What's Next For Jimmy Kimmel?

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Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osman.

Now, people watching on YouTube will know this already.

People listening might have picked it up, but we're not together.

We're apart, Richard, and it's all my fault because I have the coronavirus.

Yeah.

Is that your fault?

Yeah.

Well, it's not, no, it's not technically my fault.

It has forced us apart.

And I am at home and I can apologise for any interruptions from my many, many, many deliveries.

Also, for anyone watching on YouTube, Marina is sitting in front of her famous bookshelves as well.

So they are all the way through.

They're not looking at you.

They're literally looking behind you and seeing the absurd higgledy-piggledy nature of your bookshelf.

Oh my God, don't say that where Kieran can hear it because he's actually downstairs.

And I mean, this is meticulously organised.

I mean, if we panned out, you would see it's going all the way around.

And it is in a system which some of it's rational and some of it is

quite idiosyncratic.

I'm going to say.

Like the world.

Which brings us on to what we're talking about this week, does it not?

It does.

We are talking about, inevitably, we are talking about,

I've seen some odd words used for this, the preempting,

the suspension temporary or otherwise of Jimmy Kimmel, the fact that he's been taken off the air in direct response to a sort of something said by a Trump minion, and we're going to talk about that.

Also, going to talk, on a lighter note, going to talk about Taylor Swift and the possibility that she may be about to star in a bodyguard remake.

That is our pudding.

But should we get stuck into our main course?

Let's get stuck into this serious main, Richard.

Now, we're recording this on Monday morning, and honestly, the best situation is for ABC to get him back on air air as soon as possible.

That might even happen before this podcast goes out.

That would definitely be best for Disney,

best for democracy, although a significant amount of damage has already been done.

So, not to sort of overly rehash the story, because I know our listeners will be familiar with it, but what happened is that last week in one of his opening monologues, Jimmy Kimmel made comments about the Charlie Kirk murder suspect.

He said that Trump supporters had tried to characterize this kid as anything other than one of them.

It does make a bit more sense in context

what he was saying.

My view, and I think the view of pretty much everyone, is that there was enough ambiguity and lack of clarity in it in a very sensitive situation that the monologue should have been re-recorded.

They're all pre-recorded, the monologues at the top of these shows.

A lot of people will have seen that, and I'm quite surprised it wasn't.

However, worse has been said many times every week for years and years and years.

He's talking about, you know, the murder suspect and a whole movement.

I think it began to be clipped pretty quickly.

Remember, Trump has said following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show, which is still on the air, but it's going to end, Jimmy Kimmel was the one that Trump singled out most frequently,

saying

he's terrible, he's awful, he should be off air.

So he's someone who's he's certainly focused on.

But there are so many.

which which which by the way to put in context is like if every day Keir Starmer is sending tweets about Michael McIntyre's the big show

saying this is run out of steam come on BBC we've got to replace this that's where we are with that that's what's happening the the leader of the country is commenting on a very mainstream television program I think it's more sinister than that though because say what you like about big show it doesn't open up on that and that's probably why it does so well on a Saturday night in its particular time slot it doesn't open up with a monologue about recent political tragedies and hot-button issues.

If when there's such a sort of direct link, it's very difficult.

Now, I think there are so many telling details about this.

The FCC, which is the Federal Communications Commission, is run by a guy called Brendan Carr, who is a complete sort of Trump minion, basically.

They didn't issue a statement.

What Brendan Carr did is that he went on a right-wing podcast,

the Benny Johnson podcast, and he said, He quite literally said we couldn't do things the easy way or the hard way effectively told the companies to pull it now when I say the companies I'm talking about the affiliates so we might need a little quick explanation on what the affiliates are yeah so if you have ABC which is what Kimmel is on which is essentially owned by Disney in every territory in America so we know how America is put together historically it's come to pass that different commercial companies carry the different networks into their territory.

So, ABC, NBC, and what have you come via a local affiliate into, say, Kansas or Kentucky or a part of California.

And there are three or four very big companies.

One is called Nexstar, one is called Sinclair.

And over the years, they've built up a whole series of these affiliates in different areas of the country.

So they are not ABC, but Nexstar, for example, carries probably 30% of ABC goes through Nexstar and Sinclair.

So if Nextstar, who are not ABC, say we want Kimmel off the air or we're not going to show Kimmel in our territory, suddenly you're losing a third of your audience overnight.

And that's what happened here.

Nextstar came out and said, we are no longer going to show Jimmy Kimmel.

And that forces the hand of ABC.

Forces the hand of ABC, which is obviously owned by the Disney company.

