The Rest Is Entertainment - The Secrets of Porn Pay

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Are all pornstars making millions off OnlyFans? Did Kylie Minogue cheat her way to Christmas number one? Does Jim Carey deserve an Oscar? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions, ranging from creating motion capture masterpieces to the economics of adult entertainment. WIN TICKETS TO 'THE TRAITORS LIVE EXPERIENCE': To celebrate the launch of the new series of The Traitors we’re giving you and a friend the chance to get a taste of the ultimate game of deception and tactics. Sign up to our free newsletter by visiting ⁠therestisentertainment.com⁠ and you’ll be automatically entered into our competition to win two tickets to The Traitors Live Experience in central London. T&Cs Apply. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restors Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm very well. We had a discussion on our member show about David Hasselhoff and the Berlin Wall. And we were sort of supposed to be talking about whether David Hasselhoff brought down the Berlin Wall.

But actually, our biggest argument was about whether David Hasselhoff had a mullet or not. Remind me what side I was on? You said that he did not have a mullet. And I said that he did have a mullet. We have a letter from a viewer that I think proves us both right. It's from a sarah Breitenbach, which is, she's saying, I see that in the rest of the world that would count as a mullet. She says in Germany, though, the home of the mullet,

that is definitively not a mullet. So it would not pass from a mullet in Germany, which is what we were talking about, the context in which we were talking, as you suspected, yeah. You did say at the time, didn't you? I'm just talking in a German. context here. But I still think in the rest of the world, that counts as a mullet. Thank you, Sarah, for clearing that up for us. I am also very grateful, as you can imagine. Now, we're going

to move straight on, Richard, because a lot of people have asked about Kylie's Christmas number one. Yeah. And the one we're just going to go with is Nicola's question, who says, how did she manage to get the Christmas number one this year? I've hardly heard her song on the radio and the charts are full of Christmas classics, so it appears to have bucked the trend. Yes, and I think, I think I had very confidently said that Christmas number one is not going to be of any interest ever again because it's going to be wham every year. And I'm immediately proved wrong. So Nicola had a very close look into it. The actual answer is quite prosaic, which is the Christmas number one was decided at midnight on the 18th of December. So that was the final point at which

any song being streamed or bought counted for the Christmas chart. Because the charts come out on a Friday and so the previous Christmas day was on a Thursday this year and so actually the chart that came out on Boxing Day was the chart that contained all of the sales and all of the streaming

for the 19th December 20th December 21st 22nd 23rd 24th and 25th which is when streaming goes absolutely crazy and actually the end of the 18th is the last possible moment you could still have a Christmas number one So she brought it out in a week where we were definitely streaming lots of those old classics,

but not in the way that we do in Christmas week. So it was the softest week you could possibly have. The last time that there was that much delay, that the last time of the 18th became Christmas number one, because of leap years and stuff, it was 2010. So it hasn't happened that big delay for 15 years. So it's that if you were going to have a Christmas number one that wasn't a traditional one, that was the time to do it.

How did they do it? Well, it's on Amazon music. And so the streaming numbers on Amazon, well, there's lots of other streaming platforms, but they are very, very, very big. And of course, Amazon won that to be number one. And so that's on the top of every single Amazon playlist. And that's sent into everyone's inbox on Amazon.

There are lots of traditional sales as well, because they wanted to go all out and get a number one for Kylie. You know, she was on Strictly, all of those things. but by the way they do this every year you know tom grenin's song went top three his christmas song that was an amazon music exclusive sam riders one as well kiley i think they had the right person and they had this very very very very soft week which is not going to happen again for another 11 years i think or something like that this was the week if you were ever going to beat wham that was the week the chart that came out on boxing day which

as I say, is the chart that actually contains the whole of the Christmas week, as we would know it. It's a statistical anomaly that that wasn't Christmas, that we're not talking about this is Christmas number one. But number one, number two, number three were exactly the same as last year. Wham, Mariah Carey, Brenda Lee. Kylie had gone down to number four in that week. Lullaby for Palestine, which was number five in the Christmas number one chart, had gone down to number 58. So it was that week. they threw absolutely everything they had at trying to get a number one. Thank God for the, you know, history of number one that they managed it.

