Mickey Jo (0:00)

So, fun fact. I actually went to go and see Sunset Boulevard on Broadway as a Wednesday matinee the day after the US election, hours after the political future of the country had been horrifyingly identified. And while watching it, it struck me. I don't think there is a less politically resonant show on Broadway right now. Truly, there was nothing in that material that really spoke to the current situation, unlike in many other shows. That is, until the next day when everything was going to change. Oh, my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media, as well as a content creator and theatrical pundit. And today we're going to be talking all about the social media downfall of Nicole Scherzinger, currently starring as Norma Desmond in the Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard. And since this story began developing a couple of weeks ago, it has been all over social media. I was in New York at the time and the extent to which this was immediately everywhere was kind of extraordinary. I think it speaks to the community, the theatre community that exists within the Midtown Manhattan theatre district. But I was seeing a different Broadway show, not Sunset Boulevard, that evening and I stepped outside and immediately ran into an actor who is performing on Broadway, who I don't know that closely, but who I see an awful lot. And we immediately started talking about the Nicole Scherzinger of it all. And then I went to go to a bar with some friends where the server came and spoke to us about the Nicole Scherzinger of it all. Everyone was talking about this. And if you have no idea what I am referring to, I am going to let you know. In this video, we're going to talk about the drama, we're going to talk about the context for all of this, the history. We're going to talk about what actually happened, how it has been received, as well as my own thoughts on it, which may surprise you. Ahead of that, I want to issue a disclaimer about how dismayed I am by the results of the US election, how horrified and apprehensive I am about the next few years in the US Especially for my friends who live there, especially for the marginalized communities who are going to be more affected by this presidency, especially for women, and especially for queer people, especially for immigrants. I am hoping against hope that the horror show that many people are envisioning is an exaggeration of what is going to happen over the next four years, but I also don't think it pays to be unrealistically optimistic about it. That being said, my feelings about this particular situation and this particular drama and this particular story aren't nearly as black and white as my political stance. But we're going to talk about that later. For now, let me explain to you who is Nicole Scherzinger and what on earth happened here just before I do though, if you enjoy today's video, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on those notifications somewhere down below my face so that YouTube will let you know every time I post a new theatre themed video. There is much happening in the theatre world right now. I just got back from New York where I saw so many shows. I'm going to be telling you about all of them as well as sharing vlog content from that trip. And I want to add as well, I have been waiting to make this video because I wanted to give it the necessary time and nuance that it needed. I put something out about it on Twitter and I think I in a TikTok comment as But I don't love either of those platforms for having nuanced well rounded discussions. I think Twitter, especially lately X Sorry, the app formerly known as Twitter is so relentlessly combative and in fact I think I'm past the point where I ever want to post on that platform again. Let's all just join Blue sky, shall we? I've been on it only for a few days, but it seems like immediately a much more positive version of of that platform that's otherwise almost identical and former. Twitter has just become such a hellscape of ego and bigotry and disturbing political propaganda, it's scarcely even usable or enjoyable anymore. I am jumping ship off of that platform completely, and I'm heading over to somewhere considerably more positive. Anyway, back to the possible cancellation of Nicole Scherzinger, let's talk about it. So Nicole Scherzinger, perhaps best known to the world as a former member of the Pussycat Dolls, an integral former member of the Pussycat Dolls, that' that's a law all of its own. She has always had considerable vocal talent, and though she appeared on stage in a revival of Andrew Edwebber's Cats in the West End some years ago, and that was set to come to Broadway and she didn't end up doing it on Broadway because she chose TV opportunity instead, and Lloyd Webber sort of publicly spoke out about thinking that that was a bad idea. She has now had the opportunity to have this stage vehicle crafted around her talents. Those talents being the stratospheric voice as well as considerable dance ab a very intense acting performance. All of this displayed in her role as Norma Desmond in a revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard. This particular production, which originated at the Savoy Theatre in the West End, is a very bold departure, aesthetically and tonally, from the original source material and most other previous productions. And Nicole stars as this aging silent screen star who has been forgotten by Hollywood and now lives as a recluse in her Sunset Boulevard mansion. That is, until a young, out of work and broke screenwriter named Joe Gillis finds himself stumbling unexpectedly into her home. He inadvertently reveals that he is a screenwriter and she asks him if he would take a look at a script that she has been working on that would constitute her return to cinema. This being some sort of an impossible fantasy that she has been