"The Special Relationship": Too Much, Notting Hill, and the strange case of American women and English men

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Special Relationship": Too Much, Notting Hill, and the Strange Case of American Women and English Men

Podcast: Sentimental Garbage
Host: Caroline O'Donoghue
Guest: Monica Heisey
Release Date: August 21, 2025

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Episode Overview

This Sentimental Garbage episode dives into the persistent trope of American women and English men in romantic comedies and fiction, using recent hits like Lena Dunham’s Too Much and classics like Notting Hill as lenses. Host Caroline O’Donoghue and guest Monica Heisey (writer, performer, and co-writer/star of Too Much) explore where this dynamic comes from, its gendered nature, how it plays out in both pop culture and real life, and why we’re still obsessed—with a few pointed tangents along the way.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Trope in Culture and Media

• The Set-Up (03:30–04:32):
  Caroline introduces the episode: “That thing today is, is American girls and English men, specifically in romantic comedy film, I guess in culture more broadly.”
  Monica frames it as a “vibe” as much as a plot.

• Why So Prevalent? (08:14–09:54)
  Caroline argues, “Everything tends to be a photocopy of a photocopy… What we kind of don’t realize is those things were originally created in response to a political climate…”—suggesting historical and cultural forces drive the trope’s persistence, not just shared language.

• Gendered Directionality (09:30–09:54)
  Monica notes it's “almost always American women and British men. There’s something very gendered about it. It very rarely goes the other way.”
  Caroline foreshadows that research will get into why.

2. Reflections from Too Much and Personal Experience

• Art Imitates Life (and Vice Versa) (05:19–06:34):
  Monica recounts writing Too Much before falling into the exact trope in her own dating life, joking, “She [Lena] does think that she manifested my current relationship and I'm not convinced that's not the case.”
  She also matches fiction and life—a rom-com she wrote called Smothered featured a British Tom, then she dated a British Tom.

• Living the Bridget Jones London Experience (06:53–07:57)
  Monica: “I lived like around the corner from Bridget Jones's… Those sort of Anglophile fantasies are really prevalent in North America and in. As a result in our culture.”

3. Recent Cultural Surge and “Rule Britannia” Moments

• Current Wave (11:02–14:53):

  • Lena Dunham’s Too Much
  • Multiple new Austen adaptations under way
  • In And Just Like That, Carrie Bradshaw’s new love interest is an English biographer
    Monica: “There's a little bit of sort of special girl syndrome to having a British boyfriend.”

• American Women, English Men as a Sign of Individuality or Specialness (15:24–16:54) “There's a little bit of sort of special girl syndrome to having a British boyfriend,” Monica says, linking it to pop culture (Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo).

• Myth-Making and National Identity (16:14–17:18):
  Monica observes, “America and England as countries, there's so much between them that it's, like, very easy to participate then in sort of personal myth making when you are going out across the cultures.”

4. Vulnerability, Fish Out of Water, and Escapism

• Why the Trope Clicks (19:16–23:08):
  Monica: “One of the things that I think these stories are based in is someone who doesn't know anything, right?... Fish out of Water will remain like the romantic genre.” Caroline: “Vulnerability is one of the most contagious emotions, you know?”

• Conflict Through Difference (21:18–23:36):
  Cultural differences provide believable, “light” obstacles—conflict external to the couple, not about flaws or incompatibility.

5. History: "Dollar Princesses" and Social Reality

• Origins in Societal Change (24:18–28:34):
  At the Gilded Age turn of the 20th century, “land rich, cash poor English aristocracy plus cash rich, esteem poor American girls” led to marriages—the so-called “dollar princesses.”
  Monica: “Which I am obsessed. Winston Churchill's mother was one.”
  TikTok echoes these historical patterns today.

• Perpetuation of Stereotypes (29:12–31:22):
  American heiresses seen as bringing “snap” and directness, a contrast to English decorum.
  Caroline (quoting Laura Thompson): “These girls had snap.”

• Do the Stories Shape the Behavior?
  Monica: “Are they true, or do the stories sort of make them true?… Because you live in your own country and you don't think of yourself as particularly direct… you come over here and you're thought of in that way.”

6. Nationality as Social Armor and Opportunity

• Protection and Otherness (31:44–33:01):
  Caroline: “Your nationality kind of becomes both your embrace and your shield.”
  Monica compares it to “this fantasy of meeting an alien.”

• The Appeal for English Men (33:01–35:00):
  Monica: “How much would that allow then these men to like, redefine themselves? … the British version of yelling into a canyon is a lot lower key.”

7. Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis, and the Rom-Com Landscape

• The Hugh Grant Effect (37:18–41:43):
  Monica: “Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis together as a team have a lot to answer for… There's nothing better.”
  The “Britishness” of these films, and the pattern: in UK-set rom-coms, the woman is American and newly arrived; in US-set ones, Hugh Grant is made high-status and less vulnerable.
  Monica: “These are all women who are here briefly… You're never seeing an American who's naturalized.”

• Male Ego and Rom-Com Power Shifts
  Hugh Grant’s role shifts depending on the context: neurotic underdog in Britain, alpha in America.
  Caroline: “It goes back to sort of like male ego in rom coms. Right. It's very hard for them to let male stars look foolish in rom coms.”

8. What Does the Trope “Do” for Its Audience?

• Fulfilling Fantasies and Managing Insecurity (15:24–18:41):
  “There's a little bit of sort of special girl syndrome to having a British boyfriend… the kind of person whose boyfriend is British.”

• Personal Mythologies and Freedom (60:13–61:02):
  Monica: “There's a sense of freedom, I think.”
  Caroline: “Your nationality kind of becomes both your embrace and your shield…”

• Romance as Subculture (68:14–69:01):
  Caroline shares Sarah Griffin’s quote: “A relationship is a subculture of two.”

9. Notable Examples and Variations

• Film/TV Examples Discussed with Insights:
  • Notting Hill
  • Four Weddings and a Funeral
  • Too Much (Lena Dunham/Meg Stalter)
  • A Matter of Life and Death
  • Taylor Swift’s “London Boy” and American/British boyfriend arc
  • The Buccaneers, Portrait of a Lady, and Wimbledon

10. The “What Next?” and Meghan Markle

• The Real-Life Fairy Tale (and Aftermath) (57:10–58:50):
  After much discussion of fizzy, freeing romances, the case of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry arises:
  Caroline: “Her whole life is what happens next, which is like, people being mad at you that their jam hasn't arrived.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Trope’s Origin:
  “Land rich, cash poor English aristocracy plus cash rich like esteem poor American girls.” – Caroline O'Donoghue (26:28)

• Rom-Com History Pattern:
  “You’re never seeing an American who’s naturalized. Right? So there’s something about that. Fresh to the world, fresh to the culture…” – Monica Heisey (40:39)

• On Nationality as Social Armor:
  “Your nationality kind of becomes both your embrace and your shield…” – Caroline O’Donoghue (31:44)

• On the Unique Tension:
  “If, like, Gav says something to me, like, oh, you’re so Irish. I know he’s low key, horny. Do you know what I mean? Because that his way of expressing to me, there are parts of you I still don’t totally get. And that’s cool to me.” – Caroline O’Donoghue (72:54)

• Monica’s Take on British Boyfriends:
  “I think the best one to four dates of your life will be with an English man. And then after that, it gets a bit more fuzzy.” – Monica Heisey (69:01)

• On Attraction and Mystery:
  “If we can keep that level, that bubble, that little greenhouse of mystery alive, then it bodes well, I think.” – Caroline O’Donoghue (73:54)

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Notable Timestamps

• Introduction of the Topic & Contextual Anecdotes: 03:30–07:52
• Discussion of American Women/British Men Trope & Its Gendered Nature: 09:30–10:03
• Personal Experience and Writing Too Much: 05:19–06:34
• Recent Cultural Surge in “Rule Britannia” Moments: 11:02–14:53
• History of Dollar Princesses and Early Examples: 24:18–28:34
• Deep Dive into Hugh Grant/Richard Curtis and Rom-Com Power Politics: 37:18–41:43
• Discussion of A Matter of Life and Death: 45:30–56:32
• Parallels with Meghan Markle: 57:10–59:53
• Reflection on What Romantic Tropes Allow Us To Do: 68:14–74:08

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The Episode’s Tone and Approach

The conversation is witty, self-deprecating, and insightful, embracing both the sentimental and the wryly skeptical. Jokes, tangents, and personal anecdotes balance deep-dive analysis, and both Caroline and Monica maintain a playful, confessional style throughout: "We're not the ones who know the most; we feel the most."

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Final Thoughts

The Anglo-American romance trope endures not just because of the cultural interweaving of Britain and America, but because these stories fulfill deep desires for a fresh start, “specialness,” and manageable, externalized conflict. There's real power—and a bit of escapist magic—in myths of cross-cultural love, even as real life often brings the romantic "happily ever after" crashing into cold rooms, warm drinks, and faulty British plumbing.

