The Rest Is Entertainment - Backrooms: Has YouTube Just Saved Hollywood?

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Are Gen-Z filmmakers like Kane Parsons the new kings of Hollywood? Has Tom Hardy really been fired from the set of Mobland for upsetting Helen Mirren? And why is the author of the year’s biggest memoir facing a backlash from readers? YouTube native Kane Parsons has smashed box office expectations with his A24 horror film, Backrooms - becoming the youngest filmmaker to open at No 1 in the US. Richard Osman and Marina Hyde discuss the success of low-budget horror and the YouTube-to-cinema pipeline. Speculation is mounting that Tom Hardy has been axed from hit crime drama Mobland, after clashes with the creators and British acting royalty. But are the rumours true? And how often do stars actually get fired? Belle Burden’s bestselling marriage memoir, Strangers, has drawn fierce criticism after claims she exaggerated her financial ruin. Has the publishing industry’s hunger for ‘true’ stories broken the modern memoir? The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: James Clayden & Lorcan Moullier Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Sam Psyk & Neil Fearn Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Good day to everybody. Good day, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm not too bad. We're going to be talking to Stephen Spielberg. week. So we're still looking for questions. If you want to send your questions to the rest of entertainment at goalhanger.com, we would love to hear them. We'll put them to Spielberg. But how's your week been? Not too bad, you? I mean, you know, it's not up to ups and downs and downs.

You're too hot. Too hot. I'm going to come out and say it. But... I wish people would tell the truth sometimes. We both saw a brilliant film. Yes, we did. And that is one of the things we're going to be talking about in a sort of wider... We are. We're going to be talking about backrooms and obsession for a number of reasons. We're also going to be talking about what I would say for our podcast and our listeners might be quite a fun story, which is the story of Mobland. Has Tom Hardy been fired or not fired from Mobland? Cliff Hanger. And we're also going to be talking about the Bell Burden Memoir of Her Marriage Breakdown Strangers is like an absolutely monster hit. And like all monster hits, it has now got a backlash. We're going to be digging into why. Yes. Is it Salt Path or is it

Morden Cecil Pass, essentially that. But now, Backrooms is a horror movie. It came out this weekend, and we talk a lot about tracking on this show. Hollywood tends to be able to predict how a movie is going to open, how what it's going to do. And it's a very cheap movie, this, $10 million. And the tracking first came out and said, this movie is going to make $25 million. And everyone's like, whoa, this is crazy. On its opening weekend.

And then about two weeks after that, they said, oh, no, hold on, it's not going to make $25 million. We reckon it's going to make $45 million, this super cheap movie which we're going to talk on about. We think it's going to make $45 million. It opened this weekend. It did not make $25 million. It did not make $45 million. It made $81 million, the third biggest opening of the year behind Mario and Michael Jackson. Where has this movie come from? Why has it been so successful? And what does that mean? Okay. Well, this is an A24 movie. It's actually A24's biggest opening. now of all time.

It's going to be their biggest movie by a long movie. Yeah, it's the second biggest horror opening of all time, only after Stephen King's It. Yeah. It stars Chirotel, Edge of Four and Renata Vancevin. It's directed and created by a guy called Kane Parsons. This is where it gets interesting. This is where it gets interesting.

By the way, he's 20. He is not only the youngest director ever to have been given a studio film, so beating people like Brian De Palma or some Wales. He is the youngest director ever to have a number one film. He is an unbelievable YouTube native, and he was called Kane Pixels on YouTube, and he made lots and lots of interesting things, including music. He co-created the score for this film. And one of the things that he made was called the Backrooms Found Footage when he was 16.

It's a sort of nine-minute horror short, and it went viral. And it's based off a single still posted on the internet, isn't it? What was the original backrooms? The original backrooms is there was an internet sort of fascination with liminal space, which I suppose are sort of empty spaces, sometimes transitional spaces, abandoned spaces, strangely purposeless. We all love that sort of stuff. Like you'll open a little iron door in a tube station and wonder what's behind it. The backrooms was an aesthetic and it grew out of a 4chan thread in 2019.

Unbelievable. Where somebody said post-disquieting images that just feel off and they added this photo, is essentially the entire aesthetic of the backrooms now that you can see this film. And by the way, it is an unbelievable production design. I thought the art direction is beyond. It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous. But this particular photo, I think it was an abandoned store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

You didn't know what? It was abandoned. It was not clear at that light. It's like, was it abandoned offices, a hotel. Yeah, they later discover it was an abandoned furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. And there are all these extra. I would like to live in Oshkosh, sorry, that's an absolute sidebar. Yeah.

But that's a cool place name. It's a good place name. Yeah, I wouldn't like to, yeah, anyway, but someone had said about, and it had this sort of weird yellow light and a kind of dutch angle to it all. And somebody said, if you're not careful and you knew no clip out of reality, no clip is a gaming term where you kind of can walk through walls or whatever it is, in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the backrooms where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum humbuzz, and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be tried. trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby because it has sure as hell heard you. And by the way, that's the movie. Yeah, well, that's, but they call it creepy pastor, but it's kind of like one of those urban legend online ghost stories. And it was collaborative and everyone could add to it. And people expanded this whole, it became this whole universe and

people were posting their own sort of liminal spaces. It really took off in about, in the sort of early 2020s, this particular thing. And the idea of these kind of creepy liminal spaces. yet when we can go anywhere. And there had been a website that I'd remembered from honestly 25 years ago called UK entrances to hell. And I had to check this weekend, is it still there? Go online in, it's like this incredibly basic website. And you'll see what someone's done.

