The Rest Is Entertainment - Which Celebrities NEED Media Training?

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

What is media training, and who is in desperate need of a long lesson in it? How do you get a fighter jet in your next big film? Do agents ever play their clients against one another in a bid for the big role? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions on the world of TV and film, plus Harry Hill explains the insane production pull of making the cult classic - TV Burp. 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 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

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 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, Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. I'm Richard Osborne. Hello, Marina. Hello,

Richard. How are you? I'm really, really well. Now, on the last Questions and Answers one, we somehow got ourselves into a cul-de-sac, which was the question of which is better, Citizen Kane or Interior Design Masters. Cul-de-sac? I don't think that's what it was at all. I think it was potentially a looming third world war, but carry on. If people haven't listened to that, you will be shocked to learn that Marina and I came down on different sides of that debate. You'll also be shocked to learn that Marina came down on the side of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles' classic movie, and I came down on the side

of interior design masters Alan Carr's classic elimination TV series on BBC one. So we asked our listeners, of course, because it's the way to deal with these things, what they thought was better Citizen Kane or interior design masters, you must be fairly confident about winning that. I think people make a huge number of mistakes. And I know possible they've made a big one today. I have no I have no idea. I'd like to think that people realize that the fact that people are still talking about Citizen Kane and it's still an influence on many filmmakers today and it was made in 1941. Which filmmakers?

Martin Scorsese. Have you heard of him? How is he influenced by Citizen Kane other than by thinking, I better not make Citizen Kane? That's not what he thinks about Citizen Kane. All of those people, all of those new wave, the new Hollywood filmmakers were influenced by Citizen Kane. Yeah. This is, okay, if you think that people are still going to be talking about this series of interior design masters in like 80 years, do you? Marina.

Do you actually? Yeah, I do. I got three words for you. Banjo's Hebridean Rescue, okay, which is Banjo Beale, who won a previous series of interior design masters, essentially goes around the Hebrides and does up people's properties. And it's a really terrific show. I don't know what Scorsese has done that you think is better than Banjo's Hebridean rescues, but certainly I think both of these projects have a legacy.

I can't, I am so going to come back and haunt the world in the year 2100 and find out whether people are still talking about interior design masters. But please carry on. I believe there's a results of a poll in an envelope in front of you. There is. The envelope says Citizen Kane versus interior design masters. No expense spared there. It's exciting, isn't it? By the way, I don't know why I'm being negative. If I've won, I'm going to be so happy. Let's see. Okay. We polled 5,000 The Rest is Entertainment Mega fans as to whether they preferred the

13 time Academy nominated Orson Welles Epic Citizen Kane or BBC2, BBC1, competition interior design masters. I can't deal with suspense just saying. Citizen Kane 31.7% Design Masters, 68.3%. I mean, that's, come on. Have a word with yourself listeners. I'm sorry, these are incorrect opinions. They're wrong.

It will not stand the test of time in the same way. And I, no. Interior Design Master, of course it will. I can assure you, I can assure you that in 80 years, people will not be talking about Interior Design Masters. Should I tell you who's talking about it? I'm talking about it right now. Me and you, that's it. We're not the only people talking about it.

I'll tell you what else we're talking about. Interior design masters. And so are 68.3% of our listeners. Listen, you have to follow the audience. Interior design masters won it fair and square in a non-scientific poll. How is that non-scientific? Could we get one of the larger polling companies? No, you're right. I'm going to lose a lot harder on that one.

Our good friends at More In Common, I'm going to ask them. Please don't because I'm going to lose a lot harder. I'm sorry. Of course, as always, when people are wrong, I'm very sorry that they're wrong. I'm going to put a series of things to More In Common, XVY, and let's have a series of playoffs. In fact, let's do a World Cup of what's the best... World Cup of stupid opinions. Wow. Well, those are our listeners you're talking about Marina.

