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This week, Guy Branum and Rheerheeq Chainey are back to talk about Wicked fever, Vince Gilligan’s new Apple TV+ series Pluribus, and the celebrities we’re thankful for. Thomasin McKenzie also sits down with Louis to discuss her new film, Fackham Hall.

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Louis Virtel [AD].

 

Louis Virtel And we’re back with an all new episode of Keep It. I’m Louis Virtel, still Louis Virtel. But we have a question to answer today, and that is whether we’re changed for the better. Rheeqrheeq Chainey, have we?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Babe, I definitely am changed for good.

 

Louis Virtel Oh.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I look, I love musicals. I’ve been on this program enough that people know. And it’s just like so amazing that the tiniest women in the world have the biggest voices and you just have to sit there for three hours. But yeah, it’s amazing. I love that we’re doing it.

 

Louis Virtel I would describe them as morsels of women.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey The whispers. Maybe you know, I the fact that they are are bearing hundreds of pounds of tool down the runway every week for the last two months has been fabulous. I love them so much.

 

Louis Virtel Guy Branum, are you a Wicketeer or whatever they’re called?

 

Guy Branum The the only thing I can say in response is melcanama melanchama. I like I have you two have seen the film. I have not seen the film.

 

Louis Virtel Yes.

 

Guy Branum But like to me, this is like so purgative. We had so many like sixties and seventies musicals that did not get that perfect iteration that we were looking for. We don’t have the Julie Andrews, My Fair Lady, you know, we don’t have the Carol Channing, Hello Dolly. But these were two talents that were consummate with the task, you know. I’m delighted. Like my mom insists that she hates musicals, did not want to watch Wicked, and then last year at Christmas, we sat down to watch it. And like halfway through, when animals were like politically scheming with each other, she was like, This is a good movie.

 

Louis Virtel Oh. Well also I I wanna say about the Hello Dolly we did get, Barbara Streisand’s still not old enough for that role, which is tough.

 

Guy Branum Yeah. Oh, like seeing Patty Lapone, who is a complex person on Watch What Happening. We all are is what needs to be respected. And it’s one of the things I look for in my artists. But her like just being still mad that Still mad still mad that Barbara was not old enough for that role, I delight.

 

Louis Virtel N also, I mean like nobody holds a grudge, maybe physically, like Patricia in in her craw.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It was what was it? She went on hot ones and it was like say something nice about Evita or eat a hot one. Maybe she cleared the wear.

 

Guy Branum Also, but it goes to the point of we are in an economy where Ariana Grande is not going to New York for an indefinite run of a stage musical. Right. And we got this. You know, Cynthia Erivo respects where she came from and I think we’ll continue doing the work, but like I I like that we got that.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey But Guy, are you sure? Recession indicators, the girls are going back to the the right way. Yeah. It’s like one by one, we’re seeing men who really thought they would have HBO prestige shows at this point going to do Godot or Mark Strong in Oedipus right now. Like there is a world in which our very lovely tiny ponytailed friend decides, like, yeah, I gotta go get the tea in the e-got. Because as like again, guy just said, Louis and I have seen it. I do think there is a possibility that Ariana Grande wins an Oscar for this.

 

Louis Virtel Oh certainly.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey So then you gotta start counting as someone who has an E. Okay. You gotta start making plots and plans.

 

Louis Virtel She comes right on my show and starts talking about the E she has that I don’t have, moving right along.

 

Guy Branum Look many of us at the table have E’s. Okay.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s right, you do too.

 

Guy Branum Yes. I got the I got a G, but the wrong G. Right. I do think I have to say, getting your tea is a second marriage activity. Yes. Getting your tea is something you do.

 

Louis Virtel Lauren Bacall.

 

Guy Branum Yes.

 

Louis Virtel Woman of the Year.

 

Guy Branum Exactly.

 

Louis Virtel Yes.

 

Guy Branum You know, while you’re married to Jason Robards, you do that, and then, you know, you you do like a limited series in your older years and pick up the final eight.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Like Whoopi before me, I will be producing the thoroughly modern Millie survival.

 

Louis Virtel Oh my god, to just copy somebody else’s egot in in a the movie copycat, but about egot.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah, so like this plot works. I do think that the lead has to fall exactly at the right time and then s Sutton Foster’s tether comes up and leads the show.

 

Guy Branum Heres. Heres the scam. Here’s the scam.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yes.

 

Guy Branum How many Broadway musicals come out in a year? Seven.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah.

 

Guy Branum Just put chips on every square. Like, how do people not just go and drop a hundred grand on each musical?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Because they have other things to do. We just happen to be the ones who are doing it.

 

Louis Virtel Like heterosexuality. We are the ones who want to do that.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And I will be doing it as soon as overall deals come back.

 

Louis Virtel By the way though, speaking of the people in Wicked and the choices they’re making, Cynthia Erivo in a very interesting place right now. Like she’s about to be in the movie version of “Prima facie”, the the Jodie Comer play that she won a Tony for. Oh love. And it’s like for some reason Jodie Comer didn’t want to do that. Or maybe she just maybe Cynthia Erivo is just a bigger bankable star right now.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Also, Cynthia didn’t do color purple because she had spent so much time in it. So I understand like Jodie wanting to step away and Cynthia looking at the role itself. But also Cynthia is a small, dark-skinned black woman. She’s gonna have to diversify the portfolio.

 

Guy Branum Okay. I mean the issue of what is bankability and being somebody who has been behind You know, who is the face of Wicked, how do you use it? But that very interesting question of when they’re not just rolling out roles for you every minute. How do you build that brand? I will never forget in the HBO made for television movie introducing Dorothy Dandridge. When they when they roll out the do you want to be Tuptim in The King and I like how do we build a brand around in some ways denying that you are black or whatever? But it’s still today, like you do have to be resourceful. You do have to and also like I think that this is a really smart way of pushing people’s imagination by saying, I can do what this blonde lady did, like think about it.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. No, it’s just it’s interesting that it came to her, I guess. I just think of it as like a signature Jodie Comer role, right? You know.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Think of it as a signature Jodie Comer role?

 

Louis Virtel As op..Well I didn’t watch Killing Eve.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey We live in a different mindset. The idea that there is a signature Jodie Comer role in a world where yeah, I did watch Killing Eve all of this super kinds of lesbianism.

 

Guy Branum Villanelle is the only signature Jodie Comer role.

 

Louis Virtel Well also excuse me, she’s also the other Vanessa Kirby.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And she’s also who she’s Daisy’s mom in Star Wars as well. She appeared Jodie Comer. It was really like who’s around the studio in London at the certain point.

 

Guy Branum No, I mean the amount of but every purse lipped British woman was in some way an appendage in one of those Star Wars movies. They made too many Star Wars movies in a brief period of time and they took all of our period ladies and put them somewhere. And I feel like it’s a little Where’s Waldo.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Well and speaking of black women trying to craft a career, let’s see Lupita’s skin again.

 

Guy Branum Yeah. Yes. I mean fair point.

 

Louis Virtel What are we doing with her right now?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Nobody knows. Yeah. Nobody knows the trouble she’s seen.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, she was in A Quiet Place for a while but she was too quiet.

 

Guy Branum Okay, but since we’re going around this subject, the real question has to be asked that we’re all gonna be asking for the next two months. Did they use Regina Hall in One Battle After Another?

 

Louis Virtel Oh yeah.

 

Guy Branum I don’t know. Like I just feel like.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Guy, I can’t get into this fight right now.

 

Louis Virtel They had to have cut a scene.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey There, she was on set longer than was in that movie.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah

 

Guy Branum I don’t know if they know this. That’s fucking Regina.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I think I mean you know, PTA is her neighbor, so I think he does know the caliber that he had on set, but it is obvious that he got also because Benicio Del Toro has spoken about that sequence getting extended on like in process.

 

Guy Branum Yes.

 

Louis Virtel As in his long thing going from room to room.

 

Guy Branum Yeah, yeah. The fleeing. It’s mostly a film about fleeing. Yeah, but those black nuns had more to do.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And it got cut.

 

Guy Branum Honestly, my appreciation of one battle after another came mostly in the bathroom afterwards when I was just sort of like ticking through the amount of autobiography that was in there and realizing like, Oh, this is a really personal story. But like while I was watching it, it was just like they and they’re running more.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey No, my favorite part was seeing the other black lady in the theater as we walked out. We both went, well, at least our asses look good.

 

Louis Virtel But Chase Infinity leader supporting.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I you know, I think fraud is fine. Yes, yeah. Fra fraud is fine as an important point. She’s a kid. She’s not gonna win it. So just get the lead actress nomination so she will be best actress nominee for the rest of her life.

 

Louis Virtel And let’s be clear, by the way, Ariana Grande is also fraud. Yes going for supporting.

