Disney's $100m Mistake

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Restless Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Oswin, hi, Marina. Hello, Richard,

how are you? I'm alright. I wouldn't want to be entertainment right about now with the grilling

we're about to give it. Absolutely. We're preparing to run the rule over at all. We've got quite a

few fun things to talk about. We have. We're going to talk about AI in books. Some people are using it,

a couple of high profile examples of that, a couple of big falls on the way. We're talking about

that. We are talking about talking about big falls. It's an amazing story. If you know the story,

you're going to love it. If you don't know the story, I think you might love it even more.

The star of the secret lives of Mormon wives and the new season of the Bachelor

Editors just bought both of those franchises down in one go. We'll talk about how. What a take, Dan.

Shall we start with AI in books? We've got two stories we want to talk about. I should we start

with my story because you've got, you want to talk about Matt Goodwin? I hope audience understands

that this is a story I find impossible to take seriously at any level. You are, you've

but virtually been bouncing in your seat all morning because you wanted to talk about it. But

Mia Ballard, who is an American author, self-published author, who wrote a book called Shy Girl,

which is, I don't know, listen as if you enjoy your femgor horror, but it's firmly in the femgor horror

genre about a character who is kidnapped and kept as a pet by, listen, it's femgor horror. As I

say, she was self-published author, published this and the way publishing is now, I've spoken a

lot about self-publishing, it's amazing. Don't be sniffy about self-publishing because how many

actual publishing hits come from that? Exactly. The well of creativity out there is absolutely

huge and publishers, I mean, going to that well more and more and more to just take stuff that

they know already is popular and publish it themselves. So, traditional publishing has started,

you know, going into self-publishing, taking these things off the shelf, almost repackaging them,

putting them in, you know, bricks and water shops and making a lot of money out of that.

The other thing that's happening is self-publishing, quite apart from the top end of it,

starting to pay huge amount of money for people. The other thing that's happening is it's been

absolutely flooded with AI because this is a world in which you expect to pay 99 cents for a book

and you expect an author to do 10 books a year. You know, these are some of the things that

happen in self-publishing. And so, it's absolutely rife for AI. Also, absolutely no barriers to

entry into this market. Don't have to go through an editor, don't have to go through a publisher,

doesn't have to go through anything legal. You just write it, format it, put it on the Amazon store,

lots of other places, you can do that as well. So, one hand, all this self-published stuff,

on one hand, traditional publishers saying, oh my god, some of this stuff is really selling.

At some point, the following was going to happen, that a traditional publisher, in this case,

Hashtet, one of the absolute biggest publishers in the world, took this book, Shiger, by Mia Ballard,

said, we are going to publish this, publish it in the UK, it appears it has been written,

or certainly heavily amended by AI, and Hashtet have accepted it,

popped it, said, this is absolutely unacceptable. There's all sorts of other stuff going on in there.

Can I ask you a tiny thing about it, which is, I was quite interested in, okay, so when they take

it, they take, they say we're going to publish your book, we're going to properly publish your book,

sorry, these were proper, but you know, just a different shade here. Traditionally published.

Traditionally published your book. They said, we are enjoying refining her book with her. So,

does that mean it's not the exact text that went self-published, because you've now got an editor,

and they're going to say, by the way, it really drags here, or something in a nice,

possible way, it's going to have to be a bit different for our purposes, but now you have a

bit deal, and now you're going legit and blah, blah. I mean, as we will discover, it's actually

slightly a halfway house, because it's not one of those ones where they're involved, the

publishers involved right from the beginning, and is able to sort of have meetings, and you know,

is heavily invested in it, but they will do some due diligence editing, and then I like edit,

but you know, essentially, they know people like this book, and we're reading it, and there is a

mood effort in publishing, which I think is quite right, of why would we impose what we think a book is

on a book that is already set? So, there's, it's a light touch, but the key thing is,

there was a Reddit thread started about two and a half months ago that started raising

questions about this, and started saying, look, I'm reading the first chapter of this

Mia Ballard book, and it looks a lot like AI. It's reading an awful lot like AI.

Tell me what the signifiers were, because we know, we know some of them in nonfiction writing.

Yes. Like, it's not X, it's Y. It's exactly the same. So, there is a, there's an emotional

flattening, it doesn't do nuance and peaks and troughs very well, other than within individual

sentences, within individual sentences, it can actually go, you know, the light shone like darkness,

was never there, and the darkness shone like light was never to be. It does that sort of thing all

the time, where you go, oh, I don't know, and that's you making any sense. It does, every single

noun will have an adjective. I mean, it absolutely overrides that sort of thing. Every action has a

similarly, every single one of it will, it will not leave a single piece of action alone without,

you know, describing what it is a bit like. There's lots of lists of three, something X, something

Y, something Z. Now, all of these things, every writer does this. And that is so many of you,

but I think people have worked out now, you can just go through and say, take out M-dash.

It's really hard, especially for digital natives who've grown up in these kind of word, you know,

worlds, you absorb the writing style. I mean, I hope I don't, but I'm, I'm, I feel as a journalist,

I'm waiting for someone to say, your column's AI, and it not be. And this is it. I know we'll go

to a whole section of discussion on that, but. This is why it's a really interesting thing,

because a lot of people will say, yes, but that's how people write, and particularly,

that's how neurodiverse people write. And all of that is true. Every single one of those people,

every single one of these things, these tropes are things that writers use. However, they don't

use it all the time on every page, which is what AI does. It does, it does the same thing again,

again, again, again, a human writer will, we'll always, at the end of a chapter, at the end of

a section, just going, okay, how is my reader feeling now? Was that too dense? Do we need a bit of

lightness of touch? A real author's going, what, what, what move would surprise my reader next?

What move would, you know, move my reader next? Well, AI is thinking, what word would normally come

next? It's all they're thinking. And so it doesn't differentiate throughout a whole book. So I've

talked to a lot of editors and agents this week, because part of this whole mere ballad story is

someone put all of her, put this work through an AI, you know, scanner as well as 78% AI or

something like that. I didn't meet a single agent or publisher who uses one of those AI detection

things. They use their gut, because they're reading writing all day, every day, and a lot of

these people have been doing that for 40, 30, 20 years. I mean, it's, it's just what they do. They

absolutely understand it. They understand that writers can use all of these cliches, but they get

to a point where they can read five pages of text. This is not working for me, even cover letters

and, you know, cover art and things like that. So the mere ballad thing, a lot of people have now

come out in her defense and say, oh, no, but, you know, if you put Frankenstein through an AI

generator, it says 100% AI and all of this stuff, it seems that this is a fairly clear cut case

that Hashtag went to me about art and said, we suspect that this is AI generated. She has said,

this is her quote, she said, someone in my writing group offered to help. She'd done a draft.

Yeah. Someone in my writing group offered to help, and assured me she'd do a thorough job,

so I trusted her in the process. She also changed the loss of the wording and encouraged me to

lean more poetic, because that's my background and I listened. I should have done one final careful

pass before publishing, and that's on me. Essentially she's saying, I gave it to somebody else,

and they use chat GPT to edit it. She's published previous books, which don't appear to have had

AI assistants. So this is very, very different. So Hashtag have popped it. They said, we're not going

to publish it anymore. Hashtag in the US, which was about to publish it, has pulled it as well.

And it's the first example of this happening. It's the first example of these major publishers

being duped into doing an AI helped novel. She's pursuing legal action, mere ballad, so maybe,

perhaps listen, perhaps there's an entirely innocent explanation for all of this.

And certainly if there was AI involved, it's not the biggest crime in the world. We don't like it,

but it's, you know, to have it escalated like this must be absolutely insane for her.

But this world is self-publishing. I follow lots of self-publishing groups, and I find them very,

very interesting. And you can see the panic amongst them, because 19, well, certainly all the

human beings are doing their own work. You see the panic where they go, yeah, but I use

Grammarly to help with my grammar sometimes, because if you don't have an editor or copy editor,

you know, it's due diligence. Does that mean it's AI? And on the other side of things that

there are people who will type in a prompt, go and make a cup of tea and come back and they've

got a book and they'll publish it and we'll do 200 books a year. So there's no way

in the future that these books are going to be AI-free, because people are going to use tools to

help them if they're not in traditional publishing. So it is the beholden on publishes.

And I think this is a good new story to keep an eye out for these things. The world of self-publishing

is going to be in trouble because there is so much AI-stop. And there's so much of it.

But there's so much human creativity out there as well. So I just hope people who are self-published

are not disheartened by this whole mere ballad thing, because it's one thing. It was found out,

it is obvious to almost everyone who has read this book, what the situation is. So is this the start

of a huge avalanche of AI books that are going to be in your bookshops? I don't think so. I think

the exact opposite. I think there's a real kick up the backside for the publishing industry. I think

they're all going on with God. I think that was Hashet and not us. I'll be so into the hold. Yes,

to the lightweight brigade. We have another thing, which is everyone being accused of using AI,

which is something different. And now it's become absolutely a thing that you can beat

anyone with. And as you say, these... I'm dreading someone saying it. I've obviously never written

a column with AI, but I'm always thinking that someone can just tell. It's like when someone turns

around and say, oh, you've plagiarized this idea or something. It's like the worst thing you

can say if you really care about this. Well, as I say, these detection things don't particularly

work. So that's not some... There's no point putting everything through those. And they're

all designed to get you to sign up and get met. I don't want to say they're all scams. A lot of

them are scams in their own way. But I was going to an agent who had a client who had a book out last

year. First book, Davy books, a really big deal. And in the first week, they were accused of having

an AI front cover. So I said, your front cover is AI, which is a huge thing in self publishing.

Lots and lots of AI front covers. And the writing community are very good at

understanding that if you want to be protected, we also protect artists. And so they're very,

very against it. So there was this huge sort of uproar. Fortunately, for this author,

the actual illustrator who had drawn that front cover that people were accusing of being AI

had done a time lapse photography of her drawing it. Oh my god. So she had absolute proof of

doing it. But in future, because this is the way that AI... This is the way the public genuinely,

the only thing that really publishing is really think about AI is can they come up with their own

IP without having to involve human beings, give it to a jobbing writer, have it written, and then

own all of everything. So something like my Oxford year, it was come up by the publisher Julia

Waden, who's an amazing writer, wrote it. But the publisher owns a lot more of that than they would

if Julia Waden had come to them. So if you are a publisher and you sit at home with AI,

and it comes up with Project Hail Mary for you, for example, which is the biggest selling book

in the world this week. So it comes up with that for you. You give it to a writer and suddenly

you own Project Hail Mary. And so I keep hearing this in publishing that, well, they would just do that

when they would cut out the originator. But, and we go back to that time lapse photography,

if that happened, so Project Hail Mary was an AI thing and the publisher sort of came up with

a gave it to a writer, it comes out as a huge hit. I go, I don't think I'd like to know how you

came up with that publisher because you don't, you're not somebody comes up with good ideas,

how could you come up with it? And they go, oh, I just thought of it somehow, no, I need proof

because if AI does come up with it, if AI came up with a Project Hail Mary, the publishers would

not own it. There is no copyright in something that AI came up with. So I'll just go and do Project

Hail Mary 2. That's easy. And someone else does Project Hail Mary 3. So this thing of, we are going

to have to be in a position, as I say, as we rebuild this industry after this hurricane has blown

through, where we find a way to prove that we originate our own ideas. I'm going to wear a

grey coat to write my column. But people go, that would be on watch, but I've seen some

of my life. That would be up there with, you know, some of the worst of director. But with the

simple, we're going to need a simple piece of blue chip software that is able to show it to prove

that we came up with an idea and then be that we wrote it. And now I feel very fortunate. All

these writers, I've talked to the other day, said, my God, thank God, I started writing before

this all came out. You know, I spoke to Lee Childe, he goes, thank God, I mean, he's written all

of his books before AI came out and he goes, I never have to worry about it. But if you're a younger

writer now, you're absolutely going to have to answer this constantly throughout your whole career.

And so just some way, lightly illustrator with the time that photography is just saying, here is

me drawing it. We're going to have to have a thing that says, here is me writing it. A publisher is

going to have to accept that. A publisher is going to have to sign legally to say, yes, you did

that as well. Or if they give you a thing, they are going to have to sign something to say, I didn't

use AI to come up with this. But I do think this is one world where we want human beings. And so

we'll just find a little way, a little gold standard of how to say human made, like when you go to

a national trust gift shop, you know, and there's a little part of jam and the person who made it

signs it, you know, it's an artisan newspaper color. Art is exactly that, exactly that. Can I make

one more philosophical point? Yes. Which is the AI industry, I mean, it's sold everyone's books.

Okay, so anthropic and open AI, you know, it's scraped everyone's books and, you know,

has used them in their large language models. There is a feeling of, like some writers still,

that what AI is doing is thinking, this is going to be a brilliant way for us to write books.

Oh my God, we've got all these books, so we can copy them. And we can do our own versions of books.

And that's never been the game for AI at all. The reason they scraped all of our books

is because they just wanted a huge repository of fairly well-constructed sentences. They're not

in the businesses, oh my God, we can write books here because there is no money in books.

If you look at the industries that AI can be going into and are going into, you know, medicine,

shipping, all of these things, insurance, these things that are multi-multi-trillion dollar industries,

books, they don't care. They used us, they used us just for our worth just so they can train people

out of right emails. And then they moved on. But they've left a mess behind them, which we're

going to have to deal with. And by we, I mean publishers, writers, self-published authors,

but I think we can deal with it. That's the treat of it. Readers want to read stuff written by

human beings. Human beings still want to write books. Publishers want to support that industry.

So the anthropics and open AI's of this world, we're still going to sue them. Don't worry about

that. They're absolutely, they've stolen from us. If you're worried that, yeah, it's going to get

better and better at writing novels and soon they're going to be indistinguishable, that doesn't seem

to be the direction that AI is going in. AI, its setting point is to be accurate and concise

and boring. Its setting point is not to be radical and different and creative. There's no money

in that because the shipping logistics industry don't want that from their LLMs. Open AI and

the anthropic, they're not interested in books. It's our business again and we as an industry

can just get on and we can build something that is real and true and human and that people will

I think value even more because of what's happened. Okay. Well, I like, I've got a couple of counter

points to that in my next case study. This is the business about Matt Goodwin. I'll give you a

posseed history of who Matt Goodwin is. He is, I mean, I don't know if he still calls himself

an academic. He used to be an academic. He actually co-wrote a really interesting book in a research

book with another academic who's great called Rob Ford called Revolt on the Rire and that came out

in 2014. By the way, if you read that book at the time, you could basically essentially predict

that Brexit was going to happen. It was really interesting. It was like an analytical look at how

so many, there'd been so many on moorings from traditional kind of voter bases that some,

there was potential for that. Anyway, since then he's been on a little bit of a journey

rightward if those directions still make any sense anymore. He's got a sub-stack. He, a political

sub-stack, he stood in Gordon and Denton and the recent bi-election and he lost for reform.

He lost the Greens. He's sometimes described as reforms in house intellectual. Anyway, he published,

self-published again, which I think is interesting recently, just really recently. Last couple of

weeks, a book called Suicide of a Nation with a subtitle, Immigration, Islam, Identity. And he

is saying that it's selling amazingly because it's number two on Amazon or something like that.

It's now in the realm of Jamie Oliver cookbooks. Okay, challenge. It's not. This is not the

effort and he knows it. It's what political writer called Andy Twelves has suggested that this book

is AI-generated and it's got sort of, or to some degree, AI-generated. It's got made up quotes

from like Cicero. I mean, they should be glad people are still talking about them, but anyway.

And some of them, by the way, a lot of the stories simply cannot take seriously. So apologies

for all the people who've been taking it very, very seriously for the last week. And that they're AI

hallucinations in it and chat GPT sourcing and so on. He did come up with this epic nickname,

Matt GPT, which I'm sorry, it's just like one of those Trump ones. It's like, oh, it's so good.

Unfortunately, I can only think of this person in this way now. Anyway, Andy Twelves challenged

him to a debate on, or maybe Matt Goodwin challenged him to a debate, which happened on Friday night

and GP news. I know I've used this quote before, but I remember the night he's watching a dating show,

American dating show, and they said to the woman, what sort of men do you like? And she said,

I like men who've fighting bars. I remember thinking, oh my god, okay. I like many challenge each

other to our debates on news channels and in line girls. And I think it was resoundingly

one by Andy Twelves. I mean, nobody really watches these things, probably, yeah, all the sort of

inside beltway people watch it, but it exists like all of this stuff just to be clippable,

which is kind of relevant to what we're talking about here. Okay. What I am very much into and I

pretty much think we're going to talk about Taylor Frankie Paul in this way. Matt Goodwin's just

posting through it. Okay. He's not. And everyone's like, you should, you know, they try to destroy me.

Yeah. No, you have to, they've tried to destroy me. They're making me stronger than ever.

My book's now at number two on the Amazon charts, which I'm going to come to you in a second and ask

you what on earth? Yeah. But people have just been like, he should go away and think about. I've

seen pro, you know, genuinely people who regard themselves as credible thinkers saying, you know,

Matt Goodwin should go away and actually consider what's happened here. It's like wake up. Okay.

It's twenty six. Yeah. Politics has been post-chain forever. Okay. This is good for him. Okay.

I'm really sorry. People have spent the whole weekend saying he's been totally destroyed.

Rubbish. Okay. You're so wrong. Okay. Nonsense. Okay. It's really interesting how the right has

taken so much of what the left did in terms of online stuff. Like the left were, you know,

that kind of online victim heard all of that, which was originally definitely very much

preserved the left. The white haven't now just taken that weaponized it. There's so much better

at it. What even is this book? I remember when my elder son was tiny, like three months old,

he had a cloth book, something about a monkey, you know, it squeaked it crunk and crinkled,

you love that book. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, his fat. Like, he's got a book already.

I mean, it's like wake up. What are you talking about? It's not a book. It's like a paginated toy.

Okay. It's just got some things like this. That's what books are. Yeah. What map

goodwin has written? He hasn't written one of these treatises, even something like Liz Trusses

say, let's save the West. It's nothing like that. It is just, it's aimed at the Facebook audience,

which I mean, skews older, if I can put that, like, and it's a paginated piece of internet.

That's all. It doesn't have to be the same as what you think, some whatever book is. I wouldn't

sit with my parents this weekend. You know, like many people have bad generation.

Up next to the landline on the wall is useful numbers. And it's, you know, to me, my sisters,

the GP, you know, nice mark taxi. Yeah. David Hare, not the playwright. It's David.

He does the hair. Okay. Um, Ray Plumber, you know, useful numbers.

Some of the playwrights. Yeah.

Useful numbers. This is just useful numbers. This book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's useful.

I don't even know if they're true, but people don't mind about them being true.

This is my counterpoint. No one is going to care about this in a few years.

But this is not the book industry. No, it's just a random outline. This is not someone who buy,

the people who are buying this, they may also buy some novels here. I don't know what they do or

don't. I suspect probably not. It's a different type of audience. It's one of the things they might

sell in waterstones a bit like they might sell all the games and the toys and the

packs of cards and the books of stamps. It's a thing. It's a paginated piece of it. And also,

you know, Matt Goodwin's living is Matt Goodwin now as so many people in this era. So his job

when he wakes up every morning is I know how much money I've earned last month. I've got a rough

idea because I've got this amount of people following me on the sub-stack and there's not much

churn. I've got rough idea of how much I'm making next month. Where do I get some extra cash? Look,

I'll do this book because, and again, he's not thinking this is the thing that's going to make

me millions. He's just thinking, this is the next bit of what I do. You know, it's just

just another way of monetizing what I do. So you do a book and you put it out there and you

hope that it blows off and people give you lots of publicity. Not looking at how many he's sold.

He's not going to make a huge amount of money out of it, but he's getting lots of it. It's not

going to be a Jamie Oliver Cook, but let me tell him that right now. He knows that. He knows

exactly how many they've sold. He knows that. So the softening will get the Nielsen ratings,

which tell you actually how many books you sold through Amazon and through all their normal book

stores. And if your website has Nielsen accreditation as well. So the Amazon chart, I saw a

thing where he said it's the sixth best-selling book in the UK this week. By virtue of it being

six on the Amazon chart. And I looked at Amazon. It was actually number three on Amazon. I said,

you could say third. The Amazon chart updates every three hours, four hours sometimes.

And it just tells you where your book is at any given time. So if you're number six or let's

be fair, he was number three on the Amazon chart. You are number three on one retailer

four or four hour period. And that is it. This is not the best-selling books of the week or anything

like that. But next week, we will say exactly how many it's sold. But the AI thing is sort of

more interesting. So me, a ballad, I hope it's a line in the sand and as a industry,

as a fiction and novel writing industry, we can grow from there. The Matt Goodwin thing, it shows how

actually books. Now, as you say, 30 years ago, there was there was some prestige and oh my god,

he's published his treaties. And now it's just, it's another, Matt is making his money from

sub-stack and it's making money from people, you know, hearing whatever he's having the saying.

And as you said, this post is throw it. Yes. And this is a printed out version that you're posting

through it. Do you think with him, and I don't know enough about him, you know the thing with

Elron Hubbard and Scientology, that he was a sci-fi writer, and would write about cults and

things like that. And somebody went, hold on, this seems to be quite a lot of money in this,

if he did have a cult, you know, having written that book, which actually says super well respected,

but understanding what was happening online with the right and the agitators and the money there

was to be made. Did a bit of him just go, I mean, listen, I work really, really hard being an academic

and I know what I get paid. I feel like there might be money here. Yeah. And Rob Ford, who wrote it

with him and is now sort of like his mortal foe. And he remains in the camp with, you know, he'll

do, he'll go in the room with John Curtis all the day of the election and he'll be one of the

people who creates the exit poll. And you know, it's really interesting. Yeah, it's a it's a

sundering of, I don't think they were necessarily ever politically in the same place at all,

in fact, they weren't. But nonetheless, they combined with that kind of discipline and the

research to write this book. And then, yeah, in the, in 12 years, it's, yeah, different, different

branches of history. Anyway, next week's podcast will give you the, the final scores on the doors

for, for Matt Goodwin's book. Shall we go to a break? We'll be talking about someone posting

through it after the break as well. Oh my god, she's posting. She's posting through it so much.

Yeah. And also, and the best thing about it is, it's not in our country. Unless you're in America,

in which case, we have bad news. Yeah, but you've got so much bad news. Yeah. Because it's actually

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Welcome back everybody. Now I should say just as we've been recording and the news has come

through that Scott Mills has been sacked from Radio 2 over his personal conduct. We obviously

know nothing about that yet but we will see how that develops but yeah that's literally

just happened as we are recording it feels like that's going to be a big

story. Market is developing. Yeah. Now we are talking about a lady called Taylor Frankie Paul.

One of those names that you could do in any order. There's still be a name Paul Frankie Taylor

sounds like a bassist around, around, around. She may need to change it. Yes you may indeed

please for those of our listeners who are not familiar with her work. I would say she has

cost the American entertainment industry over $100 million in the last 10 days. For sure I think

that is I would have thought yeah okay so it's interesting. Disney has a new chief exec Josh

Demaro who's just taken over but he's come from the Parks division. The very very successful

and lucrative parks division. He's now having to slum it in the complex waters of entertainment

because on something like his second day in the job this huge scandal erupted involving the

star of the new completed season of the Bachelorette. The Bachelorette is a show based on the

Bachelorette where you know someone has to find love. They've got to choose through 30 different

suitors and it's insanely huge. Yeah it's it's like it seems like 25 or something. Yeah it's

an older sort of creak in reality formats from the sort of Nazis it goes all the way back to that.

Taylor Frankie Paul the Bachelorette they cast for this series because they wanted to kind of

revive that old creak in franchise is Taylor Frankie Paul now. So in the Bachelorette there is

one woman and there are a whole series of suitors. So 30 guys and they'd go on dates you know blah blah

you've got to choose the opposite of the Bachelorette. So the person you cast quite often

stunt casting quite often someone who's been on the other side you know who's been one of the

suitors in in previous seasons. Yeah they normally bring people out of the format because it's

that's but it's a huge deal you're carrying that entire season of that entire show and they choose

Taylor Frankie Paul because they already have a relationship with her because of because of a new

reality format that's been going I think about three seasons it started two years ago is an

absolute mega success it's called the secret lives of Mormon wives it's kind of like a housewives

thing that are different it's all under the Disney just it's a Hulu show so they think that is a

runaway hit and she is the standout star you know with her chaos and her drama. The reasons we will

go into it and they they think we'll cross the streams because and by the way reality TV has become

that sort of a thing British people complain about the American version of traitors when it first

came out because it they had all been on multiple different reality formats and in the old days

which as we used to talk about that you couldn't have someone you'd been on I'm a celebrity

yeah then appear on Strictly it doesn't matter anymore reality TV you just do the rounds of the

shows and actually it's better to accrue kind of more clouds you become a professional reality show

I mean so the antecedent for this happening for Taylor Frankie Paul being in the Bachelor

is another big big old behemoth of entertainment television which was creaking a few years ago

with dancing with the stars which has now was to be spoken up before gone huge and dancing

with the stars in the last season had two other members of the secret lives of Mormon wives

in the cast everybody loved it again you crossing the streams it was a huge success so you think

okay well that seems to work beautifully we've got the Bachelor Red it's not doing great I think

the last two seasons have been the lowest rate of seasons ever we have had success with the secret

lives people going on dancing with the stars everyone seemed to like that we had this thing the

Bachelor Red that needs a really really strong presence at the heart of it and actually that's

what launches this show and we also happen to have in the secret lives of Mormon wives like a real

breakout star who is Taylor Frankie Paul so let's cast her but if we rewind a little bit before

the chaos comes about why was she such a huge part of the secret lives of Mormon wives because

it was built around her really yeah and I mean I almost find it quite difficult to talk about without

giving away what's happened to her because right from the very start we in the very very first

episode of the secret lives of Mormon wives some police body cam footage is shown from an

incident in which she's sort of being she's drunken and being arrested and there's just a little

bit of it anyway and you know she confronts this supposedly and talks about rebuilding and I've

done the work and all these kind of modern phrases we do she had not done the work she had not done

the work so she the whole thing starts because she she starts like this this mom talk thing

yeah m o m t okay where she starts doing bits of her life and bits of you know life of other people

in the Mormon community and it's quite surprising to people because you know amongst the you know

the the things you would expect it's not the state community you might think it is and her first

controversy is she's doing this mom talking stuff and then she starts talking about how her and

her husband at the time and other members of the Mormon community they lived in were soft

swingers which meant they you know they swap sexual partners every now and again and everyone's like

huh and her this mom talk really really blew up at that point and everyone in TV is going

holy moly you got so you got this community of Mormon wives so you know we we we we think we know

what we're going to get but it's like it's a real house-wise franchise but from a really unexpected

and so they jumped on this mom talk thing that Taylor Frankie Paul had started the secret

lives of Mormon wives comes out of that and she is its progenitor and as you say the very very

first thing that happens the fact that it all comes from there is a charge anyway so she's

cast in this new season of the Bachelorette she is on the promotional tour for the new seasons about

the Bachelorette it's completely finished it will have cost them tens of millions of dollars

and what comes out now TMZ the sort of video ratsy site gets given leaked a video which is the video

of the actual incident that led to that the police being called and then we see in the body

and this is and this is not by the way a video that we have seen on secret lives of Mormon wives

this is this is this is new what so we sort of this video is disqualifying this is a video of her

she's very she's really drunk she's having some big domestic argument she's throwing bar

stools at her on-off partner and the father of one of her children she's completely wasted it

all for one of the stools hits her daughter from the previous husband and you hear her cry

and he says you're not even going to your daughter and she's crying now that cry is basically

regarded as the sort of insurmountable horror for the executives and they have pulled the entire

season of the bat you can't it's it's really interesting a video there is that we obviously we live

in a video culture there is something so kind of obviously viral and insurmountable about actually

seeing the incident and knowing that every single one of your potential viewers is Tina

and so yeah and so when you're but when you're saying oh god who knew I mean you should have

because it's not a secret that there was something that led to the original Pete police body

oh so everyone knew about this incident by the way so this is this has been absolutely has

been documented on you know their own channels so you can kid yourself to sort of that if what

you're seeing is the tiny bit of footage you've seen off the police body so they are put in a

situation where and this this is where you see sometimes where you can really visualize a meeting

in the entertainment industry so they have a meeting and this meeting is what do we do about

to the bachelor ret because it probably doesn't have long left is there a way we can save the

bachelor ret and I'm gonna tell you exactly what this reminds me of by the way in a moment how do

we save the bachelor ret and they go well look how about Taylor because we're there's dancing with

a star she's chaos she's trying and she's chaos and you know and also guys she's not in the room

but this is how they'll be thinking of course and they'll go redemption arc you know maybe she

finds love maybe that's what she always needs and someone in that thing go yeah but don't forget

they're what there's the thing with the kid we know that that well they know there's a police thing

and there's a mystery battery guilty plea they're good you know but what about the stuff you know

the the arrest and also we're we're you know it's not the last thing she's done that's been chaotic

in the the first three seasons of normal wise and they go well yeah no I know what you mean yeah

it's interesting that but it just I sort of feel like can you imagine when we announce I mean can

you imagine when we announce it it's gonna be like huge isn't it yeah well should we like maybe

look into it a bit more because I'm a tiny bit uncomfortable with her being because what if she is

sort of uncontrolled or go I think honestly you know the guys on the bachelorette they're pretty

good I think that they can put they can probably handle it let me talk to some of them more

and more of some producers and they're going yeah listen she's a firework for sure and they go to

tell us more about the arrest yeah you know what I think that I think maybe that's sort of

in her in her past a little bit because it's their show as well yeah exactly exactly this is all

this is all owned by the same people and so they so those guys didn't properly relay the situation

because otherwise that you're threatening your own show yeah I mean it's crazy but no but don't

think it also more than wives are thinking because they're just you know they're almost like a startup

still and they're incredibly excited that's who I mean two cast members on dancing with the stars

and they go oh god now we're gonna have Taylor on the bachelorette this is this is huge for everybody

so everyone's got around a table and everyone's kind of gone is this okay maybe this is okay

and everyone's gone oh is it okay and the fact that they've all kind of gone well it is it okay

that the decision is sort of made sort of in the censure of any moral thinking what's

we're having they go you know what let's do it and it's exactly the same process that leads to

Peter Mendelssohn being the US ambassador don't you think oh my god that everyone's going

a little sort of solves some problems though wouldn't it because like you know I guess that

Trump he'd be good with Trump and is it really so bad this stuff that he's done and asking

the Epstein thing is it is that okay and everyone's sat around the table gone maybe it's okay

exactly it maybe it's okay maybe it's okay to do that yeah and like Peter Mendelssohn

on the work yeah has he done the work maybe is it is there more to come out is there more to come

out here I don't think there is more to come out no I think I think it's going to be fine and it's

exactly the same thing only someone had lost that phone footage yeah it's so unfair anyway she is

re-rested for something else so please go and visit her house much more recently and this is

the thing that somebody obviously releases this video because she's back in the news again somebody

releases this video to TSE domestic violence incidents that he that that on off partner has

reported really recently so not only that I mean which by the way should be our primary focus

yeah but she's also destroyed the season of the bachelor rep because it's quite all right she's

with the guy that she's got that she's back with that guy so I guess none of the 30 worked out the

30 suitors yeah because she's back with the guy that she's got and and their ongoing reports of

direct domestic violence from him so I guess we know she doesn't find love yeah so what this

tell us about state reality well well I mean what what what happens now is the big question which is

so they've they've shot the whole of the bachelor rep is all in the can all in the can to the extent

that the production has been paid every the you know the production company has been paid

Taylor Frankie Paul has been paid a quarter of a million pound fee and does not have to give it back

because she she's done everything she's been asked to do everything that happens afterwards is not

her business it costs as you say there are some I was reading somewhere there's 45 minutes look

I it's more around 70 million dollars this cost and that's before you start you know any any

sort of publicity campaign so that money is written off or is it parked that for for for a second

the secret lives of Mormon wives latest season is also on hiatus because of all of this which is

another absolutely enormous franchise so Paul Josh Demaro as he says not that poor coming

from parks where you just think in I mean this is just a business literally on day two he turns

into the director general of the BBC and goes oh what so what now he's done what I feel that they

can you know in a really grotesquely cynical way that Mormon wives can probably save it because

they can bring it into the format because it sounds like a show and you know I'm not debating

the morality of this this is entertainment television but I think that they can probably bring

it in it does say something to me about the state of reality TV which is that in the old days the

format of all these shows would be the start and basically you're dealing with unknowns and you

could get freaks and hot messes and provocateurs and the format could sort of take them because

you weren't building a show around someone already and so you could sort of say oh they

and they were sort of they're discrete entities and the next season we start again but now the

formats are built around the biggest outlier characters people you know nobody's a nobody everybody's

famous in some way whether it be on online they all come with these huge high profile platforms

outside the show and so reality TV contestants can be much more toxic and crazy in some sort of way

because they actually have a form of power that they never did before and also they are going to be

they are suddenly returnable so in the same way that you know Peggy Mitchell was returnable in

EastEnders but you were writing her and she misbehaved you could get rid of her these people are

returnable they're the reason people are watching the franchises but you are not in control of that

person you can pay that person for sure and you can withhold pay of certain things happen but you

can't control them as a human being because they have other sources of income and they have other

sources of attention which actually bad behaviour will only increase a lot like Matt Goodwin

I mean the absolute Matt Goodwin of Salt Lake is this day but she's posting through it

also like Matt Goodwin she's posting through it because again I just I love to think that these

moments culturally are we now know who you are and you go away with your tail between your legs

in some ways you get more interviews and you can possibly have you get more publicity you get more

clout yeah you get the documentary about you in five years time yeah shame is just the whole kind

of legacy respectability politics concept that doesn't work any longer and you just carry on and

I I've she's done so many interviews this week that there's no sense that in the old days I mean

I'm not even talking that many old days I'm talking three years ago she would have just gone

quite on her socials and you know and whether or not it would have died down or whatever

not at all yeah she is absolutely leading into it yeah leaning into it leaning into the skid

yeah but I would have thought they will try and find a way of building it entirely into more

than wives because you can't and I think and I think also that the bachelor ret that whole season

will see the light of day because you just do it as a documentary but by the way or I'm

lovely producer Imi was talking about how all the guys from the bachelor ret who've been on this

series so by the way they've filmed this whole thing like everyone in the hometown knows they're

going to be on the bachelor ret they're going oh my god this amazing thing they did this thing

when and I was said to take that X Y and Z they're already for their moment in the sun and suddenly

that's pulled for all of them so they're all currently on their Instagram saying I'd really like

to tell my story yeah follow me I tell my story you know it's there are so many documentaries at

the moment about that you know the you know the biggest loser and just you know all these shows

that are awful yeah I'm a morality of it and now the industry about and a bit of me is thinking

I'm glad that you know things have changed and then you look at this decision you go oh my god of

course it hasn't changed but I imagine that you know yes the bachelor ret the documentary version

of everything that they just filmed will be the thing that's on in a year's time because the production

company I think in 12 in 12 months time can sell it to whoever they want you build a documentary

around all of that footage anyway it will be number one yeah I think I think I think that's right

can we do something next week about all those sort of shows because it's so interesting how

that early kind of golden toxic whatever era you want to call it of reality TV and the brutal shows

like America's wall accept top model the biggest loser and now being kind of revived as the subjects

of tell all documentaries about how dreadful it all was then can we talk about

but maybe we can talk about that next year any recommendations this week there is a positive

banquet awaiting on new streaming new UK streaming service HBO Max I mean the pit is terrific

it's very hard for me to pick something the most thing like but I have to say that the thing I was

most looking forward to was which has only just come out in America with season three of the

comeback oh yeah the comeback has come back oh my god it's a very interesting show these

could row plays a TV actress and it's about there's so much about the indignity and pathos of being

in the entertainment industry but what's so interesting about the show is the first season was in

2005 the second season was in 2014 and the third season is obviously now third and final 2026

yeah that's cool that every chair is just still with us she's still working trying to work just

trying to make her way in a difficult industry and I absolutely love it it's just brilliant so

if you haven't if you don't know about it and you can go back and see all of it oh yes

all three of them yeah yeah because that whatever 20 20 21 years between all three seasons

I'm going to recommend an HBO Max thing as well we're not sponsored by HBO Max by the way

although if you're listening which is Rooster the Steve Carell yes show which which is just really

really funny from what I know I've watched Steve Carell and anything but I won't tell you

the whole plot of it but just watch it and there's a couple of British actors in the Charlie

Clive and Phil Dunster and amazing supporting cast but it's a really lovely I mean oh my god

when the Americans do comedy well they do it well don't they yeah okay that about does us for

today we will be back on Thursday with our Q&A and on Friday for our members the first in a bonus

series about the Spice Girls where are they now incredible story which is a huge amount of fun

if you want to join um for ad fee listening and bonus episodes it's the rest is entertainment.com

see you on Thursday see you on Thursday

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