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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky.
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Now, whether you're dancing through life in the Emerald City for the first time or flying back for a magical encore, Wicked is now on Sky Cinema. And with the Sky Glass, tv, Oz feels closer than ever.
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Bring the gravity defying ballads home with a Dolby Atmos soundbar built in for a truly cinematic experience. The high notes and the harmonies have never sounded better.
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A
I love the idea of ballads hitting harder.
- [00:37]
B
They couldn't hit harder.
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A
Just say hello, Sky. Wicked. And it's showtime.
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B
Enjoy the enchanting sights and sounds of oz in full 4K picture quality on Skyglass from the best seat in the house. Your own.
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And if you want a smarter TV without lifting more than an impressed brow,
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head to sky.com requires relevant Sky TV subscriptions, broadband recommended, minimum speed 30Mbps, 18 UK Channel Islands and Island man only. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Car shopping shouldn't feel like preparing for a marathon of paperwork. That's why Carvana makes buying and financing your car easy. From start to finish, search thousands of vehicles with great prices, all online, all on your time. And when you're ready, your new car shows up right at your door. It doesn't get better than that. Buy your car the easy way on delivery fees may apply. I'm not an astronaut. I don't need an astronaut.
- [01:37]
A
Audiences have spoken. Project Hail Mary is an awe inspiring masterpiece. So I met an alien. If you've fallen out of love with going to the movies, this one will bring you back. Ryan gosling in the first must see scene movie of 2026. Project Hail Mary, rated PG13, may be inappropriate for children under 13 only in theaters March 20th.
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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest Is Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde.
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And I'm Richard Osman. Hello Marina.
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B
Hello Richard.
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How are you? I'm very, very well. Some lovely questions this week. I'm going to start with some. Any other business Jenno Byrne has written in. Do you remember last week we talked about what would be the best entertainment job in the world? And it was suggested that being an unfamous Coldplay would be the best job in the world because you get all the money, all the adrenaline, but you can walk down the street and Jen says I can Confirm that being an unfamous member of Coldplay is the best job in the world. I once looked after the whole team for an event. I went to collect one of the band who had arrived by tube. I asked him why he didn't get dropped off by car like the others. He said, this is faster and no one knows me or cares. When I said, it's done. I'm going to sit in the regular seats of my family, watch the rest of the show and no one will recognize me. I said, that sounds effing great, if I'm honest. And he said, it is. It's the best.
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B
There you go. It's actually been declared confirmed by an anonymous member of Wembley.
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A
Talking of shows at Wembley, Matthew Bethel has written in and said, sorry if I'm going out of my mind, but did I see Marina twice on the big screen at the Oasis concert on Wembley on Sunday night in a bucket hat?
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B
You know what? You didn't. No, I was not on the Jumbotron at Coldplay because I didn't go. I would have liked to have gone. I would have. Sorry, not Coldplay, Oasis. I would have liked to have gone, but I didn't go. I. I'm told, like, literally every single journalist in the whole of London had a free ticket to it, so. But no, I didn't go and it wasn't me in the bucket hat.
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A
People seem to have loved it, don't they? People have gone crazy for that whole thing. And again, that lovely thing of just everyone going out and seeing something real, real people in a real place.
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B
Yes.
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A
Do you know what? I assumed that was you, otherwise I wouldn't have asked the question. That was a really disappointing answer.
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B
No, I'm sorry.
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A
Sorry, Matthew.
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B
I'm very sorry. It wasn't me. Oh, okay, here we go. This question's from Robert Berry. Who would be on your director Mount Rushmore? For me, it would be Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, Ari Aster and Brad Bird.
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A
It's a hell of a question. This I took it to mean in the same way that it's the four sort of great early presidents are on there, or, you know, the people who've done remarkable things. I thought it had to be four massive names. I didn't just choose Robert, My four favorite directors. I didn't think that was appropriate. It's one of the few things where, you know, if you're asked who's on the writers, Mount Rushmore or actors, Mount Rushmore, the director's one is very, very hard not to pick four men. It's almost impossible. In fact, if you're looking at the whole history of kind of Hollywood and not pick four men. And I think it's one of the few remaining industries where that's the case. So Hollywood, they'll think about that. I have got four names. I'm gonna go for Alfred Hitchcock. You sort of have to write Billy Wilder.
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B
I was gonna put him.
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A
I've gone four.
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B
I was thinking of him.
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A
Okay. I've gone for Spielberg. You have to sort of Spielberg or Scorsese. But I just think. And I love Scorsese, but Spielberg, just because of what he means to people and what he's given to our culture. And my fourth one is Rob Reiner, only because I think he had the greatest run of movies that anyone's ever made with Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men and Stand By Me and Misery. You think, come on.
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B
Unbelievable. Rob Reiner is unbelievable.
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A
And I think he is the one name on there that wouldn't ordinarily be put on that Mount Rushmore. But I think we need to have a little rethink about Rob Reiner and his career. Because he does comedies. I think sometimes people are slightly. I mean, I know Billy Wilder did as well. I mean, it's all white men. And, you know, I haven't gone outside Hollywood. I haven't gone for Kurosawa or something like that. I just. I felt I had. I just thought in the. In the. In the spirit of the original Mount Rushmore, I would go with just four behemoths. I'm aware you have not had any time to think about this at all, but if you were to. To. To have the four great directors, I
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would have had Hitchcock, I would have had Billy Wilder, I would have had Spielberg, and I would have had to have had Scorsese.
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That's a hell of a snub to Rob Reiner.
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B
I know. I know.
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A
It is interesting, because if you did, like the four, if you had, like, literature, you would. Jane Austen would be there, Agatha Christie would be there. I mean, you know, acting. But directing is so male and white.
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It still is.
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Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?
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It remains that way completely. Which is why the acting categories remain split at the Oscars, as we've discussed before. Because if they weren't, it would all be men nominated, I'm sorry to say.
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A
But I have to say, no matter
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how much they try and diversify, the Academy, people would cleave to male nominations if it was just to. In the sort of humankind.
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A
Sense rather than during the humankind.
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Well, you know what I mean. In the word that describes both men and women in the acting profession.
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Yes, I understand. But, Robert, I have to say I love the format of the question. The director of Mount Rushmore and if anyone wants to get a question on this show, Mount Rushmore of various other.
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I've been to.
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Have you?
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B
Yeah. How was it the sculptor, a guy called Borglum, who. The whole story of how he did it is really interesting. And it's something like 17 miles away from one of the other great enormous landscape sculptures which is still unfinished, which is Crazy horse. They're about 17 miles from each other in South Dakota, and it's absolutely amazing. And Crazy Horse is still being built and is the most enormous thing.
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Is it just a tourist attraction?
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The Native American chief came to a sculptor and said, I would like the white man to see. I think he said, the red man has his. This sculptor is so enormous, it's of Crazy Horse pointing forward. I think you could put about 400 people on the arm. It's still being built, and the children have taken it over, and then the grandchildren have taken it over because we spent too long at Crazy Horse. I was thinking, oh, we've missed sunset at Mount Rushmore. This is so annoying. But actually what happened was that we went and sat in this auditorium and they have this incredibly moving ceremony where they say, are there any veterans in the audience? Once the sun set, they retire the flag every night. All of these veterans from different conflicts came down the steps. The whole thing was really amazing. And so just those two, 17 miles apart, these two very, very different parts of American cultural history. Anyway, I really recommend, if you're in South Dakota, you have to do both those things.
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A
We have to remember we're restless entertainment.
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B
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
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A
But it's like we can add a little bit of value. But anyway, I love the question, Robert. Thank you. I'm happy to do more Mount Rushmore's of Marina. I have a question for you from Alan, who has not provided us a surname or has not provided us with a first name, one or the other. Alan says thank you so much for the podcast. I can't tell you how much I look forward to you joining me for my breakfast every Tuesday and Thursday. Thank you, Anne. I have a question I'd love to hear your answer to, although I'm slightly trepidatious as to Marina's response. Okay. What do you think of the rise of Dungeons and Dragons as an entertainment product? The podcasts about the game are Enormous and Critical Role is something of a cultural behemoth. Oh, I've said behemoth quite a lot in this episode. Would it finally break into the mainstream?
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B
I don't know why you're worried about my answer. Because Dungeons and Dragons is amazing. It's owned by Hasbro, which is more than 100 years old as a toy or games company, but it's got a subdivision which are called Wizards of the Coast. The rest of Hasbro is not doing as well. Wizards of the coast revenues grew 70% last year. I think they made almost 1.5 billion. They look after Dungeons and Dragons. They also have Magic the Gathering and things like that. There's lots of reasons. It has a kind of cultural relevance. I always think when things get a cultural relevance, it can't just be because a niche fandom, however engaged and however many millions are playing it, things like the Stranger Things. And that in itself is derivative of the start of ET of which the whole look and those early Spielberg films, the whole look and the whole kind of vibe of Stranger Things is very much inspired by those. But Critical Role, who are, as you say, they are huge. They're like a group of friends and professional voice actors. They play a livestream game of it. It's enormous. When they were gonna do a live version of the game, they sold out Wembley and Madison Square Gardens in something like six minutes. Amazon has begun animating old episodes and they're in four seasons in Critical Role, actually have their own game, which is called Daggerheart. But that in itself indicates the sort of health of all of this, because Daggerheart is becoming huge. And therefore, you know, it's not just like a space that's really, really big, but it's basically Dungeons and Dragons. Lots of people who worked at Wizards of the coast now have helped develop this for Critical Role. Live streaming, Twitch. All of those things have obviously helped. I mean, Obviously in the 80s, it was kind of hamstrung by that whole moral panic thing, which, if our audiences don't know, there was a big panic about Dungeons and Dragons that it was Satanic in the 80s and it started, I think, in 79. It was a sad, very sad story about a who was a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons, who vanished from their university dorm and then actually they were later found sort of hiding in a tunnel. It was some kind of awful self harm episode. And I'm afraid this person eventually ended up taking their own life and another suicide. The mother thought it had something to do with Dungeons and Dragons and it became this weird Rumor that if your character died, you know, like you lost it, then you had to kill yourself, which was not the case at all. And it was one of those bizarre moral panics that basically dissolved because it was complete nonsense and nothing happened. I mean, when you think of the things you got to worry about nowadays, this was a very, very tame thing. And Dungeons and Dragons is very sort of. I don't know, it's inclusive. It's a huge, huge thing. I don't know. It's the biggest game in the world, I guess, tabletop game, as it were, and you can make anything of it. You know, you. If you've ever played it, and I have played it many times. You. You can. Yes, but you can. You're creating worlds yourself. So it's. I mean, it's.
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A
Yeah, it's an incredible game. And if people don't know it, there are. There are sort of various. You know, there are runes and laws, but, you know, you roll dice and, you know, huge amounts of luck involved. It's a story, but the story can. Can go off into lots of different places.
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B
You can take it where you want to.
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A
You can take it where you want to. And again, we talk about it a lot. It is a reaction against the speed of our culture. These are my sons. In a Dungeons and Dragons game that goes on for, like two years or something, it's like a. It's like a saga, but it's a group of people all hanging out with each other, all chatting. You don't know what's going to happen. You know, if you love the mythology and all that sort of, you know, there's. There's. There's lots to hang on to. There's lots of kind of. At heart, it's a. Just a bunch of people hanging out with each other, doing something interesting.
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B
That the movie, whatever it's called, Honor Amongst Thieves.
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A
Yeah, I enjoyed. I enjoyed the movie.
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B
Yeah.
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Yeah.
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But it didn't do anything. It didn't do very well at all.
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No.
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And it's because Hasbro obviously have tried to monetize lots and lots of their properties into kind of cinematic worlds. And it's interesting that the things that have taken off are stuff like Critical Role and the live streams and all of those things. It's just a. That's the right. They don't have ownership of that, though. That's the trouble for them, is that they. Whereas obviously, you can own and license your rights to have movies made. You really couldn't have explained this to someone, honestly, even 15 years ago, that you could sell out Wembley to watch people pay a live version of it. None of these things could be explained. I mean, obviously, you know, podcast selling out shows could also not have been explained. But it's interesting. I mean, I love. I'm a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons and I love what's happened to it.
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I think it's a wonderful game and I think it has a wonderful place in our culture and I think it speaks to where we're going as well, which is human connection.
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Yes.
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A
In. In entertainment. Shall we go to some adverts?
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B
Yes, let's do that.
- [13:03]
A
This episode is brought to you by Sky Sports.
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B
The curtain's about to rise on a new Premier League season. The national Soap Opera With 20 clubs chasing glory, redemption or simply survival. And this year, Sky Sports will show 215 games live, compared with last season's 128.
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A
Search Sky Sports Premier League or go to sky.com terms apply.
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B
This episode includes a segment from our sponsor, TUI, the holiday experts who understand that sometimes your next big trip starts with your latest watch list.
- [14:14]
A
Yes, this is the location effect, where we look at how film and TV locations don't just set the scene, they can set your holiday itinerary too. Sometimes what starts as set design ends up as a travel plan.
- [14:25]
B
Give me some examples, Richard, of your. Of your of dream locations.
- [14:28]
A
Ingrid and I are terrible. Anything we watch, if it's somewhere beautiful, say, let's go there on holiday. If someone has a nice house, we just go, should we live there? And if anyone's a nice on holiday, we're immediately online looking it up. I think the absolute perfect example of it is the White Lotus. So the White Lotus. Firstly, they go to amazing resorts, Sicily or, you know, Thailand, wherever they might be. And people are being murdered. Terrible stuff is happening, but you spend the whole time just going, we have to go There on holiday. Oh, my God, this looks amazing. You know, in between sort of gunfire and all sorts of terrible things happening, you're like, wow, this place. The best ever depiction of Italy is Ripley, the amazing Netflix series. And it's shot so beautifully and, you know, always sort of walking up sort of cliffside walkways and under arches and things like that. It's impossible to watch those shows and not immediately think we have to book a holiday. It's like if you think about the money that is spent on videos for holiday companies and suddenly you got this movie which has been 40, 50 million dollars making somewhere look absolutely incredible. It'd be weird not to watch these things and not immediately think, I have to go on holiday there. But Ripley as well, just the Amalfi coast and Rome, when you watch Ripley, just absolutely make you salivate for a holiday.
- [15:52]
B
However, Richard, let's be a bit more prosaic because sometimes it is a tax break. So there are the great tax break countries. Morocco actually offers up to 30% back in production rebates, which is why it will very gladly play anywhere for you. That's where the Colosseum was built for Gladiator 2, in the desert town of Wazazate. Speaking of desert towns, I think you and I have both been to the same place, which is the place where the spaghetti westerns were shot, which was not actually in the Wild west when they became really popular things like A Fistful of Dollars for A Few Dollars More Good, Bad and Ugly. It's actually in Spain. It's near Almeria. And have you not. We've just discovered that you and I have both been to that same town.
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A
Absolutely loved it. And that's literally going to the set of a movie, because they've got all the old sets there. Like, you can take amazing photographs. And yeah, it's. It's in Almeria. So that is literally a movie set. That's not just the backdrop of. Oh, my God, look at these majestic mountains. That is the taverns, the bars, the shops of a Wild west town. And you. Can you go there? It's, it's. I absolutely loved it. It's the greatest photo shoot location of all time.
- [17:03]
B
It's hilarious. I took only 937 pictures of Kieran in the Wild west there when we went. It was absolutely. It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
- [17:11]
A
Don't forget, with Tui, you don't just have to admire the wide shot. You can book the whole scene, explore
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B
over a hundred destinations with Tui, from Greece to Thailand, Morocco, Morocco and more. Stay in premium hotels. Book authentic cooking classes and experiences to get closer to the culture behind the screen. Find out more online via the app or in store.
- [17:30]
A
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- [18:13]
B
Welcome back, everybody. Oh, now, Richard, you recommended Murder by Phone, that great documentary about Encro Chat. Yeah.
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A
And also so people have come up to me in the street this week and said, thank you for recommending it. We loved it.
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B
Yes. Okay. Tessa o' Hanlon says, my partner and I are loving Murder by Phone, the anchor chat documentary that Richard recommended. We've been trying to cast people for the inevitable Netflix series that will be on our screens. Mike Pope could only be Statham, but we noticed that some detectives were blurred and others weren't. Surely the NCAA agents speaking openly are at high risk of being targeted, even after five years.
- [18:47]
A
Yes. I spoke to Simon Ford, who's the executive producer of this show, and again, if you haven't seen it, I won't give away spoiler, but what he said was interesting about exactly the question you're asking, Tessa. So this show took them. Yeah. Years and years and years to make. The level of access they had to make. The show is absolutely unprecedented. That right in the heart of the National Crime Agency, which is a very, very secretive place. And, you know, the legal hoops they must have had to jump through if you've watched it. The stuff they must have had to clear, you know, every single message, all that stuff, the legal hoops must have been almost unimaginable. So, yeah, a lot of the people speaking at this work at the NCA and various other agencies that are not, as you would say, public facing. So they're not people who really should be showing their face. And the program maker said, well, look, we gave them an absolute full gamut of how they were allowed to appear on screen, which is. Which is what you've seen, Tessa. So you can run from what they call full id, which is. It's just you. It's your name, it's what you look like to full Non id, which would be the complete blurring. And in between, and you'll have seen this one particular one, there are name changes and obscuring identities by disguises and makeup. There's one great NCAA officer who essentially, like, wears glasses, like a, like a big wig, and they like these big sideburns. And you're like, maybe that's what he looks like. If, by the way, you are listening and it is what you look like, then forgive me, because it's a strong look, I'll say that. But certainly if you were looking to disguise yourself, then he had every single version of a disguise you could possibly have. And Constance chatting to those people in advance of transmission as to, you know, do they want to change how they're shown, you know, has something operationally happened that means they have to be taken out of the documentary or obscured in a different way. So right up to the sort of day of transmission, making sure that every contributor, the program was kept informed. And. But Simon says, look, it's. It took a long time to make this thing. It's a very, very small team, very, very secretive team, as it has to be, because, you know, there are people whose identities can't be given away in this, you know, if you look at the people that they're locking up especially. But obviously some directors on the show did have to move on because you can't stay on this show for five years. It's a. You know, because it was in deep freeze for a long time because so many of the criminals involved in this documentary had so much money and spent so much money trying to stop the documentary going out, trying to make the messages inadmissible in court, which, of course, I mean, they're inadmissible on TV as well. And without those messages, you don't have a series. So it's one of those ones where Simon and his team and the whole channel absolutely held their nerve till the last possible possible moment. But, yeah, every single person involved was. Was kept informed all the way up to the last minute. And Mick Pope, who is the guy I spoke about last week, who's wonderful. Yes, Simon says he was an absolute joy. Rare to find such a compelling storyteller. Even when he is telling you what he had for breakfast to check the mics, he said, and Mick Pope actually got in touch with us to say thank you for, for his mention. And he said, I. I did worry that my language might be a bit fruity, but I, I hope people would understand it in the context of the job that I do. We Absolutely did.
- [21:52]
B
It's a hard bit, Richard.
- [21:53]
A
Yeah. Do you know, listen, you got to see it. He doesn't, he doesn't come across as hard bitten. Mick Pope. I can, I can see the Statham thing, but I'm starting this tonight. I think you would love it. But yeah, Statham as Pope and Mick Pope, not the Pope.
- [22:08]
B
No.
- [22:09]
A
Thank you so much to Simon Ford for, for answering Tess's question as well and thank you for making that great show and for holding your nerve for such a long time. Adam Levy has a question for you. Marina. He said, I've really enjoyed your quickfire A Lister segments, although I do think the Marina is a bit too generous to some of the legacy A listers. Who is the biggest A list A lister of all time? If we compare people when they were at the absolute peak of fame, who is the absolute goat of the A listers?
- [22:32]
B
Okay. The idea that I'm too generous to legacy A listers is something I've also been thinking about.
- [22:38]
A
Oh, really?
