The Watch - What Makes ‘The Mandalorian’ So Enjoyable? Plus, Hugh Grant on Episode 5 of ‘The Undoing.’

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Netflix revealed that 62 million people watched ‘The Queen’s Gambit,’ once again cherry-picking which stats to release (1:10). ‘The Mandalorian’ is purely enjoyable and doesn’t need to try for much beyond that (10:58). Plus, Chris and Andy break down ‘The Undoing’ Episode 5 (22:18) before being joined by Hugh Grant to further discuss the series (31:40). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Hugh Grant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Rigger.com and joining me on the other line, his beautiful dark saber twisted fantasy. It's Andy Greenwald. Did you just do that off the dome?

Yes. Wow. What's up, man? Welcome to The Watch. It's Monday. What a stack show we have for you today. So a little bit of house cleaning as we get into it. Here's what we're going to do.

me and Andy will talk about Mandalorian. Me and Andy will talk about last night's episode of The Undoing. Me and Andy will talk to none other than Hugh Grant. Andy and I, Chris. I'm from Philadelphia. I know, but on the third one, I got to jump in. So that's what today's show is. Usually we do my recaps of the Crown with Amanda.

We're going to save those for a special episode on Thursday where Amanda and I will wrap up season four of the Crown and you can listen to all of our recaps together. So that's going to be a special episode on Thursday. But without further ado, let's get into the watch right after this. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you?

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Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimfaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line.

Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. How are you, man? You look great. I'm from Philadelphia too. Chris, I just want to say, before we get into it, What a stack show. We talked to Hugh Grant.

I mean, my goodness. Incredible. I was so happy for you after all that Daddington stuff. Did it live up to your expectations? Well, let's, it did. And we'll, let's save the pre-gaming from we get to it. We talked undoing. We did get a little Paddington talk.

And we made it in under the wire because we only had a short amount of time before you had to put on a sweater and do Colbert, I believe, because he was doing all press in one day from a hotel suite somewhere in England. Yeah. But Chris, just happy Blinken 182 day. Good job. I know this is not Pod Save America, but I do think it is relevant to our interests when our new Secretary of State designate Twitter bio says, check out my Spotify artist profile. And my guy is a shredder.

Is he? So how would you describe the possible future Secretary of State's musical kind of vibe? Righteous. Yeah? Righteous. You know what I mean? How does it sound like? I haven't listened.

I just sent you the link. But we'll listen. Maybe he'll come on Tony Blinken. Come on the watch. But I just think I didn't expect it. This is something that's not necessarily relevant to us yet. But I do think it's going to be interesting as we continue to age. And the extremely online generation takes over the levers of power in this country.

And then has this like, you don't even have to go in the internet way back machine at archive. org to just find these signifiers, right? of like check out my, check out my Insta or whatever, I think it's fascinating. It's fascinating. I did not expect it to be a 58-year-old, you know, Ivy League educated alum of the Clinton and Obama White House, who is just like, you know, hit me up on band camp. But it's pretty cool, I guess. Yeah, sure.

I mean, I think it's a nice change of pace from what we've had for the last couple of years. Were you surprised not to get the next. odd for climate czar? Me? I mean, the ship's not sailed yet, you know? Wow. Are you suggesting some palace intrig? Do you think you think you could make it through the McConnell blockade? I think I'm like even odds. It's like CR or Susan Rice, you know, like getting through a Senate confirmation. That's true. You took, you had some wild takes on Benghazi back in the day. People can run back to the Hollywood prospectus days and you were, you were letting it fly. You were Sydney Powell levels of concerned.

I remember that. Hugo Chavez funded that movie. How are you? How are you feeling about the state of our pop cultural world? Yeah, I'm pretty good. There's not really that much news news that I think we have such like,

you know, cool shows coming out of the weekend that I wasn't even really checking for that many headlines this weekend. Do you want to then say, like, before we get into Mandalorian, I guess we could take a moment to just say like Hugh Grant was on her show. It's interesting because,

I guess it's a testament to both his particular celebrity where people love him for a variety of reasons, whether it's romantic comedies or the correct reason, which is his villainous turn in Paddington, too. But this felt like a bigger get. Maybe he's been famous for a long time, too, but people were like, oh, wow. Yeah.

You know. You Grant's fucking famous. Yeah. I was like, damn, that's Hugh Grant. Yeah, I was on a Zoom with us. You know what I've realized about him? Maybe we could just talk about undoing now, if you want. I realize that he has always been this age. It just took him a couple of decades to get there.