 

Guy Branum Okay. Yeah. No, but as someone who watched Romy and Michelle this weekend, like I was very aware of these things that we conceive of as being two female lead things so frequently are a really subtle difference. And one of my great realizations was this is Romy White’s movie. Like Michelle Weinberger is the soul of this film, but she is not the protagonist.

 

Louis Virtel That sounds like a Carol issue. You know? Like it’s like we’re looking at Carol, but she is the star. It it’s like the great Gatsby, the narrator has to be supporting, even though we’re hearing him constantly.

 

Guy Branum But to the fraud point, you don’t necessarily want the life of Keisha Castle Hughes or of Gabby Sidabe. And both of those were like very specific actors that did not have teams or reps who could figure out how to get that next thing for them. But I think that when you are young and a woman of color and you get that supporting nomination, they understand where to take like there is more of a path for where to take you. But when it is the onus of a best actress nomination, you so frequently can’t live up to it.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey But you’re also talking about bigger bodied brown women versus like Chase Infinity is more in the shape of someone who would have that career. And at the end of the day, yeah, Ariana Grande is the lead of for good, but whatever gets her to hold the statue that will be as tall as her, I’m fine with it.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. I wanna say by the way that a lot of people are talking about her performance in this movie and I just want to say in the climactic moment of this, the drama that Cynthia Erivo brings is more than sufficient. I thought she was fabulous during that scene.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Incredible, she’s an incredible actor. And I think that like if anything that people are gonna leave over this what twenty months of PR that we’ve gone through is that she has put her soul on screen in a massive universal production and and Brava.

 

Louis Virtel Ding dang. Much well said, well said. Okay, since we are dark next week on the podcast, if you want to hear my opinion, and I know you do, on the new Wicked movie, I’ll post that on our socials in the next few days. It’s at Keep It Show on Instagram and every other social possible. Try movie, who knows? This episode, we’ll probably get more into Wicked due to our problems where we revisit things we don’t want to let go of.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah, the ADHD is singing right now.

 

Louis Virtel But elsewhere in this episode, we have an interview with the fabulous actress Thomasin McKenzie. You probably remember her from the movie Leave No Trace a few years back, which I love so much. She’s in the new Downton Abbey parody, Fackham Hall, which I’ll try to pronounce the British way midway through that interview. Elsewhere this episode, Thanksgiving is coming up, and we’re gonna talk about the celebrities we’re thankful for. And speaking of thankful for, the actress Ray Seahorn is in a new Vince Gilligan show that I’m curious to dig into, and I’m curious what our friends here have to say about it. It’s called Pluribus. Everyone’s talking about it. There’s three episodes out. Will we continue? It’s a sci-fi show, not really my thing. But we’ll answer these questions and more when Keep It Returns.

 

Louis Virtel [AD].

 

Louis Virtel Breaking bad creator Vince Gilligan has traded the Albuquerque drug scene for the high tech dystopia of Pleurabus, Apple TV’s new dark comedy that seemingly everyone is talking about. The series stars Ray Seahorn as a begrudgingly successful author trying to topple an alien virus that has turned the world into one big happy hive mine. Guy, Rheeqrheeq, were you expecting something like this from Vince Gilligan?

 

Guy Branum I have never been a Vince Gilligan person. I did not watch Breaking Bad. I didn’t watch Better Call Saul. And like everyone loves Breaking Bad so much the Jeopardy writers can’t get over it. Yeah. And I had always I knew that there was complexity there, but I had never entered. And then I watched this and I was really delighted and electrified by what I saw within a premise that I I thought was constrained enough that I was worried about it. I was like, what am I watching? Like though there is something Greek about like one character and then a chorus.

 

Louis Virtel Yes. Also, this character that Ray Seahorn plays, as we said, she’s an author, but she hates what she writes. She hates the these romance novels, she hates the fans of them. So it’s basically like giving a dystopian sci-fi franchise to Charlie Sterin and young adults, which if you think of it that way, gay people should be on board.

 

Guy Branum No, I mean, the first ten minutes building the relationship between her and her wife made me invested in this show.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Miriam Shore should be in most things. Yeah. They had such limited real estate to establish that Carol, who is Ray Cyrin’s character, has one person. Yes. She has one person that’s in this entire world. And so the idea that her whole mission is to save the truth of humanity after the only human that she really wants to be around is gone is an interesting premise. And how you’re gonna maintain that is something I’m

 

Guy Branum I’m questioning. Well and and also like setting up someone for whom even the closest love is a stark battle.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. Yes. Right. The scenes we get of them in the normal universe, they are contentious with one another. Her wife is like trying to tell her like to enjoy the pretty good life she has, etcetera.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I don’t know, is that contentious? I know a lot we know a lot of curmudgeons. Oh yeah. Truly that’s that’s how they show love. It’s like oh we we show.

 

Guy Branum And I’m not sure. It’s why I fell in love with these characters.

 

Louis Virtel By the way, before we move on, Ray Seahorn looks fabulous and could be just an action star as I was watching her dart through these landscapes.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I I read a a few of the interviews with Vince Gilligan and to his credit, he admitted that he initially wrote this character as a man. And watching Ray Corn on set of Better Call Saul made him realize, oh no, that’s the face you wanna watch go through all of this. And what way to pivot my guy.

 

Guy Branum That’s very interesting because I was wondering there are ways that I I think r representing Lesbian couples can be a way of feeling of the moment and progressive while not challenging ev anybody because we love to see two women kiss. And then once I got into it and I was like, No, no, no. This is a lesbian couple. Like Oh yeah.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Oh yeah. Oh they read?

 

Guy Branum Yes. No, like y you know, into each other’s lives too much, not enough boundaries and a lot of resentment. But were either of you at the WGA Awards last year when Vince Gilligan gave his speech speech about he gave a speech about Writing anti-heroes had to some extent built the political environment that we are in and was encouraging the audience to write more heroes. And a lot of people I was with were frustrated by that. They were like, You’ve made so much success off of antiheroes. Why are you trying to like call us in? And then while watching this, I was like, Can we call a person whose angry outbursts kill millions of people? Not an anti-hero.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, right. No, the part of the premise of this is only thirteen people are immune from this hive mind thing that’s taken over, where everybody, all these other people who are left on Earth have all the collective information of each other. Yes. So they’re all basically the same person in different bodies. And Ray Seahorn is one of the people who is left otherwise. So she’s s in after the first three episodes, which is what we have, she’s figuring out still what she can do with her own life in this space, I think.

 

Guy Branum And her negative emotions can to some extent hurt this hive mind sometimes.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Which made me roll my eyes.

 

Louis Virtel It is a little interesting.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It really, that part did irk me because the idea that she has to take accountability for the fact that everything that is true to her has been ripped away. But now if you have a reaction to that, oh girl, the other people might die. Which is how I feel every day. It’s like how I’m not supposed to respond to the fact that you put me in this corner, but you put me in the corner.

 

Guy Branum I love this idea. I love this idea of individuality has cost.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Mm-hmm.

 

Guy Branum Individuality and liberty does end up making things messy. Is it worth it or not? And I think it is like such a juicy idea to put into a show, but there are so many dramatic restrictions on what can happen. It’s like last man on earth, they just kept finding new people. And I’m like, how how do we make this juicy and interesting?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I think he was waiting for the comment of like, guess I know you all some of you watched Last Man on Earth on Fox a couple years ago. And these we have an a discreet number of people. Yeah, and we are going to name them, even though they did adjust it episode two, be like, there’s one guy who won’t answer the phone. So we’ll see him, I’m guessing episode eight. I I totally I hear you in terms of like how do we as an individual have to look at how we affect those around us. I am so tired of that weight and accountability. And I think that you see that in this character. Yeah. Which is maybe why I was told that I would really like this from a friend of mine who was like, Oh yeah, she’s a writer who likes a martini. I was like, That well, that’s fair. Call me in. I don’t know. The Apple generally has a lot of these look at this vista, this like lone hero, high concept, quiet shows. Yeah. I mean, I do think that we should be aware that Vince Gilligan comes from a history of writing on the X Files. And though I only paid attention to how T A Gillian Anderson looked on there, he does have this sci fi spirit from him organically. But I do not watch television to be alone with my thoughts. Right. But I know I can see that that is the purpose of it. And I might be chafing at that idea because we live in such a loud world right now.

 

Guy Branum It’s a it’s a T V show about eight billion people who don’t need to talk to each other. Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. Well also it’s this in the thirteen people who are like her still retain their old identities or whatever. Only one of them who we’re f familiar with seems to have any anger at all. So these other characters, I’m wondering what we’re gonna get out of them in the long run. They better turn into interesting people, is what I’m saying.

