The Rest Is Entertainment - Sydney Sweeney's Bathwater Bonanza

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Sydney Sweeney is selling her bathwater… does this make her a bad feminist? Will the Nintendo Switch 2 become the biggest video game console of all time? Where are all the 'real' humans in blockbusters? The hottest of Hollywood stars, Sydney Sweeney, teamed up with Dr. Squatch to sell soap containing her own bathwater which sold out in seconds. Does this make her a soapy sell-out, or is this all just clean fun - turning her into one of the smartest actors in the business right now? Richard Osman has got his hands on the record breaking Nintendo Switch 2, what is his verdict? And can Mario stay on top? Does Hollywood have a problem with humans? Marvel - superheroes, Barbie - toys, Lily & Stitch - aliens. Will humans soon vanish from the big screen? The Rest Is Entertainment AAA Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to our Q&A episodes, ad-free listening, access to our exclusive newsletter archive, discount book prices on selected titles with our partners at Coles, early ticket access to future live events, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestisentertainment.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestisentertainment. 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. Visit Sky.com to find out more For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Video Editor: Kieron Leslie, Charlie Rodwell, Adam Thornton, Harry Sewell 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

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Sky. Now, they really know how to put on a show and to make it easy for us to enjoy them. Everything is just there. No digging around, no endless scrolling. Absolutely. And here's the magic. If you know what you're in the mood for, just say it into your remote. You want something specific, say Sweet Pea and Sweet Pea would appear. If you want something a genre, just say, show me horror and your Sky will show you horror movies, horror TV shows, anything in that genre. It really is magic. It's not magic, it's technology, but it feels like magic.

It's like having a shortcut to your perfect evening. You speak, it listens, and suddenly you're three episodes in. A feast of entertainment right at your fingertips. Feast, schmorgersbord, banquet. Which makes me very hungry. Yeah. I wonder if you can get snacks from your remote. Try it. I'm being told you can't. It's just the world of entertainment at your fingertips, the world of food you have to go elsewhere. So if you're ready to dive into top-notch entertainment, just head to sky.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osmond. Hello everybody. Hello, I'm very pleased we're together. We're in the same room. Thank God. Long may this continue. After years apart. Yeah, it's felt like a long time. Has felt like a long time. How's your week been? It's been a bit. I've been in New York. I went to New York. You went to New York City.

I've been in New York City, which I believe you've heard of. And I've had a brilliant time. I've seen, I've taken one of my children and I've seen every possible tourist attraction, every museum, every kind of major site and it was brilliant. Did you have a cronut? I did have a cronut. Yes, I did have a cronut. I had many different items of food at a considerably higher price than the UK. Yeah, I had a brilliant time. It was wonderful.

I've been having because as we approach the longest day of the year, I've been having what is traditionally in British television is Christmas week. At Desjardins Insurance, we put the care in taking care of business, your business to and British television is Christmas week. easy to understand so you can focus on the big stuff. Like your small business? Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. Whether it's a family member, friend or furry companion joining your summer road trip, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with Volvo's legendary safety. During Volvo Discover Days, enjoy limited time savings as you make plans to cruise

through Muskoka or down Toronto's bustling streets. From now until June 30th, lease a 2025 Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000. Condition supply. Visit your GTA Volvo retailer or go to volvocars.ca for full details. So I did the- Oh my god, you're doing Christmas right now. I did the Christmas wheel, which is great fun, which I'll talk about more nearer the time. Suffice to say somebody fell asleep during the recording. That's all you need

to know about that. And tomorrow it's the House of Games Christmas special. This is just so seasonal. And it's great because everyone's got their Christmas jumpers. All the crew is talking about the early. So I think catchphrase went earliest this year. I think catchphrase went in May, a catchphrase Christmas. But no, it's absolute Christmas season. Well, pour yourself a glass of egg, Norg. And light the fire, because this week we're going to be talking about Sydney Sweeney,

who I have a huge amount of time for. She is the star of our era, and she's launched a new bath soap, which contains elements of her own bath water residue. I don't know what to say. More on that later. We're gonna talk about, arguably, the greatest video games console in history,

the Switch and the Switch 2, came out this week, and has been a huge phenomenon, and again, is eating up an enormous amount of hours that traditionally would have been spent watching television. We're also going to pose the question, where are all the humans in movies? I'll just leave that one and explain it once we get to it. But also during that thing, we're also I think we've both been to see a particular movie this week. I think it might be one of the best movies of the last 10 years, certainly

one of the best British movies. And we're to, that's going to be my big recommendation for the week. An amazing movie which I think 95% of our listeners would love to see. Absolutely, I agree with that. Let us begin Richard with Sydney Sweeney. She's a TV star, she made her big break in Euphoria playing Cassie. There's something about her which is she's treading her own path in many ways, which I think is quite interesting. In quite an impressive way.

Yeah, actually she was in New York. Like, I didn't see her. I should have just found out what hotel she was because I tell you, every day she came out of that hotel, it was like a catwalk. She had a whole look. Okay. She was in New York because there was a premiere of a new film that's coming out, which has got her, Judy Ann Moore and Kyle McLaughlin. And honestly, they're standing on either side of her at the premiere just like spare parts. She's in this unbelievable red dress. It's just a sort of throwback to complete glamour.