Like his sort of late 50s curmudgeon, but still kind of has it, still has like a kind of a sexuality to him and like a charm to him. I feel like he has always been that. And he was like an old man trapped in a dashing young man's body when he was younger. And now it's like, I wonder if this will open up some doors of him doing a lot of really interesting work in this late middle age. I think it has for the last few years, a very English scandal. The movie you've seen that I haven't seen that you talked to him about. The gentleman? Yeah, man. Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting. Yeah, you've described it to me. It seems like it's not like the witch. Like, I feel like I could watch this. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I'll watch it if you watch Paddington, too. How about that?

Yeah. Okay. The one bit of news that I thought I would met... Yeah. I know you're not going to watch it, so I don't have to watch Panig then. The one bit of news that I think we probably should discuss is the Netflix announcement that 62 million people checked out Queen's Gambit.

Yeah, so a couple things to tick off here. One, that's an insane number of people watching a television show. Good for Scott Frank, good for Friend of the Watch, Anya Taylor Joy. I guess good for Netflix PR who continue to try to try have it both ways where they can say, we don't share data except when it's extremely flattering

to us. Right. Which is kind of interesting. I know we live in an era of norm breaking, I would say, but what's funny, and again, like the other norms that were alluding to, like 20 years ago, HBO was like Netflix and that they didn't play by the rules, they were the bad boys of television. Yeah. But they also didn't share any ratings data, and that was a much more Nielsen-driven moment, of course, and they never shared information about anything. It was totally opaque and proprietary until the Sopranos went gangbusters. And they couldn't help themselves. But once they started sharing, they felt obligated to share. And then they were in the ratings conversation like all the other broadcast networks and cable networks at the time. Netflix is still just like,

this is the most popular thing that's ever been released. And then you're like, oh, yeah, how's Glow doing? And they're like, who can tell? Who can tell really? So it's a dodge, but it's a successful dodge. Yeah, I thought it was, it speaks to the long tail of the show, I think, which has been, it's been really surprising to me, but I wonder whether or not the proposition of it being a contained thing, a miniseries, and Sean and Amanda talked about the sort of rise in the miniseries format on Big Pick in a really interesting conversation in conjunction with the series of films that Steve McQueen did for Amazon that are starting to premiere now.

small acts, which I hope we get to talk about in a future episode. But yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of a Queen's Gambit backlash, which I think in some ways is like there are, there are some cases where I think it's kind of being dismissive because something has reached a certain level of popularity and ubiquity. So you're just kind of being like, yeah, wasn't that good. And then there are some really thoughtful critiques. I thought Jane who's piece in Vulture was actually was quite good and had like a really a lot to say about some issues, not necessarily, mostly about like, Queen's Gambit being a period piece existing outside of a sense of history

that I found really, really provocative and fascinating. I thought it was a really good piece if people had a chance to check it out. I think that it's important, though, to take a moment, and I think you're right, and I think it's important to take a moment now and stand a stride history as the backlash is forming, because it is inevitably, mainly because of its enormous popularity. And say, hold on a second. Isn't that the William F. Buckley quote about conservatism, standing atop the tide of criticism towards miniseries and say,

hey, guys, let's all chill. Because what concerns me about it, and it's, look, this is baked into social media culture and the way Twitter responds to things anyway. To be provocative, to be noticed, you have to jump out and say wild shit. But this show is ripe for it. For the very, popularity aside, it's ripe for that. kind of need your criticism or reactionary criticism precisely for the same reasons why I think it's worth championing. Because as we said in our many conversations about the show,

it's special because it is optimistic. It's special because it is essentially a feel-good, whether you want to call it a sports movie or a Buildings Roman or whatever or superhero origin story like Decider did, whatever framework you want to put it into. It is inherently an uplifting story. And I will just say it again for the formal record here. Like we overrate downers. We generally overrate downers because we think they're somehow smarter because they're finally being honest about how reality is. And I think that this show is extremely special

because it is exceptionally written, exceptionally directed, phenomenally performed and conceived. And it leaves you feeling a little different than a lot of the other entertainment does at this moment. And it zagged and other things zig. And I just don't, intelligent criticism like the one, you're pointing out is of course deserved and merited and worthy of conversation and discussion. That's what good art does and good art can sustain. But miss me with saying it's bad because you can't

look at this production design, these performances, this direction, and just dismiss it because I think it's a really impressive and worthwhile achievement. That's probably like a product of like where everything kind of collapses in, if you're reading about TV on Twitter, for instance, like there might be one piece of criticism that says like, man, you guys like this show. and then there might be another, which is like Jane's piece, which is an incredibly thoughtful and interesting critique of the show that makes me think about it in a different way. But those two things start in the same timeline,

and I think that they can get kind of viewed with the same lens, unfortunately. But yeah, I thought that news is pretty interesting. Let's talk a little bit. Let's do Mandalorian, and then we can do it doing it and then we can go to Heard. Carl Weathers directed this episode. Godspeed. You knew that I had to do it. Mando!