 

Guy Branum Like and I’m sure they will. You know, when you met the five people who spoke English, it was a lot of bad American TV writing of bad English in a way that was uncomfortable. Lakshmi was the only bright light of maybe this could be a show. But also I just want to address the soft problem of us only naming South Asian female characters Lakshmi or Priya. And I just want to say Go off. Throw a sick in there, okay? Like let’s see a jazz jeet. I would love to see a Rupinder.

 

Louis Virtel If I hear this complaint one more time.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I mean, but that is once we we do meet some of the other English speakers in episode two, and we meet Coumba, who is from Mauritania, and he is like, I think this could be all right. You know, as a brown-skinned person, maybe I don’t need to be judged by everyone all the time. And maybe Air Force One is mine now. Yeah. Which, okay, I can understand that point of view of like, why would I want to go back to something that had marginalized me to the point that I immediately react to how much I can take. But the quickness with and it is a male character, but the quickness with which he no longer sees women-shaped bodies as people who have choice. Yeah. The quickness with which he is free from that is also a statement of like, we are so depersonalized from the idea that anyone we’re speaking to, anyone that has anything that we want, whether it is money or pussy, it means anything.

 

Guy Branum Is that is very real to where we are. I ultimately really like this TV show because it is it is asking big questions about ideas like fascism and unity. And that is important of the moment. Yes. Always I think also of resource allocation and that thing of like the American rolling in and being like, Well, why does he get Air Force One? And it’s like, ’cause he asked for it. And the But she she tried

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey so hard not to be pissed about.

 

Guy Branum Yes.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And someone has to go, Well, w whoever asked first could take it.

 

Guy Branum But her entitlement to be like, Well guys, we have to get on board. Well g like there is a deep Americanness to this character that I enjoy and I think is being criticized and examined in an interesting way.

 

Louis Virtel I I will say the one thing that I’m already getting a little sick of though, and I know the hive mind will evolve, like these characters will not resemble the current form they have. We’re getting a lot of that the good place type acting of like what you know, the one happy look kind of thing. And it’s like that just gets tiring really quickly. Just dramatically I’m not getting enough out of that.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey But then I’m my personicity ass is like, y’all aren’t having enough. One of y’all is smirking and one of y’all is smiling. What are we doing? No, I mean

 

Guy Branum No, I mean when they were so there are a lot, as you were saying, Lewis, a lot of long quiet or both of you were saying, long, quiet sequences where people are supposed to be moving in unison. And I was like, you need to pay for better background actors. Why are we not casting dancers? Why are we not casting dancers to be swabbing the inside of the mouth ends.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey They had their own rehearsals and they did have a movement coordinator, and thank you all for your service. And you do notice that direction when you are supposed to be looking at a swarm of like, where does the uniformity lie? And then I found myself wondering, especially there’s a lead sort of concierge for a Ray Cyborg’s character, Zoja, who is so fine. God bless. Yes. But I’m like, okay, so is that tick her? Is that tick a remnant of the person that she has taken over? Or is that the hive? Yeah. The hive ticks, apparently, especially when brought up, there’s a whole sequence of like does the hive ever say no to anyone that’s left? Which I think is like my favorite question brought on by this show. But you see the person portraying the hive at that moment really grapple with that. And so it it does make you wonder when they’re saying that there is no singularity, there we are just we or we are none. No, someone’s something is making a decision. Someone say who it is. I guess that’s what television is. Yeah, I know.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, right. We’ve got five more episodes or whatever.

 

Guy Branum Is some sort of vast democracy. Though there there is this inherent thing of Some of the people joined them and were deemed unnecessary or whatever. Like, you know, that there are people who have died in this process. What happened to the president? We all want to know.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Oh My God. That’s my favorite thing, and I have to say this. There is a man in a suit in the first episode, and he is played by a character actor from Young and the Restless, who I’ve been watching TV.

 

Louis Virtel I was going to say, do I know this man? I kept thinking that.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey The actor’s name is Peter Bergman. For those who were at their granny’s house in the summers of the 1990s, he plays Jack Abbott on Young the Restless. He has been playing this character since the 1980s, and I had a crush on him when I was five. I do love that Vince Gilligan will be like, oh, look at this other performer that we haven’t actually been have platformed this way. Let’s move him over from this lot that he’s been sitting on for 50 years.

 

Louis Virtel I always think about that. Like soap actors are obviously extremely capable. Why are we not just plucking them all the time? Because people aren’t at home watching them.

 

Guy Branum The greatest joy on earth is when a daytime actor gets to go be in something respectable. They’re always so proud of themselves. Nobody is more excited to be on the television program hacks than Deidre Hall. Yes. But also when you see Julianne Moore on a a daytime show, you realize like within the constraints of what they do, they are all doing their best work and they have trained so hard that if you give them a second take, if you give them just some time to prep, they can fucking do what that man. He’s so delightful. He hit the comedy so well, he hit the gravity so well.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I mean his voice is is so attuned to what that is and it’s like, oh, we have these troves of actors everywhere, but unless you met Brian Cranston while doing Shakespeare in the nineteen seventies, you may not be given the opportunity that others people have.

 

Louis Virtel By the way, who would be playing this role in the nineteen eighties guy? The correct answer is William Devane.

 

Guy Branum Anyway, go ahead. So true. I just thought it was so interesting when she did meet the other survivors who spoke English that they were more invested in this system because they had loved ones who were part of it. And I thought that there was something so interesting about the way that her loss of her wife distanced her. And also I thought it was saying something very interesting about queerness and divorcedness from like the systems of.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Nuclear family.

 

Guy Branum Nuclear family as a like a force for opposition and creativity and and everything like that, that these people who were part of the system, even though they weren’t fully part of it, were still invested because their families were there.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey If even if you have the visage of my child is still here, my man is still here. How much rope would you give the aliens that have killed the 887 million people? Maybe a little bit because you feel there is that tether. Whereas, like, and you have this in the character of Carol that you see she just is agitated by everything, but even so, she refuses to come out in the 10 minutes at the beginning when she’s almost happy. When she’s doing a QA online, she refuses to say who she really modeled a character over. And it’s like, so now she’s been holding her own life, her own truth privately for so long, but that grief is so overwhelming, she keeps having rage fits that kill millions of people. It’s really tough.

 

Guy Branum Like the continuing closetedness of it. Yeah. And sort of the like this is a person who hates her own art. Like it made me think of like in a room of one’s own, Virginia Wolf makes that argument that Jane Austen was a smaller talent, but who was not constantly having fits of rage. So her talent came out in a more pure form where Charlotte Bronte was having these fits of rage and it was getting in the way of what she was doing. And I was just like, our Carol, she’s having those same fits of rage.

 

Louis Virtel Speaking of which though. Should we talk about agitated female leads? I feel like it’s been a minute since we’ve had a really like front and center one.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah. My brain is trying to go through like white women with a shaggy bob who is just like the world doesn’t get me.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I can’t place them right now because I really am watching a lot of 90 day fiance.

 

Guy Branum About the character we’re getting actually. We’ve we’ve had a lot of cute, nice ladies recently. We’ve had a lot of mazels. Yeah. But I I I would say Rebecca Bunch of Crazy Ex Girlfriend was somebody who was giving us she was making problems for herself and others in very in very consistent ways.

 

Louis Virtel And also Rebecca on Cheers, I think, also counts. First of all first of all, when Christy Ellie would enter Cheers, here’s her entering a doorway. Like I have to pull the I have to get under it. I’m seven foot four.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Oh, ’cause her hair was so good.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, and her trench coat was years long. And then s but like the energy she brought to that show was always so surprising to me because it was not sprightly ever. No. And yet it worked in the broadness of that space.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Well, I think it’s like but especially for this character in particular, it’s a agitated character, it’s an angry female lead. So like yeah, I don’t particularly watch zombies, but yeah, you have The Last of Us and you have the baby Ellie. And I I see it on clips on TikTok because I’m young. But I also it takes time to get there. In that like I’m thinking a little bit Piper in Orange. Yeah, I mean, what we’re talking about is lesbians. Oh, Viola Davis. Speaking of Lesbians, Viola Davis and How to Get Away with Murder. Yeah. Whose secret old lover was Flavka Johnson. Baby we were up on Primetime TV at one point. But that was huge because it was like Viola’s character. They were like, okay, Olivia Pope, she got a bag and fucking that white man got her messed up. But I remember that character was so they were like, We have never seen this. She’s a l she’s a lawyer, but she she might have murdered people and she’s black on ABC. Like it was it was fascinating. Was this you, by the way? Just standing outside people’s doorways. Yeah, I was I was it was back when I was still on Twitter. But it was that was huge to have have platform that way, someone who’s like anger was front and center for however many seasons.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. Enlightened Laura Dern, that might be a good one. Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, yeah.

 

Guy Branum Like we want our women to be whole and nice. You want women to always be a little bit mommy. And there is that very true grit kind of thing of can we deal with a woman who has lost her arm in the journey to self? You know? Can we deal with somebody who is a little bit broken or a little bit dangerous? And

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And I wanna tell you, from do being in development, no. Yes. We are smoothing back away from that.

