The Rest Is Entertainment - Is Marina Wrong About Hollywood A-Listers?

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Why does Hollywood STILL have a problem with hiring diverse directors? Is there a secret stash of cancelled celebrities at Madame Tussauds? Does Marina think Dungeons & Dragons is cool? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer a flurry of amazing audience questions from the world of showbiz. 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. The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Video Editor: Kieron Leslie, Charlie Rodwell, Adam Thornton, Harry Swan Producer: Joey McCarthy Senior Producer: Neil Fearn Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone, this episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. Now, whether you're dancing through life in the Emerald City for the first time or flying back for a magical encore, Wicked is now on Sky Cinema and with a Skyglass TV, Oz feels closer than ever. Bring the gravity-defying ballads home with a Dolby Atmos soundbar built in for a truly cinematic experience. The high notes and the harmonies have never sounded better. Skyglass automatically adapts the picture and sound to whatever you're watching. Brumsticks whoosh faster, ballads hit harder, Emeralds. gleam brighter. And with voice control, the real magic is doing it all without lifting a finger.

Love the idea of ballads hitting harder. It couldn't hit harder. Just say Hello SkyWicked and it's showtime. Enjoy the enchanting sights and sounds of Oz in full 4K picture quality on Skyglass from the best seat in the house, your own. And if you want a smarter TV without lifting more than an impressed brow, head to sky.com. Requires relevant Sky TV subscriptions, broadband recommended minimum speed 30 megabits per second, 18 plus, UK Channel Islands and Island ban only. Hello and welcome to this episode of the rest is entertainment questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. Hello Richard. How are you? I'm very, very well. Some lovely questions this week. I'm going to start with some any other business.

Jenno Byrne has written in. Do you remember last week we talked about what would be the best entertainment job in the world and it was suggested that being an unfamous member of cold play would be the best job in the world because you get all the money all the adrenaline but you can walk down the street and jen says i can confirm that uh being an unfamous member of cold play is the best job in the world i once looked after their whole team for an event i went to collect one of the band who had arrived by tube i asked him why he didn't get dropped off by car like the others he said this is faster and no one knows me or cares when i said it's done i'm going to sit in the regular seats for my family watch the rest of the show and no one will recognize me

I said, that sounds effing great, if I'm honest, and he said, it is, it's the best. There you go. It's actually been declared the best by an anonymous member of Coldplay. Talking of shows at Wembley, Matthew Bethel has written in and said, sorry if I'm going out of my mind, but did I see Marina twice on the big screen at the Oasis concert on Wembley on Sunday night in a bucket hat? You know what? You didn't. No, I was not on the Jambotron at Coldplay because I didn't go. I would have liked to have gone. Sorry, not Cold Play. Oasis. I would have liked to have gone, but I didn't go. I'm told like literally every single journalist in the whole of London had a free ticket to it

but no I didn't go and it wasn't me in the bucket had. People seem to have loved it don't they? People have gone crazy for that whole thing and again that lovely thing of just everyone going out and seeing something real, real people than a real place. Yes. Do you know what I assumed that was you otherwise I wouldn't have asked the question?

That was really disappointing answer. No, I'm sorry I'm very sorry it wasn't me. Oh okay here we go. This question is from Robert Berry, who would be on your director, Mount Rushmore? For me, it would be Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, Ariaster and Brad Bird. It's a hell of a question this. I took it to mean, in the same way that it's the four sort of great early presidents are on there. Or, you know, the people who've done remarkable things. I thought it had to be four massive names. I didn't just choose, Robert, my four favorite directors. I didn't think that was appropriate. It's one of the few things where, you know, if you're asked who's on the

writers Mount Rushmore or actors Mount Rushmore. The director's one is very, very hard not to pick four men. It's almost impossible, in fact, if you're looking at the whole history of kind of Hollywood and not pick four men. And I think it's one of the few remaining industries where that's the case. So Hollywood, I'll think about that. I have got four names. I am going to

go for Alfred Hitchcock. You sort of have to do, right? Billy Wilder. I was going to put him. I've gone for. I was thinking of him. Okay. I've gone for Spielberg. You have to. of Spielberg or Scorsese, but I just think, and I love Scorsese, but Spielberg just because of what he means to people and what he's given to our culture. And my fourth one is Rob Reiner, only because I think he had the greatest run of movies that anyone's ever made with Spinal Tap and when Harry met Sally and a few good men and stand by me and misery. You think, come on.

Unbelievable. Rob Reiner is unbelievable. And I think he is the one name on there that wouldn't ordinarily be put on that Mount Rushmore. But I think we need to have a little rethink about Rob Reiner and his career. Because he does. As comedies, I think sometimes people are slightly, I mean, I know Biddy Wilder did as well. I mean, it's all white men. And, you know, I haven't gone outside Hollywood. I haven't gone for Kurosawa or something like that. I just, I felt I had to, I just thought in the, in the spirit of the original Mount Rushmore, I would go with just four behemoths.

I'm aware you have not had any time to think about this at all. But if you were to, to have the four great directors. I would have had Hitchcock. I would have had Billy Wilder. I would have had Spielberg and I would have had to have had Scorsese. That's a hell of a snub to Rob Reiner. I know, but I know. It is interesting.

If you did like the four, if you had like literature, Jane Austen would be there, Agatha Christie would be there. I mean, you know, acting. But directing is so male and white. And still is. Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? It remains that way completely,

which is why the acting categories remain split at the Oscars, as we've discussed before, because if they weren't, it would all be men nominated. I'm sorry to say No matter how much they try and diversify the academy people would cleave to male nominations if it was just in the sort of

humankind sense rather than In the humankind sense Well you know what I mean In the word that describes both men and women In the acting profession Yes I understand But Robert I have to say I love the format of the question

The director of Mount Rushmore And if anyone wants to get a question On this show Mount Rushmore of various other entertainment things Have you? Yeah How was it? The sculptor

A guy called Borglem the whole story of how he did it is really interesting and it's something like 17 miles away from one of the other great enormous landscape sculptures which is still unfinished which is Crazy Horse they're about 17 miles from each other in South Dakota and it's absolutely amazing and Crazy Horse is still being built

and is the most enormous thing Is it just a tourist attraction? The Native American chief came to a sculptor and said I would like the white man to see I think he said the red man has heroes too this sculpt is so enormous. It's of Crazy Horse pointing forward. I think you could put about 400 people on the arm. It's still being built and the children have taken it over and then the grandchildren have taken it over. Because we spent too long at Crazy Horse. I was thinking,

oh, we've missed sunset at Marshmore. This is so annoying. But actually what happened was that we went and sat in this auditorium and they have this incredibly moving ceremony where they say, are there any veterans in the audience? Once the sunset, they retire the flag every night. All of these veterans from different conflicts came down. The steps, the whole thing. was really amazing. And so just those 17 miles apart, these two very, very different parts of American cultural history. Anyway, I really recommend if you're in South Dakota, you have to do both those things. We have to remember we're as entertainment. Sorry, sorry. But it's like, we can add a little bit of value. But anyway, I love the question, Robert. Thank you. I'm happy to do more Mount

Rushmore's of. Marina, I have a question for you from Alan, who has not provided us a surname or has not provided us with a first name, one or the other. Alan says, thank you so much for the podcast. I can't tell you how much I look forward to you, joining me for my breakfast every Tuesday and Thursday. Thank you, Anne. I have a question I'd love to hear your answer to, although I'm slightly trepidacious as to Marina's response. Okay. What do you think of the rise of Dungeons and Dragons as an entertainment product? The podcasts about the game are enormous and critical role is something of a cultural behemoth. Oh, I've said behemoth quite a lot in this episode. Would it finally break into the mainstream? I don't know why you're worried about my answer,

because Dungeons and Dragons is amazing. It's owned by Hasbro, which is more than 100 years old as a toy or games company, but it's got a subdivision, which are called Wizards of the Coast. The rest of Hasbro is not doing as well. Wizards of the Coast, revenues grew 70% last year. I think they made almost 1.5 billion. They look after Dungeons and Dragons. They also have magic, the gathering and things like that. There's lots of reasons it has a kind of cultural relevance. I always think when things get a cultural relevance, it can't just be because a niche fandom, however engaged and however many millions are playing it. Things like the stranger things, and that in itself is derivative of, at the start of ET, of which the whole look and those early Spielberg films,

the whole look and the whole kind of vibe of stranger things is very much inspired by those. But critical role, who are, as you say, they're a huge, they're like a group of friends and professional voice actors. They play a live stream game of it. It's enormous. When they were going to do a live version of the game, they sold out Wembley and Madison Square Gardens in something like six minutes. Amazon has begun animating old episodes, and there are four seasons in.

Critical Role actually have their own game, which is called Dagger Heart. But that in itself indicates the sort of health of all of this, because Dagger Heart is becoming huge, and therefore, you know, it's not just like a space that's really, really big, but it's basically Dungeons and Dragons. Lots of people who worked at Wizards of the Coast now have helped develop this for Critical Role. Live streaming, Twitch, all of those things have obviously helped. I mean, obviously in the 80s, it was kind of hamstrung by that whole moral panic thing,

which if people, audiences don't know, there was a big panic about Dungeons, and Dragons that it was satanic in the 80s and it started I think in 79 it was a sad very sad story about a student who was a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons who vanished from their university dorm and actually they were later fans of hiding in a tunnel it was some kind of awful self-harm episode and then I'm afraid this person eventually ended up taking their own life and another suicide the mother thought it had something to do with Junctions and dragons and it became this weird rumor that if your character died you know like you lost it then you had to kill yourself which was not the case at all and it was one of the

of those bizarre moral panics that basically dissolved because it was not complete nonsense and nothing happened. I mean, when you think of the things we've got to worry about nowadays, this was a very day thing. And Dungeons and Dragons is very sort of, I don't know, it's inclusive. It's a huge, huge thing. I don't know, it's the biggest game in the world, I guess, tabletop game, as it were. And you can make anything of it. You know, if you've ever played it and I have played it many times, you can, yes. But you can, you're creating worlds yourself. So it's a, I mean, I mean, it's an incredible game. And if people don't know it, there are sort of various, you know, there are ruins and laws,

but, you know, you roll dice and, you know, huge amounts of luck involved. It's a story, but the story can go off into lots of different places. You can take it where you want to. You can take it where you want to. And again, we talk about it a lot. It is a reaction against the speed of our culture. These are my sons in a Dungeons and Dragons game that goes on for like two years or something. It's like a saga.

But it's a group of people all hanging out with each other, all chance. you don't know what's going to happen you know if you love the mythology and all that sort of you know there's there's lots to hang on to there's lots of kind of at heart it's just a bunch of people hanging out with each other doing something absolutely nuts yeah it's interesting that the movie um what it was called honor amongst thieves yeah i enjoyed i enjoyed the movie yeah but it didn't do anything it didn't do very well at all and it's interesting because hasbro obviously have tried to monetize lots and lots of their properties into kind of cinematic worlds and it's interesting that the things that have taken off are stuff like critical role and the live

streams and all of those things. It's just a, that's the right. They don't have ownership of that, though. That's the trouble for them is that they, they can't own that, whereas obviously you can own and license your rights to have movies made. You really couldn't have explained this to someone, honestly, even 15 years ago, that you could sell out Wembleve to watch people pay a live version of it. None of these things could be explained. I mean, obviously, you know, podcasts that's selling out shows could also not have been explained. But it's interesting. I mean, I'm a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons and I love what's happened to it.

I think it's a wonderful game and I think it has a wonderful place in our culture. Yeah. And I think it speaks to where we're going as well, which is human connection. Yes. In entertainment. Shall we go to some adverts? Yes, let's do that. This episode is brought to you by Sky Sports.

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travel plan. Give me some examples, Richard, of your dream locations. England and I are terrible. Anything we watch, if it's somewhere beautiful, so let's go there on holiday. If someone has a nice house, we just go, should we live there? And if anyone's a nice room on holiday, we're immediately online looking it up. I think the absolute perfect example of it is the white lotus. So the white lotus, firstly, they go to amazing resorts, you know, Sicily or, you know, Thailand, wherever they might be. And people are being murdered. Terrible stuff is happening, but you spend the whole time just going, we have to go there on holiday. Oh my God, this looks amazing. You know, in between sort of gunfire and all sorts of terrible things happening,

you're like, wow, this place. The best ever. depiction of Italy is Ripley, the amazing Netflix series, and it's shot so beautifully and you know, always sort of walking up sort of cliffside walkways and under arches and things like that. It's impossible to watch those shows and not immediately think we have to book a holiday. It's like if you think about the money that is spent on videos for holiday companies and suddenly you got this movie, which has been $40, $50 million, making somewhere look absolutely incredible. It'd be weird not to watch these things and not immediately think I have to go on a holiday there. But Ripley as well, just the Amalfi Coast and Rome when

you watch Ripley just absolutely make you salivate for a holiday. However, Richard, let's be a bit more prosaic because sometimes it is a tax break. So there are the great tax break countries. Morocco actually offers up to 30% back in production rebates, which is why it will very gladly play anywhere for you. That's where the Coliseum was built for Gladiator 2 in the Desert Sound of Wazazarte. Speaking of Desert Towns, I think you and I have both been to the same place, which is the place where the spaghetti westerns were shot, which was not actually in the Wild West, when they became really popular, things like a fistful of dollars, for a few dollars more, good, bad and ugly.

It's actually in Spain, it's near Al-Maria. And have you not, we've just discovered that you and I have both been to that same town? Absolutely loved it. And that's literally going to the set of a movie because they've got all the old sets there, like you can take amazing photographs and yeah, it's in Al-Maria. So that is literally a movie set. That's not just the backdrop of, oh my God, look at these majestic mountains. That is the taverns, the bars, the shops of a Wild West town.

And you can go there. I absolutely loved it. It's the greatest photo shoot location of all time. It's hilarious. I took only 937 pictures of Kieran in the Wild West there when we went. It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Don't forget with Tui, you don't just have to admire the wide shot. You can book the whole scene.

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We're the hosts of another goalhanger show, Empire. And we are here to tell you about a recent series we've done on Partition. On the 14th and 15th of August, 1947, Pakistan and India announced their independence from the British Empire. But as these nations gained their freedom, their rushed and violent division resulted in the deaths of well over a million people and the forced migration of over 14 million more. It's a piece of South Asian history that many people are familiar with, but in this series, we want to explore it alongside four less well-known partitions which continue to affect the region in monumental ways. Yeah, you're quite right. In one episode, we dissect how Dubai almost became part of modern India. and in another we're going to unpack the history behind the headlines about the conflict in Kashmir. We also explore how the separation of Burma from India is linked to the origin of the Rohingya genocide

and how East and West Pakistan separated in 1971 to create Bangladesh. So if you'd like to hear more about the five partitions that completely transformed modern Asia and how the weight of the memory of partition has been passed down through the generations, we've left a clip of the series at the end of this episode for you to listen to. Welcome back, everybody. Now, Richard, you recommended Murder by Phone

that great documentary about Encro chat last week. And also so many people have come up to me in the street this week and said thank you for recommending that we loved it. Yes. Okay, Tessa O'Hanlon says, My partner and I are loving murder by phone, the Anchorage Chat documentary that Richard recommended. We've been trying to cast people for the inevitable Netflix series that will be on our screens.

Mike Pope could only be Statham. But we noticed that some detectives were blurred and others weren't. Surely the NCA agents speaking openly are at high risk of being targeted even after five years. Yes, I spoke to Simon Ford, who's the exact producer of this show. And again, if you haven't said, I won't give away spoilers on this, but what he said was interesting about exactly the question you're asking, Tessa. So this show took them, yeah, years and years and years to make. The level of access they had to make the show is absolutely unprecedented.

They're right in the heart of the National Crime Agency, which is a very, very secretive place. And, you know, the legal hoops they must have had to jump to, if you've watched it, the stuff they must have had to clear, you know, every single message, all that stuff. The legal hoops must have been almost unimaginable. So, yeah, a lot of the people speaking at this work at the NCAA and various other agencies that are not, as you would say, public facing. they're not people who really should be showing their face. And the programme maker said, well, we gave them an absolute full gamut of how they were allowed to appear on screen, which is what you've seen, Tessa.

So you can run from what they call full ID, which is just you, it's your name, it's what you look like, to full non-ID, which would be the complete blurring. And in between, and you'll have seen this one particular one, there are name changes and obscuring identities by disguises and makeup. There's one great NCAA officer who essentially wears glasses, like a big wig and these big sideburns. And you're like, maybe that's what he looks at. If, by the way, you are listening and it is what you look like, then forgive me because it's a strong look. I'll say that. But certainly if you were looking to disguise yourself, then he had every single version of a disguise you could possibly have. And constant chatting to those people in advance of transmission as to, you know, do they want to change how they're shown?

you know, has something operationally happened that means they have to be taken out of the documentary or obscured in a different way. So right up to the sort of day of transmission, making sure that every contributor to the program was kept informed. And but Simon says, look, it took a long time to make this thing. It's a very, very small team, very, very secretive team as it has to be, because, you know, there are people whose identities can't be given away in this. You know, if you look at the people, they're locking up especially. But obviously some directors on the show did have to move on because you can't stay on this show for five years. It's, you know, because it was in deep freeze for a long time because so many of the

criminals involved in this documentary had so much money and spent so much money trying to stop the documentary going out, trying to make the messages inadmissible in court, which of course I mean they're inadmissible on TV as well. And without those messages, you don't have a series. So it's one of those ones where Simon and his team and the whole channel absolutely held their nerve till the last possible moment. But yeah, every single person involved was kept informed all the way up to the last minute. And Mick Pope, who was the guy I spoke about last week, who's wonderful.

Yes, Simon says he was an absolute joy. Rare to find such a compelling storyteller, even when he is telling you what he had for breakfast to check the mics. He said, and Mick Pope actually got in touch with us to say thank you for his mention. And he said, I did worry that my language might be a bit fruity, but I hope people would understand it in the context of the job that I do. we absolutely did. He's a hard-bitten cot, Richard. Yeah. Do you know, listen, you've got to see it. He doesn't come across as hard-bitten Mick Pope. I can see the Statham thing. I'm starting this tonight. I think you would love it. But yeah, Statham as Pope and Mick Pope, not the Pope.

No. Thank you so much to Simon Ford for answering Tess's question as well. And thank you for making that great show and for holding your nerve for such a long time. Adam Levy has a question for you, Marina. He said, I've really enjoyed your quickfire A-list segments, although I do think the marina is a bit too generous to some of the legacy A-listers. Who is the biggest A-lister of all time? If we compare people when they're at their absolute peak of fame, who is the absolute goat of the A-listers? Okay, the idea that I'm too generous to legacy A-listers is something I've also been thinking about. Oh, really? But I think it matters because what I do think about all the time is,

even though I might think someone like Harris Dickinson is amazing and he's probably going to become, like, maybe he'll be James Bond, maybe whatever. Go down a high street in the UK or Main Street USA to use this a generic term and shows people to pictures, say, do you know who this is? And the answer is no. And it's very interesting. The reason I call them a legacy A list is because people actually know who they are. And you could show people pictures all across America, all across the UK. But I have been preoccupied with this because I've also noticed this thing, this tendency in myself. So I found some... This is a real... It's interesting. Yeah, well, I'm going to come to the answer to the actual question in a minute. But more about you. No, so I had a look at some UGov polling that they poll every quarter really. And the most recent polling for Q2 for 2025 is the most sort of famous actors, the most recognisable.

Oh, do they do that? Yeah, that's fun. Okay. Number one, Keanu Reeves, 98% recognition amongst all adults in UK. Have you started this list at number one? Yeah, no, I have, okay. But it's interesting where it goes down to it. Okay, okay.

So two Morgan Freeman, three Nicholas Cage. I mean, these are interesting, you see. Like more than Tom Cruise? Yeah, well, Tom Cruise is at seven. Four Johnny Depp, five Will Smith, six Leonardo DiCaprio, eight Marilyn Monroe, interesting. We're going to come to all this. Nine Brad Pitt, ten, Jim Carrey.

You see, I think this is interesting. There's something about that. When's the last Jim Carrey movie you saw? There's something about Legacy A list that is a thing. But in terms of your actual question, I, by the way, think he was talking about Catherine Heard. In terms of biggest movie stars, maybe. She's got one the most Oscars, Catherine Hepburn.

So there's lots of... She's the only person to win an Oscar and another actress got an Oscar for playing her. Yes, that's correct. Yeah, yeah. Okay. You know, is it like Chaplin where just the most people in the world were watching their movies at any one time almost because it was such a... Catherine Hepburn, the most Oscars. Marilyn Monroe may be the most iconic.

I think it's so interesting that she's still at number eight. That's crazy. Also, by the way, the only woman in the top ten. Yeah, Angelina Jolie is actually the other. woman in the top 20 in that list. I didn't go all the way through them. For me, in some ways, the kind of platonic ideal of a movie star, Carrie Grant. Yeah, sort of defined what movie star meant. Yeah, what movies are meant. So there are all these different metrics that I could use. Brando, maybe, Marlon Brando, maybe the most influential. You'll find most

movie stars saying, you know, John Wayne, that kind of iconic Americana thing, right when America is the absolute center of the world for everything. Tom Hanks, who takes those very big sort of huge American roles. And Samuel L. Jackson, you know, the movies that he has been in have grossed the most. But he's just lots of that's because of Marvel. Wasn't she just overtaken by Scarlett Johansson? Yes, because Jurassic Rebirth has tipped her over. De Niro, for me, in so many ways, such an iconic actor.

But actually, what I have to say is that I have to come back to Tom Cruise because, and I thought about this really hard, he's basically spent 40 years as a leading man and show me anybody else in the whole of movie. history who did that and maybe that's part of our anti-aging techniques that we have nowadays or whatever we have but he spent 40 years as a leading man and I just don't think that is replicated anywhere in in cinematic history and for that reason probably I would say that although it feels odd because to a large extent he comes in not exactly that line in the first episode of Sopranos lately I've been thinking I came in at the end of something but he does to

some extent. He is maybe the last movie star as well as perhaps being the biggest. Yeah, and seems to care about the industry and seems to have a view on it. So he's not just turning up for work. He's trying to add to the canon. Oh, and so self-conscious, though, and thinking about the craft and thinking about what it means and thinking about theatrical and all those sorts of things. But as I say, there are many different ways we could talk about it. So I hope I talked through all of those little bits about who I think is why. But you're going cruise, yeah. I think that's not a bad call. Simply because I can't, because of staying as a legal.

being man for 40 years. Yeah, yeah. That's me. Okay, speaking of the iconic, Madame Two-Swords, Ewan Davidson says, I've just taken my son to Madam Two-Solds for the first time and couldn't help but think about the behind the scenes of it all. How do they make the figures and what happens to the figures if the celebrity gets cancelled? But I'm so obsessed with that of the people who were famous and are no longer famous and knowing the kind of the melting point. The melting point, yeah. Yeah, which comes to everybody. A friend of mine, The Guardian, once went to Madame Trey's also do an interview and saw Richard Branson's head in a sink. I had a story once. Someone was working at the Iranian embassy in the 70s, and they had done a waxwork of the Shah of Iran.

And they had like a private view of it. And the Shah said, I want to be taller and thinner. And they're like, okay, we can do that. So they went away again and to make him taller and thinner. And in the meantime, he was deposed. And so it never turned up. It's now part of Kylie Monogue in the pop legend's exhibition. Joe Kinsey, the studio manager at Madam She saws, is very helpful to us on this. She says it can take over a year to make a wax worker like a, you know, with proper likeness. And the first thing they will do, by and large, is you have to have the celebrities' involvement, really. They will come and pose.

They will find a way between you and the celebrity of finding a way, like an iconic look that they have or an iconic, you know, just something that really represents them. often the celebrities will donate their own clothing so Timothy Salame's waxwork has got his own Alexander McQueen boots So the spaces of you start with a sitting Hundreds and hundreds of measurements photographs you scan the eye the hair colour all of that kind of stuff Joe says it's a real mix of art and science

And you can you can really believe it when you see what they do They start with a clay model Eyes are hand painted Each strand of hair is individually put in skin tones done with oil paints hair if you've got the hair you have to use regular salon products so you've got something you really can just go down to boots and get actual salon products to do the hair with

just like any real person with same with nail varnish and stuff like that that's real you know commercially available so much easier to work with one of these and have to wait for the celebrity nine hours for them to turn up to the appointment yeah exactly the dream I'd love to do a waxworks hair they recently had to do 13 Taylor Swift's Because Maddenty sauce is not just in London. It's all over the place.

So they've got 13 different Taylor Swift. It took them 14 months. 40 people, 14 months to make 13 Taylor Swift's. That's like a exam question, isn't it? Yeah. Dressed in various different bits of the Ears tour and, you know, using the same swatches of material that Taylor herself had used. You know, and props as well.

You know, Joe was saying they had over 20 trials to get the exact consistency of a marmalade sandwich for Paddington. But in terms of who's in there and when people get, you know, kicked out, they're always looking at, you know, news events, social trends, things like that, fan requests and stuff. So we drove past Madden she saw us the other day and Harry Stiles is the big one. Harry's home, it says, at the beginning. So they're always looking at that.

They're always sort of trying to find current icons, of course, but current icons who might last. You know, so Harry Stiles and Timothy Salomey are going to be around for a while, I would say. You know, there comes a point where you think, well, this person's going to be here for at least three or four years. And then it's worth your while. But obviously people do get retired. And there is a, yeah, there's a storage facility where all the retired and rotated characters are archived. That must be the single creepiest place to work. I was just about to say, could they not franchise it into some sort of horror movie thing?

You know, some of them aren't melted down. So some of them, if you just think, you know, this person's day is done, you know, Leo Sayer might have been melted down at some point. But lots of them are still, they're like sitting there. on the subs bench in case they become famous again. That's a game show. What if Harry Stiles gets cancelled. I've got to draw someone in. Harry Stiles will not be cancelled.

He's not going to get cancelled. But I'm just, you know. As I say, a complete mix of art and science, you get incredible artists doing those things. But then it's... You also get ones in, you know, I'm not going to name any of the facilities, but I think we all enjoy an off-brand two swords.

If you ever find one in any city in the world, I strongly urge you if you're an ironist like myself, to go on in there and to have a look. My best one ever went to one in Nanjing in China and they had this waxworks thing. It was so brilliant. There were only three British people in this whole waxworks. David Beckham, barely recognisable.

Yeah. Stephen Hawking was there. Interesting. And the third one of every single British celebrity ever, every single cultural icon we've ever had from Britain, every single person who might have made a splash in China who might be kind of universally recognised. Apart from Beckham and Stephen Hawking, the third one was Lucien Freud.

No. Yeah, the artist. Did he look ironically like a Lucian Freud? Do you know what? I don't know if he looked like Lucian Freud because I didn't put it. Yeah, he looked a little bit like a Lucian Freud. It was, I loved it so much. Do you know what?

I tell a lie, because James Bond was there in the form of Daniel Craig, but looking so unlike Daniel Craig. It was like, it was almost... You have to just guess which other... The game is to guess which other celebrity or 19... native football they had been before yeah exactly

he looked he looked half melted but yeah a bad wax smoke museum is one of the greatest things in the world previously appeared as

Lee Sharp yeah yeah wonderful Lee Sharp if he's in some sort of storage facility somewhere

somewhere just off the westway I would love I wonder I wonder if they let us have a look around I'd love to see

that yeah ideally at the dead of night poorly lit maybe just going around with a phone torch oh it'd be amazing

I mean they never would ask for my wax sweat But firstly, that's a lot of wax. But if they ever do, you'd have to say no. Just because you'd know that you're going to be, at some point, you're going to be melted. You know, everyone understands that in a show business career, that, you know, there's a waning. But that's a real physical example.

You know, you're literally melted down and turned into Sue Pallard. That's too much perspective. Too much perspective. All right. On that note, I think that is us done. That's us done. Yes, we have a bonus episode tomorrow, all about the, uh, rise of Euro Disney, so for members, I hope you enjoy that.

Fall and Rise, I think it's fair to say. Fall and Rise of Euro Disney, yeah. And other than that, we'll see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. This episode was brought to you by our good friends at Sky, who've made something rather special. TV and a smarter one at that called Sky Glass. No box, no dish, no cables creating abstract modern art on the wall, just one sleek screen that does it all. It adapts to what you're watching to,

a Spanish villa in the Day of the Jackal, a jungle paradise in a nature documentary, or poolside in the White Lotus. The crystal clear picture quality will make you feel like you're right there, minus the questionable company. Sky, Netflix, Disney Plus, Apple TV, plus, your favourite apps built into one place. Gone are the days of app popping your way to a perfect evening's entertainment. If you fancy a TV with the latest tech and unmissable titles, visit sky.com requires relevant SkyTV and third-party subscriptions. Broadband recommended minimum speed, 30 megabits per second, 18 plus, UK Channel Islands, and Island Man only. Hi, it's William Drimple here again from Empire, another goalhanger podcast. Here's the clip

from our recent series on the five partitions that created modern Asia. And it was deeply emotional. Sparsh picked up some pebbles from the village, which he made into jewelry, family heirlooms for his family going down the generations. Because he was always saying, you know, my family doesn't have archives, etc. We lost everything in partition. And there's nothing that we have from Bela to show where we came from. But so he wanted to pick up something from Bela and make it into airlines for the next generations, you know, three, four generations from now, they'll still have a piece of Bela with them, even if, you know, the relationship between India and Pakistan worsens again. And, you know, even if his kids can never visit Beela,

they'll always have a piece of Beela with them. This connection with Earth, Dherty, you know, they call it Dharthi in India, and Zameen is the Urdu word, exactly the same thing. But it is much more than just the earth. It is who you are, where you have grown from, where your forebears have grown from. And the number of people I know who have been lucky enough to travel across the border, and I count myself as one, who find it impossible to. leave without a scoop of earth. And I have one too. You know, in Lahore picked up a handful of earth and brought it back with me because I thought, you know, this is the stuff my grandfather used to walk on. To hear the full series, just search Empire wherever you get your podcasts.