My DGA card arrived, sir. I got myself in a fraternity with Paul Thomas Anderson. And Paul W.S. Anderson, director of Alien versus Predator. Can you have him say, can I, can you be on cameo with this voice? I would pay you money to do, say, like, extremely director shit. Like, we're in a meal penalty. You know what I mean? Mando, I'm losing my light.

Yes, yes. Great job by Carl Weathers. Great job all around. By the way, not easy to direct an episode that you are also in 70% of. Yeah. Yes. And I will be honest with you.

At times, like when he was running his fine 72-year-old self out of the gun turret, I was like trying to read facial expressions because is he also thinking like, am I in frame? You know what I mean? Like it's just an extra way of thinking about it. So good job, Carl Weathers. others. Good job John Favreau and the entire team for empowering cast members and letting them

be involved and direct the show because it's going great. But most of all, this is the segment that I think we do now every week suddenly, and no one is more surprised than I am, where we just say, good job everybody involved. This show, it's not just decent. It's not just good brand management anymore. At some point in the last three or four weeks, the last dominoes of skepticism fell inside of my heart, and I'm just delighted by the show now. I'm fully and wholeheartedly delighted by it, and I was probably the last one. This show is in full flight right now, because it is established its own cadence. I don't think people are going into it to get like a Ray cameo anymore or to like see, you know, like Ray's dad in the background of a scene

somehow, whoever that is. And yet I think people are completely comfortable with the pace at which it's moving because they trust that they're going to get these little tidbits like at the end. Chris, just side note. I know we don't remember a lot about Rise of Skywalker, but Ray's dad was Don Jr. Palpatine. I thought that was her grandfather. Her grandfather is Emperor Palpatine. Her dad was Don Palpatine Jr.

High on Regeneron, the force, and maybe some other stuff. Right. Just making wild-ass opinions on, you. you know, the outer rim cable channels. Yeah, right. I'm super into this mashup, by the way, but please continue. I can't remember what my point was.

Oh, I have a couple of things. So, like, yeah, I think that this show has now kind of achieved sort of bulletproof status where everybody's comfortable with the weak to weakness of it. Even if you're like, I even think it's alleviated some of the pressure on it by just being like, you know what, we're going to do a mission of the week. They're going to kind of feel pretty similar. We're going to go to some pretty cool places. When a tie fighter chases the razor crest, it's going to look like we

spent $100 million on it. And it's just a pretty fun hang every week. And every time I think they can't think of anything else to do with this little green guy, they put them in a classroom. And I got to say, you know, this was brought up to us a couple of times. You know, we largely skated past the egg-eating controversy that erupted. Huge controversy. Where a lot of...

I would go as far as to call it the biggest controversy of November 2020 in America. where somehow Entertainment Weekly found someone to write in and be like this was not okay when Yoda ate

the endangered eggs of the frog woman I will say this guy continues to have a very selective use of the force they've been in some pretty tight fucking situations

here some really sweaty jams and so far the only time he's ever thrown up it's a little hand to get something going. Not the only time he's thrown up, by the way. No, is to cop these neon Oreos that he steals from a child.

It's savage. Yeah. I love that he's a savage. He's a little shit. It's great. It's great. And by the way, I'm painting myself as the biggest skeptic of the show. So there was kind of a breakthrough moment in my household last night that I may or may not get in trouble for revealing, but, you know, it's just us here chatting.

I have become what I most feared, which is the person who, when baby Yoda does something endearing, which is at least six, seven times an episode, will call out to my wife, who is busy doing the crossword puzzle, or reading about how Moderna manage their RNA sequencing on the vaccine, and be like, look what the cute alien baby did. And I did that last night when he was, you know, Danny Glovering the bomb, I mean the engine room with the red blue and the, the red wire and the blue wire. Yeah. And I got, I got,

I had a, basically a pit of sarlac reaction. Why? Like, I don't, I know you want me to like this, but I'm, I'm busy.

So just, you know, enjoy your show. And I was like, okay. And I kind of slinked away. And then I heard something very unexpected,

which was an involuntary chuckle of delight when he electrocuted himself. Now, is it because baby Yoda, like many of us, Daddingtons and Mommingtons, reminded us in that moment of our own children when we've had them hotwire our spaceships, metaphorically speaking.

