, which he'd started with his best friend. And that band and that music was sort of known for this. Like it's very positive sort of happy kind of pop.

And then George Michael made a transition to being like this solo artist. I feel like in the last couple decades of his life, really when I was growing up, he was this figure that was just kind of like, I feel like the diva and ridiculousness part of. of him are what we focused on. He was kind of a joke, frankly. It hurts to hear. Yeah. That's what y'all thought of George. I know.

And I hate to say, I think in some quarters, not all, but I think in some quarters, he is still a little bit of a joke. I want to talk about that disconnect between the person and the icon you know, someone who was sort of like an icon in the gay community, and the sort of joke who I grew up kind of knowing. hearing about. After listening through like years worth of archival interviews that he's given, I feel like the joky version of him exists just because we actually as a society don't want to talk about some of the other things that were impacting his work. Like to see George Michael clearly would be to acknowledge some things we actually don't really want to acknowledge about the time period in which he was really becoming a star. Oh wow. All right. I'm ready to talk. about this.

All right. Well, let's do it. And we're just going to get into his backstory a little bit here. I have to say, looking through the archive, one of the things I enjoyed a lot about George Michael is that he was above all, like, just this massive showman in the way that he talks about himself. There's basic facts that are incontrovertible, right? He was born to a Greek family in the 1960s in London.

Giorios Kriakos Panagiotto. I've totally messed up that name. You can see where they did the name change for the starry. You can tell why he ended up becoming George Michael. But in just looking through the archive and sort of learning about his origins, there are like sort of these two different origin stories. The first one is that he always knew he had this love for music. I'm going to play you this first clip.

It's him in 1986 talking about just kind of his desire to be famous. I had very, very strong ambitions from a very early age. but they were totally unfocused. Totally unfocused. I mean, as far as I was concerned, when I was seven years old, I was convinced that one day I was going to be a pop star. I have no idea what I thought I was going to do.

Really? Yeah, because I didn't think I could sing, and I didn't think I could write or anything, but I was just convinced somehow that I was going to be a pop star. I don't know how. This is my George Michael, okay, I'm at all, like, a seven-year-old who's like,

I don't know about talented or anything, but I'm going to be famous. Right. What you're seeing is the image of a little boy singing and dancing in front of his mirror. Like, that's the day. Hair flowing. You know, all of it.

Hairbrush in hand. Well, okay, so there's that one. And then there's this completely different origin story. He tells this a good 30 years after this first one on a British interview show that's really famous called Desert Island Discs. Something strange happened. The age of about eight, I had a hair injury. And I know it sounds bizarre and unlikely,

but it was quite a bad bang. I had it stitched up and stuff. But all my interest is, changed. Everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy crawlies. I used to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden

and collect insects before everyone else got up. And suddenly all I wanted to know about was music. It just seemed a very, very strange thing. And I have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident because they had this whole left brain, right brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice. But I became absolutely obsessed with music

and everything changed after that. It's so ridiculous. Like a bang on the head is so absurd. And what's funny about it to me is he's definitely thought about this myth he's creating. The left brain, right brain, final science to be justified. He's looked up stuff. I mean, listen, though, you know, rule number one for a diva, Emmanuel, I have to do not correct their origin stories.

Right. Do not, like, point out inconsistencies in their myth-making. It is your job to nod and smile and say, oh, yes, that's exactly right. That's how it went down. I know for sure you're totally right. Honestly, you are, you're just revealing how few divas I have with my life, Kai. I need more.

Anyways, back to George Michael. So right from the beginning or later, however you want to believe, he develops this, like, love. At seven or eight. Exactly. He develops his love of music. And the time he's a teenager, he starts a band with one of his best friends at school, this guy whose name is Andrew Ridgley,

and it's just the two of them. They get their first major record deal, the two of them, and this band becomes known as Wham. Wham, it has an exclamation mark on the end. That is very important. And the exclamation mark is there because, I don't know, that group was known for this very, very positive,

quote-unquote bubble gum pop. I think that is a fair description of it. You know, disposable. It's literally a piece of bubble gum. And it's, you know, the first album I remember seeing it was, pink with, you know, wham is in like bubble, actual bubble letters, you know. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, you think of it as like, you dance to it once and that's

the end. I feel like the best way to describe is actually just look at one of their most famous songs, which is called Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. And I'm just, I'm just going to read the lyrics. Just straight up. I object to this already, but go ahead. Wake me up before you go-go. Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo. This is not fair. This is not fair. And I caveat all about by saying, yes, it is just as ridiculous as it sounds,

and yet that song is a certifiable bop. It's spectacular. You can play it today. And there is passion in the voice. You want to wake up and go to the go-go with him. Okay, well, these songs were a pop. They were also super successful. They were one of the biggest bands of their day.

And I think even besides the music, there's this other aspect of them that I feel like it's such a time capsule of that moment in pop music. Right? Like, they are putting out this happy go lucky pop while also looking pretty effeminate. You know what I mean? Yeah, certainly him. Yes. Certainly, George, you know. I mean, blown out hair with.

blonde tips, you know, and all their photos are like airbrushed in that 80s style where they look like, you know, they're twinks in today's language, but they look like femme twinks. Totally, totally. And the way their images are displayed on their album covers and stuff like that, it's like their extras out of primetime soap Dallas or days of our lives, you know what I mean? Just so, like the hair is big, the earrings are definitely in. It's like a lot of artists of that era, frankly, like you have people like Prince, David Bowie. Just like these sort of effeminate people. But I have to say, I don't know that any of those guys wore short shorts the way that Andrew Ridgely and George Michael did in some of their music videos.

Because they weren't as gay. Exactly. Like, unlike a lot of the people in the 80s who were just sort of being effeminate, George Michael was actually gay. But around this time, he was not fully out. Not at all. Most people listening to his music I have to say watching it now It was obvious that he was gay

But at the time It was kind of like it's open question No I mean you would have never Just the ability To deny what was in front of your face Around sexuality at that stage I mean I was really young So but still in the culture

I mean so I grew I didn't Know of And someone who said, I am gay, I'm a gay man, publicly or privately, until I was a late teenager. I was like in college, you know. So it just wouldn't have occurred to you. It wouldn't have occurred to the average consumer that George Michael was a gay man.

I don't know what adult gay men were thinking at the time, you know, but in the mainstream culture, no way. What if they would have thought he was gay? Right, right. And obviously back then, it was not necessarily good for his. life or his career to come out. I actually just want to play you this clip of him talking about that period and his identity. He did this interview much later in 2007.

Yeah, when I was 19, I came out to various friends and one of my sisters, and I said I was going to talk to my mum and dad, and was persuaded in no uncertain terms that it really wasn't the best idea. By who? By friends, but they weren't really, I don't think they were trying to protect my career or their careers. I think they were literally just thinking of my dad. Because, you know, when you're 19, that's as far as you think you look at your parents. Oh, don't tell your dad.

My God, your dad will hit the roof. And then very soon after that, everything changed. AIDS was just not something I was prepared to bring into my parents' life. I was too young and too immature to know that I was sacrificing as much as I was. That's hard to listen to, honestly. I, well, one, I hadn't realized how intentionally closeted he was. and the Wham era, you know, for so many people, certainly me, you know, it's a process of coming out to yourself that is hard. Right.

But to have been intentionally with the collaboration of his friends choosing to be closeted while being a pop star who was considered sexy, right? Like young women were supposed to be into him. I can't imagine the weight of carrying that. It's super exhausting. But then, yeah, when you lay the AIDS stuff over top of it, at the time, just the terror of that virus. A hundred percent. And if he's talking about the early 80s, it's also a time, remember, we didn't even know. There was so much.

Yeah, we didn't know. I mean, literally, in a lot of quarters, people did not call it AIDS. Like, we didn't even have a name for it. And, yeah, like, in the early 80s, AIDS is this thing, right? that's just like coming on the scene, it's exploding. And activists in the US, gay activists, are desperately trying to just like wake up the public to what's happening. Like just when I was looking through the thing I was struck by was like,

take a song like, Wake Me Up Before You Go, that I just made fun of, right? This happy go, lucky song. The year, Wake Me Up before you go comes up. It is activist, Bobby Campbell, who was a nurse who came up, who came forward with this illness that he had. He had complications from AIDS. And that was sort of like this seismic moment in the public consciousness about,

oh, there's this disease and gay men are dying from it. Wow, first off, I'm just connecting the dots like between the beginning of AIDS activism and wham. And even in my own life, just thinking about like looking at that album cover and looking at that bubble gum pop, you know, alongside this epidemic. And it was a time in certainly, at least in the United States,

where there was so much desire for optimism. Right. Like that's what made AIDS so hard, one of the things that made it so hard to respond to is everybody, including gay men, were at a moment politically and culturally where it was like, morning in America, let's have fun, you know, and along comes this epidemic.

And to think about him as a 19-year-old boy, that sucks. It sucks. Just a weight of that on someone. You can hear it, like, between the lines of, like, what he's saying. I just want to pay you just another clip from that same interview. So I try to understand, firstly, how much I love my family. And the AIDS was the predominant feature of being gay in the 80s and early 90s, as far as any parent was concerned. And my mother was still alive, and every single day would have been a nightmare for her thinking about what I might be subjected to. And that's legit. You know, and it's interesting when he's saying this stuff to the moderate. ear, it might sound cowardly too, right? Because we went through this whole period, you know, in the 80s and 90s around coming out, not just as gay men and not as just as queer people,

but also around HIV and naming your status and fighting the shame that was part of what was killing us. I mean, act up slogan was silence equals death. Right. And at the same time, he's a 19-year-old boy, you know? and being gay and this deadly disease is synonymous. And I just, I have so much empathy for him carrying that. And so much, honestly, about his experience in Wham and what comes next is his transition from the scared boy at 19 to the man that he's going to become and the man that he wants to be given everything that's happening.

And that's what we're going to talk about after the break. Welcome back to Big Lives. Today we're talking about the one and only George Michael. By the late 1980s, George Michael is kind of done with the bubblegum poppiness of Wham. Yeah. Right? He releases sort of almost like a tester single. Just to test the waters of solo stardom that Andrew Ridgely helps co-write, but he's not in, called Careless Whisper.

A bona fide classic. Yes. Which I have to say, as someone who grew up playing the song, saxophone, someone has asked me to play that song almost every time I've ever played in public, like almost every single time. The whole thing is supposed to be much more romantic. And it's just like this sort of indication of where he's going as an artist, right? He's trying to be a little bit more openly thoughtful in terms of like...

Sultry and soulful and a little darker, you know... Totally. There's a line in there about how his guilty feet ain't got. no rhythm. Yes. I'm never gonna dance again. Not the way I danced with you. Like it's definitely supposed to be

a sort of song that someone could picture themselves in. You know what I mean? And like where there's loss and hurt. It's not a party. It's a reflection. 100%. And he keeps that moving, right? And all of it builds to this tent pole of an album, like a first major solo album called Faith.

Absolutely one of the best albums ever. Wow. Best albums ever. Correct. Okay, okay. That was what I will stand on. Wow. It's brilliant.

It's brilliant work. It's certainly, you know, in my life, it is one of my favorite albums. Can I make a guess as to why that is, Kai? Okay, yeah. Well, one, the music is fantastic. It is. It is such a more mature version of him. And also it is a version of him just in terms of the aesthetic, like his appearance.

If he's been on this journey from Boy to Mad, he is a man. when Faith comes out. He's a man. He's a man. I'm talking, he goes from sort of, as you said, this kind of twink in the 80s to a muscled man. He goes from being clean-shaven to having just right amount of stubble. The stubble, to this day, the George Michael stubble, like, all of y'all are out here trying to do the George Michael stubble. And the dangling cross earring became like the thing for many generations later young gay men. of like, can I have the stubble

and the little cross earring? It's definitive style. And a lot of the visuals for this album, he's left the Days of Our Lives Our Live soap star look behind. And he looks kind of just like a biker dude in leather that is just a little too tight, just enough. Biker dude is a very polite way to put it.

This is leather kink. This is a genuine leather daddy. Yes. The other thing is, I will say, I hadn't thought about this, but having listened to you, like, thinking through him, it also, part of what makes it such a great album for me is it feels so much more honest. And I hadn't, I never really thought about that. Like, that's part of what's so cool about the look and the music and everything is it is a more

honest person and a more honest take. Like insofar as what you're seeing is a man who is really embraced. not only like in a way his own gainers, which he's still not out at this point, but, you know, there are songs in this album that when you listen to them, that is the conclusion you come to. Certainly. Like there was a song called Father Figure, which is a complicated song. It's a creepy-ass song. But, you know, some of the lyrics is to do the reading again, you know, let me be your father figure. put your tiny hand in mind.

I will be your creature teacher. Anything you have in mind. George. And it works. Like, it is the biggest selling album in America in 1988. And Fave actually becomes the first album by a white solo artist to hit number one on the Billboard top black albums, child. This I did not know.

So he's, he's, I mean, this is, and remember this is Michael Jackson and. Prince is still around. Prince is still around. Like, keep sweat. You know. Like, this man is beating Keep Sweat on the, a man who once had a radio show called The Sweat Hotel. He's beating Keepsweat for sexiness among black people.

Way back up. I don't know about the Key Sweat Sweat Hotel. Oh, Keep Sweat Hotel. That's a discussion for another. time, but all you need to know is it is a call-in radio show. Shut up. Is a calling in radio show all about sex and people calling in to keep swear about their problems. How is this the first time I've heard of this?

I don't know. But all you need to know for now is that George Michael beat that guy. Right, right. Beat that. And yet, totally. He's in this period where he is totally flying high. And then there's other thing happens, which is that he meets someone. And I'm going to play just this clip about it, again, from the interview show Desert Island Discs.

He gave his interview in 2007. How did you meet your first love? Well, what happened was actually, it was a strange, strange thing. I don't know if people will relate to this, but there have only been three times in my life that I've really fallen for anyone. And each time, on first sight, I had something as clicked in my head that told me I was going to know that person. And it happened with Anselmo across a lobby. So I met him in that lobby, and I didn't understand why the clique happened.

This is a man in a Brazilian hotel. I'm never going to see him again. Why did that happen? I didn't understand what was going on. This was the first love of my entire life. This was the first person I ever shared my life with. How beautiful. He's such a beautiful story tell.

He is. He is, right? He just saw a man across the hotel lobby and, like, the world stopped. But, I mean, listen, have you never experienced such a thing? I have experienced such a thing. I have experienced such a thing. For sure, for sure. Where you're just like, I don't know how you're going to matter to me, but you are going to matter.

But you're all I can focus on in the world. 100%. In true George Michael fashion, there is another variation of this story. Oh, sure. Which is that he meets, and just to say, the man he meets. His name is Anselma Filipa. He is Brazilian. There's a version of this story where George Michael's performing a concert in Rio to, like, thousands of people.

And in the crowd, a lone face. They're not even similar. Not even. I thought for sure it would still be like at a hotel lobby. I mean, to be fair to him, to him. I do think in that version of the story, he later sees him again in a hotel lobby. But the way he tells it isn't that similar. kind of way where it's like I saw this man in the crowd, everyone else is jiving to my music,

but this man is serious. Wow. George. Yes. Again, this is all inappropriate. You do not correct a divas origin story like this. I just like both stories, okay? I just love both stories.

And the main thing you need to take away from this law is that this was George's first real adult relationship. Like, he was in love in love. And this relationship would totally change the trajectory of his life. Because within six months of that fateful meeting, of them starting to date, and Selma will be diagnosed with AIDS. Yeah. And so this fear, right, that George Michael and so many other men, like, it's come home.

And maybe it had come home in other ways before that. But in this specific way was something that totally rocked his world. And the thing about that is Anselmo, he gets sick pretty quickly. And, you know, at this point, we're now firmly in the 1990s, right? But early 90s, right? So like 91, 99. Like in around 90s, in around that, there's still no treatment. AIDS is just finally starting to be a thing that the government is taking seriously,

not just as it applies to gay people, partly because there are two seismic events. in pop culture. Basketball star Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex. The HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers. AIDS clinics were inundated with calls

for days afterwards. Which opens up a whole world for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. Massive world-changing thing. Because up until then, HIV is known as the gay man's disease. gay man's disease. And the white gay man's disease.

100%. And a lot of people, I don't want to say okay with it. But they're, it's okay, yeah, okay with that. Absolutely. And also, Magic Johnson is probably one of the most famous people on the planet. Right. In 1991. Right.

Like maybe the most famous sportsperson other than Michael Jordan. And literally that same month, that same November, Freddie Mercury dies from pneumonia after having battled AIDS. The pop star Freddie Mercury died last night in London. The lead singer with Queen, aged 45, had announced on Saturday he was suffering from AIDS. Yeah. Another massive celebrity, I mean, one of the most famous,

arguably the most famous rock star on the planet right then. And as an aside, now that I think about it, a bit of a counterpoint to George Michael. I mean, Freddie Mercury was so clearly gay. You know, what George Michael became when Faith came out was kind of a version of what Freddie Mercury had been since the seven. Oh, so sort of just like sexual, a little teasing, very much himself without actually saying anything. Yeah, and that thin, masculine, like, tight clothes and like really associated with being a gay man of like that era's gay culture. And, you know, it's interesting that you point out that sort of difference in a relationship between the two.

because you know how we were talking earlier about that origin story of George Michael where he sort of knows he wants to be a style from the beginning and he's singing in front of his bathroom mirror possibly at seven? Like the person he's imitating when he does that is Freddie Mercury.

Wow. Freddie Mercury is George Michael's hero. That makes total sense. A massive hero of his. That makes total sense. And within a year of Freddie Mercury dying, Queen hits up George Michael, like their band members, hit up George Michael, and they're like, hey, we are going to put on a massive tribute concert for Freddie Mercury. This thing is going to be billed, basically, as up until that point, one of the largest, if not the largest, a specific benefit concert and awareness concert in UK history.

Do you want to stand in for Freddie Mercury? I didn't know about this. Yeah. Did he do it? So he does it. And I want to talk about this and just take a moment here. because not only does George Michael do this, I actually think it's the best, most honest performance

that George gives in anything in his entire career. And it is that way because it's the most emotional. We're just going to play some of it for you here. Please. So he's singing this song, Somebody to Love, is obviously a song about someone who is yearning, yearning, yearning for companionship, the lyrics of which kind of speak to the journey that he's been on. George Michael has found someone to love in Enselmo, but that person is dying.

And there's this moment in this performance that, I don't know, I just think is so, so special. It's towards the end of the song in a section of it where they're repeating the main melody of the song. And this thing happens, that's so special. And there's just like this silence here a little bit. I've been the crowd just actually responds to him. The whole time, George Michael just looks so transported, right? And, you know, he was later asked about this performance. He acknowledges that he thinks it's one of his best performances.

And he really says about it. He said, my subconscious knew I was singing a Frederick Mercury song after his passing in front of my lover. Oh, man, you're going to make me cry. Like, my subconscious knew that this was probably the most important performance of my life. Because I had to take all those years of standing in a bedroom, whether it be with a mic, I don't think I had a hairbrush, she says. But I would stand and sing to the mirror and sing all those queen songs and know them backwards, know the harmonies, know everything about them. And that child was going to take all that knowledge, all that subconscious eating enough music from that group and sing one of Freddie Mercury's songs to the world.

and Selma was there and I was dying inside. And my whole... Oh my fucking God. He says he just went to another place. And he calls it the loudest prayer of his life. And he says it's not an accident that that performance, perhaps the most well-known of his career, was sung to his lover he was dying.

Oh, my God. It's so moving. And I mean, one, his... I'm glad that one of the things about that performance that we could get to in this conversation. is George Michael is an fucking credible singer. Like, even from the beginning,

that note when he's like, somebody, I mean, I'm not even going to try. Like, it's so beautiful. And if you've ever heard, like, cuts, you know, of these, of his songs where they've stripped everything out and just left it to the vocals. Yeah.

His voice is angelic. Yeah. So it's this angelic prayer that he's describing, you know, while his partner is dying. and there's no treatment, you know, it's a certain death at that time. What an incredible thing. Yeah.

What an incredible thing. He's carrying all of that. And he feels he's sad but also seems so free because he's getting, this arena is packed to the Gills with thousands of people. That had that sort of feedback must have been incredible. I can't imagine. I didn't know about this concert. and I didn't know about his lover and it's so sad.

Yeah. But there's a thing that happens next which I feel like is him working through that sadness in a real way. A sadness that, you know, as we've talked about so many people are experiencing at this moment in time,

so many of them experiencing. Anselmo's illness progresses after that concert and George Michael is not making music, right? He's just sort of like, this is a time, and he feels some sort of guilt about that a little bit. He's sort of like, I know that this is a moment

where I could be out there talking about this disease. And don't get me wrong, he was still doing a lot of these sorts of benefit concerts and things like that. Like Elton John did a couple, he did those. But he's not making music. And there's trouble, actually, with his record company about that. Because they don't understand. They're like, where's our music, bro?

Make me some money. Fuck you. which of course pisses George Michael off and I'm just going to pay a clip of him talking about that in 2007. When you just made $200 million for a company, you expect them to have a little bit of patience with you, you know? It was very obvious that I was going through something personal that meant I couldn't face the world.

What I was actually going through personally was dealing with the fact that the person I cared for most in the world had a terminal illness and I didn't know how long that terminal illness would be. I didn't know when I would ever be happy enough to write another song. I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified. At that point in time, I had no idea what to do.

And it was such a dark period of my life. And I thought it was just going to continue that way. I really did. It's really enraging. You know, I can, and you kind of hear the rage in his voice there, and I'm with him. A hundred percent. $200 million he's made you. You can't let this man grieve.

Totally. The whole thing is a mess. he can't write music, he doesn't want to write music, and he's angry. And he's angry at these music executives that he says we're talking about him in really defamatory ways. And these executives deny this to this day. But, you know, George is on the record talking about how music executives at Sony were calling him like the F word. Of course. So George takes all of that anger and he's looking for his contract.

And he's like, you know what? These guys are not allowing me enough freedom as an artist. So he decides he's going to sue Sony and try and get out of his contract. He is so angry in this time. He makes a comment that I have to say he's a choice as a white guy in a... I have to say it's a choice. The comment is that he likens his situation to quote professional slavery. Which this is a choice.

I don't know why these artists, how many artists have felt like they needed? You know, I mean, this is a Kanye remark. I know, but the difference is at least black, bro. At least those two are black. But listen, it does not, that comment does not super go down well for a white guy in music. You know what I mean? Like, ah. And some of the public perception of him around this time is like, you know, greedy, whatever.

Especially because they have no idea. Nobody really knows what he's dealing with behind the scenes. And then, of course, Anselmo dies. Inevitably. Which is brutal. George Michael actually uses that particular moment to reach out to his own mother and finally come out to her personally. Because it feels like, okay, there's this one honest thing I should be doing.

But he's still not out publicly. You know, understandably, like Ensemble's the great love of his life. it plunges him into this massive depression. Sure. So he sues Sony and he loses. Which means he's spent at this point quite a while without making anything. Gone of years about releasing new music. Nothing to show for it.

And he starts sort of sliding out of the public's eye, I think, around this time as a serious person, around the mid-90s. Where people are just like, this guy maybe. yeah, should we take him seriously? I don't know. Yeah. Like he makes an album mourning his lover. And it does not do nearly as well as Faith or Reeves album. No, I barely remember it.

Exactly. And I'm a fan. Exactly. Exactly. So this is the beginning of George Michael as a joke. And I feel like even just by saying George Michael as a joke, I'm underplaying it. Like, George Michael is going to become a very, very, very. easy punching bag for a lot of people.

And that is really, really going to be the case in 1998. I know where this is going. All right. Let's get to it after the break. Welcome back to Big Lives. Today we're talking about George Michael. And where we are now at is the year 1998. Ooh.

This look of recognition just came across your face. Yeah. Yeah. I want you to picture at 1998, Beverly Hills, California. George Michael is inside a public toilet at a park. And he's there to have sex. Yes, yes, he was. I don't know.

What did you say was the thing that was happening in the 90s? Oh, come on, man. Yes, it happens to this day. But certainly, you know, going for decades, cruising cultures, when, you know, like, certainly gay men, but I think where people of all sorts, you know, go cruising for sex in public places. And it grew out of a time when that's what you had to do and expanded into a time where that's what you enjoy to do. They're called public sex environments, is the public health word for it. Wow. Okay.

And park restrooms. Well, in this public sex environment, man approaches George Michael on kind of like a, listen, I'll show you, mine. kind of thing. Only that man is a cop. And so, of course, as soon as George Michael interacts with this person, he's arrested. And it's this massive thing. One headline from the time was called Zip Me Up Before You Go Go. It is this massive thing.

George Michael, if you didn't know before, you know now that he's gay because he has been involuntarily outed in this very... by the fucking cops. Yeah, public way. This huge way. Here's how you've recently reported it at the time. Yeah. While we've been on air, police in Beverly Hills

have confirmed that the singer George Michael has been charged with committing a lewd act in a park toilet. He gave his real name, Georgeius Panyutu, and is expected to appear in court next month. Beverly Hills police officers arrested the singer known as George Michaels. Mr. Michaels was arrested for a violation of 647.

A of the Penal Code engaging in a lewd act. Engaging in a lewd act. Go right to hell. So I have to say some things. Yes, please. At this time, and it started happening again today, one of the things that police departments in cities around the country were doing is when they needed to run up tickets,

were going and doing entrapment stings on gay men. in public sex environments, which is an absurd use of public money. And it was a really big deal. I mean, because this was, it was still illegal period to have gay sex period. Sodomy was illegal. The Supreme Court had not thrown out so

so in many places I was reporting on it down in D.C. in Virginia at the time, it was an opportunity to sort of rail against gay people, look at how, like, depraved we are. And so, yes, George became a joke, I have to say, for us too, like in this moment. How does that play out for you guys? It is funny, you know? Like, so on one end, it's funny, right?

Like, oh, literally caught with your pants down, you know, and all of that. You know, and he's already a sex symbol. And so now, you know, I mean, who wouldn't, of course, the cop really wanted to have sex with George, who wouldn't want to let George's dick, you know, like those kinds of things. but also like just a very relatable outrage, you know? So he's a punchline, but he is also somebody who, for me, certainly, and I think for many of us of my generation at this moment, like really felt solidarity with George.

Right. In this humiliation. Right, right, right. And, you know, it's interesting, Zephyber, because I feel like at this time, right, he spent 20 years in the public eye Yeah But the whole time

He's tread this very careful line Or even as he's been carrying So much right Like so much pain There are all these different points Right That he could have come out And said that he was gay

He could have come out For example And said he was gay After his lover died And told the world about And so much He didn't But he's forced into it here

And what George Michael does Is he decides to go On sort of British TV's version of the Tonight Show. It's a massive show called Parkinson's, hosted by this guy Michael Parkinson. And I'm just going to play a clip.

It's Michael Parkinson just talking about that decision and about the events that led up to George Michael sort of like meeting this moment. You took the decision, I think, 24 hours after all this was happening with helicopters and news crews all that said. You decided to go to a restaurant, didn't you? Just to make your public declaration. Tell me what happened with you.

Well, I suppose I just, I was, there's one recurring theme to my actions as a celebrity or as a person, as an adult, and that is if I'm pressured into anything or pressured into a point of view or a certain position, either by individuals or by history, i.e. the way that celebrities normally deal with scandal and shame, you know, or supposed shame, I react against it. And my reaction to this was, I'm not going to be like a another one of these people that's peeking out from behind their neck curtains a month later, you know, trying to get rid of the press. They were surrounding the house and I thought, for God's sake, you know, what is the game here? What do you want? A reconstruction? What is it?

Why are you all here? So I thought, I'm just going to go out for a meal. I know they'll chase me. I know they'll just, you know, I know it all cause, and it did cause havoc. You had all these, all these cars going across red lights and this. And I was just ambling down to my local restaurant, you know. And I just thought that's the only way to deal with it. In fact, someone had said something to me earlier in the day that one of my closest friends said that his mother said, he's not the first, he won't be the last. He's just the biggest.

And I thought, I like that. I love it. I love him. I love him. He just bodys it, right? Yeah, like supposed shame, you know? Like even in the middle of telling that story, he was careful. Supposed shame, you know. And by the way, I'm hung. Totally.

Totally. And, you know, it's interesting because I'd never seen that interview until like a week ago. And watching it today, my initial reaction was, oh, so that's the end, right? He killed it. Because if I watch someone be like that on national television now, instant win. I think George Michael, by this point, had gotten to a point where he was sliding a little bit out of a public consciousness. Like, just as a person. Very much.

He's definitely back in that regard. sales on his greatest hit album definitely increase. Did they really? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, he puts out a very, very wild kind of music video and a song that parodies what happened in the bathroom. It's spectacular. It's unreal.

It is absolutely spectacular. Yeah. It's like cop costumes and disco balls are involved. George is in a cop-cops soon. He is in a cock-cop. And it's like tight-fitting. And I mean, there's no more wink in at being gay, obviously. Right.

You know, but like it is full on like cop fetish, you know, which is a great comment on like, well, why are you in the bathroom with me, Mr. Cop? Like, if you so put out by penal code 2057A or whatever the hell it was. Exactly. Why are you in here with your dick out? Exactly. But as much as that video and that song generates buzz, you know, in a sort of almost like 90s reality kind of way. writ large in the United States, his biggest market,

it's essentially the end of his musical career. Well, but I think it's also, Emmanuel, the start of now, I'm thinking about what you said at the beginning of our conversation and like the difference between how we think about him because you're right. I almost forget that it's the end of his musical career because it's not the beginning of him being a gay icon,

But it's like a really big moment in the story of him as an icon for our generation. Because he is so bold about it. And we get the joke, but then we also get to punch back, you know. And so I still see him and think of him as undefeated. Right. You're right. It was the end of his music career. I don't think about that.

Right. And I mean, just to be clear, like he's still making. music, right? There are literal songs, big songs that he did in the early 2000s that got basically almost no radio play in the US and some massive collaborations with huge stars of the day. Like, for example, he did a massive duet with Mary J. Blige. And like, it really didn't get much radio play in the US. I think it's just like by the early 2000s, I think that gap between the people who like see George Michael as his icon. And the people who see him as a washed up star, that's kind of a joke, that starts to really widen.

And we're into this era where really a lot of what you're hearing about George Michael, if you're not on the icon train, is wild stories about like this kind of out of control, over-sex guy. And by the 2000s, what you see in the headlines is that whatever, you know, he was doing with a read in terms of coping, that seems to have become a drug habit. Yeah. And so he's arrested in 2008 in a public bathroom, but this time not necessarily for nude sex. This time it's because he's in possession of crack cocaine and marijuana. Right. And I don't know.

I think this is where my image of him as a kid comes from, which is sort of like, right, this over-sexed drug doubt has been. I mean, he ultimately dies of a drug over this, right? No, no, no, actually. And so this is officially, no. Officially, no. Officially he dies in his sleep. Like anything else is conjecture.

See, even me. Even me. Right. Right. And I think that's the thing, even if you don't see him as a drugged out person, his demise feels so connected to that. Yeah. The way he's covered, he's not covered as a person who is dealing with probably a decent

amount of survivor's guilt. You know what I mean? Who's depressed and trying to cope with it. Yeah. And I think we don't want to see that. not just with George Michael, but by the early 2000s, and this is my experience, as someone who's coming of age in this time, HIV-AIDS is this thing that no one's really talking about

as a thing that happened in America or the UK. It's a thing that is happening somewhere in Africa, vaguely. In sub-Saharan Africa, that's right. You know what I mean? That's right. No one's talking about it there. We're just kind of ignoring, and I want to be careful about the use of we, but I feel like there are a decent amount of people who are ignoring

kind of what's just happened. I was at that time spending an enormous amount of my time arguing, you're all ignoring this and you need to stop. So, you know, absolutely. I'm also when you describe the caricatured version of, you know, this drugged out gay man, drugged out over-sexed gay man, it's also the caricature of gay men at that time. Totally.

Period. Mm-hmm. Right. And it's interesting to me to think about that he becomes emblematic of that idea of a gay man to the broader culture. And to me and the queer people in my world, you know, he is emblematic of being more than that. Yeah. of like an honesty with and that's what I meant about going back to faith you know like it starts to be honest one of the lyrics of that album is like all we ought to do now is take these lies and say they're true right like he's reflecting on like the hypocrisy of the moment and for me all of his honest journey through the epidemic through having to bury his partner,

the survivor's guilt of certainly that generation, Ike, is so definitive. And the fact that he got over all of that to laugh at the end while he's supposed to being laughed at to stand up and say, what of it, I'm having sex in the park. Yeah.

Go to hell. For me and for us, he's a symbol of our perseverance. Totally. That's a sort of larger sort of, of men of thing happening here too which is like I think the reason we don't want to touch it is because we have and I said we I think a lot of people we've guilt about that guilt about that era I hope that's more optimistic than me I hope y'all got guilt about it I hope some people are guilty

because there is guilt to be had yeah about the lives that were discarded globally but certainly in this country yeah 100% Well, thank you for going on that journey with me. Thank you for taking me on that journey. But it's also I know a journey you were there for. You know what I mean? You've lived that. No, but I learned so much, that's stuff that I didn't know.

I didn't know about this stuff. I have a better understanding of George, my hero. So thank you. Of course. Of course. So now I want to know, after this journey, we've been on where are we going next week? Okay.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play you a few clips. Okay. of the person that I'm going to introduce you to. I have somebody really fun. Okay. And I think you'll know who this is, but let's go. Let's see. Let me start with this clip.

All right. I get up there and just do it and say what's on my mind. And over a period of time, it develops. I find something's funny. And then what's not funny, I leave out and I keep building on the funny. I like humor. I like funny stuff. I don't like not funny stuff.

I don't care who does it. Okay. Don't tell people if you. you know what it is. Whoever is loves funny stuff. Okay. Loves funny stuff. This is a comedian.

Being black was being cool. I remember it wasn't black in those days because black wasn't beautiful yet. Remember, you couldn't even say black. He called dude black. I don't tell you that. And he is funny. And he is funny. And the voice is so iconic.

Like you have to, people know this by this point. He's a black comedian though. And here's the last one. Do you find that the bigger you get, the further away you get from like the street, and therefore the harder it is to be funny still. Yes. Well, it's not harder, but it's just difficult to be in the streets if you got some money.

Yeah, exactly. And people are rushing up to you after. No, it's not that. There's no reason to be there anymore. I cannot wait for this episode. Oh, my God. There's no reason to be in the streets if you got somebody. That's a truth.

That is a truth. All right, well, that's next week. All right, until next time. Until next time. Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Emmanuel Jochi and Kai Wright. Our team over at BBC Studios includes producer Emma Revel, Archive producer Samira Chowdery,

sound design by Melvin Rickaby. Our executive producer is Annie Brown. Our production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly, and our production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Constanza Goliado, producer Daphne Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan.