Behind The Oscar Glow: Hollywood's Dirtiest Secrets 2025

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In October twenty seventeen, The New York Times reported a
Hollywood scandal that would have global consequences. One of Hollywood's
most powerful men, Harvey Weinstein, was accused by numerous women
of sexual harassment. His victims, spanning several decades, include stars
who we paid off to keep silent. What started as
the revelation of one of Hollywood's darkest secrets sparked the

(00:23):
Twitter hashtag me too, spawning a worldwide feminist movement. This
is the story of the men who started it, all
of the movement's global repercussions, and of the women who
had the courage to lead the fight. Who are the
celebrities accused? How did they get away with it for
so long? How did this Hollywood story have such a
broad impact. Let's explore the me too movement?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Harvey Weinstein, who believed in us and made this.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Movie, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Harvey Weins and
Harvey thank your Weinsteinstinum and God.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Harvey Weinstein, with over eighty one oscars under his belt,
It has been said for decades that Harvey Weinstein has
been thanked more than God. For years, Harvey Weinstein has
extended his influence on Hollywood as an independent movie producer.
In the early nineties, through his company Miramax, he produced,

(01:20):
alongside his brother Robert, his first international hits, Steven Soderberg's
Sex Lies and Videotape in nineteen ninety and Quentin Tarantino's
Pulp Fiction in nineteen ninety four brought attention to the
Weinstein brothers since they both won the Palm d'aux at
the cann Film Festival.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Mira Max at the time was kind of, you know,
the archway that young filmmakers came in.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
The new filmmakers came in. So I met with Harvey.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
It was almost like a scene from The Godfather when
I met Harvey. So I come into the hotel and
it's full of smoke. It's like cigar smoke, and like
I come in, I sit down and there's Harvey and
he's an intuitive guy and literally stopped me, like you know,
mid sentence, and he said, I'm making your movie.

Speaker 5 (02:04):
Tell your age. It's not That's literally what he said.
And then I go was like, I'll tell him.

Speaker 6 (02:08):
Sir, Harvey Weinstein couldn't make or break a career if
he wanted to make your star, he would if he
wanted to make you disappear, he could do that as well.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
In nineteen ninety seven, Harvey won his first Oscar for
Best Movie for the English Patient.

Speaker 6 (02:23):
For Harvey Weinstein, the Oscar was It's not just a
sign of prestige. An oscar is also a great marketing
tool and one for increasing box office and income. So
Harvey Weinstein put all his effort into Oscar campaigns. And
not only was he very aggressive about getting ads in

(02:44):
newspapers through any means possible, or approaching Academy members individually
if needed, he also allegedly had people engage in whisper
campaigns that would smear the other movies that were nominated.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
In the following years, he was the controlling force behind
some of contemporary cinema's greatest successes. Among the films he
produced are Goodwill, Hunting, The Scream Saga, Shakespeare in Love,
Gangs of New York, Sin City, and every Quentin Tarantino film.
But his work methods were not always esteemed by his peers.

Speaker 7 (03:23):
I've made a very nice little film I think called
My Life So Far. It got wonderful reviews, but it
was ruined by Harvey Weinstein completely just decimated and ruined.
He put his heavy fist upon it. But that's what
he does. He tries to change people's work because to

(03:43):
do it like he wants it.

Speaker 6 (03:45):
If Harvey Weinstein wanted to make a film, even one
that he made disappear, he would do that. He had
the power to make something that he had spent a
lot of money on just completely go under the radar.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
His work habits were not the only problem.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
As early as two thousand and five, rock icon and
actress Courtney Love tried to warn people of Weinstein's behavior.
When asked about what advice she had for young actresses,
she replied.

Speaker 6 (04:10):
Why Harvey Weinstein advises you to a private party and
the fourth seas on step there. There's no way of
knowing who knew and who did it and.

Speaker 5 (04:17):
What they knew.

Speaker 6 (04:18):
But I feel like everyone who worked in the industry
had heard something at some point about Harvey Weinstein.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Similarly, in twenty thirteen, comedian and director Seth MacFarlane made
a scathing joke about Weinstein at the Oscar nomination ceremony
action Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend
to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein. In twenty seventeen, Seth
MacFarlane offered some context to his twenty thirteen attack on

(04:49):
Weinstein with this tweet. In twenty eleven, my friend and
colleague Jessica Bart confided in me regarding her encounter with
Harvey Weinstein and his attempted advances.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
It was with this.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Account in that when I hosted the Oscars in twenty thirteen,
I couldn't resist the opportunity to take a hard swing
in his direction. Make no mistake, this came from a
place of loathing and anger. Many of his collaborators acknowledged
they knew at least parts of his behavior. Ben Affleck
and Matt Damon, and also Meryl Street, all frequent Weinstein collaborators,
had been accused of knowing and covering up his actions

(05:21):
for years.

Speaker 6 (05:24):
There were a lot of actors who have greatly benefited
from Harvey Weinstein over the years. It is completely impossible
to know what they knew and what their individual responsibility is.
In this case, it's a much larger discussion.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
His most frequent and famous collaborator, star director Quentin Tarantino,
admitted in twenty eighteen that there was more to it
than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn't secondhand.
I knew he did a couple of these things. I
knew enough to do more than I did. Tarantino told
The New York Times that his then girlfriend Mira Servino,

(05:58):
had told him about an innent involving Weinstein making unwelcome
advances and physical contact. I couldn't believe he would do
that so openly. But the thing I thought then at
the time was that he was particularly hung up on
Mira because he was infatuated with her. He horribly crossed
the line. Many seemed to know at least parts of
his alleged behavior towards women. So why didn't these stories

(06:21):
gain traction earlier? Who are the women who became known
as the silence breakers? Let's listen to their shocking stories.
In late twenty seventeen, The New York Times published a
now famous article describing accusations of sexual assault by thirteen
women spanning two decades. The stories all described as sexual

(06:45):
predator that often used the same methodology to attack his victims. First,
Harvey Weinstein would invite a young actress to his hotel
to talk about a part in one of his movies.
Originally set at the bar, eat would be moved to
his suite, where he claimed he had his office set up.
When the actress arrived, he would welcome her and would

(07:07):
talk to her about the script, and he would quickly
become overly flirtatious and physical. He would insist on opening
a bottle of champagne and make her drink. Using his
power in the industry, he would make promises to advance
the actress's career in exchange for her compliance. He would
ask her for a massage or propose one, or ask
her to watch him take a shower.

Speaker 6 (07:28):
There was an occasion where he chased one of the
actresses around the table when she refused to do so.
There have been instances reported where he wouldn't let them
out the door, and he would stand in front of
the hotel door.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
According to Ashley Judd's encounter in nineteen ninety seven, he
would insist and argue. I said no a lot of ways,
a lot of times, and he always came back at
me with some new ask. It was all this bargaining,
this coercive bargaining. These stories offer some even more dreadful details.
During the count Film Festival, he would often bring actresses

(08:02):
or models to his hotel room. His French driver, who
witnessed his behavior for years, claimed he saw many girls
leaving Harvey's place crying. He also states Weinstein was carrying
a briefcase full of sex toys and viagra. Many of
his alleged victims also describe how he'd leave for the bathroom,

(08:24):
get undressed, and come back into the room wearing a bathrobe.

Speaker 6 (08:28):
He would go away, he would come back and appear
naked underneath a robe, and at that point he would
ask them to either massage him or watch him masturbate,
or in some instances, he would try to force them
to go down on him.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Thankfully, many escaped, others were not so lucky. Actress Asia
Argento alleged that she had been sexually assaulted by Harvey
Weinstein during the cann Film Festival in the nineteen nineties.
Argento delivered a powerful speech following the twenty eighteen cann
Film Festival, calling the festival Weinstein's hunting ground. In nineteen
ninety seven, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein here at Cannes.

(09:10):
I was twenty one years old, and even tonight, sitting
among you, there are those who still have to be
held accountable for their conduct against women. One of the
first to speak up was the Charmed and Planet Terror
star Rose McGowan. After years of forced silence, she shared
with the world her dreadful.

Speaker 6 (09:27):
Story in nineteen ninety seven, when Rose McGowan was making Screen,
which was the Harvey Weinstein film he allegedly raped her
at the Sundance Film Festival.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
McGowan claimed that when she spoke up about the assault,
some in Hollywood threatened to end her career. Weinstein responded
with a one hundred thousand dollars settlement in agreement that
she would keep quiet, and the story didn't end there.

Speaker 6 (09:50):
Robert Rodriguez, the director, met Rose mcgallan at cann and
she complimented his films in City and said that she
really wished she could have been part of it, and
he said, you would have been excellent. Why didn't you audition?
And she told him that she wasn't allowed to audition
for any Weinstein films, and she had also signed the
non disclosure agreement after he allegedly raped her at Sundance.

(10:14):
Now Robert Rodriguez then saw Weinstein at that party as
he was sitting with Rose mcgallan and called him to
the table and said, Hey, have you met this actress.
She's fantastic. I'm going to cast her in my next film.
And from the expression on Harvey Weinstein's face, he immediately knew.

(10:35):
He says that everything that Rose McGowan had just told
him is true, and Harvey Weinstein didn't at that point
stand in his way. He did allow him to cast
Rose McGowan. What he did instead was pretty much bury
the film. It never got the marketing it deserved and
never got the release it deserved.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
The rest is history.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
For some of his victims, coming forward was especially difficult,
the case for Uma Thurman, who has worked with Weinstein
on some of her biggest hits, Pulp Fiction and kill Bill.

Speaker 6 (11:05):
When Uma Thurman first discovered that Harvey Weinstein had been exposed,
her reaction was just one of anger, and she didn't
say anything until she was ready to speak, And when
she was, she told a story of her sexual assault
at the hands of Harvey Weinstein.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
She recounted to The New York Times a series of
disturbing incidents, including an alleged assault at the Savoy Hotel
in London. And these stories are just the tip of
the Iceberg. Many other women came forward.

Speaker 6 (11:37):
It was quite incredible the names that came forward in
regards to Harvey Weinstein. Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina, Joe Lee, Kara Delavine.
The list was absolutely endless, and it included a lot
of a list talent.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
And shocking evidence would soon surface in the Weinstein affair.

Speaker 8 (11:56):
Nothing to do and You'll Never see me again avers.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
But before sharing this audio recording and exploring Harvey Weinstein's downfall,
let's take a look at the global repercussions of this
Hollywood scandal.

Speaker 6 (12:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Ten days after the first New York Times article broke,
actress Alyssa Milano published the following tweet, suggested by a friend,
if all the women who have been sexually harassed or
assaulted wrote me too as a status, we might give
people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. And
tens of thousands took up her call. Far beyond Hollywood's

(12:32):
glimmering lights, women all over the world made their voices
heard under the me too hashtag.

Speaker 6 (12:38):
And the me too hashtag was used half a million
times on Twitter in the first twenty four hours and
four point seven million times on Facebook within the first
twenty four hours alone.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Surprisingly, Alyssa Milano was not the first to use the
me too hashtag. The hashtag was coined by civil rights
activists to Arana Burke over a decade earlier. The rise
of social media and the power of a celebrity turned
the hashtag into a global phenomenon.

Speaker 6 (13:06):
It was actually incredible when the me too hashtag started
to flood social media. For once, it felt as a
woman like you weren't alone, like your experience were not
solitary ones. We were one big community.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
The impact could be seen at the following Golden Globe Awards,
were many guests chose to dress in black to express
solidarity with the me too movement and victims of sexual violence.
Many wore pins which read Times Up.

Speaker 6 (13:38):
It felt like the community had finally come together to
actually actively fight something.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Media tycoon Oprah Winfrey made an inspiring speech. For too long,
women have not been heard or believed if they dared
to speak their truth to the power of those men.
But their time is up. It's here with every woman
who chooses to say me too, and every man who
chooses to listen. The following Oscar ceremony also had its

(14:06):
moment of communion when Francis McDormand won her first Academy
Award for Best Actress and invited all female Oscar nominees
to stand up, if I may be so honored as
to have all the female nominees in every category stand
in this room tonight. Okay, look around everybody, ladies and gentlemen,
because we all have stories to tell and projects we

(14:26):
need financed. This movement has shown that Harvey Weinstein was
only the beginning. Other major stars were soon faced with
shocking accusations.

Speaker 6 (14:36):
There's an expression called the casting couch for a reason.
This has been business practice for a long time.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Would many have called the Weinstein effect allowed many victims
of sexual misconduct to come forward and denounce famous perpetrators.
Some of the most famous, admired, and trusted men in
Hollywood came under career threatening scrutiny.

Speaker 6 (15:01):
It's disturbing to hear that people you have looked up
to for so long or capable of this sort of behavior.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Hollywood legend Dustin Hoffman was accused by seven women of
sexual misconduct or assault. Author Anna Graham Hunter wrote in
a Hollywood Reporter column, Dustin Hoffman sexually harassed me when
I was seventeen, recounting her experience as an intern on
the set of the nineteen eighty five film Death of
a Salesman. Hoffman's daughter's friend alleged Hoffman exposed his penis

(15:32):
to her in a hotel room, then asked for a
foot massage. She was under eighteen at the time. Hoffman's
response was vague and dismissive. I have the utmost respect
for women and feel terrible that anything I might have
done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I
am sorry, it is not reflective of who I am.
Hollywood fellows, including actor Liam Neeson, defended him, undermining accusations.

Speaker 6 (15:58):
There's this idea that things were different in the seventies,
that a little smack on the ass was just a
joke and it was playful. And while this has been
acceptable behavior in the past, I doubt it was super
fun for the women involved.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Another trusted and admired Hollywood icon, John Lassiter, creator of
the Pixar Studio who brought us toy story cars and
a Bugs Life, has been accused of sexual misconduct towards employees,
such as grabbing, kissing, and making comments about physical attributes.
Disney who owns Pixar Animation Studios, fired him, and Lassiter

(16:34):
left the studio he created at the end of twenty eighteen.
The Weinstein effect also forced actor Casey Affleck, Ben Affleck's brother,
to address prior sexual harassment accusations held against him. The
affair was surfaced following his Oscar win for his performance
in Manchester by the Sea. Two women who had worked
with Affleck filed sexual harassment suits against him.

Speaker 6 (16:55):
In twenty ten, Casey Affleck was producing the mockumentary I'm
Still Here. He was accused by two female crew members
of inappropriate behavior.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
One of those.

Speaker 6 (17:06):
Incidents involved him crawling into bed with one of the
women and refusing to leave, and the other inappropriate and
berating behavior on set.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Traditionally, the winner in the past year's Best Actor category
presents the award for Best Actress. The year of the
me too phenomenon, Affleck did not. I think stepping aside
was the right thing to do, just given everything that
was going on in our culture at the moment, and
having two incredible women go present the Best Actress award
felt like the right thing. Soon, another A list actor

(17:39):
and heart throb was under fire.

Speaker 6 (17:41):
So James Franco wears a Times Up pin to the
Golden Globes in support of the movement, which felt ironic
to a woman who had felt under attack by him
and decided to tweet such an accusation during the Golden Globes.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
And it went by.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
The Los Angeles Times published a story in which five
women alleged they experienced inappropriate and sometimes sexually exploitative behavior
by the.

Speaker 6 (18:08):
Actor James Franco was mostly accused of inappropriate behavior towards
his students, where they felt that he would dangle roles,
f and opportunities in front of them if they just
took their clothes off. He was also accused of removing
the plastic protection that one uses when simulating oral sex

(18:28):
on films.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
America's most prey stand up comedian Luis c K also
took a hit from the Weinstein effect.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
The creator of.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
The cult TV show Louis had been accused since twenty
twelve of sexual misconduct, but it was only in twenty
seventeen that the story went viral after a national newspaper
reported five women alleged that he masturbated in front of them,
and after years of denial, he finally admitted to The
New York Times that these stories were true.

Speaker 6 (18:53):
I feel like the in the industry there were men,
very successful, men who were well known for inappropriate behavior,
and the Me Too movement finally gave the women the
power to speak out against those men. One of them
was Louis c K, who joked that in an hour
he lost thirty five million dollars as a result of

(19:17):
exposing himself to his female colleagues.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
After Louis c K, another comedy star had to face
another form of accusation as He's on Sorry, stand up
hit and creator of the successful show Master of None
on Netflix, was accused of sexual assault by a woman
with whom he went on a date the year prior.
The woman had shared her account with the website Babe anonymously.

Speaker 6 (19:39):
She felt coerced into having sex with him, and the
problem or the discussion that that evoked was it was
linked in with more serious accusations. It was definitely not rape,
it wasn't assault. It was just a man being shitty
and we as women can have higher standards. But as

(19:59):
far as the the movement goes, it made a lot
of people bulk at the fact that now everything was
falling under one Umbrella.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
One of the most shocking stories is yet to be told.
Some men also came forward to share their stories. Actor
Anthony Rapp claimed through the online magazine BuzzFeed that House
of Cards lead actor Kevin Spacey had made unwanted sexual
advances toward him when he was only fourteen.

Speaker 6 (20:24):
So Kevin Spacey decided, as a result of these accusations
that he would tweet his coming out because somehow his
privacy and reconciling of his sexuality made up for his
previous behavior.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Following this accusation, Spacey became, after Weinstein, the biggest symbol
of toxic behavior in Hollywood. Since then, at least thirty
men have accused actor Kevin Spacey of sexual misconduct or assault,
including twenty employees of London's Old Vic Theater, of which
he was director between twenty four and twenty fifteen. For Spacey,

(21:01):
the professional sentence was immediate. Netflix fired him and ended
House of Cards without him, and director Ridley Scott even
reshot Spacey scenes in his already completed film All the
Money in the World, replacing the disgraced actor with Christopher Plummer.
After a year of complete silence, Spacey came back on
YouTube with a disturbing video.

Speaker 6 (21:22):
Kevin Spacey decides to tweet out a video of himself
as Frank Underwood, flippantly denying the accusations and simultaneously asking
if we would want him back on House of Cards.
It was completely bizarre, considering there's now thirty people who
have accused him.

Speaker 8 (21:39):
But you wouldn't believe the worst without evidence.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
You wouldn't rush to judgments without facts, would you?

Speaker 8 (21:47):
Did you?

Speaker 1 (21:49):
And even more unexpected is the fact that Ajar Argento
made headlines again, this time as an accused. She was
accused by a co star of assaulting him when he
was seventeen and she was thirty seven.

Speaker 6 (22:01):
A movement like me Too depends on, unfortunately, on the
morality of the people accusing the perpetrators, and when one
of those is accused of doing the very same thing, unfortunately,
it sets the movement right back.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
The Weinstein effect and the power of the Me Too
movement really struck everywhere and put on hold the careers
of many big stars. It's now time to see what
the repercussions and punishments were for the man who started
it all. In the end, more than ninety women came
forward to accuse Weinstein, stars and anonymous alike, and then

(22:42):
The New Yorker released a confounding piece of evidence, an
audio recording of a discussion between Weinstein and model Amber
Battilana Gutierrez. Here's the first minute.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
What do we have to do.

Speaker 8 (22:55):
I'm going to take a shower. You soon there and
have a drink water?

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Can I stay on the bar?

Speaker 9 (23:01):
No?

Speaker 8 (23:02):
You must now, please, I don't want I'm not doing
anything you like.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I'm sorry, I don't come.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
Elias said it was a kind of aggressive.

Speaker 10 (23:13):
I need to know a person.

Speaker 8 (23:14):
I want to do what thing? I don't say. Please,
I swear I want to just sit. Let me. Don't
embarrass me in the hotel. I'm here all the time
to please sit there. Please one minute, please, I don't
want to do something. I don't want to go to
the pre Listen to me.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
I want to go downstairs and.

Speaker 8 (23:33):
You'll never see me again after this if you if
you embarrass me.

Speaker 10 (23:37):
In this hotel, I'm not embarrassing you.

Speaker 8 (23:39):
It's just that I don't I don't feel comfortable. I mean,
don't have a thing with me. Please, I'm not going
to do anything. I swear to my children. Please come
in on everything.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
I'm a famous guy, feing very uncomfortable.

Speaker 8 (23:51):
He has come in now and one minute, and if
you want to leave, when the guy comes.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
With my touch, my grace, please, I'm sorry.

Speaker 8 (23:59):
Just come on.

Speaker 5 (24:00):
Used to that, are you?

Speaker 9 (24:03):
No?

Speaker 8 (24:03):
But I'm not used to that.

Speaker 6 (24:06):
Of course, these rumblings had been around for years, but
Harvey Weinstein, with the power he had, had always been
able to shut those articles.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Down, and now he wasn't. The repercussions were immediate. His
company fired him, and his past collaborators turned their back
on him, all sharing stories of his abusive behavior.

Speaker 6 (24:25):
For Harvey Weinstein, the punishment was not just professional but personal.
His wife, Georgina Chapman, left him very soon thereafter.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
She later spoke about it in an interview with Vogue.
My head was spinning, so there was a minute where
I couldn't make an informed decision. And then the stories expanded,
and I realized that this wasn't an isolated incident, and
I knew that I needed to step away and take
the kids out of here. The giant that one stood
at the very top of the industry had crumbled. Hollywood

(24:56):
has been through many changes throughout its history, but the
me too movement. It might be one of its most
radical changes ever.

Speaker 6 (25:03):
This movement hopefully puts an end to the casting couch
that from now on, when this sort of behavior happens
to women, they can speak up and they're not the
ones getting fired. It's the perpetrator.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Ever changing, Hollywood is now a safer place for women
to be part of the City of Angels might finally
be able to deserve its name. Hollywood hides many dark secrets.
The Weinstein scandal, that saw one of Hollywood's most famous
producers accused of numerous cases of sexual assault and rape,
is one of the most shocking, but something even darker

(25:39):
lies behind Hollywood's facade. The cinema mecca hides many cases
of child and teen abuse spreading throughout its entire history.
And if the Me Too movement revealed the violence women
have had to endure in the industry, a few voices
also courageously rise to denounce the violence child and teen
actors often have to deal with, and some immensely famous
stars took a blow from the seventies to today. Let's

(26:03):
unveil those stories that revealed the true face of Hollywood
and we will see how in the rise of the
Me Too movement Hollywood has finally led a door open
to examine and reevaluate it's sometimes dark past. From Roman
Polanski to Kevin Spacey, from Michael Jackson to Woody Allen.
It's the story of the child and teen abuse accusations
in Hollywood. Before tackling more recent scandals, let's dive into

(26:27):
the seventies. That's when one of the most famous sex
scandals in Hollywood's history occurred, a story still shocking to
this date. It's nineteen seventy seven. Roman Polanski, one of
Hollywood's hottest directors at the time, is doing a photo
shoot with a thirteen year old actress named Samantha Gamer.
She testified that she felt uncomfortable during the first session,

(26:49):
in which she posts topless at Polanski's request, but nevertheless,
she agreed to another shoot. Polansky was staying at Jack
Nicholson's villa, who was on a ski trip in Colorado
the night.

Speaker 11 (26:59):
Of the at the time when the girl arrived, Angelica Houston,
the actress was actually there because she shared the house
with Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 10 (27:07):
She left. The photoshoot continued.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
We did photos with me drinking champagne. Gamer says toward
the end, it got a little scary, and I realized
he had other intentions, and I knew I was not
where I should be, and I just didn't quite know
how to get myself out of there.

Speaker 11 (27:23):
After that, at some point he also gave her a Klude,
which if I'm familiar with, they're no longer made, but
they were a popular relax and drug in the nineteen seventies,
and he proceeded to take her into her bedroom and
then and then sexually assault her. At some point, Angelica
Houston came back, knocked on the door, and then Polanski

(27:45):
told her that everything was fine and turned her away
and then continued the assault.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
We were alone, and I didn't know what else would
happen if I made a scene, so I was just scared,
and after giving some resistance, I figured, well, I guess
I'll get to come home after this. Gamer testified that
Polanski performed oral, vaginal, and anal sex X upon her,
each time after being told no and being asked to stop.

Speaker 11 (28:07):
If you have ever read through the deposition, it's pretty horrific. Actually,
everything that he did to her, he assaulted her in
all manners. So after it happened, he took her home
and she told her mother, and her mother.

Speaker 10 (28:22):
Called the police, and then he was charged.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Two weeks later, a grand jury initially charged Polansky with
no less than five felony counts raped by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, luden,
lascivious acts upon a child under fourteen, furnishing a controlled
substance to a miner. Claiming to protect Gamer from a trial,
her attorney arranged a plea bargain.

Speaker 11 (28:42):
He made a plea deal with the prosecutors to go
for a lesser charge of sex with a miner, which
would have not been a felony, which probably wouldn't have
gotten in prison time, and he was put under observation
in jail for ninety days. He served forty two of
those days under psychological observation and was released and then

(29:05):
was to be sentenced for the crime that he pled
guilty to, and then that's when he decided to flee
the country.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Polanski flew away and settled in France. For several decades,
he was able to pursue a successful career that saw
him win an Oscar for Best Picture for the Pianist.

Speaker 11 (29:20):
In the long term, I don't know that it affected
his career at all, because he went on to win
an Oscar and has continued to make films until this day.
Those films have been based in Europe, but obviously he
still has had the.

Speaker 10 (29:32):
Approval of the United States.

Speaker 11 (29:34):
The mentalities have only evolved recently because again he won
an Oscar, and he was still given accolades by the
Academy and by Hollywood until just a few years ago.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
And Polanski later discussing his conviction, said, if I had
killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to
the press. You see bud thing you see and the
young girls. Judges want of young girls, juries want to
young girls. Everyone wants a young girl.

Speaker 10 (30:01):
You know.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
It was that.

Speaker 11 (30:04):
Sex, drugs and rock and roll era in Hollywood where
people were hanging out to Playboy mansion, and it was
this free love kind of time, and so initially it
was seen as just another folly. I suppose only now
I think, even post Weinstein really hasn't really made a difference.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
This well known case illustrates that for many years, very
few in the movie industry seemed to care about sexual
violence against minors. A convicted director was sentenced by justice,
but not sentenced by his peers or the public. This
extremely public case is unfortunately the tip of the iceberg.
Other perpetrators were able to cause harm for decades without

(30:43):
this level of scrutiny. Hollywood in the eighties saw many
child actors rising to fame. Movies such as Et, Stand
By Me, The Goonies, the Breakfast Club led the industry
to focus on younger talents like never before in its history.
This trend kept going for a decade, and from Drew
Barrymore in Et to mcaulay culkin in Home Alone, many

(31:06):
kids had to deal with fame at an early age.

Speaker 11 (31:09):
That time period was a very fun time period in
the United States, and there.

Speaker 10 (31:15):
Were a lot of magazines that.

Speaker 11 (31:16):
Were devoted to these actors, Bop and Tiger Beat and teen,
and they were just photographs and interviews with all of
these actors, and so it was really the sort of
this Golden Age. It was sort of a fun time
on the surface, but now we know things weren't quite
as queakie clean as they appeared to be.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Barrymore became a star in nineteen eighty two when she
was just seven years old, after her breakout role in
the Steven Spielberg classic et the extraterrestrial, but in her
early teenage years she became more known for her drug use.
It really is a recipe for disaster. It's said that
there's this weird alchemy about kids doing this line of
work that followed them up, and I'm no different.

Speaker 11 (31:54):
I mean, she was eight years old and going clubbing
and doing cocaine at nine and ten, which is, I mean,
unbelievable by today's standards, But for some reason it was acceptable.
Like her mother would take her to Studio fifty four
in New York and she would be, you know, dancing
with all of these disco and rock stars and doing cocaine,
and somehow that was allowed.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Mccaullay culkin, the Home Alone star, also suffered from his fame.
In his case, he had to deal with abusive parents.
His father was, according to the actor, mentally and physically
abusive and jealous of him and made threats including do
good or I'll hit you.

Speaker 10 (32:32):
If.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Drew Barrymore and McCaulay Culkin managed to get back on
track after their troubled teen years, others were not so lucky.
River Phoenix, praised for his roles as a child actor
and stand By Me and Running on Empty died of
a drug overdose at only twenty three years old.

Speaker 11 (32:47):
He was quite young and got into that, and it
was people looked the other way, or it was allowed
in some way. And again, you know part of that,
you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll, Hollywood lifestyle
that was acceptable at that time. And I think the
kids were put into it very young. They were treated

(33:08):
like adults, got into very adult things very young.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
But beyond those difficulties and personal turmoil, some of them
had to face a different kind of threat coming from
the outside. The young Corey Feldman, who shared the screen
with River, Phoenix and stand By Me, was one of
the most famous child actors of the eighties. His career
crumbled in the nineties, but he later became vocal about

(33:32):
the abuse existing in the industry. He is one of
the few that came forward to denounce sexual abuse, and
he became the most outspoken advocate for child protection in Hollywood.
He extensively described how Hollywood let child actors exposed to
excess and lust. Some parties were organized to groom young boys.
They would throw these parties where you'd walk in and

(33:53):
it would be mostly kids and there would be a
handful of adults. When somebody approaches you and says, hey,
this is a Hollywood party. That sounds like a great opportunity,
and that's when you become pass with them and you
get their phone numbers, and the next thing you know,
they talk to the moms and say, hey, I want
to take Corey out to an event. This would be
great for him. Let me pick him up and take him.

Speaker 11 (34:14):
It's just really a psychological pattern of adults that have
interest in children to befriend them or sort of gain
their trust over a period of time so that they
can put them in a position to sexually abuse them
later on. It can take several forms of being friends
with them or trying to be a mentor, or even

(34:36):
becoming close with their families to make them feel safe
and to make them feel like it's a natural sort
of thing.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Other famous child actors, such as Elijah Wood. Back to
Feldman's accusations, clearly something major was going on in Hollywood.
It was all organized. There are a lot of vipers
in this industry, people who only have their own interests
in mind. There is a dark wakness in the underbelly.
What burns me about these situations is that the victims
can't speak as loudly as the people in power. That's

(35:08):
the tragedy of attempting to reveal what is happening to
innocent people. They can't be squashed, but their lives have
been irreparably damaged. Corey Feldman described how people in power
frequently molested him, but he didn't only depict his own experiences.
He also described the story of one of his closest friends,
Corey Ham, who tragically died of pneumonia at age thirty

(35:29):
eight after struggling with substance abuse most.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Of his life.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Feldman discussed his experience in an interview with me. There
were some molestations and it did come from several hands,
so to speak. But with Corey Hame, his was direct rape,
whereas mine was not actual rape and has also occurred
when he was eleven, and the name of a hugely
famous star later came up as one of Ham's alleged perpetrators.

Speaker 11 (35:56):
In Corey Haim's case, uh Corey Feldman, it said that
he was raped on the set of the film Lucas
by another male actor. Corey Feldman never chose to disclose
who that actor was. However, another actor on the set
did say that at the time Hayme had told him
that it was Charlie Sheen.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Former actor Dominic Brascia claimed Hame disclosed to him what
happened between him and his co star Charlie Sheen on
set of the film. Ham told me he had sex
with Sheen when they filmed Lucas. He told me they
smoked pot and had sex. He said they had anal sex.
Charlie Sheen was nineteen years old at the time of
the alleged abuse. When the story came out in the press,

(36:38):
he strongly denied it, and Corey Haim's mother backed him up.
She defended Sheen and said that it was in fact
Dominic Brascia who abused her son. We might never know
the truth about Corey Haymes rapist, but the consequences were
fatal for the young actor.

Speaker 11 (36:55):
It spiraled very quickly from there, and he later said
that by the time he with like fourteen or fifteen,
he was doing cocaine and filking crack.

Speaker 10 (37:02):
He was apparently doing.

Speaker 11 (37:04):
So much drugs and he just wasn't reliable and nobody
would work with him. So within a few years his
career was just gone. Essentially emotionally and workwise. He just
never quite got his feet after that incident.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Corey Haymes, perpetrators might never face justice, but fortunately others did.
Just like Feldman described it, somemon in Hollywood took advantage
of their position of power to abuse young actors. Bob Villard,
a headshot photographer and publicist who represented, among others, Leonardo
DiCaprio when he was a teen actor, was accused in

(37:39):
two thousand and one of sharing child pornography. Villard had
been on the LAPD's radar since the late eighties. When
he was indicted and later convicted, and after searching his computer,
police officers found thousands of photographs of boys in skimpy
bathing suits posed in sexually suggestive positions. He was sentenced
to three years of probation. In two thousand and five,

(38:00):
Villard was back in court and charged of committing a
leude act on a child. The victim was a thirteen
year old boy who sought him out as an acting coach.
Villard was given an eight year prison sentence. But Corey Feldman,
while being one of the strongest advocates for child protection
in Hollywood, has also faced criticism because of an embarrassing friendship.

Speaker 11 (38:19):
Kroi Feldman was also very close with Michael Jackson, and
so that takes us down a whole other path. And
he for a long time defended Jackson because he said
that he had never been abused by him. He has
now said that he could no longer defend him, but
for a long time he was sort of towing the
line between saying, this is what happened to me, but
I don't think it could have happened to others, which is,
you know, if you go into the psychology of what

(38:41):
happens to children that are abuse is understandable, but it
makes it difficult for people to trust his word on
this case.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Indeed, since his two thousand and five trial, Michael Jackson,
well never sentenced, has carried a reputation of a child molister,
But after his death in two thousand and nine, the
general opinions seemed to have chosen to forget about it.
It wasn't until twenty nineteen that more vivid stories were
told and reached a wider audience. What is the King
of Pop really accused of? In twenty nineteen, the four

(39:15):
hour documentary Leaving Neverland was aired on HBO It described
in great detail the devastating stories of Wade Robson and
James Safeschuk, who alleged Michael Jackson sexually abused them in
their youth.

Speaker 11 (39:27):
They talked about how he at the time groomed them
and their families and they were allowed to spend a
significant amount of alone time with him, including sleeping in
his bed with him, and he went on to be
able to abuse these kids for several years, right under
the notes of their parents that were well aware of

(39:50):
how much time the kids were spending with him alone
and sort of allowed it to happen.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
James Safechuck was a child actor who met Jackson on
a Pepsi commercial, and Wade Robson is a dancer and
choreographer who appeared in several Michael Jackson videos when he
was a team.

Speaker 11 (40:05):
And in the case of Waider Robson's, if you look
back at the photos, it's very creepy because he would
dress them in matching outfits and hold hands with him
and take him everywhere with him, and it was just
so strange that no one seems to call him out
on that at the time.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
But their stories were backed up by twenty years of rumors,
allegations and trials against Jackson. Many accusers were silenced with money,
and since his death in two thousand and nine, his
estate has successfully preserved Michael Jackson's legend. Many have also
defended him during all those years.

Speaker 12 (40:38):
I'm still I'm still coming to the surrealness of his passing.
It's it is devastating, but you know, the beautiful mister
Jackson left us with a gift, a gift that we
can all share for generations to come.

Speaker 11 (40:53):
Well, his family is still defending him and saying that
these accusations have come out years later because the people
are only seeking, which you know doesn't make sense in
the way that you know, why would you do that
and how does that actually help you? I mean the
case of Waide Rops and he's a very successful choreographer.

Speaker 10 (41:11):
I don't think he needs the fame.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
It took the twenty nineteen documentary to make people reject
him and question his legacy.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Why did it take so long?

Speaker 11 (41:19):
I think that you know, in the post Weinstein era,
people are willing to call people out in a way
that they weren't before. And once that floodwall broke, it
was a deluge of all of these things that were
just no longer acceptable, and everyone sort of went back
and re examined what had been going on.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Michael Jackson's image has now been irreversibly tarnished, but he
is not the only influential artist whose case has been
re examined in light of the post Weinstein era. One
of the most respected and praised directors of the past
fifty years also came under scrutiny for his past behavior.
Woody Allen was in the eighties at the peak of

(41:59):
his popular His relationship with actress Mia Farrell led in
nineteen eighty five to the adoption of a little girl,
Dylan Pharaoh. The couple broke up in the early nineties
after Allan shockingly started dating Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, Sun Yi,
who was twenty one years old, and in August nineteen
ninety two, the troubled family sank into even darker places

(42:21):
when Dylan alleged her father abused her. She was seven
years old at the time. I was taken to a
small attic crawl space in my mother's country house in
Connecticut by my father. He instructed me to lay down
on my stomach and play with my brother's toy train
that was set up, and he sat behind me in
the doorway, and as I played with the toy train,
I was sexually assaulted. As a seven year old, I

(42:43):
would say I would have said he touched my private parts.
Alan strongly denied the allegation and accused Mia Pharaoh of
manipulating their children to get revenge. In September nineteen ninety three,
the state prosecutor announced that, despite having probable cause, he
would not to pursue charges.

Speaker 11 (43:01):
So, actually he wasn't judged innocent, and I think that's
what people make the biggest mistake. The prosecutor at the
time said that he believed he had the evidence to
charge him, but did not want to put Dylan on
the stand and so declined to press charges. That he
was never put on trial and he was never declared innocent.

(43:21):
That was a judgment of the prosecutor, which is something
that is common in childhood cases because they don't want
to inflict further trauma upon the child by making them
take the stand and having to testify against their parent.

Speaker 10 (43:34):
At the time, the court also.

Speaker 11 (43:38):
Requested a report from social workers from a doctor. So
when that report came out, saying that you know the
case was unclear, it was unclear what happened.

Speaker 10 (43:50):
Alan went forward and said, Okay, I'm innocent.

Speaker 11 (43:52):
I'm innocent. But later the doctor that was behind the
report said he had never actually interviewed Dylan. He never
met with Dylan, he didn't ever speak to her. So
he then rescinded his approval of the report. It's all very,
very murky, but he was never actually found innocent.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Alan pursued his successful career and made one movie a
year throughout the nineties and the two thousands, each one
casting the best and biggest actors in Hollywood. Dylan's story
had been silenced, but after the Weinstein scandal, Ronan Faroh,
Dylan's brother, decided it was time to bring back his
sister's story in the media, hoping she would finally be

(44:28):
heard and that his father will finally face repercussions.

Speaker 11 (44:32):
Ronan Faroh was key in opening the Weinstein case when
he was investigating it for NBC News and for The
New Yorker. So after he broke that case and everything
started coming out and people were re examining it, he's
the one who came forward and said, well, wait a second,
and how come is nobody's talking about what happened in
my family. Nobody's talking about my father and what happened

(44:53):
to my sister.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
And Ronan's attempt to defend his sister worked. For the
first time in twenty years, people in Hollywood were turning
their back on Woody Allen. Many actors he has worked
with and that previously praised their experience with him on set,
took to social media to declare they would never work
with him again. Timothy Shalloway, the breakout star of Call
Me by Your Name, said in an Instagram post that
he would donate his salary from the Allan directed movie

(45:16):
A Rainy Day in New York to charities. Ellen Page
also came forward and said, I did a Woody Allen
movie and it is the biggest regret.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Of my career.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
I am ashamed I did this. Ultimately, However, it is
my choice with films I decide to do, and I
made the wrong choice. I made an awful mistake and
Ladybird director Greta Gerwig, who worked with Alan on the
twenty twelve film to Rome with Love, announced that she
would not work with Alan again. If I had known
then what I know now, I would not have acted
in the film. I have not worked for him again,

(45:46):
and I will not work for him again.

Speaker 11 (45:49):
Yeah, several actors who had worked with him now say
they would no longer do So why is that?

Speaker 10 (45:55):
Is that a personal decision?

Speaker 13 (45:57):
You know?

Speaker 11 (45:57):
We don't know, but I would say that it's because.

Speaker 10 (46:00):
They've been called up by the public.

Speaker 11 (46:01):
And that's sort of what shifted, because it wasn't like
people didn't know.

Speaker 10 (46:05):
About the allegations or the charges.

Speaker 11 (46:08):
I mean, maybe people just didn't research, but it was
known and it was out there for years.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
The power of the Weinstein scandal helped people come back
to already well known cases, and Woody Allen's career was
impacted for good. But the Me Too movement also helped
reveal current crimes committed on miners in the industry, and
some big names had to face the consequences. Some powerful

(46:33):
personalities were pinned down as late as twenty nineteen for
abusing miners. Three of them made headlines and saw their
careers shattered by the accusations. Right after Harvey Weinstein, Kevin
Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct running from the eighties
to today. Actor Anthony Rapp has said that he made
a sexual advance toward him when he was fourteen, and

(46:54):
many other men came forward, of them miners at the
time of the.

Speaker 11 (46:57):
Misconduct kind of knew for years, you know, he had
been well known for having these types of relationships.

Speaker 10 (47:08):
And then he had.

Speaker 11 (47:09):
Another actor that came forward saying that he had made
advances on him when he was a teen, that nothing
had ever happened, but that obviously he had a pattern
of doing.

Speaker 10 (47:17):
This for many years. And so when that came out,
people backed away from him.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
The professional sentence was immediate. He was fired from House
of Cards and were placed in the movie he was
shooting at the time. Kevin Spacey's friend Brian Singer, who
directed him in the cult classic The Usual Suspects, was
also called out. In the post Weinstein era, he has
been accused by several men of rape or sexual assault.

Speaker 11 (47:42):
Yeah, so in Brian Singer's case, again, it's another one
that he was sort of well known to have these
behaviors for many years in the industry. He wasn't necessarily
secret about it either. He would show up at parties
with sixteen year old boys saying, you know, I'm bringing
him in working with him on something or casting and
it was just sort of like this open secret.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
And it took the industry quite some time to recognize
these allegations, since he was still directing major studio productions
until twenty eighteen.

Speaker 11 (48:11):
The fact that he was working on Bohemian Rhapsody, he
was still embraced by the industry up until the moment
that he wasn't what changed.

Speaker 10 (48:21):
It was just I think a shift in the culture.

Speaker 11 (48:24):
Robbie Malak, who starred in the film, said, oh, you know,
I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't hear anything
about it. But it's almost impossible because everyone knew. But
they did a very good job of pretending that they
didn't know until the moment when everyone decided, now.

Speaker 10 (48:44):
This is important.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
When the allegations gained traction, he was fired from Bohemian
Rhapsody and didn't take part in the Oscar season following
the movie's huge success. Finally, a complex case was brought
to light involving the actress Asia Argento. She was one
of the accusers of Harvey Weinstein and one of the
most vocal in bringing him down, but it turned out

(49:06):
she had her own skeletons in the closet. She had
allegedly assaulted former co star Jimmy Bennett while he was
still a minor. The affair leaked shortly after Argento came
forward to accuse Weinstein.

Speaker 11 (49:19):
It's believed that Harvey had some intel on her and
was going to sort of put this case forward, and
at that moment she chose to pay the boy to
keep quiet, and so it became even more complicated.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Her accuser has since refused to talk to the press
and has impressed charges against the actress. These post Weinstein
cases showed that even if you are not immediately sentenced
by justice, alleged perpetrators are called out by the media
and rejected by an industry that used to be more forgetful.
From the seventies to the twenty tens, many things have changed,

(49:54):
helped by social media, mentalities have evolved, and some unreachable
stars were finally brought.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Back to earth.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Many years of blindness are being amended before our eyes.

Speaker 10 (50:05):
We've allowed these things to happen.

Speaker 11 (50:07):
They were happening, and we saw them happen, and we
kind of knew they were happening.

Speaker 10 (50:10):
But you know, we turned a blind eye to it.

Speaker 11 (50:13):
So I think that there's probably a feeling of guilt
on many people's part.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
The time when celebrities crimes were excused and victim's story
silenced seems to be over. Hollywood has evolved into a
much more monitored space.

Speaker 11 (50:28):
Celebrities are more conscious of their actions I think going forward,
and we'll be called out on them. In part because
of social media as well, certain things are no longer
acceptable and people will come forward and on small things
even call people out and say this behavior is not
a lore acceptable.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
It took decades, but the dream factory Hollywood is supposed
to be might have finally gotten rid of its darkest nightmares.
In twenty sixteen, the Oscar nominations sparked controversy. Hollywood's most
were and prestigious awards institution was facing the most important
backlash in its history, and all that happened thanks to

(51:07):
the help of one hashtag on Twitter, Oscar so White.
This hashtag was trying to denounce the lack of diversity
in the Academy Awards, which in twenty fifteen and twenty
sixteen had only nominated white actors, and following the social
media outrage, some of the most important stars in Hollywood
decided to boycott the ceremony. But the twenty sixteen Oscar

(51:28):
ceremony was only the tip of the Iceberg protest against
the lack of diversity in Hollywood had been ongoing for
a century. Black Latino's, Native Americans, many populations have fought
for better representation on the silver screen, and it took
Hollywood quite some time to hear their voices. How did
it all start? Who came forward to denounce racism in
the movie industry? How is this fight still ongoing? This

(51:51):
is the story of minority rebellion in Hollywood. In twenty sixteen,
for the second year in a row, all twenty actors
nominated in the lead and supporting acting categories at the
Oscars were white. What followed This outrage changed the movie
industry forever. But before diving into the Oscars So White scandal,
let's see how the ground for such a revolution has

(52:11):
been prepared for one hundred years by many protesters and
now Hollywood has often reflected the worst habits.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Of its time.

Speaker 14 (52:19):
These arguments have been a part of that Hollywood story
from its very beginning.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
The Academy Awards history itself embodies this cruel misrepresentation of minorities.
Between nineteen twenty nine and twenty sixteen, only fourteen black
actors have won Acting Oscars. The first was Hattie McDaniel
for Gone with the Wind in nineteen forty and the
winner's pool is even.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Shallower for other minorities.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
A mere five Latino actors have won prizes, for example,
but minorities have not been silent about it. They didn't
wait until twenty sixteen to make their voices heard. The
history of racial protests and hut Hollywood is as old
as Hollywood itself. The first blockbuster of cinema history, which
also happens to be one of the most groundbreaking movies

(53:07):
ever made, was an openly racist movie.

Speaker 14 (53:10):
When Birth of a Nation came out in nineteen fifteen,
people flocked to it, making it one of the most
popular and successful films of its era, or.

Speaker 5 (53:17):
Really of any era.

Speaker 14 (53:18):
And what they were responding to was the fact that
this was the first movie that felt and operated like
a giant epic book. That's a kind of form that D. W.
Grithers created with Birth of a Nation. He just happened
to use that form to tell the story of the
birth of a kkk the Ku Klux Klan that itself

(53:40):
was extraordinarily controversial at the time as well. So if
we look back out on today and say, like, I
can't believe that this movie came out, I can't believe
that millions of people flocked to see it. Well, people
were saying the exact same thing one hundred years ago.
There were protests, there were fistfights. Somebody shot at this
green at one of the screenings of Birth of a Nation.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
But Birth of a Nation is not the only all
time success that reflects the racism of its time. Another
revolutionary movie, the first to include sound, can also be
seen as racist by today's standards. The Jazz Singer, released
in nineteen twenty seven, signed the death of the silent
film era. But it's also a controversial movie the reason
the main character is seen performing in blackface.

Speaker 5 (54:23):
It is about a performer who puts on blackface.

Speaker 14 (54:26):
It's very traditional vaudeville technique of painting your face black,
giving yourself big white lips to create a very very
stylized racial stereotype, racial caricature of an African American man,
and then seeing popular spiritual songs or popular music of
the day, and of course blackface. Now we look at
it and we say well, how can you do that?

(54:46):
How can you simplify an entire race and entire person.
It wouldn't go so far as to say that The
Jazz Singer is a racist movie in the same way
that it's not a malicious movie, but it is a
product of its time.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
The movie that invented modern cinema and the first talking
movie both contained different levels of racism. But we also
have to add to the list the biggest success of
all time, still unbeaten by any Marvel movie, Gone with
the Wind. Why is this milestone of cinema still adored today?
Often considered problematic.

Speaker 14 (55:18):
The only African American characters that we see in the
film are slaves and sometimes are treated as racial stereotypes,
a little bit shifty, a little bit lazy.

Speaker 5 (55:30):
Tricky or Hattie McDaniel.

Speaker 14 (55:33):
You know, she played a maid, and she was a
sort of a Southern mommy maid, which was its also
its own kind of cliche. And it's a film that
depicts a society.

Speaker 5 (55:45):
You know, the slave.

Speaker 14 (55:47):
Holding South, in a very romantic view that completely overlooks
the real violence and degradation that was helping support that society.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Despite the stereotype she embodied, Hattie McDaniel became the first
African American to receive an Academy Award. In nineteen forty,
she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. On the
Oscars stage, she declared, I sincerely hope I shall always
be a credit to my race and to the motion
picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you
just how I feel. And may I say thank you

(56:16):
and God bless you. But at the time, supporters of
the African American cause frowned upon her historic achievement.

Speaker 14 (56:23):
When the movie came out, a lot of people in
the United States, a lot of African Americans in the
United States protest it is They were protesting the fact
that actress Haddie McDaniel essentially won an Academy Award for
playing a racial stereotype their character of the slave Southern Mommy.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
And when people called her out for perpetrating African American stereotypes,
Hattie McDaniel responded with the following statement, still famous today.
I'd rather make seven hundred dollars a week playing a
maid than earned seven dollars a day being a maid.

Speaker 5 (56:55):
And so that's also part of the system.

Speaker 14 (56:58):
It was a system that gave Africa Americans opportunities, but
conditional opportunities. Opportunities on the condition that they helped perpetuate
the same stereotypes that they were trying to avoid.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Protests only intensified through the century. But why did it
take so long for Hollywood to hear these voices? Surprisingly,
very vocal and organized protests were made against the movie
industry as early as the forties, and the sixties witnessed
a movement nearly identical to the Oscar So White movement.
Let's rediscover those who paved the way to the changes

(57:33):
we are now lucky to witness.

Speaker 12 (57:35):
Well, this is a slice of African American life that
people needed to know about.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
In the forties, formal requests were made to obtain better
representation on the big screen.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
In nineteen forty two.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Walter White, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, came to Hollywood with a letter in hand.
This letter had a very specific goal and had been
written by the most powerful woman of the United States
at that time.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Eleanor Roselt.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
The First Lady, took the time to pen this letter,
asking for studio executives to receive and listen to what
Walter White had to say, and what he had to
complain about was the lack of proper roles for the
African American community.

Speaker 14 (58:13):
That's a sign already that not only were people agitating
for change in nineteen forty two, but some of the
people agitating for.

Speaker 5 (58:23):
Change were doing so from the highest levels of American culture.
This was a letter from the White House.

Speaker 10 (58:28):
That the man had.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
He came to Hollywood hoping to convince studio heads to
get rid of their stereotypical characters and let those performers
show the full extent of their humanity. But his task
would prove to be a difficult one.

Speaker 14 (58:40):
When he spoke with some of the studio chiefs, they
listened to what he had to say, but they didn't
really take his advice to heart.

Speaker 5 (58:48):
In fact, they were actually happier to meet him halfway.

Speaker 14 (58:50):
Instead of creating new textured, fully written roles for African
American performers, they just got of African Americans from the
screen altogether.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
This failed attempt led naturally to more angry forms of contestation.
As early as nineteen sixty two, the Oscar ceremony had
been picketed in the interest of equal opportunity for African Americans.
Tired of the negotiations, a group called the Hollywood Race
Relations Bureau took direct action and paraded in front of
the Oscar ceremonies with signs urging film equality for Negroes

(59:25):
and sake, and the protest unfortunately ended at the police station.

Speaker 5 (59:33):
The protest led to twelve arrests. Why were these people arrested?

Speaker 14 (59:37):
Of course, protesting is a civil rights protesting. Everybody has
the right to protest. Because twelve of them, their toes
dipped onto the red carpets, and so, of course the
streets themselves are open to the public, but the red
carpet that evening was part of a private event, and.

Speaker 5 (59:53):
So twelve people were arrested for.

Speaker 14 (59:54):
Trespassing at the nineteen sixty two Oscars just because they
they somehow made their way onto the red carpets. In
the end, I don't think that those twelve people spent
a long time in jail. I don't think that those
charges lasted. But here we are, more than fifty years later,
talking about their protest, and so at least their protest
might have had some greater effect.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
And the African American community wasn't the only one thinking
Hollywood was being retrograde in its portrayal of minorities.

Speaker 14 (01:00:23):
Latino and Hispanic characters were often depicted as quite untrustworthy, criminal,
and sometimes lazy. One of the first big actions in
the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties for Latino activists was
getting rid of a certain television mascot called the Freedo Bandido.
Latino activists said, well, why does it have to be
the Freedo Bandido.

Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Why can't it be the Freedo Amigo.

Speaker 14 (01:00:46):
Why can't it be somebody who comes and shares his
potato chips instead of this little rascal who comes and
steals the potato chips.

Speaker 5 (01:00:52):
And so that's really indicative.

Speaker 14 (01:00:54):
Of just where the culture was with the stereotypes that
associated with and Latino men.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
For the most part, Latinos took a stand in the
seventies through the organization Justicia.

Speaker 5 (01:01:07):
It was trying to create leverage, trying.

Speaker 14 (01:01:10):
To use the tools of the court, the tools of business,
to create a window for themselves to make their case,
and in fact it did work.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
But one of the biggest scandals of the oscar's history
was yet to come. Another population was being strongly misrepresented,
Native Americans, they had been portrayed by white actors in
many Westerns and depicted as violent savages in a countless
amount of movies, and it took the support of one
of the greatest actors of all time to help them
make their voices heard at the Oscars.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
It's nineteen seventy three.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Marlon Brando just played his most iconic role in The Godfather.
Following the movie's success, he was sure to win the Oscar,
and he decided to take advantage of his moment of
glory to make a provocative move still bold by today's criteria.

Speaker 14 (01:01:59):
So his idea was that, well, I can have a
larger presence with my absence if I send somebody else
in my stead, I can make a larger impact, make
a larger statement. So he sends a Native American actress
named Sash and Little Father to collect the oscar for
him and to read a fifteen page statement condemning hollywood

(01:02:21):
further treatment of Native Americans on screen and showing his
support for Native Americans at Wounded Knee, which was an
ongoing political story, an ongoing siege between Native American activists
and the American government.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
When she went on stage to collect the Oscars and
denounce the treatment of Native Americans on screen. She was
booed by many in the audience, and Clint Eastwood, who
appeared on stage shortly after, mocked her speech. I don't
know if I should present this award on behalf of
all the cowboys shot on all the John Ford Westerns
over the years.

Speaker 14 (01:02:50):
The lines are kind of mundy, but in the end
the statement that he was trying to make got lost
in the larger controversy.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
All these protests slowly made room for change, but still
very slow change. Nevertheless, black actors of the Oscars would
soon make history.

Speaker 8 (01:03:08):
We'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
In nineteen sixty four, Sidney Poitier won the Academy Award
for Best Actor for the.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Movie Lilies of the Field.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
He was the first African American to do so.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
This accomplishment is.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Even more impressive if you remember that two years before,
in nineteen sixty two, black protesters were arrested on the
Red Carpet. His victory can't be undermined, and it meant
a lot for the African American community. But Sidney Poitier
was still, at the time, the exception that proved the rule.

Speaker 14 (01:03:39):
It didn't necessarily change the larger industry and how many
African Americans were given the opportunities to lead movies, to
have movie star rules. People thought that the market wasn't
able to support that. Why did people think the market
wasn't able to support that? Because nobody was making it,
and so nobody had proven that the market was able
to support that. And so it's all tied in. It's
like the snake eating its own tail.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
And it took many years to see another black actor
win that award again. In the meantime, Denzel Washington won
for Best Supporting Actor in nineteen eighty nine for Glory
and Cuba Gooding Junior won Best Supporting Actor in nineteen
ninety six for Jerry Maguire. Talented black actors were still
only supporting roles in movies led by white actors. It
was only in two thousand and two, thirty years after Pointier,

(01:04:22):
that something major took place.

Speaker 14 (01:04:25):
Really, the breakthrough award was in two thousand and two
when both Halle Berry won the Best Actress oscar for
Monster's Ball, becoming the first African American actress to win
Best Actress, and Denzel Washington won his second Acting award.

Speaker 5 (01:04:39):
He won Best Actor for Training Day.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
In Monsters Ball, halle Berry played a grieving woman whose
husband was executed on death Row, and in Training Day,
Denzel Washington played a larger than life evil cop.

Speaker 8 (01:04:51):
They're bad people in all his work. You know it's
a bad person. He's a twisted person who has a
license to kill.

Speaker 14 (01:04:58):
These are the kind of roles that win Movie Stars Oscars.
Not because they showed themselves to be more dignified, not
because they played a supporting role in a film that
was ultimately a white man's story.

Speaker 5 (01:05:09):
These are two films anchored.

Speaker 14 (01:05:11):
By African American actors giving big movie star performances, and
that really is the breakthrough.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Following this milestone, a few black actors had won the
Oscar for Best Actor, Jamie Foxx for Ray in two
thousand and four and Forrest Whittaker in two thousand and
six for the Last King of Scotland. But these wins
don't feel as revolutionary as the two thousand and two Oscars.

Speaker 14 (01:05:32):
Why so it doesn't have the same shock as giving
two African Americans Best Actor and Best Actors. Not because
they imitated a very well known historical figure, not because
they played in a film with some larger social import
just because they chewed scenery and they created memorable turns
as movie stars, regardless of everything else about the film.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
In the two thousands, Oscars were opening their doors to
more diversity.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Black actors were being nominated every year.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
But in twenty fifteen, the Oscars made two steps back
and planted the seed for an unprecedented controversy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
Let's see what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
On one morning in twenty fifteen, the journalist April Rain
was watching the announcement of the Academy Awards nominations when
she noticed that all twenty acting nominations went to white actors.
She decided to tweet a joke hashtag oscars so white
they asked to touch my hair. It was the first
time in nearly a decade that no black actors were
nominated for an Academy.

Speaker 5 (01:06:34):
Award, and that just sort of took off.

Speaker 14 (01:06:36):
That hashtag took off, and people started making, you know, jokes,
using that hashtag for jokes on Twitter, and it lasted
for an entire year.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
But the hashtag was then only a joke on social media.
It took the announcement of the OSCAR nominations in twenty
sixteen to make it an industry wide movement. For the
second year in a row, no black actors were to
be found in the Best Actors category. The outrage spread
all over America.

Speaker 14 (01:07:03):
It created a kind of meltdown in a way, didn't it.
People were very vocal with their disappointments. People are very
vocal with their anger. It was no longer just the hashtag.
It was a real problem that people both in the
industry and outside of the industry wanted to be solved.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
The domino effects started with director Spike Lee announcing he
would not attend the ceremony. He denounced the fact that
the movie Selma, depicting the fight of Martin Luther King,
only had a single nomination.

Speaker 12 (01:07:31):
I've been saying this nineteen eighty eight school Days Wake Up.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
His criticism was heard and shared by actress Jada Pinkett Smith.
She decided to tweet the word boycott and even referred
to Sashine Little Feather as an influence.

Speaker 14 (01:07:46):
Interesting to see how these events are not isolated, how
Sashin Little Feather's protest on behalf of Marlon Brando helps
inspire Jada Pinkett forty years later, when in fact, we're
still dealing with some of the same problems.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Her husband, Will Smith also called to boycott the ceremony.
He was personally upset he wasn't nominated for Best Actor
for his movie Concussion. The ceremony aired under high scrutiny.
The irony was that the host of the twenty sixteen
Oscar ceremony was a black actor, Chris Rock. He refused
to boycott and instead used his time on stage to
address the issue. I'm here at the Academy Awards, otherwise

(01:08:23):
known as the White People's Choice Awards. If they nominated hosts,
I would never have gotten this job. We want black
actors to get the same opportunities, not just once. Leo
gets a great part every year. What about Jamie Fox
and all that protest under the Oscar so white banner
proved to be very effective.

Speaker 14 (01:08:43):
The President of the Academy is Sheryl Boon Isaacson. She
is an African American woman. She realizes that they can't say, well,
we have to have a mandatory number of nominations for
actors of color every single.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Year, and so to make that change, the Oscars made
a clever decision by in both twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen,
expanding radiit the voter base of the Academy Awards. They
brought in more international actors and directors, more people of color,
and younger voters as well, and things changed. Indeed, the
twenty seventeen Oscars were much more diverse than they had

(01:09:13):
ever been. Viola Davis and Mahershala Ali both won for
Best Supporting Actors, and Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins, won
Best Pictures.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
But some called for caution.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Viola Davis her Oscar in hand, was skeptical about whether
the hashtag Oscar so white campaign has had a real
lasting impact on the Academy Awards. I believe what still
is a deficiency is that we have one year a
plethora of African American movies and then the next year nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
But some also believed it was a.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Mistake to focus only on the Oscars when the issue
was much larger than the ceremony.

Speaker 14 (01:09:46):
With Davis and many other people have argued is the
problem isn't the lack of talent. The problem is the
lack of opportunity. How do you change the lack of opportunity, Well,
you have to change the people that are making the
decisions behind the scenes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
The few years that followed saw many other battles and
some of Hollywood's most shameful habits were slammed and exposed.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
In the media.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Once again, it took social media to increase scrutiny around
one of Hollywood's oldest twisted traditions, whitewashing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
What is it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
It's the casting of white actors as non white characters,
depriving non white actors of these roles.

Speaker 5 (01:10:24):
Well, originally it was just a question of pragmatism. You know.

Speaker 14 (01:10:28):
Studios would have these giant backlots where they would film seven,
eight nine different films every single day at a time,
and they had.

Speaker 5 (01:10:40):
People that were salaried, so the extras on.

Speaker 14 (01:10:42):
A film would be Roman soldiers one day, Indians the
next day, and Greek gods the day after.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
With society's evolution, this habit has progressed, seen as retrograde
and insulting toward minorities.

Speaker 14 (01:10:58):
Part of that is the fact that there were generations
and generations of people who grew up watching Mickey Rooney,
for instance, doing a very crude Asian caricature in Breakfast
the Tiffany's, or Peter Sellers doing a somewhat crude Indian
caricature in the party, and they were made fun of.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
But even in the twenty tens, many big studio movies
had been accused of whitewashing. It was the case in
twenty thirteen with The Lone Ranger, in which Johnny Depp
played the Comanche Tanto Aloha in twenty fifteen casted Emma
Stone as someone of half Hawaiian half Chinese descent. She
has since apologized, saying there's a lot of conversation about

(01:11:40):
how we want to see people represent it on screen,
and what we need to change is a business to
reflect culture in a clearer way and not in an
idealized way. There are some flaws in the system. My
eyes have been opened in many ways this year.

Speaker 8 (01:11:54):
It's not Moses, this is not this family.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Another good example is the movie Exodus, Gods and Kings.
The movie tells the biblical story of Moses, and as usual,
the part was given to a white actor, Christian Bale.
This time, just like it happened in the fifties with
Charlton Heston. Director Ridley Scott said about his casting, I
can't mount a film of this budget and say that
my lead actor is Mohammed so and so from such

(01:12:21):
and such, I'm just not going to get it financed,
so the question doesn't even come up. Scarlett Johansson for
her twenty seventeen movie Ghost in the Shell, I.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Feel I grew a lot when I made making this film.

Speaker 15 (01:12:36):
I learned a lot about my my limitation.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
According to men, this adaptation of a Japanese animated movie
shouldn't have casted a white actress as the lead.

Speaker 14 (01:12:48):
The argument that the studio would say was that, well,
there's no Asian American actress who has the same international
profile and box office peel as Scarlett Johansson, and so
we have to go with the pragmatic business choice. People
responding to the studio would say, well, yeah, there is
no Asian movie star in the age bracket of Scarlet
Johansson because you're not giving any Asian American actresses the

(01:13:11):
opportunities to prove themselves as box office action stars. So
it's a real chicken or egg thing. Can you put
an unknown into a role that you need a movie
star for?

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
But these endless protests are forcing Hollywood to change, even
if Hollywood will never completely abandon its main goal of
obtaining star While taking as as possible.

Speaker 14 (01:13:35):
Studios do not lead the way studios follow. If they
were making Exodus, God and Kings today, I don't think
they would cast Christian Bale. I think they would cast
romy Mallick. Not because the studio is any more progressive.
It's just that, well, Rami Mallick is a very popular
Egyptian American actor who'd want an Academy Award and started

(01:13:56):
a massive film.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
Nevertheless, Progress is here and managed to make its way
in Hollywood's quest for success. Progress even proved to be profitable.
In twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. Two Mexican directors wanted
the Oscars for movies, promoting inclusion German del Toro in
twenty eighteen for the Shape of Water and at Fonso
twenty nineteen for Roma. Spike Lee even won his first

(01:14:18):
Oscar for Best Screenplay in twenty nineteen for his very
political film Black Clansmen. But being praised by critics is
not enough, and the movie like get Out, released in
twenty seventeen, proved a horror film with an unknown black
lead actor could both be a smash hit at the
box office and politically relevant.

Speaker 16 (01:14:35):
I hope that they have a discussion about race or
horror films that they haven't had before.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
But the movie that became a true milestone for African
American cinema is the Marvel produced Black Panther. This movie,
casting a large majority of black actors, became one of
the biggest successes of all time.

Speaker 17 (01:14:58):
You know, when I was a kid, I could see Superman,
you know, maybe Batman a little bit later or whatnot.
But to see someone who looks like you occupying that
role of being larger than life, you know, and there's entertainment,
but when you get a chance to see a reflection
of yourself on the screen as well, there is empowerment.

Speaker 18 (01:15:18):
We have here a Marvel universe that is unapologetically black,
and to see us occupy an African country with kings
and queens and warriors, and it's so inspiring. It's an
aspirational nation.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
And a new generation of black actors bloomed within a
few years.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Michael B.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Jordan and Creed in Black Panther, John Boyega in the
New Star Wars trilogy, Lupita Nyogo and us Daniel Caluja,
and Get Out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
The list goes on and on.

Speaker 5 (01:15:51):
But that's a question of audacity.

Speaker 14 (01:15:55):
Somebody has to take the risk at some point to say,
you know what, We're going to take a bet on
a new generation of talent that can be more diverse,
play wider roles.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
We can measure the distance minorities have come from birth
of a Nation to black panther. It has been a
century of struggles, each decade bringing new hopes and letdowns,
But the new Hollywood seems to have understood inclusion is
not a risk, after all, it's the best way to
keep shining. He is an icon, a powerful actor, and
the sex symbol of an era. Johnny Depp has been

(01:16:28):
one of the biggest stars in the world for more
than thirty years. He went from being a TV sensation
to an independent film star. His collaboration with director Tim
Burton made him one of the most respected actors of
the nineties and two thousands, and with the Pirates of
the Caribbean Saga, he became a blockbuster movie star. But
his life has often been seen as chaotic, and his

(01:16:48):
wealth allowed him to sink even deeper into his excessive lifestyle.
Many rumors have been heard reckless violent with his ex
wife amberherd addict. It has even been said that he
was broke and had spent his entire six hundred and
fifty million dollar fortune. What is going on with Johnny Depp?
Did he really face bankruptcy? What is this money mess

(01:17:09):
all about? Let's unveil Johnny Depp's crazy life. Johnny Depp
has never really known a steady life. In his early years,
he was already on the road with his family and
lived in more than twenty different places to accommodate his
father's job. When he was twelve, his mother, Betty Sue,
gifted him again. It was the beginning of his passion
for music. He immediately started playing with various bands. He

(01:17:31):
even dropped out of high school at sixteen to pursue
a career as a rock musician.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
He joined a garage band called The Kids.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
The group became successful enough to open for The Talking
Heads and The.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
B fifty twos.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
Shortly after, he moved to la but he failed to
land a record deal. That's when he met his first wife,
Lourie Ann Allison, a makeup artist, who introduced him to
a young actor at the time, Nicholas Cage. Depp and
Cage became friends, and Cage advised him to pursue an
acting career. He divorced Allison and shortly after but took
on Cage's advice, and as early as nineteen eighty four

(01:18:04):
he landed his first minor roles in B movies, but
his big break came in nineteen eighty seven with the
TV series twenty one Jump Street. He became an instant
sensation and a popular teen idol.

Speaker 6 (01:18:16):
Johnny Depp was from the very beginning, the ultimate bad boy.
He was that guy in a leather jacket riding a motorcycle.
He was soft spoken with his big eyes, and he
seemed very poetic, but at the drop of the hat
could maybe pick a fight with a with someone in
a bar.

Speaker 10 (01:18:33):
I don't know that.

Speaker 6 (01:18:33):
His private life was super tumultuous from the beginning, but
it was always an adventure.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
But fame didn't seem to be enough for Depp at
the time. He couldn't stand being a TV product and
left the show to work only for cinema and roles
he believed in. In nineteen ninety, he worked on his
first lead role in cry Baby, a film by camp
director John Waters.

Speaker 19 (01:18:55):
Sunday Night, John Television, people seemed if they know you,
they put you in a category and they try to
make you stay there.

Speaker 8 (01:19:03):
But for me it was important to do not what
people expected.

Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
But his first smash success came that year with Edward Scissorhands.

Speaker 19 (01:19:13):
When I read the script to Edward Scissorhands, I mean
I thought it was the best, not even just script wise,
I thought it was one of the best things I've
ever read, you know, So.

Speaker 20 (01:19:27):
Of course I would have jumped at the opportunity to.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
Play with this cult movie was his first collaboration with
director Tim Burton, with whom he would create a very
fertile artistic collaboration. They worked on seven more movies together,
ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride,
Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadow. In the
early nineties, he was the star everybody wanted to have.

(01:19:53):
He was both a serious actor and a sex symbol,
and his love life became a worldwide center of interest
when he's he started dating his Edward Scissorhands co star
Winona Ryder.

Speaker 6 (01:20:04):
We all just wanted to be with Johnny Depp. I
think to a degree we thought he was Edward scissor
Hams because the fact that him and Winona Ryder were
on that film together as love interests, and then took
the romance into real life and he tattooed her name
on his arm like it was just it was the
most romantic thing you can think of.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
However, they quickly broke up and depth started a very
public and destructive relationship with supermodel Kate Moss from nineteen
ninety four to nineteen ninety eight. At the time, his
lifestyle was already believed to be hectic, and with his
first massive paychecks, came a taste for a grandiose lifestyle.

Speaker 6 (01:20:40):
As soon as Johnny Depp started earning money, the first
thing he.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
Bought was a farm for his mother.

Speaker 6 (01:20:46):
After that, he bought a Harley Davidson from nineteen forty
and in nineteen ninety three he bought a nightclub, which
he named the viper N.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
A small rock club which samed the hippest spot on
the Sunset Strip. But alcohol and drugs, which were of
course part of Depp's rock and roll lifestyle at the time,
led to a tragedy. His friend, the actor River Phoenix,
Joaquin Phoenix's older brother, died from an overdose at the club.

Speaker 6 (01:21:10):
It was no surprise that there was a lot of
drugs in the club River Phoenix on the night he died,
was given something at the viper room which caused him
to overdose and consequently die. According to Johnny Depp in
a recent interview, he was blamed for giving the substance

(01:21:31):
to River Phoenix.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
There appears to be no truth to that.

Speaker 6 (01:21:34):
There's no evidence that that ever took place, but he
feels bad about having to live under the cloud of
people thinking that he was somehow responsible.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
Depp also dabbled with drugs and spiraled into a deep depression.
He was seen as the bad boy of Hollywood, sexy
but dangerous.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
Like the rock stars he idolized.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
As early as nineteen eighty nine, he was arrested in
Vancouver for assaulting a security guard after the police were
called to end a loud already at his hotel room.

Speaker 6 (01:22:01):
He's famous for trashing hotel room at the time that
he was together with Kate Marks. Apparently he was hunting
for an armadillo, but no one could ever find.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
The charges were dropped against him after he agreed to
pay nine seven hundred dollars in damages. He also has
a difficult lifelong relationship with paparazzi. He was arrested again
in nineteen ninety nine for brawling with paparazzi outside a
restaurant while dining in London.

Speaker 6 (01:22:27):
He got in trouble with the paparazzi, apparently he threatened
one with a plank.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
But none of his antics tarnished his image and didn't
seem to have an effect on his professional life. He
was seen as a passionate young actor, excessive but talented,
and true to himself.

Speaker 6 (01:22:43):
Johnny Depp is an incredibly versatile actor. From cry Baby
to Edward sisser Hands to ed Wood to Blow to
Donnie Brasco, there was nothing this man couldn't do, and
that he earned an Oscar nomination for it, several Golden

(01:23:04):
Globes nominations for it. He was that guy that you
just wanted in every movie.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
After Dead Man and Donnie Brasco, depth worked on Fear.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
And Loathing in Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
This film, directed by Terry Gilliam, allowed him to portray
one of his heroes, the gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson. They
became friends and, according to Depp, experienced a lot of
drugs together.

Speaker 6 (01:23:27):
They were close to the point that when Hunter Thompson died.
Johnny Depp shot his ashes out of a cannon, as
had been his request, for three million dollars, which he
again Depp says cost an actual five but I think
the average I think the price tag on that was

(01:23:49):
around three million.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
And he also worked around the same time actor Marlon
brand in a class of American Si latly inspired Depth's
way of life out of.

Speaker 13 (01:24:00):
Any normal I found Marlin to be incredibly generous, very helpful,
really funny, one of the funniest people I've ever met
in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
The actors starred in Depth's directorial debut, The Brave. The
movie was poorly received, and Depth decided to focus on
his acting career, but his rock and roll years were
about to come to an end. After his breakup with
Kate Moss, Depp began a relationship with French actress and
singer Vanessa Parody, whom he met while filming The Ninth

(01:24:35):
Gate in France.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
In nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
They very quickly settled together in the south of France
and had children. Their daughter, Lily Rose's Melody Depp, was
born in nineteen ninety nine, and his son, John Jack
Christopher Depp third was born in two thousand and two.
Depp stated that having children has given him real foundation,
a real strong place to stand in life, in work
and everything. You cannot plan. The kind of deep love

(01:25:00):
that results in children fatherhood was not a conscious decision.
It was part of the wonderful ride I was on.
It was destiny. All the math finally worked.

Speaker 6 (01:25:10):
When he met Vanessa Paradi and had children with her,
it seemed like he had turned a corner in his
private life.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
He said, he stopped drinking.

Speaker 6 (01:25:20):
They lived a very quiet life together with the children.
In interviews, he said that he had found the meaning
of life and all those things, all the fights with
the paparazzi or the drunken brawls, seemed to come to
an end for those fourteen years.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
And during this peaceful era, Deck climbed to a new
level of stardom. In two thousand and three, he became
Jack Sparrow and the summer blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean,
The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Speaker 21 (01:25:45):
There are many pirates in rock and roll, you know,
but the one that I I thought would fit the
bill was Keith Richards as a kind of the basis
for the character. So then you start getting into the
abstract of Keith Richards and Peppi Leapew, you know, and

(01:26:14):
you sort of amalgamized these two as you put them together.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
Critics and audiences alike acclaimed his performance, and it was
at that point the biggest success of his career.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
And earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Speaker 6 (01:26:26):
So Johnny Depp had always been considered a list since
he did Edward Siser Hands in nineteen ninety. After that,
he did very critically acclaimed films that acquired him a
lot of fame, but not to the degree that he
was a blockbuster actor. And then when he was cast
as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, that all

(01:26:49):
changed and he became not just an A list critically
acclaimed actor in indie films, but an actual, successful, viable moneymaker.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Role made him more money than he ever had, and
during the next fifteen years, he would reprise this role
in four sequels, dead Man's Chest in two thousand and
six and At World's End the next year, on Stranger
Tides in twenty eleven, and One Less Time in twenty
seventeen for Dead Men Tell No Tales, each time with
pretty impressive salaries.

Speaker 6 (01:27:19):
Johnny Depp is one of the highest paid actors of
the moment. He gets from around ten million per film
up till about twenty million per film, but also with
back end deals that give him a lot more income.
So for example, for the Pirates of the Caribbean, he
was paid eleven million for his first and twenty million
for every sequel, but on top of that he's probably

(01:27:40):
made an additional forty million in back end deals.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
He was a bigger star than ever and with his
new fortune came new eccentric spending. He became a real
estate giant.

Speaker 6 (01:27:51):
He lives in an estate that he has. He initially
bought a castle and then he just accumulated the houses
around to build aound. And the same thing in France
in the south of France, where he basically just owns
a village.

Speaker 2 (01:28:06):
And that's not all.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
Dept bought estates all over the world, but maybe his
most spectacular purchase took place in the Bahamas.

Speaker 6 (01:28:14):
Debt bought an island in the Bahamas for a reported
three plus million dollars, which was an idea that he
got from Marlon Brando, who had his own private island,
and that seemed to give him refuge. To get to
said island, you need a boat, so Depth bought a
yacht for eight million dollars, which also needed more than

(01:28:35):
eight million dollars in repairs, which is a cool sixteen mil.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
But his involvement in the Pirates of the Caribbean saga
didn't keep him from working on interesting new projects. In
two thousand and seven, he reunited with Tim Burton for
the musical Sweeney Todd.

Speaker 10 (01:28:50):
I've worked with.

Speaker 22 (01:28:51):
Johnny several times, and you know, the one thing obviously
this is new, is him singing. And you know that,
as always was a really great surprise, I mean, knowing
he could do it, but then being real surprised that
he just he sounds great.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
The role earned him a Golden Globe Award, and in
two thousand and nine, he worked for the first time
with director Michael Mann, portraying John Dillinger in the movie
Public Enemies. But in twenty twelve, his private life would
take a radical turn. He worked on the movie The
Rum Diary and met actress Amberhard. That same year, Vanessa
Parody and Depp announced their divorce after a thirteen year

(01:29:33):
long relationship. Subsequently, Depp began dating amberheard. The couple was
publicly seen together for the first time in twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:29:42):
Twelve, not long after Depth split with Parody.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
The couple got engaged on Christmas Eve in twenty thirteen
and tied the knot in February twenty fifteen. It was
the beginning of a controversial new era for the actor.
Before their marriage, Depth faced critics within his own family.
His sister warned him this marriage could be a bad idea.

Speaker 6 (01:30:05):
His family and friends cautioned him against getting married without
a prenup, but he wasn't listening.

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
Soon after the beginning of his new relationship, Depp had
to face controversy for the first time in a decade
for his role in the Disney blockbuster The Lone Ranger.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
The film was a box office bomb that caused Walt.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
Disney Studios to take a one hundred and ninety million
dollar loss. But even worse where the accusations made against Depp,
who portrayed Tonto, a Native American character. Many were shocked
by this casting choice and accused the studio and the
actor of whitewashing. It seemed like something had changed in
the actor's film choices.

Speaker 6 (01:30:43):
It seemed like he had a career shift where initially
he was known for making films like Blow or ed Wood,
or movies that he felt were artistically important and not
so important for the paycheck. But then as his spending

(01:31:03):
increased and as his assets increased, it appeared that the
movies that he chose were more for the paycheck.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
Around that time, the actor returned to drinking in drug use,
and he didn't hide from it. He embraced the lifestyle
he always envisioned for himself, a rock star living like
there is no tomorrow.

Speaker 6 (01:31:25):
When he separated from Vanessa, he made a point of
saying in an interview that turning to.

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
Alcohol would probably be fatal for him.

Speaker 6 (01:31:35):
But now in recent years, as we know, he has
gone back to old habits and is almost proud of
the fact that he's doubling in drugs and alcohol again.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
But this exciting and crazy lifestyle quickly appeared darker.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
Than it seemed.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
In May twenty sixteen, Hrd filed for divorce, and shortly afterwards,
she also filed a restraining order alleging that Depp had
been verbally and physic abusive. What happened exactly is still blurry,
since the two reached a settlement and signed a non
disclosure agreement stating our relationship was intensely passionate and at times.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
Volatile, but always bound by love.

Speaker 1 (01:32:13):
Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There
was never any intent of physical or emotional harm.

Speaker 6 (01:32:20):
What they also decided was to not speak publicly about
their marriage. Now, yes, what happened between them could have
resulted in the same kind of situation that a lot
of men during the Me Too movement suffered, meaning loss
of career. But I think in this situation, because the

(01:32:42):
two in a very strange way parted on amicable terms,
it affected how they both moved forward.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
However, the case was reopened after herd Penden article in
December twenty eighteen that described her experiences with them as violence.
In response, Depth filed a fifty million dollar defamation lawsuit
against his ex wife and accused her of being violent
and hitting him during their relationship.

Speaker 6 (01:33:09):
As a result, a lot of the text messages, voice messages,
and sound files from their relationship are coming to the
four So whatever Johnny Depp and Emberhard wished to keep
private as a result of this case will probably be
public knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):
During the Me Too era, those allegations could have cost
Depp his career. However, the difficulties establishing the truth of
what happened and the support of the industry helped Depp.

Speaker 6 (01:33:37):
Another thing that might have had an impact on why
Johnny Depp could bounce back from alleged domestic abuse was
that all his former girlfriends and his ex wife spoke
out on his behalf, saying that they had never encountered
any violence from him and said that he was one
of the gentlest people they'd ever met. And of course

(01:34:00):
we should believe two sides of every story, but I
think that spoke very much in his favor.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
Some people still criticize the fact that Depp was cast
as the villain in Fantastic Beasts, the Harry Potter spin off,
but J. K Rowling defended him, and Depp later commented
on the controversy by saying, I'll be honest with you,
I felt bad for JK Rowling having to feeld all
these various feelings for people out there. The fact remains,
I was falsely accused. JK has seen the evidence and

(01:34:28):
therefore knows I was falsely accused, and that's why she
has publicly supported me. She would not stand up if
she didn't know the truth. So that's really it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
We don't know what she knows. We only know what's public.

Speaker 6 (01:34:41):
And it wasn't met without criticism, but for her it
was enough, and the films went on.

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
But his career in private life were not even his
biggest concerns at the time. His financial situation happened to
be critical what happened to his colossal fortune. In twenty sixteen,
Depp apparently discovered money was running short. His management company
told him that he had to sell parts of his

(01:35:10):
estate empire to be able to keep going with his
way of life. Dep accused his brother and sister for
parts of this financial mess.

Speaker 6 (01:35:18):
As part of Johnny Depp's spending, he bought the wrench
for his mother and consequently his siblings moved in, so
he hired them as caretakers of the ranch. They were
his employees and all this according of course to articles
that have been written and Depths interviews himself, what he

(01:35:40):
claims is that they were taking advantage of this situation,
buying handbags for his mother, despite the fact that she
was bedridden, or that once she had passed, there was
no reason to hang onto the ranch.

Speaker 2 (01:35:52):
Anymore.

Speaker 6 (01:35:53):
So, he maybe had thought that this was an agreement
that would come to an end, and it turns out
it didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
But his family was only a small part of the issue,
according to the actor. He cut ties with his management company,
owned by the Mendel brothers and accused them of improperly
managing his money. He explained he discovered very late his
money difficulties and claimed the Mandel brothers hid the truth
from him.

Speaker 6 (01:36:17):
Johnny Depp hired a management team to take care of
all his assets, and because of that, he claimed that
he wasn't actually aware of how much money he had
or didn't have, or that he was in financial trub
it at all, because he had people to take care
of that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:32):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:36:32):
Of course, his management team, the Mendel Brothers, claimed that
throughout they discussed the fact that cashflow was dwindling his money,
his assets weren't doing well, and he actually had to
get rid of some and he refused to and now
claims that he just had no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
Depp filed a twenty five million dollar lawsuit against his
former business managers, claiming they mismanaged six hundred and fifty
million dollars of his earnings from the previous two decades,
but his management team countersued him for unpaid fees and
for damages, alleging that Depp was responsible for his own
fiscal mismanagement.

Speaker 6 (01:37:08):
According to his management team, Johnny Depp spent in excess
of two million dollars per month. All of that included
staff that he had, whether it was security for him
or his family, or he would spend two hundred thousand
a month on private jets because he doesn't like to
fly commercial. It was an exorbitant amount of money that

(01:37:29):
he didn't have to spend, but.

Speaker 1 (01:37:31):
His former management team went into even more detail. They
described Depp as an irresponsible alcoholic who couldn't control what
he spent for his addictions.

Speaker 6 (01:37:40):
In the article by Rolling Stone that the in depth
interview that was made was done with Johnny Depp, they
brought up the fact that he, according to his management team,
thirty thousand dollars on wine per month, which apparently is
not an investment if you drink it immediately. He said
that that was insulting because in fact, he spends.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
A lot more and at the time, his money mess
wasn't even his only problem with the law. In twenty eighteen,
it was reported that Depp was being sued for allegedly
hitting a location manager on the set of his film
City of Lies, about the murder of rapper Notorious Big.
According to the suit, the movie star grew irate when
told that production was finished for the day, at which

(01:38:23):
point he twice forcefully punched the location manager in the
lower left side of his ribcage and unleashed a verbal
tirade until being dragged away by his bodyguards. As a result,
the movie was pulled from distribution a month before its
scheduled release date.

Speaker 6 (01:38:38):
This seemed to go away fairly quickly, so we don't
know what the real situation was, but certainly he was
embroiled in a lot of legal trouble at the time, and.

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):
That same year, Depp was on the other end of
yet another lawsuit, with two former personal security guards suing
him for unpaid wages and their exposure to dangerous work conditions.
According to his bodyguards, they had to warn him he
was in possession of illegal substances anytime he was about
to enter a public space, which they felt was a
toxic work environment. Many friends defended him, like Penelope Cruz

(01:39:12):
and Javier Bardem, who described dev as one of the
kindest and most generous people they ever met. But everything
seemed to be falling apart in his life. He was
still working despite being surrounded by controversies and defending himself
in the press, claiming he never hurt anyone and that
his way of life was his own business.

Speaker 6 (01:39:31):
Looking at it from the outside, it seems like Johnny
just kind of accepted the chaos, leaned into the fact
that he always wanted to be a rock star, and
now he's living that kind of life, the hard drinking,
the hard drugs. He came to Hollywood wanting to be
a rock star and fate turned him into an actor.

(01:39:53):
Now he's kind of back to his roots, playing in
Vampires of Hollywood with Joe Perry and Alice Cooper and
living that life and who knows where it leads.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
In twenty nineteen, however, some of his problems were solved,
even if his financial situation still wasn't clear. One of
his battles in court came to.

Speaker 6 (01:40:11):
An end in regards to the lawsuit between Johnny Depp
and his management team. They settled out of court just
a few just a few moments before they were about
to head into court and all of this would have
been public knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:40:23):
They settled out of court.

Speaker 6 (01:40:25):
We don't know the details of it, but everyone seems
fairly satisfied.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
But in twenty twenty, his battle with Amber Herd was
still going strong in the beginning of that year, and
audio recording from a twenty fifteen therapy session involving the
then couple was leaked. Throughout the recording, Herd and Depp
can both be heard acknowledging their anger issues before both
agreeing to put an end to the physical violence. It
ends with Herd's alleged confession to hitting Depp during their relationship,

(01:40:52):
creating even more confusion around the already complicated case.

Speaker 6 (01:40:57):
I don't think Johnny Depp came out of these tumultuals
yours completely unscathed. I think it definitely had an impact
on his career. However, I do think he's plugging along,
making at least one or two movies every year, and
if Hollywood loves anything, it's a redemption story. So we'll
just have to see where this goes.

Speaker 1 (01:41:19):
We might never know the truth about his dynamic relationship
with amberhard It seems like his life was meant to
be tumultuous and he embraces every bit of it while
defending himself from accusations of violence. His image and legacy
have clearly been tarnished, but he is still loved by
many worldwide. He is still involved in some of the
most profitable franchises in cinema history, and great roles are

(01:41:41):
certainly around the corner. One thing is sure, Johnny Depp
will never disappear from the news.

Speaker 2 (01:41:49):
It's hard to argue that he is not the biggest
movie star in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
Adored, legendary, controversial, Tom Cruise has been everything in the
span of his long career. He is the ultimate action
star and has one of the most remarkable filmographies in
the history of American cinema. But his aura has been
tarnished by his personal life, and especially by his involvement
in the very polemic Church of Scientology. The star has
become a strong advocate for the organization, and his private

(01:42:16):
life is surrounded in mystery. What is his real relationship
to the Church, Why did he break up with Nicole Kidman,
What was his.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
Marriage with Katie Holmes? All about?

Speaker 1 (01:42:25):
Tom Cruise's life is as unexpected and exciting as his movies.
Let's explore its secrets. Tom's cruise made Pethor the Fourth
that's his full name, was born in nineteen sixty two.
His mother was an amateur actress and teacher, and his
father an electrical engineer.

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):
Because of his dad's career, the Cruz.

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
Family moved a lot, and Tom wasn't able to settle anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
And lead a normal life.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
His childhood was scarred by poverty and his father's abusive behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:42:55):
Cruse later described.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
Him as a merchant of chaos who beat his children.
He was the kind of person where if something goes wrong,
they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life.
How he'd lull you in, make you feel safe, and
then bang. For me, it was like, there's something wrong
with this guy. Don't trust him, be careful around him.

Speaker 11 (01:43:14):
I didn't have a very good male role model when
he was growing up and has sort of become a
chameleon as he always had to change personalities and change
into these different schools. But he did remain close with
his mother and his sisters as he grew up.

Speaker 1 (01:43:29):
But it's also thanks to his dad that Cruz discovered
what would become the passion of a lifetime cinema. I
was seven When my dad took me to the movies
to see two thousand and one, the theater was full
and I had to sit on my dad's shoulders. I
didn't get everything, but I was very moved.

Speaker 20 (01:43:45):
When I was a kid and I would go to
the movies. The movies were very, very important to me.
You know, when I looked at those characters they on
the screen, they weren't it wasn't a movie to me.
They were very real.

Speaker 2 (01:43:59):
And I'd bring those.

Speaker 20 (01:44:00):
Characters home with me and I'd think about their lives
and where they were, and I'd dream about that. And
I love movies so much.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
To this day.

Speaker 1 (01:44:08):
Kruz claims that spending a day without watching a movie
is impossible for him. His mother eventually divorced when Tom
was eleven and took her kids away from their dad.
She remarried and was able to offer solace to her family.
Like his mothers and sisters, he suffered from dyslexia, making
school very difficult for him, but at the time he
had a surprising career becoming a priest. He always had

(01:44:31):
an interest for spirituality and religion. He was raised in
a very religious family and would keep seeking spiritual elevation
throughout his entire life.

Speaker 11 (01:44:40):
He did go to a seminary school for a year
when he was thirteen or fourteen years old, and according
to his classmates and contemporaries, at that time, he was
a very devout Catholic. I would attend Mass and go
to prayer regularly, and at that point had been interested
in the.

Speaker 10 (01:44:56):
Priesthood, and he has in the past said that he was.
That may have been the case.

Speaker 11 (01:45:02):
That may have changed, but he was a very devout
Catholic at one point in his life, but.

Speaker 1 (01:45:06):
He finally changed his mind and turned to other passions.
He got disappointing grades in high school, but was excellent
at sports. He even considered pursuing a career in wrestling
before a bad knee injury stopped his plan. That's when
he turned to acting.

Speaker 11 (01:45:20):
He had been acting since he was a kid, and
he was always in drama when he was in these
different schools, and when he enrolled in high school he
really sort of took to the stage and really bloomed
in that area.

Speaker 1 (01:45:31):
In his senior year, starred in a school production of
a play and decided to commit fully to his acting career.
He said a ten year deadline to build his career
and moved to New York.

Speaker 11 (01:45:41):
One of his first roles was in a movie with
Sean Penn, who was another very intense actor, and he
took on a lot of his methods, including only addressing
his co stars by their character name, and so he
just became known as this very sort of intense, serious
guy pretty much right away from that. He was spotted
by friends for Coppola, who he worked as later, and

(01:46:03):
his second film was The Outsiders, which is another sort
of really intense drama.

Speaker 10 (01:46:07):
So he even started his career.

Speaker 11 (01:46:08):
With these very serious roles that sort of showed his
range as a dramatic actor. That's even before he moved
into any of these sort of action films. So I
think he always was seen as someone who did have
the acting chops to sort of back up that million
dollar smile that he is now famous for.

