E63: The Price of Fame

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[00:00:02.140] - Oliver (Host)

Do you remember that poor celebrity? You know, the one who started working really young, basically as a teenager, and then made it big. The one who thrilled audiences with that voice, that screen presence. They had it all. Always pushing the envelope, always needing to be bigger, better, more admired. And they did it. They weren't the next big thing. They were already huge. Chart-topping albums, a film or two, magazine covers seemingly every single week. The career most people can only dream of. They must have been on top of the world. But then we started hearing more worrying stories, the interviews that felt a bit off, the kind where you wonder whether they're exhausted or depressed or even drunk. Do you remember the unpredictable behaviour? The missed performances? The drugs? The abusive relationships? The managers issuing carefully worded statements? The trips to rehab for tiredness? And suddenly, it all came crashing down. The truth couldn't be denied anymore. You know who I'm talking about. Except, of course, actually, you don't, because it could be anyone: Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Britneyy Spears, Justin Bieber. Different decades, same script. Early game, impossible pressure, a relationship that turns toxic, and then the familiar collapse.

[00:01:39.080] - Oliver (Host)

We tell ourselves each story is unique, each story worthy of its own sad profile in a prestigious magazine. But really, it's just a rerun, a remake. So what actually goes wrong? Is it fame that breaks people, or the people fame attracts? It's impossible to separate the two. Hollywood is both the egg and the chicken. It draws in the ambitious, the insecure, the endlessly driven, and then it amplifies every weakness. The entire system is built on exploitation of talent, of image, of youth. Agents, studios, and PR firms depend on keeping the machine running, even when the person at its centre is falling apart. When the star becomes unreliable, there's always another one waiting in the wings. That's the part we rarely see, the pretty disgusting corruption beneath the glamour, the parties, the power games, the rumours everyone knows, but no one can confirm. And that's because too many people benefit from keeping quiet. The magazines that sell the dream, the studios that protect their investments, the journalists who need continued access. Hollywood can survive a scandal, but it can't survive real transparency. And it's not just the producers and agents. The whole thing runs on illusion.

[00:03:07.700] - Oliver (Host)

The perfect body created by steroids, the flawless smile created by dentistry and Photoshop, the refreshing authenticity brought to you by a media team of scriptwriters and advisors. We, the public, pretend to believe it, and the stars pretend to be it. When the illusion cracks, which it does almost inevitably -with a breakdown, an overdose, a lawsuit - the system doesn't fix it. It monetises it, and then it moves on to the next hopeful. Even personal collapse becomes content. The story of failure is sometimes even more profitable than the success originally was. And then there's us, the audience. We like to think we're innocent observers, but we're the ones who keep buying the dream. Even when we know it's wrong, we can't help ourselves. There are people like me, people who talk high-mindedly about how we should rise above all this, how we shouldn't feed the machine, how we shouldn't be discussing another person's pain. And then we do exactly that, as I am doing right now. We click the headlines, we stream the documentaries, we join the chorus of outrage online. Even the people who comment on newspaper articles about the latest starlet's fall from grace, with a, "Who? Why should I care about a non-entity like this?"

[00:04:27.960] - Oliver (Host)

They're feeding the frenzy, too. Feeding the algorithm, clicking on the story, staying on the page enough time to leave a smug comment. But things are changing. The old studio system that controlled every aspect of a star's life and fame fell long ago. But now, fame has become totally democratised. You don't need a Hollywood anymore. Just WiFi and a front-facing camera, like this one. But for the people who want to be famous nowadays, Instagram influencers, models, online celebrities. The same rules apply: near constant visibility, public image, private anxiety. The rules have changed, but will the result be any better?

[00:05:13.660] - Oliver (Host)

Welcome back to English and Beyond, the Advanced Level podcast for people who want to learn English as a foreign language, and we'd appreciate topics that are either a little bit weird in themselves or discussed from a slightly odd perspective. As always, there is a free transcript and free flashcards available online at www.morethanlanguage.com. Please go and check out the website. In fact, I've redesigned it myself this week, and I'm kind of proud of how it came out. So go and tell me what you think. Thank you very much. And now I introduce my special celebrity guest, César!

[00:05:46.860] - Oliver (Host)

So César, one of the things that we're going to be talking about in today's episode is the narrative, the narrative of decline when you've lost your spark.

[00:05:55.940] - César (Guest)

Your mojo.

[00:05:56.650] - Oliver (Host)

Your mojo, when people don't want to be associated with you anymore. And I think it might be happening to us because this is now our third attempt to record this episode. Last week was the same. I think that not that we ever had a touch, a Midas touch, but my God, it's gone now. It is hard-going.

[00:06:14.320] - César (Guest)

Podcasting is not an easy industry.

[00:06:16.870] - Oliver (Host)

Is this how Taylor Swift felt when she recorded Reputation? Is this what Lindsay Lohan felt after Mean Girls? This is hard. So, César, how do you think that you would cope with fame if you were famous?

[00:06:36.160] - César (Guest)

I'd be recluse in my house.

[00:06:39.820] - Oliver (Host)

A recluse? (Yeah.) Shut away. I think that Greta Garbo, I think she was like, I want to be alone. But someone, one famous actress said, I want to be alone.

[00:06:51.380] - César (Guest)

I think it's probably quite uncomfortable to be recognised, to be surrounded by a paparazzi, to be reading about you, and turning on the TV and seeing yourself on the news and things like that.

[00:07:07.360] - Oliver (Host)

Well, I mean, that's one of the things that I kind of - well, to jump to the very end of the topic, one of the things I wanted to talk about is exactly that, about the paparazzi. Because I don't know if this is still something that happens. Do celebrities get swamped by paparazzi in the same way that they used to? I feel like the industry has improved.

[00:07:23.800] - César (Guest)

It's probably different because of social media, because the...

[00:07:30.000] - Oliver (Host)

You are the paparazzi yourself now.

[00:07:31.560] - César (Guest)

Exactly. Shared their private life, pictures from their houses and all that. It's not as interesting as it used to be.

[00:07:40.970] - Oliver (Host)

The exclusives, the scoops that the paparazzi got, aren't really exclusives anymore when a famous person has taken tens of photos of a particular outfit or a particular dinner or something like that, already put them on social media themselves with perfect lighting. (Yeah.) I don't know whether it's just because I don't live with my sister anymore, obviously. Now I don't look over her shoulder like celebrity magazines. It just seems to me like that whole industry has died for the reasons that we talked about. And so the question that kind of arises for me from that is, do you think the price of fame has become lower as a result of the move to Instagram, the move to social networks? Do you think it's now less awful to be famous?

[00:08:31.600] - César (Guest)

I think you probably have a point because I feel like fame and the celebrity industry has diversified. They're like micro famous people. They're very famous people just for people who are in their teens from TikTok and things like that. So I feel with social media, the breakdown of famous people has changed a lot. There are more more famous people, more celebrities, but in a smaller scale.

[00:09:04.700] - Oliver (Host)

I think that you see that, for example, when proper newspapers and proper journals and magazines quote Twitter or quote some random person on Twitter as being basically a source, as they've given an opinion. But I think that in general, now you don't have celebrities pursued so much by the paparazzi. But in contrast, now I feel like the equivalent of a paparazzi meltdown is some really rubbish plastic surgery. I feel like that's the kind of focus of celebrity gone off the rails a bit. There's so many viral stories, right, where you get a surgeon discussing what Bradley Cooper has done to his face or someone analysing the facelifts of Kris Jenner and Lindsay Lohan.

[00:09:56.890] - César (Guest)

Or their Spanish, like people analyse - I think I've it in the past - like, today we're going to analyse the language of Gwyneth Paltrow's Spanish.

[00:10:05.830] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, her accent. So yeah it's kind of like, very, you know, like, erm creators, I suppose - like us - basically, giving their opinion on...

[00:10:19.840] - César (Guest)

On everything, on their diet, on their skin, on their accent. Yeah, that's horrible, actually.

[00:10:25.440] - Oliver (Host)

There's so much (bleep) out there now that it's virtually impossible for someone to become truly famous in the way that someone like Britney Spears was, where everywhere she went, she was being pursued because everybody knew her, everybody. And now, you don't really get that with the the new generation of influencers and Instagram models and things like that.

[00:10:53.100] - César (Guest)

I think the only people who are really, really famous are the people who are known by kids, but also teenagers, but also millennials, and also elderly people, people like the Queen of England. She was really famous because she was known by everyone, right? (Yeah.) Or like sport people as well. (Sport stars.) Sport stars in every country. But I was going to say that I think the equivalent of a paparazzi meltdown nowadays would be the - a celebrity posting something on Instagram without thinking what they are doing. Being angry at someone or having a beef with someone. Like recently, two female rappers had a horrible beef on X.

[00:11:47.930] - Oliver (Host)

This is high-quality vocabulary - beef.

[00:11:49.960] - César (Guest)

Beef, yeah. Like a dispute, (dispute) like a fallout. An argument saying horrible things about (each other's children) about each other's children. So I think that's the breakdown that you get nowadays on the internet.

[00:12:05.860] - Oliver (Host)

That's true.

[00:12:06.320] - César (Guest)

It's live. You asked me, but how would you deal with fame?

[00:12:11.840] - Oliver (Host)

I think I would be a dreadful famous person. I think I would be terrible at it. I think when I was younger, when I was a teenager, I thought I'd like to be famous. But I think that I thought that because fundamentally, I was extremely insecure. I think that that's what I tried to talk about in the the monologue. I think there is a question about what comes first, the chicken or the egg, the mad insecurity or the celebrity status. Because I think naturally, it does, like being a celebrity does attract people who are insecure, want external validation, want to be told that they're beautiful and funny and kind and thrilling and charming and talented and important and all of these things. I think that it attracts people like that, and then it makes them so much worse. Because I think that, for example, you see it all the time with these people who are the most beautiful people in the world who make it really big as actors and actresses, and they end up so insecure that they ruin their faces with unnecessary surgery or steroids or fillers or all sorts of different things.

[00:13:29.320] - Oliver (Host)

I'm not saying I think that it's always a bad idea to do those things, but I'm saying that clearly, some of the most beautiful people in the world go way too far. And I suppose it's because you're in this environment where people are telling you, Oh, you're so beautiful, you're so beautiful. But of course, we're going to have to do this, we're going to have to position in this way because if we have you on that angle, then we can see that your nose is bent or your face is uneven or something like that. Or we're going to just - you worked as an extra with one of the men who- (Don't say his name.) I'm not going to, don't want to get sued. When you were doing extras work in London, and they were constantly having to spray in his hair (because he was balding). I think it takes someone who is extremely secure in themselves to have people fussing around, fixing all of your flaws so that you can be acceptable, because it means that every time someone says to you, Oh, you're really beautiful, you are aware, and the person saying it to you is not, you are aware that they've spent hours making you look that way.

[00:14:40.410] - Oliver (Host)

And that extends to talent as well. So someone might say, Oh, you're so talented. But then you might be aware that you've got a part in a film for a certain reason, or you might be aware that the director was screaming at you, that you're a (bleep) moron while you were trying to record, like, this monologue that wins you an Oscar. I suppose it must just be quite damaging for you.

[00:15:09.860] - César (Guest)

I think basically what happens is that someone becomes very famous, so their success is... How can you say that something can make it on news? Noticeable? (Newsworthy?) Newsworthy, yeah. So it's newsworthy. Then they get to the peak of their career. And then after that, obviously, they might still do very well, but they maybe are not as successful as they used to be. You can start creating, or the media, starts creating this narrative of (decline) declined, yeah. And I guess that probably affects you, that gets you psychologically. And it's like a spiral of people talk about my decline and ,y failure. And actually, there's a lot of substance abuse in those industries sometimes.

[00:16:08.500] - Oliver (Host)

Well, I think that's probably one of the problems with celebrity culture, and I guess it's true to an extent of business as well, but I don't think business is as image-focused. But this problem is that, as Taylor Swift says in her latest album, You're only as big as your last hit, right? I think that that is really true for celebrities, that when you know so much in Hollywood depends on you being on the up, on having a good trajectory, that as soon as you start having a failure, then you might get labelled a flop or box office poison, that kind of thing. So therefore, you know, people don't want to be associated with you. You start maybe becoming a little bit more desperate, or you might start worrying more and more about your image, and then that feeds into a negative cycle, right?

[00:16:57.860] - César (Guest)

Yeah, definitely. The question is, like, do you need a big ego to do any of these professions? Because singers always say, you need to have a big ego in order to go out on a concert in front of thousands of people on stage, and you need to believe that you are the best in the world in that moment. But you need to combine with that with stepping out of the stage, and then you have to go off the stage and (be a normal person) be a down to earth person. That must be quite difficult. The adrenaline from (performing for like hundreds of thousands of people) and then going to your hotel room to sleep, and then following night, the same thing.

[00:17:48.320] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah. And it must be quite bad as well because everyone always expects you to be on. Everyone's always expecting you to be the charming, fun person that you play on TV or that you are on stage. And you can... I mean, you have to respond totally gracefully all the time to the mad (bleep) that people come up with when they're demanding that you sign all sorts of random things, or when someone is asking you to sign something that you know is not for them, but instead they're going to sell it. And then when you do lose your patience because you haven't slept in 24 hours, it then goes viral. And people say, oh, my God, she It's such an ungrateful (bleep).

[00:18:31.340] - César (Guest)

Then you said that we were mentioning that now it's easier because the paparazzi era is not as important as it used to be. But now everyone has a smartphone on their hands, so they can ask you for a picture or even a video call someone to talk to you.

[00:18:50.560] - Oliver (Host)

Or just take photos of you. Like, you can never, ever relax.

[00:18:54.200] - César (Guest)

I've always thought that being famous might feel like being a monkey in a cage at the zoo, where everyone is looking at you and throwing peanuts at you, taking pictures. Being just like this person in a golden cage.

[00:19:28.280] - Oliver (Host)

Okay, lovely. Yeah, fair enough. Very profound.

[00:19:34.860] - César (Guest)

Thought-provoking. It's never been said before.

[00:19:44.120] - Oliver (Host)

Exactly. Wow. That is the material that people come to this podcast for.

[00:19:50.940] - César (Guest)

It's like a thinking tank.

[00:19:53.880] - Oliver (Host)

A think tank.

[00:19:55.100] - César (Guest)

Thinking tank.

[00:19:56.190] - Oliver (Host)

Thinking tank. What are you talking about?

[00:19:58.540] - César (Guest)

Thinking tank.

[00:19:59.520] - César (Guest)

What's a thinking tank?

[00:20:00.920] - César (Guest)

Where ideas and thoughts are made.

[00:20:03.380] - Oliver (Host)

Think tank.

[00:20:04.230] - César (Guest)

Think tank, yeah.

[00:20:05.430] - Oliver (Host)

Think tank, yeah, well.

[00:20:06.660] - César (Guest)

Keynote speaker. You can contract me.

[00:20:09.380] - Oliver (Host)

You can pick César now. Cheaper than you'd think! Okay, well-

[00:20:16.120] - César (Guest)

10 euros an hour. Or now dollars. $10 an hour.

[00:20:22.280] - Oliver (Host)

Wonderful. Okay, well, thank you very much César, for -

[00:20:25.230] - César (Guest)

You're very well - all my pleasure. Thanks for having me here.

[00:20:30.000] - Oliver (Host)

Great. And please like, follow, subscribe. We need to be famous. Don't. No, I really actually-

[00:20:37.970] - César (Guest)

Or unsubscribe as well.

[00:20:39.820] - Oliver (Host)

Unsubscribe, yeah, don't subscribe because actually, I actually do think it would be dreadful to be famous.

[00:20:44.920] - César (Guest)

Yeah. This video might- (I don't think we're at risk of it.) This podcast might make us famous.

[00:20:51.240] - Oliver (Host)

I highly doubt that. (Yeah, me too.) No. Well, thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.