 

Guy Branum Well I mean there’s a fake show about ladies on Thirty Rock and the theme song is Can they be good at their jobs? And it is just like the note of but can she be good at her job is like has feminism ruined the workplace?

 

Louis Virtel By the way, I just want to say the the thing I love about Tina Faye is that you expect one level of comic cynicism and you actually get four layers. Like she goes harder and deeper.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey No, she’s she’s she’s real this, she’s true to this. But I mean, also in in context of this show, Vince Gilligan and our Matthew Weiners made these antihero men. Then there was a cycle of like, what if women can be antiheroes? And so that a lot of them made it to air, but we’ve read quite a bit of oh, she’s bad, but it just got kept getting smoothed into sort of like good girls or and so we’re coming back to it, but also in the shape, as you mentioned, that Vince Gilligan wants us to believe in heroes. I think he is setting himself up for a hard task, but he is obviously a very kind and very, very smart man. Yeah. I’m sure this is gonna.

 

Guy Branum Work at least for the two seasons about ordered. So ultimately the danger of a show where you are putting written and directed by by a single person for too many episodes scares me a little bit. Is he is it all him? I don’t know if it’s all him. I just know in like the two episodes or that I paid attention to whether it was him. And I think that there is this, let’s call it a Mike Whitey danger. As people who have all been in writers’ rooms and understand the power of a writer’s room, I do worry about somebody like trying to grate genius their way and you know, not having somebody there to say, like, here’s another idea, especially when we really only have a handful of characters who can be characters.

 

Louis Virtel Right. I also just want to say, by the way, about Mike White though. Like I was hard in the last season of White Lotus. I just didn’t think it paid off in many ways. Yes. That said, I’m now actually grateful for the bad season of White Lotus because it at least came from like one cogent mind. Like I it didn’t feel like it was meetinged to death. Yes. You know what I mean?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It it needed a few more meetings.

 

Louis Virtel I’m not saying I object to the meetings, it was nice to see an unfettered version of it.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey As someone who was very privileged and recently was in Maui, the idea that like he set this like motif of water on rocks. I was walking by the water was just on the rocks

 

Guy Branum He didn’t come up with it again. I I think White Lotus would benefit so much from having there be a writer who is a woman of color who could say to him, Hey, you know, women of color are things other than nice. Like there are

 

Louis Virtel I guess we are getting quite a bit of nice on that show. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It I mean, I think oh God, I can’t have the argument I had so many times a couple years ago. But there is something, you’ve seen the reaction he got in season two where they were like, they ain’t a brown person here. And he was like, Well, I like Natasha and he brought him back. But it is wrapped, and like I don’t want to put any friction in this character. The good thing I think that Vince Gilligan is doing in Plurpus is that like, you know, everyone at that table except for Ray Horn is not white. Yes. And you’re dealing with, you know, delusion and and passivity and hope and stealing planes. Yes. But there is a complexity there. He is he is building out these characters. But, you know, I will say there wasn’t a single black person when that alien signal arrived. And if there was, they would not be in this problem. There’s been a single black person in that trailer when the alien RNA signal arrived, nobody would have Googled it.

 

Louis Virtel Okay, well, we have a lot more of that show to watch. We’re only three episodes in so far, but we’ll keep you posted. I’ll keep watching it, sure. When we’re back, we have Thomasin McKenzie with us. But before that, some quick housekeeping.

 

Louis Virtel [AD].

 

Louis Virtel Every time I think New Zealand is done sending over their best and brightest, they find some new ingenious talent to ship our way. Today’s guest is one of those national treasures. You know her from her landmark performances in Leave No Trace, which we will get into. Jojo Rabbit, last night in Soho, and more. Now she’s starring in the period spoof Facem Hall, maybe pronounced better, Fackham Hall, which hits theaters December 5th. Please welcome to Keep It, Thomasin McKenzie.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Hello, thank you for having me.

 

Louis Virtel I have to say this is such a shocking project for you to be a part of. If I look at the rest of your filmography and then this, I guess everything you do sort of is a a hard right turn from the last thing you did. But are you surprised to be in this movie, this very, very broad spoof?

 

Thomasin McKenzie Yeah, I think I like to keep people on their toes. For me, a real goal in my career has been to try and have as wide a a range as possible or to not be kinda stuck in one genre or one kind of film. So I’m I’m I’m happy that you say that.

 

Louis Virtel What was it like embarking on this particular movie? Do you then watch a lot of Down Abbey to prepare? And not just Downton Abbey, like it spoofs like British Who Dunits and things like that too. So what is the preparation process like for a movie like this? Did you watch Downton Abbey just as a fan beforehand?

 

Thomasin McKenzie Yeah, I have been a long time Downton Abbey fan. I watched with my dad back when I would have been like ten. I mean, when was it coming out?

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, about that long ago now. Fifteen years ago, yeah.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Back in the days where you had to like we watched it on T V and you had to wait for each episode to be dropped. You couldn’t just stream, you couldn’t binge the whole thing, you had to have patience back in those days.

 

Louis Virtel And then did you watch other things besides Down Abbey too, or was it just that?

 

Thomasin McKenzie A lot of Downton Abbey, I watched Airplane, which is another like the a lot of the comedy in Fackham Hall was inspired by Airplane, as well as The Naked Gun. I watched Gosford Park. I think that was probably my favorite one. Yeah, just like trying to watch all of the references that Jim, the the director, gave me to get a good idea of the tone of what we were making.

 

Louis Virtel Who would you say was like funniest to watch on set? ‘Cause all the characters in this are playing different extremes. Like some are pretty specific Downton Abbey parodies, but then other people are just, you know, wild. I mean, like just like the things that occur in this movie are crazy.

 

Thomasin McKenzie I really couldn’t choose one person. I just think everybody was absolutely fantastic and yeah, everyone was perfect for who they were playing. Really loved working with Tom Felton because he’s just As a person, he’s so, so wonderful. And I just thought he did a fantastic job at bringing Archibald to life. For me at least, he was so good, he almost made the character likable. And he’s not playing a particularly likable person. No, correct. So I really I loved working with him. Catherine as well, Catherine Waterstone. I just did another film with her that I literally rapped on Friday, and this was she said to me that this Fackham Hall is the first comedy she’s ever done. And I just thought she did a fantastic job. She took to it so naturally. But yeah, everybody, everybody.

 

Louis Virtel What did you get from watching movies like Airplane and The Naked Gun? I mean, that that is that does remind me the whiz bang of those movies does carry over into this i in terms of the broadness you get in this movie.

 

Thomasin McKenzie I’d not seen much of this genre before, the spoof genre. I mean, I I guess there there are similarities to Monty Python, which I watched a little bit when I was a kid, but I’d not seen The Naked Gun, I’d not seen Airplane before preparing for Fackham Hall. I mean, I think what you get out of it is just absolute joy. It’s such a relief to watch something that you don’t have to be intellectual about. The point of watching it is to have a good time and to escape from real life.

 

Louis Virtel Also, it almost certainly prepared you for the sheer volume of jokes in this movie too. Cause I I mean, I don’t think we’ve had a movie since airplane where it’s just that like sandblasted with material that makes you laugh.

 

Thomasin McKenzie No, I mean there are two hundred and seventy eight jokes in Fackham Hall.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, somebody actually counted this.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Yeah, that was a an official tally gave us that two hundred and seventy eight jokes, which is insane. I don’t think there’s even that many scenes. So if you do the maths, that’s like a lot of jokes per scene.

 

Louis Virtel You’re also in the Testament of Anne Lee, which just came out, which is directed by Mona Fassfold, who we know from The Brutalist, also co-written by Brady Corbet, who directed that movie. Talk about working with Amanda Seifrid on that movie, whom, like you, has wowed us in a number of contexts, and yet she has a whole new power in this one.

 

Thomasin McKenzie I love Amanda. I really, really love Amanda. She actually is a very comedic person. She is hilarious. She ha yeah, she I was gonna say, has she done comedies? Of course she’s done comedy before, Mean Girls, for example.

 

Louis Virtel Yes, Jennifer’s body, et cetera. Yes. Mamma mia.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Incredible. Is Mamma comedy? Yeah, it’s it’s funny.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, there’s some jokes in it. Yeah, Merrill made me laugh a couple of times, I’d say.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Yeah. I love her. She’s a very unique person. I’ve never met anybody like Amanda before and I don’t think I’ll e ever meet anyone like her again.

 

Louis Virtel And meaning what? Does she have a sort of strange energy?

 

Thomasin McKenzie Not strange, she’s just one hundred percent herself. She’s not ashamed just to be herself. She is silly. She’s just Amanda. I feel like you need to meet her. I mean it’s if you watch, you know, interviews that she’s done or it’s pretty evident that there is just no one like her. She’s magical.

 

Louis Virtel And speaking of women directors, you of course worked with Jane Campion on the power of the dog, still one of my favorite movies of the past five, six years or so.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Oh, thank you.

 

Louis Virtel She is of course a definitive New Zealander. What do you take from that experience all these years later? Does that experience hang on you in a sort of precious way?

 

Thomasin McKenzie Yes, I think when I was filming The Power of the Dog, I was so amazed at the fact that I was even there, like working with Jane. I was kind of on a cloud, like floating throughout the entire thing. And my memories from that time are very cloudy. I think just ’cause I was kind of in shock. It was also at a very weird time in the world. Like we filmed it just before COVID and then we had hiatus and then we were like one of the first productions to start up again during COVID. So it was a strange time. There’s so much to learn from being on a Jane Campion set. Yeah. No one thing.

 

Louis Virtel You’ve worked with such fabulous women directors. Like your breakout project with Deborah Granick was Leave No Trace, a movie that I still think about. It just has such a specific relationship at the center of it. And the relationship evolves so beautifully and so organically. But I can only imagine that had to have been a very intense movie to make at such a young time in your career. What do you remember from making that movie and working with her?

 

Thomasin McKenzie I had such a wonderful time on that shoot. I was sixteen when we filmed it. And it was a time when I had like very few cares, very few concerns in the world. So I was able to just fully immerse myself in the role without having to worry about, you know, adult. So it was yeah, really Just the entire experience for me was was wonderful. Especially working with the bees. There were a couple scenes in Leave No Trace where I would got very up close and personal with bees. And it for whatever reason, I loved it. I was absolutely hypnotized by them. And it’s given me a weird superpower to this day where, like, if a bee is around, most people react, like they they scream or they run away, or they, you know, smack the bee away. But I I just let the bee be. Just let it be. It doesn’t it’s not there to harm you, it’s just looking for its honey, you know? Yeah, I loved it.

 

Louis Virtel Did you relate to that character in a certain way? A at least in terms of how she initially, sort of relates to her dad and sort of initially seems to be on the same path with him in terms of living a sort of natural existence.

 

Thomasin McKenzie I mean, I’ve got a really fantastic relationship with my dad and it it made me think a lot about my relationship with my own dad and the you know, amount of love that I have for him. And it was such an honor to work with Ben Foster. He’s an incredible actor and he took such wonderful care of me. Partner was pregnant at the time of filming, so he was preparing to be a dad, a first-time dad himself, and so I think that really informed his performance. How did I relate to Tom? I have always felt very connected to nature coming from New Zealand. I mean, I I grew up so close to nature, would go for like walks in in the New Zealand native bush every single day. So filming in the forest was such a happy place for me. I think similarly to Tom, I have always felt a little bit out of the loop with like people my own age, with my peers, probably because I spent so much time away from school. I never was quite up to date with what was going on. And you know, we see Tom kind of like dealing with that when she’s introduced to people her own age and and and trying to integrate into society, kind of feeling like just out of her depth. There are lots of ways that I related to her. Love of animals, it really was just a perfect role for me, and I was very lucky to have been given that opportunity.

 

Louis Virtel We were talking about how Fakham Hall is a right term in terms of how broad the comedy was, but it’s it’s important to note that you were in Jojo Rabbit, a movie that on the page I’m sure seemed insane to a certain degree. But Taiko Watiti just is since the moment he sort of emerged, has been such an interesting artist. And what was it like working with him on developing that project and what it turned into? Is that what you expected to see on the silver screen?

 

Thomasin McKenzie Do you know what? When I first watched JoJo Rabbit, I really freaked out. I don’t know why, but I had a really negative reaction to it. Well, I do know why, because it’s a very sensitive topic. And I was terrified of what people would think watching it, because it you know what the subject matter actually is, even though it’s a comedy. So I was really quite scared. But Tyker is just an absolute genius. So all I had to do really was trust in him. He’s such a fantastic director for kids because he is just like a big kid himself, just constantly joking and has such a young energy about him. I have been so in insanely lucky to have worked with such incredible people in my career. So a lot of it I’ve just kind of like floated through. Kind of just a amazed and confused that I get to do what I do.

 

Louis Virtel My last question for you is do you have a favorite line from Fackham Hall that you still kind of say to yourself? ‘Cause there are some delicious line readings in this movie.

 

Thomasin McKenzie The script was fantastic. Like there was no faults to it. It was perfect. A line that I do think a lot about though was actually improvised. The only moment I improvised in the film where Eric, played brilliantly by Ben Radcliffe, is describing it a dream to Rose, my character, in which he says, and my penis fell off. And Rose’s reaction was, OMG, same. I’ve had that dream before.

 

Louis Virtel Hello.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Which just yeah, it makes it makes me chuckle.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, such a good moment. Such a good moment. Thomasin, thank you so much for talking to me today. And also, congrats on such a fabulous career. I really love the movies you do.

 

Thomasin McKenzie Thank you. I really appreciate that. It’s been lovely talking to you.

 

Louis Virtel Thank you to Thomasin  McKenzie. Fackham Hall hits theaters on December fifth. When we’re back, it’s more Keep It.

 

Louis Virtel [AD].

 

Louis Virtel Keep It is dark next week, so we’re spreading some Thanksgiving spirit early by sharing which celebrities we’re most thankful for, and since my producers have a sniper trained on my head in case I even utter the words Mary Tyler Moore. I think it’s best if Rheeqrheeq goes first.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah. I I love this question. Cause there’s so many, I’m gonna say women, because women’s stories matter that float in our brains, but who came to me immediately were Angela Bassett, Whitney Houston, Layla Rashawn, and Loretta Devine, the cast of Waiting to Exhale, as evidenced by my shirt on this audio medium. Fabulous shirt. Thank you. I have been doing a series this year with my best girlfriends. Love you guys though. My best girlfriends of watching movies our moms didn’t necessarily let us watch in the 90s. And so one by one, we’re kind of going through the movies that we know of, have seen in I Love the 90s, but have not actually gotten through. And one of my best friends had not seen Waiting to Exhale. And one of my favorite moments this year, one a moment I’m very thankful for, is watching my girl watch these girls on screen. Forrest Whitaker, the director of this film, God bless him. But it is this is a beautiful tale of friendship that is wonderfully brought on by these four women who are titans. And, you know, Angela Bassett gets not enough flowers, but she gets her flowers. Whitney left us. Layla Rashawn is so lovely, but Loretta Devine is an icon, and we need to talk about that more. She has enriched media and television and film all of the lives of the people sitting here. And I am very thankful for those women.

 

Guy Branum One of those connective tissue performers who so frequently can be a tiny part in something or a huge part in something, but is bringing such richness and life and love. Yes, Angela Bassett gets Titanic Betty Davis walking away from a flaming car moment. But real acting, that is turning unloading things from a moving van into romance.

 

Louis Virtel Yes. Also, I just want to say Loretta Devine was the lead in like a horror movie a couple years ago where she like kept somebody in an attic. I want a little bit more of that from her.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah, I think she, Loretta Devine, did a interview recently where she was talking about when she won her Emmy for being on Grey’s Anatomy, playing Mrs. Weber, and really thinking, Okay, I’m back. But you know, she’s a black woman of an age. It is not necessarily gonna be that easy, but the miraculous nature of her talent is that people keep finding it. We just mentioned this about Peter Bergen talking about Pluribus, but like there are these actors that you light up when you because you know they’re gonna just make you feel something or make you laugh your tits off. And she’s one

 

Guy Branum Working on hacks with Rose Abdo is just so magical because you start to see all of the things that Rose Abdo has done. And you know, tiny parts, bigger parts, and also somebody who as a Latina and person of like Levantine origin, like doesn’t yeah, people don’t know where to cast her, but also they can cast her anywhere. And you know, like everything from Gilmore Girls, this wasn’t my person, but this is just turning into me saying I love saying Rose. Oh sure. But my my person is I’m gonna say Adele.

 

Louis Virtel It’s crazy that we don’t just have like a statue somewhere of the original Dream Girls. Yes. I mean, like if you’re part of that institution, there’s no beating that in theater history.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I mean, well, Sheryl Lee Ralph for a while had a festival where they would all show up and sing together. And so you can find some grainy Nikon footage of Sheryl Lee Ralph, Larry Advine, and Miss Jennifer Holliday on I wanna say a beach in Jamaica. It’s it’s fabulous. And they they really were these statues of like what it is to be glamorous and know how to throw a line. And we’re also singing with Sheryl Lee Ralph. It’s like

 

Guy Branum Yeah, exactly. It’s amazing. But it is that thing of like being on stage for hundreds to thousands of performances. You learn the game, you learn it from every direction.

 

Louis Virtel You need to explain it all to us now.