Now, the affiliates have always, traditionally in American broadcasting, always been more conservative in general than where these places are HQ'd, which tend to be sort of coastal, and it's either New York or LA.

And so, you often find that

throughout the course of TV history, there have been people saying, Oh, we don't like this, we're not going to carry this, we think it's outrageous, we think whatever it is.

So, there is a sort of precedent to that.

And all of them now, most of them now, have deals that all of the companies that we're talking about have deals that they want to get across the line.

Well,

Nexstar, for example, are in talks to buy the third biggest company who essentially have affiliates.

So they're about to buy this third biggest company, and they need to have that signed off, not by the FCC funding, but by the Department of Justice.

So they need it signed off by the government.

That's one of the big things.

And, you know, even Disney, they have a big ESPN deal.

They're trying to get over the line.

They're trying to buy into the NFL, actually, trying to literally buy into the NFL, and they will need FCC approval.

And so all of these companies in the next three to six months have an awful lot of money on the line, which is going to be dependent on government approval.

So that's the kind of environment in which all these decisions are being made.

Bob Iger, who runs Disney, and Dana Walden, who runs the TV side of Disney and is maybe in pole position to take over after Iger.

There's a sort of succession battle between about four of them.

And she's widely thought probably to be in the lead of that.

Jimmy Kimmel is a huge thing for ABC.

He, not only does he do Jimmy Kimmel live, he does the Oscars, he does Celebrity Millionaire, he does lots of specials for them.

He always presents the upfront when they present their news slates to the advertisers.

He's a sort of mega good servant to the company.

And they all have a lot of fun.

This, funny enough, is why I mentioned Michael McIntyre because that...

that is sort of who he is in that ecosystem.

You know, every single ABC and Disney programme, their stars come through the Jimmy Kimmel show.

Jimmy Kimmel has always gone above and beyond to be a cheerleader for the company and to be incredibly useful to that company.

So he is a big, big, big part of that ABC ecosystem.

And that's what you know, he's not some maverick on a tiny channel.

He is Michael McIntyre over there.

He's a huge, big mainstream presence right at the heart of America and right at the heart of ABC.

What happened was that Dana Walden and Bob Iger decided, he obviously refused to apologize and said, no, I want to do another monologue.

I'll contextualize further what I was saying.

And they thought that would make matters worse.

And so before he could do that, they have pulled him off the air.

They're continuing to pay everyone.

I personally now believe they have to get it back on the air, and we'll come to that in a minute.

Um, they have to find a way back, but it is very, very difficult to find a way back because Sinclair was saying we're going to air a Charlie Kirk special.

So, Sinclair, by the way, are the other Next Star and Sinclair.

So, they're the people who run the affiliates.

One of the two, yeah.

And they said, oh, we want to air a Charlie Kirk special in the Jimmy Kimmel slot.

In the end, I think they've been talked out of that.

And the aired, like everybody keeps airing these old editions of Family Feud

in this slot.

But now they're still saying the only way he could go back on air is if he personally gives money.

Jimmy Kimmel personally gives money to Turning Point USA.

A really extreme sort of ask.

And of course, it's all a bargaining position, and maybe they'll find they sort of have to find a way back now.

This is just a theory, and this is my speculation.

I think loads of people in Hollywood voted for Trump in 2016.

And I certainly think they did in 2024.

And I'll tell you why.

And it's because all of them are in various forms of crisis.

And they knew that various forms of consolidation were needed.

And they voted on the MA basis on the fact that they need to be mergers and acquisitions to kind of keep Hollywood, to kind of save the ecosystem.

So the high-ups in Hollywood, the executives and people like that, were voting out of self-interest.

Well, here we are.

It does make you think that it is all about money.

What can happen?

Okay, there are different forms of pressure.

There's the audience pressure, subscriptions, people are are cancelling their Disney Hulu subscriptions.

We're not going to know to what extent they have been cancelled because coincident actually, genuinely coincidentally, in their very last earnings call, Disney said they were no longer going to report on subscriber numbers in earnings calls.

So when it comes to the fact that it's genuinely handy.

Yeah, how handy, Richard.

How very handy.

So they said it was left less meaningful to evaluating the performance of our businesses.

What would really affect Disney's earning calls though is is not so much the subs.

It's more if people start cancelling their cruises and visits to Disneyland and Disney World and you know that that's where the money is and that's that's I think the thing.

If that starts becoming attacked then Disney are in a very difficult position and would have to fight back.

That they do have to talk about in earnings calls.

Clearly everybody is talking about it and thinks it's bad.

Not that many have put their heads up above the parapet.

