← Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Piers Morgan Unfiltered: Trump, World Leaders, Kanye Chaos, Meghan Markle Feud & the Interview He Still Wants
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- [00:00]
Jillian Michaels
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- [01:21]
Piers Morgan
Keeping it Real.
- [01:22]
Jillian Michaels
Keeping it Real. Keeping it Real with Jillian Michaels. First of all, thank you so, so much for joining me. I'm so excited. How are you?
- [01:29]
Piers Morgan
Well, it's lovely to see you.
- [01:31]
Jillian Michaels
I gotta tell you what a bizarre feeling it is to be on your show and have just watched your interview with Yay and Sneako and not be able to ask you about it. It is the most torturous feeling because I just want to say, like, did you want to punch Sneako in the face? Like, I have so many questions and I'm so excited. So I know your time is short. Question number one. I would liken your Meghan Markle moment to Joe Rogan's Covid moment. And I, I really want to know. Piers, you had to know you were calling out a black princess with mental health issues. That is like running into a bus. What made you do it? What? Where did you get the balls, quite honestly, to take that one on? Because it was what so many of us were thinking, but nobody would have.
- [02:27]
Piers Morgan
The nerve to touch because I thought I was dealing with a lying actress as well. And the bottom line is I knew I was watching the Oprah Winfrey interview with Harry and Meghan and I just knew they were lying. The stories weren't adding up. They were inconsistent. They couldn't get their years right on some of the more serious allegations of racism and so on. And there was one little story where they claimed the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most powerful churchman in the uk, had secretly married them three days before the televised wedding. Had he actually done that, we checked very quickly. That would have been a crime, and he would have been sent to prison. And so, because I knew that within minutes of them saying it and knew that was a lie, I then realized they were clearly just telling Whopper after Whopper. And it's been very interesting to see how the whole thing played out. You may notice that now they dropped all the claims of racism against the royal family. Harry turned it into. Oh, that was the media trying to spin that it wasn't. It was him and his wife trashing the royal family as racist. We all heard it on Oprah Winfrey, concerns about the skin color of their baby. We. What Oprah said famously, turns out there's never been any evidence for that. There never will be, because it didn't happen. Not the way they were trying to spin it. And on the mental health stuff, that never appeared again either. So she apparently felt suicidal and went to somebody senior at Buckingham palace who told Meghan Markle, you cannot have any treatment to help you with your suicidal thoughts. That story disappeared, too. So you've got these incredibly serious, incendiary, very damaging claims against the royal family and the monarchy. Hugely damaging with enormous repercussions. And they've both just disappeared like they never happen. Harry wrote a book of over 400 pages about his whole life. He never mentioned either of those two things in his book. And yet in the Oprah interview, these were billed as two of the most shocking claims ever leveled at the Royal family. So you're dealing with a pair of chances, grifters, as the Spotify executives called them, but people who were prepared to use their royal titles for enormous personal gain while simultaneously lying and trashing their family, the royal family and the monarchy. And that, to me, is brazen hypocrisy and something that has made them, in this country where I am right right now, the uk, unbelievably unpopular.
- [05:09]
Jillian Michaels
You're vindicated now. Now you can point to all of these things that didn't bear fruit, right? But in, I think it was 2021, you. You had to know that she was essentially a protected class to begin with. And you had to know it would beget all of the hell that you went through. So much so that you walked off of your show. I. I just want to know, in your mind, as somebody who's been canceled and didn't quite have the bravery that you had in the moment. Um, and took it took me years to kind of come back from my cancellation of not celebrating Lizzo being obese. I wonder where was the courage? Where did it come from? Because you had to know, all right, this is gonna end an opportunity for me. In fact, I'm gonna end it. And uncensored didn't exist yet.
- [06:03]
Piers Morgan
No.
- [06:04]
Jillian Michaels
Like what was going on in your head? And I.
- [06:06]
Piers Morgan
Well, the same thing was actually. I mean, I'd come back, I'd done a show, I'd replaced Larry King at CNN for four years, had a great time, missed England a lot, came back to England, ended up hosting the morning show, the big morning show called Good Morning Britain. Now it was being beaten regularly, had half the ratings of its rival, the BBC Breakfast Show. And in that last two week period before I ended up leaving, we were finally neck and neck. That's how much we'd done to the ratings. We had turbocharged. And ironically, on my last day, we actually beat the BBC in the ratings for the first time ever. And that was the only time they've ever come close. And the ratings now have gone back to how they were before I joined the show. But the point of saying that is that what we were doing was incredibly popular. And I was billed as. I mean, to give you some idea, the promo when I joined the show was the Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil. So they weren't exactly portraying me as Mother Teresa. They were portraying me as a devilish guy who was gonna call out everything as exactly as he saw it. Speak my mind. And where I smelt bull, I was gonna tell people, this is bull. And with Meghan and Harry, I don't think I've ever met too big a bullsh in my entire life. So in that moment when I had to decide, am I going to sit there on a show that I've made hugely popular and be lectured by a deputy weather guy who was lucky to even be sitting there, frankly lectured by him about Meghan Markle. And I decided, no, I'm not going to be. I'm not doing this. I'm just not playing along with this pathetic virtue signaling nonsense. And if it means I leave a show that I love that's on fire and. And doing great in the ratings, so be it. And I've never regretted that because actually, sometimes in life you've got to stand up for what you believe in and don't let other people try and bully you in the way that I Was, you know, Meghan Markle wrote to the boss of the network. I know it was a woman. And she. And somebody who read the letter said to me, it said, I write to you as a woman and as a mother. You've got a fire in, of course. And then they, and they, they did very sneaky. They said, if you apologize to Meghan Markle, you can keep your job. I said, I'd literally rather shoot myself with a rusty harpoon. Thanks. So I'm leaving. And that was that. So it sounds courageous. Actually, it's really just about saying no. I just have. I didn't need the money, right? I'd done enough varied stuff in my career to back myself. I've always backed myself in good and bad times. And I was like, no, I'll be fine. I'm just not going to be put in this position where I have to issue some kind of pathetic, weaselly mouthed apology I don't mean to somebody who I think is a disingenuous half wit.
- [08:55]
Jillian Michaels
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- [12:17]
Piers Morgan
Honestly, I think it's just chilling self belief. I came from a, I came from a wonderfully strong family of very strong women who instilled in me and I'll give you one example. My grandmother always said, you know, she used to have this saying, one day you're the cock of the walk, the next you're a feather duster. And what she meant was never get too big above your station when your things are going well and don't because there'll always be a downside coming in life. It's what life is like. It's how you deal with these two things. And to stay on a Level Keel. And my mother sent me a postcard when I was very young of a hippopotamus flying with a flock of seagulls. And it had the headline, ambition Knows no Bounds. And that was from a young age, and that was the family mantra, that, you know you were as good as anybody else in the world. You just had to find what you wanted to do. Live your passion, live your dream, and back yourself. And I say, I've got four kids from 31 to 13. I say to them all the time, back yourself. There's no such thing as just doing what everybody else does. Forget that there's a big herd mentality. You'll find out there. Don't be one of the herd. Find what you love. Chase that dream. And there's no reason why you can't become the greatest of what you do that's ever existed. The only thing stopping you is yourself. And because I've always had that mentality, even when I've had downsides in my career, which I've had. I've had low moments, I've been fired from jobs and so on, but I've always seen them not as a negative, as an opportunity. My sons will tell you I bore them rigid with the same speech from Rocky Balboa in the sixth movie, which was the one that Sylvester Stallone did 20 years after the Rocky V, which was a turkey. So he had this terrible, terrible end to the franchise of Rocky 5. And then he came back 20 years later, and he made Rocky Balboa a brilliant film, because by now, Rocky's stopped fighting. He's old, and he comes back out of retirement. But his son's a spoiled brat in his 20s who hates being Rocky's son, even though he secretly loves his dad and so on. And Rocky eventually has it out with him in the street, and he says, look, life is. It will knock you down and keep you there if you let it. And the way that winning is done in life is not how hard you can hit, it's how hard you can get hit, get back up and keep moving forward. Now, you know that, Gillian. I know that I do. And we've learned the hard way. I tell young people, understand, life is hard, right? And you all get too cosseted. Now, at schools, when they brought in participation prizes for kids at school, where if you came last, you got a prize, I was like, how does that prepare you for the real world? How does that prepare a child for the adult world where you don't get a participation prize if you come last, you get fired. Right. You know, and I just think this whole mindset has been so wrong for young people. And thankfully I think that kind of wokery view of weaknesses, strength and so on is beginning to go because we've realized how damaging it is. You should be encouraged to want to win, to be the best of what you can possibly be in life, to back yourself to be a winner. These are good things, not things to be ashamed of. And if you come last, don't have a party with your friends celebrating how terrible you are. Just look at yourself in the mirror and say, I'm going to be better next time. You know, I was never any good at athletics. I was a great cricket player when I was young. I was good at soccer, football, good at a few sports, terrible at athletics. Both my brothers were great sprinters, jumpers and everything else. But I used to always win the non finalist race, which was for all the people who never made a final on sports day. I used to win that one. I was the best of the bad athletes and I'm prouder of that than I am about anything I've achieved in my life. Because actually what it showed me was even when I'm terrible at something, I would still have that competitive zeal to be the best of the losers. I appreciate that.
- [16:22]
Jillian Michaels
I want to shift gears on you because I have got to ask you about the interview with Yay and Sneako. So first question is, listen, you're a free speech absolutist. However, I have watched you talk about the fact that you think his account should be shut down on X and you famously took inches off of his dick by giving him 32 million followers when he had 33. I mean, I was crying, laughing in the car at something that should arguably be an outrage that, that said, what then makes you want to interview this guy? And I, I, I know you're like, I want to call him out on his bs, but do you feel like you got what you wanted out of that? Like we exposed him for what he is or No, I didn't feel like that line.
- [17:08]
Piers Morgan
All I got out of it was a lot of global noise, which is always quite fun if you're doing what I'm doing. I, I think he got out of it what he wanted, which was to turn the whole thing into a bit of a joke and get publicity. I kind of thought he might do something, pull a stunt like that. Sneako is like a little Andrew Tate. Like agree, he wants to be Andrew Tate, but he hasn't really got master to pull it off. He's just quite an annoying little sidekick. One of my favorite cartoon strips when I grew up was called Dastardly and Mutley. And I sort of see ye as dastardly and sneaky as his little Mutley. Mutley was the sniggering little dog in the corner that would laugh at everything Dastardly did. Now, my thinking about ye is obviously you're dealing with one of the most iconic music stars of my lifetime, an absolute genius when it comes to music, but who a few years ago went completely nuts and began being brazenly, openly anti Semitic. And when he was allowed back onto X, it was one of my bugbears with Elon, who I really admire and think he's a genius. But we had a falling out a bit. I was going to interview him and then he found out I criticized him over allowing Alex Jones back on his platform. And he had originally said he wouldn't allow Alex Jones back on. And I said the reason he shouldn't was that Alex Jones had a $1 billion defamation case awarded against him for deliberately inflaming the grief of Sandy Hook relatives by perpetrating things he knew to be lies about them. You know, having actors who created the whole shooting and so on, making people attack the relatives of those who died to go and desecrate the graves of the dead. That's what he did, whilst making hundreds of millions of dollars out of his lies that he promoted on social media. I don't think he should have been allowed to do it. Elon was right the first time and wrong when he brought him back. Similarly with Ye, if you've got 33 million followers on a platform like X and you're spewing not just very unpleasant anti Semitic bile, but you're also telling people to whip Jews as he did, to make them slaves again. In other words, you're inciting hatred and violent hatred against a group of people based on their ethnicity, then you should not be given that platform to do it. And Elon, you know, X, I think, has been revolutionized under him. He's allowed a much fairer platform, with many conservative voices allowed to. To come and have their say in a way they didn't before he came along, and that's to be applauded. But I do think there are limits and so do x. They suspended 5 million accounts last year, often for far less offenses than what ye gets up to on an hourly basis. So, yes, I will absolutely, implacably support someone's right to free speech. But even the First Amendment has qualifications of things that are not protected, be it child pornography and incitement to violence and so on. And X has a number of his own rules which he violates with total impunity. And I don't think that's right. And so I wanted to call him out on my show, not to give him a platform to spew his bullshit, but to call him out on his bull and explain to a big global audience what he's saying here is completely wrong and I'm going to expose it to his face. Now, my offer to him was remains. If you want to come and sit with me for two hours, we'll go over absolutely everything as we did two years ago when I interviewed him then and I felt we got somewhere. I thought we got to some raw honesty in that interview and we could potentially do that again. But he has a lot to answer for and a lot to explain. And I don't think at the moment he is a safe person to be given the platform of that size by Elon Musk.
- [20:56]
Jillian Michaels
You know, I have often wondered where the line is between free speech and inciting violence. And we're seeing more and more attacks against Jews under the pretense of free Palestine. And you have to really think about, like, when Sneako is like, well, he's not whipping Jews, is he Peers. And it's like, yes, but look what just happened in Bowler, Colorado. Look at the two people that were just gunned down. You're inciting lunatics. 33 million people who follow you to do this kind of crazy, dastardly evil deed. And I, I, I, that does bring me to Elon in wondering, I see the genius. But now you've got the New York Times coming out saying like, hey, he's loaded on ketamine and ecstasy and he can't control his bladder. And there are rumblings. I have friends in Austin who are like, man, he has these crazy ketamine parties. I don't know that you, you kind of wonder is, is Elon thinking clearly? Like, why do you think Elon permits it? He's, I, he's clearly a brilliant. But there is a bizarre double standard.
- [22:01]
Piers Morgan
Yeah, listen, I, I've always been very supportive of Elon Musk. I think he is a genius. I've said that, written it, said it on air many times. I've met him a few times now, and we've had really good encounters. And then we've had some quite frostier ones. He's canceled on me twice for interviews for reasons which, honestly, it seemed very trivial. Really, for somebody who's a big free speech advocate, he's not that good at taking criticism. But ultimately, he's, he's in charge of some of the greatest, most transformative companies in history. But I think that Elon, he ought to exercise a little bit more control, I think, of people like Ye and Alex Jones and others who are deliberately misusing his platform in a way that I think if it was anybody else, they would be banned.
- [22:51]
Jillian Michaels
You have talked about not being as afraid of some of the things that are alarming people with regard to the Trump administration because you have a personal relationship with him. And Bill Maher said something very similar. Bill was like, listen, I mean, the guy that's freaking all you guys out is not the guy in the Oval Office. What is the, what is the difference then? Like, what do you see that everybody flipping out isn't seeing? And listen, I think I understand the men's intentions. I. I'm like, okay, I get it with the tariffs, and I understand this. And I understand that I'm not so sure about the strategy feels, you know, a bit bombastic, more than I'd like. But there's definitely something that the insiders see that the rest of us don't with Trump. What is that?
- [23:40]
Piers Morgan
He can be very charming and very funny and very entertaining. And honestly, how many politicians can you say those three things about in the world, right? So he's the antidote to conventional politicians. It's the complete opposite. He doesn't control what he says. It comes out of his mouth in a way that most politicians talk, like controlled robots. He will crack inappropriate comments and jokes in a way that no other politician would dare do. He doesn't care about cancel culture because as he's proven by winning back the White House, he's impervious to cancel culture. The more people try to jail him or shoot him or cancel him, the stronger he became. So Trump is a complete unique character in the history of world politics. I've known him 20 years, since I did the Celebrity Apprentice show. He's always been a very good friend to me, I have to say, personally. So when I left the CNN job and came back to the UK from the United States, I could count on one hand number of high profile Americans who bothered to stay in touch with me. Trump would get in touch with me every three, four weeks. He'd either call me for a chat, he'd send me an email message, he'd see something about me in the paper and he'd print it out and he'd get his famous sharpie. And he'd send me an encouraging note. He asked if he could help me in any way. He didn't need to do any of that and most people didn't, actually. And I remembered that he did. And so we formed a good friendship. Now I'm not afraid to criticize him and sometimes that's led to us falling out briefly. But he'll always fall back in with me. You know, I was in this very dressing room actually, when, after a six month period after I last interviewed him, when he'd gone nuts. I know, but that's a great interview. But he went nuts about the way we promoted it, even though I did exactly to him what he did to me on the Apprentice every night, which he eventually conceded. But he rang and the phone went, it was Piers is Donald. Are we good? And I was like, of course we're good. Because actually, for me, the good outweighs the negative with him. But he's always going to be his own person and he's always going to shoot from the hip and he's always going to say things which wind people up and he doesn't always mean what he says. But his big picture gut instincts are quite good. In fact, I would say they're very good. Most Americans, probably, if you sat down calmly with a group and said, would you like to see a stricter policy on the southern border to stop illegal immigrants coming in than you saw under Biden? Yes. And Trump's performed miracles on the southern border. Would you like to see peace, not war around the world, an end to war in Gaza, an end to war in Ukraine? Well, yes, we would, yeah. Would you like to see America's economy on a fairer keel than it has been, particularly at the hands of China? They've been abusing really a lot of the American economy for their own gain again. Yes. So you sort of go through all the things that Trump stands for and everyone knows what he stands for. Most people probably agree with the big picture. Where they disagree sometimes is the rhetoric he uses to promote them and the way he goes about some of it. And I think that's something that is never going to change. And there is a real disease called Trump derangement syndrome, where a lot of people on the left just cannot even hear his name mentioned without going into some form of anaphylactic shock. And I just think it's such a waste of energy. Apart from anything else, it makes him laugh. So you just making him laugh. Is that what you want from your devil figure? So I Think, look, he's a completely unique character. He's another person that backs himself completely. I think his whole life story is of a guy who has always backed himself and he's done it to the highest office in Milan twice. And people have tried to kill him, they've tried to jail him, they tried to silence him, cancel him. The one thing you cannot argue about, Donald Trump, he is the most resilient human being that's probably ever lived.
- [27:43]
Jillian Michaels
There is definitely that theme of people who are fearless. And I obviously have put you in that category. And I say this as a person who aspires to be as courageous as you are. Now, you mentioned like, well, I criticize Elon and I'll call out Trump and you'll get the cold shoulder that does. That is always kind of in the back of my mind. Like, I'm like, oh, God, if I call out the New York Times piece and I ever want to put this on X when I will there be something punitive? Will it get buried in the algorithm? But you aren't afraid of that. Is there anything, is there any topic you won't touch? Is there any truth you won't tell?
- [28:21]
Piers Morgan
No, no, absolutely not. And nor is there any box that I will be put into. You know, I will not be parked into any partisan box. I'm not left, I'm not right, I'm not this, I'm not that. I am me. I'm a journalist. I try and look at things objectively. I try to be firm and fair. I try to challenge everybody in the same rigorous manner. I try to call out where I see it. And I think that's why Uncensored has proved so popular, is everyone knows that I get everybody on. We have sometimes very, as you know, very passionate, fiery debate, or we have very, you know, long, interesting one on one interviews. We have the whole mix. But ultimately I don't think anyone can look at me and say, well, he's just a partisan hack, because I'm not. And I think that gives me a fairly unique place in this whole YouTube world, which is becoming, as we know, ever more dominant. And I was in the Middle east last week and I couldn't believe a number of young people in Dubai coming up to me who watch Uncensored. And they were loving. When I said why? They said, because you get everybody on. It's like a proper debate and we want to hear both sides. Young people have a thirst for hearing both sides of an argument and making their own minds up. I love that. That to me, as A journalist is where I think every journalist should aspire to be. You shouldn't ever have people watching you going, well, he's obviously in that team or that team. That's not my job as a journalist. My job is to call things out with every team.
- [29:52]
Jillian Michaels
You know the other I kind of liken it to as a health person, when you hide spinach and brownies for kids. Nobody on the right wants to listen to a left wing show, and nobody on the left wants to listen to a right wing show. But when you get everybody on, you're exposing them to different perspectives, whether they like it or not. And it's such a massive public service that you're doing. I have a few like questions I've been dying to ask you. And I'm watching the time. Four minutes. Okay.
- [30:22]
Piers Morgan
Who?
- [30:22]
Jillian Michaels
You said Elon Musk. So I'm wondering if maybe you've said it already, but if you could interview anyone, who would it be?
- [30:29]
Piers Morgan
Definitely Elon would be right up there. The new Pope. I'd love to. I've never interviewed a Pope. Came quite close with Pope Francis actually went to the Vatican and met his press people and we came quite close, but it never happened. But I think the new Pope is fascinating. The first American Pope. I interviewed his brother actually on Uncensored, who's quite a maga guy, which was really interesting. And he's put a good word in for me, he says, with His Holiness. I am an Irish Catholic, so I'm one of the clan. And I think it'd be fascinating to sit down with a Pope in this day and age and ask him to question. The one I would have loved to have interviewed was the late great Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth ii, because she never gave an interview in her whole reign. And what a life she led. You think of the President she met, the Prime Minister, she met, the private conversations she had with pretty much every significant person of the last 80 years. And she never told. And, and she ended up being unbelievably beloved around the world. And there's a lesson there for people who over emote, who talk too much. You know, who are in these positions either the royals. If you look at the way that Meghan and Harry have gone and compare it to the Queen, the Queen ended up beloved after a 75 year reign. And these two have ended up loathed and reviled. And there's a lesson there, you know, people, you can't, you can't scam your way to people's respect and admiration. You can only do it the way the queen did it, which is to be there for the country when we needed her. And less is more. Let us saying, you know, never explain, never complain, and rarely be heard speaking in public. That was the Queen's mantra she got from her mother, the late great queen mother. And they were right. The more the royals talk, the less interesting they become. Same with movie stars. If you think about it. Jack Nicholson hasn't done a television interview in 45 years, I think. And he's still Jack Nicholson, the coolest cat in Hollywood, because we don't know that much about him. He never tells us. He just does his gray roles.
- [32:34]
Jillian Michaels
Okay. Of all the debates, I mean, Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson, of all the one on ones, which is your favorite and why?
- [32:47]
Piers Morgan
I'd actually say the one I did with Bassem Yousif, who's a kind of Arab. Jon Stewart, because he did a half hour interview with me right near the start of the war and he was very pro Palestinian. He's from Egypt. He was the biggest TV star in Egypt for a few years, and it got driven out when the military took over. And he just came at me with such a brilliant way of tackling the debate where he made light, appeared to make light in a very dark way of using his wife and children as human shields and so on. And it really caught fire online. 23 million people watched that interview on my channel, and it was extraordinary. And everywhere I go in the Middle east now, everyone talks about that interview. But I think in terms of impact, that was definitely the one that made the most impact globally because it came at a time when I think people were trying to work out what to think about what had happened. And he was brilliantly able to crystallize the Palestinian view in a way that I think hadn't really been done in such a powerful, evocative way.
- [33:54]
Jillian Michaels
Piers, I know you need to run, obviously, tell people where they can find you and get more.
- [34:02]
Piers Morgan
Well, I always ask this, but you're so hugely famous. Get on YouTube and every. We're on every podcast platform now. As of the last couple of months, we're about to pass 4 million subscribers. We get millions of views for all our. All our stuff. The great thing about YouTube is no one can hide. All your numbers are there. Everyone can see who's watching. And we are right now probably up there as one of the two or three biggest watch shows of our kind in the world. Very proud of that. Very proud of my team. I'm very proud of having a place, I think, in global debate whether it's about Trump and tariffs, or about Ukraine or about Israel, wherever it may be. I feel that we've become the place that people turn to to hear all sides of a debate and make their own minds up.
- [34:46]
Jillian Michaels
I love that you absolutely have, and there's no question that you have hit your stride. Continue making incredible impacts. Thank you for everything you do. And thank you for joining me.
- [34:57]
Piers Morgan
Well, I've loved it. You have a great show yourself, and it's always great having you on mine. So thank you.
- [35:02]
Jillian Michaels
Thank you, boss. I know you need to run.
- [35:05]
Piers Morgan
Take care. All the best.
- [35:07]
Jillian Michaels
Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please, like, comment, subscribe and share. And make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.