clinging to in her later years. Now, even though this role, which was originally portrayed on screen by Gloria Swanson, has been performed by many fantastic actresses over the years, Originally by Patti LuPone, then on Broadway and in Los Angeles by Glenn Close as well, subsequently by Diane Carroll and Betty Buckley and Elaine Page and many others, Nicole still elicited huge praise both from critics and audience members for her performance, for this incredibly powerful performance. If you would like to hear what I thought of it, you can go and watch my original Sunset Boulevard review right here on YouTube. I apologise, it's quite long. But this praise was sustained throughout the British awards season, where Nicole won not only the what's On Stage award as voted for by the public, but also the Olivier Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, voted for by the members of the Society of London Theatre. Like I said, audience acclaim and industry acclaim and everything that has happened since notwithstanding, she is remarkable revelatory, even in this role. She gives us a new Norma Desmond for this new production and no one can say that she is giving anything less than the entirety of herself to this performance. She is beating her chest with this animalistic fury. You can see the veins as she is performing these staggering pieces of music. It's a hugely soul exposing performance. She is wiping blood all over her face. She is rolling around on stage and sliding into the splits. She is sprinting across the stage in the second act. She is having giant camera HD close ups on her face, crossfading her with a young actress who looks like her, only decades younger, like it's not a flattering production, catering to her ego and her sensibilities whatsoever. She is giving herself over to this thing relentlessly. I have seen her do this twice now, once in the West End, once on Broadway, and the extent of the performance was similar, as were the extents of the reaction. People have been very effusive in praise of her. And yet the fact that she won multiple awards for doing the role in London was no guarantee she was going to win the coveted Tony Award on Broadway, which, you know, for all intents and purposes seems to count for more. And the reasons for this are largely twofold. First of all, winning the Olivier does not guarantee you winning the Tony. Just ask Eddie Redmayne, who last season, despite having won the Olivier Award for playing the MC in revival of Cabaret, did not win the Tony Award for the same role in the same production once it transferred. Or indeed, Katy Braben, currently starring on Broadway in Tammy Faye as Tammy Faye, who won the Olivier for playing Tammy Faye in Tammy Faye. Not to say that she isn't going to win the Tony this year, but her and Nicole both won the Olivier and you know, they can't both win the Tony unless there was a tie. But this brings me to the second factor, which is the Broadway return of multi Tony Award winning actress Audra McDonald. In fact, Audra McDonald has won more Tony Awards for acting than any other human being in the history of theatre. She has won Tony Awards in every acting category available to her. Leading actress in a musical, supporting actress in a musical, as well as their counterparts in plays. And true enough, she has not won a Tony Award every single time she has been on Broadway. She does have a pretty decent track record for it. But she is returning in what happens to be one of the greatest roles written for women in musical theatre, if not the greatest, because she is going to play the iconic Rose in Gypsy. And if there's one role that might be showier than Norma Desmond, it's Rose. And so as soon as these two revivals were revealed to be in the same season, the conversation immediately became who is it going to be? Is it going to be Audra McDonald? Is it going to be Nicole Scherzinger? I think, you know, there's been a slightly unfair writing off of every other actress coming to Broadway this year, including Katy Braben, including Jasmine, Amy Rogers, who will be leading Boop. Including Idina Menzel, including Megan Hilty and Jen Simone. And they're not the only ones. But certainly there's a lot of focus on the Nicole vs. Audra of it all until drama happened. So Nicole was getting pretty much unanimous raves from both the Broadway community and its critics until the election, and specifically two days after the election. Now, I am assuming everyone is abreast of the full context here in what happened in the recent US Election, but Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris was running as the Democratic Party nominee against former President Donald Trump, who was the Republican Party nominee. And though President Joe Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race had sparked among many people an increased hope in the days leading up to the election, it began to become eerily clear that this wasn't quite a guaranteed landslide. And in fact, for many reasons that have now been discussed and analyzed at length, Kamala Harris did not win enough votes in enough states to become the next president of the United States. And to the surprise of some, Donald Trump did. And to be in the heavily Democratic New York City at this time was just an incredibly bleak experience. There was this really heavy solemnity and misery that could be felt in the city in the days in the weeks that followed, and I'm not standing in criticism of that whatsoever. It was a very strange time to be in the US as someone who is a tourist, as someone who is British, I don't live in the U.S. i don't have U.S. citizenship. I go there a handful of times a year, and I have the privilege at the end of that trip and at the end of each of my trips to be able to get on a plane and fly away from it all. Not that the UK has been without its own political angst for the past few years and arguably ongoing. But without wishing to seem politically performative, I am very concerned about the next few years for the US for my friends in the US and the other thing that I need you to understand about all of this is how fearful people were and people still are, and rightfully so. But it was amongst this climate that it emerged that Nicole Scherzinger had liked a couple of dubious Instagram posts. In fact, the first one was a comment she had commented beneath a post by Russell Brand, who used to be an actor and who is now a lunatic. He was wearing a red Donald Trump Make America Great Again style hat, but instead on it it said, make Jesus first again. Now, I disengaged sufficiently from Russell Brand, my least favorite of Katy Perry's husbands, that I have no idea where he stands politically. And I don't actually know if this hat was a sort of a Trump alternative endorsement of Trump, like the red hat is for Trump. And his own message was like a version of that, where he was super focused on the religion that he pretends to care about so he can make money. Or if it was a alternative, if he was saying, don't make America great again, don't focus on nationalism. Nationalism, by the way, which very much befits this incoming government, especially when you translate it into German. But yeah, I wasn't really sure if this was a show of support for the incoming President Trump, which I just hate to say, or a criticism of his campaign and of his values and of what he stands for. Maybe not centering faith and religion enough at the heart of all of this. In any case, Nicole Scherzinger had commented beneath this post with where can I get this hat? Which, aside from anything else, is a slightly inane question because, you know, Google it. But I think that speaks to something which we're going to circle back to in just a moment. This was the thing that first caught people's attention and it spread across social media like wildfire. And across, like I said, the midtown Manhattan theatre district, everyone was talking about this. People then alerted to what seemed like an endorsement of Trump and of the whole make America great again ideal people went searching through her social media and found that she had also liked a post by RFK Jr who previously had also been running for election this year in the US that again, I was attempting to disengage from politically. So I really don't know that much about him, other than him being an unscientific and hazardous nightmare. But within that post were contained hashtags more explicitly, explicitly supportive of Donald Trump's presidency. And so the natural conclusion of all of this was that Nicole Scherzinger herself was pro Trump, was pro make America great Again and all of those things, and had presumably voted for Trump in the days before the keyword here being presumably. And this spread beyond the theater community who were horrified and appalled by this, having been rooting for her, having embraced her into the community. And it spread beyond them to the mainstream news. And this was heavily talked about, the timing of all of it, it has to be said, really wasn't fantastic. She was kind of the first outed Republican again, presumably in the days after the election, which was still being felt, is still being felt acutely and painfully in many parts of the US and because the New York theatre community, and because Hollywood sort of lean more liberal, you get very few celebrities outing themselves as Republicans. That's not to say that there aren't many. You just don't get many open talking about it. You get many more celebrities endorsing liberal candidates, which is something that we saw in this election it didn't work, but we saw it. And once people thought that they had found this out about Nicole Scherzing, they went back through her social media and they found a video that she had posted on or just before Election Day of her walking down this corridor saying, on my way to make the right decision, which people now view through a different lens. And they think it's her sort of, like, gloating about being on her way to go and vote for Trump or being duplicitous about voting for Kamala. And I saw as much angry discourse about this as I did campy memes and a lot of different hat jokes of people posting different hats. And Nicole's comment underneath, where can I get this hat now? Within a few days of this all happening, Nicole Scherzinger had released a statement or a statement had been released on behalf of Nicole Scherzinger on her platforms. As this was happening, Sunset Boulevard had turned off the comments on their social media because otherwise it would just be flooded with a lot of anger and negativity, and they came under fire for doing this. And I have to say, please do not direct this anger, no matter how valid, towards the social media accounts of the show, because there are real people working behind these who find these experiences incredibly traumatic. And when you're doing that, you're not talking to the producers, you're not talking to the cast, you're not talking to the writers. You are talking to the social media team. It's not an intern in most cases, but you're talking to the social media representatives, and they do not have the power to exact and release a statement of their own accord. Wheels will have been put in motion to make that happen at that point, but harassing the Instagram account isn't going to make it come faster. Whatever political activism you think you're doing there, I promise you are just typing. Anyway, this is the statement that was released on Nicole Scherzinger's Instagram story. I deeply apologize for the hurt caused by my recent engagement with some social media posts. When I commented on these posts, I made the mistake of not realizing that they could be easily interpreted as being politically related. And I apologize to anyone who understandably reached that conclusion. Many presumptions are being drawn which do not reflect who I am, what I stand for, or who I voted for. That's key. Many of the marginalized communities feeling hurt and concerned by the results of the presidential election are people I care about most. I stand with them as I always have. Throughout my life and career. If you know me, you know that like so many others, in times of adversity and uncertainty, I turn to my faith. I believe that the posts I engaged with were about encouraging people to choose love and faith, putting Jesus first. For me, Christ embodies peace, compassion, hope and above all, unconditional love, especially for those who may feel it the least right now. I come from a place of love and I will always support values that bring us closer together. It's so important we come together with compassion and love one another more now than ever. Ever. So that is what happened. In the immediate aftermath of this. There was an extraordinary amount of criticism of her, of the show. People encouraging people to go and see the Tuesday night performances where Mandy Gonzalez appears as a guest artist in the role of Norma Desmond rather than Nicole. People talking about a boycott of the show entirely. People selling their tickets via third party ticket selling apps because they could no longer financially support this show and her by extension. And it's largely in response to all of that reaction to this that I have the following feelings. Here is what I think about all of this now. I've been talking about this at length over and over again with a lot of friends for the past couple of weeks and there are so many things I want to remember to say here. The first thing is a conversation about who did what here with social media. And I do believe, though not all stars are in control of their own social media accounts, I do believe that she liked those posts and she engaged with those posts. Personally, I don't. Well, we know that she didn't write that statement independently, but I also don't think that it was written entirely without her involvement because some of it speaks very personally. The criticism of the statement has been that she didn't say she voted for Kamala. She implies that she didn't vote for Trump, but she wasn't willing to say that she voted for Kamala. And my thoughts on that, if we're being completely objective, if we are separating ourselves from the pain of the last few weeks and the pain of the coming political turmoil that I get get and I understand and I am right there with you, I think we can agree no matter where you are on the political spectrum, it is not a good idea, it is not a positive thing to try and out people's political affiliations and force them to disclose who they voted for in the UK specifically. This is really not a done thing. Further to that, people are of course entitled to boycott and to spend their money how they see fit and to be and to feel comfortable how they are spending their money and with the performers and the shows that they are supporting. But the idea that someone ought to be fired based on their political affiliations and their voting history, I hope we can agree no matter where you are on the political spectrum is not a good idea. Because if we support that for Republicans, whose values we may not agree with, whose values I certainly don't agree with, then it almost promotes a support of the alternative and the same thing happening to Democratic voters. And the kicker to all of this is I don't think she voted for Trump. I really don't. Here's what I think happened. I think Nicole Scherzinger is giving that performance like five, six days a week in Sunset Boulevard. She is bearing her soul on stage. She is belting to the heaven. She's sprinting across. She's covering her face in blood. It's a soul bearing, thorough performance she is giving nightly. She goes back home afterwards, she shattered. She's scrolling Instagram like this. She's not what we would call a digital native. She may not have the most social media fluency. I think she's holding the phone this close to her face. She's still got blood on her chin. She's like, yep, Jesus, love that. Yep. Save the children. Yep. Whatever, Health of America. And that's what's happening here. I do not think that this was politically motivated. I think this happened out of a political ignorance. Because I also don't think Nicole Scherzinger is the most politically astute person going. I know that RFK Jr is a lunatic because I've seen that on Twitter. But I haven't understandably been engaging with the American election because the resources aren't really available for me to do that here. Now, she is American and she has had the opportunity to do that. But do we really think that Nicole Scherzinger, of all people, is the most politically engaged and the most politically mindful? Because I really don't think so. Hence why we can look back at that comment she made about not realizing the political relevance of those posts that initially seemed baffling and preposterous and consider maybe that was just, just genuinely the truth and Trump was explicitly in the hashtags of the RFK post. But I also do not look at every single hashtag of every post that I like. Now, if it seems like I'm doing a lot of gymnastics here to try and justify this, I'm really not. I'm just offering an alternative that I think no one is really considering. And what people have really been outraged by on behalf of her cast, who I don't believe have said anything on behalf of the Broadway community, is that, you know, she doesn't personally reflect the values of that community. But if we go back to what is said in this statement, if we are willing to take it at its word, even if it is a constructed thing involving the marketing department, the prs, whoever, then she is talking about solidarity with marginalized, wounded communities and concerns for them and leading with love. It's clear that she is heavily religious and she comes from that kind of a background. She has a very religious family. There was some news a few years ago when she was doing was it like a remake of Dirty Dancing? And the character she was playing in that had an abortion. And she said she that was difficult for her because she is personally anti abortion. On the back of this, people have been saying she's anti abortion in such a way to imply that she is anti abortion for all. And that is her personal conviction that, again, she is entitled to. I think what we're experiencing here is a discrepancy between Republican values and political Republicanism and an endorsement of Trump, which is not necessarily completely aligned with that idea either. Privately, I've heard that Nicole Scherzinger can't stand Trump because of everything that he personally stands for. Privately, I have heard that she voted for Kamala Harris in the most recent presidential election. And I'm going to say that here, even though I can't talk about how I know that information, and I can't substantiate that whatsoever, because I would like for you to understand that this is not how I would be responding to this if I had any belief that she did actually vote for Trump. And also that it's entirely feasible to me that she voted for Kamala and still isn't willing to address it and say so explicitly because she has the right to retain some level of political anonymity, as do we all. Another component of all of this is some people say the most distressing part of all of this is the fact that she was engaging with content from Russell Brand. And again, I'm willing to draw a veil over this with the idea that she may not realize the extent to which he is everything that he now is in discussing this with other people. I don't think my parents are necessarily aware of what Russell Brand has gone on to become. It's so far from what he originally was. I don't think it's obvious if she's following him on social media, then she is more likely to see that. But again, she is, she is a very religious person. And all of the more nefarious stuff that people just like Russell Brand, as well as he himself post on social media is is hidden behind this facade of positivity and love and light and Christianity and glory. It's only beneath that that you start to see all of the psychosis. And again, I think that requires a certain amount of mindfulness and, and being politically astute in order to glimpse that a lot of people are easily taken in by it. It's what it's designed to do. And so this begins to look like someone who ought to be cancelled less for their personal political convictions and more for their ignorance. And is ignorance something that we want to deplatform someone for? Here's the thing. She didn't make an open statement about all of this. She commented on a post and she liked another one. And this is a level of behavior that because of celebrity status, people feel entitled to. People feel they need to be made aware of what someone's values are. And certainly if you have a platform as a celebrity, I think people have a certain right to that as well. But to go through someone's Instagram likes, even to find out something that you think is very important, again, it just makes me a little uncomfortable. Which brings me to the only thing that I have said about this previously on social media, which was on X. And I sort of regret saying this because I felt like I found myself in slightly hot water, understandably, because it's not a platform where you can have full and nuanced conversations. But here is what I said about this whole situation. I said, controversially, I think bullying performers with some conservative values into becoming radicalized echo chamber Republicans is a bad idea. And a lot of people had strong responses to that. Here is what I meant. And I was thinking specifically about Laura Osnes, because Laura Osnes used to be this Broadway star with a bright career. She was on Broadway in the original cast of Bonnie and Clyde in a revival of Rogers and Amerstein's Cinderella in Greece, in South Pacific, in many shows, and she was quite universally liked. She was delightful. She was, and presumably still is, remarkably talented. But as theatre was beginning to return in the US amidst the COVID 19 pandemic, there was some controversy around her decision not to get vaccinated. And her justification of this being that it was because she wanted to retain options in terms of starting a family. This particular moment triggering a wider investigation into her Again, religious values and political affiliations. And what's happened subsequently is that she's kind of been ousted from the Broadway community and she performs in context and in like, in films that are more in line with her political convictions. And this is what I was referring to in this tweet, because beforehand she was real quiet about all of this. But after this was outed and talked about heavily on social media and kind of ended her Broadway career, she was now emboldened to become this Republican martyr. And it feels like it's the left wing that did that, myself included. I made a video talking about the Laura Osnes drama situation. And, you know, I think it's taken a few years to see the bigger picture here and I feel regretful about having done that, that not because I didn't believe in everything I was saying at the time, but because I think the idea of just trying to simply silence and push away all political alternatives ultimately kind of offers them a position of different power. So it's like I said in my tweet, bullying them into becoming radicalized echo chamber Republicans, a bad idea. And I do agree that actions have consequences and I do think that the statement released by Nicole Scherzinger is quite limited. I also don't think this is going to have nearly as big an effect on the show as people are acting like it will on social media. Again, we live in a whole kind of theatre industry bubble. There are a lot of people outside that who are still going to be booking tickets to Sunset Boulevard, regardless of a couple of things that she did on social media. Someone commented on Live the other day, I heard there was going to be an LA run and now it's been cancelled because of this. I don't have any reason to believe there was an LA run at all. People just want that to happen so that when they walk outside and do the thing at the start of the second act, they'll actually be doing Sunset Boulevard. On Sunset Boulevard. But that's not going to happen anyway because of Jogger. Nothing has been cancelled. No one is being fired. Is it going to affect her Tony chances? Very possibly. And not just because she did the thing, but because of all of this backlash happening afterwards. Her actions won't affect her Tony Awards chances nearly as much as what everyone else is doing subsequently. Even what I'm doing here right now, because it's all contributing to this story and to the PR narrative. And the Tony Awards, as much as anything else, are a big PR campaign. They talk about this in the Musical, the Prom, Funnily enough, people don't vote for you, they vote for your brand. And Nicole Scherzinger's brand has certainly been tainted by this, especially when one of the biggest focuses of her interviews before opening night was talking about being embraced and feeling embraced by the theatre community. That now hits differently. But I also can't really bring myself to feel that sad about that or that sorry about that. Because who's winning a Tony Award next year is not as important as the hardships that are going to be experienced by so many people because of this presidency. And Nicole Scherzinger is the smallest, most insignificant detail of all of that. And I think the conversation has been blown so far out of proportion and I think it's willfully ignorant of any of us to pretend like she's the only theoretical Republican on Broadway when there's a David Mamet play coming in in the new year, someone who has been open about being pro Trump when there are various politically ambiguous stars coming into shows in the new year. Here you have a non white woman who has engaged with a couple of social media posts that I believe you could write off to an extraordinary amount of political ignorance and post show exhaustion. Frankly, being held to this wildly different standards to a handful of men in the industry. If you want to find the Republicans, go look at the producers, go look at the investors. You can find a Republican attached to every single Broadway show if you look. And I don't see the same energy for other problematic productions. There is still a play on Broadway that continues to line the pockets of a wildly transphobic individual who uses uses their considerable platform to spread anti trans hate on the daily. Whereas the Broadway community's anger about that. I still see people dressed up in cloaks and wands and why is it so often that it's only the women that we're trying to cancel and they're the ones that stay canceled? Men seem to be able to bounce back from anything. I do think that we need to have a bigger conversation about society's institutionalized misogyny. I don't think that we talk about that enough. There were of course, many factors in the recent election, but I do believe one small component of that is the reluctance to elect a woman to presidential office. And the way that we are now painting Nicole Scherzinger as the villain of Broadway, I think is participatory in all of that as well. Even in this show. Honestly, Angelo Webber, who wrote this, who continues to be involved in this production, has, you know, had political participation in the past that has only worsened poverty and austerity conditions for some of the most harder up in British society years after this. He now describes himself as being apolitical, but why is that not something that we're still mad about? But Nicole Scherzinger leaving one Instagram comment and liking another post is this extraordinary offense and that's the reason to boycott Sunset Boulevard? I do not want to condemn the individuals who have perpetuated this narrative and who have agreed with this and who may continue to agree with this because I understand the place of hurt and fear that it's coming from. But I also think, given the context of everything, that we continue Put down the pitchforks, but those for now are my thoughts about the Nicole Scherzinger situation. It's entirely possible that we have crested the wave of this moment on social media and the rest of the run will play out with less controversy. But if the discourse continues, then perhaps you will see me on here talking about it some more. I would love to talk about almost anything else, but those have been my thoughts. I would love to hear yours, as always, in the comments section down below. Given the contentious nature of this video's topics, I would encourage everyone to lead with compassion and understanding and be respectful towards each other as a priority in the comments section. And if anyone is here from a very pro Trump, pro Russell Brand standpoint, then I simply don't want to hear from you. And I know I implied that we ought to be open to different political perspectives earlier in this video, but I am very comfortable drawing the line at those that continue to spread hateful, endangering divisions. Which brings me to the end of this video. I hope that you have enjoyed Question mark. I hope it's been informative. I really hope that you have taken what I have to say about this in good faith and I hope that everyone is staying safe. I really mean that and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Micky Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.