Damon Lindelof, who did Lost for ABC, said, oh, I won't make a show with them while they do something like this.

Probably the most significant that I've seen in some ways, because it's such a detailed thing to say, is Michael Eisner coming out.

Michael Eisner, who is, of course, the legendary kind of 90s, 2000s Disney executive who Bob Iger replaced.

I mean, sort of kind of came out of nowhere to say, where has all the leadership gone?

You know, talking about the aggressive, yet hollow threatening of the Disney company, yet an example of another out-of-control intimidation.

Jimmy Kimmel is very talented and very funny.

That's quite significant, that side of he's he's a significant voice in it all.

Can I give an angle I haven't quite seen written recently, but a lot of this relies on, as you say, an awful lot of this is to do with legacy media companies who are consolidating with other legacy media companies because being a legacy media company is very difficult these days.

And the generation of Jimmy Kimmels and Jimmy Fallons and Stephen Colbert's grew up in that environment, legacy media, as my generation grew up over here, legacy media.

If you're Jimmy Kimmel now and it's like, oh, ABC, I've got to try and get him back.

We've got to try and get him back on late night and do this, that, or the other.

If I'm him, I'm finally going to take a look in the mirror and go, why have I stuck around here for so long?

Why have I stuck around on legacy media where I am constrained an awful lot in what I can do?

Why have I done that for such a long time?

We had so many years where the right worked out that they weren't really on legacy media as much as they would like to be, the big networks.

And so they were forced online.

And actually, that's how they got a jump on the progressives in American politics and in UK politics, in that they developed this online ecosystem where they could say anything they wanted, do anything they wanted, without constraint, without Ofcom, without FCC in the States, all of that.

Whereas the progressive side of things still had that legacy media.

So Colbert and John Oliver and Kim Adam Fannam were still absolutely able to have these big mouthpiece late-night TV shows for years and years and years.

Now we've known known that the ratings for those are going down and then this, that, or the other.

The ecosystem of online and of YouTube and podcasts and things like that is so enormous now that a Jimmy Fannin could immediately make what he's making from ABC outside of that system.

He can make exactly what he's making in terms of his money.

He would have far fewer constraints on him.

He would be his own brand rather than an ABC company man, which is what he absolutely is.

In some ways, it's going to force this generation of progressive talent to go where the right went 10 years ago, which is online and untrammeled, the intimacy of being, you know, directly in people's homes and through people's headphones.

So it might be one of those things where the beast now becomes unleashed.

If you've got Colbert and John Oliver and Jimmy Kimmel unable to work on mainstream television, then they'll just go to the other ecosystem and talk directly to people, which actually is where culture is now.

And it's certainly where political culture is.

I mean, look at Conan O'Brien.

He left legacy media and his podcast is now getting 100 million downloads a year.

His profile hasn't dropped in any way whatsoever.

He hasn't become less famous.

He hasn't become less rich.

But what he has become is someone who's got more freedom to do the things that he wants, who can wake up in the morning and be a little bit happier.

You know, Trump is also saying, cancel Jimmy Fannin, cancel Seth Myers.

They've gotten no ratings and they're hopeless.

You think, well, I mean...

We can find if people are commercially viable.

We can find if people are funny because they just go out there by themselves and find an audience.

And I suspect those are people that could.

So it might be one of those things that enables a free-for-all and enables this whole new media culture to get started.

I think in the end is very bad news for legacy media and they're being complicit, I think, in their own downfall.

And not for the first time, as we've discussed before.

But perhaps now's the time.

And perhaps we see that this group of people can be much more effective and much more useful and get their message across and their personality across far more by being themselves than by being themselves within that old legacy media system.

Okay, I really think that is a very good point and I think that might occur, and I definitely think that could happen.

Having said that, I do think that late night has had a problem.

Late night has become something that is entirely perceived to be for one side in this entire, in the whole of American politics.

There is no suggestion that people who don't agree with the point of view, with the liberal point of view, with the sort of anti-Trump point of view, even watch those shows anymore you know I've said this before but if you look back to the those golden days and the big late night wars really and there was you know Jay Leno Letterman

the whole of America watched those shows as in people on both sides of the divide watched the shows they weren't perceived to be so completely and of course you had jokes about the president you have jokes and I to some extent I sympathize with these guys because people are saying oh all you do is you know joke about the president it's like yeah because he's the president yeah when i used to sort of write about the tories where the tories are in power people would say, you don't write very much about Labour.

It's like, yeah, because they're not doing anything.

I mean, you know, sometimes I will write about them, but you've already got to mostly write about the people who are in power.

I don't really write anything about the Tories now because they're not doing anything.

Exactly.

