Monday
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and if we don’t always get the heroes we want, we surely get the ones that we need. This week, as Donald Trump mouthed off at the UN and told Europe it was going to hell, relief came in the form of – what else? – a man best known for his Beadle-style pranks, including painting people’s houses while they’re out and putting snakes on their backs while they’re waiting for a massage. Jimmy Kimmel, who has always struck me as the best of the late-night hosts and infinitely preferable to his late-night rival, Jimmy Fallon, nonetheless looked surprised, this week, to find himself caught in the spotlight of history.
It was Disney+ boss, Bob Iger’s decision last week to suck up to Trump by indefinitely suspending Kimmel’s show, triggering uproar in the form of a popular campaign to cancel all our Disney+ memberships and – deep breath, everyone – a now-you’ve-really-done-it open letter from Hollywood actors. This one, signed by Meryl Streep, Jennifer Aniston and Tom Hanks, among others, was notable for forcefully pushing back against Trump and his cohorts – “We the people must never accept government threats to our freedom of speech”– and also for failing to include George Clooney’s signature; perhaps he’s decided to sit this one out or the wifi was down at Lake Como.
Anyway, no one likes being told off by icons and Iger caved, Kimmel returned, and on Tuesday night, the genial host rose to the occasion with a moment of real Voltaire-like gravity. “I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway,” said Kimmel, a reference in part to Ted Cruz of all people, who had criticised Iger’s decision. Kimmel then landed a couple of well-timed Epstein jokes and was moved to tears by his own eloquence. In the 24 hours after it aired, 17.7 million people watched the monologue on YouTube, confirming that the Streisand effect is real and the quickest way to a massive audience is to tell everyone not to watch something.
Tuesday
Heavy emphasis was put by Kimmel on the fact that Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed head of the US broadcasting regulator, the FCC, had, by threatening the show, indulged in behaviour that was “un-American”, a textbook accusation used by both political sides in the US that has no real equivalent in Britain.
I know “British values” is a phrase used in schools and in politics. But it doesn’t have the force of “un-American” because – and it’s a hard one to put one’s finger on – in an old country without a written constitution, the loudest part is often the one no one actually articulates. Even in this climate, “British values” is a slightly embarrassing phrase likely to be used with a face doing half an apology. That’s why the whole flag thing feels so incongruous. We haven’t, historically, been a people who plant flags on our lawn as a friend suggested this week, demonstrating the unspoken snottiness that truly represents British values, it’s because unlike the Americans, we know who we are and don’t have to remind ourselves every two minutes.
Anyone in doubt about this need only consider the long list of Hollywood movies with the word “American” in the title and road test them with something closer-to-home: British Beauty, British Gangster, British Sniper and, my favourite, British Psycho. Less searing drama, more spoof.
Wednesday
More from Hollywood this week in the form of the erstwhile Harry Potter actor Emma Watson who has come out of retirement to do a series of interviews to raise awareness about an under-researched and little reported-on condition suffered by actors who are allergic to interviews. Watson last appeared on screen in 2018 as one of the sisters in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Since then, she told various outlets this month, she has become “maybe the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been”. On a two-hour podcast and in an interview with Hollywood Authentic, she talked about the “soul destroying” experience of doing publicity. During her absence from acting, she said, she missed the “art”, but not the “selling things”.
I guess there are two things here. As soul-destroying aspects of a job go, it’s quite well compensated, isn’t it. And, something that has always made me laugh: the absolute conviction on the part of many actors that, while they’re having a terrible time, their interlocutors are just thrilled to meet them. I remember interviewing an actor in a restaurant in New York years ago who started complaining bitterly about how much she hated junkets. “You know none of us wants to be there, either, right?” I said, which did not trigger a moment of mutual understanding, but won me a look of pure horror.
Thursday
If you enjoyed the schadenfreude surrounding the Observer’s Salt Path investigation, might I direct your attention to a blockbuster investigation that just dropped in the New York Times into Amy Griffin’s bestselling memoir, The Tell. Woo-boy, it’s a corker. Griffin, who numbers Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and nerdy productivity guru Adam Grant (who gave a quote for the book jacket) among her friends, wrote an account of her childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a teacher in Amarillo, Texas, which sold to publishers for a reported $1m and has been raising eyebrows ever since.
I happen to have read this book and I cannot recommend the newspaper’s extremely thorough investigation into it highly enough. For the purposes of the drama, it doesn’t hurt that Griffin lives with her hedge-fund manager husband and their children in a $77m townhouse in New York, or that she came by the memories of what happened to her after taking an MDMA pill during what the Times describes as “psychedelic assisted therapy” (an experimental therapy into which, writes the Times, her husband has heavily invested and awaits FDA approval). If you’re moved to read it, maybe get it from the library.
Friday
Finally, it’s here, the new season of Slow Horses. And despite snarky early reviews, I won’t hear a word against it. OK, the script is slightly shonkier and Jackson’s sweary dialogue slightly more self-conscious than in earlier seasons. And the theme – masculinity is in crisis! – might poke through the first episode like something sharp through a shopping bag. But all of that misses the point about shows like Slow Horses, which can go on for ever because, like the new Downton movie, in which nothing whatsoever happens, it is enough for most of us simply to be in that world.
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