And you. That's true. Mainly me, it's the truth. We're going to do a little... I'm going to come up with a little format, a little World Cup format that more in common can help us with. And we'll just see exactly what the most important culturally relevant entertainment franchise of all time is. And we'll see where Citizen Kane comes on that list. Okay. I am going to get sedated and then I can't wait to play. Shall we get on with some questions? Please.

I have a question for you. Connor Burns wants to ask you about media training. He says, we hear lots of examples, usually when interviews have gone badly, that the person needs some media training, or on the flip side, you can tell they've had media training. But what is it exactly? People talk about media training all the time. It's quite a sort of savvy, because everyone's become so media literate now, they use phrases like media training, say, oh, normal people in comment sections say, why didn't they have media training. Media training teaches subjects how to engage with the media and teaches you the tricks

and the pitfalls and how to get your message across. And if your role suddenly or even momentarily becomes kind of front facing and you're going to be asked questions by news outlets of any kind, you probably need it. And actually, interestingly, people who are very, very senior in the media really need media training when suddenly they have to talk to the public, because it's very, very different. They might need to be trained not to say certain things just to get their point across, or in some cases to make themselves very boring because they can't, you know, they might be sparkling and terribly gossipy conversationist backstage, but they have to become a very boring version of themselves.

Yes, I would say media training has two very different versions of it, which is, how do I make a boring person interesting? And how do I make an interesting person boring? I agree. And it's amazing who, I mean, a friend of mine was saying to me recently that she's spoken to a filmmaker, they were going to a film festival and they were doing a sort of dry run and saying, you know, why did you make this movie? And he said, oh, my my god I can't remember now. She's like okay you're not going to say that okay because by this point you're so many millions in

the hole for this thing. But also you know people like sports stars need it because they're amazing at sport but they're not necessarily amazing at seeing the pitfalls of what someone's asking you and just even for the post-match you need to have a way of doing it. And again, it can matter because a franchise in sports can be worth millions and millions and millions. And you say the slightly wrong thing, even tell the truth about something that happened in the dressing room. Suddenly it's a huge story.

And suddenly, yeah. And it destabilizes you, it can destabilize the team because it will be written about and that is really what we're talking about. It's become much more important media training in an era of viral moments where everything's instantly shareable, you know, in an era of cancellation, all of these sorts of things. If you think of stories we've covered, I'm just thinking of things like that, the business of Rachel Zegler in the Snow White thing. I mean, the things that she said, if she was someone who people said, why didn't they give her media training and tell her not

to do these things? Because in the end, it ended up derailing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment. And again, there are two prongs to this, which is media training can be to help someone go viral. Or media training more often than not is to help someone not go viral. That's the key. Most media is get out of that room without there being any headlines at all. And some media thing is get out of that room with as many headlines as possible. Yes, I agree. But it is a thing, and I know you've said this to me before, I remember a couple of years ago at the Edinburgh TV Festival I interviewed Jesse Armstrong

and I said to him beforehand, is there anything particular that you'd like to talk about? And he just said, yeah, you know, I just kind of love it if we didn't make news and I fully understand that and so many creatives feel the same way and I tell you what that means is in the old days you used to interview people and there was an interview now what happens in newsrooms every single time you interview someone is that the news desk say is there a news line and they want to say they want to have a news story running saying you know Richard Osman says XYZ and then they'll have the interview as well. I saw an amazing one the other day, which is the Daily Express or something, that said

Richard Osman left floundering on holiday. I said, I have no idea what that is. I literally, I could not pick that out of a lineup as to what I said and when. And I think it was, I was saying, when we're in Italy, because Ingrid speaks Italian, she does all of that, and I'm just sitting floundering at the table just in admiration that someone's speaking the language. A hardcore news line comes out of this podcast every week and that was absolutely one of them. I wonder why that knocked off the front pages.