It's nothing to do.

It's like, have I got news for you?

It would always be, oh, another, you're bashing Boris again or bashing the government.

You think, yeah, they've been in power for 14 years.

That's sort of.

Yeah, he's the Prime Minister.

I'm so honestly, give us another Prime Minister and we'll have a, you know,

we'll have fun with that.

But that's what you do.

If those are the people in power, that's the job is you do you do jokes jokes about them.

And so, there is a little bit of that, but I do think, Richard, that there is a perceived problem, which is that these shows are quite obviously designed for one side so completely.

And maybe that's because American culture has flat fractured so completely and it's so siloed and it's sort of so polarized that that's all they can be.

But there has been a perceived problem.

So, the idea of sort of slightly saying, like, oh, wow, you could go to YouTube and find your voice, you've had your voice, they've all had their voice, they've had the run of network television.

But, but, but, but because the rights have been unconstrained, because they've been in this environment which has not been controlled, the overton window of what is acceptable and what is mainstream has shifted because of the enormous amount of commentary from the right that we've had in the last 10 years.

In arenas where at the beginning we people were thinking, this doesn't matter quite so much.

This is quite niche.

But you look back on that last 10 years ago, no, that's where everything was happening.

That's where our culture was.

We still thought our culture was these, you know, late-night television programs that made people feel safe and comfortable, but it wasn't.

It was elsewhere.

And so the window has shifted entirely.

So the politics of those late-night shows have not shifted at all, but they've been seen to be increasingly progressive and increasingly left-wing, which is

the situation we find ourselves in.

I agree with your basic point, which is they do come from a

particular political standpoint, but that political standpoint has been seen as far more extreme over the years without actually moving anywhere.

I would say that the political pressure is building and it's coming from quite interesting places.

Did you see Ted Cruz saying, Oh, this is right out of Goodfellas?

I mean, Jimmy Kimmel once called Ted Cruz a moist, gelatinous tube worm whose elastic band pants are filled with an inky discharge every time he speaks.

So maybe that happened when Ted Cruz spoke out in his defence.

But

he is actually quite significant in this because he's chair of the Senate committee that has oversight over the FCC.

And this is a huge test of the right and free speech and the First Amendment, which is...

Yeah, I'm getting very tired of the woke right, Richard.

I'm getting very, very tired of the woke right and their cancel culture.

But it absolutely is the woke right.

And there's no point pointing out this hypocrisy because they know it is.

They do it.

That's the playbook and it always has been.

There's no point ever crying hypocrisy.

But there are some people on the right who do actually very strongly and fervently believe in free speech rather than just as something to say to own the libs.

They actually do believe in it, and they have been energized by this.

I think there's probably a feeling abroad in Hollywood that if you don't stand up now, when do you stand up?

Because this is such a clear example of political interference.

Colbert, you can maybe sort of think, oh, look, it was failing anyway, and I get it was time.

And they, I mean, I don't think it's quite right, but I can see whatever's happened.

We can all see what's happened, and everyone on the right and left absolutely understands what's happened.

But also, wake up.

It's appeasement.

It doesn't work.

You've seen what happens with this guy.

It never works.

You've seen what happens with Trump.

You know, no sooner has this happened than he's saying, well, maybe other people's licenses should be taken away.

Oh, also, I don't like the view.

It's like, wow, you've come for a big show.

Now you're going to do loose women.

You know, I mean, it's obviously ridiculous.

It's so pathetic.

Anybody who thinks that he won't keep going, anybody.

He is like us.

He is of a generation where he still thinks that these big networks are important.

He still thinks that the view and late-night TV, that's what he grew up with.

That's what he understands.

So that's what he goes for and attacks.

The second you're outside of that ecosystem, his power is gone.

His power completely goes.

All he can do is control you if you're on one of these big legacy media companies.

That's the only leverage.

I feel like he controls quite a few of the podcasters too.

You know, he can't take them off air.

There's no button that can be pressed that takes him off air.

When this story first broke of the first couple of days, I thought, well, I can't see the way back, but they're going to now have, they are going to have to find a way to put him back on air.

I totally agree with you that he may say, you know what, I don't even want to.

It's hard to set yourself up immediately and it will take a while in a different format and he might decide to go to YouTube or something like that.

But

it's hard to do that immediately.

You don't want to look like you've been run out of town by Donald Trump.

Well, I think you could say if you immediately launch with something massive and there'll be plenty of money out there for Kimmel and Colbert and all of those writers, you know, there'll be money out there to create something in this new ecosystem that we live in and there'll be plenty of venture capitalist money out there.

You know, there's cash out there and there are audiences out there.

If he was a young comedian now, Jimmy Kimmel, and someone said to him, Would you like to host Jimmy Kimmel Live, a late-night TV show?

he would say, No, I would not like to do that.

I can build my own brand.

I can build my own thing.

That's That's what he would be doing.

Maybe this is the end of the old ways and the start of new ways for that side of the political argument, which, as you say, has had access to legacy media in a way that the other side has not.

On the political side, the other side has definitely had access to traditional legacy media news and what have you.

But on the entertainment side, less so.

And I think maybe now

everything becomes the same.

Everything's up for grabs.

And nobody wants to be constrained.

No one wants to sit in that ecosystem anymore.

There's no, there's, there's no fun there.

And, and people like Jimmy Kimmel want to have fun.

What Trump is doing just so increasingly,

I've always felt that Putin did everything before him.

And this reminds me so much of that.

Um, did you ever read that great book by Peter Pomerantsev, um, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible?

It's absolutely brilliant.

You'd really like it because Peter Pomerantsev was young, his parents were sort of Russian dissidents, but he went back to Moscow and he worked as a reality TV producer in the 2000s.

And it's so fascinating and, you know, how Russian media just became completely subsumed and how the TV stations that disagreed were silenced.

You know, it's very, you know, he always says, there's a good line in it where he says the regime can feel like an oligarchy in the morning, democracy in the afternoon, monarchy for dinner, and a total totalitarian state by bedtime.

There is that sense of complete kind of discombobulation at the moment with what Trump is is trying to do.

And I would, you know, it's impossible now not to say that he is moving towards trying to silence anything that disagrees.

Now, talking of creative freedom, shall we go to some adverts?

Yes, please, Rich.

And afterwards, we can talk about Taylor Swift and the bodyguard.

Your pudding's coming, everyone.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Now, Taylor Swift has unleashed.

I mean, it must be a Monday if Taylor Swift has unleashed another surprise upon the world.

We know her new album's coming out, Life of a Showgirl.

And she announced this weekend that the official release party of a Showgirl is happening, which is a cinematic experience, a movie experience that she is once again selling direct to movie theatres.

Do you remember just as she did with the Eras tour?

Remember, that's the highest-grossing concert film all time.

It made like $260, $270 million or something.

It's almost like legacy media doesn't work anymore.

It's almost as if people can take their own careers into their own hands.

Shockingly, she has bypassed studios such as Disney and is selling this director, AMC Theatres, who will manage to distribute it via other places as well.

And it's going to be a one-weekend play, and it's the 3rd to the 5th of October.

As soon as it was announced, in 24 hours, it had already sold $15 million of pre-sale tickets.

Uh, and it'll probably make, I would have thought, well over $50 million.

I've seen lower estimates, but I think it will make a huge amount in that opening weekend.

Um, this is like the Thursday Murder Club at the Uckfield Picture House all over again.

Yeah, I mean, didn't want to say it, but yes, Richard, I do think that reminds us, right?

Reminds us a lot of it.

As for what it is, what we know about it is that it's essentially an, I mean, I want to say it nicely, an advert for the album.

Sorry, can I just say

I understand all the context, but I just want to reassure people, we are going to start talking about the bodyguard at some point.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, great.

Well, but it's we're leading in.

We're leading in.

Just making sure.

But anyway, she's going to have all this behind-the-scenes footage.

She's going to have, it's going to have the new video, the fate of aphelia, and interview stuff.

I tell you who, though.

The Fate of Ophelia.

The Fate of Ophelia is probably the lead single on this forthcoming album, The Life.

Fate of Ophelia.

Yeah.

Oh, I've got a.

I'm going to do a song called The Fate of a Failure.

Not such great visuals, but it's anyhow.

Yes, it's set in the Carropidus office.

There we go.

Sorry, please go on.

No, no, no.

Because you know, who's not going to be absolutely ruddy thrilled about this, Richard?

Have you heard of The Rock?

I don't know if you know, but he's got a little movie out called The Smashing Machine.

Oh, The Oscar guy.

You know, The Oscar guy.

Yeah.

It's the opening weekend of The Smashing Machine.

Yeah.

Can you imagine how angry he is about this now?

So as I said to you, the Rock's Zorska campaign is going to have many twists and turns.

Here's the first one, which even I didn't predict.

So I guess they could try and get a Barb and Heimer vibe going and call it something like Show Machine or

Smash Life, something like that.

Once you've seen the Taylor Swift Life of a Showgirl, why not go and see The Rock get beaten up straight off?

I don't know if that's going to work.

The Venn diagram looks very thin.

Yes, now let's land this plane.

Is this the only cinematic outing for Taylor Swift in coming times?

Because last week we talked about Mike DeLuca and Pam Mabdi, who are the Warner's executives who everyone thought should be fired and, in fact, have suddenly done very well.

And as we said, they'd taken risks on quite a few originals.

They are also sort of mining the

IP and doing various remakes.

So you've got a new Matrix remake coming, Practical Magic, Gremlins, Goonies, all of these things are going to be rebooted.

And one of the things that they've said they're going to reboot is The Bodyguard, the 1992, maybe not critical darling, but certainly mega-grossing movie starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner.

Now, who has been announced as the director of this, the reboot of The Bodyguard?

But a guy called Sam Wrench, who's a British guy.

And if you're thinking, who's he?

Well, let me tell you.

Sam Wrench,

he can absolutely go in with Chuck Adema Simplies and MC Hammer.

It's great.

If I work on OnlyConnect,

I'm seeing a wall.

In the toolbox of celebrity names,

yeah,

he glitters.

But he also is the director of the Taylor Swift Era's Tour, which, as we've just said, was the highest-gracing concert movie of all time.

He's done other things.

He did that nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter.

He's done concert films for BTS, Billie Arlish, various things like that.

But surely the most significant aspect of this is that they've announced that he is going to be the director of the new bodyguard.

Now,

what does that lead us to believe?

Huh?

Well, I mean, surely Taylor Swift has to be the Whitney Houston character.

I mean, I'm actually shocked, Richard, because you told me you have not seen the bodyguard.

No, no, never seen it.

Never will see it.

Okay, well, what about if you will see it if Taylor Swift's in it?

I will personally frog march you, Dan.

I just don't know

why I would have done.

I get it.

And I've seen lots and lots and lots of clips from it.

I mean, I feel like, it's like one of those movies I feel like I've seen.

I mean, it actually had, it was written by Lawrence Kazdan bizarrely, because

it isn't very good in lots of different ways.

But Lawrence Kazdan's obviously amazing.

He wrote Raids of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back.

And it was a huge thing with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, though.

And I think it was maybe the second highest-growing film of that year.

But it sort of cemented Whitney Houston as kind of queen of all she surveyed.

And it's one of those films that, as the tide of culture goes out, has remained like it's got bigger and bigger and bigger and become more and more mountainous over the years.

That's one of those films that people absolutely love and one of those films that people are fetishize.

Well, in some ways, we've never had bigger female artists, have we?

Right.

So, I mean, even if Taylor Swift doesn't do it, maybe Sabrina Carpenter would like to do it.

Maybe, you know, the sort of premise is the person who the bodyguard has to look after, who's a sort of former presidential bodyguard, you know, is a diva, is a

wants, wants their own independence, is moving into acting in the original.

Now, listen to me.

I mean, surely, why would Taylor Swift not do it?

Can you imagine what this would be like if Taylor Swift was in an actual fictional movie?

Get the rating of it right.

It's obviously going to have to be a 12.

Can you imagine what I think that would do unbelievable theatrical business?

Maybe this is what you do before you have a baby with Travis Kelsey.

Maybe this is just like, I can do literally anything.

I'm the queen of everything, and I can do this.

And if so,

can we just cast some of the rest of the movie, please?

By the way, the thing that cemented the bodyguard as that incredibly famous film is the song, is I Will Always Love You, which is Whitney doing Dolly Parton and made a huge amount of money.

So Taylor understands that if she does this film, not only does it introduce her to the world as an actor, but also there are absolutely enormous spin-offs here.

Yeah, but also there were two other singles.

It was like, I have run to you, I have nothing.

They're all in, you know, so she, you can get a big, you can get a lot out of it.

You could, I mean, Taylor Swift could certainly get an album out of it.

So, yeah, listen, let's cast it.

Bear in mind, I have never seen this film, so all I know is that Kevin Costner is in it and Whitney Houston is in it, and I've already cast Taylor Swift as Whitney Houston.

My casting job here is fairly limited.

Well, there's one role that is relevant, I suppose, other than the obvious.

There's a treacherous sister.

Could it be Blake Lively?

There is, okay, but who for the Costneroll?

Is there romance in it as well?

Yes.

Yeah, that's the whole point.

Yeah, he's very, very professional, except he's not that professional because they sleep together.

Where's his gun?

Where they're doing that?

Probably like on the nightstand, I imagine.

Why am I using nightstand?

Like I'm American.

On the bedside table.

On the bedside table.

On the bedside table.

Next to his Pepto-Bismole.

Yeah.

Who for the Costner roll?

Like I said to you, Richard, I know someone who could do it.

Glenn Powell could do it.

Your friend could do it.

Glenn Powell could do it.

Do you think he would?

Yeah, I think he would, but I'm not sure that they would go for him, actually.

I think that she would want someone sort of of a particular type,

you know, because I don't think she, you know,

she wants someone who can sort of deal with her, as it were.

So for me, there are three.

Okay.

I'll give you my view.

This is a meeting.

This is a pitch meeting now.

Michael B.

Jordan.

Michael B.

Jordan could do that role.

He would be very, very good in that.

I have to say, I think Michael B.

Jordan is definitely up to you.

And your other two options are Michael A.

Jordan and Michael C.

Jordan.

All the Michael Jordans.

No, Austin Butler.

Why not?

Okay.

Not with a quiff.

Give him a buzz cut and a scar.

He's 34.

He could do this.

Okay.

I can believe him.

Get him to change his name from Austin Butler to Austin Bodyguard.

But my number one choice.

Come on.

Mescal.

Paul Mascal.

Paul Mescal could look after you.

Yeah.

Paul Mascal could love you too much that he couldn't protect you.

I suppose he could.

Yeah.

Okay, Paul Mescal, I can see that.

Because I read someone, Tyra Banks was saying it should be Idris Elbert, and you think he's like about 30 years older than her.

Yeah, and I understand that, like, you know, Gen Z have a number of views on that level of age gap.

And I can

rest absolutely assured that someone much, much older will not be in the role of the bodyguard.

Paul Mescal.

Oh, come on.

Mescal's perfect for it.

Well, sort of.

Although I'm trying to think of him in Gladiator 2, where he's sort of beefed up.

Well, that's what you want.

Yeah, but I'm not sure Taylor would like that version of him.

Well, she would if she's a diva who's under threat from a stalker who's trying to kill her.

She doesn't want Timothy Chalamet doing it for her, does she, if that's the case.

If that's the plot.

I'm just saying.

Chalamet's not going to protect you in that situation.

A lot of it, by the way, I love him.

But let's be honest on the screen persona.

Yeah.

Mescal could do it for you.

I love him, but not as a bodyguard.

No.

Who's your bodyguard?

Timothy Chalameth.

Okay.

But when you see a bodyguard who is uh short and slim you know they're incredibly hard have you got a suggestion then tip what timoth shall me um

who would i who would i have as to i haven't given it an awful lot of thought who was your first one michael b jordan that seems best to me michael b jordan be very good oh i know who i'd have i love david johnson oh yeah he's my yeah he's my new favorite actor but he's but he might be a bit too quirky i i think he might be too quirky and i i do probably think he could be six inches shorter than her in real life.

I mean, you know, she's going to have to have the high-heel boots on.

So I guess, you know, they can just do what Hollywood's always done and put someone on a box.

Is Paul Mesgow not tied up in the Beatles movie for the next four years?

Yes, he's one of the four actors that will be unable to play any other roles because they're tied up

in four films that feed into each other and film all around each other.

I'm joking, of course.

But yeah, it's quite a project.

And I think that lots of people do feel that people are less available who they might want to put in their films as a result of it.

Do you know what I would do if I was Taylor?

I'm not Taylor for lots of reasons, but I would do an open casting.

I would TikTok it.

Imagine that.

Imagine TikToking being.

Well, you'd need some bodyguards for that, wouldn't you?

You'd need some bodyguards for the open casting.

Yeah, I'm not sure she can do open castings.

Also, because she hasn't acted particularly, she probably will want a Michael B.

Jordan, someone there who absolutely is solid as a rock and she can work around.

Are you saying that Paul Mescal can't act and Austin Butler can't act?

Austin Butler, do you know what?

I don't really...

I mean, I know he did Elvis and I saw him in that motorbike gang movie.

But other than that, he hasn't left a big impression on me.

So Mescal, 100%.

I think he's great.

But the trouble is you led with Michael B.

Jordan.

Yeah.

Who is so perfect.

Yeah, he is perfect.

I personally would love to watch it.

But I really want this movie to happen.

And I didn't believe it's beyond the realms.

Otherwise, no offense to Sam Rencho, I think is what he's done with concert films is beyond, and it's amazing.

It's amazing.

So I'd love to see him do a feature.

But as I say, you know, you could always put Sabrina Carpenter in it.

You could put somebody else in it.

But I do think you need to do a, it's much, it's great if you use a real-life star.

And we live in an era, as we've obviously talked about it so often, is when women, individual women artists completely dominate the charts and

sales and streaming and everything.