I think it's a very healthy and a very great thing to do. But it's not something I think they'll be able to replicate next year. I think you might be able to get quite decent odds on Wham next year because they got beaten this year. There is a sort of national treasure moment thing where you suddenly feel like lots of her appearances were kind of weighted towards, oh, you've got this new thing coming. you've got the single coming and it's tied to the 10th anniversary re-release of her Christmas album, all that sort of stuff. At the same time, it didn't feel like a stunt, like we've got to save Christmas number ones or anything like that, which I do think people find it quite annoying. That's definitely true.

Lots of stars aligned, but definitively, she's number one because it was sales in the week leading up to the 18th of December. It's funny enough, in that chart, the Christmas number one week, in the boxing day chart, the whole top 20, I think the whole top 26 are Christmas songs. Every single one of them is a Christmas song, which is how these days it always is a Christmas. The top 20 is always Christmas songs. But in that week, the Kylie Week, there were five non-Christmas songs in the top 20, which is absolutely unheard of these days.

Again, because it wasn't quite the Christmas week. So Dave was in the top 10. Sam Fender and Olivia Dean were up there. Olivia Dean had another song in the top 20. Taylor Swift was in there. So there were five non-Christmas songs in that top 20, which tells you it wasn't quite Christmas. week. So absolute fair play to Kylie for launching that song at exactly the right song and exactly

the right time and for finally making Christmas number one exciting again. It's a calendar thing and I've spent so much. I had so much fun the last few days looking back over the last 20 years of what day was this, what day was that. And the last day, there's a 19th December chart. Charts were done on Sundays anyway, so it's completely different. So yeah, it's 2010 was the last time we had this much gap between the Christmas number one being announced and Christmas. I love that. Very interesting. Okay.

I have a question for you, Marina, from George Rose. George says, I once read that Richard Curtis thought that Will Ferrell deserved an Oscar nomination for his performance as elf. I was wondering what comedy performances you think should have been nominated or won an Oscar in the past. Well, this is true. People always feel that comedy is completely unappreciated by the Academy who take themselves frightfully seriously and can't nominate a comedy performance.

And there's a lot, there's so much truth in that. Suddenly can't actually award a comedy performance. There have been, you know, quite a few for supporting, but for leading actors, in no sort of special order, but I'll get to probably my favourites at the very end. But, you know, Jim Carrey in the Truman Show, a lot of people, thanks. I mean, I don't particularly care for Jim Carrey's performances, just as a matter of taste. he was feels just about to appear after the epithet

rubber-faced funny man however the Truman Show is a pretty amazing performance and it's sort of ridiculous that he didn't get no one I mean I love Jeff Bridges in the Big Labaz I suppose there's less perhaps there's less range in that but for me something like Bill Murray in both Groundhog Day and Lost in Translation

but brilliant but particularly in Groundhog Day it's a brilliant performance that's a pure comedy as well a very broad comedy it's a pure comedy Eddie Murphy in trading places is some people are nominated, but they don't win. I mean, I find it extraordinary that, you know, Peter Sellers lost out for Dr. Strange Love to Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, which is kind of like, that's really like, you know, actor and a musical comedy. I mean, I suppose Jack Lemon and some like it hot, people have been nominated, people like often in the supporting category like Melissa McCarthy and Bridesmaids. Something like sense and sensibility.

Again, Emma Thompson won for the best Oscar for the screenplay of that, which she wrote, which is brilliant. but she almost doesn't make it look like a comedy performance but it absolutely is and it's holding it's a big part of the glue that holds that together but she makes it look so easy that you almost don't realize you're watching it I probably say gearing up for my major two I know a lot of people don't have a huge amount of love for him

in the business but I have to say that Sasha Baron Cohen for Borat that's improvised acting and you're doing it in often relatively perilous situations and the Academy simply wouldn't know what to do with that at all. He should, in my view, I think it was incredibly impressive to pull that off over so many different scenarios and to be improvising all the time and to stay in character and actually be in sort of tricky situations.