But the point is we hooked it. We hooked her. Because it is irresistible and it's a genius thing. So I have a lot to say about this episode, which was really entertaining. And your point about like almost falling in love with the show, not in spite of its sort of quaintness or old-fashionedness or quirks, but really celebrating them.

Like, what percentage of episodes, Chris, are our characters running through hallways that are, don't look closely, it's just the same hallway over and over again? Like, every spaceship slash base they go into. And I will also say, as someone who is not scared of getting involved in the mythology of things or getting involved in the canon of stuff, and I know that I joke around a lot, but like, I like to have like a handle about that on that. Like, so the empire's back? Like, that's just happened.

I know it's the new order or the first order or whatever, but they just have all the cool old outfits. Well, I think they still did. I think that that's, it's like the vestiges. Now, my question is like... So there's no dry cleaning on the Death Star? Well, no, my question is like, do their pensions continue to vest?

You know what I mean? Like, at a certain point, are you like, I feel like my employment options are better elsewhere. Right. Unclear. And if you are someone who, like, is an obituay of the boards, Like, I suppose this show in some way, and thankfully not in a major way, is explaining how it never really went away and some renegade people like Ma Fring is like turning it into the first order or whatever nonsense it was in movies.

Mafferanos, yeah. Yes, yes. So it still exists, all of that. But it's fine. I just feel really relaxed in my enjoyment of it as they run through the same thing over and over again. because it doesn't matter. And it's actually kind of cleansing. There's something almost zen

about my enjoyment of this show now because even, you know, we like to paint ourselves as, you know, either like jaded older fans or contrarians. And, you know, we have often, and even in our conversations of the show once it's aired, continue to kind of say, like,

is this the grown-up Star Wars show we wanted? Is Lucasfilm going to let people take off the training wheels and blah, blah, blah. And it's so much more, it got us, it's kind of more beautiful than that. Because what I am really struck by, however many episodes in, we are 12, I guess, total across the two seasons, is the simplicity of it. It, they didn't overthink it to a degree that I, we certainly, me, we weren't charged with doing this, but we certainly overthought it. You know what I mean?

It just reduces it to something that is so simple. It makes everything else look foolish. And it's this combination of like, well, what do we like out of this mythology? What do we want out of it? And sometimes what we want out of it is just funny rubber-suited aliens tapping at screens that don't make any sense and touching buttons. Like that is so essential to Star Wars. Like everyone these ships has buttons and levers. Who cares what they mean?

Just touch them and do the stuff. Similarly, like when they're flying away from the Thai fighters and grief is rocking the guns, right? And there's a radar that is apparently high-tech enough to immediately show. a stormtrooper lifting his arm to throw a bomb, but their other technology is basically like the will I am hologram from across the galaxy. Fine, we don't want more of that. We just want goofy suits and aliens and chowder hoses, you know?

And the rest will take care of itself. What did you think of like smuggling runs being taught to children at that age? Oh, pro. Yeah. Pro, pro, pro. I mean, look, the outer rims are rough, man. We learned about that. I hear the other lingering questions I have though.

Thank you for bringing that up, and I say them with love. One is timeline, timeline stuff feels a little wonky. Like, for example, Mando was gone, like two episodes. And yeah, like he had some bumpy adventures with the Frog Lady and on the ice planet and all that, right? But travel, as established by light speed and all that, is not that hard. You know, when they're like, you probably won't be coming around here soon, X-Wing Fighter. And he's like, literally all I have to do is push him. a button and I can be here.

And yet in the time he's been gone, Kara Dune and grief have completely revolutionized a society and, in fact, built schools and installed your boy's favorite thing to see in sci-fi landscapes, a thriving outdoor spice market. But that timeline compression is nothing. Yeah, Gina Carrano, like a young Randy Wine Garden. Just it's kind of Yes. She cares about the kids

and the learning. I have to say, of all the things that Gina Corona was very convincing at, caring that she set up a school is not one of them. How do you feel about her relationship to her stote?

Like her small, like space stote pet. She carried it. I liked her snack pouch, which contains like the Barack Obama approved seven almonds per day and she gave it to the animal. The other timeline thing, I don't care.