They just people get adding weird doorways or blocked in things. And they give them names and they say that there are entrances to hell. So there's a sort of element of that. Like everyone can join in, everyone can whatever. But it became a sort of subculture of popular imagination. and Kane Parsons, who's like extremely online, said he's interesting why people are drawn to that, because it's kind of like you've been there before. Like he calls it a tainted nostalgia or a type of purgatory.

My brother, he's like 16 when he's starting off with this. So where he's getting tainted nostalgia from. But yeah, exactly. But you can see how influential it is because Dan Erickson, who created severance, and if you've seen severance and you haven't seen the backgrounds, you'll understand that idea of these kind of corridors, weird office space, whatever it is. And Dan Erickson says that the internet sort of subculture of the backrooms really influenced severance.

Yeah, I mean, you can see. You can see. But also those things are influenced by kind of our cultural memories of things like The Shining, which is full of corridors. Again, there's a lot of sort of weird space in that film. Yeah, the artist, Mike Nelson, used to just fill sort of whole rimless with it. So you've been an unusual weird backroom that wasn't quite right. Things are slightly off.

Lots of people created things based on this idea. deer. And his nine-minute short, they went the sort of most viral. He was offered a deal by A-24. His shorts, by the way, were digital animation. Yes. Yeah. He used like blender and something else to kind of create it. And now they've built it and they've built like 33,000 square foot of these sets and it's all, you know, they've realized it and it's all a practical set. But there is obviously some CGI and what have you. But obviously so many people have gone, they've spent very little on the marketing. They've spent about 10 million, but they've done it all in the native areas where this things sprung from. So when I went on Friday, I went to the earliest possible screening I could

find, which was at 3.45 on a Friday. The cinema was full of, I would say, 18 to 25 year olds, like obsessed, really wanting to see it. We're going to talk more about horror in general as this thing, as a place where the things that we want to happen are happening. Well, here's the other thing. You know, one film is a phenomenon, two films is a movement. And the other film is obsession. And that's made by Curry Barker, who was at 26. He must have thought he was pretty cool, making a movie at 26. Now, Obsession costs $750,000,

which is very, very, very cheap for a movie. It has, in the last three weeks, made over $100 million. Three weeks in a row, its box office take has gone up. And you might go, yeah, but that happens with lots of films because people go see them and then they like them.

Everything does best in week one, everything. To do better in week two is almost unheard of. To do better in week three, do you know the last film to do that, to go up three weeks in a row? Is it something like E2? E.T.

Yeah. In 19802. Occasionally Christmas, Christmas movies go up. But other than that, that's the last movie to do it. An obsession, 750,000 pound it cost. It has made over $100 million. Again, a 26-year-old director who absolutely honed his skill on YouTube. And it's a horror.

Again, it's a horror. It's part of the sort of YouTube to cinema pipeline that obviously includes Kane Parsons. But we talked about Markiplier who made that film Iron Lung, which I think actually was quite expensive by some standards. It was $3 million. It made $51 million. Haley Boston, who does the TV show for Netflix, called Something Very Bad is going to happen.

The Philippi Brothers in Australia. There's lots of good examples. Haley Boston had only ever been on a film on a set once, on sort of two-week placement as a runner. She is now the showrunner of a massive Netflix show. The thing I love most about Kane Parsons, he said, well, I didn't really watch films, because why would I?

Because I had all the entertainment I needed. I saw it, I think it was in The New Yorker, and he admitted to not watching Blue Velvet, and they've gone, are you kidding, you haven't watched Blue Velvet? And do you know what, right there, right there is the issue about, so why cinema went wrong and where it has to go next. It's interesting that lots of them start in the found footage horror genre, and they're all really young. One of the things that I think is very interesting about these people

is that they massively understand audience, because if you put things on YouTube, you sadly cannot kid yourself about audience, you understand a lot of things very quickly. Well, it's the Beatles playing Hamburg for two years, isn't it? It's night after night after night, you see exactly what works and what doesn't work and why. And they've had, you know, without even thinking about it, it's just what they've been doing in their bedrooms for five, six, seven, eight years. And every single time they see exactly what works and what doesn't. And that's not, by the way, a sort of cynical eye.

It is actually, if you're a creative person at all, getting that kind of feedback is incredibly instructive sometimes. Because you're still being your creative self, you're just going, oh, do you know what, I won't make that. that single mistake, though, or I'll take the fact that they're like that, and I'm going to twist it in this direction. And a lot of these things they built, you know, it's really interesting. Kane Parsons was still making backroom stuff for YouTube for two years of the development of this movie. I think they shot it in about six weeks last summer, and he kind of stops in about May,

because they're obviously starting to shoot in July. But he wants to then expand it. He now wants to make maybe a nine-part limited series about it. But what's fascinating, I definitely agree with you, is that they have. haven't often seen any of these things. They've weirdly, they've seen like the parodies of things. Like Cory Barker said, he had seen, you know, the Treehouse of Horror, which the Simpsons do at their Halloween episode every year.

He saw a 1991 one, which is a monkey's poor thing, and said, oh, that changed my life. Because in the same way that, have they seen the Shining? Not really. But they've seen so many takeoffs of the Shining. It's conceivable they've seen the Ready Player One scene where all the players like stormed the Overlook Hotel and they're all making in jokes about Room 2,3, 7, whatever it is. It's conceivable that maybe they've had those experiences. But they often haven't seen the original thing.

And the reactions, I think, to the work is quite fascinating. It's really weird. This film obviously is a huge hit, but it's got a B minor cinema score. And that tells you a lot about... By the way, that's the cinema score is you ask people who've been to see the movie, what they thought of it. The critics like it. Yeah, the critics. Of course, Siddig's going to save Hollywood.

But he's had to serve. of two audiences, the incredibly invested sort of fan community who's to say, oh, no, but then he didn't include this or he should have included that, or he's deviated here. We had a few walkouts in our screening of people who literally couldn't sit still at any point before they walked out and then walked out. I think it was just, I think they couldn't take how long it was and how, you know, I think they found something about their... I mean, and there were people saying, well, he doesn't own this, which is kind of like,

okay, well, that... Stephen Spielberg doesn't own sharks. No, and no one owns folklore. It's just one of those things. And if you're the one who's made it. But I do think that the genre itself, horror, which we've talked a lot about on the podcast, it is the place that the thing we say we want to happen is happening. People are not spending huge amounts of money on films, even on the marketing.

They are filling the theatres with people who want to have a communal experience, who are young, who are hyper-engaged. I think it's 74% under 30%. Yeah. The audience for backgrounds in the US. I was genuinely twice as old as pretty much as anyone else in the cinema. We were as well. Everyone was young. I went with a 15-year-old, so mine said that was fine.

Normally I go and what's like art house things and we're always the youngest people there. Oh, this is nice, isn't it? Yeah. And this time it was like, oh, but also no one on their phones, no one, absolutely no nonsense. People who, you know, it was a absolute treat. This is what we say we want to happen. And it's really interesting how many of the kind of big name directors who, who were young, who have done stuff in horror, Ryan Kugler,

Zach Kregger, Jordan Peel. I mean, you're doing things in horror. When people saw Get Out, they were like, all right, this is a horror movie, but it's sort of about race and it's, you know, people are tackling themes in horror that it's not just slashes stuff. There's a movie I'm really looking forward to later this summer called Teenage Love. I don't know if you saw that as a trailer is yours, but I'm dying for... The Disclosure Day is the trailer.

The trailers are terrifying. Oh, the trailers, yeah, teenage sex and death at Camp My As and. I'm dying for this, but Julian Anderson and Hannah Ironbender, and it's like a meta-horror remake thing. But, I mean, if you look at it, you can see it's incredibly sort of creative and prestige. And this is why... Well, we've got scary movie six coming out next week, which again might do absolutely enormous numbers. But it's got so much to satirise because we are in the era of, we said before, of prestige horror. This is like otters are making horror.

And they always have done to some degree because people could get started cheaply in the genre. But also, you know, the Shining is horror, and that's Kubrick. I mean, you know, people, it's a great format for working. But it's particularly now where almost all of them with, I would say, someone like obviously Greta Gerwig hasn't done it, but a lot of the young directors are all, have all done it. The guys, the men have all done it. It might be. It might be terrifying. Yeah, which would be a way to go with it.

But so there's the horror thing. But I think in some ways even more interesting is this idea of, you know, cinema has been made by a certain generation for a certain generation for a very, very, very long time. And, you know, we understand where the sequels come from. And for a long time, they went, oh, no, we understand what young people like. They like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Great. We've got that covered. And actually, because that audience was not being served, they were serving themselves and they were doing something completely underground that anyone who was under 16 was seeing day in, day out, but anyone who was over 40 was not seeing. And all of those nascent careers are now coming to fruition. And they don't have to, by the way, go into multiplexes, other than It's quite a nice way, Kane Parsons, let's assume he's going to make $25 million from this, something like that. So it's a nice way to make $25 million if you've built that stuff off online. But they don't have to. The message in music, in television, in film and everything these days is these people do not have to go mainstream. They don't have to do it.

And also, they're not even that interested in going mainstream. That fish you can dangle that says, oh, you could come and do a Channel 4 series now if you want. They go, I'm literally driving a Maserati. I don't know what. And also, all of my audience, all the people I want to impress and entertain are on the platform that I'm on. And then not on the platform that you need me. I don't need you. And in the last few years, I know we've seen that happen gradually, but it has completely changed now.

The ecosystem has completely changed. Yes, but surfacing stories and creators which people are already interested in, which is a form of known IP, you know, rather than the IP of just like, oh, how about we find a different? way to do Spider-Man. Yes, good idea. The known IP is kind of percolated through the internet. People see it all the time. And finding these people, but you have to say that Hollywood executives and the people with money, and you don't need much money, as we're showing, have not done a great job

of finding those people. They are there. We know the audience is there. How many horror movies have to come out each year, which do incredibly well and which make so many multiples of their budget back? Not like if another film, you know, if very expensive films do well, then might make three times the budget back. I mean, these films are doing...

Obsessions has made about 170 times its budget now. It's like those things like long legs or whatever, those, the sort of micro-budget that become absolutely massive. And it's almost without exception in this genre, and young people are going to cinemas, as I say, all the things that people say they want to happen are happening, and yet to some degree they are still not being served and they're still not finding those creators.

I think after this, surely it's somebody's job in every single studio to come up with people like this. I was talking to a TV producer the other day. He said when we spoke about microdramas a long time ago, he said it's the first time I'd heard people talking about them. He said, I now do not go into a single meeting in any drama department of any company anywhere where they don't first start talking about microdramas is all anyone talks about. Now the thing you can see about backgrounds, by the way, we haven't reviewed it, which we should do. We'll get on to whether we enjoyed it or not. But the one thing you definitely know,

firstly, there's going to be great opportunities for a new generation of filmmakers in the same way that you had that incredible generation of filmmakers who launched themselves in the 70s. This is a very different generation. But secondly, my God, there's going to be some bad movies coming out of this. Because everyone's going to chase it.

Yes. I mean, that's the problem. And they don't know what they're chasing because they're not natives themselves. I'm talking about the 90 people and the big executives who are much, much older. Yeah. And, you know, everyone's going to be looking for the new Curry Barker

and Kane Parsons now. And there will be some out there. But there will be more that are not. There will be, oh my God, there's going to be some shocking films coming out. But then there always have been. What did you make of the film? I absolutely loved it. I have, it's a huge mood and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I think it's, there's something about it that's so sort of open-ended. I can't say, I won't say anymore because I don't do any spoilers, but there's something about it that's so open-ended. It's quite hard to give spoilers in a funny kind of way. Yeah. It's a real vibe of a movie. Just the aesthetic And as I say

I thought the art direction The production design was unbelievable I mean extraordinary And it just It seeps into you It's Yeah I thought it was Ingrid watched lots of it

You know you know there's always going to be a jumps scare You know that memory You know there's going to be a jump scare And she just had a head in her hands Throughout those bits But actually he doesn't use that many jumps scares But yeah I thought

Yeah it's a mood right It's a mood And I didn't look at my watch To see what time it was At any point And I always do I usually look at my watch Even if it's the best one in the world

About 15 minutes in I've got another two hours of this film that I'm really enjoying I'm already out of pick and mix But yeah I thought it was great And it was great to be in a cinema Full of young people Yeah on day one

And afterwards just hearing them all talking about it When they're coming out And you think that God that's just what films used to be Yeah So I think I mean God fair play to Kane Parsons And to A 24 who really Because it's it's difficult

There's something very very different about what he did on YouTube to what they have created. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it'd be very exciting to see what he does next. Yeah, it's really exciting. I just thought it was, I felt excited and that it was something different. And because I knew, because I was slightly obsessed with those liminal spaces back those few years ago, I could see where it had come from and I thought it was such an interesting way to surface that story.

Now do rom-coms, YouTube, please. That I'd like to see. Or heist movies. Oh, that's what I'd like. Come on, YouTube. Let's do some hoist movies. there's not enough heist movies around. Verticals for two of heist movies.

Yeah, vertical heist movie in the Tower Block. And you've seen Obsession as well. Yes, I really recommend seeing both films. This episode is brought to you by Lloyds. Now, I love it when characters are part of the club. You wouldn't know anything about that. Would you, Richard? The Thursday Murder Club in some ways reminds me of the A-Team. I would now like to map each of those characters onto the A-Team and feel I probably could.

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They've got an annual coffee club and Gourmet Society membership, which would be mine. And also something that the Thursday Motor Club would enjoy very, very much indeed. To top it all off, you have fee-free spending abroad, which means wherever you are, you won't be charged by Lloyds to use your debit card. when you're travelling. Now joining this club costs £5 per month, but that is refunded in any month that you pay £2,000 into your account. Now that is a club that's worth being part of. Check out Club Lloyds today. You'll need to be a UK resident and aged 18 or over to apply. It's nearly that time, everyone. The rest is football will be on Netflix every day for the world's

biggest tournament. Join myself, Alan and Micah for daily debates, unfiltered takes and the most special of guests, all from the heart of New York City. Yeah, that's right. We're excited too. See you soon. Welcome back, everybody. Now, Mobland. Tom Hardy, should he stay or should he go? What's going on there? There is drama on the set of Mobland, a drama. This is the Paramount show about an Irish crime family in London that was co-created by Ronan Bennett and Guy Ritchie, who directed some of the episodes of the first season. The show run, and EP is Jess Butterworth. One of our great playwrights.

Yeah, one of our great, yeah. It stars Tom Hardy, but also Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. It's kind of held together by, I would say, having watched it by the Tom Hardy performance. Anyway, but it's a huge hit for Paramount, really big hit for them. However, there's been some fallout. I read last week that Tom Hardy had been fired from Mobland. It was a sudden spilling out of all this stuff. Tom Hardy was said to be very angry.

He didn't love the scripts. he didn't love that it was becoming more of an ensemble piece and his anger manifested itself. Again, all of this is reportedly and allegedly because you'll see how undermined it becomes later on in the story. It manifested itself by him apparently offering lots of script notes on Jess Butterworth scripts. Ronan Bennett and Jess Butterworth co-wrote the whole of the first season.

I don't know if that's the, but anyway. And by the way. The season two, which is this is what we're talking. Just as a recap, Jess Butterworth wrote Jerusalem. He wrote some of the best plays of this century. He's been a writer forever. Ronan Bennett wrote Top Boy. You know, again, these are both people

at the absolute top of their profession. Tom Hardy, a great actor. Yeah. So, I don't know. Who do you take script notes from? I would say the script writers. Well, he was staying in his trailer, apparently, and he was being late for Pierce Brosnan and Helen Miller.