- [22:39]
B
But, but I think it matters because what I do think about all the time is even though I might think someone like Harris Dickinson is amazing and he's probably going to become like, maybe he'll be James Bond. Maybe whatever, go down a high street in the UK or Main street usa, to use as a generic term and show people the picture and say, do you know who this is? And the answer is no. And it's very interesting. The reason I call them a legacy A list is because people actually know who they are. And you could show people pictures all across America, all across the uk, But I have been preoccupied with this because I've also noticed this thing, this tendency in myself.
- [23:13]
A
So I found this is a real.
- [23:15]
B
It's interesting.
- [23:16]
A
Yeah.
- [23:16]
B
Well, I'm going to come to the answer to the actual question in a minute, but more about you. No. So I had a look at some YouGov post polling that they. They poll every quarter. Really? The most recent polling for Q2, for 2025 is the. The most sort of famous actors, the most recognizable.
- [23:34]
A
They do that. Yeah. That's fun.
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B
Okay, number one.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Keanu Reeves. 98. Recognition amongst all adults in the UK.
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A
Have you started this list at number one?
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B
Yeah, no, I have. Okay. But it's interesting where it goes down.
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A
Okay, okay. Okay.
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B
So 2. Morgan Freeman. 3. Nicolas Cage. I mean, these are interesting. You see like, like more than Tom Cruise.
- [23:54]
A
Yep.
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B
Well, Tom Cruise is at 7. 4. Johnny Depp. 5. Will Smith. 6. Leonardo DiCaprio. 8. Marilyn Monroe. Interesting. We're gonna come to all this. 9 Brad Pitt, 10 Jim Carrey. You see, I think this is interesting. There's something about when's the last Jim Carrey movie you saw? There's something about legacy, a list that is a thing. But in terms of your actual question, I, by the way, think he was talking about Katharine Hepburn. In terms of biggest movie stars, maybe she's got one the most Oscars, Katharine Hepburn. So there's a lot.
- [24:23]
A
She's the only person to win an Oscar and another act got an Oscar for playing her.
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B
Yes, that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, is it like Chaplin where just the most people in the world were watching their movies at any one time almost, because it was such a. Had Katherine Hepburn the most Oscars. Marilyn Monroe may be the most iconic. I think it's so interesting that she's still in number eight. That's crazy.
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A
And also, by the way, the only woman in the top 10.
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B
Yeah. Angelina Jolie is actually the other woman in the top 20 in that list. I didn't go all the way through them. For me, in some ways, the kind of platonic ideal of a movie star. Cary Grant.
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A
Yeah. Sort of defined what movie star meant.
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B
Yeah. What movie star meant. So all these different metrics that I could use. Brando, maybe. Marlon Brando may be the most influential. You'll find most movie stars saying, you
- [25:05]
A
know, the most actor.
- [25:07]
B
Yeah.
- [25:07]
A
Of all the actors. Yeah.
- [25:08]
B
John Wayne, that kind of iconic Americana thing. Right. When America is the absolute center of the world for everything. Tom Hanks, who takes those very big sort of huge American roles. That. And Samuel L. Jackson, you know, the movies that he has been in have grossed the most, but he's just. Lots of. That's because of Marvel.
- [25:24]
A
Wasn't she just overtaken by Scarlett Johansson?
- [25:26]
B
Yes, because Jurassic Rebirth has tipped her over. De Niro for me in so many ways. Such an sort of iconic actor. But actually, what I have to say is that I have to come back to Tom Cruise because. And I thought about this really hard. He's basically spent 40 years as a leading man. And show me anybody else in the whole of movie history who did that. And maybe that's part of our anti aging techniques that we have nowadays, or whatever we have. But he spent 40 years as a leading man. And I just don't think that is replicated anywhere in cinematic history. And for that reason, probably I would say that, although it feels odd because to a large extent, he comes in not exactly that line in the first episode of the Sopranos. Lately I've Been thinking I came in at the end of something. But he does to some extent. He is maybe the last movie star as well as perhaps being the biggest.
- [26:18]
A
Yeah. And seems to care about the industry and seems to have a view on it. So he's not just turning up for work, he's trying to add to the canon.
- [26:25]
B
Oh. And so self conscious though, and thinking about the craft and thinking about what it means and thinking about theatre and all those sorts of things. But as I say, there are many different ways we could talk about it. So I hope I talked through all of those little bits about who I think is why.
- [26:37]
A
But you're going cruzy. I think that's not a bad call.
- [26:40]
B
Simply because I can't because of staying as a leading man for 40 years. Yeah, that's me. Okay. Speaking of the iconique Madame Tussauds, Ewan Davison says, I've just taken my son to Madame Tussauds for the first time and couldn't help but think about the behind the scenes of it all. How do they make the figures and what happens to the figures if the sort of celebrity gets cancelled?
- [27:02]
A
But I'm so obsessed with that of the people who were famous and are no longer famous and knowing the kind of. The melting point.
- [27:09]
B
The melting point.
- [27:10]
A
Yeah, yeah. Which comes to everybody.
- [27:12]
B
A friend of mine, the Guardian, once went to Madame Tussauds to do an interview and saw Richard Branson's head in a sink putting it out there.
- [27:19]
A
I had a story once, someone was working at the Iranian Embassy in the 70s and they had done a waxwork of the Shah of Iran and they had like a private view of it and the Shah said, I want to be taller and thin, thinner. And they're like, okay, we can do that. So they went away again and to make him taller and thinner and in the meantime he was deposed and so it never turned up.
- [27:42]
B
It's now part of Kylie Minogue in the Pop Legends exhibition.
- [27:46]
A
Joe Kinsey, the studio manager at Madame Tussauds is very helpful to us on this. She says it can, it can, it can take over a year to make a wax worker like, like a, you know, with, with proper likeness. And the first thing they, they will do, by and large is you have to have the celebrities involvement really. They will come, will find a way between you and the celebrity of finding a way, like an iconic look that they have or an iconic, you know, just something that, that really represents them. Often the celebrities will donate their own clothing. So Timothy Salome's waxwork has got his own Alexander McQueen boots. So sproces of. You start with a sitting. Hundreds and hundreds of measurements, photographs, you scan the eye, the hair color, all of that kind of stuff. Jo says it's a real mix of art and science and you can. You can really believe it when you see what they do. They start with a clay model. Eyes are hand painted. Each strand of hair is. Is individually put in skin tones with. Done with oil paints. Hair. If you've got the hair, you have to use regular salon products. So, you know, you've got something you really can just go down to boots and get, you know, actual salon products to do the hair with. Just like any real person would. Same with nail varnish and stuff like that. That's real, you know, commercially available.
- [28:59]
B
So much easier to work with one of these and have to wait for the celebrity nine hours for them to turn up the appointment. Yeah, exactly the dream. I'd love to do a waxworks hair.
- [29:07]
A
They recently had to do 13 Taylor Swifts because Madam Resource is not just in London. It's all over the. All over the place. So they've got 13 different Taylor Swifts. It took them 14 months, 40 people, 14 months to make 13 Taylor Swifts. That's like a exam question, isn't it?
- [29:23]
B
Yeah.
- [29:23]
A
Dressed in various different bits of the eras tour and. And, you know, using the same swatches of material that Taylor herself had had used, you know, and props as well. You know, Joe was saying they had over 20 trials to get the exact consistency of a marmalade sandwich for Paddington. But in terms of who's in there and when people get, you know, kicked out, they're always looking at, you know, news events, social trends, things like that. Fan requests and stuff. I saw, we drove past Madame, she saws the other day and Harry Styles is. Is the big one. Harry's home. It says. Yeah at the beginning. So they're always looking at that. They sort of trying to find current icons, of course, but current icons who might last, you know. So Harry Styles and Timothy Sanomie are going to be around for a while, I would say. You know, there comes a point where you think, well, this person's gonna be here for at least three or four years and that's. Then it's worth your while. But obviously people do get retired and there is a. Yeah, there's a storage facility where all the retired and rotated characters are archived. That must be the single creepiest place to work.
- [30:24]
B
I was just about to say in the whole world, could they not franchise it into some sort of horror movie.
- [30:29]
A
You know, some of them are melted down. So some of them, if you just think, you know, this person's day is done, you know, Leo Sayer, you know, might have been melted down at some point, but lots of them are still. They. They're like sitting there on the subs bench.
- [30:41]
B
Yeah.
- [30:42]
A
In case they become famous again. That's a game show.
- [30:44]
B
Well, if Harry Styles gets cancelled, you've got to draw someone in.
- [30:48]
A
Yeah.
- [30:49]
B
Harry Styles will not be cancelled.
- [30:50]
A
He's not going to get cancelled.
- [30:51]
B
But I'm just, you know, as I
- [30:52]
A
say, a complete mix of art and science. You get incredible artists doing those things, but then it's.
- [30:57]
B
You also get ones in, you know, I'm not going to name any of the fac abilities, but I think we all enjoy an off brand two swords. If you ever find one in any city in the world, I strongly urge you, if you're an ironist like myself, to go on in there and to have a look.
- [31:12]
A
Because my best one ever, I went to one in Nanjing in China and they had this waxworks thing. It was so brilliant. There were only three British people in this whole waxworks. David Beckham, barely recognizable. Yeah. Stephen Hawking was there.
- [31:27]
B
Interesting.
- [31:27]
A
And the third one of every single British celebrity ever, every single cultural icon we've ever had from Britain, every single person who might have made a splash in China, who might be kind of universally recognized, apart from Beckham and Stephen Hawking, the third one was Lucian Freud.
- [31:44]
B
No.
- [31:45]
A
Yeah, the artist.
- [31:46]
B
Did he look ironically like a Lucian Freud?
- [31:49]
A
Do you know what? I don't know if he looked like Lucian Freud because I didn't. But yeah, he looked a little bit like a Lucian Freud. It was. I loved it so much. Do you know what? I tell a lie because James Bond was there in the form of Daniel Craig, but looking so unlike Daniel Craig. It was like. It was.
- [32:05]
B
You have to just guess which other per the game is to guess which other celebrity or 1980s footballer they had been before.
- [32:11]
A
Yeah, exactly. He did look. He looked half melted. But yeah, a bad Waxman museum is one of the greatest things in the world.
- [32:17]
B
He appeared as Lee Sharp.
- [32:20]
A
Yeah, I. Wonderfully sharp as ever. If he's in some sort of storage facility somewhere, somewhere just off the West Wing, I would love. I wonder, I wonder if they'd let us have a look around.
- [32:29]
B
I'd love to see that. Yeah. Ideally at the dead of night, poorly lit, maybe just going around with a phone torch.
- [32:36]
A
Oh, it'd be amazing. I mean, they never would ask for my wax first. That's a lot of wax. But if they ever do, you'd have to say no, because. Just because you'd know that you're going to be. At some point, you're going to be melted. You know, everyone understands that in a show business career that, you know, there's a waning. But that's a real physical example. You know, you're literally, literally melted down and turned into Soupaulard.
- [32:59]
B
That's too much perspective.
- [33:00]
A
Too much perspective.
- [33:02]
B
All right, on that note, I think that is us done.
- [33:05]
A
That's us done. Yes. We have a bonus episode tomorrow, all about the rise of Euro Disney. So for members, I hope you enjoyed it.
- [33:12]
B
Fall and rise, I think it's fair
- [33:13]
A
to say, fall and rise of Euro Disney. Yeah.
- [33:16]
B
And other than that, we'll see you next Tuesday.
- [33:17]
A
See you next Tuesday.
- [33:34]
B
This episode was brought to you by our good friends at sky who've made something rather special.
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A
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Did Vladimir Putin interfere in the US 2016 presidential election? I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. And we are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified. And in our latest series, we're going deep inside the 2016 election to reveal the true story of whether the Russians helped Donald Trump take the White House. This is the unbelievable story of how Russian spies first hacked and then leaked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, how Julian Assange got involved with Putin spies, and how 2016 marked the point that the world changed forever. Get the full insider scoop by listening to the rest is classified. Wherever you get your podcasts.