Floundering. I was honestly, that holiday I did nothing but flounder. It's interesting, there are some people who don't care about news lines and that people like Elton John or JK Rowling who who don't care and have passed through some sort of either baptism of fire or Just do not care at all Over an age and of a level of celebrity that they don't care and they don't care that they make news lines every time They say anything in fact They quite maybe they quite like it and they want to in're and they're strong enough to deal with it but for a creative thinking okay say you make do an interview and you make news and you

say something that has become a news line it's a real hassle then people are ringing for follow-ups for the next few days those are two days you can't properly concentrate on writing or being in the edit or whatever it is there are always follow-ups if there's something even like a non-story like that there will be like three emails the next day saying, oh, any comment on X, Y, or Z. Duolingo would like you to give her a free password to learn Italian. Would you like to? I can't answer these questions. And yes, that's what happens. So in a way, what I find quite depressing about all of that is that it has led to a much sort of flattened discourse where people don't want to make

headlines. If you go back and read interviews with film stars in the 90s even, they're wild. People say absolutely incredible things. And it just wasn't the convention to try and pull a news line out, make a news story out of that. And also just the ease of which you can share it nowadays has made it very, very difficult. Again, it's two pronged, which is mostly it's how do I get out of this without a newsline? Or it's here is a very specific newsline we want this journalist to take from this interview. How do you do that? How does everything you say be bland, except then just drop this at the end? Yeah, but it's made everything very managed and curated and far less authentic, which is supposedly

the thing we prize. And yet at the same time, liberals have become the kind of great polices of things and everyone became the people who made the thing. All of us probably have highlighted some stupid thing that somebody said in an interview and put it at some point on social media. I don't do that anymore because I just think it's a complete waste of time. And also you think it feeds into a really kind of boring and flattened culture. Practically how it happens, media training. So say you're in a football team, often the press offers of that football team or the communications director will do sessions with players.

So you'll do sessions with younger players who are, for the first time, going to be interviewed on match of the day and you say, look, this is how it will happen. You literally go through it like 20 times. This is how it will happen. This is what will happen if you lose. This is a question you will ask. Give me a natural answer and they will give you a series of answers. You go, I think probably the best one of those answers to give if you've lost is this. We go again. You know, thanks to the fans for coming out. They really supported us. The gaffer knows what he's doing. You know, how do you feel about being left on the bench?

I understand it's the gaffer's decision and you know, I respect that. So they're taught to say those things. And often you'll also get at the end of players careers, the same communications directors or PR people will be asked to go into a TV studio with those people and say, how can I be a pundit? What would happen if I were a pundit? Which is a very, very different skill because that skill is now I've literally spent the last 16 years teaching you not to say what you think. Now I'm going to teach you to say what you think and be honest about things and be honest about other players and be honest about the game. And so you have

those skill sets equally in a political organisation. There will be in-house staff who are communications experts who will take you through any single debate you're about to have or any single interview you're about to have. they'll talk you through how that might work. But you also get lots of outside companies who do this, this is like a business and they will go into organizations or they will go and talk to, if you're Kirste Armer, for example, he knows how to speak to the media because he's done it forever and ever, but he's speaking to the media in a different way. So someone will come in and say, these are the different new angles that will come.

These are the different places you will be reported. These are some of the things you might like to think about. I absolutely get it in sport and all those things because it's sport. My view in politics is, and you will get new media trainers who were reflecting this, the authenticity is the thing, as you say, where this media training, this flattening of people's answers and people's responses to questions has done everyone a disservice. Everyone's lost interest. No one believes anything they're hearing because they know they're not hearing the actual truth.

It's like background music now. You just immediately switch off when you hear it because it's such a time-worn performance. And you lose, absolutely, you lose respect for what is being said. And so you get people, you know, you meet politicians in real life, you think, oh my God, you're genuinely passionate, funny. You genuinely care. There's stuff you want to do, but nobody knows that. And you talk like a human.

Yeah. So if I've got a TV presenter who I know has a certain personality, you do everything you can to make your format fit that personality so they can show people who they are. That's the point. You don't put them in a straight jacket and say, no, just do this script. You try and get the format so that that person's personality shines through. The authenticity shines through. So they serve the format, the film that serves them.

But with politicians, we're still in that kind of Paxman thing of, oh no, but if they ask you the same question 12 times, this is how you respond. This is how you shut down a question. And actually the thing to do always, always, always like improv, instead of your response to a question being no, your response should always be yes and always, always. And then say the thing that you wanted, but it's hard because as you say, every single thing you say is so scrutinized. It's very difficult if you're a politician, I think,

to kind of go, do you know what, I'm going to actually ride the waves of this. Yeah, and enjoy the chaos and the scrutiny. But we can see that the people who are surging in politics are people who don't play by these rules, who don't sound media trained. Who worked that out a long time ago. Yeah, and have decided to, you know, just as you say, to ride the wave and just to try and feed off the chaos. Yeah. To not manage the thing you said yesterday, just say something new that then would have to be managed, but then you say something new and that would have to be managed. And,

you know, and then you're yourself, aren't you? And that feels to me the only media training you should have. But then again, look at Cole Palmer. Cole Palmer is sort of a cult hero. He's reinvented the fork. Because he's himself, you know, he's not saying the things he's supposed to say. He's sort of incapable of playing the game and so he does his own game. He's created a persona for the post-match. And listen, that's what you need in this business. Yeah, exactly. But media training is a fascinating industry. But media training has also worked all this stuff out as well.

There are some very old school media trainers who will just teach you how to avoid stuff, but there are a new generation of media trainers who have said, actually, you need to give more of yourself in a way that you're comfortable with. Thomas Middleditch, who was the lead in Silicon Valley, the HBO show, he did an interview in 2019 with Playboy in which he said, I have an open marriage, we've gone to swingers clubs. And talking to people who were on that set, it gives you an example. As the interview dropped, you could sort of physically see it being read.

And that was just a tiny microcosm of it happening across the world. It spread across the set in real time, almost like a wave and it just created, I mean, huge drama. Him and his wife were split within six months. That's unusual for an open marriage. I know. Normally rock solid, aren't they? Just when it went completely nuts and no one had said to him, yeah, yeah, they really want

you to be yourself, but don't be too much yourself. It is extraordinary that someone actually, and the lead on a show that big was able to do that and then to not see around the corners of where it would go. I heard the most unbelievable story. I can't tell it. Someone who put something in their autobiography that was so jaw dropping. And their publishers are like, I don't think, and they were saying there'd be a good news line. And I go, oh, I think this would probably. It would be the only news line we'd be reading forever. No matter, even if World War erupted, I'd be reading that story. God, that's one for the obituaries. Yeah.

Yeah. The dead can't sue Richard. It's much harder to get cancelled. These are so funny with them because X used to be the place where you would get cancelled. You had to be very careful there. But now it seems like you can sort of say, I mean, people are constantly, you'll see something and people say, oh, well done. You've absolutely ruined your legacy.

That's it for you. And then the next day everyone's like, oh, sorry, what happened? Nothing happened. It's like that the engagement on that particular platform seems to have almost completely disappeared. So at least that makes things a bit easier. I know we've only had one question, but let's go to a break and then we can try and fit as many questions as we can into the second bit starting with one about TV burp. Oh, very good. Let's do that.

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. called The Rest is Classified, where we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spas. 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, that question about TV burp comes from Elliot Hart, who says, I've recently been sucked into a rabbit hole of old episodes of Harry Hill's TV BIRP on YouTube. What a wonderful rabbit hole to be down. Yes, that's a nice rabbit hole. And it's maybe wonder a number of things about how they originally produced the shows.

How quickly did they turn an episode around given that they were reacting to TV that was live that week? It is a very good question. So it was a very tough show to make TV BIRP. Oh my God, it was. And I've spoken to a few people. I've spoken to Dan Mayer who was one of the writers. He's an absolute genius. But first we talk to the man himself, Harry Hill, to give us

his insights. Hello Richard. Hello Marina. Welcome to TV Bird, explained. So the way we did it, as far as I remember, and it's a long time ago, when you take your time asking me, we would get preview tapes of the shows from the channels. BBC wouldn't give us any preview tapes, they didn't like us taking Mickey out of their shares. So we used to get those from Ali Ross, the son, and other journalists. They would watch and copy them and then send us to her. Five of us would watch these tapes at home, you know, at various homes. You'd have two VHS players. If you liked something, you saw something,

you'd rewind the tape, press play, and press record on the other VHS recording. So at the end of the week, you'd have like a, maybe 20 minutes of clips. We'd have two meetings a week, and I would write this, we'd record the show on the Thursday, on the Friday I would go to the edit in the morning, I'd go to the meeting for the next

show in the afternoon and on the Saturday I would write the script for that show. Any live shows, we would watch live and we'd add those clips in at the last minute. But the truth is I never really rewrote it. I would do one draft and then the producer, Spencer Millman, who was a brilliant producer, he was always very tough on me. He'd say, cut that, cut this. I would cut stuff or sometimes I'd fight for it. And on the day, on the Thursday when we recorded it, we would run it. And if, you know, often the memory of

what you'd seen in the clip wasn't actually what happened, so that would get cut. And we'd record about 35 minutes, edit it down to 22 minutes, an ITV half hour. And sometimes there'd be stuff left over which you could put into the next week, and that was a joy for me, because it made the writing job easier. And that's it, and we would do that week in, week out for the nation's entertainment.

But thank you for your inquiry. I hope that's answered your question. Oh, he's very good. I literally love him. When that was running, that was without any question my favorite TV program. TV, but my kids were young when that happened, so it's the first thing we watched together where everyone was laughing at the same time. Unbelievable. It's just so, but you knew watching that just how much work, because you have

to watch an unbelievable amount of stuff to just get one joke. I remember once they had, they had like the end of the show, they'd done a bit earlier in the show about, I think it was a reality show set in a motorway service station, and they had this guy who was like a karaoke singer and sung this song on the reality show. And at the end of Harry Hills TV burp, that guy came on and sang a song. And I remember my son, he was very young at the time, he was just going, is that the guy from the motorway service station reality show? Okay, yeah. They've got him on to sing. How did they do that? And he goes, listen, I don't know, the miracles of booking, isn't it?

But just lovely little things like that. I spoke to Dan Mayer as well, who I say is one of the writers on this show, some brilliant writers on that, Paul Hawkesby, and lots of great people. And I was asking him what the most difficult things were. And he was saying that the absolute key with a clip is the clip itself cannot be funny.

If the program makers already have tried to be funny, then that's their joke. Yeah, you can't put a joke on a joke. You can't put a joke on a joke. So he would say, it would be things like, he gives an example, he said, you would have to watch Cory EastEnders and stuff. You have to absolutely decontextualize what you were seeing

to try and spot if there was a joke. It was getting you at their eye in, because the things that would happen in the back of scenes, and you'd think, sorry, how could you notice that while someone was having a meltdown in the front of the scene. But he gives a couple of examples. So one example he says, episode of Cory, Ken Bardot picks up a kettle, goes to the sink and fills it up.

Okay. Yeah. Obviously when you're watching Cory he's supposed to be following the narrative but he says I have to watch it differently and he said I note that of course you can't see the kettle we just see him pick him up so we know what's happening. But my TV Burt brain sees Ken at the sink, here's running water and interprets it as Ken having a wee in the sink. Right? So it's that sort of thing. And his favourite one, he sent me a clip of it, I don't know if we can get a screen grab of it. But there's an episode of the bill and I'll tell you what the joke

is and you can imagine what the clip is. You have to constantly look where you weren't meant to be looking narratively to see funny stuff like extras or props that look like people. Pathetically, probably my favorite of my very own TV book jokes, which is, have you ever noticed when your shadow looks like an elephant carrying a shopping bag and from an episode of The Bill and you watch it, you go, oh my God, yeah, that guy's shadow does look like an elephant carrying a shopping bag. Absolute deconstructualization. And Dan would do lots of the other slightly longer form things like, he noticed that Phil Mitchell would sigh through his nose a lot at the end of a scene. And he'd seen a couple of them and he goes, and

when you noticed that, he said, okay, I've got a couple. You then have to go back two years through EastEnders for every single time Phil Mitchell is on screen. They said we didn't have researchers to do this. It's like being the director of the FBI and just trying to develop a file on Phil Mitchell's no sign. Yeah, and he would like, he'd do a super cut of that. But the one of, which I thought was a clip from T.B. Burke, but it's not, it's just Dan himself did this amazing clip.

And I think Rodney Marston, the musician, put some sound in it with Martin Roberts from Homes Under the Hammer. Oh my god, this is... And it's essentially Martin Roberts from Homes Under the Hammer and saying, so what made you buy the house? And he always does a little thing with his hands that makes it look like he's playing the piano. And so Dan, because of the sort of comic brain he has, so I have to do a supercut of this.

So he's got the supercut that Rodri has put the pianos on. It's just brilliant. It's like, so what made you buy the house? Ding ding. And so when you've got writers like that in the writers room as well, it's a real skill. But Dan said, as Harry says exactly that, it was hard work. And Dan also says that the stuff would then go up to Harry and Spencer and we wouldn't see it again. And they would put all sorts of magic on it. But he said their job was to find these decontextualized things, absolutely switch their brain off

somehow and come up with- You must have to relearn how, once you finish that job, how to watch television again. How to watch TV again. Because I miss that show more than any, probably any other show. I miss it so much. It's amazing. I mean, listen, the reason it's not on is a whole other tale, which we can't tell for legal reasons.

James Lovick has a question for you, Marina. In big budget blockbusters, how do filmmakers arrange to use real military planes, helicopters, ships or even aircraft carriers? I know CGI can replicate a lot, but some films clearly feature the real thing. Surely there aren't any spare Hercules bombers or carriers just lying around. How do productions afford them? More importantly, how does it work logistically? Right, well obviously lots of films have these things in them.

Sometimes it's stock footage, but and of course if something's set on it, for example, Under Siege, they will have to build the sets to look like it's on the app with the USS Missouri. But sorry, the Navy and Army all around the world, they all have their own TV and film departments. And particularly in the US. Do they really? Yes, but particularly in the US where it's been such a huge part of recruitment and things like that. So they've, you know, going all the way back to the war and before the Second World War, you've got to provide a copy of the script and then it needs to be approved.

There are certain movies, Black Hawk Down, they let them have actual Black Hawks. They let the cast and crew go to Fort Bragg and they train them. They involve you in those things. I mean, Top Gun obviously is a movie originally, but both the original and Top Gun Maverick, these are movies that were hugely instrumental in signing up for the US Navy or whatever. And so they will let you use lots and lots of stuff. I think for Top Gun Maverick, they came up with totally different ways of getting the cameras in. Tom Cruise was the camera operator for that,

so he's in the back. There's a person actually doing the maneuvers and he's turning the camera off and on. There are obviously limitless historical ones for hire. There's lots and lots of things that are in museums. I actually went to New York last week as I mentioned and I walked around the USS Intrepid which is now a sort of museum. It's so big it's got a Concorde, one of the planes on its deck is a Concorde. That's cool. That's like a Duxford as well. If you want to go to Duxford it's a great day out. They've got a Concorde. Oh have they? I've never been, I'd never sat on one. In the UK, you can contact the Ministry of Defence. People generally want to help and they want to, they will let you film footage.

In Iron Man 2, the Pentagon was still heavily involved. They let them have these F-22s and they actually went and filmed at an air base which had real BT bombers, but they were only allowed to film them from certain angles in case our enemies are watching Iron Man 2. Yes, unlikely. Iron Man 3, yes. Yes, Iron Man 3, yes, which is considerably better as you say. Richard, this is one for you from Charlie Addie. What happens when two actors represented by the same agent go up for the same part?

Does the agent push the client they think has the better chance or do they try their best to remain impartial despite having 10% of a horse in the race? Often 15%, sometimes 20%. I spoke to a few people on this because there's something I wondered about. I talked to Oliver Slinger, who's one of the big UK agents, represents loads of good people. He says it actually doesn't happen all that often. He said quite often it will happen within your company. There'll be other agents who have a client going up for the same job. But he says quite rare that you've got two people in your stable. You go for the same thing because what people are looking for, it

tends to be so specific for you to have someone in exactly the right age range, exactly, you know, the right look, all of those different things. It's quite rare. He said, but that definitely does happen. Definitely happens. And when it does, they're both your clients and you absolutely give both of them a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, you, I mean, you have to, because there's nothing to be gained or lost. You know, the, the money's going to be the same, whatever happens, you have to let the production company work out exactly who they want.

And pushing them doesn't make it. The idea that you're pushing them, you're putting them up for it, but actually you're not pushing them. An agent wouldn't talk to a casting director or a producer and say, I mean, maybe B, maybe person B. But I talked to a casting director, which of course is the other side of that thing. And the casting directors, they know exactly who's coming in, they know who they're from. They know as soon as the first 20 auditions are done, and they're the shortlist and people are called back, they, they know who's on the list, and they recognize immediately if two people are with the same agent, they said that a couple of things we'll do if these

people are coming in, we will make sure they're not coming in on the same day, we'll make sure they're not coming in, you know, next to each other. So just in case the agent wants to keep everything under wraps, which some agents will want to do absolutely 100%. Again, they say we've never had a situation where an agent has come to us. I was talking to, there's an amazing casting director called Andy Briley, who again is one of the absolute best in the business and discreet as you like. But he was like, I can talk about basic principles. I've never been in a situation where an agent would push one person ahead of another.

He said, I've been in lots of situations where we have a preferred person to cast. You go to the agent and say, okay, we'd like to make this an offer. And the agent said, I'm afraid actually she can't do those dates or this is, uh, and then, then Andy will say, just so you know, if she is unavailable, our next choice is also your client. So it will go to that person. And again, so he said, that happens a lot, but he has never been in a situation where he's felt there was a conflict of interest.

How could you possibly second guess it? And they often don't know themselves. So if they see it, they see it. And if they don't, they don't. And an agent's job always is, I look after the interests of my client. And so you just have, you can do that with two people at the same time, knowing that most of the time people are not getting jobs anyway. You just you you just do your job as normal in the TV world.

Of course, the thing that happens all the time is this someone doesn't do something and then an agent will say, what about my other clients? Yeah, maybe they could do it. And, you know, so they will definitely do that. I think that about winds us up. Yeah, we are back. Really winds us up. We're back tomorrow with for members and you can join at the rest is entertainment.com

with the first of a two part special on it's 50 years since the release of Jaws. It's the movie that both changed the movie industry and the swimming industry. That's a very good way of putting it. All right. Otherwise we will be back as normal with the main episode on Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. This episode of the Restless 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 got three new obsessions, a reason to cancel plans and a lead detective you inexplicably trust with your life. If you need suggestions, just ask what should I watch and Sky lines up recommendations based on the kind of things you normally go for so you can trust it won't miss. Got a favourite actor? Just say their name and Sky brings up a selection of what they're in across all your apps and channels. No judgement.

Whether you're after something niche, nostalgic or new enough to dominate the group chat. Or reliving Fudum's finest Europa League hour, 4-1 against Juventus, frankly who wouldn't? Sky's got you covered. Search sky.com to find out more. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McClaskey. Together we're the co-hosts of another Goalhanger 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. 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.