And she sort of in the dread parlance of our times broke the internet because she released Dr. Squatch, the sort of, you know, affordable men's grooming brand, released a soap that they said contained traces of her bath water because I think she'd done a photo shoot for them before. She had it in a bath, yes, which broke the internet beforehand. Now she's broken it again. We've literally only just fixed it. And she's broken it again. Oh, you haven't. She's not done it again.

Sydney, I have, oh my God. I swear to God. If you break it one more time. One more time. I'm taking it away from you. Yeah. And anyhow, so there was a sort of, there was an immediate backlash and people said this is completely unfeminist. This is what I don't even know. She said, what your fans want? Your bath water. What you keep asking for your bath water? What are you supposed to do? I mean, it's not so much how she, it is obviously she's got a particular look, but it's more the things that she says or does that grab headlines.

And I think she's interesting because I think that her and her people are positioning her in a very, very particular way. She also, by the way, seems to be someone very much in control of her own image and in control of her own business interests. We were always told years ago that certain high profile women were, you know, business women and they were in charge and actually you look back and there were various shady men. But Sydney Sweeney seems to have right from the straight out the gate seems

to have had some control over what she does. Very interesting. Although part of her sort of origin story is I didn't have any control and people sexualized me and didn't said whatever they liked about my body and now kind of I have monetized it and I'm doing it and now I'm in control. But stardom has always been about telegraphing who you are. And before we had like managers and brand managers and all those sorts of things. You know, we had the studios who decided who a star would be, what their screen persona would be

and how they were going to be presented to the outside world. And actually it's funny, you know, when they deviate from that, often it's sort of ridiculous. The only sort of ridiculous thing I can think that she's done recently is when they cast her in Madame Web, which is, you know, I sat through. And Sydney Sweeney in that movie plays a nerd.

And there were so many people in the industry I spoke to who said, sorry, I don't understand. Sydney Sweeney is hot. Why have you put her in a sort of pair of thick glasses? This is no. Does she not even play hot nerds? So like later on she took... I mean, yeah, no, no. Like plain Jane. No, there was no like, why you're lovely. In neighbours who was clearly beautiful, but wearing glasses.

Yeah. And like, then Guy Pearce took her glasses off and went, whoa. Whoa. And you're like, you're not plain Jane the Super. Yeah, okay, sorry. That's a quite ancient reference for those who are 27 years old like Sydney Zweeney. But I like that. It's like watching The Simpsons and they mention something you don't know. I'm like, oh, I wonder what that is. So I listen. Yes, absolutely.

I'm always very comfortable throwing in. And I think they all came out for the final episode of Neighbours. Neighbours, yeah. Plain Jane the Super Brain was there. In the hiatus, in fact, of Neighbours for about 15 minutes. Yeah, Guy Pearce was there. Anyway, that really is a sidebar. That really is a sidebar, anyway. But she's had lots of backlash and people, she seems to sort of welcome backlash. I've seen pictures of her, she's put a picture out of herself not that long ago, wearing a sweatshirt saying sorry for having great tits and correct opinions.

not that long ago, wearing a sweatshirt saying sorry for having great tips and correct opinions. Which was, you know, there's something very, I don't care what you say about me about her, you know, and I, but equally she's very, very careful about talking to you about her origin story as we say, you know, she says she's working class, she's five generations rural. Yes. Rural, key, makes a difference. And she- I was on every sports team, those sort of things. She's like a rocket scientist, she's on the maths team. She speaks Russian and Spanish, I think, something like that. She's obviously accomplished.

But she wants to tell you about her financial anxiety and she spoke a lot saying, I don't even know if I can, you know, it's very difficult once I pay my managers, all those people. For a long time, she said, you know, I can't really, I don't have any connections in the business. This is a very important part of the sort of story. I'm an outsider, you know, I don't have any connections. It turned out she bought a $13.5 million house in Florida on a private island. She's got a wine cellar, an aquarium. She's actually got a $6 million house in Bella. I think she's got sort of much upward of $20 million. Well, I was reading, I was reading there's a lovely story that said that her family had grown up in the same

house for generations at some rural house and there's a lovely story on one of the American chat shows saying that they had to give up this house, they couldn't afford it anymore. And that the moment she became successful, she went to the new owners and bought it back. And I thought, well, that's genuinely a lovely story because that's the dream. But then you start looking into it and you go, I think it was quite a nice house and her mom still lived next door to that house. And it had been in the family for generations, which is not the sort of thing that happened. Maybe in America that happens. But yeah, I started thinking, oh, I wonder if your origin is slightly less. It's quite what it was. Sure. And that, but if you want to be a star of the time, and

I think she 100% wants to be a star of the time, we'll come to that in a minute. Telling a story about financial precariousness to modern America is clearly, has been quite successful in the field of politics. My struggle. And perhaps of showbiz. And I think it's interesting, she's got huge commercial instincts. So much of politics or whatever in this polarized world has been how we see stars, like, you know, either you're Kid Rock or you're George Clooney.

Even the stars who for a long time didn't really like to talk about politics. And that's the sort of history of entertainment we didn't really like to talk about politics. And that's the sort of history of entertainment. We didn't. Over the past decade, pretty much everybody polarized, or it became quite obvious. There was a party she threw for her mother where people were wearing maggot-ish hats. I think they were saying make 60 great again. And there was someone in a Blue Lives Matter t-shirt. Blue Lives Matter. It's a police thing. So there's someone like Jennifer Lawrence who grew up in a conservative family and is one of those stars who's not a lot older than Sydney Sweeney but said, I can't really talk to them, you know, it's a huge riff, we can't really discuss politics anymore. And we all know, like you've read a million of those

articles, particularly in US publications, those kind of slightly pathetic, now seem incredibly dated articles about, you know, how to survive Thanksgiving with your politically diverse family. And Sidney Sweeney is not really about that at all. And I think that she has centered something on the, wherever she sits politically, she centered something on the wind that has, we've all felt since the Trump victory, which by the way, wasn't the cause of it, but reflected it, everything's changed and the rules are not the same. And five years ago, a very commercially instinctive Sidney Sweeney would not have sold soap with

her own bath water. She would have done some sort of feminist stunt because that was where the eyeballs were. And it's interesting, did you see that story about, there was a film producer called Carol Bam who was a sort of famous development executive and developed things like Working Girl, Officer and a Gentleman. She produced Father of the Bride, Dead Ringers. And she made some public comment on stage saying, oh, I watched this movie with her and Glenn

Powell, and I don't understand why everyone that she can't act and she's not hot. Now Sydney Sweeney came out and said that it was really disappointing, but then she did a full interview saying that Hollywood feminism is bullshit and women supporting and empowering other women in the industry is fake. I mean, I slightly agree with her. She said, this entire industry, all people say is women empowering other women. None of it's happening. All of it is a fake and a front for all the other stuff they say behind everyone's back. I think you're probably right. Yeah, there's some truth in that.

But another product she's done is she likes to tinker with cars, okay, what could be hotter. And the other thing she did, apart from this bath water soap, was a limited edition Ford Mustang. Now, it was so limited that I think she had one and one was on display at some Ford showroom. That's very, very limited. But the point is, it's a sort of whole big branding exercise and it's the whole sort of, and it's much the Sydney Sweeney vibe but obviously what we've seen since the Trump victory is all these entertainment studios making a big play of having had a big wake-up and saying oh no we get they're gonna row back on what's perceived as extreme wokery or whatever it is of the last 10 years. And it's so...

So her positioning herself as this type of person, I mean, who is going to get the big roles in the franchises? Are you going to hire her or are you going to hire like Rachel Zegler? I mean, it's not really out there, is it? It's not a decision. She really wants it. Yeah. There's something about watching someone just come out in that... The big red dress, coming

down the hotel steps every single day like it's a catwalk with a whole different look. She really, really wants it. The return of stars. Yes. But she wants to be a star and she wants to be a particular kind of star and she wants to appeal to people who lots of other people might have thought appealing to them was slightly beneath them or whatever over the past decade of cultural philosophy. And she has positioned herself squarely in the market to appeal to them. And as a result, I think she's going to get huge numbers of roles. Yeah, I agree.

It's interesting the idea of now you have to be in a slightly different political space as an actor, culturally political. We talked last week about the cultural becoming very, very political. And, you know, Hollywood's always going to be a progressively, politically progressive place just because, you know, the talent pool of writers and producers tend to come more from the left than from the right. Although loads of executives vote Trump. Oh, yeah, of course they do. But it would be interesting,

my view on these things has always been, if you want to use art to further progressive politics, don't tell anyone, just do it. And the last 30s of actors constantly telling us what they're doing and why they're doing it, you think that's the thing that people, just do it, just show it. The first rule of Hollywood, show, don't tell. Always, always,

always. So do that with your politics. Show, don't tell. Just do the stuff you believe in. Make the projects that you believe in. You don't have to spend your entire time telling the whole of America what they should be doing and what they should be thinking. You can telegraph your own place in the firmament though, and I think that's what Sydney Sweeney does very well. She hasn't told anyone anything. She is showing, not telling. Yeah, I agree. Which is absolutely the key thing. And you know, as you say, she makes an interesting

pairing with Glenn Powell too. And you know, we've talked about there being no stars left and it feels like almost week by week, those two are becoming, you know, Burton and Taylor all of a sudden. You know, a Burton and Taylor for our time. I can't take it seriously. I can't take him seriously. But he wants it so much. No, no, no, I know. I know. I know. If we were doing the rest of the... A Burton and Taylor for our times. If we were doing the rest of the entertainment when Liz Taylor was just breaking out on the scene, we wouldn't be saying, oh my gosh, she's iconic. Oh my gosh, she's incredible. The things she's doing, We'd be like, okay, who's this? We wouldn't go 50 years later.