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For Further Listening

• Monica’s past episode on Love Actually (which, they note, interestingly subverts this whole dynamic)
• Upcoming events with both hosts’ new books and media

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[Subscribe to Sentimental Garbage for more culture deep-dives with heart and wit!]

Transcript

[Monica Heisey]

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[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Hi everyone. This week's episode of the podcast is about the relationship between American women and English men in the context of rom coms and romantic fiction. And it's interesting that we're talking so much about like the American gays this week because I'm actually going to be in America really really soon. On the 6th of September I am going to be at the Library of National Congress doing a speaking event with Ransom Riggs at the National Book Festival. It's going to be at 9:30 in the morning. I'm gonna have a signing afterwards. It's gonna be great. I, I can't wait. I'll put a link to the tickets in the show. Notes please, please stump up tickets. I have never been to Washington before and I'm coming at an extremely strange time in the city's history. So would love to be made feel welcomed by any sentimental garbage fans the vicinity. Then the very next day on the 7th of September I have an event. I, I think I'm more excited for this event than anything I've ever done in the past and I like include, you know, selling out theaters in that. So I am going to be at the Strand Bookstore in New York City the very next day, Sunday September 7th and I'm going to be interviewed by someone extremely special. Special full stop. But like also extremely special to me. You guys might know my friend Natasha Hodgson. She is one of the writers and performers, Tony nominated performers of Operation Mincemeat. And she's obviously in New York at the moment because she's a Broadway star. She's also done episodes of this podcast in the past including our Wicked episode which many of you loved. But Tash is also the audiobook narrator for my latest book Skipshock, which I know I've spoken about on this podcast before. It is the most incredible audiobook I have ever definitely heard of my own work which is a steep, steep, you know, standard. I, I can't believe I not only I have a, I have a Tony nominated performer doing my audiobook. And she's also one of my oldest friends and she is going to be interviewing me at the Strand, one of the most like, important and famous and storied bookstores in the world. Maybe. Anyway, I'm pretty sure tickets are going to sell out pretty quickly, and I would love to see some Sentimental Garbage fans there. So please buy your tickets, tell your friends who live in New York, I can't wait to see them all. Right, on with the show. Hello and welcome. Sentimental Garbage, the podcast where we haven't even noticed it's raining. My name is Caring o' Donoghue, and I'm the actress who has never even heard of the royal family before I met my husband, Prince Harry. And she doesn't know our fancy manners, but her heart's in the right place. It's Monica Hicey.

[Monica Heisey]

Hi.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I love when we do these kinds of episodes that are kind of about a trope or a thing or a vibe. We're not necessarily pinning it to any one, you know, movie or TV show. It's just a thing that we all know exists. And that thing today is, is American girls and English men, specifically in romantic.

[Monica Heisey]

Comedy film, I guess in Cult, actually, I guess in culture more broadly.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Right. Cause there's like, there's a lot of it about right now.

[Monica Heisey]

There is a lot of it about.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I mean, your credentials as per this episode, Monica is first, that you wanted to come over and second, that you are one of the writers and should I possibly say stars.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah, Big Star. Two Line Star, as they're calling it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's a tour de force of the. Of the TV show Too Much. The Lena Dunham show, starring Meg Stalter, which is about an American girl coming over here to London, meeting an English guy, falling in love. And Monica, if anyone wants to place her visibly, is the girl who makes Meg Stalter feel terrible about herself at a dinner party.

[Monica Heisey]

And I do want on record that I know that Lacanian is pronounced Lacanian and not Lacanian. We said it the other way for a joke.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Okay. Have you been having a lot of correspondence about that?

[Monica Heisey]

No, I've just been really self conscious about it, even though I know that everyone knows what acting is and that you're not. It's not just a documentary you made about how you're bad at a dinner party, but because I'm not used to being in stuff and it was just like a funny thing that Lena suggested. I am shy.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Okay. So I realized that your acting performance in too much, which is once again a tour De force.

[Monica Heisey]

Thank you so much for continuing to call it that.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's not a documentary, but your writing on it does come from a place of some experience. Would you like to tell the class?

[Monica Heisey]

The, the, the. So we wrote the show several years before it came out. It was in 2023, I guess I just. Yeah, because I just come back. Anyway, we wrote the show in 2023 and then Leah and I worked on one of the scripts together for episode eight throughout that year. And then she carried on and made the show what it is. I mean, I was such a small part of it really.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You co wrote the wedding episode, right? Really fun.

[Monica Heisey]

It was so fun. I had the best time working on it, but truly was such a small part that I almost forgot about what the characters need names were. And then I started dating a sort of chain smoking British artist called Felix and then saw Lena for lunch and we were catching up and I told her that and she was like, excuse me. So she does think that she manifested my current relationship and I'm not convinced that that's not the case. It's really possible. The timeline is sketchy at best. Something's absolutely up as well because I also wrote a rom com called Smothered about a nice British man called Tom and right before that came out started dating a nice British man called Tom. So something's definitely going on.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Something's going on. But like you do, you find that within work A lot like I often find in novels. Like I'll get to the end of the novel and I'll suddenly have a wave of inspiration about how it should end. And then I'll realize the pieces have all been there from the start or in a script, but you're doing that with your whole damn life.

[Monica Heisey]

I think a lot of the time you get to the end of a work and you realize that it's the culmination of at least months, often years of thinking and mulling the same things over and over. And certainly too much is so heavily rooted in this question of what is it about living in the UK and potentially loving in the UK that has such a draw on the North American imagination. There's this like really confronting montage at the very opening where Meg is sort of like running through fields in like in like Jane Austen garb and like imagining the different versions of herself that she could be in London. And I had never really thought about it when I came over here, but like what did I think I was doing? I came over to do a master's degree in Shakespearean Literature and live. Lived like around London Bridge. I live like around the corner from Bridget Jones's.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You're doing that Bridget Jones Tower Bridge walk every day, were you?

[Monica Heisey]

I was certainly walking by it back to my nasty student halls in the shadow of the Shard. But. But yeah, I think the. Those sort of Anglophile fantasies are. Are really prevalent in North America and in. As a result in our culture.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I'm so excited to talk more about it because I think it's like. Because on the one hand you could be like, yeah, no shit. Like there's like, you know, there's two extremely dominant cultures that both speak English and there's a lot of like, you know, trade of like, ideas, values and, and items, whatever going back like hundreds of years. Of course there's going to be a lot of like, pairings on screen of Americans and English people. But like, the more you look into it, the more you kind of realize, I guess with kind of any trope romantically. So like, if you're speaking specifically about romance fiction or rom coms or whatever, everything tends to be a photocopy of a photocopy because we're always looking at what works best and like, you know, for. That's why we keep on using Shakespeare plots, why we keep on using Jane Austen plots, why we keep on just using these things over and over again. But what we kind of don't realize that when we're copying things is those things were originally created in response to a political climate that was happening at the time or a social climate that was happening at the time. So like, what on the surface seems like very simplistic being like, yeah, two cultures that speak English and they have a lot of communication, so they end up together. Actually has a really deep history that I think we're going to go through today.

[Monica Heisey]

I think it's really fascinating as well. Because you think, oh, sure, like it's an obvious possibility. Why wouldn't they get together? But actually like, the intense prevalence of it, particularly in the romantic genre, is really noticeable. And also it's almost always American women and British men. There's something very gendered about it. It's not. It very rarely goes the other way.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And there are reasons for that that I found on my research. I'm just so happy to do research.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh my God. Ugh. Let me get my homework folder out. It's my dream come true. I just want. Do you guys have a. Do you have the word duatang here?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Fuck.

[Monica Heisey]

Is that okay? It's like a. I don't Know if it's a Canadian or North American word for like, a kind of folder. But if you're an organized little loser, as some of us may have been as children.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Dua Tang. Very important part of your life.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Okay. This is very much that moment in Clueless where she goes up at the top of the class and does her presentation on the Haiti. You know.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's that.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

We've done some research. We've gone into the historical ness of it.

[Monica Heisey]

But, like, does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Before we get into the historical stuff, I kind of want to pause for a second and be like, okay, we obviously just spoke about too much, which is, you know, anytime Lena has a huge. As a show out, it's a huge moment. Right. Like, it's. And I. I like living in that world.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

One of the few things about my world right now that actually, I would not change that when Leena Dunham does stuff, we all sort of listen. But like this, you know, I think that we're kind of at the apex of another, like, Rule Britannia moment kind of thing. And I know that because a Guardian journalist reached out to get me to comment on it.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh, no. I have seen, you know, when you.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Got nothing coming on, when you're commenting on someone else's article. But. Right. So there's too much. There's the fact that there is not one, but two major Austen adaptations happening at the moment, one of which is being done by friend of the pod. Shout out to our girl who's doing Pride and Prejudice. And the other one I'm very proud of, this is also a friend of the pod.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh, my God.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Diana Reid, who came on this podcast talking about Caroline Calloway, is writing the New Town Sensibility.