Don't be late for Pierce and Helen. It was described as career suicide. Anyway, the lateness thing supposedly particularly annoyed Dame Helen in some highly dubious bystander, that I read in the Daily Mail. Do you mean made up? Well, I'm just saying this is an insider who talks like all tabloid insiders.

Oh, that's interesting. She expects better. She holds people to a high standard. She's 80. She's been there and seen it all. The behind-the-scenes crew watch it all and believe that she no longer looks as happy working on scenes with him. It has all become quite personal between them. She's got a very interesting way of talking.

It's like she's in Howard's End or something. I agree. She talks exactly like a tabloid bystander or it could have been a man. In fact, it would have been a man. We're going to get to that later. But Helen Mirren then unfortunately put a picture on Instagram of Tom Hardy and she said, Love you now and always, which seems to me like the bystander had got things a little bit wrong about the relationship those two. That's not like a bystander.

Also, it seems that maybe Tom Hardy hasn't actually been fired and that the producers are going to have a sit down with him and maybe they can work it all out. Richard, I would say two things. First, that this is very unusual that this much stuff has come out into the open. and second, that this drama is so much better than Modland. I mean, I mean, just enjoy it, right? I mean, it's very, very watchable this particular drama, you know, which I don't necessarily feel about Mobland. I've not seen Mobland, I have to say that.

I'll say this which is... Trying to imagine the make a feel by-election, but in a fictional TV show set in about some Irish gangs of London. It's sort of like that, or, you know, like those... The thing I did notice is there's some big personalities involved, just Butterworth is a big personality, Richie is a big personality. Tom Hardy is a big personality. There are 12 executive producers on that show.

Let me count how many of them are men. Hold on. One, two, three, four. All 12 of them are men. And you sense, that's the trouble often with men. If you get a group of men in a room, they get so emotional. Well, that's what I, you see, I get so dramatic. I am a huge supporter of the experiment, if I can call it of that, of men in the workplace.

I'm a huge supporter of it. I've been thrilled that they've had a go. But I do sometimes wonder if they're too emotional. for the performing arts. And I don't want to say that because, you know, I love to think that people can buck their biology.

But can they really have it all, Richard? It doesn't look like it. No. There's so much testosterone on that set. If I walked on that set, I would grow a beard. That literally just by osmotically, I would absorb it.

Actually, there's a misconception about Tom Hardy and Guy Ritchie and Jess Butterworth. They don't actually have bids. They're clean-shaven every single morning. And by lunchtime, they've got these fulsome things that you see them in.

because there's so much testosterone on that set. The same with Guy Ritchie and Tom Hardy's accents. Yes. You talked to with lots of people who went to school with them. Yeah. And they're like, oh, that's interesting. That's interesting. They used to speak like that.

Yeah, it's something. They didn't used to wear those caps. There's something in the waters or in the something. And as I say, I mean, it's very, very watchable. We don't know how this will play out other than, you know, as I say, I would love the experiment of men in the workplace to continue. So I hope everyone can work this out. But it's, you know, it's happened lots of times.

before, it's interesting. If an actor is really badly behaved, that's what we're talking about here. When the story first comes out, you're like, oh my God, he must have been so badly behaved because if you've got a big star like Tom Hardy, and he is brilliant. I mean, he's so watchable and everything he does. Look at him in Peky Blind, there's all sorts of things. He can really carry pretty much any scenes in. So if you've got him in your show, then you're delighted. And the same with it, if you've got Pearson, Helen, there as well, you're delighted. But you want to keep him in your show if you're Paramount, because they need these big shows that go on and on and on. and you build up big libraries as they did with Yellowstone.

So you think, wow, you must have done something really, really awful. When the news first came out and said, it definitely been fired. Now, of course, everyone's slightly backtracking, go, we're going to sit around a table and do this, the other. So maybe it was just a warning shot. Because it doesn't happen very often the actors get replaced. Charlie Sheen, when he got replaced on two and a half. I mean, the stuff he had to do to get fired was completely insane.

I don't think we would. But you can see that on another Paramount show, look what happened on Yellowstone, Eventually, Taylor Sheridan, Kevin Costner, again, you know, I'm just wondering about that hormone, but there was so much buzzing of heads that he wasn't there for the end, Kevin Gossner. Chevy Chase on Community, again, I mean, you have to really, really do. I mean, any, always read about community. I think that was a troubled set in for lots and lots of different ways.

And I love the show so much. It's amazing what came out of it. Yeah, it really is amazing. Isaiah, Washington and Patrick Dempsey on Grey's Anatomy. I mean, any of these shows that had a few. Yeah. Any of these shows that are ensembles. because that's the thing with actors is

I think it's quite hard for them. If they've got something that's an enormous success, it's quite hard for them to accept that success might not be down to them. I think Catherine Hegel was nominated for an Emmy for Grey's Anatomy, and she publicly asked to have her name removed because the work she had been given to do

wasn't good enough. Which is saying to Shonda Rhymes, no, this is tat. She did later admit that that was slightly unclassy. But yeah, it's quite hard. Roseanne Barr is another one. that they, you know, essentially she came back and then they

immediately replaced her with, every single other person came back from that show. They renamed it the Conners and, you know, it continued. But you really have to do something pretty spectacular as an actor to get replaced on something. So I guess we'll watch this space with Tom Hardy and Mobland. But as I say, it's very entertaining. Just enjoy it. Yeah, exactly. But it is, you just think maybe maybe one executive producer who's a,

woman might be helpful. Do you know, by the way, the connection between Mobland and Backrooms that we talked about earlier? No, I don't. So, in Backrooms, there are two characters who work with the Chetal Edgier 4 in the furniture store. You know the young stoner guy. Yeah. He is not American. He's English.