I would immediately be like, Sydney Sweeney is iconic. I think we would have clocked Taylor pretty fast, but obviously she'd started as a child. But yes, I think they're not the stars in the same way that they used to be. Stars aren't the same at all. And you know, part of this is a hankering for a time that you can never get back to. Yeah, like a monoculture. Yes, and a huge part of Glenn Powell's career is like people saying to him, is going on films with people like The Expendables or whatever, which one he was in, I can't remember which iteration of that particular endless franchise he was in, but where Harrison Ford

and all those people said to him, oh, it was amazing, you know, we were the biggest stars. And he wants to kind of tunnel his way back into a world where, you know, a Glenn Powell movie opening is the only thing that anyone in the culture is talking about. I absolutely see it. I see it in television as well. You know, I'm from a generation that grew up with, you know, if you had a hit, that was a show that everybody was watching.

And you can see the whole of television re-hankering to get back to that. And you can't, I mean, you can have it strictly and stuff like that, but show that everybody was watching and you can see the hold of television really hankering to get back to that and you can't, I mean you can have a Strictly and stuff like that, but even that is incredibly siloed. It's the same with books. People say, you know, if you listen to people like Bret Easton Ellis or Jay McEnany talking about when they had a book out in the 80s, it was like the most enormous sort of cultural event it would happen and you'd have this sense that everyone was reading it, whether or not that was actually true. It felt to them that everyone mattered and it was like having a giant movie opening or something like that, which of course is not the case anymore.

I often think, and I talk to all sorts of creators about this and no one has yet disagreed with me, when I have like a new book out, there is a large bit of me that thinks, right, could everyone else not have a book out for the next two weeks? Yes. No one else should be allowed to have a book out or a film out. When my thing is out, should we just have two weeks where everyone can focus? I feel like we do have that with your books. It's amazing you want more.

But everyone wants more. That's the point. You know, you talked to, I was talking to someone who's in a very, very, very big band about this. And he was saying, yeah, when our new album's out, I want every, I want the clocks to stop. I want everyone else to go, no, no one else is, like the radio is not allowed to play anything else. No one else is allowed to release a record. There are no, everyone goes, you know what, we're not going to do gigs for a few weeks because this new thing is out. So that's all I want.

Yeah. I can understand that. And I, you can never have stars like that again because the culture has become so much more atomized and people can't be... Although, hang on, we've said that before and then I think Taylor Swift is bigger than anybody and she's bigger than maybe even Madonna was at the time. It's hard to... Well, that's it. You're either everything or you're a small...

Yeah. I think Sydney Sweeney wants to be everything and I'm here for it. She wants to be the Walmart of actors. Now after the break we're going to talk about The Switch 2. I'm going to ask you questions about it and you're going to answer them. And we're also going to recommend a film which everybody who hasn't already seen it is going to enjoy. Which I loved.

Alright, shall we go to a break? Let's do that. Shall we go to a break? This podcast is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch season three of And Just Like That, the next chapter in the Sex and the City story. What is Carrie Bredtler up to now, Marina? Well, she has said goodbye to her beloved apartment. She's moved into a townhouse in Gramercy Park. New chapter, new book. She is writing, you'll love this, she's writing Romanticie, Richard. Yes, that genre we have already pretended to understand for

this podcast. Just romance and fantasy. Listen, it's what I'm doing next. The Thursday Romanticie Club. Now Miranda's adjusting to post-Shea life, Charlotte is navigating family life while reliving her thirties alongside younger colleagues and Carrie she is still catastrophically allergic to stability but trying. Watch the brand new season of And Just Like That, available 30th of May on Sky. Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, National Security Journalist. And I'm David McCloskey, CIA Analyst and Spy Novelist. Together we're David McCloskey, CIA analyst turned spy novelist. Together we're the co-hosts of another Goldhanger show called The Rest is Classified, where

we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spies. We have just released a series on the decades-long battle between the CIA and Osama Bin Laden and this week we are stepping into the devastation of the 9-11 terror attacks to understand how Osama bin Laden was able to carry out such a plot right under the nose of the CIA. It was a moment that changed global politics forever, shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation states towards hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them. We will then go into the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden, which culminated in a

dramatic raid at his compound in Pakistan in 2011, which killed the world's most wanted terrorist. So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode. Welcome back, everybody. Now, we're going to talk about the Nintendo Switch 2, which was after a very long wait, I think about eight years, was released last week. And now this is the sort of home console, but it's also portable. So it's both. Richard, you have one.

Yes, I do. Why is it important, you ask? I think Nintendo might be the great geniuses of our time in the world of entertainment. I know we talk about Netflix and YouTube, but Nintendo are so incredibly brilliant at what they do and for a very specific reason, which we'll get to, which is something that we talk about an awful lot. So the original Switch has sold 150 million. We have one of those. Yeah, exactly. And listen, it's great, right? It's terrific.

The only consoles in the whole of history of video games that have sold more are the PlayStation 2, that's how long ago that was, and the Nintendo DS. So Nintendo have very, very few rivals. So it's come out this week, the Switch 2. It's not enormously different to Switch 1. It's bigger, the technical specifications are better. It's got live chat, but any big gamer can do live chat anyway. So it's not hugely different, but it's just an update on what they do. And most importantly, it launches with Mario Kart World and Mario Kart and the Switch are almost interchangeable in some ways. There's loads of other great games, but Mario Kart is always the launch game. And in fact, it's one of the few Nintendo

titles that actually is available for this new Switch. and Mario Kart is one of the great pieces of art of the 20th and 21st century. And the reason it's one of the great pieces of art of the 20th and 21st century is the thing we bang on about a lot, which is it's just fun. It isn't anything other than what would people like to play. I taught my son, he's the one who's got the Switch 2 and he absolutely understands video games in the way that hopefully I understand TV. And he said, well, look, the reason that people go crazy for Nintendo is, you know, they're not doing some big blockbuster game that eight years ago they say they're going to do and

you know, bit by bit it comes out and then it's a year late. They're not doing some open world that's stuffed with micro transactions. They're just doing a great version of a game you've already played and they just make it a little bit better, you know, increase the playability, you know, the new Mario world that you can play with more players, there's elimination modes, there's all sorts of things. But it is just a great playable game that hardcore gamers love because you can go really, really in-depth, like if you're a chess chess player and that you can pick up with any member of your family who wanders around, everyone can play Mario Kart immediately.

And Nintendo have consistently done that. This new Switch that's come out is £395, I think, over here, which is an awful lot of money. And I think a lot of people will hold off buying one because weirdly the Switch one still works so brilliantly. Um, that's, uh, it will take a while to invest in a Switch two, even though off buying one because weirdly the Switch One still works so brilliantly that it would take a while to invest in a Switch Two, even though Walmart in the States had to change their opening hours last week.

Well, they did some of that, which you don't see anymore, which was a real, since everyone's gone over to, well, not completely, but to digital games, those big openings you used to get for a new game where people sit in queue at midnight and it was kind of like a real game of things to do, don't really happen in the same way anymore. Those kind of huge hype things where they dress the outside of the store or whatever, because people have transitioned to buying digital games. But there were people queuing, they had lots of sort of midnight openings. Because they're buying the hardware, which is the one thing you do have to go to a shop

to buy. Well actually, the pre-orders was interesting because I was reading how the pre-orders, they had to apologize, didn't they, saying, oh, we're not actually going to a shop to buy them. I mean, you can buy them online of course. Well actually, yeah, the pre-orders was interesting because I was reading how the pre-orders, they had to apologize, didn't they, saying, oh, we're not actually going to be able to meet all the pre-orders. But in store, if you did queue, and you could be part of that visual, you know, which was obviously shared millions of times on social media, then you were more likely to get one in a funny kind of way. So that old sort of bricks and mortar thing and that way of doing a form

of hype. Talking about old school curries, sold 30,000 of them at midnight, you know, and that's a 400 quid a pop. So, you know, you immediately sort of see that there's an awful lot of money in this, but actually the consoles, and it's always been the history of consoles, are not the thing that's making the money. The console in some ways is a loss leader, because once you have the console, it's about buying the games. And that's the key thing. And the second you're on the Switch, you can buy games from them. You can download games. If you buy an independent game, Nintendo

are taking 30% of the money from that. If you buy a Nintendo game, they develop everything in house, they're taking 100% of that money. No shop, no cover, you know, art, you know, there's no, there's, there's, there's no case for the CD to go into. It's big, big, big business and they sell huge amounts of software, but you only do it consistently over years and years and years. You just do it right. And again, my son was saying that Nintendo keeps so many of their developers, their developers, some of them have been around since the NES days.

You know, they've been there for so long. And even if they're not the ones at the forefront of what's happening now, they are training the people who are at the forefront. But all they've done all the way through is say, we make games for families. We make games. You can play together. We make party games. Then, you know, then they'll make Legend of Zelda and have these incredible sort

of worlds, but the absolute entry route into Nintendo and into the Switch and things like that is, you can sit down with your family, everyone can pick this controller up, everyone can play a game. And you can take it with you. We grew up in an era where you could take around computer games a lot.

And now, you know, that's sort of Xbox, PlayStation, you're not taking around. It's interesting where it falls in the life cycle of those. They're both about halfway in their life cycle, aren't they? Whenever the PlayStation 6 we don't know is coming out, and whenever the next Xbox version is coming out. There's a lot of cross ownership. I mean, I have a PlayStation and also a Switch

because of the different things they do. Is the hardware advance enough for you to think, oh, like, this is a, sorry, this is going to sound crap, but, you know, like a game changer. Not really, not anymore is the truth. You know, you even look at the Switch and as you say, it's been a lot, a number of years since the first one came out. I mean, it kind of looks better graphically, it looks better, but that's the sort of thing that that kind of gamer nerds absolutely obsess about, which is great because you have to get them on board.

But in terms of the playability, nothing's changed since the Sega Mega Drive. If you plug Super Tennis on the SNES, it's still one of the most playable video games of all time. It's playability, it's playable with other people is the key there, and that's the key to getting a big mass audience into video games. You'll always get hardcore gamers because it's the thing that they love and that they breathe. But if you want to be making $12 billion from software, you're making $12 billion by having

something that two people can sit down together and play against each other or you play against someone from across the world. That's how you get that much money. That's how you get a big family audience into these things. And that's the thing that Nintendo has always been incredibly good at. They are a hardcore gaming company that in every possible way presents itself as not a hardcore gaming company. As a, oh, this is a bit of fun. Oh, you'll enjoy this. But behind it, every single decision they make means every single one of their games, with their own exceptions, are incredibly playable

and incredibly playable, whatever level of player you are. They really lost. I mean my children spent, we went to save some people at half term and they spent a huge amount of time playing like Wii Golf. Yeah. Which is so basic, so basic. They absolutely just kind of completely love it and it's just fun and it was social and it's fun. It's basic to play football with a goal drawn on a brick wall. So you could play in Wembley Stadium with loads of people, but it's the same game. There's no difference to the fun that you are having. And Nintendo understand that in a way that certain film companies and certain TV companies do, which is the customer is everything.

You have to give people something that they are going to love to do. And they've done it forever. And I just think it's hard to think of another success story in any other realm of the arts that matches Nintendo's success story. The run of success, the lack of failure that they've had over many, many years and all the big... Decades. Over decades. I mean, it's genuinely extraordinary what they've done. And what's Mario, right? Mario, you know, he's started in Donkey Kong and he's just...

He was a collection of pixels, so he was something that was very easy to put together. And, you know, then you look at Super Smash Bros, you look at Mario World, all of these things. You know, this incredible universe they've created around something... Around something that was in a game and watched. Yeah. And it's just... Oh, he's a plumber. And no one might, everyone's, you know, okay, he's a plumber. And they have built an empire which feels like it's going to last an enormous amount of time. And I think most importantly, has brought a huge amount of pleasure to people.

I agree. Do you think that thing is still true, which I do still think, which is that it's hard to replicate, to see that success replicated anywhere else in the arts, but we still have that thing where video games are not particularly taken seriously and they're siloed off and people they don't seem, even though they are beyond mainstream, they're not treated by kind of legacy media outlets in that way. I remember a really long time ago, maybe even 20 years ago, reading someone saying, oh, we need to find the Pauline Kyle, the video games criticism, Pauline Kyle being the famous film critic

who was a huge part of the new cinema, people like Spielberg, Coppola, De Palma, all those people coming through, Skullsaysay, and wrote about their films in a way, and even as the critic was a big part of that kind of movement in film. There's never been that kind of breakout way of talking or writing about them.

There has been, obviously, on dedicated sites, but it hasn't sort of crossed over. It's written about as a kind of hype story, like, oh, look, you know, finally Grand Theft Auto's come out, and oh, dear, this bit's really violent, or whichever, whatever your particular outlet likes to kind of seize on as its particular thing. But it's not written about culturally in the same way as other branches of the arts.

I think that's right. I think it came of age at a time when things were becoming siloed anyway, is probably the truth. But it's interesting how an instructive, whenever we talk in Trestle TV about the threat of Netflix and the threat of YouTube, and we talked last week about Netflix being threatened by YouTube, this is almost as big. If you're playing Mario Kart and if you want to play something like Legend of Zelda and Elden Ring is going to be out on the Switch as well now because the technology is slightly better, this is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours where you are consuming content. And you can't think of anything else. You're playing like Ghost of Tsushima. You need to

go all the way through it and you're not going to be watching TV during that time. Exactly that. The eyeballs, the hours, they're all gone. And of course, then add to the fact that the second you finish, all you want to do is watch people on Twitch playing that game as well and seeing how they did it, is this industry takes a huge amount, and by the way, rightly, takes away a huge amount of eyeballs away from television. Years ago at Endermol, I was saying, you know, television people play is more powerful than television people watch. You know, there's something about being involved in something and you have to have one or the other. And there's a generation of people,

this is the thing that they do instead of television. So forget Netflix when they're on YouTube, they're watching stuff about games. And it is an enormous amount of people. And we can see how- And it does lead the culture. Yeah. The whole business of watching people play video games,

which you might start watching Mr. Beast and his friends, or you're watching Twitch things, or whatever it may be. That is now being pulled from that and I notice people talking about, oh, you know, YouTube's going to get into sports by getting people to watch along games or matches or whatever sporting event it is and they're pulling all of that from the way that gaming is covered on these particular platforms. And Neil Merran, the CEO of YouTube, is talking a lot about that. It's like starting to build those things around sporting events where people are watching along with whatever commentators they particularly want. Which is of course Soccer Saturday.

Which to my mind is still the single greatest innovation in television in the last 30 years. I think it's the only original idea anyone's had in television in 30 years is Soccer Saturday. Oh, it's so compelling. People watching the football and just talking to you about it and you can't see it. Do you actually think that Jeff and the guys were the pioneers for the gaming community? Yeah, I think Jeff Stelling, when the annals are written, he is literally going to be on the front cover. He'll be the guy. I know parents particularly worry about video games and my kids are spending

too long playing video games and my view would be, you don't need to worry. If they are mindlessly playing video games, I get it. It's quite hard these days with the quality of what's out there to mindlessly play a video game. You know, there was a lot going on. There's a lot of problem solving. There's a lot of decision making. There's a lot of sociability or can be a lot of sociability. And in the sense, you know, I grew up, I did nothing but watch television, but I was interested.

I cared about it. I was interested in who was making it and why they were making it. I learned a huge amount of everything I've learned off the television. And if your child is playing a lot of video games, but is engaging in those video games, firstly, they're learning quite a lot. But secondly, that's the world they're going to grow up into. You can send your kid to piano lessons, they're probably not going to end up a concert pianist. However, they probably will work in a video games adjacent industry, like an industry where those skills are needed and coding is needed and all those things. So I personally think if your kid loves video games, I think it's probably a net positive of video games.

People don't really say that, but I think they're extraordinary. I think Nintendo are extraordinary. I think in the same way that Saturday night television used to bring families together and give such joy, and that's the thing I loved about television, the reason I went into television, I think that industry, I think Nintendo in particular, have created that environment. I think they've created an environment in which you would have your switch in the living room.

That's the thing. It would be next to your big TV and it would be opposite your sofa. And I think that's an incredibly powerful thing and something to be celebrated. And I just, you know, given it came out last week, I just thought it was a good time to speak about it. And as I say, if you've got a Switch one, you don't necessarily need to switch up. I mean, the new Mario Kart is great and it's got a bit more open world stuff in it and there's new stuff. You can live without it. And also there's lots of

Switch ones which are now redundant because everyone who bought a Switch 2 will certainly their Switch one very, very cheaply. Can I, on a final note, give the final note to the president of Nintendo America is amazingly called Doug Bowser. And Bowser is one of the big characters in Nintendo lore. From the moment he got that job, literally he has never been left alone. Like the memes about him, the jokes about him. And Doug Bowser is quite a straight, businessy type guy. And he's clearly had media training.

So why is everyone spending their entire life talking about my... I can't go on stage without people shouting stuff at me about Bowser. So they've given him the line which is, it's a signal to me that we have an amazing passionate following and our fans are embracing it. It's ironic we share the same name and there are times when it'll be fun and we'll play with it. But we're two very, very different characters.

Doug Bowser finishes. I'm not tired of it at all though. Doug, come on man. Doug Bowser. I'm not tired of it at all though, says Doug Bowser. But anyway, it's Mario Kart. I bow to anyone. My record against my son is currently, he has 873 individual wins I have four

873 place for a different human being to my son might throw me a bone every now and again yeah he won't do it and call it your dad's right you just can't the times I win I like the they they are just special it's like someone's giving me five BAFTAs I'm really hope you get your fifth soon, Richard. Oh my god. Listen, you'll be the first to know listeners when I get my fifth Mario Cartwin. Now, you have a thesis, which sounded interesting when you said it to me. It's like a dummy thesis, really, but I, yes, I caught up with Lilo and Stitch, the live action Disney version of the previous animation, and it's done huge business.

The CGI alien is the protagonist. It's quite hard to have a non-CGI alien. No, it is quite hard. But it got me, I suddenly started thinking movies aren't really, they don't really have humans as protagonists any longer. So I looked up the 2024 top-gracing films. I'm talking about, obviously there are movies, there are lots of interesting movies that have humans in them, but they don't do any business and you may see them represented at the Oscars, but nobody goes to see them in a meaningful way. So 2024, listen to this list.

I mean, these are the top, I'm going to go past the top 10. Inside Out 2, which is a sort of fantasia of emotions. No humans. No humans. Deadpool and Wolverine. So my thesis is they are either superhero, animated, animal, or alien. That's not really... That sounds like a game.

Yeah, the taxonomy. Everything must be sorted into that. Inside out too, Deadpool and Wolverine, Moana, I mean, okay, they are humans, animation, but okay, human. Despicable Me 4, Wicked, the witches, Mephasa, Lion King, June Part 2, science fiction, I guess so, but then Godzilla vs. Kong, New Empire, Kung Fu Panda 4, Sonic, Venom. I mean, I'm going way past the top 10 now. These are all the biggest grossing things.

So I think what's interesting to me, and it says something I think quite odd about our times, is that none of these films are about real humans doing real things in real world situations. They're not these big dramas or big comedies or anything that can dominate. I guess the last example that would overrule that would be Oppenheimer. Would be Oppenheimer. But he remains a sort of outlier, doesn't he, Christopher Nolan? And yet he also is the person who we think can save cinema.

So it's quite interesting that both of those things can be true at once. So I talked a little bit to the Guardians film critic Peter Bradshaw about this, and I was like, where are all the humans? And he was saying that you really need the international sales of these things. So the thing about having little cuddly animals or animations or superhuman things is that the international sales are helped by that. He described it as a sort of Esperanto of tame on reality and fantasy, which I liked. So if you're trying to sell a film like that into China or into

Saudi or whatever, without upsetting local sensitivities where, I don't know, human women are shown driving cars or having sex or human men are shown uncovering corruption or whatever it may be. It's just much easier if it's some lions or like a little alien or a superhero. Yeah, listen, takes us back to Animal Farm. Yeah, it's much easier. And so, but I do think that's quite significant. You just don't watch these big drama movies or big comedy drama movies or whatever. They don't dominate the culture at all.

They are nowhere near the top 10 of anything. And they maybe recognize the awards ceremonies. And so therefore what you've got is you've got to get the big actors who you might have in the past driven those kind of movies. They do because they want to have awards as well, but they're all hooked into different franchises where you kind of think, what on earth are you doing in this? Why are you here? Why have you bothered with this? How much money is enough? Or do you just feel like there aren't on the other films? You don't have the cultural relevance unless you're in one of these franchises. And that's even the case with someone like, you know, Timothée Janamé, who is a big star, and we've talked about that, he's probably the

biggest star of his generation, and he can do a complete unknown, which basically not very many people watched, but he also has to be in Dune as well, because otherwise... Is Dune not... I haven't seen Dune, I must admit. Is that not a person? I know it's sci-fi, but Star Wars was sci-fi. Yeah, okay, so I'll count, you know, they're on an alien planet, it's sci-fi. But it's not, but yes, but in general, it's just completely absent. And the days of those kind of movies being able to draw people to cinema, or even being made in a way that is intended to draw people to the cinema, are gone. However, we both independently saw a movie this week, which I just think is magnificent and makes you think, well, I would like to see films with people in them. And that is the Ballad of Wallace Island.

It's so lovely. I saw it yesterday. Tim Key and Tom Basden and Kerry Mulligan, Tim and Tom, wrote it. And I don't really need to go through the plot, but it's about a folk duo and a guy who wants them to get back together so invites them to a gig on this island. And it is, I think Ingrid cried, I would say for 75% of the film. But you're laughing all the way through as well. Beautiful performances from all three of the leads. A really simple, one hour, 40 minute long film. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy it.

It is entirely human. They are all doing human things in a real world setting, the Wales coast. And I really loved it. And I have to say, first of all, it goes without saying, Kerri Mulligan is just ridiculous in everything she's done. She's never not been absolutely amazing. Tim Key is, I mean, he-

I was heart breaking. I mean, he's unbelievable in this, he's brilliant. Tom Basden adapted The Accidental Death of an Anaconda not that long ago for theatre at the Dario Fay play and he rewrote it. I took my son to see it, he was laughing so much, he insisted on us. The theatre was completely packed, it transferred everywhere, went to the West End. We had to buy the script at half time, the interval, I believe they call it in the theater. We bought the script at half time because it was so good. I thought I must find out who that guy's agent is and write to him and say, I just think you're amazing. But I didn't actually do that. So if Tom Batson ever gets here, this, by the way, I think you're amazing. But in this,

watching these folk songs, he's written. I mean, he's like, he's really, what can't he do? I thought it was absolutely wonderful. And it is very funny, but it's, again, as you say, it's completely, it's a completely human movie. And it's, it's in such stark contrast. You can see it in cinemas now, by the way. I think it's been out about a week-ish. But I would really, really strongly recommend it.

It feels like the cinema used to be where you could go along and what's the great film we can see this week? And I definitely, definitely the ballad. You won't be sorry if you go in and think, I'm just going to give a couple of hours, less than a couple of hours, one hour forty of my life to this. It's lovely. Yeah, it's deeply charming. Anyway, so that counts as a pre-recommendation and our clarion cry for human beings in films. Where have all the humans gone? More humans please. More humans. That's us done I think. I think it is.

Can I give one other recommendation which I've finally caught up with the latest series of Night Coppers on Channel 4 and I've talked about Night Coppers before but I love it so much. It's a very, very human show. It's not that one of those absolute blues and twos things and you know it just show all that stuff but also shows the human beings behind it and what the police do down in Brighton. So that's on channel four, you can catch that on there on all four. Very good. Now other than that we'll be back for our usual question and answers on Thursday and also it's 50 years since the release of Jaws, maybe the first summer blockbuster and it's such a brilliant

story so we're going to be doing a two part special on that for our members which you can join at therestisentertainment.com. Otherwise we will see you all on Thursday. See you on Thursday. This episode of The Rest is Entertainment was brought to you by Sky, who've made watching TV feel effortlessly smart. Just use voice control and ask Sky what you want to watch. It's so quick that before you found your snacks you were already halfway through a series. It's basically TV with a sixth sense. Say, show me crime dramas and suddenly you've found your snacks, you are already halfway through a series. It's basically TV with a sixth sense. Say show me crime dramas and suddenly you've got three new obsessions, a reason to cancel plans and a lead detective you inexplicably trust with your life.

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Search Sky.com I'm Gordon Carrera and I'm David McClaskey together with the co-host of another Goal Hanger show called The Rest is Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on. When I look back on it now, you still see that, you know, there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications, there's all these things, but they're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they? I'm a little bit of two minds on this because I agree with you

that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11. Yeah, but we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA understand that Osama bin Laden is coming for us in particular after the East Africa bombings, there is a push to improve our collection and our understanding of Al Qaeda pretty significantly. I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period. There's a lot more technical collection. Alex Station is beefed up to more than 40 people. There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners on Al Qaeda that hadn't existed before. I mean, interestingly, there's a PDB president's daily

brief in December, December the 4th of 1998, which is titled quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft and other attacks. And so there's a lot of strategic warning, I think you could say, about what Al-Qaeda is up to. And yet there's an inability, I think, to translate that into practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and just stop Al-Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9-11. If you want to hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.