That's what's so beautiful about this. It's just, it's enjoyable. I don't care. It does the important things, not the things that we often mistake are important. But that ship was in pretty shitty condition. These guys, Grief's guys, must be the greatest mechanics in history

because they have that shit factory fresh in what I want to say is an hour and a half. That is incredible. They do good work. Let's get, we should do undoing before we get to, he were in. Okay. Thank you to everybody who's been congratulating me on calling Henry as the prime suspect, if not the murderer. As is always the case, though, you know, I feel like they revealed that like 30 minutes too early in this series for it to be

true now. So last night's episode, at the end of the episode, Grace Frazier finds the missing murder weapon, presumably, in her son's violin case. he's only 10 or whatever, but still bad job hiding things. Kids should be, there's just, why would you put it in like your violin case? You could just like throw in the river. To be fair, I don't have children that play the violin, but I can't imagine. Sculpting hammers? They are sculptors.

Thank you. I encourage their artwork and their freelance murdering. I, I, how often are you going to go in your kids' violin case to make sure there's a violin in it? You know what I mean? It's not like there's going to be a Tommy gun in there because it's a 1930. gangster film, you know? Well, so I just feel like, so they revealed the end of the episode that the murder weapon, presumably, is at least in Henry's possession.

And he, they have continued to hammer home, him popping up weirdly, scaring her, spying on people, having weird vibes at restaurants, like that whole scene at the restaurant where, you know, the guys just are keep, they keep bringing them bread service throughout. It's a divine bread service that they do. They bake their own roles. They're served warm. And I love that whole scene just because it's just like every character gets more and more agitated as this is happening. But Henry's whole, like, you know, if you promise never to cheat on her again, can we be a family again?

And, you know, like his sort of, his desires are quite clear at this point. That being said, revealing it at the end of the penultimate episode of the series suggests to me that there is another shooter drop. and I do think that there is just a tremendous amount of seemingly unnecessary cutaways to both Lily Raib and Donald Sutherland. So I'm not saying I'm betting the field. I don't want to be unfair where it's like it could be Beto,

but it could be Kamala, but it could be Elizabeth Ward. It's like I think it's probably something to do with Henry and then like a person, like a conspiracy basically participating in trying to save Henry from I appreciate the analogy. I think the difference is that Henry, as a suspect, didn't struggle through Iowa and New Hampshire.

You know what I mean? Like, this isn't Broadchurch. Like, Henry has led the field from the beginning. You know what I mean? Like, he, we all fell in, in Broadchurch, you fall in love with the other candidates early and you cycle through them before you settle on someone. The interesting thing about this show, and I enjoyed this episode, I've enjoyed watching it much more than I expected to from my reaction to the first one. And I think that when we talked about the first one, you actually did make the broad church comparison, we assumed that it would be a wider net. Yes.

And what makes the show, I think, compelling is that it, and at times frustrating because we felt the Henry thing a little bit maybe too strongly for full engagement. but at the same time, what makes it compelling is that it hasn't been that interested in muddying those waters. There are only a limited number of characters, and you're right, like the Lily Rape, Lily Rape's presence in the show almost feels arbitrary at this point. Like they just needed someone for Grace to be on the phone with. So there's probably something else there, but I don't see how you get to her being a murderer. Similarly, Donald Sutherland, I've seen people saying online, well, he has motive, he has this and that, but I just simply don't see it unless the murder happened in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is where you're... spends most of his time. So what that leaves us with is, you know, the murder weapon is in the home.

So the murderer is in the family. And I still think you got to bet the favorite. I think that Henry's behavior throughout has suggested it and maybe part of the, if the show does something that runs counter to murder mystery tradition and drops this too early, it leaves open the possibility that in the final episode, which we should say, No one has not been screened for critics. No one has seen it. Right. Could become something different.

In which case, it's no longer about Grace's life unraveling. It's about the reality and what will she do now that reality has punctured her last illusion of her happy life, which could make for a compelling finale. The other alternative is that it is Hugh Grant's character that it always was. The third one, and I'm going to ask your opinion about this, and I cede the floor. I'm sorry I've been going on about it. A lot of people, people are talking. A lot of people have, even people have said to me, boy, Grace has a lot of these sort of flashed out flashes.

Yeah. You know, and is that the ultimate undoing that it was her? Is that still in play in your mind? And how would you feel about it? Definitely. Okay, so this is sort of like, Chris, who do you think is going to win the NCAA tournament? And I pick five teams, you know, but they are doing a really good job in terms of playing with the conventions of mysteries where they are they are definitely

leaving the door open for a bunch of people and have spent so little time on the actual investigation. All we have is Edgar Ramirez's character kind of being like we were looking at this person. They haven't really gone a lot into like what forensic evidence is there? Like what do we have on each person? So there's going to be some red herrings. But it wouldn't surprise me if Grace was deeply involved. in it, just given the fact that she has these moments where she obviously is remembering being painted. You know, she remembers sitting for that,

for that portrait in some way. And I don't know. We should say, well, a couple things. Like, from a business perspective, and maybe we'll talk about this more after the finale, this has seems like it's been success for HBO. People are talking about it. We're talking about it. People are compelled by it. I'm curious about the value because this is, as we've said many times, this is an expensive show.