He's Finn Bennett. And he is the son of Ronan Bennett, who writes Mobland. Yeah. He's terrific as well. He's very good. Yeah, he's very good. But yeah, so there you go, a little connection. I won't always be able to do connection between our first two stories, but I have today.

I love that. Have I blown your mind? Yes, you have. Yes. The more usual thing about actors being replaced, certainly way back when it's because they asked for too much money. My favourite example of that is Valerie Harper, who was on the sitcom Valerie. In the 80s, I got paid a lot of money.

It was a big hit the first season of that. Asked for too much money. So they fired Valerie from Valerie and replaced it with someone else. called it Valerie's family. That's bad. And also Monk, which is one of my favorite shows of all time, his assistant in the first few seasons, disappears mid-season, completely disappears and is replaced. And she was amazing. And then you look it up, you go, oh, it would have been a huge hit,

so all the male actors got a raise, and she didn't. So she asked for one, and they fired her. So there you go. But again, that's some... That's showbiz. That is showbiz. Yeah. Well, showbiz if you're a woman, for sure. talking of women.

How's that for a segue way? I love it. Bell Burden. Tell us about Bell. Bell Burden is the author of a book called Strangers, a memoir of her sort of disintegrated marriage.

Now, it's been an absolute monster hit since it came out earlier this year. It's already going to be adapted as a film for Netflix and Gwyneth Paltre's going to stuff. I know. She sort of plays just sort of meta versions.

Since her on retirement from acting, she's sort of playing ironic meta versions of herself as far as you can see after that Marty Supreme role, which was sort of hilarious. Anyway, it is the story of an unexpected marriage split. If you haven't read it, I've actually just read the magazine serialisation

because I don't particularly read bullets like this. But it's a... I thought you're going to say I don't particularly read books. No, I don't. It's a story of an unexpected marriage split. It's unexpected on her part. A true story, yeah. He's a hedge funder.

She is a stay-at-home mother. And during the pandemic, they decide to move from their New York place for lockdown. and they go to their waterfront house in Martha's Vineyard. I'm going to say thus why I'm not sympathetic to either of them. Well, yes. Okay. And then during this time, the husband of a woman rings her to say that her husband is having an affair.

Her husband leaves her and says, basically, you can keep the kids. She's completely hit for six emotionally. He sort of leaves literally like the next morning without any, he just packs a bag and bubbles off. Yeah, and goes. And she's hit for six emotionally. She tells this, as I say, I read the magazine serialisation, which, I thought was sufficient for me. But other people have been completely gripped by this book

and going through and saying, were there signs? But what she says is that part of the sort of stakes of the book is she going to go off a financial cliff edge. She's going to lose her house. She has a pre-nup which her lawyer before marriage has sort of advised her not really to sign. And what's clear from this is that she has kind of given over aspects of her financial control to her husband. I have kept up with a feverish discourse of this.

I like a feverish discourse. There's now a new backlash. A New York article came out saying that this wasn't the whole story and that actually Bell Burden had concealed her wealth. She has a number of family trusts. She's basically worth tens of millions. So she was never really in what anyone normal would understand as any form of financial jeopardy.

And some people are saying, oh, this fatally undermines the book. Others are saying, well, she wrote about a very rich lifestyle all the way through. They've got to watch for one house and large it from India, work it out. And anyway, the emotional truth and the devastation is the same. And she clearly didn't pay enough attention to her finances or whatever, which is interesting. But other people are saying you have to disclose everything and you haven't made it clear. So I think this is interesting. So Bell Baden has responded in a statement that says that she tried to own her privilege as much as she could.

when she wrote strangers, but she feels like, you know, the emotional truth of it is a book about her heartache and her betrayal. And also that a reminder that we should all pay attention, women, particularly to finances within their marriage.

One thing I will say about this, I've spoken by chance to completely, to a number of very rich women about this book since it's come out. They're all obsessed with it, like genuinely obsessed. And what I find fascinating is this kind of deep fear,

and the sense that they might, you know, they're gripped by the idea that she missed red flags in her own marriage. Again, like, this is the grinding agonies of the super rich. You know, a life of indolence can be quite exhausting. Yes, you've got a lot of time on your hands. Treating your marriage as a sort of detective story where you've got to keep,

and whereas the female labour in that marriage, because it's always the husband in these particular cases who are rich, have got to sort of keep an eye on, you know, am I missing things? And maintaining this is almost like me maintaining the interior of somewhere, keeping them up to date. It's almost like owning a football club. Yeah.

You're just like, oh God, I'm just the capriciousness of fate and of these. And they have a sense, what I found extraordinary of the people I've spoken to, the sense that does Jeopardy lie around the corner for them? So anyway, so to go back, like, okay, did she misrepresent it? I can see for her that she felt like there's such an ingrained class thing here that she wouldn't really be talking about. It's not the Kardashians where like all the money's up there on the screen and they want to talk about it all the time. She's a sort of waspish East Coaster who clearly has massive generational wealth.

Yeah, her grandmother was a famous magazine editor. I don't know, she's from, you know. She's from money. I think, yeah, and I think she makes it, you know, to most people fairly clear that she's got a lot of money. Having said that, the book does keep suggesting that she might lose the house or not be able to buy her husband. another house or whatever it is. See, I think, again, this happens. Same as Salt Path.

Well, I think sort of thought. Well, I think there were some factual inaccuracies there that were probably unacceptable. I think in the case of this, again, I've only read the sort of long form extracts in various places. But it's really well written. As you say, it absolutely touches a nerve because it's not about, well, is me, I'm going to lose my house. It's about have I been living with a psychopath all of this time? And did I misread things? You know, have I been an absolute idiot?

I've been wrong about everything. It's like an exhumation. It's like an autopsy going back to try and see what happened. And that is incredibly compelling to read. When she writes it, as you say, she is rich, but she doesn't particularly know that if you know, in the same way. Sometimes rich people don't know that they're rich. But she's not professing poverty.

There's obviously bits, as you say, where they say you're going to leave the house. But that to me is like the editor has said. Well, that's what I think we should talk about. They didn't trust in the emotional honesty. I think the reason people love the book is because it's about do I trust my partner in a really, really good way. And it's weird that, and I bet it has come from the editor,

that kind of the idea that... Understandable. Yeah. Often when you're writing fiction or you're writing even TV fiction and they don't understand the stakes for your protagonist, they always say, could she need money? It's like one of the things that people always say,

could she have some sort of financial pressure put on her? You will never ever see a show where a good person is moved to crime, where they don't have a relative and a care home. Yeah. She's just saying, but to keep her in it,

we need another 11 grand. I got no way of getting it. And he goes, hold on, didn't I have a chat yesterday with that guy who said I could smuggle some gold for him? Okay, so let's get on to who the editor is. The editor is someone at Dial Press,

which is a Penguin Random House imprint. I don't think we would be talking about this quite so much. Had this editor also been the editor for oops, another memoir that was huge but has since suffered a really big backlash. And I'm going to talk about that one because my goodness, that was the tell by Amy Griffin. Amy Griffin is honestly one of America's richest women. She had illegal because these things are not legal or not yet legal, although her husband is a big investor in psychedelics firm. She had a legal MDMA-assisted regression therapy. Her memoir is about her recovered memory of being raped multiple times by her

school teacher when she's in middle school. So it's starting when she's about 12. Now, this book was picked by Oprah for her book club, picked by Reith Witherspoon for her book club, picked by Jenna Bush Hager for her book club. It's, again, it's, was on the best seller list for a long time. Since then a lot of questions have arisen, including one former schoolmate is suing saying, these are my memories and you've stolen my story, saying she was the rape victim. And it wasn't wasn't this teacher at all, it was a different teacher. The teacher who Amy Griffin effectively, people have been able to identify him because you can work. Yeah. There's never been any other complaints against him. He, I think, has had to sort of go into hiding. Both of these books,

Bell Burden's one and Amy Griffin's one were edited by someone called Whitney Frick at Dial Press, who understandably now is receiving quite a bit of pushback. What she said about when Amy Griffin's memoir began to be questioned was book publishers are not investigators. This is Amy's story. We trust her and all of our authors that they are recounting their memories truthfully. Well, okay, this is a recovered memory under like psychedelics, but okay. And also this is exactly what they said about Saltbath. They said, no, we have to trust the author. I have to say that I think that if you know your book, a book, a book might even might be big, and lots of people have said this over the last week, if you know a book might be big and it might have a book up a monster hit, as I always say there is

always a backlash because people do remember things differently. Maybe we're all unreliable narrators and we can get to that. But if you know that, but why can't they be fact-checked to some degree? And that is a protection for the author as much as for the reader or whatever it is. I've got a theory as to why this is. A bit of a rash. Okay. I have a commercial. I have a commercial theory. Right. Right. About why there's a memoir fakery issue in the moment. About about about why publishing never checks. Publishing never checks by Richard Osmond. No, I honestly think that no one expects any books to be a hit.

I think when something comes in like this, they will do everything they can to make something a hit because hits are so few and far between in publishing. I mean, vanishingly few and far between, one in 30 books might turn a profit, one in 60 might be like a phenomenon. And so statistically, the book you are currently working on, the Bell Burden book is not going to be a hit.

No, but these books got much. massive advances. It doesn't matter. Okay, but if you're paying that much in advance, I think you should pay for some form of fact checking because you've actually essentially backed yourself. If you're giving multi-millionaires already a big advance and there's a bidding war, then you are backing yourself to say, I think this will be a hit. As much as I can know anything in publishing, which is not a lot, as you say,

then in which case, why not invest in something that can help the author as well? Because actually, it's not clear that Bell Burdener at all. all felt she was misrepresenting anything. It doesn't sound like she was particularly. Do influencers misrepresent? They give us, they sort of write us into their lives, but they sort of don't. And they curate and they, you know,

downplay some things and they amp up others. Yeah, I think if you're Rainer Wynn and Salt Parth and you're saying you don't have a property and you do, that's one thing. I think if you're saying I did what... Well, there's a number of things with that one. If you're saying I did worry, you know, I worried about my financial security and the financial security of my children, I'm sure she did.

I mean, if anyone else in her situation, wouldn't because she's obviously backed up by quite a lot of money. But I imagine that's definitively what she felt. If you're saying I've had my memories recovered. Oh, that's different. Come on. Is this not a red flag for a publisher? I would have thought on that case, yes, I definitely would have thought. But again, they're probably thinking, well, this is unsueable because she's telling us

that she had her memories recovered. And as you say, they'll go, oh, no, you'll never identify that guy. And that's the problem is we live in a world where you can identify anyone now. I agree. And so therefore, this is something that it must be, we said this was a sort part. going to have to catch up with this world. Baby reindeer. Yeah.

Yes. The same thing keeps happening. But I think where the booming memoirs and obviously some of those are going to have question marks over them, I always think of it as like the My Truth era. The books were seeing published now or quite recently. They were probably bought at a point where the absolute moment of peak woke. US publishing in particular became so woke that even fiction was kind of fraught with danger. Like, oh, can you really ventriloquise the person of?

a different race, can you, you know, a different gender, a different sexuality. In the end, you get to the point where first person articles or memoir are the safest genre. Because you mustn't deny anyone's truth. You can't deny anyone's truth. The act of fiction itself is almost political and not in a good way. So what you're left with is people saying my first person story, very powerful, etc. You know. So not this is a thing that happened to someone. This is the thing that happened to me. I'm allowed to talk about it because I am me. And no one, I'm not allowed to tell any other truth. No one else is allowed to anyone else's.

And I think that lots of these books were commissioned during that time where a particular sensibility was abroad where almost nobody can pretend to be anything. And actually what's ironic is that some of these people seem to have been pretending, some of the powerful quote unquote first person pieces seem to have been the least reliable and most questionable of all. I mean, does anyone, any of us truly know ourselves? No, probably not. But I think it's a function of that particular era where memoir felt like a really safe genre because it couldn't suddenly become cancelled because everyone was saying, how on earth can someone pretend to be a Mexican woman or how can earth can someone pretend to be? Which is crazy because if you or I tell an anecdote about someone else, it's usually fairly factual or they will ramp up certain bits. If we tell an anecdote about ourselves, that's the biggest lie we've ever told. I mean, honestly, the spin we put on that. And then, yeah, I guess there was. five guys with knives and they were all coming at me.

And it just is absolute nonsense. The worst lies you tell are the lies about yourself. I agree. Any recommendations, Marina? Yes. You know I've been banging one about microdramas and thinking, oh, someone clever and someone brilliant. Even though I, you know, there's a lot that I've had sex with my billionaire CEO,

Wehrwolf boss. I know that, but we were talking about microdrama. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I told another story about my. Confessional is like, yeah. It's powerful, though. Powerful.

That'll be the express. Yeah. So Issa Rae, who is the brilliant creator of Insecure and has now turned her attention to microdrama. She's produced a 57 episode vertical microdrama called Screen Time. That's about sort of two couples that are on a double date and things turn very weird. There's a hacking situation. I looked yesterday and it had 160 million views on TikTok. This is the first breakout, one of these things that is completely a very recognized creator who's brilliant, has done it. People have been completely gripped by it. And it's the first one on TikTok that has kind of blown up in this way. Because there are all these other platforms, as I've talked to you about before, like, things like Real Short or whatever, yeah. Yeah, which are, well, Crunchy Bowles anime, but things like Real Short that are

specifically dedicated microdrama platforms. But this is done on TikTok. It's a recognised creator and it has blown up completely. It's called Screen Time. Have a look. And I would say if you add the success of that, which is a phenomenon to the success of Backrooms and Obsession, we are in a moment, I would say, a transitional moment. It's not even a transitional moment. The transitional moment was two years ago. Now we're seeing that we were in a transitional moment and nothing goes back to what it was, which is why sometimes the things we talk about, about building, you know, BBC and all the different public service broadcasters together. Why it's so important now? Because this, this, the fight, the fight is not what it was. It's not all these channels are against each other. It's the whole world. has completely changed.

And if we want some of the traditional jobs and some of the traditional media we've had, we have to understand that everything has changed. I'm going to talk about traditional media, though, because I just finished this latest series of Amanda Land, which is superb and reminds you of what terrestrial television at its very, very best can do, beautifully written, beautifully acted,

so British, so funny, very, very charming, feels fresh, feels new. And so, yeah, Amanda Land's six episodes series two. It's just, yeah, yeah, I mean, what a, you know, It is joy to be alive in such a time that that is made. But everything has already changed. Things are not changing. Everything has already changed.

And we just all have to get our mind around. But lots of it is incredibly exciting. Exactly that. There's still brilliant people working. Creatives are still doing the same things they were always doing. There's probably more money now for creators. There's probably more money for young creatives who didn't have an entry into the industry. There are lots of ways in which this new world is better than the old world, but we also have to try and protect and bulwark the bits of the old world which we know work.

Right. On that bum shell. On that. We will be back on Thursday with our questions and answers edition. And for our members, there's the third part of my series in which I was talking to James Kanagosuram. I don't want to say is Taylor's, it's Swift a basic bitch, but it's saying, is everything becoming generic? And if so, why? Are we all basic bitch?

Are we all becoming basics? I definitely am. I'm not becoming it. That's how I started. But it's a very interesting chat about generisism. If you want to join for ad-free listening and bonus episodes, it's the rest is entertainment.com. Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday.