What Marina Asked Glen Powell

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Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina High. And me, Richard Osman.

Speaker 1 Hello, everyone. Hello, Marina.

Speaker 2 Hello Richard, how are you?

Speaker 1 I'm very, very well. How are you?

Speaker 2 I'm very well. I mean I'm still heavily sedated after Traitors last week and I'm gradually being brought back to sort of full consciousness.

Speaker 1 No spoilers. No spoilers.
No spoilers.

Speaker 1 We have our Celebrity Traces podcast which people are very welcome to listen to if they've already watched it.

Speaker 2 I'm just implying that it's good.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 It's great. But I don't want people to switch off immediately because they're like, I'm just about to watch it.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, there's nothing about it in this particular podcast. Nothing whatsoever.

Speaker 1 Nothing apart from this.

Speaker 2 I'll tell you who we are going to talk a bit about.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm very excited about that.

Speaker 2 I'm going to talk a little bit about Glenn Powell.

Speaker 1 So you

Speaker 1 as we all remember, interviewed Glenn Powell a while ago. He did an introduction to the podcast for us.
And that interview came out on Saturday. I know lots of people would have read it.

Speaker 1 So I want to talk a bit about that. But really we want to talk about why nobody says anything interesting.
in interviews anymore. And by the way, he said lots of interesting things in that interview.

Speaker 2 I think it's really significant. And I think what's happened to interviewing and what's happened really to people's celebrities' ability to say anything of interesting, remotely interesting.

Speaker 1 Anything at all. And we'll talk about why.

Speaker 2 Also going to talk about the Saudis.

Speaker 1 Oh, I've heard of them.

Speaker 2 Heard of them as well. We know they've been moving into all sorts of different forms of entertainment.
We talked about the Riyadh Comedy Festival. We've obviously talked about the golf before.

Speaker 1 And now they're going into video games. So we'll talk about the various deals that they've done and the way they're trying to do it.

Speaker 2 And they're basically kick-starting a movie studio in Hollywood as well. So we'll talk about

Speaker 1 that too.

Speaker 2 We'll talk about war by other means.

Speaker 2 War by entertainment means.

Speaker 1 War by entertainment, which could be a tattoo on the shoulder of Mr. Glenn Powell.
Yeah. So

Speaker 1 the interview I thought was fantastic.

Speaker 2 No, no, Bob, that's very kind of you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Do you know what? It was awful.

Speaker 1 Do you know what? I cannot write. Do you know what? I'm a hack.
No.

Speaker 1 I was reading it. Honestly, I threw up.

Speaker 1 When I was reading it. I hated it.

Speaker 2 It was interesting.

Speaker 2 And we'll talk a little bit about what the process of doing an interview like that is um because as i say and i say as i said in the interview i don't do our interviews very often so um in my last one i did i think was about 13 years ago and was nigel farage i met somebody yesterday yeah who had interviewed marilyn monroe really yeah oh wow that's very cool yeah yeah yeah

Speaker 2 I digress. Did you tell her I'd done Farage?

Speaker 1 Yeah yeah. Yes, I did.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You'll notice

Speaker 2 oftentimes he didn't sit with a PR in the interview at all, which I really liked. I had sort of 55 minutes with him, basically, and

Speaker 2 I went all the way to the cursed city of Los Angeles for that.

Speaker 1 And who did he think you were, if you know what I mean? Was he just walking into a room? He doesn't know.

Speaker 2 He just thinks I'm doing an interview with him, which is what I am doing.

Speaker 1 It's just me, another thing that's been cited. So he's doing stuff for a movie.
His publicist would have sent him 100 asks. Well, they would have had 200 asks.

Speaker 1 They would have knocked it down to about 30 that they think, oh, this is sort of acceptable for what we want in terms of demographics.

Speaker 1 Some will be podcasts, some will be print interviews, some will be news, some will be TV interviews, things like that. They will get it down to about 30.

Speaker 1 They will then send it to Glenn's manager who will knock it and say, oh, no, no, not him. No, he won't do that because blah, blah, blah.
And he will knock it down to maybe 15.

Speaker 1 And then Glenn will look at those. and go, yeah, I'll do that.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I don't think he looks at them in my

Speaker 2 and I don't think most stars do either. I think they

Speaker 2 sort of vaguely trust the many teams they have around them.

Speaker 2 Don't forget, you don't have just your agent, you've got management, you've got, obviously, you've got the film company, in this case, Paramount.

Speaker 2 But Paramount also would offer, Paramount would think, well, because they're in charge of this particular movie, this movie being

Speaker 2 Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man. And so Paramount might have said, oh, we would

Speaker 2 offer them to The Guardian, or we would offer, you know, you're thinking, where would we like to place something?

Speaker 1 And in the UK, by the way, they'd be thinking, okay, we've got UK strategy. We'll probably do one TV, we'll probably do one newspaper, and we'll do one big lead time magazine.

Speaker 2 You'll do Graham Norton, you'll do, you know, whatever it is. But you'll, and also, obviously, it's completely mandatory that you would have the cover.
Otherwise, you're not doing it.

Speaker 2 There's a certain point where you'll only do it if you have the cover.

Speaker 2 And he's definitely at that stage.

Speaker 1 I'd like to see who was on the cover if it wasn't him.

Speaker 2 Well, many people will say, oh, you can't.

Speaker 2 You know, you can't say this, you can't ask that. And there is always a bit of that.

Speaker 2 I think the key is to not have any of that in writing.

Speaker 2 But I mean, I know some people who have done interviews where you've told in advance, you can't talk about this, you can't talk about that. And there's so many different things.

Speaker 2 And actually, then in general, I do think as a journalist, also never sort of agree completely because you don't know what they might say.

Speaker 2 And you can't sort of say, oh, well, I just refuse to follow that line of questioning. But also, they may open up to you.
They may want to say all sorts of things. You don't have to say that.

Speaker 1 Because those demands come from two different places that he will not talk about X.

Speaker 1 If there's 10 of those, nine of those will come from Paramount or whoever the company are because they don't want it to to be about certain things.

Speaker 1 They have a very clear idea of what they want it to be and maybe one or two of them will come from Glenn or come from whoever you're interviewing just going, oh, actually, you know what, I've really had enough talking about this or this has been a thing that I've seen reported and

Speaker 1 I just don't want to talk about it. And when you start interviewing them,

Speaker 1 you find out which is a lot of people.

Speaker 2 You might be able to get around it and you might be able to bring it up.

Speaker 1 So when journalists do celebrity interviews, what are typical things? they're told the person might not want to talk about.

Speaker 2 Well, the PR is supposed to be looking after them and will think, okay, here are the the liabilities.

Speaker 2 Has recently been in a film with someone who was in lots of, it has recently been in a scandal, won't want to talk about that.

Speaker 2 They're just trying to put guardrails so that they don't have to talk about anything that every single word you've got to think on the hoof.

Speaker 2 And most journalists I know will still find a way near the end because you don't want to make it long way of asking those things. I mean, there are all sorts of tricks.

Speaker 2 You know, I only had a little bit of time. So I thought, would it be good if I could go along to the photo shoot? Because you don't have to say anything.

Speaker 1 He looked amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Also, I noticed him like wiping up after his own because it was in this huge old warehouse and Brisket, his internet famous dog, he was like wiping up after him and I thought, you know, Clennam helping himself after his own dog.

Speaker 2 That's good. I wouldn't, you know, it's just a little thing, but you might see.

Speaker 1 The person I spoke to yesterday who interviewed Marina Monroe also said she met Senator Joseph McCarthy. This is an amazing conversation.

Speaker 1 And she said he was incredible. He's talking to a young child.
And I thought, oh my God, he's like talking to a kid. And I thought, oh, wow, you know what?

Speaker 1 Maybe I've misjudged him because he was being incredibly charming. So the child walked away.
Senator McCarthy took his hand and just wiped it on his trousers. And she thought, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 Anyway, that's such a

Speaker 1 biggest sidebar of all time.

Speaker 2 I love that.

Speaker 2 Okay, right. So you might, so you're trying to find ex-joys.
I do know people, I mean, Lynn Barber, who's a

Speaker 2 famous celebrity interviewer, always used to turn out half. If they went, she went to, you know, she'd always try and do it at their house because it's good to be on Metro.

Speaker 2 And she would always turn out half an hour early. Then they're not expecting you and it's just starting.

Speaker 2 I know at least another, I won't say, because I think they're probably still using that particular technique, but doing that.

Speaker 2 I mean, if they'll have you at their house or if they'll come to your house, anywhere, you know, you can see that people will,

Speaker 2 some people want that to happen. I think that's unusual to want them in your house.

Speaker 2 Personally, I would not have one journalist in the month's house. Yes.
Never having one in the house.

Speaker 1 It's like having a film crew in your house. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Listen, I love film crews. Yes.
You know I love film crews, but I'd never have one in my house.

Speaker 2 So there will always be things that they don't really want you to talk about. Having said that, with Glenn Powell, he did not have a PR, which is now almost the common occurrence.

Speaker 2 At least two publicists sit on lots of interviews and say, no, you can't talk. He's not talking about that.

Speaker 2 None of that happened. We sat at a picnic table and it passed it.
That's a paramount lot. None of that happened.

Speaker 1 Being in a why? Yeah. They knew you're toothless.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Also, maybe because it's Glenn Powell, Richard. Have you ever thought about that?

Speaker 1 This is a soft soap. We know this.
They're going, you know what? Just before you walked in, they went, she's nice. She's no Lynn Barber, but she's nice.

Speaker 1 If you haven't read this interview, by the way, absolutely, you must read it.

Speaker 2 It is peak hyde. You can imagine what people don't want to talk about.

Speaker 2 And the reason they don't want to talk about it, and actually, I think they increasingly stars themselves have, in the old days, they would say, I don't want to talk about my love life.

Speaker 2 You know, I get all that. That's really kind of, you know, and maybe they would get onto it if you persuaded them or whatever.
But you can see why they wouldn't want to talk about things like that.

Speaker 2 But actually, it's widened so much more that,

Speaker 2 you know, you would think, oh, I don't really want to have to talk about anyone who's caught up in, I don't want to talk about politics, especially if you're someone like Glenn Powell, who wants to be a multiplex guy and he wants to be for all America.

Speaker 2 And he's actually, in many ways, I think, one of the things I talked to him about in the interview was, is it quite hard to be an all-American person, want to be an all-American person when in a divided America, when the perception is that there are certain people who one side can like, and late night has become entirely that.

Speaker 2 It's become entirely siloed for this, you know, I'm calling it the left, but it's not, you know, you know what I mean, not the Republicans.

Speaker 2 And in the old days when David Letterman was, or Jay Leno, everybody watched these shows. They were for everybody.

Speaker 2 And the stars, you know, and a lot more people went to the movies, which is interesting. But now, all of those kind of shows are perceived as political persuasion.

Speaker 2 And movie stars and all sorts of stars, I would say that there are really quite few people who people don't think, oh, yeah, I know what you're about. So everyone can like The Rock.

Speaker 2 Everyone can like Travis Kelsey. Glenn Powell wants to be the top guy that everyone can like.
I can tell you that I think Sidney Sweeney wanted to be someone who everyone can like.

Speaker 2 And look what happened.

Speaker 1 So devil's advocate. If I'm sitting home going, no, but look, these people are, you know, they want this free publicity.
They want all this publicity.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they must speak out. They should speak out.
They should tell us what they think about things.

Speaker 1 What would your take on that be? My first take would be, they don't really want to do this publicity.

Speaker 2 First of all, they don't want to do this publicity. My second take would be,

Speaker 2 in the old days, yes, of course I thought, oh, you know, you want to be on the cover of a magazine, you want to be this or that.

Speaker 2 You should,

Speaker 2 to some degree, take a position on things.

Speaker 2 And if you're asked a question and it's not completely rude or unreasonable, I think you could talk to me about, I don't know, Sidney Sweeney and the culture wars or something like that.

Speaker 2 I fully understand these days that it has changed totally.

Speaker 1 Talk us through your sensibility walking into there and why it would have been different to walking into there. 15 years ago.
15 years ago.

Speaker 2 Because 15 years ago, an interview with any star would be in what we used to call a colour supplement or in a magazine. It might be on, you know,

Speaker 2 and that interview would sort of stay there. And if you read it, you'd think, oh, that was a brilliant interview.
It's so cool. And they said fascinating things.

Speaker 2 Go back and read those, read interviews from 15, 20 years ago. Stars say incredibly interesting things.
They talk about their co-stars.

Speaker 2 You look at them now. They are so on message.
They speak like politicians. And there's a single reason for it all, which is because of what's happened with news distribution on the internet.

Speaker 2 Every interview, and by the way, I have to say that publications are as guilty of this, and I'm not

Speaker 2 the Guardian, but lots of publications. I'm doing it as a general.

Speaker 2 But everybody always says, is there a news line? So you do an interview, and what they mean by that is, can we have a story that could go on the news pages?

Speaker 2 Like, just, I'm just going to think of some random thing here. You know,

Speaker 2 you know, say Glenn Powell had said, you know, I'm actually a hardcore MAGA and that's what I am now. That would become a news story.

Speaker 2 So not only would it be in the interview and be an interesting part of the interview and an eye-popping part, by the way, he didn't say that.

Speaker 2 But what they want is then there to be a news story because news stories get clicks and Ibelsnet drives it into the, and it's all about traffic. And everybody wants this now.

Speaker 2 You know, you see people going to TV festivals, like industry gatherings. I saw what happened.

Speaker 2 Someone from Channel 4 or Channel 4 News said, I think lots of those people from adolescents sort of piggybacked on what Channel 4 News would do or something like that.

Speaker 2 I can't remember what she said in a panel discussion at the Edinburgh Television Festival, an industry gathering.

Speaker 2 And it was reported round the world as, you know, like adolescents are sort of ripped off Channel 4 or something like that. And I just thought, you've had an absolute nightmare there.

Speaker 2 What you've tried to say is maybe something like we've made some interesting crime documentary or something. I don't even know.
I didn't

Speaker 1 have time to ask you. You're trying to entertain people.
You're in front of a live audience and you're talking to people.

Speaker 2 300 people in a sort of hall in Edinburgh. Why can't you say anything?

Speaker 2 But you can't sit in there because then you've got three days of firefighting and everybody's saying, coming to you for another quote, they've gone back to the adolescents people.

Speaker 2 What do you think about the fact that they just slagged you off?

Speaker 2 And it's just this absolute shitstorm all all the time and so you know that if you're a celebrity and you're being interviewed and you say anything that I mean even touches in the same postcode as something that's an ongoing news story you will be it will immediately say you know as I've said in the interview Glenn Powell sort of wades into the Sydney Sweeney discourse and he has to talk about that and then it's scraped by every clickbait news site and it's This thing just has a life of its own and it tears off across the internet and it's days and days and days of it.

Speaker 1 And sorry, can I just say this, which is if, you know,

Speaker 1 if people would hear that and just go, well, that's a, God, that's a bit woeies me. I mean, who cares?

Speaker 1 I mean, no one cares other than you're just turning up to do your job, which is do this interview for something, and your next three days is then incredibly boring because you're constantly, you're constantly being, people are saying,

Speaker 1 it's X, it's Y, it's this, it's that, or the other. And you just think, oh, God, I had a really nice chat to somebody I thought was really, really nice.

Speaker 1 And then suddenly I'm having to deal with this for four days.

Speaker 1 And, you you know, it's it's so it's not, it's not like no one's kind of not destroying anyone's lives, but it's definitely making you think, oh, next time I just won't say anything.

Speaker 2 It's gonna make it. It's working for three days.
You have to just deal with that.

Speaker 1 You're not really getting anything out of it. The only thing, the reason you ever give anything in an interview is if you're having a fun time.

Speaker 1 If you're chatting to an interviewer and you think, oh, I want to have an interesting chat, this will go out and people will read it. So I want to say something that represents me.
And

Speaker 1 the people at the record company or the film company are happy.

Speaker 1 But the second that that goes out and, you know, you've got even a day of just people going, it's interesting that you said this because blah, blah, blah, you just think, oh, okay, I just, the easiest thing next time will be not nothing.

Speaker 1 I'll say nothing at all.

Speaker 2 As a result, people have become incredibly boring. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And they try very, very hard not to make news in headlines because you can just see the next, you've had it happen to you enough times that you can see the next few days spooling out and it's going to take you away from your core business and what you actually want to do with your time.

Speaker 2 And so I think the flip side of that is which is what i ended up saying to him which was you know i felt i thought it was absolutely not of course sydney sweeney's jeans campaign was nothing to do with eugenics but no you didn't see anybody from hollywood coming out and saying this is bullshit and i said to him i i felt that she was left to slightly twist in the wind when everyone must have known it's bullshit and i i think he found it quite hard to answer all that sort of stuff because he is friends with her yeah and you know your friends can't come out and say it because then it's just they just get drawn into it it doesn't stop it and i think that was his point it doesn't stop it it just oh the discourse gets more about you know you're never you're not changing anybody's mind you're just you're just annoying more and more and more people

Speaker 1 for something that you just I just think it would have been easier not to say anything it's what happened to politics a long long time ago and it's that search for the news thing so it's not it's not enough to say I'm going to talk to you about what's happening but it's what is the news thing that we get this over so if Laura Kunzburg doesn't interview you on a Sunday morning the the job is do you have something that leads the six o'clock news news or the ten o'clock news?

Speaker 1 So can you get something that leads that? And not something that the government wants you to lead with, but you've found something else.

Speaker 1 And that's, you know, and that's, by the way, perfectly good journalism. It's not good journalism if that's all you do all the time.

Speaker 2 Nor is it good politics to have to feel that rather than actually try and present complex and difficult arguments and try and work out how you can do the best thing, you have to think, let me parcel something out so that you have something for the Laura Koonsberg interview that will appear to be a news line and so it becomes this incredible sort of diminishing returns thing and actually you know that started right back when

Speaker 2 you know kind of New Labour's era of spin news management when they're trying to literally parcel something out something for the six o'clock something for the ten o'clock everybody's got to have their little thing and then everyone will be happy and now it's become so lawless but now entertainment has gone the same way and that's why almost all interviews are incredibly boring.

Speaker 2 I think it's very difficult and I think everyone, I think it's the number one thing that anybody sits the star now sitting down thinks which is I don't want there to be any news coming out of this and I think at the moment it's it's a particular issue with print publications I think for example if you do go on Jimmy Kimmel or if you go on Graham Norton

Speaker 1 you are very aware that their job is to be an entertainment show not to get a news item and if I mean occasionally they'll get them but that's that's not the job the job is to be as funny as possible with interesting entertaining people.

Speaker 1 I've never felt going on a TV thing that you don't have to watch yourself quite so much because no one is deliberately trying to trip you up.

Speaker 1 Every time, and listen, I for me, it's nothing, but because I just talk about books and stuff like that. But even I can see if I talk to certain publications, that they'll do all the stuff.

Speaker 1 And then at the end, you know, they'll

Speaker 1 ask you a political question or stuff. They go, oh, God, this is probably not important.
It's not really for the article, but what do you think about this?

Speaker 1 And you're like, but I mean, I'm not an expert, so don't ask me. But I'm in a second league.
Come on.

Speaker 2 I know what you're doing. Every single week in this podcast, somebody will say something that you've said.
I believe that you've...

Speaker 1 Oh, God, I had the thing that my my

Speaker 1 when we were talking about what's coming the christmas number one book uh and i was going through the runners and writers i was talking about clox and with his diddly squat and i said so diddley squat's just coming out um in a couple of weeks uh and i said of course he's bringing it out really near christmas that's the coward's way of doing things uh and you know if he had any guts he'd have brought it out yeah earlier nobody in britain hearing that knows that's anything other than a joke.

Speaker 1 So you know it is. Like we used to just do jokes.
And immediately I just had an email sort of saying, oh, we've just talked to Clarkson's representatives. We heard you called him a coward.

Speaker 1 You're like,

Speaker 1 yeah, I mean, and again.

Speaker 2 Has this story appeared?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's in loads of things.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 we've talked about people

Speaker 2 toiling in the content minds of Reach and the Daily Express, which is probably why I imagine that they appeared.

Speaker 1 I will say this. I will say this to the London Evening Standard.
Oh, my God. No, no, no, no.
Good. It's good.
They're the only people who said, jokingly, calls Jeremy Clarkson a coward.

Speaker 1 I really. Thank you.

Speaker 2 There's so many times. I've like, for a long time, I wrote a a showbiz column and it was supposed to be, it was just making fun of the news.

Speaker 2 And so I wasn't breaking stories in it, but it was commentary every week. And there'd be three items in it, not unlike this podcast.

Speaker 2 And I remember always thinking, oh, yeah, but lots of people have deliberately misunderstood this. And you can see this.
I hate it when people do it with politicians as well.

Speaker 2 Politicians do sometimes make jokes and they are quite good.

Speaker 2 And every now, it's so rare, but when it happens, it's such an easy thing to like pretend that you didn't hear the inference and just turn it into a horrible news story.

Speaker 2 It has resulted in a much, much, much more boring public discourse in an area, by the way, in which isn't politics and which people, you know, we should, we'd love to be entertained by ours.

Speaker 1 Can I give one corrective to it? Because I feel like I've been moaning and it doesn't

Speaker 1 offend

Speaker 1 you is I talk to journalists a lot whenever I've got a book out, anything like that. And 99% of the time, it's a really positive experience.
I love it. You know, and it is.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you'll talk to the Daily Mail or people like that, and you just think, lovely interview. No one's stitching it, you you know, and it comes out.
And I'm happy.

Speaker 1 If you've been able to speak freely, you can hopefully say interesting things and useful things.

Speaker 1 But so almost all the time...

Speaker 1 But it's all.

Speaker 1 But you are constantly thinking, what's the pool quote?

Speaker 2 But it's also all the secondary, tertiary, all the other sites that just scrape all that content. You have no control over that.
And they will just do whatever they like.

Speaker 2 They will obviously deliberately take things that's supposed to be jokes as not jokes. And it has made the world much more boring, much more full of slop.
And also, everything is kind of completely

Speaker 2 gutted for anything it has.

Speaker 1 So you never find anything just like a scrapyard you might spy from a train. Yes.

Speaker 2 I do think that.

Speaker 2 But anyway, so it would be nice to think that we could return to some kind of prelaps Aryan state where people could say things they thought and they could be fascinating and scintillating.

Speaker 2 And it wouldn't be just taken over by bad faith actors all the time. Right, Richard, shall we now go to a break?

Speaker 1 Come on then.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back, everybody, to the Desert Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As we know, Saudi Arabia, under the aegis of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is trying to expand beyond oil.

Speaker 2 And one of the absolute key things they've been trying to do is just build a kind of entertainment empire.

Speaker 2 You know, they've got the Live Golf, they've got an F1 race, they've got, we've talked a lot about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, they've bought stakes in Live Nation, they had stake in Activision Blizzard gaming company, but they've gone big with the biggest ever leveraged buyout brokered by none other than Jared Kushner.

Speaker 1 Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 He can do you a Guards of Peace plan. In fact, he did them in, I think, the same day, same week, same day.
In fact, these were announced.

Speaker 2 They've acquired Electronic Arts, who make all sorts of video games. They make EAFC FIFA to anyone who plays it.

Speaker 1 Yes, EA Sports. It's in the game.

Speaker 2 It's in the game. Yeah.
Madden and NFL, The Sims, they've got all sorts of things. Yes, it's the biggest ever leveraged buyer and the Saudis have acquired it.

Speaker 2 They also have their film festival, the Red Sea Film Festival is reactivating again in a few weeks and they want to become a film production hub. And they've also brought in to Hollywood.

Speaker 2 They put a billion into a studio within LA that they want to make content in. So let let's talk about it right now.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about electronic art.

Speaker 1 So they paid or are paying it, has it hasn't quite been approved yet, but as you say, given it's Mohammed bin Salman and Jared Kushner, you wonder who would disapprove. Certainly,

Speaker 2 I mean, they may not openly say it, but with people connected with the Trump family, that I don't think there's going to be any regulars.

Speaker 2 So you can have a foreign company can own an American company that has access to lots of sensitive American citizens' data in some cases.

Speaker 2 Sorry, TikTok, but it's okay here because I guess Jared did the deal.

Speaker 1 So they're paying $55 billion

Speaker 1 for electronic arts, $55 billion. And they're sort of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gaming.
As you say, so sports they've understood, entertainment, they've understood.

Speaker 1 You know, Live Golf, you know, it's like a hand grenade in world sport. This deal is essentially like 12 times bigger than the money they put into that.
And is the tip of the iceberg in terms of...

Speaker 1 gaming. Gaming seems to be the thing that they're putting a lot of their money.
They have a huge population of under-30s in Saudi Arabia and gaming, of course, is an enormous thing for them.

Speaker 2 I I read somewhere that they they felt that AI was going to so soon going to take so many jobs that many people would have much more leisure time and they really want to have gaming companies to be able to service that time.

Speaker 1 I mean it makes it it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 If there's one thing FIFA will do for you, it'll make a cheery kind of sense, doesn't it, Richard?

Speaker 1 It'll eat up a lot of their time.

Speaker 1 So I think people, most people think of EA as EA sports, but Apex Legends is EA, Sims is EA. But I mean it

Speaker 2 people hate a lot of gamers really hate them and think they that they ruin franchises and that they've, because they've got this monopoly on all of these things, and the biggest games, that they absolutely ruin them.

Speaker 2 They think they've ruined the Sims. They think they've ruined FIFA, which isn't called FIFA anymore.

Speaker 1 But it might as well be.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is for our purposes.

Speaker 1 I mean, have you heard that Twitter's not called Twitter anymore? Exactly.

Speaker 2 I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it'll always be FIFA. And yes, and they bring out live service versions of that, and people feel like they're slightly being led dry for money.
And occasionally they'll say.

Speaker 2 Oh, there's a worse ways to go. Yes,

Speaker 1 exactly that.

Speaker 2 And the Saudis are in charge, but yes.

Speaker 1 So they spent all of that money, but they're also trying to become the esports capital of the world.

Speaker 1 And now for a long time, certainly in the West, people have tried to make esports happen and they haven't really.

Speaker 1 You know, you keep hearing, oh, in South Korea, there are these enormous arenas, but you know, they're still not really filling out, you know.

Speaker 1 the O2 every Saturday night for people playing Counter-Strike 2. You know, there's something about that that hasn't quite kind of broken through.

Speaker 1 But Saudi are putting a big bet that esports is going to be the next huge thing. So every year now they held the esports World Cup in Riyadh.
$60 million in prize money.

Speaker 1 Which is, I mean, I mean, you know.

Speaker 2 Do they hold it in boulevard, Richard?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they hold it in square, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe they just do it in square. If you listen to our Riyadh comedy episode, you will understand this entertainment quarter that has these incredibly generic names.

Speaker 1 And as always, when we talk about

Speaker 1 Saudi Arabia buying something, we're essentially talking about the PIF, which is their big investment fund, which is controlled and owned by the government.

Speaker 1 And PIF owned Savvy Games Group, which is the cutely titled name of their gaming company, which is now about to own Electronic Arts, which runs the esports stuff.

Speaker 1 They bought the biggest esports companies, ESL Gaming and Face It were both bought by Savvy Games Group.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, they have this World Cup every year. They're going to hold the 2027 esports Olympics in Riyadh as well.

Speaker 1 They are absolutely betting huge amounts of money that this is going to be the next big thing. They own an 8% stake in Nintendo.

Speaker 1 So Activision Blizzard, they did have before Microsoft bought the whole thing. The whole gameplay is oil is going to run out one day.
And so we need to replace it with something.

Speaker 1 They're building an enormous esports arena. They're building two, in fact.
They're building one in Riyadh and they're also building one in Neom.

Speaker 1 which, as you know, is that

Speaker 1 entirely space age, new built, incredibly long indoor city, which is exactly like something you would have read in 2000 AD and gone well this will be thousands of years in the future.

Speaker 1 It's even written in capitals.

Speaker 1 So they are building that. In a way

Speaker 1 I kind of, listen, I'm not taking a moral stance here at all. I kind of like the mentalness of the future being built around us in real time.

Speaker 1 I mean, it is crazy saying we're building an entirely artificial indoor city and within it, we are going to hold an arena for people to play digitized sports against each other.

Speaker 2 Because the robots will be doing their jobs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it feels like, oh,

Speaker 1 this was sort of what we were promised. Yeah.
This feels like, oh, flying cars, then you've got the full set. I mean, they will definitely have flying cars

Speaker 1 very, very soon, won't they? So, yeah, they're making this enormous bet on gaming. And Electronic Arts is the biggest of the biggest of the big.

Speaker 1 But I think it's worth reflecting on what a sort of extraordinary company EA has been. And it was never really, it never really made video games.
It was always a publisher.

Speaker 1 It always sort of bought other people's games and distributed them. I think the first games they did were in 1983.
The first sports game they did was Dr.

Speaker 1 J and Larry Bird go one-on-one, which was like the first, you know, it's Julius Irvin and Larry Bird, essentially playing the game of, you know, and back then with the amount of pixels you could have, this idea of having a half-court game and there's only two players, they could do it, but it was always, it looks about as real as you can possibly make it.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it sold like 400,000 copies or something. So did amazing numbers.

Speaker 1 they worked up very very early on um where things were going but yeah they were never really a developer it's a guy called trip hawkins who worked for apple who who set it up and when they had enough money they then started buying developers and then suddenly they they are a developer of games but i mean they're buying developers and the developers are doing games but to have build a 55 billion dollar company out of that just thinking oh i'm going to get some you know indie game designers and i'm going to put them out on the amiga and the commodore 64 and all these things that uh they they started doing.

Speaker 1 It shows a certain vision, I would say. It shows a certain understanding of where the future's coming.
If you talked about EA back in the 90s,

Speaker 1 it's Madden.

Speaker 1 I mean, American football, I know nothing about, but we would play Madden almost non-stop. We would play FIFA, we would play Madden, we would play Colin McRae Rally.

Speaker 1 But the money they made from those, and then, of course, now, you know, with streaming and stuff, the fact that they can do

Speaker 1 live service versions of these games, those games, FIFA and Madden, are bringing in so much money every single year. I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions.

Speaker 2 But as I say, people do think they're sort of getting ruined and that it's just a monopoly now.

Speaker 2 And I mean, this is a big sell-out, we have to say. Oh, yeah.
Everyone just wants that sweet sovereign well-funded money. And I mean, remember, they were sort of persona non grata.

Speaker 2 In 2019, after the murder of Jamal Khazogi inside the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, Ari Emmanuel, who's the like mega super agent and in charge of lots of other sort of big sporting things and wrestling and so on, he had just taken 400 million from the Saudis when that happened.

Speaker 2 He handed it back and said, we don't want to be in business with these type of people after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Speaker 2 And then he felt he's had to start traveling with bodyguards, Ari Emmanuel, after that. But having said that, now two WWE shows a year are held in Saudi.

Speaker 2 He's saying again, oh, we're very happy to be in business with the Saudis.

Speaker 2 But on home soil in the US, it's just been announced that it's not actually the PIF, but it's another part of sovereign wealth controlled by Mohammed bin Salman, have now backed something called Arena SNK Studios.

Speaker 2 They've turned up with a billion, immediately saying we want to rival Marvel or Legendary or one of those kind of companies.

Speaker 1 And by the way, a billion is sort of... chump change to them at the moment.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's actually not...

Speaker 1 It is not chump change for Hollywood.

Speaker 2 It's not. It's not quite enough to do what they're starting to say.

Speaker 2 But having said that, what they do have and what's very valuable is that, as you said, they own lots of video game rights and those are doing an anime, both of which, as we know, are on a huge tear in being able to in terms of being able to make money as entertainment properties.

Speaker 1 And they're about to get them a great deal cheaper to be made into movies as well. I mean,

Speaker 1 it's exponentially cheaper.

Speaker 2 They don't have a problem with AI.

Speaker 2 Look who is on the board of it. It's being run by Eric Feig, who's the former Lionsgate president.
The former Disney film chief is on the board.

Speaker 2 Really, really kind of blue-chip Hollywood people are now allowing this money to come in. And we know that they want to turn it into a production hub.

Speaker 2 The trouble is the temperature does make that tricky. But they can build these beautiful.
You know, if you can build an indoor city, I'm pretty sure you can build some air-conditioned studios.

Speaker 2 So they do want to turn it into a production hub. And they're offering much better incentives than Morocco and Egypt.
I think Morocco and Egypt will offer you like 30%. The Saudis will offer you 40%.

Speaker 2 So they're constantly trying to move people.

Speaker 1 I feel like the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which we have talked about before,

Speaker 1 it might be the final outpost of outrage over people going to Saudi Arabia and investing in Saudi Arabia and taking Saudi investment.

Speaker 1 And I know lots of people in Hollywood have been taking this money for a long time, and lots of people in sport, of course, have been taking it for a long time.

Speaker 1 But that felt like everyone, it brought people up a little bit sharp, the comedy festival, because of the people who were involved.

Speaker 2 Who didn't need money, by the way. As we've said, comedians have never been richer than they are now.

Speaker 1 Yes, but by the way, like Anthony Joshua needs money. I mean, it is.

Speaker 2 I get that. But given that they didn't need it and they still did it,

Speaker 2 and they sort of, I suppose, got away with it and they can carry on and still go on and talk about free speech.

Speaker 1 Every single person in every single area of entertainment, because entertainment, all it ever really wants is for you to give it money. That's what it wants.
You know,

Speaker 1 we've got stuff, then stuff needs to be funded.

Speaker 2 They've all got houses.

Speaker 2 All these Hollywood executives have big houses that they want to.

Speaker 1 That's what they really mind about and suddenly people have got money and you know they are all going

Speaker 1 is this is this okay if enough of us do it i think it's going to be okay if enough of us do it no one will say jamal khashogi again what's the point where i don't ever hear his name again and they're all kind of they've all got their ear to the ground going is someone else say jamal khasogi no one said okay no one said it for a week okay maybe we can do it everyone is sitting there thinking

Speaker 1 okay we build we build we build we we're not going to sort of come out and say it publicly too much but we are absolutely getting in bed And all of this money is coming from Saudi Arabian oil and is it Neom and Riyadh and all of these places.

Speaker 1 It is just the future. And that Riyadh Comedy Festival, I think, will look back and just go,

Speaker 1 that was the last stage.

Speaker 2 That was the last staging post. I definitely agree.

Speaker 1 Anybody ever sort of complained? Can I recommend, by the way, if people have not read Helen Lewis's article about the Riyadh Comedy Festival in The Atlantic, she went out to...

Speaker 1 the Riyadh Comedy Festival editor from The Atlantic. It's a really, really, really good piece.

Speaker 1 And it's a good piece about Saudi Arabia and it's a good piece about the comics who went out there and what happened before. And she actually goes to the gigs, tells you what it's about.

Speaker 1 I thought it was fascinating. I tell you, one thing that's very interesting in that is at the Jimmy Carr Louis C.K.

Speaker 1 gig, the opening act is an Irish comic called Andrew Maxwell, who lots of people will know. It's been on House of Games and all sorts of things.
And you see the name, you're like, huh.

Speaker 1 Andrew Maxwell is out there. And he is on the plane home with her.
And she knows him a bit, so talks to him. He gives the only good defense I've seen from any comedian at that festival.

Speaker 1 He actually says something that makes you think and and I thought was really really really interesting and it's the only smart bit of thought I think from any of the comedians who've been out there that that I've read.

Speaker 1 So I thought that was fascinating but I do feel like this is a battle that is done and the Rio Comedy Festival is not the beginning of something.

Speaker 1 It's not the beginning of some sort of you know rearguard action where people are going to you know suddenly find their morals and and not go into business.

Speaker 1 It is the last post yeah and hollywood needs billions to keep it in the manner to which it's become accustomed and they're gonna take it from anywhere and if it's allowed by trump then it will be allowed um my favorite bit of the match from documentary on netflix is uh is is eddie hern whenever he has to deal with turkey al-sheikh who's behind a lot of the vision twenty thirty stuff and turkey al-sheik's always sort of calling him up at 11 p.m and and eddie hern sort of gets that at four and it just goes yeah i had a meeting and then he we went for dinner and then then we had to go for a drink then we had to go back and then only then were we allowed to talk about anything and he just he looks so tired all the time you know jamal khashoghi is a is is a lightning rod for a lot of things you know human rights abuse you know there are there are lots of people being executed in saudi arabia you can find far more present examples of people not being allowed freedom of speech, we put it that way in Saudi Arabia, and people and other and comedians and anti-government voices being completely silenced and executed.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 far more contemporary than 2019.

Speaker 1 And it's interesting how our culture works because until

Speaker 1 you all rally behind the same banner, nothing happens. So Jamal Khashoggi, everyone knows the name, knows what happened.
And so that feels like something you can say.

Speaker 1 But when you talk about some of the people we spoke about on the Real Comedy Festival episode, until everyone's talking about the same thing at the same time, it dissipates through our culture and goes away.

Speaker 1 And it's a couple of people saying it, but they can still go on and do their deals. But for all the people who are currently working at Saudi Arabia, I'm sure there are plenty of you out there.

Speaker 1 It's worth looking into. Just make sure that

Speaker 1 whatever compromise you feel you're making is the compromise you think you're making.

Speaker 2 By the way, on Friday, if you remember, there's a real treat in store because Ollie Richards and Chris Lockery are going to go through in remorseless detail every Oscar contender.

Speaker 1 And if you don't know the work of Ollie and Chris, the two of my genuine favourite journalists, when someone said that they would come and chat, I was like, okay, this is a good thing.

Speaker 2 They've already seen every single offering. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, they've already seen it a month. That's the entire thing.

Speaker 2 That will be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 Both very funny men as well.

Speaker 2 So, if you want to join for ad-free listening and for bonus content, it's the restorsentertainment.com.

Speaker 1 And can I ask you a question? Are we going to do a Celebrity Traitors reaction episode this week?

Speaker 2 What do you think? Yeah, I think we can do it. Let's try and keep it to under six hours, but you know,

Speaker 2 we can't.

Speaker 2 Yes, we will be there moments after the last strains of the Traitors' credits and drives.

Speaker 1 will be free. Yeah, if you want those bonus episodes at free listening, all that kind of wrestlersentertainment.com.
Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday for the Q ⁇ A and Thursday evening.

Speaker 2 Okay, see you on Thursday. See ya.

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