It looks expensive. The star wattage is expensive. And is that still, but if it is ultimately just like, you know, a gotcha who done it, a family murder mystery thing, are those two things out of whack in terms of like the business strategy versus the investment of it, right? Yeah. Like could they, could they get a, is there a cheaper version of this that might be more compelling because the stars are less starry, you know, and maybe we're a little bit more

because I think a lot of people are watching it, not just for the mystery, but because it, look, it's Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. Yeah, it's like great New York locations, yeah. That's part of the conversation that we can have after the finale, and we'll talk about that on Monday. To set up our interview with Hugh Grant, we talked to him, as we said, two

weeks ago, during his media day. That's why if you watched him on Colbert, the TV is done. He's wearing the same outfit because he was, he was line him up and knocking him down, but he was surprisingly game. I think we were both a little, he doesn't like doing this stuff, you know, he doesn't really like doing press. He barely likes acting, as he said to us. But he was a very good sport, and we enjoyed talking to him. We spoke to him about the show through episode five, which is why we didn't run it until now. And he muses, but he doesn't, he says something interesting, I think, about the finale, but it's not really spoilery, right? I mean, he was, I mean, he was,

very careful not to spoil anything. And like I said, we don't know what happens in the finale. We haven't seen it. I just want to let people know we were limited in our time with him or else the Paddington 2 conversation would have gone on considerably longer. But Chris also has some really ironclad clauses in his contract that allow him to just sign out if I say the words kids movie. Talk to my guys at ETA if you have a problem with that. Or endearing. It's a wrap from him. So I think we should get into it. Yeah, we'll get into our interview with Hugh Grant just after a quick break on Thursday. It'll be Thanksgiving. So happy holidays to everybody. We'll be putting up all of our crown recaps for people to check out for season four with me and Amanda Dobbins. So that'll be happening. And then we have a great week the following

week. So keep watching industry. Keep watching the undoing. We'll be talking about those shows. Check out a teacher. We'll be talking about that soon. And yeah. If hit your local independent bookstores and get a copy of our friend Melissa Mayors's book. All right. All right. All right. Oral history of days. confused. We will be talking to Melissa about the movie and about her book next week. And just in general, at this time of year, Chris and I are very grateful for our listeners for letting us do this. We love you guys. Please stay safe. Please don't travel. If you don't have to, please stay home this year and have a otherwise great Thanksgiving. All you Beranskis. Hugh Grant. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere

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Get free delivery during online deal days, plus $30 off your first online order. Ralph's Fresh for Everyone Andy and I are so thrilled to be joined by Hugh Grant from The Undoing on The Watch podcast today. Hugh, thank you so much for joining us. It's very nice to be here. Thank you.

And our listeners have seen episode five of the undoing so we can talk through that dramatic episode. I was reading some of the press that you did before the series actually went up and you seemed like you were just like pregnant with things that you wanted to say but could not say about this show because of spoilers and because of all these

sort of rules that we have about how far we can go ahead. But now that five have aired, we were still waiting for the last one. But what was the thing that you really wanted to say about Jonathan in the beginning when people were asking you about this character that you felt like you couldn't really reveal? Was it his journey through prison and into the legal system? Or was it more just sort of the slow reveal of his backstory and his past that you found fascinating? I still can't really say anything very interesting. Because I hope people by now are, you know, still wondering if he's guilty or not, whether he's a total psychopath or just a man who had a weak

moment with one of his patients' mothers. So I can't go further than that, except to say, yeah, I suppose when I was doing these interviews about the episode one, it was very, very difficult because I just had to say, well, he seems to be a very nice guy. And that really is about the most boring thing I've ever had to say in an interview. What an incredible six-episode run that would have been, though, had you just been a very nice guy throughout. Well, it was my whole career 20 years ago. Well, that's actually a question that I had, because as someone of the appropriate age to have first encountered your work in four weddings, I did wonder if you took a particular pleasure as I do, and I think a lot of audience members do now, in kind of weaponizing your trademark charm in a role like this.