So that, but my two big ones are René Zellweger for Bridget Jones' Diary, the original. I think it's an absolutely faultless, faultless comic performance, which is more British than the British. that is brilliant and I think I want to say she lost to Hallie Berry

who got it for Monsters Ball which is a pretty forgettable film now we don't ever talk about Monsters Ball

anymore I really think that that is an amazing performance and again you can see where the Academy

likes to go the person who lost to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi was Dustin Hoffman for Tutsi

how he didn't get it for that I find out I mean obviously Ben Kingsley it's a brilliant performance

etc and it's a very serious film etc. I think Dustin Hoffman and Tutsi that's one of my all-time great comic performances and it has such range for obvious reasons

because you know the nature of the story I think it's brilliant that would have got one for me I think that's a really good question makes you think as well but yeah I mean the idea that it's almost beyond any doubt

whatsoever that Christopher Guest is never going to win an Oscar oh yeah seems extraordinary there that I would yeah I mean I'm sorry There's so many that I've kind of overlooked or there just isn't time to mention them all. But yes, they've got a serious problem that they can't bear to think that this is proper acting,

which is ridiculous because it's in almost all cases much, much harder than, you know, playing a, you know, I don't know, 1940s diplomat and looking sad. Certainly fewer people can do it. I will say that. Goldie Horn in Private Benjamin. Yeah, there you go. Come on.

Over the whole film, she's, anyway. We could go on all day. Let's go for a break, shall we? Now, when we come back, we've had a fair few recorded answers from specialists in their fields on this podcast. I think we might have the most famous one yet. It is a great honour. Yeah, it's a big name answering a small question for you. See you after the break.

See you after the break. Hello, everyone. This is an exciting one. Actually, genuinely exciting. To celebrate the launch of the new series of The Traders, you know how much we love it. We are giving you and a friend the chance to get a taste of the ultimate game of deception and tactics, that is the live traitors.

If you sign up to our free newsletter by visiting the Restors Entertainment.com, you will be automatically entered into our competition to win two tickets to the Traders' Live Experience in Central London. You'll be able to take your seat at the round table, complete missions to build the prize pot, and of course, find and eliminate who you think are the traitors. genuinely a really, really amazing experience. You'll love it. If you win the tickets, we'll also give you £500 spending money towards transport and accommodation.

To enter our prize draw, sign up to our free newsletter now by visiting the restisentatement.com. That's the restisentatement.com. Entries close on the 30th of January. Terms and conditions apply, don't they always? And very, very best of luck. Welcome back everybody now. We tease you just. before the break that we've got a very, very famous question answerer now. Annie Lishman, if you're, that's not the person. That's who's asked the question. Annie Lishman, if you are listening, you asked us a question.

And you thought maybe just Marina or I were going to answer it, but we're not. So, Marina, you tell us what Annie Lishman's question is, and then we can tell everyone who has answered it for her. Well, Annie, very helpfully asked, how do actors in motion capture films get into character when there's no set and costume? Good question, right? Yeah, very good. We have a video answer from James Cameron, the legendary director, but most particularly relevant in this case because, of course, he presides over Avatar. Well, this is a great question. So, all right, you're acting in a performance capture volume. There's no set. Well, there is a set that supports you and like ramps and things like that to be tree branches and so on, because you can't climb up on pixels. So we build a rudimentary set. But it's not visually.

the world. And so what we do is we give the actress everything they physically need in order to be able to do the scene. So if you're going to touch something, if you're going to climb on something, if you need a vine to get up a trail, that sort of thing, they don't wear costumes per se, but that's because they're not wearing very much, because they're Navi in a tropical rainforest. But if somebody needs a cloak or a cape or a weapon or a knife or a belt or something like that for character, we always give them what they need. For example, Sigourney Weaver playing

Kitty, she wanted to be sort of pulled away from everybody and kind of withdrawn. So she asked for a shawl that she could kind of huddle in as a disaffected teenager. We created a shawl. Now, why wouldn't we just normally put her in a shawl? Well, because we can't cover up the markers. So we have to create something that's non-ocluding, which means that it was a very open net mesh. And so, you know, there's a little bit of a dance with the technical requirements of performance capture. But usually we give the actors everything they need.

And if they have an idea and they want something, we'll create that. Because it's a very give-and-take creative space. I think of it as a kind of infinite space because within that volume, we can do anything we can imagine. So interesting. And for those who don't know what volume is, a sort of 360 degree screen that is around you and things can be either played on it or anything can be placed around it because he doesn't have to shoot lots of different coverage because

the cameras are everywhere. In a way it's almost more like being in a place. So rather than stopping and starting all the time, you're sometimes putting everything into just one scene and not having to do little bits of close up and coverage and things like that. So in some ways there's a chance to be more immersive in those things than having to be much. more sort of technically precise. It seems kind of paradoxical in something that is so kind of technologically based, that type of filmmaking. But equally, they have a chance to sort of just be in the moment much more than in some ways you might on a much more conventional, conventionally shot film. But how about that, Annie? James Cameron. Marina, from the sublime to something else.

Miles has a question for you. Miles has a question which starts, sorry. So you always know it's going to be a good one. Miles says, sorry about this. But I'm only asking because none of these other cowards will. In the age of free streaming, how on earth does adult entertainment make money? Who's paying these people? To answer that question, James Cameron. Okay, sex changed the internet, and then the internet sort of changed sex. And it's definitely true, as you say, that free streaming of adult entertainment and

porn killed the old studio model. And by free streaming, I mean things like porn, Harbour X videos and those sort of things. and by the studio model, I mean DVD sales and what they used to pay adult performers, porn stars, pay per scene fees. So that was for each specific sexual sequence they did and it wasn't a day rate and it was really complicated like whether they were in groups or couples or solo or the type of sex act all sorts of things affected that and was quite a complicated thing.

The studios do still exist but they function much more as a marketing engine, in a place that you might launch your brand or they aggregate content. But they definitely don't pay your bills, as you rightly say, Miles, if you're a performer. The core income stream for porn styles, adult performers, whatever they want to call themselves, is subscriptions. So via something like OnlyFans, you've got locked posts,

you've got tiered access. In terms of how much money people actually make, it's like the top 1% of seven figures. the median creator I think the median so a lot of people aren't a lot less is that is $200 a month $200 a month it's a you know it's there's a sort of impression of all sorts of things but we'll get on to how risky it is at the very top in a bit but what's happened with as with so many different things and remember this is an industry that has always led the way and showing you where all sorts of other things in society might go the

skills have changed performers now need kind of parasocial skills, you know, you're looking into the camera and that you need to feel they're looking into the camera and seeing you. And so, in fact, what's happened is that paid interaction has become much, much bigger for them than explicit content. And the biggest earners in this, they monetise like DMs, voice notes, custom videos, sexting sessions, which are kind of like the equivalent of old premium phone lines. But as a result, emotional labor has become more important than, you know, what you'll do sexually. And the whole girlfriend experience, GFE, for sure, is a massive part, weirdly, of this,

the parasocial relationship. And the way that they can scale these, they basically reuse content. So sorry, guys, she is saying the same stuff to a lot of other men, I have to say. And they have, sometimes they often hire other people to do their DMs, but they can keep repackaging content. But the key is they all own their own IP. And the tube sites, the porn hubs and whatever, they're lost leaders really. But they do keep performers in the conversation. So you can funnel people to your micro business from there. This is kind of, sorry, can I interrupt for one second? This is amazing.

Well, I tried to think hard about it, rather like you had with Kylie and the statistics. Do you know what? As you were talking, I was thinking she has enjoyed looking into this as much as I enjoy looking into why Kylie was Christmas number one. Well, it's interesting because I do still think that porn is massively exploitative and I think it's toxified masses of real life relationships in society and all sorts of other things. But it is very, very interesting as, you know, when you make a business that's based on people's impulses and appetites, it shows you where lots of things that are going in the

whole of society. And I'm going to get on to that in a minute. Those tube sites that we talked about and that you were asking about porn hub and whatever, those sort of things, performers sometimes will strategic. leak low-res clips to them. But live cam shows are still huge, as we keep saying, the live experience in whatever format it may take, Richard, is big. Weirdly, sexual coaching courses have become very big.