 

Guy Branum Oh, have you ever heard of her? Okay. Let me pull up the tapes. As someone who spent way too much money to be front row in Vegas. Okay. The thing that makes me saddest on this planet is that Adele will never be hard up enough for money that she has to host a game show. Because Adele could host a game show. You have somebody who has a big, beautiful, singular talent, but then has the personality. Like the video of her seeing Celine Dion in the audience and starting crying and just understanding that like the realness is right there, like on the surface. Like, while I am saying Adele generally, I have to say specifically, it’s Adele and Alan Carr telling stories about when she was staying at his house and went through a breakup and all of the shame eating that she did. I do think at this time of transition, medical and cultural, around fatness and who is fat and how you live through fatness, that Adele managing to lose the weight but still be a fat girl in every other cultural way is something that is like important and beautiful and needs to continue.

 

Louis Virtel I am sorry to say that one thing I cherish about Adele is that she just openly says that Housewives is not for her. I’m sorry, in a way, it’s brave. I’m sorry. I’ve never heard anyone just like say like I don’t really like that popular television and like the the fact that she’s sort of just like Well it’s true and in that Britishy way.

 

Guy Branum Well but also who are you getting a sincere opinion from on most talk shows? And again, I think

 

Louis Virtel Right. Again, I think Yeah, the Terry Gar era is over.

 

Guy Branum Yes. Well I mean, look, there is beautiful work being done on Kimmel and Colbert, but also Graham Norton is I want holding it down.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I want to be on Graham. Like my level of acclaim is to get a fourth seat on Graham Norton. It’s all I want to be on.

 

Louis Virtel That person gets to lean.

 

Guy Branum And then say the joke.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah, I was like, What did you do?

 

Guy Branum The hardest part is that it’s always a like slightly cute, straight British stand up comic who you know Graham a little bit wants to fuck.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey No, I here’s the thing. I here’s how it’s gonna go. I’m at the sag after party. Okay, you’re right, we’re there. I’m you know, I’m doing a twirl, right? A Dell song comes with all I’m like, Oh my god, crazy, I do know all the riffs. I’m off the dance floor and Grim Rose like, Oh, who’s that? I’m like, Oh she’s re reading, she has two silent cues, you should meet her. I believe

 

Louis Virtel I feel like usually you shouldn’t say it out loud on a podcast, but who knows? That is manifesting. That’s manifesting, yeah.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey In a world where Alan Carr, I think, is about to get another show because of traitors. Say exactly what you want out loud and get it. I love your pick, not just because I love Adele so, so much, but there is something about like this woman who has maintained her charismatic truth through being persecuted for her body and for her choices and for like being a perfectionist. She is still so funny. She sounds so good. And she told me I was beautiful when I went to see the show. So

 

Louis Virtel She’s pretty rad. Yeah. Okay. All right, Lou. My person is. I I thought long and hard about this. I realized there’s just nothing I even dislike about this person. And I love what she brings in every conceivable way. Kirsten Dunst. Kiki. First of all, let’s start at the top. Still hard glamor. Yeah. The way she comes on, and it’s a Veronica like swoop. Yes. Every time. Let’s do that. I feel like all of the roles she picks have some degree of risk to them. I was just thinking about her, even in the movie Hidden Figures, where she plays a first thought. Yes. She plays a villain who is gross. Yeah. Like really like in these women’s faces and like plays the performance in a risky way that other people would not play.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Down white people who play racists in films. Yeah. I will be back to make a list. But Kinky Dunts did an amazing thing.

 

Guy Branum The thing is if if she’d been doing anything to preserve herself, if she’d been doing anything to be like, oh, but I a little bit get it, it would not have been servicing like she understood this is not my movie. Yeah. Like I’m gonna kill this by being a a prudish bitch. And it’s so good. Yeah, and also like it she gets to be a

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It’s calm. It’s not it’s not Sarah Pulson and Twelve Years a Slave. Yeah. It is this is a woman you are going to run into at the DMV. Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, right.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And that person can just completely ruin your life and your rights away. Yeah. And there’s nothing you can really do about it. She’s fabulous.

 

Louis Virtel And also just her interest in the arts, the way that she was asked, like, Oh, have you seen the Oscar nominated movies this year? And she said, I’m in the Academy. I’ve seen everything.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It’s my job.

 

Louis Virtel Like no nonsense, like of course. And I also just feel like the career she has and where she is with her like lovely husband, Jesse Plements, is so hard fought. Like we treated her like garbage in the two thousands. You know what I mean? Like we treat her like Kiki drunks and like that whole universe of like gossipiness about her. She’s somebody who would have easily just turned her back on the industry and seems to be more avid about it than ever, and more avid about making awesome choices and working with women.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey But I want her to come back to comedy. Come back to comedy.

 

Louis Virtel Bachelorette, she was hilarious.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Exactly. I and the Lord knows I watch Fargo, but like no, I want you to come and ruin

 

Guy Branum Someone’s

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah.

 

Guy Branum Joke dense monolog. Like, let’s do it. There’s nothing better than when somebody’s best work goes largely ignored. I think there is something so just about the fact that Tar didn’t win anybody any Oscars. But Marie Antoinette, that we as a culture were just like, that movie. And then I showed it to my niece and who was just torn apart by it. And we didn’t understand Sophia Coppla, and we didn’t understand that we were going to be taking like a two-centimeter journey inside of Versailles. But like nobody else could have pulled that off. Nobody else could have pulled you in and pushed you away in all of the ways that were necessary. But also to Rheeqrheeq’s point, she needs to come back to college.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey She hasn’t played the comedy. Like it yes, mama, I love when you’re subtle. Yes, yes, be on that farm with that man. They’re gonna do cover batch. And I would like you to be leading a comedy we have a woman who is going through a divorce and decides to move to Costa Rica. I just wanna see it.

 

Guy Branum To your points earlier about development, who or how are we going to have a comedy that is centered on a woman between thirty five and fifty five be made today?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Baby. I saw a clip this morning of Melissa McCarthy honoring Rose Byrne. I w we are fifteen years after Bridesmaids at this point. And after you know, we’ve had moments of trying to regurgitate that formula. Do we just have to wait for Kiki to get book club old? I don’t know.

 

Louis Virtel Or just call a movie bad something. Yeah.

 

Guy Branum Woman has divorced and has to go find herself again is like the most proven trope. Like you know like

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Under the Tuscan Sun really changed some things for some people and let’s bring it back. I know, I it’s totally right. And it’s this fight that my friends and I have all the time. Like I thought about writing something that stars a man and I was like, I have to go back to who I am. You know, like I can’t do that.

 

Guy Branum But back to your little movie club. Now, is something new going to be part of that or is something new late enough that you experience?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey We did it. We’ve been doing it like every couple months. And the one we did this Sunday after going to Wound in Pasadena, which was delicious, we watched Heartburn. Oh it’s a little slowed for me. But yeah, my other three women are Meryl Streep, Socker Channing, and Catherine O’Hara. Seeing them in some feathered smollets, just doing it. It is a little slow and it’s and Mike left the camera loose, but they are so amazing. Yeah.

 

Guy Branum No, first of all, you do need to read Heartburn. Heartburn is the book that made me understand a fundamental way that I think differently from women because I am a man. It is a book about I am so experiencing the consequences of my potential actions that I cannot make the choice that I need to. And then finally coming to the point of making the choice and like particularly going through we’re in this room, so the pie will land on this floor and not on the carpet. And I wouldn’t have done it on the carpet. And I think that. Mike Nichols and Nora Efron did not understand each other fully at that point in time. And he was trying to service that. He was trying to keep talking in the front of the camera and hide and mask what was going on. But I think it was relationships that went out and flowered in so many directions with Nora’s films, with Merrill’s films, and with Mike’s films. But also, can I just Nora Efron? Nora Efron, yes. Yes. Do you realize that My Blue Heaven, do you remember My Blue Heaven? It is a

 

Louis Virtel Nick Pellegi and like the h her husband then wrote Good Goodfellas based off the same concept.

 

Guy Branum It’s just it’s just her making fun of a Goodfellas. It’s just her making fun of Goodfellas.

 

Louis Virtel Right

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah, and they were together for decades.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. It’s the best. Now why stocker channing specifically?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Oh Stockard Channing playing the best friend and she keeps there’s this refrain she keeps saying of like are you being good? Which is, are you keeping your mind away from the fact that your husband is probably still fucking Thelma with the who’s tall? And it’s her delivery of it is so resonant as a woman with friends who sometimes date men that do not deserve them. Yeah. Where it’s just like, are you taking care of yourself enough? If you want us to blow him up, we will. If you want us to run up on Thelma, we will. But day to day, it has to be, and in theory, how are we doing? I think Stalker does it amazing because you do have these, like, you know, people are putting on performances. Catherine O’Hara is putting, she put an accent on and a twerk in her ass, and it’s amazing. And Meryl, the tear that falls down her face when she’s getting a C section makes me cry every time. Yeah. And the audacity of men, oh, I miss Jack Nicholson. But Stockard, that role, that friend role could be nothing. It often is. But I’ve loved her since I was a kid.

 

Louis Virtel I want to say also that Catherine O’Hara, I of course I’m thankful for her. And I especially since this year with the studio, she really fucking impressed me on that show. That is an awesome performance. And like there are a couple characters in that show where it’s like, I can tell they’re supposed to be based on somebody real, but I’m it’s not scanning for me. With her, I’m like, I know everything about this woman. I know exactly that studio head and exactly how exasperated she is at all times.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And in theory, if it is exactly who we all think it’s based off of, she’s like, I’m gonna wear the wig, but I’m gonna make it someone else. And I think it’s pretty cool.

 

Guy Branum Can I say something shocking but magical? Yeah. I was at the original table read for the studio, and the role that Catherine O’Hara is in now and is beautiful and great in was read by Lorraine Newman. And it was in the same way that like British traders and American traders, you have two very distinct forms of hosting that are equally magnificent. Getting to see Lorraine Newman like truly sink her teeth into something and make it wonderful was magical. I mean, Catherine O’Hara is an icon. Catherine O’Hara hosting the John Candy Memorial in Toronto.

 

Louis Virtel Don’t don’t even start with that. It’s the greatest memorial of all time. She nailed it so hard. It’s like a it’s like a literary text, which she throws down. Her delivery is unbelievable. And that I also want to say an underrated Catherine O’Hara performance that no one ever talks about. She plays the mom in Orange County. And she plays, she’s like a pill-ridden, like Orange County mom. And at one point, she just in the middle of an argument with her son, she goes, I had to take a nap. And she goes and she goes to her bed full of huge pillows and takes all of the pillows off one by one so she can take a nap.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And speaking of the details of womanhood. It’s like, yeah, you’re storming off, but all of these ornamental pillows cannot be laid on unless I put my bonnet on. And it’s like, Yeah, let’s build that world out. It’s amazing.

 

Louis Virtel Who is your next person, Guy?

 

Guy Branum What you guys were throwing at me. It’s not original. I’m not saying anything we haven’t seen. I just said Mary Louise Street, babe. A thousand times. When f share fucking thanks, Mary Louise Street. No, yes.

 

Louis Virtel No, yes. But then she lies and said she was in my first movie and it’s like Cher, I know you were in the movie Chastity in the sixties and come back to the five and dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean before that. Which is a good but weird movie. I’m going to say Lisa Coudre.

 

Guy Branum I mean, it just When is the comeback coming back? I don’t know. And I’m worried, but I have so much trust. It’s gonna be fine. I have so much trust in her. Like just those real improv chops, the fact that there is intellect and wildness, like that she is working from the heart and the head at all times, in all ways. I got to show Romy and Michelle to like a 28-year-old this weekend, and just seeing in their eyes like the pure joy of that deeply queer movie is is magnificent. And I I we just we need to preserve her at all costs.

 

Louis Virtel Lisa is also an amazing interviewee. She’s just right like when she does like Vulture Fest or s what but look up any clip of her, she’s an amazing interviewee.

 

Guy Branum Look up any clip of her, it will be great. But you look up a clip of her and Conan, and suddenly you are going three levels deeper. Suddenly you have her like completely open and completely like vulner getting to watch those interviews where an interviewee knows that they can be perfectly vulnerable and are in great hands is magnificent.

 

Louis Virtel Yes. You guys did didn’t detect my long game. You guys said Kirsten Dunn should be in more comedies, and yet you didn’t detect the second person I was going to say, Gabrielle Union, who I think is I think the greatest interviewee we have. Every time, every time she pops off with a quote, I remember the quote. She is so she’s so opinionated and in your face and correct. I like somebody who comes correct with the opinion.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I gosh, I have a very emotional attachment to Gabriel because that black girl in that Clovers uniform really like set a stage. I learned that cheer in middle school. Like she is so charming and she’s one of those people who obviously is media trained, but also won’t let that take away any of her vulnerability.

 

Louis Virtel Yes, no, it’s one hundred percent her personhood every time she presents it.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey And she’s just so effervescent when you see her and it’s not just the skincare routine. It’s just like something we’re talking about inside. But she also, I think, is like another person who has looked at okay. I don’t necessarily have someone’s career path to follow exactly. So how am I going to give you red carpet and performance and brands and all these things? It’s a very contemporary celebrity from an old age who started in a different era of this.

 

Guy Branum With her slay parenting too. She has essentially 10 lines in Ten Things I Hate About You. Like if you go back and look at the actual real estate that she has, it’s just not there. But she feels like a quarter of that movie that is overstacked because like she knows her worth. She goes into every scene being and knowing her worth. And there is that way, and we don’t talk about it enough, but like There came the time when to star on a show, she had to be on a BET show that wasn’t going to have the resources that network or cable show was going to have. It got into a situation where they were like basically fudging the books to not give her the raises that she deserved.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Being Mary Jane.

 

Guy Branum Being Mary Jane, I’m sorry. But it is one of those things that we don’t talk about and don’t acknowledge that we do have Alternative entertainment systems that aren’t as respected and aren’t as remunerative, and that some people have to go into to survive to make a life in art. And the fact that she has done that, but not been scared to push back and make demands and assert who she is and like what she needs is something I really, really respect. And it is just the thing that, like, you’re not just doing this work for yourself, you’re doing this work for everyone who comes after you to say. I do not deserve less respect just because I am a black woman.

 

Louis Virtel And oops she’s hilarious. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just unbelievable. Unbelievable. We didn’t have time for me to bring up Carrie Kuhn. I love that she both the the bigger she gets as a movie star, the more she stands movies and like.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Please go on GQ dot com there is a photo shoot of Carrie Coon and Morgan Specter that just dropped. It’s really good. If your mental illness is just like mine, you’ll have a good time.

 

Louis Virtel Mine’s adjacent

 

Guy Branum Can I just say one thing? Can I just say one final thing?

 

Louis Virtel Yes.

 

Guy Branum If your nine-year-old boy ever watches a film with Alfre Woodard in it and says, Who’s she? You understand that your child is gay. Like it is very hard to watch the Gun and Betty Loose handbag right now, but if you would like to see Alfre Woodard at her absolute best, you find the Gun and Betty Loose handbag.

 

Louis Virtel But by the way, if you don’t have any like Molly on you and you want that kind of high, go and look at Alfre Woodard’s Emmy nominations. Eighteen different flavors. You’ll be high as a kite. Trust me. It’s unbelievable. Okay. Thank you for those. And thank you to the celebrities we’ve mentioned. We’ll be back with our favorite segment of the episode. It’s keep it. And it’s time for our favorite segment of the episode. It’s Keep It Guy, we’ll start over there. What’s happening?

 

Guy Branum Hey, your seasonal jokes about cranberries, you can keep it. You’re like, oh, cranberries, they just come out of a tube. Oh, cranberries, this is the only time that we eat them. That’s your restrained approach to life. Okay. You’re the one who is keeping the blinders on your eyes. These things are a great source of acidity. I’m not even going to talk about a health benefits. I’m just going to say it’s a delicious berry. They are always available. They are very bouncy. When you get a bunch of them, you could bounce them all over the place. But it’s like, I made a hell of a salad dressing the other day. And instead of vinegar or lemon juice, I just use cranberries. Acid. Like, yes, it’s acid, baby. Like, it’s a good tart, strong flavor. If you think they’re too strong, mix them with something else. Learn to fucking cook. Like they are a great and exciting ingredient. And if your Thanksgiving table is limited and boring, that is your fault. And I would also like to say at this point in time that the Thanksgiving table is one of the rare places where the most racist white people in America and black America can agree. Like that pie should be sweet potato. Your stuffing is boring and should have cornbread in it. And like we need to take these moments and embrace them. So stop shitting on your Thanksgiving table and show some goddamn respect for cranberries.

 

Louis Virtel Well, first of all, I just want to say that you really captured my voice and you said, cranberries they sounded just like me. I was right there, right in it. Second of all, you think Dolores A Reardon named her band Cranberries because they suck? No, they’re full of tart power.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey My keep it almost was the fact that we are really disrespectful to our best food holiday, which is Thanksgiving. Yes. True. And I understand why we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But I do babe, Brian that turkey, like pr preheat that oven. Th you are embarrassing your mother by showing these plates. Just because your family can’t cook doesn’t mean that we can’t like the things that we like.

 

Guy Branum Yes. Like do some work and understand it is autumn. Some of the food’s gonna be brown.

 

Louis Virtel Right. No, that’s my favorite thing about Thanksgiving is we just agree on a mid century modern food look.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It’s the corduroy of plates.

 

Louis Virtel Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, there’s a ribbed quality to all the food.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel Rheeqrheeq, what is your keep at this week?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey My keep it is to the male characters of the new Peacock show, All Her Fault. Not to be mixed up with All’s Fair, which is not the same show, though All’s All Her Fault is shot in Australia but pretending to be Chicago and that’s the one that’s more logical to me. Other than Michael Pena, who is playing decency to the highest degree. The show should have been called Why Men. Not since Martin Short’s performance as a creep in the first season of Morning Show. Have I thought, damn, men aren’t this horrible and stupid, but you know what? They are. Making up the cast, we have Jay Clacy. We have Dakota Fanning’s husband who keeps swiping and is on quizzics the whole time. And finally, gorgeous Jay Ellis, who even he is just a true dumbass. I never want to say like men’s stories writes, but they really do all of this men dirty because not a one of them makes a lick of sense. I do like, thank you, Sarah Snook, for coming back to America to do press. Thank you for wearing a Peplum suit in the final episode because we need it. But watch the show. There, it talks about invisible labor and especially watch it during the holidays while the men in your life are in the room so that they can see you look at them about the fact that they haven’t done shit today. But let’s bring back having punchable faces on screen and having them punched. It was just a missed opportunity.

 

Louis Virtel Well Jake Lacey is sort of that dot com and I I say that appreciatively. No I think

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey No, I think I have only heard lovely things, but it is I was reading interview with Jake Lacey and they were talking about like, Oh, he’s played all these good guys and he’s played these boyfriends and high fidelity and g girls. I was like, Oh no, every time he ended up horrible. Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. The movie Carol, where he’s like, Stop loving Carol.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey It’s just like just because he has a flared bang up there doesn’t mean he ended up he was not nice to Hannah. And he was and he was a little presumptuous with Zoe’s character. And he’s spoken about like I f I don’t know why people keep casting me like this. I think I’m a nice man. Nah, babe, wear that wig and good health and get punched in the face.

 

Louis Virtel I haven’t seen it yet. I’m s I’m a little salty with her because I hated picture of Dorian Gray so much. You hey oh did you see it? Yes. I just thought it was way more entertaining to read than watch her like stand behind a screen where we can’t see her.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I think that I appreciated the swing and I can just watch her face do anything for an extended

 

Louis Virtel Well, she’s also one of these accent zombies where it’s just like she can do anything. It’s like fully th pluribus. Like it makes no sense.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Like it makes no sense. She’s downloaded the other accents. But it’s amazing to see someone who can cut your entire self worth with like a retraction of her pupils. I think she’s just so so wonderful. But I downloaded those episodes for a plane and I kept laughing out loud and my my family were like, Why are you cackling? I was like, ’cause they so stupid.

 

Guy Branum I just wanna say Broadway is for swings, Tony’s are not for swings.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey That’s fair. That’s totally true.

 

Louis Virtel My keep it this week feels so disappointing to have to even bring up, but it’s so confounding. Yeah. Keith Urban performed at Mar-a-Lago for actual President Trump who was there, but he performed Pink Pony Club. Did he think he was being subversive? Excuse me. Also, I did not need you to perform Pink Pony Club. Yeah. He still had, of course, his and you know this is what I think of him, his peppermint patty haircut. Oh my god.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Oh yeah,

 

Louis Virtel He’s looking for his Marcy and girl, she was not at Mar a Lago or I hope she wasn’t.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Tabitha Takeover ass haircut is so crazy.

 

Louis Virtel 2007.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yes for you young listeners.

 

Louis Virtel John and Kate plus all that.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I mean, l look, I am so excited for Nicole off the leash. She Nicole Kidman is going to be doing some of the most outrageous intimacy coordinators running for the hills as performances in the years to come. But Keith Urban, like you Australian country singing as gold toilet shitting, apparently now. Like this pivot is so unnecessary. Like you’re obviously getting a check from your ex wife. You’re doing it for fun. That’s just

 

Guy Branum Also, you’re a foreigner, like you could stay out of this whole situation and be perfectly fine.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey No, it’s an opt in. You opt it into the email at this point and that shows that he lacks the taste of the thing.

 

Louis Virtel I will say this, I I do feel like we never really actually understand a celebrity’s finances. I do want to say that. That said, it’s like this is a kind of grace I generally extend somebody who is, for example, lost on the pride circuit. Yes. Like Taylor Dane, oh, you ended up at Mar-a-Lago. Guys, let Taylor Dane go go to Mar-a-Lago. Sorry.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Yeah, yeah. Trusting the check I’m getting from Marlako’s gonna clear. Yeah. Like that’s the thing. You are taking a risk on some Bitcoin? Absolutely not. Yes. Okay. Also, it does feel a little bit like he wanted the press cycle. Yeah. And I know whose side of this I’m on. I understand that.

 

Louis Virtel Even that pride that cycle?

 

Guy Branum I so look forward to Nicole’s palate cleansing third marriage to I wanna say a French gynecologist and a nice agent. I think this could be an exciting moment for you to stay.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey But she’s like she’s not Reese. It is going to be a leather laced up pant, 34-ish year old who’s just, you never don’t see his dick print. It is gonna, I think it’s she’s gonna go back towards Linton.

 

Guy Branum Okay, but do you think that her relationship decisions are all just based on the prison that Tom was and trying to escape that prison in her mind, or do you think this is just who she is and has always been?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey No, I think she’s a cusp Gemini cancer and this is just like what we’re living with. Yeah. I do love like a beautiful, newly single woman in her fifties because you really can’t tell which way it’s gonna go. But I think she’s gonna do something that is going to m make his bangs curl. Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel I do think Keith Urban was a reaction to Tom Cruise though, because Tom Cruise was a president and then Keith Urban’s whole thing is going, cool.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey But she was she was with Lenny Kravitz for years. Like that was the thing during the second season of Big Little Lies Press tour, Zoe being like, Oh yeah, she was like engaged to my dad. And Nick was like, Nick, like, I know her. Nicole Kivid was like, Yeah, oh sh I think she forgot you guys didn’t know that I was engaged to him. So she’ll move to someone’s horse farm, she’ll come back, she’ll go to Nashville. She’ll move to Stockholm. I don’t know. All of the all of the sets that are in that show on Hulu that she’s she keeps being a therapist in. Yeah. Our homes she has. Yes. Extants or whatever? I don’t know.

 

Louis Virtel Expats.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey No.

 

Louis Virtel And then the other one lioness.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Oh, Expats was Expats was Amazon Linus is on Paramount Plus. Nine different faces. Yeah, but everyone was the most covet ash show. Oh my god.

 

Louis Virtel No. We’ll try to name all of her T V credits soon and explode. How about that?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey I am the perfect couple, so

 

Louis Virtel Rheeqrheeq, where can we find you on social media?

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey You can find me at at Resqquared, again two Q’s on Insta and you know, just at your local Bristol Farms.

 

Louis Virtel I agree. And Guy where can we find you? You seem to be funny are you a comedian?

 

Guy Branum First yes, I am a stand up comedian. But I also just want to say Bristol’s Farms has really great pie options for your holiday buying and as we learn from the end of and just like that, buying pies for your friends for the holidays really is

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Can be the series finale of a show.

 

Guy Branum The core of community. I am at Guy Branum across all social media except for TikTok, where I am at Guy Brandham Comedy, because apparently someone has at Guy Branum on TikTok. Oh my God. And also, Lewis, I am a beloved stand up comedian who is taking my solo show, Be Fruitful, to Washington, DC on December 18th. Yes. Philadelphia on December 17th, which is before that. And then Brooklyn at Union Hall on December 19th. So please come and see me. And I’m in LA on December 14th at the Lyric Hyperion and November twenty fifth, if this does not air before that, at Lyric Hyperion doing Be Fruitful.

 

Louis Virtel I can confirm you are very fucking funny. Thank you.

 

Rheeqrheeq Chainey Really good time.

 

Louis Virtel All right. That’s our show. Thank you to Thomasin McKenzie for being here and and for introducing us to Fackham Hall, where I hope to revisit soon. Enjoy your Thanksgiving and enjoy all the celebrities you love. I know we will. We’ll see you next time. Don’t forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. You can also subscribe to Keep It on YouTube for access to full episodes and other exclusive content. And if you’re as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Keep It is a Crooked Media Production. Our producer is Bill McGrath. Our associate producer is Kennedy Hill, and our executive producers are Louis Virtel, Ira Madison III, and Kendra James. Our digital team is Delon Villanueva, Claudia Sheng, and Rachel Gaewski. This episode was recorded and mixed by Jerik Centeno. Thank you to David Toles, Kyle Seglin, and Charlotte Landes for production support every week. Our head of production is Matt DeGroot. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.