There's the scene with the attorney, you know, where she is staring at Jonathan and is dazzled and says, you know, basically to paraphrase her, this could work because you are very compelling. Yeah, but she's clever. She's testing me. Don't forget in that moment. She's testing the depths of my vanity. But mainly she's seeing, am I actually going to come onto her at that moment? True. She's damn good. And yeah, it's a good moment. But yes, I think by now, after episode five, we know that certainly Jonathan has a problem with vanity. You know, I think my colleague at the hospital says, I never got the God complex memo. And so, yeah, like a lot of doctors, I think he has sort of got the greatness or has had the greatness.

He can save lives. and he slightly gets off on it, and he loves the gratitude of the families, which is wonderfully sick, seeing as he's, you know, trying to cure their children's cancer. But I do wonder, though, does that appeal to you when you're looking at roles and your, in your fielding offers this opportunity to play the charm that American audiences first came to know you for and then also, you know, put a little edge behind it and perhaps play against type? Well, I wouldn't, I'm not sure that that is what I'm looking for.

I'm just looking for dark, twisted, interesting, different. But sometimes, yeah, there's sort of do that via a curdled version of my old romantic comedy, sort of charming persona. I mean, even in a very English scandal, I don't know if you saw that series. Or as Jeremy thought the politician, you know, he was a very charming, smooth, old Etonian. member of parliament. And there was a lot of charm, but of course beneath that velvet glove,

there was an iron fist, worse than an iron fist. Well, although Jonathan has a not bad fist himself or at least some sharp pincers, because I was wondering when they were saying, Hugh, please come play this part. Did they say you could also,

in your performance, become king of the art at Rikers? I know that. That might not have been on your resume prior to the show. There's a whole other show in that. Yeah. Do you think we bring that moment off or is it absurd? You know what? I have to say, I thought it was pretty good.

And that was one of the first times that my eyebrow raises about Jonathan in a really significant way. I mean, up until then, it's 50, 50. Did he do it or do you not? But when he has that interaction with the guy who wants his autograph, you're like, well, this guy also gets into fights. Like, this is a guy who will stand his own on the prison yard. Like that, I thought that was a fascinating scene. It's a tricky fight, though, because, you know, I'm an old fat middle-aged doctor and he's a young, super fit, sort of, I don't know what he is, some kind of criminal. So it couldn't look as though I was in any way winning that fight.

In a way, it's the kind of dark version of my fight with Colin Firth. I cheat. I fight like a girl. I bite him. Why he's aren't supposed to bite? Fair. I was wondering, Hugh, do you typically, as a viewer, watch stuff like the undoing. Are you a mystery fan?

Or do you find yourself watching a lot of series like these, these sort of limited mystery series, like whether it's broadshare. or whatever. Have you found yourself as a fan of these in the past? No. I need to do a lot of catching up, a lot of catching up.

I only really watch sport on the TV. So I still need to watch the Sopranos. Okay. I'm very, very behind. We generally talk about shows like that on this podcast, so if you have any questions, we'd love to take this time for that.

The only one I have probably been addicted to recently is the Crown, because although I pretend to be somewhat sort of liberal and progressive in my politics, I'm secretly obsessed with royalty. You've got one of us. Chris here is a big fan of the crown. I do have to ask, when watching the series so far, we were both struck by the number of international performers playing New Yorkers.

And yet only Dr. Jonathan Frazier manages to maintain his birth accent. and I wondered if that was the source of any friction on set when everyone else is laboring with these American syllables and you're just having the time of your life speaking as you would normally. I don't know why I made that a kind of thing that ages ago when I had a little bit of success and America first invited me to be in anything,

I was resistant to be American because I always thought if you want an American, hire an American and and I just, but I think now I was wrong. I was wrong. I should have done it. And I have done it. Were there some iconic New York parts that you turned down? Like, could you have been Henry Hill and Goodfellas or something? Yeah, I was offered that, yeah. No, no, but I did, I have done American accents. I did a movie of the week in the, in the sort of early 90s called Our sons, Julie Andrews, now Margaret, and I'm American in that. You can have, dig it up, and you can have a real laugh. Well, you do a great American accent in episode one, almost to taunt the actor Noah

who plays your son, who I believe is also English, and yet he's forced to keep up the facade the entire time. Well, he does a brilliant, yeah, yeah, I forgot that he's English. He's actually from Manchester he talks like that, you know, a little Manchester accent. And we didn't hear it for six months, because he did that thing that René Zelliger used to do. of staying in, you know, character when they're off screen. And then suddenly at the rap party, you get this little mank. Didn't know who he was. So speaking of all this stuff, I really do love the undoing as a New York show.

And I was curious whether or not you thought that you and Nicole and Suzanne brought a different sensibility to a New York film drama like this because you are sort of outsiders. I know you spent a lot of time in New York, but is there, what is it the thing that you, that you like about the way the undoing captures, New York City because I think it's like a wonderful portrait of it. Suzanne Beer is a proper, as you know, Oter, artie-farty, European ex-dogma filmmaker. So it's all down to her.

She knows how to create texture, as a lot of those Scandinavian directors do, particularly, you know, in the noir kind of genre. And I'm fascinated watching it again. I'm not watching me or any of the actors. I'm watching what she's up to it. It's so interesting, all these sort of just weird shots and atmospheric shots and very clever use of music and sound. There's a whole other story being told beneath David Kelly's incredibly expert American thriller

script. There's a, there's a Euro film going on. And I like that combination. It reminds me a bit of when Polanski first worked in. America and he brought sort of dark, weird, Polish directing to, you know, quite genre American writing like Rosemary's baby. I have to, because of the way that episode five ends, with suddenly suspicion turning towards Henry with discovery of the hammer in the closet, classic place to put a hammer or a murder weapon. As a parent of young children, Hugh, I am as well. Do you have any

thoughts now that you can share about Jonathan and his wife's parenting priorities as it comes to screens. Because from my view point, I'm not saying that Henry is necessarily a murderer. We will discover that in due time. But he does spend an awful lot of time watching. He watches television like a murderer. Put it that way. He does. That's right. Do you feel like maybe limits should have been set? Because that for me was the red herring before the reveal of the hammer. Well, if you're right that a child that watches too much screen is a murderer,

then I have five murderers on my parents. Well, especially, all rules are out the window during the pandemic. I think that we all get a pass on that. Yeah, that we will told ourselves that. Yes, we have. A poor little thing. Some of them are going blind. I mean, they have to wear glasses now.

It's awful. At least he's watching a lot of New York one, though. That's the most important thing is he's supporting local journalism. He's civic-minded. Yes. Finally, this is a personal passion for me to ask this. I imagine that the producers of the show first reached out to you with Jonathan's prison fight in mind, having seen you acquit yourself well in prison in the modern masterpiece

Paddington 2, which to my mind is one of the finest films of this century. And your performance is perhaps the best thing in it. The thrill of the undoing, of course, is that it is a Paddington villain reunion with Nicole. I imagine much of your conversation was focused. on your, you know, sharing the screen with an animated bear. I felt he should be in it. Yeah.

God, yes. An extended universe. Yeah. Yeah, I lobbied that it just, it would add an extra layer or texture if in some quite heavy scene between me and Nicole on the streets of New York, with all the extras going past in the background, one of them is suddenly Paddington. And we never comment on it or anything. But I felt he should be there.

You're preaching to the. choir here. In all seriousness about that role, I mean, I do think that it is one of the most amazing performances I can remember seeing because you bring so much to it and there's so much there. Was that as much of a joy to make as it is for us to watch? And in the case of having small children during a pandemic, watch again and again and again and again. Well, you know, I hate my job. I find it just nothing but mental torture and anxiety. but I will say that one came out quite well and so I'm quite proud of that

and my children do now strangely love it I took them to a screening when it was just about to come out and they sat there and the one sitting next to me kept saying Daddy why are you in this so much but now they do love it and they can quote the whole thing and do the song and dance number at the end

Can they also quote large swaths of the gentleman or have we not gotten to that stage yet? I'm not sure I can show them the gentleman yet. I did try to show it to my 92-year-old ex-military dad the other day. I can't say he really loved it. So the sweet spot is between the ages, perhaps. That's right. That's me. That's exactly me.

Somewhere between a child and a 92-year-old ex-military. And this is, if you dislike the job of acting, you will dislike this job even more, perhaps. but we feel compelled to ask, which is listeners who have been enjoying five episodes of the undoing with one episode to go, if we were to force you into the uncomfortable role of pitchman or hype man for the final episode, can you give us any crumb or any sort of sizzle for what's to come? Well, I will say that I had to do some stuff in episode six. that made me, it's either sublime or the worst thing ever committed to celluloid or digital, as it now is. It was, so it's dangerous what happens in six.

That's phenomenal. That's enticing. Probably no marmalade sandwiches, unfortunately. I'm not saying there are not marmalade sandwiches. You've made my day. Hugh, thank you so much for joining us. We can't wait to see how everything wraps up with the undoing. And thank you for all your great work.

Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Hey, Mama. Thanks for making all my favorite recipes. Hi, Ma. Thanks for your unfiltered advice. Hi, Mom. Thanks for always being by the phone.

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