So porn stars teaching people how to have sex like them is big, and people paying for that as a sort of whatever. And some of them get mainstreamer infants, so deals, whatever. But the power has shifted from studios to individuals who have direct relationships with their audience and we've seen that in lots of other places in different ways, you know, in other forms of entertainment than not explicit.

The porn performers stopped competing with free streaming and they sold what free streaming couldn't which is basically a version of intimacy which is interesting because it's different to what, you know, you had before but what I will say and what's the most interesting thing about it, sorry, this has taken quite a long time but it is an interesting industry.

It is still massively all controlled by banks and the people who process the payments these are the real sensors of this area of entertainment and I'll come on to why they could be of all sorts of things. People like MasterCard, Visa, certain people like PayPal

won't do explicit content but major bets, some people will process it but they decide what counts as high risk. If you're an adult performer, they can terminate your account without explanation. If you lose your processor, your business essentially collapses overnight. There's no appeals process,

There's no ombudsman. When you say processor, it's not that you mean who is processing the money. The payment like Visa, MasterCard, the ones who will agree to who will do this. And a lot of people won't. Not a computer processor. Not a computer processor. No. And in some ways, these are very, very fascinating people, the people who handle this stuff for say Visa

because it's a bit like a black box. We don't really know anything about them. And yet they make very significant editorial decisions in the culture every day. They're much stricter than the law. you get a kind of sense of what happens when, you know, and I'm going to return to this again, when Nigel Farage, not a porn star, was debanked by Coots, that was very significant because you suddenly thought, oh, I see people in financial infrastructure, financial people are making essentially sort of editorial decisions or political decisions. So the platforms like Onlyfans and Fancy and all

those sort of things, they sit between the performers and the creators and the money. And actually, They don't care about the performers at all. Sorry, I'm sure people are the only fans to say we really care about creators. You don't. You care about Visa. You care about keeping Visa on side. So you will happily burn a few creators. If they think performers are high risk in some way or they're going to pose any regulatory risk to their platform,

then they'll just get rid of them because why not? You don't care about that. So they don't like any kind of edge cases in any way or any people who gain too much attention. anything that draws regulatory risk so creators as a result completely expendable and consequently they're very compliant and weirdly as I was saying much earlier on

stars are the most vulnerable because they get the most attention and if they do anything that kind of draws attention and makes them look risky then they can just be deplatformed completely so mid-tier may earn a lot less but they're kind of the safest but what this ends up being is

as you can see morality is kind of being enforced via financial infrastructure. I'm not saying it shouldn't be, but we have to accept that these people are effectively the census, not the law. So porn is, as I said, miles ahead of other things

and it tells us a lot of where things are going. And what happens to these porn creators could in future, in the near future, happen to politicians or to controversial journalists or to comedians

or anyone who is deemed a high-risk creator in any other genre could exist in this kind of slightly precarious thing where you just say, oh, I no longer process your payments or I'm debanking you or I'm whatever it is. So it's quite interesting. They are a form of canary in the coal mine, this particular industry. And they went over, they, as I said, at the start of this, sex changes the internet and then everything else changes afterwards. But it is very

interesting that financial infrastructure really still rules the roost on all of these things and is the effective sensor. That was amazing. Sorry, that's a long answer. No, is it? That It was absolutely fascinating. Fascinating what a microcosm is of what is happening in wider culture. Miles, listen, I'm glad someone wasn't a coward. Yeah, I really took the fun out of that one, didn't I, Miles. No. I hope I really dampened down anything you might have been expected for that answer. Yeah, he's literally on Pornhub now typing in debanked by Coots.

It's a really neat genre. Canary in a coal mine. I think that's us out of. time. What a, what a happy finish. I've burnt on so long about that particular area of the rest is adult entertainment that I have rendered all further questions redundant today. Literally, since the adverse, all we've had is James Cameron and you talking about porn. That might be the best half of the podcast we've ever done. Yeah, exactly. On that note, thank you so much, listeners. We will see you all next week.

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