So there is actually quite a good choice of people who it could be

if they want to dip their tone to acting.

What are the odds that this is going to happen with Taylor Swift?

God, I don't know what the actual odds are.

You'd have to tell me that, but I really want it to happen.

But it seems likely.

People seem to be saying this is actually...

going to happen.

Well, it's not definitively not happening yet, is it?

Because they haven't cast anybody else.

And it would, for me, make perfect sense.

It's a risk, but it's a huge thing that she'd do.

I think it would be unbelievable the box office for it.

Remember, it's not an expensive movie.

I've got my choice for the bodyguard.

I finally found someone better than Michael B.

Jordan.

See, it took me a while because that's such a good suggestion.

But I think I have a better, you just look at the poster now.

Taylor Swift,

Ross Kemp.

You don't think that's an age gap?

Yeah, but Ross Kemp, he can, you know, that's he's sort of the years melt away.

Well, I think that I'm sure, obviously, if offered the chance to work with Kemp, she might just say, I don't want to even hear these albums, forget it.

Oh, well, that's fun.

I genuinely, that feels like something that would land in the middle of culture with

just a joyful splash, and the music from it would be incredible.

You would hope that maybe she would find

an old Dolly Parton B-side to do a Taylor cover version of, you know, just to pay homage to the original movie.

That,

you know,

in a tricky week, that would bring us all such joy.

It would.

It It would be such an event.

And

it's not, as I say, it's not happening yet.

Joey, our producer, just said in my ear, this is a great suggestion.

This might be, I'm not saying it is, it might be better than Ross Kemp.

Adam Richson, Reacher.

It could be great.

And in lots of ways, he's got elements of Travis Kelsey to him because he's such a kind of big all-American guy.

I have to, yeah.

Does it matter?

She's a pop star.

He is a TV star.

He's not a movie star.

But I mean, you don't need anyone if Taylor Swift's opening the movie.

Exactly.

Whoever you put in that instantly becomes a movie star.

You're right.

Okay.

Reacher is a great suggestion.

Alan Richardson is a great suggestion.

I take my hat off to it.

Jack Reacher looking after Taylor Swift.

Oh my God, it's too much.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, you're right.

That is brilliant.

All right.

I mean,

we've done a number of pieces of good work there.

Lots of that is something that we should make follow-up calls.

If any listeners have a better combination, do please send them in.

We'll read some of those out next week.

Very good.

Any recommendations, Richard?

I wanted to recommend a really, really simple thing that a sort of friend of mine sent me the other day who's a Brighton fan and Brighton Halvalbian teamed up with the Samaritans.

They've done a little two-minute video about mental health.

We'll put that link in the episode notes and also in the Friday email, which you can sign up to at the RessesEntertainment.com.

And it is so beautifully done.

It's so brilliantly done about men going to the football and not talking to each other, which is a narrative we've heard before.

But they'd absolutely nail it.

It's two, three minutes long.

It's really beautiful, really, really important.

So that's my recommendation this week is you can watch within three minutes, which might be a first.

How about you?

I would like to do recommend a documentary that I thought I knew the whole story of, but the way it's put together is

really quite jaw-dropping.

And it's on ITV and it's called The COVID Contracts.

Follow the Money.

If you thought you knew everything about what actually seems to be like one of the most enormous financial scandals in government ever,

it's just so well done.

And I really thought it was brilliant and an amazing focus on the story that you sort of can't quite believe we've moved on from when you see the scale of it.

God, I haven't even heard of it.

Remind us what it's called.

It's called The COVID Contracts, Follow the Money, and it's on ITV.

Marina, thank you ever so much.

Thank you so much.

I'm so sorry we're parted.

I love the fact that you've recommended something about the COVID contracts when you've got Covid.

You're such a professional.

Yeah,

I hadn't actually thought that I've thought of that, but I will continue trying not to give you COVID ahead of your book launch on Thursday.

In the business, we call that a button.

You've absolutely seen a button on the end of this whole thing.

Yeah, book launch on Thursday, Impossible Fortune.

People would be very welcome to buy it.

We have to see if we can outsell Dan Brown in a victory for Britain.

Oh, come on, everybody.

Okay, Richard, we will see all of our listeners for a QA on Thursday.

And we also have a fun bonus this week on the whole business of script doctoring.

What is it?

Some amazing sort of historical examples of it.

And just to sort of deep dive into that, which is a really interesting part of the business.

That thing of famous writers who, without you knowing, have written some large parts of some fairly extraordinary films that you wouldn't expect them to be writing.

It's a hell of an industry.

So we'll see everyone on Thursday.

See you on Thursday.

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