[Monica Heisey]

Incredible.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But on top of that, I know you've bailed out event just like that. Like a fucking pilot whose engine is on fire like a normal person. You have stopped watching. And just like that.

[Monica Heisey]

That's right.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But Carrie Bradshaw's latest paramour is an English man.

[Monica Heisey]

I've heard he's an English novelist.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

He's an English biographer.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh. And she's writing a novel. And he's looking at it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. And I have to say, like, that show is made for people who committed sins in a previous life.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Has to pay for them in this one. And for some reason, I committed some terrible sins previous life. And that means I have to watch every episode sometimes twice.

[Monica Heisey]

Twice. I don't know.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I just have to.

[Monica Heisey]

You're very sick.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But something I Found really interesting about, like, you know, Carrie Bradshaw has everybody, but for some reason, this is like her first major, like, English paramour. Right. And this guy. The one thing this season is doing well is that it's positioning this guy as being like, you know, she's had boyfriends before, but she's always just tried to be cute and crazy and sexy and try to impress them. She's had artist boyfriends before, but she's always felt like she had to kowtow to their. Like, their art, basically. Jack Berger was all about his insecurities. The Russian was all about his light installations or whatever that this show makes a point of really saying. This guy. This guy. Duncan, the biographer. And she says it with her own human mouth. This is the first person I've ever been able to sort of go toe to toe with and be an intellectual equal with.

[Monica Heisey]

We're supposed to believe that she's lived 50 something years.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

And in the intervening time, this is the whole problem with. And just like that, nothing happened to any of these women. And in between the finale or I guess, God forbid, the trip to Dubai and then the day they all woke up on the first episode of. And just like that, to meet in that brightly lit restaurant and not eat French fries or whatever happened that seems so crazy to me that Carrie wouldn't have. Anyway, fine, Whatever. They can. They're adults, can make their own choices.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

SJP sells it. You really do believe. And you're like, wow, yeah. You have never been yourself with a man until this. This biographer.

[Monica Heisey]

I think this is rude because I actually think she was herself with Big.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And herself as a freak.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. They're awful together, and that's why they work. Do you remember how hard she laughed when he put a whoopee cushion on her stool? They loved it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That's so funny.

[Monica Heisey]

They loved it. Those people were meant to be together. I understand that he's canceled in real life, and so they had to kill him and dump his ashes out of a little bejeweled purse into the Seine. But for God's sake, they were equals in a lot of ways.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

I don't know.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I don't know. I'm gonna tell you the scene, but I want. I do. So if we're thinking about all of this as, like, a trope and, like, the trope having different meanings through different period of time, like, what do we think the English man and the American girl means right now? What part of our brain is it servicing? Like, what part of, like, American insecurity is it Servicing, like, what, what, what? What's it doing right now?

[Monica Heisey]

I think there's a little bit of sort of special girl syndrome to having a British boyfriend. If you look at all the British pop stars that have. Or the American pop stars that have British boyfriends, I think there's something.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Suki Waterhouse, I guess. Is she American?

[Monica Heisey]

She's British. Her name is Suki Waterhouse. She's got to be British, right?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. That is a very Notting Hill name.

[Monica Heisey]

But like, Olivia Rodrigo, huge American pop star, has a British boyfriend.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Who's her boyfriend?

[Monica Heisey]

Some guy, Louis something.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Okay.

[Monica Heisey]

But she's always. She was like, on stage at Glastonbury being like, I love pints. Why not? Good for her.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Sure. Good for her.

[Monica Heisey]

Famously, she has a song called so American, which is, like, about her British boyfriend finding her funny and telling her that she's so American cute.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I actually love Olivia Rodrigo.

[Monica Heisey]

Well, I think. Okay, here's my, like, sort of galaxy brain take on the whole thing. America and England as countries, there's so much between them that it's, like, very easy to participate then in sort of personal myth making when you are going out across the cultures. Right. Like, Olivia Rodrigo doesn't have to just be a pop star. She can be like, I'm so American. She can get involved in the American myth. You know, Taylor Swift, famously, there's like a ton of songs like Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. Taylor is one of the biggest defenders of, like, an English boyfriend will make me feel better.

[Monica Heisey]

She really likes to get into the idea of being someone's American dream. It's very natural, like, because these people are, like, large cultural outputs of their country. It makes a lot of sense to be able to be with someone where you can kind of define yourself against it and be like, I'm the girl of his American dreams. He's this, like, messed up sort of. Like, he's not just a jerk, he's British.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And it's also with all of Taylor's songs about her various British boyfriends, most of it is about seeing yourself through the lens of an imagined lens of how they think that they're seeing you.

[Monica Heisey]

The kind of person whose boyfriend is British. Yeah. I do love to show English men when I'm single and dating, I do love to show them the song London Boy.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I love London Boy.

[Monica Heisey]

I love to show it to them. I love to tell them that that's exactly how it feels to go out with them. They don't like that, but it's really interesting. They all respond in Sort of unique way. Ways tells you a lot about a man.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I think people need to lighten the fuck up about London. Boy, it is fun.

[Monica Heisey]

Everyone Queen, be fun. Everyone's mad. Cause she goes to too many places in one day. She's got a driver. It's Taylor Swift, for God's sake.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Come on.

[Monica Heisey]

She's being driven around. I've cracked it. They did the same thing. She cracked it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Monica.

[Monica Heisey]

They did the same thing with too much. Everyone was mad that she went to a pub in Nunnhead, in Nunhead, despite moving to Hoxton. But if it's your first day in London, what you've done is texted a friend who's been to London before and said, where is good to go get a pint. And then they've told you somewhere. And you thought that how far could it be? Because you don't understand the scale of the city. And then you're in an Uber you can't back out of. That's 45 minutes long.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

This is the time that I was in San Francisco and we were being taken out by clients of Gav's or whatever. Or maybe Gav was a client of them. Anyway, they needed to impress us for some reason that the power was all off. And they were like, where have you always wanted to go in San Francisco? And I said, because I had watched the Anthony Bourdain Private Parts thing, I want to go to the Tiki Room, okay? And they first got sick in a bag and then drove us there. And it took so long. And then there was a dollar twenty ahead. It's like no one's immune to being stupid in a different country.

[Monica Heisey]

It's part of. One of the things that I think these stories are based in is someone who doesn't know anything, right?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Fish out of Water will remain like the romantic genre, right? Because it's like. It's like somebody who's on the back foot immediately vulnerable, therefore immediately lovable. Like vulnerability is one of the most contagious emotions, you know?

[Monica Heisey]

And I'm just thinking about all the ways that we then try and manufacture that sense of wide eyed naivety. Like. Like in Aladdin, I can show you the world. It's like she's seen it before, but she hasn't seen it like this. And this is just making it so clear and literal. From the beginning. She actually hasn't seen it. He can show you everything. He can show you all of Nunhead. But I grew up on all of those movies and so I think it was romantic. To me, the idea that you would go somewhere and not know anything. And someone would be like, don't worry, I'll show you everything. I'll explain everything to you. Which I guess, like, in a sort of my, like, little grew up in the 2010 Feminist Online Commentary piece, Brain is like, that's a disempowering fantasy. But I don't know that that's true. Maybe the fantasy is just like, you have everything you know and they have everything they know. And actually they couldn't know what you know. You couldn't know what they know, and then you share what you know. I do think as well that having a cultural difference in a relationship is a little bit of a get out clause. And maybe that's one of the reasons that it's so prevalent as a romantic comedy trope as well, because you're looking for ways for people to. I think all the time about, like, Harry and Sally, who are obviously the same culture, but squabbling and finding ways. When we were writing Smothered, it was the same thing. We were trying to find ways for them to have conflict that was real and involved real argument, but that wasn't threatening to the relationship. And I think when you're from different cultures, it's very easy to be like, we are not fundamentally incompatible people. Or the amount of friction that's normal in trying to know someone and be known by them isn't overwhelming us. There's just a cultural difference between us. Do you know what I mean? So you can blame. And those feelings, I think, exist in any relationship and you can execute really quickly, really quickly, very fast. And also, sometimes you can lie.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Sometimes you can lie. I told someone once, lying is legal.

[Monica Heisey]

Years ago, I told. So, like, I would when I was single and kind of like dating around a bit more casually. I was very bad at being like, I. I'm so sorry to be like, so North American about it. I just feel like, you know, it's like, really normal in my country to like, know sort of where you stand with someone.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That's great.

[Monica Heisey]

Which is not true. It's as bad over there as it is over here. But you can sort of push it a bit.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And yeah, people are like, especially in London, where people are always, like, kind of conscious of having a diverse circle. They're like, okay.

[Monica Heisey]

I mean, and there are. There are genuine differences which the films that we're going to talk about get into. But I do think there's something about, like, the kind of lightness of the conflict that comes from outside of your couple. It's not about your two personalities, it's about the places you've come from.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, yeah, it is. It does make it special. And you see that even with, like, couples who are both English, they'll try and dig down into something of like. Well, the thing is, is that, you know, he was from East Yorkshire and I was from. Yeah, West Yorkshire.

[Monica Heisey]

We went to the two different schools in the town.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, exactly. You need that kind of. Yeah, that kind of little bubble to exist because a conflict has to exist in relationships in order for it to remain interesting. It's not like that. Esther Perel classics of, like, eroticism sort of forms in the area between familiarity and mystery.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And sort of nationality and differences in nationality and culture can be a great sort of glass house for that stuff to.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes. I will say I worry often that I spend too much of my time being, like, in Canada, we would call that this. What do you call it? Like, that might not be amazing chat, but I don't tire of it. And actually, now that I think about it, I know it's not amazing chat because they almost never do that in the film and television that we're talking about.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And you know what never works as well, not in real life and not in film either, is when you try and get up on your high horse about what their country has done to your country. Speaking as an Irish person, that is when the chat falls flat. Like, talking about, like, fun differences is fun. And being like, oh, I don't get this, and you don't get this. And I'm obsessed with shame and you're obsessed. Whatever.

[Monica Heisey]

For example, to pull an example from nowhere.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Nowhere. And I mean, I literally have a podcast about shame. But, like, then when you try and get like, well, if I can divert your attention to the famine. Second of all, there was no famine.

[Monica Heisey]

I would be. I would be using that all the time.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

The beginning of. The beginning of people being really obsessed with American girls and English guys happens, like, at the front desiccle obsessed. I can't believe I went for it.

[Monica Heisey]

I'm really proud of you.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

In front of you as well.

[Monica Heisey]

I'm really proud of you. I'm proud of myself for being an intimidating person to say that in front.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Of at the turn of the century, late 19th century. You know, what Miranda Hobbs will have us believe is the Gilded Age, where, like, we have this. This kind of America has existed for long enough where there is genuine, real crazy money happening in America. Like, people have built the railroads. There's, like, there's big, big, big business happening in America. You know, there's the sense of like, it's the whole Edith Wharton thing. It's what is called the 400, which is like kind of the 400 people that are allowed in New York high society. It's Mrs. Astor, it's all that. Cynthia Nixon will tell you all about it. But like that sort of thing of like Americans who have existed with money in America for like three generations, maybe three or four, from the kind of like original Dutch settlers.

[Monica Heisey]

It's not surprising to me that this kind of intercultural relations for England only became possible when generational wealth began to exist in America.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

So true. Before that it just Pocahontas and Johnson.

[Monica Heisey]

She looks great. Actually.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You know what? Never mind.

[Monica Heisey]

We've really, you know what we do?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

We really evolved our notions of you since you started having massive railroad bucks.

[Monica Heisey]

You have massive railroad money. Our plumbing doesn't work in the house anymore. Why don't you come back over here, girl?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Why don't you come back over and like that. But I think it's so interesting the thing of like America was trying to form this sort of facsimile culture that was aping European aristocracy, even though it was like had nothing to do with it. So they're like forming like very courtly manners when there is no court. So they're like, how can we get one? We'll get our pretty daughters to marry some earl somewhere.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And so it's like land rich, cash poor English aristocracy plus cash rich like esteem poor American girls.

[Monica Heisey]

Call them dollar princesses.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Love that.

[Monica Heisey]

Which I am obsessed.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I used to dance under that name.

[Monica Heisey]

Winston Churchill's mother was one. Yes, Jenny, I'm obsessed with that. The television show the Buccaneers on Apple TV is about such a group.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

It's really, it's a really. So yeah, the, the pre existing thing of like I'll go over to England and find myself a kind of genteel husband.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

You can see girls talking about it on TikTok now. Like it's so interesting how these, these ideas like just continue to exist or like cycle through in and out of the culture. Girls on TikTok will are. Are like posting videos being like, me and my friends all came over to London to like meet English boys.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yes. Yeah. Like there's this great quote I read today which was one does not love but accepts a millionaires. So brutal.

[Monica Heisey]

Okay.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But like the contemporary writing at the time is very like, you know, these girls are never going to be fully accepted.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And also, but also this twin thing of like and what English girl stands a chance? It's unfair. It's rigged the deck.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You do get in contemporary rom coms as well as being like, how dare you go out with this American? Like, you get that in Brida Jones when she finds Lara on the roof. Right?

[Monica Heisey]

That's right. The American stick insect. Not only is she thin, she's American and brunette, with tiny little glasses. The tiniest glasses in the world, but the biggest document briefcase. But yes. So it was a social phenomenon, I would say, before it was a cultural phenomenon. But then you start to hear about it. I mean, even Henry James is writing about it in Portrait of a Lady, I think.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. And the Buccaneers is based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel, I'm pretty sure. Right. Which is about the dollar princesses.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Where it comes from. But, like. Oh, my God. Okay, so I have a book. Can't believe I'm referencing a book.

[Monica Heisey]

I'm so excited.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

So I. This is my favorite nonfiction books. It's Heiresses by Laura Thompson. She is an incredible writer. Her newsletter is incredible. But she talks a lot in her book about the daughter princesses and about how the Prince Regent at the time was, like, a real. He would, like, really, like, form a house for them to, like, thrive in, because he just, like, loved being entertained, loved drinking, loved anybody who had, like, enough money to sort of facilitate how much he wanted to eat and drink.

[Monica Heisey]

Sounds like a great time.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Great time, I think. Yeah. Bertie, as he was known, was an easy nut to crack for American heiresses. He found them direct and unstuffy and no doubt wonderfully unlike his mother. Deference was so familiar as to be something of a bore. These girls had what he called snap.

[Monica Heisey]

Snap.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

These girls had snap. And I love that because, like, that's like, you know, the 1800s or whatever. But, like, that sort of portrayal of American girls in English things has never. Or even, like, you know, like, in the kind of. The English romance has never faltered. It's always the thing of, like, she's this burst of, like, fresh energy. She has no regard for convention. She doesn't even know what the conventions are.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. You know, but what I think is so interesting with all of these stories is, like, are they true, or do the stories sort of make them true? Do they sort of reify this behavior from people? Because you. You live in your own country and you don't think of yourself as particularly direct or particularly confident or particularly brash or whatever. And you come over here and, you know, you're thought of in that way.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Does that change your behavior? Does that change your self perception in a way? I think one of the things that's happening in these cross cultural relationships is that you're sort of playing into these mythologies for each other.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

So like, whether or not you are particularly direct or particularly brash or particularly confident North American woman, I think sometimes going on a date then with a British man, they get to decide, I'm out now with this like, loud, straightforward person, which means I can be louder and more straightforward or I don't have to worry about coming across as too loud or too straightforward because obviously this dinosaurs crashing around the pub and is going to be sort of louder than me. And I think there's a certain safety or freedom or something in allowing a cultural story to sort of take again. I think we're just looking at, like, ways to relieve a bit of the pressure of two people meeting each other and having to kind of like make it all happen, just the two of them.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. Right.

[Monica Heisey]

Take some of the pressure off where you're like, obviously in a dating context, I would love to be direct and fun and straightforward and confident.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

And the story that we have from all of these, you know, films and television and whatever is that, that's what in this pairing I would be.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. That's what American girls do.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

I mean, me saying this and I'm not even American.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. In North America. You get it. We know what you're talking about. We know it. But no, I feel that too. I mean, look, we're obviously both from different places, but we both come from places where there's a strong idea of what our nationality is supposed to be. And that can be a really useful and comforting social guise to live under, you know, especially, particularly when you're talking about London. Particularly when you're talking about kind of London media circles or whatever. When you get an awful lot of people who've been to Oxbridge or have been to, you know, various kinds of private schools together and sort of your nationality kind of becomes both your embrace and your shield kind of thing. It's like, come, come over and talk to me because I'm kind of the loud, kind of funny Irish girl or whatever. But also like, you're never gonna be able to interrogate me too deeply because you don't know where I come from. You don't know anything about me. Whereas all these people are able to interrogate each other very deeply because of having a shared backstory. And that comes up a lot in too much, this idea that Felix is always running into these people who are from this very posh background and everyone is always checking each other's homework all the time. And, and the freedom of therefore meeting somebody who does. Who can't check your homework and you can't check theirs. And there's a kind of, I don't know, an elasticity that happens around that. I think.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah, I think it's like this fantasy of meeting an alien, you know, like, particularly, I feel like I must say that that's my. Felix's theory. Well, we were talking about like what. We were talking about this and what the appeal is. And I think there's like, particularly in the films, it's so useful. In real life it can be useful and I think trickier. But in the films it's like, what would it be like for someone from a really codified world to meet someone who doesn't know, have any sense of what those rules and codes are? How much would that allow then these men to like, redefine themselves?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

How much freedom does it give them and also how much does it point out the sort of arbitrariness of them? Right. Like if these rules about class and behavior are guiding factors in these men's lives and then they meet someone who's like, oh, none of that means anything to me.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Like, I think that could be quite freeing in an almost, you know, like the American, non American version is the manic pixie dream girl, but she's not bringing her own sort of. I think historically she doesn't bring her own intellect and ideas to it. She's just like, I don't really respect that. I think it should be different. I think we should yell into this canyon. But I think the British version of yelling into a canyon is a lot lower key.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

There's always been stories about, you know, cross cultural romance and like often that will have like religious or racial kind of inferences of just kind of one of these things of like you'll get a couple where it gets to a point where it's like, well, we simply can't go any further unless somebody converts or unless somebody radically changes their life. But like Americans and English people or even indeed Irish people and English people, there's. There's really not that much to get over. And as you're saying it makes you confront these tiny little kind of social norms that you think to be so important. Are they, as you say, are they important at all? You know?

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Like it's so uncontroversial and yet so internally Confronting.

[Monica Heisey]

There's. There's something. I mean, one of the things I find really challenging about living in the uk, and I've lived here a long time and I still find it challenging is how many rules you are failing to observe in a given day. And no one will tell you because they somehow think it's more rude to correct you than to let you embarrass yourself.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Like what?

[Monica Heisey]

It's like. This is like a really Oxbridge Y example. But I had a few friends when I first moved here who went to maudlin college.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

No idea.

[Monica Heisey]

Okay. It's spelled Magdalene.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Really?

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. Nobody told me. Yeah, for years. It's not like I was saying it a lot, but no one ever corrected me. Very embarrassing.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Very embarrassing.

[Monica Heisey]

Very embarrassing.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I guess I mean, specific, but I mean.

[Monica Heisey]

Well, I was trying to think of a bigger example. Like. Like nobody told me that quite means is like passive aggressive. So quite is a modifier that means very. It means more. If you said that's quite nice, that means it's very nice. But in this godforsaken country, it is a passive aggressive way to say that's not very nice. And everyone knows that, but no one will tell you.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That's so interesting. Yeah, that's the kind of. The equivalent in Irish is like saying something is grand. Like in any.

[Monica Heisey]

Is grand bad? Mostly mother fucker.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Mostly. Grand means absolutely fine. Just about par.

[Monica Heisey]

Do you hear the word you're using for that?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I know, exactly. Grand means, you know, luxurious, sort of festive, rich gold.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. You know what's grand? The boulevards in Paris.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

For God's sake.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

How was Paris, Caroline? It was grand.

[Monica Heisey]

She hated it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It was grand. She hated being in Paris.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah, it's those kinds of things. I mean, that's, you know, it's very challenging. Why did we start talking about that, though? It was related to the trope thing. You're like crashing through all of these. All of these, like, unspoken rules, which I suppose might be freeing for the other person to see, but actually it's quite embarrassing when you're the one doing it. Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis together as a team have a lot to answer for in terms of my day.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's just better.

[Monica Heisey]

There's nothing better. They are so good together. I feel like when Hugh Grant went over to America and then did sort of like a different character who was also still Hugh Grant, but he's still very charming in like two weeks notice, even in music and lyrics, which is a real weird one, he's still so charming, but it's like, he's nowhere close to the heights of, you know, like apricots and honey guy in Notting Hill.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. I think those are. Those have to be my favorites.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It is so crazy to me that, like, when Hugh Grant aged out of doing like rom coms and honestly, he hasn't. I mean, in a commercial sense, he hasn't actually aged out of doing anything. He can do whatever he wants.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That we just kind of stopped with rom coms.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah, we were like, stopped. We tried a couple other ones without him and then we thought, no.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's so interesting to me that like, and this is a bit of an aside that like those star power rom com actors, Meg Ryan, Hugh Grant are those people who just had unbelievable. Just wattage behind them that just completely fortifies films. Julie Roberts. Once they duck out, we never replace them with anything. There is nobody who has that same romcom power now.

[Monica Heisey]

No. Well, I think part of it is that everyone looks the same.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, that's tough.

[Monica Heisey]

But also, apparently big male celebrities don't want to do romances anymore. Although very exciting to see. Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans in the Materialists.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Oh, yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Not so big on the calm of the rom com, but certainly a romantic movie with two major stars in it, which is really nice to see. So maybe there will be a shift. But yeah, Hugh Grant, really. Nobody did it like him and nobody is doing it like him.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But like, do you feel. So if we think of the major Hugh Grant plus American sort of things, we've got Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell.

[Monica Heisey]

Yep.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

In Four Weddings. The original. The OG then we've got Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.

[Monica Heisey]

Yep.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Then we've got Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock in Two weeks notice.

[Monica Heisey]

Absolutely right.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Then we've got Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore in music and lyrics.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Now, what would. Can you chart a progression for us there in the. The evolution of Hugh Grant and also the evolution of this trope?

[Monica Heisey]

Actually, I'm going to. I think the real issue of where Hugh Grant loses his power is when he goes over to America. So none of the women in these American women have indefinite leave Germane. Okay. These are all women who are here briefly. Andie McDowell is coming in and out for Wedding Season, but she doesn't. They don't really see each other a lot. She hasn't lived. She marries that Scottish guy eventually. Yes. Famously. Of course, Julie Roberts is playing a big celebrity who's only in town briefly in Too Much. It's like her first day in London. She's not planning on staying. These are people who, if we're sticking with the alien thing, have like recently landed and are maybe not here to stay. And the customs are unfamiliar to them. You're never seeing an American who's like naturalized.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Interesting.

[Monica Heisey]

Right? So there's like something about that. Fresh to the world, fresh to the culture, certainly. And then when Hugh Grant moves over to America, they don't let the women characters explain stuff to him like that.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That's so interesting. It goes back to sort of like male ego in rom coms. Right. It's very hard for them to let male stars look foolish in rom coms.

[Monica Heisey]

And Hugh Grant is really high status in the American ones, whereas in the British ones he's quite low status. He's like a nerdy woo weirdo. He runs a failing bookstore. He's like a posh guy at a wedding, but I don't remember what his job is. And he's sort of like on the back foot with this cool, sexy woman.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

And then. And once they go over to America, two weeks notice.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

He's like the head of a major company.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And music and lyrics. He's like a bratty reform pop star.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. He's like a slightly fallen pop star. But she's his cleaner. She's watering his plants.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Oh, yeah, that is it.

[Monica Heisey]

She's watering his plants. Then she starts singing perfect lyrics to his new song.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Oh, yes, lovely, lovely song.

[Monica Heisey]

That movie. Like those two people are huge charisma bombs. And it doesn't bomb in a positive way, I guess, but it doesn't quite come together, I think because the thing that makes Hugh Grant, I mean, he's very good at playing high status. We've seen him as Daniel Cleaver. He plays like really particularly recently, has played a lot of really talented villains. But the really romantic thing is this idea of him as this, like. Imagine meeting someone like Hugh Grant and he's on the back foot in Notting Hill. He says he's been left for a more attractive man.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Who could that be?

[Monica Heisey]

Well, they say he looks like Harrison Ford. Crucially an American. Oh yeah, a sexy Harry. Traced the American lately? This is my specialist subject.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

No, but you're so right though, that thing of like. I think in the context of American woman with no indefinite leave to remain, going over to.

[Monica Heisey]

She has not taken the multiple choice.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Test, which you have the coming. And it's generally the context of the American woman is she is complicated. She has been like chewed up a little by life. She's been spat out again. And she is, whether explicitly or implicitly worried whether or not there's anything in her worth loving because the way she's been treated at home or whatever. And I think, and what that kind of generally, I think what's happening there is like she's got this complexity. And the complexity is also partnered with a kind of learnedness. And that learnedness could only be appreciated in a place where books were invented.

[Monica Heisey]

I do think you're onto something as well about the idea of like a holiday. Romance often feels frivolous because your cultures are so different. You speak different languages, they live in Sicily. You know what I mean? Like, it's like the Olsen twins never stay with any of the people when they take Rome or take Paris, passport to Paris. Because it's like obviously the Olsen twins.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Getting ran through all over Europe.

[Monica Heisey]

It's obviously different. How could it work? But in this case, you're right. We speak the same language even though we're so different and we both come from these enormous global superpowers. So, you know, why shouldn't it's just crazy enough to work.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

This back to school. Hear your teen say something you never thought possible.

[Monica Heisey]

Thanks Ma. Come to your boo store and take.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Home iPhone 15 with your its amazing camera and all day Battery for only 99.99. Perfect for back to school.

[Monica Heisey]

Thanks Ma. You won't get tired of hearing it. Visit your nearest Booth store requires ID.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Verification, port in and activation on $60 per month plan and $35 device setup fee taxes extra. BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever.

[Monica Heisey]

You are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Feels better, right?

[Monica Heisey]

That's 15 seconds of self care.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax. Actually, this brings me on to my like second history point.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes, please.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Which is that we talked about how it is very often English men, American women, very less often, which is American girls, English guys.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah, you get it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But it's just less frequent. And I think a lot of this has to do with our old friend World War II. So in prep for the podcast, we watched a lovely movie called A Matter of Life and Death, which is about an American girl who is, for some reason, we don't really know why, is stationed in England and is manning a kind of a radio tower that is connected to English pilots. And then the very first scene is one of the most charming openings of any movie I've ever seen.

[Monica Heisey]

It's one of the best openings to a film I have ever seen in my life.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Do you want to describe it?

[Monica Heisey]

No, you do it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Okay. I mean, you've seen it more.

[Monica Heisey]

I don't want to mess it up.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But basically, this guy, David Niven is like. He's this sort of daring do, classic sort of World War II pilot. Everything we imagine, when we imagine a World War II pilot, he, he. He's plane is on fire. He realizes he's going to die. His kind of electrician is already dead.

[Monica Heisey]

Beneath him, given his parachute to his gunner. Yeah, because he's such a goddamn hero. Sorry, carry on.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And he finds a radio signal, this American girl who is manning this tower. And like, he's talking to her and he's. He knows he's about to die. He knows he's going to have to bail out with no parachute over open water. He will either die on impact or drown. And he's trying to basically distract himself in his last moments by trying to connect with this girl. It's so. So I gotta say, the movie for me as a whole was a little bit odd. I loved some of it. Didn't love all of it. It's a Palin Press burger, so it's basically great, but like, didn't love it, all of it. But this scene is so stunning where it's just like him being like quoting poetry and just sort of saying it off by rope because he's panicking and he's trying not to panic. And he's like saying, well, you know, what's your name? And she's like, june. And he said, well, are you pretty, June? And she's like, I'm all right.

[Monica Heisey]

Do you have a boyfriend? Don't tell me. It's fantastic. It's so romantic. And I feel like the movie was. You can see what there's. They've done that amazing thing where the first like few minutes of a film sets up exactly what the film is about, which is about the difference and affinity between English and British cultures. The film was designed to be a piece of propaganda to promote Anglo American relations towards the end of the war and into the post war period. And you can see it there immediately. I mean, obviously because it's made by English people. England is the absolute hero. David Niven is absolutely shining, charming. He's being brave, he's quoting poetry, he's being stoic. He sends a message to his mom that's like, tell her I didn't say it enough, but I loved her. It's like, it's sort of every crime.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I didn't want that.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh, I cried the whole, like, almost as soon as it began.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. No, it's a real weeper, this opening scene.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And also what's beautiful about it as well is that for the first kind of couple of minutes they're talking, she just keeps on saying, I can't understand you. Partly because of. He's sort of like kind of hyper in quoting poetry and part of it because of the static, but also just like them trying to find a connection through all this mayhem is just so beautiful.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And then he crash lands. He miraculously doesn't die. There's like. And this is where it gets wacky. It's like, yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Immediately there's a crazy loophole from heaven.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. There's like a good third of this movie is set in heaven.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. There's a lot of movies from this era that are about, like, falling in love with ghosts or like, people who've died looking back on their lives because. Yeah, there was just a huge amount of people who were truly fucking dying.

[Monica Heisey]

Absolutely hundreds of thousands of people dying unnecessarily all the time. Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But there was also this sense that, like, for this to work, I mean, that. That like, America had joined the war. There was a lot of American GIs who were stationed in England. It was a culture shock for everybody. I tried to find it before you came over, but I had this tiny little booklet which is a replica of the booklets that were given to American GIs who were landing in the UK and basically a sort of a short guide to, like, how not to get in trouble while you're in the UK and. And say and things kind of about local women and being like, listen, like, this has been a war torn country for some years now. Do not expect the same level of, like, grooming. I, like, I was researching a lot of you. I was doing, like, working on that BBC adaptation for a period piece that never ended up going, but I ended up like, I'm so glad we are doing the podcast today because all the information, I just.

[Monica Heisey]

Hell, yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You know what I mean? When you're working on a thing that never goes and all this information just sits there.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. But honestly, if we weren't recording a podcast and I came over to your house and you were like, can I tell you a bunch of facts about the cultural vibe in the UK during World War II? I'd be like, yeah, man. God, I thought you'd Never ask.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Lay it on me, sis. So, like, yeah, they were, like, giving out these things to people and. But, like, oh, there's this huge. These American guys who were over here were so well paid and they were getting more food than anybody else in the country. So obviously this kind of like. Like, sexual marketplace began really quickly. I meant what the Girl of the Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark is about. Have you read that book?

[Monica Heisey]

No. That sounds amazing.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Love it. It's basically like, yeah. About girls who are friends with guys at the American Embassy. But this created a huge amount of anxiety around British men who were all overseas in, like, Germany or in the Pacific or whatever, that American men were going to steal their wives and girlfriends and knock them up and stuff. And so around that period, you get a ton of propaganda movies that are about English girls having romantic friendships or, like, very charged friendships with American GIs. But they had. They're torn between them never crossing a.

[Monica Heisey]

Line because Charlie's waiting for me.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Charlie's waiting for me. Or they think Charlie's dead, and then Charlie comes back and she has to make a choice. And often it will, like, they will almost never kiss. And it will just be this thing of, like, you know. You know, Tony, tell. Tell the boys in Brooklyn I say, hi, but I'm staying here with Charles. And it's like this. And I think this is why if we talk about, like, romance often being photocopies of photocopies, the reason that we don't have a lot of the other way around of, like, English women and American men in the culture as much as the other one is because there aren't that many photocopies because we were visibly preventing that from happening so English men wouldn't get sad.

[Monica Heisey]

Well, so if you're. If you're talk about who's making the movies and whose fantasies we're reflecting. Yeah, it's British men's fantasy of freedom. Right. It's like, you know, Richard Curtis made all of those movies. It's not like, you know, there's no, like, female equivalent, I guess, working at that time.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Making the same sort of.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, there's kind of. There is no British Nora Ephon.

[Monica Heisey]

Really.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You know, there's no.

[Monica Heisey]

There has to.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

There has to be. I'm sure someone will write in, but I can't name her.

[Monica Heisey]

Her name is Dolly Alderman. Okay, back to Matter of Life and Death. The thing that I think needs. Needs to be said as well is that it's really explicit about the question of American and British romance. Literally, most of the film is taken up through a slightly convoluted thing about the afterlife in a long trial.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Such.

[Monica Heisey]

A long trial, a globally attended sort of trial in the afterlife to answer the question, can love exist between an American woman and a British man?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yes. And the thesis of this is that he has cheated death once, and then he's fallen in love with June, the American girl in England. And then he becomes best friends with her and her, like, platonic male friend, the surgeon, and. Which I thought would be more of a triangle than it ended up being. And while he's sort of like, falling in love with June, he keeps getting these visits from this strange, like, French grim reaper who is saying to him, like, we're, you know, he's an aristocrat.

[Monica Heisey]

Who got beheaded during the revolution.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Please, some respect to my man's name. And, yeah, basically that he has a case he needs to appeal of whether or not he gets to remain on earth and remain alive. And his case is like, you can't kill me. I'm in love with this girl. And the counter case is, an English man could never truly love an American girl and vice versa.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes. And it's very amusing. And I would say it took my. The argument they made sort of took my breath away. I have it here, actually. The lawyer, in his sort of closing remarks, says, should the vibrant humor of a young American girl be stifled in the pages of Punch? Should the swift tempo of her life, besides slowed to the crawl of a match at cricket? Should her accustomed native comfort perforce conform to England's warm drinks, cold rooms, drafty windows, smoky chimneys and faulty plumbing.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That is this movie is from the.

[Monica Heisey]

40S and that it's so good. All still applies now.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Warm drinks, cold rooms, faulty plumbing. What was the other one?

[Monica Heisey]

Drafty chimneys, drafty chimney.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I was like, we're literally sitting in a room right now where all that is true.

[Monica Heisey]

Those are some good questions. Those are some thoughtful questions. They're worth asking.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Maybe. It is a great movie.

[Monica Heisey]

It's a fantastic movie.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

The beginning and the end are certainly perfect.

[Monica Heisey]

My other favorite thing about it, which is totally unrelated but might be a fun fact, is that they didn't have enough color film because they were making it during the war. They had to choose. Half of the movie had to be in black and white and half the movie had to be in color. Oh, is that why that is? Yeah. And so they had to decide, are the scenes in the afterlife gonna be in color because heaven, you know, Technicolor, or should the scenes on earth be in Color. And they decided that Earth is in Technicolor because it's life. I know.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And it's really nice because when you see him with Jun, and, like, the flowers are really pink and the leaves are really green. It's like. It's lovely.

[Monica Heisey]

I know.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That's really nice. I love Partle and press burger.

[Monica Heisey]

I do, too. I also think all romances, the color, the saturation needs to be turned up a bit, because it's like the movies need to feel like what falling in love feels like. So everyone is about 15% more charming than in real life. The colors are a little bit brighter. The music pops a little bit harder. Everyone kind of says and does the right thing at the right moment because falling in love feels like things are clicking like that.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Isn't it so funny how, like, we grow up on romantic movies that look a certain way and we try and have the romances in our real life reflect that, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. But then you have this moment, and they happen. Like, you know, if you're very much in love where. Like, that moment where you look at your partner and you'd be like, you're like. You're a movie star. You are from the movies. Like, light has never been so golden as it is in this room right now. And you realize, like, oh, I thought I was trying to replicate the movies, but the movies were trying to replicate this.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh, that's nice. That's very nice.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

A poem.

[Monica Heisey]

That is nice.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That is nice, I think. All right, we've got a big list here of different things we've compiled that emphasizes our point. Haven't even talked about Meghan Markle and Harry, which I think needs to be spoken about because it is the Icarus tale of this entire trope.

[Monica Heisey]

Well, what if you get together with a British man and then his family's crazy?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. Like what?

[Monica Heisey]

Like.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But also, it's that thing of. Because there are so many Hallmark movies and Milton Boone's novels or whatever about, like, the. The kind of. The fizzy American girl with a lot of ambition and ideas, and she's a little bit screwball, but she's beautiful. Meeting the uptight English guy, freeing him with her kind of fizzy joie de vivre, and then coming up against the stonewall of family. And then what's so fascinating to me about Meghan Markle is that, like, you know how we always say about, like, how we have the happily ever after, but then what happens next? Her whole life is what happens next, which is like, people being mad at you that their jam hasn't arrived.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh, the jam. I. Did she really say she didn't know about the royal family before she met him?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

She did say that. She said she knew who they were but didn't know anything about them and.

[Monica Heisey]

Okay.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. Which, I mean, she was living in Canada.

[Monica Heisey]

That's true.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Which arguably is more interested in the world.

[Monica Heisey]

We really know about them.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, we really know about that.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My mom had Princess Diana's haircut for, like, five years of my childhood. I think Meghan Markle is a bit outside of the rules because her fantasies being princess, which you could do in any old country, as the Princess Diaries have shown us.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

I think there's. She's, like, buying into. I think she got a little bit sort of monkey's paw version of being with a British man. Because I bet Harry, on his own, in isolation, was sort of like a lot of the things you want from a British man. Sort of, like cheeky and funny and I'm not gonna say smart, necessarily, but, like, they're quick and they're silly and they're charming. And then to have to be a princess is a totally separate problem. I mean, it's not. It's not totally separate, obviously, but I think he slightly exists outside of everything, actually. In a lot of our examples, the British man is sort of lower status than the woman, which is, I think, also a fantasy and not real.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Even in Too Much, Felix is, like, essentially homeless.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. But homeless and posh, though.

[Monica Heisey]

Fallen posh.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yes. Fallen posh.

[Monica Heisey]

Fallen posh.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I think it's interesting that there are. Okay, there's this big trope. Right. But there are different strands within the trope, and they each kind of mean different things. So there's the thing of, like, girl who's been, like, in some way or another, rejected by America. You know what I mean? Like, she's. She's received. She's been humbled by her home country. There is a depth within her that needs to be unearthed by an English.

[Monica Heisey]

Man or she's rejected America. Right. Like, Julia Roberts, I think, is sick of what she views as, like, American celebrity culture. Obviously, British media culture, which is also nightmarish, comes for her eventually, but I think she's there. Like, a lot of British. American celebrities are. A lot of American celebrities move over here because they feel like they have access to a sense of privacy and daily life that is not available to them in America.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

There's a sense of freedom, I think.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

I wonder why that Is.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I mean, like, I know Lena has written about that a lot about her sense of freedom that she gets from living here. But, like, this is the most, like, gossipy town. It's so.

[Monica Heisey]

Well, I sometimes wonder if it's an American misunderstanding of British culture, because gossip is not the same thing as press.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That's true.

[Monica Heisey]

So, like, certainly your British neighbors will be like, guess which celebrity lives next to me? Ellen DeGeneres. But Ellen can still feel like she's not being bothered in the street, even though everyone's going home and telling their entire family and all their friends that they saw Ellen at the supermarket.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yes, that is true.

[Monica Heisey]

That's what in Portrait of a Lady, someone says really early on to someone who's been living in England a long time, but who's a technically American, you understand a great deal of the English. You know exactly what they say, but you don't understand still what they don't say. And there's, like, a great deal more in what they're not saying.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Which is something that, as a North American is very hard. It's very hard to understand.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Do you think the triptych of Taylor Swift boyfriends can teach us anything?

[Monica Heisey]

Who's the three? It's Joe Alwyn.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Well, there's loads more. I mean, technically, we could count Calvin Harris, but he's Scottish.

[Monica Heisey]

He's Scottish. Yep.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

So there's Joe Alwyn, there's Matty Healy, and there's. I mean, I guess there's Tom Hiddleston and Harry Styles.

[Monica Heisey]

I mean, the last, the first, the most recent two British ones, the big ones, are sort of opposite sides, I think, of the. If you put them together, I suppose that's the full fantasy on the Taylor.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Swift of it all. I think it's so interesting that she's written, like, dozens of songs that are basically like, I'm American and you think that's horny, or you're English, and I think that's horny or whatever. And then it kind of. She draws the whole chapter to a close and finally goes back to American Men, which I think was the right thing all along with that song so Long London.

[Monica Heisey]

Yep.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Which is basically the rarely documented B side of having to deal and live with English people.

[Monica Heisey]

I do. I did really like that Too Much plays so aggressively with the cultural output that we've been talking about. All of these big. It's funny, too, because Working Title made a lot of those movies and then also made Too Much, which is sort of like in conversation with all of those films, but it's nice that it moves past the film version, right? Because it's a television show. It's so much longer. You have the meet cute. You have them getting together. You have a little obstacle. They get back together. That's sort of where the film would end. And then we get to see the continued life. I mean, I think all the time about that amazing scene at the end that Lena wrote where after they've just gotten married, and she's literally fantasized that he's Alan Rickman throwing the coins up in the air. She's Kate Winslet, they're in Marylebone Town Hall. The whole thing is beautiful. And then he turns to her and says, how long do you want to stay married? And then she's like, what? You're kidding? And he's like, yeah, I'm kidding, maybe. And that is so what it's like.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

How long you want to stay, Matt?

[Monica Heisey]

How long do you want to stay? They've just committed to you in front of all of your loved ones, and then they turn to you and say, were you serious about that?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Or.

[Monica Heisey]

I don't know. I'm trying to think about, like, what the engine is for the romance in the films and stuff. And I think it's the idea of one crossing that divide. Like, the sense of, like, against all odds. The almost Montague Capulet of it. Like, we come from these different places. How could it ever work?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I also think a lot of it, a lot of, like, the payoff for these movies is like, I have overcome the nature that's been bred into me by the country I'm from. Like, I guess I'm thinking about Wimbledon, which is a movie I love, and we've covered on this podcast before. Do you know it?

[Monica Heisey]

I know, but I haven't seen it.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

So Wimbledon stars Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst. And Kirsten Dunst is, like, this absolute, like, killer tennis player. Like, all she cares about is winning. She's so American. She's managed by her dad. She is, like, really outspoken, proud, best foot forward all the time. The golden girl. Exactly who you imagine Kirsten Dunst to be at 22. And Paul Bettany is like, he's hitting 30. He's like, used to be ranked, but he's falling out of it. And he's chosen as the wild card in Wimbledon that year, and he has, like, a good streak, and he becomes sort of like the hopeful of that year's Wimbledon or whatever. And he's like this great sort of rags to riches tennis story. And inevitably, what it kind of crunches down to is that she softens for him and starts losing and he toughens up for her and starts winning. And so they both kind of like, compromise their natures.

[Monica Heisey]

I don't need her to start losing.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. But, like, it's actually, she played really well and she hates him for it. And, like, that's how it's got. Yeah, that's kind of how it goes where she breaks up with him because she's like, you have, like, compromised my nature that I love. So you. And yeah, he gets tougher for her and it's like his kind of like, entire British Persona is like, oh, never mind me. No. Well, I'm nice to my ball boy and I'm nice to my rivals and I. I shake hands like a gentleman and she's like, that, like, win like you. And then eventually they get back together and she becomes. And she ends up winning Wimbledon twice. And, like, it's all good. Don't worry. But, like, it's interesting to me that I think the most satisfying way in which those kind of rom coms can resolve can be like, it's taken. Because I think for any good rom com to feel satisfying, it has to be like, we've both met in the middle somewhere. Right?

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And so for the thing to be like, I have denied this scary country where I'm from, and that scares me, and I have compromised what that has taught me to be with you, who I love, I think is good.

[Monica Heisey]

I was just thinking as you were talking about how satisfying it is when in romantic comedy, the creator of whatever it is literalizes one of the sort of images or metaphors of romance. So, like, I'm thinking of, like, in the Husbands by Holly Grimasio, there's an infinite number of possible men that keep coming out of her attic, which I think is like a really clever way to talk about what to do with that feeling of. There's potentially unlimited choice, but not all of them are good. And I think maybe the enduring appeal of these, like, stories where two foreigners come together is that that's just what it's like for anyone to meet anyone. And your context and their context, even if you're from the same country, even if you grew up in the same town, whatever, you're still individual people from the sort of individual places that made you, whether that's your family context or your friendship context or just your personality. And this makes it so clear and straightforward. Like, here are two different things coming together, trying to merge from totally different backgrounds into one Thing which is just literally any relationship.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Literally any relationship. Yeah. And it's like, as we said at the beginning of this podcast, love can only really work if you can. If you can sort of mythologize your way through the hard times. Like something my friend Sarah Griffin says and that everyone I know who hears it ends up quoting in their own work is a relationship is a subculture of two. And like in any sub. Any healthy subculture, you need stories about how the subculture got that way. You know, you need stories about, like, you know, what gigs you played and what venues you played in and the hard things that happened in the vans that broke down along the way or whatever. And it's the same in relationships, and you need these stories about how you overcame these monumental hurdles. Even if they weren't monumental, they just kind of were to you.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. I've dated English men across different ages now, and I feel like I do think there are some things that are true about them generally. Like, I think the best one to four dates of your life will be with an English man. And then after that, it gets a bit more fuzzy.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Gets a bit so long, London. It gets a bit. I sacrifice myself to the gods of your bluest days.

[Monica Heisey]

I just think all of them can be amazing on four dates. And then after that, you actually have to contend with their personality. But British people are so, so good at just, like, keeping the conversation going and being charming and fun that you almost don't really get to know them. You're just having a very nice time at the pub. And then once you start trying to, like, be like, knock, knock, may I come in? They have different strategies to defeat you doing that, some of which are more fun than others to defeat you.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

This has nothing to do with anything, but as we're towards the end of the podcast, not only the real heads are left.

[Monica Heisey]

Yep.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Every Irish man who lives in London thinks he's 15% funnier than he is.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh, no.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Because everyone is just like, that voice, that face, your folksy ways. You must be the funniest guy. Like, they all have stories that are just not that good. They know way too much.

[Monica Heisey]

There are definitely. There are definitely things in all of my relationships with the British men that I've been out with, where I bet you English girls have gotten fed up sooner. And I've been, like, he said crumbs. And it does just distract you. It's like, it does. You know.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

All relationships should be entered.

[Monica Heisey]

It feels a little bit like dating with, like, armbands.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Because you are still swimming. You have to swim yourself. But there's, like a little thing keeping it buoyant, helping you keep it a little light. Float around a splash. Splash.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. I'm trying to think if I could ever seriously go out with an American guy. I think the way they say come is too embarrassing.

[Monica Heisey]

Oh, no. What's the difference? I don't. I shouldn't.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You gonna cum?

[Monica Heisey]

I shouldn't. Gross. I mean, if you were going out with Urkel, I guess what I will say is that a lot of the movies about transatlantic relationships don't take the difficulty of a transatlantic relationship as their subject. And they make it sort of between the two of them. But I think looking at the body of work collectively, you can see themes emerging.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. Which is arguably what the last hour has been about. It's about themes emerging.

[Monica Heisey]

Themes are emerging. We're noticing patterns. What's that tweet? That's like the most fun a woman can have is, like, noticing patterns, observing behaviors, creating parallels.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

That is the truest tweet.

[Monica Heisey]

That's what we love to do.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Noticing patterns. I love observing parallels. It is great.

[Monica Heisey]

I think the thing that I keep thinking about is that often when you dig into tropes, they exist because they're clever ways to get to the meat of what a certain kind of story is about. So it's a fast route towards romance because you have, like, as you were saying with Esther Perel, the tension in a romantic relationship is between keeping some mystery and difference and conflict while also being close. And if the fantasy is, like, a slightly unknowable person, you know, like, being in the arms of someone who's culturally so different from you that you'll never totally understand how, you know what their culture called a bread roll. Totally.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

You know, at the end of the day, if, like, Gav says something to me, like, oh, you're so Irish. I know he's low key, horny. Do you know what I mean? Because that his way of expressing to me, there are parts of you I still don't totally get. And that's cool to me.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes. Olivia. Rodrigo's song is. He laughs at all my jokes, and he says, I'm so American. And what he's saying in that is like, I'm charmed by you, but I don't understand why.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah.

[Monica Heisey]

Which is, I think, what people are hoping for.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's literally everything.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Like, it's so interesting. I mean, this is a bigger conversation, but, like, it's as like, we sort of count and calculate basically everything in our Lives that the only thing that is left that is like, sort of, you know, those. Those London neighborhoods that have one little nature preserve where it's, like, open on the last Sunday of every month or whatever. The one thing that we have that is the nature preserve that can't be, like, counted or spreadsheeted or tracked or whatever is attraction and sexuality. It's like, we don't know why. It just is. Go in there, there's some bees.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

And. Yeah. And if we can keep that level, that bubble, that little greenhouse of mystery alive, then it bodes well, I think.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah. And what easier way to do that than by growing up in totally different contexts?

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Do you think we've really depressed all the girls who are just like, English and married English guys?

[Monica Heisey]

No, because as they were saying earlier, their context is so hyper specific. One of the things that's crazy about English culture and actually they don't need to be going to America for this is why the Americans are coming over there and the British people are largely not going over to America.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

No, they don't want to do that.

[Monica Heisey]

Because English people are amazing at categorizing and classifying and noting the micro differences that make up larger differences between, like, strata of people. They're incredibly good at it. So they can make difference between almost anything.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

They really can.

[Monica Heisey]

Right. Which is why I think English culture is such a crazy mix of, like, sexually repressed and, like, the weirdly horny. Like, you're not prepared for how horny it is over here when you move over. Not even horny in, like, a sexual way. Horny in, like, Great British Bake off will show a squirrel and the squirrel has balls, and everyone is noticing that the balls are there. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's like a.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's puerile.

[Monica Heisey]

The country is, like, teetering on the edge of titillation at all times. It takes, like, a whisper to, like, push them over the edge into full titillation. Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

I mean, it took them years to get rid of page three. Right. Like the.

[Monica Heisey]

Yes. It was still going on when I moved here.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah. Right. Like, for that to be a national conversation of whether we're allowed to have boobs in the news.

[Monica Heisey]

Yeah.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Like a sickness. So funny.

[Monica Heisey]

But, yeah, I do think it's something that people come over to have access to that. That tension between closeness and remoteness, which is, like, inherent to British culture. I think the country has a reputation as being good at flirting, because flirting is all about pushing someone away and then drawing them close over different measures. And I think English people are incredibly good at the micro awareness of what others someone and what signals that they're on your side. And so it's really satisfying when they push you out in a sort of friendly way and then it's extremely satisfying.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

When they really back in.

[Monica Heisey]

Really back in.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Yeah, Very nice.

[Monica Heisey]

Hugh Grant. You know, let us know.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

This is like whole 90 minute podcast has been a subtweet to Hugh Grant.

[Monica Heisey]

Be like if hacked off. Hugh.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Monica Heisey, Caroline o', Donoghue, you are the author of really Good actually and a forthcoming novel that I believe is gonna be out next year. Does it have a name yet?

[Monica Heisey]

It's coming out in 2027 so nobody needs to worry about that.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Nobody's worried about that at all. Don't pre order.

[Monica Heisey]

There's no word.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

They haven't built a link yet.

[Monica Heisey]

It's coming but she's not. She's not ready.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

But in the meantime, you are a co writer on two months and one of the leading actresses. Thank you for coming on today. If you want to listen to more Monica, you did a great Love actually podcast with us a couple of Christmases.

[Monica Heisey]

Ago and they really interestingly subvert this whole thing in love actually they do.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

When we get into that thing. So bye everyone.

[Monica Heisey]

Prime delivery is fast. How fast are we talking? We're talking puzzle toys and lick pad delivered so fast you can get this puppy under control fast. We're talking chew toys at your door.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Without really waiting fast.

[Monica Heisey]

Keypads, cooling mat, peg, hammer, Fast and fast. And there's training T R E A T s faster than you can say sit fast. And now we can all relax and order these matching hoodies to get cozy and cute.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

Fast, fast.

[Monica Heisey]

Free delivery.

[Caroline O'Donoghue]

It's on Prime.