Speaker 1 (01:46:25):
Cruise's career was launched and would never slow down. He
soon had his first leading role in Ky Business, his
first commercial success. He was now a star and would
during the entire nineteen eighties spread his influence in Hollywood,
but it was in nineteen eighty six that he definitely
became one of the biggest stars in the world with
top Gun.

Speaker 2 (01:46:44):
He had it all. In only six years.

Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
He had developed his acting career and was smoothly transitioning
from big blockbusters to great dramas with important directors. With
rain Man and Born on the fourth of July, he
definitively became one of the greatest actors of his general.

Speaker 23 (01:47:01):
Oliver Stone had called me, has been a huge fan
of his, and he talked to me about Born in
the fourth of July and that he was going to
give me the script and he said, it's a tough film,
nobody's going to want to make it, and you know,
just read it and see what you think. And I
read it and.

Speaker 10 (01:47:17):
It was absolutely.

Speaker 23 (01:47:20):
Blown away, to say the least. And now you know,
we've got eight Academy Award nominations. It's it's tremendous.

Speaker 11 (01:47:28):
Yeah, I don't think you can sort of underestimate what
one of the Fourth of July did for his career
and sort of what it meant to the country at
that time when it came out. It's a shame that
he didn't win though, And obviously like he's been he's
been nominated three times now, always when he was in
a very dramatic role and just sort of, you know,
hasn't made it, but if anything, that should.

Speaker 10 (01:47:49):
Have been the one probably that he won for.

Speaker 1 (01:47:52):
His professional life has made Tom Cruise one of the
highest paid actors in Hollywood, but his personal life also
evolved remarkably during the eighties. In nineteen eighty seven, Crew
settled for the first time and married actress Mimi Rogers.
This union would end up having a decisive impact on
the actor's life, since Rogers was the one who introduced
him to Scientology. Mimi Rogers helped the actor become a

(01:48:19):
student of Scientology. What is Scientology. It's a church founded
by science fiction writer l Ron Hubbard.

Speaker 11 (01:48:26):
Scientology is basically a level of courses that you go
through to sort of get to this what they call
state of being clear, which is emotionally.

Speaker 10 (01:48:38):
Being able to shed the things that are holding you back.

Speaker 11 (01:48:41):
But for many people they do become trapped in the
church for years because the courses cost ten, twelve, fifteen thousand.

Speaker 10 (01:48:48):
Dollars to go up these levels.

Speaker 11 (01:48:50):
A lot of people that have defected from the church
have talked about what the teachings are, and the teachings
of that are that there was a god named Zenu
from another planet seventy five thousand years ago who sent
these aliens to.

Speaker 10 (01:49:06):
Earth, and they were living in the volcanoes on Earth.

Speaker 11 (01:49:08):
The volcanoes were then hit by hydrogen bombs and all
the aliens died, but their spirits are still living on Earth,
and their reincarnated spirits will attach themselves to human bodies.
And those are the emotions that you feel yourself being
held down by. And so once you get to these
upper levels through the courses, you're able to free those

(01:49:30):
spirits from your body and free yourself from the emotions
that are holding you back.

Speaker 1 (01:49:34):
Cruz began reading Hubbard's book Dianetics, and he went through the.

Speaker 2 (01:49:37):
Process of auditing sessions.

Speaker 11 (01:49:39):
To explain it, it's sort of like a cross between
maybe Catholic confession and taking a lie detector test, because
they use these machines they call the emeter that you
put your hands onto, and you're supposed to sort of
like read your emotions as you're talking about these stories,
and you usually have a person that is interrogating you
and asking you of more intense questions to sort of

(01:50:02):
be able to track your emotions. Tom has since said
that because he was diagnosed as dyslexic. Back in the
seventies and eighties, there were programs in schools and they
didn't really have any ways to treat this effectively. So
he grew up thinking that he was an idiot and
thinking that there was something wrong with him, which was
very hard for him. And when he got into the church,

(01:50:23):
he went through this tech and he said that as
soon as he learned how to read through scientology like
he was cured. And so I think that that was
very emotional for him and sort of pulled him in
very very quickly into the church and its teachings.

Speaker 1 (01:50:39):
His star status since the actor just came out of
Top Gun and rain Man, made him progress very quickly
within the church, and he soon became one of its
leading proponents. But his new faith didn't keep him from
pursuing his successful career. He joined forces with Tony Scott,
the director of Top Gun, for a new summer blockbuster,
Days of Thunder. The team was looking for an actor

(01:51:00):
to play the female lead of the movie, a neurosurgeon,
against Olaud's a twenty three year old Australians Nicole Kidman.
It was rumored that Cruz, who had seen her in
a small movie, insisted on her getting the part. The
two lead actors had a real chemistry.

Speaker 11 (01:51:15):
And then they very quickly started a romance, I guess
a friendship that was very intense and turning two romance
very quickly while he was still married to Mimi.

Speaker 1 (01:51:25):
After his divorce with Rogers, the new couple married on
Christmas Eve nineteen ninety It was the beginning of a
new prosperous era for Cruise. In the nineties, Tom Cruise
was unstoppable. He and Kidman were the most glamorous couple
in Hollywood, and both their careers skyrocketed.

Speaker 2 (01:51:44):
At the time Weird nominated.

Speaker 1 (01:51:46):
He had many successes and critically praised movies such as
A Few Good Men, Interview with a Vampire, and Jerry McGuire,
and Kidman became widely regarded as one of the best
actresses of her generation. In nineteen ninety six, Tom Cruise
made one of the smartest moves of his entire career
and produced a movie adaptation of the TV show Mission Impossible.

(01:52:07):
He hired Brian de Palma to direct the first installment
of what would become a very successful saga. Cruse had
created for himself a series of action films he was
totally in charge of his love for entertainment and his
passion for control led to this perfect vehicle for the actor.

Speaker 20 (01:52:22):
To be the employee or the boss. You know, each
one has its challenges, but I enjoyed producing this movie.
You know, do I want to do it again?

Speaker 18 (01:52:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:52:33):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
He was developing two careers, one as an action film
hero specialized in crazy stunts and technical challenges, the other
as an ambitious actor shooting intense dramas with the best
directors on earth. On the personal side, the couple adopted
two children, Isabella and Connor. Everything should have been peaceful,
but for much of the nineteen nineties, Cruz and Kidman

(01:52:54):
had to face attacks regarding the legitimacy of their marriage
and rumors regarding Tom Cruise's alleged home momoseexuality.

Speaker 11 (01:53:01):
It's kind of a sad case, but I think the
rumor started because he was not able to have kids,
so it was like, well, he must be gay, Like
there was this thing, although there's really no evidence for it.

Speaker 1 (01:53:12):
They filed two different lawsuits against tabloid publications. In each case,
the couple received a published retraction and apology, along with
a large monetary settlement.

Speaker 2 (01:53:22):
Which they donated to charity.

Speaker 11 (01:53:24):
I think the fact that he responded to it that
way and the case was so big that that sort
of was like, well, maybe there's fuel to the fire.

Speaker 1 (01:53:34):
Putting that negativity behind them, the couple accepted in the
late nineties the proposition of a lifetime. Stanley Kubrick hired
them to play in his last movie, Eyes Wide Shut.
One of Kruz's lifelong dreams working with Kubrick became a reality.
The couple moved to London to make the film, and
because of Kubrick's perfectionism, the shoot, initially planned for twelve weeks,

(01:53:55):
lasted two years.

Speaker 11 (01:53:57):
And I think that just shows that he was really
dedicated to working with the greats and doing new and
experimental things. But obviously working with Kuprick isn't easy and
was very intense for him and for Nicole.

Speaker 1 (01:54:12):
On the set, Cruse pushed himself like never before and
even developed an ulcer during the shoot.

Speaker 2 (01:54:18):
The movie was released.

Speaker 1 (01:54:19):
In nineteen ninety nine and is now widely considered as
Cruse's best film. The movie was also a challenge for
the couple. They had to face even more rumors about
their intimate life. A tabloid had even pretended they couldn't
perform their sex scenes in the movie and had to
hire a sexologist, even though they don't share any sex
scenes in the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:54:39):
But in February two thousand and.

Speaker 1 (01:54:40):
One, Cruz and Kidney separation after eleven years of marriage.
The couple cited the difficulties involved with two acting careers
and the amount of time spent a part while working.

Speaker 11 (01:54:51):
When they split up, Cruz very cryptically said, at one point,
Nicole knows what she did, but no one ever explained it,
and so there were sort of rumors about infidelity or
this or that, but no one really has any idea.

Speaker 1 (01:55:06):
But once again, many rumors described their divorce as a
result of Cruz's involvement in scientology. Kidman partly confirmed those
assumptions by saying she didn't want her children raised as scientologists.
Er rumors appeared saying that scientology facilitated their divorce because
of Kidman's lack of engagement in the church.

Speaker 11 (01:55:26):
Later again, people that defected from the church and spoke
out in a documentary called Going Clear said that they
were working behind the scenes to sort of break them up.
After they were married. Tom had sort of not separated
himself from the church. She certain say anything about leaving
the church, but he was pulling away, not as what

(01:55:50):
these people who have left the church said is that
they were to break them up because they wanted to
pull him back into the church. You know, eventually, I
guess it worked, or you know, we again, we don't
know exactly what happened, but it's understood that it was
sort of a wedge that was driven between them by
the church because Nicole was never really one hundred percent
on board.

Speaker 1 (01:56:10):
The two thousands started well for the star after his divorce,
Cruse dated his Vanilla Sky co star Penelope Cruise for
a few years.

Speaker 11 (01:56:18):
At that point, after he had broken up in Nicole,
I think he with his two kids, they were drawn
back into the church and were very, very heavily involved
in it, and Penelope and him had co starred in
Vanilla Sky, but she was never considered acceptable by the
church and didn't stick around for very long.

Speaker 2 (01:56:37):
In the meantime, he was making some classics such as
Minority Report with Steven Spielberg, Collateral with Michael Mann, and
War of the Worg.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
Again, but by the middle of the decade, his public
image would start to change for the worst. In January
two thousand and four, Cruz made a controversial statement saying,
I think psychiatry should be outlawed.

Speaker 11 (01:56:57):
He was doing promotion for Or of the Worlds, or
at least he was supposed to be during promotion for
War of the Worlds, but it sort of became about
Tom and his opposition to psychiatry. He doesn't believe in it,
and he doesn't believe that there should be any sort
of medical treatment for any mental problems because they can
all be solved through the teachings of the Church.

Speaker 1 (01:57:14):
Cruse also became a militant spokesman for Scientology and began
campaigning in Europe in order to help the church be
recognized as a religion. He lobbied officials in France and Germany,
raising high criticism worldwide.

Speaker 11 (01:57:27):
He just really became sort of an evangelist for the
church in this period of time.

Speaker 10 (01:57:32):
He's so esteemed within the.

Speaker 11 (01:57:33):
Church that he's really sort of their international figurehead.

Speaker 1 (01:57:37):
But maybe the strangest element of Cruse's life by two
thousand and five was in a new relationship to actors
Katie Holmes. In June two thousand and five, after a
two month Courtship Cruz proposed to homes in a restaurant
at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Speaker 11 (01:57:50):
You know, all of a sudden they were dating. They
showed up on a red carpet all over each other.

Speaker 10 (01:57:54):
Within like a.

Speaker 11 (01:57:54):
Week, they were making incredibly excessive PDAs across the world.

Speaker 1 (01:58:00):
In October, they announced that they were expecting their first
child together. The hasty proposal and surprise pregnancy quickly became
tabloid gossip, and his best man at the wedding was
none other than David Miscavish, the leader of the Church
of Scientology.

Speaker 11 (01:58:15):
And his relationship with David Muskevitch, as you know again
people who have defected from the church have said, was
incredibly intense. His life at that point was completely arranged
by David, who was supposed to be his best friend,
and they would do these really manly things together, like
go riding motorcycles and go out and sort of, you know,

(01:58:35):
have this dream life that David made possible. And so
I think that he was sort of so far really
pulled into that that he didn't couldn't see anything outside
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:58:47):
And as always, crazy rumors had been heard about Scientology
auditing potential girlfriends for Cruse after his breakup with Penelope Cruz.

Speaker 10 (01:58:55):
These have come out later.

Speaker 11 (01:58:56):
And also I can say that at the time, even then,
it was sort of the room around hollyod with that
they were sort of like casting calls to date him
because he was, you know, the number one superstar in
the world at that point and sort of was looking
for a younger actress to.

Speaker 10 (01:59:13):
Come in and be his partner.

Speaker 11 (01:59:15):
The rumor has always been that they went through that
process and the one who won was Katie Holmes.

Speaker 1 (01:59:22):
Seeming you are learning more about scientology, Can you tell
me a little bit about that.

Speaker 22 (01:59:27):
Yeah, I'm excited about it, and I feel like have you.

Speaker 5 (01:59:29):
Started have you read maybe any of Cobb's.

Speaker 10 (01:59:32):
Books at all?

Speaker 24 (01:59:33):
Yeah, I've read a view, listened to a couple of tapes,
and I feel like it's making me a better person.

Speaker 1 (01:59:41):
But the decisive moment when the public opinion switched and
stopped regarding Tom Cruise as a well beloved hero was
perhaps his infamous appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Speaker 11 (01:59:51):
I think every person has probably seen a video of
that and what happened. Had just started this romance as
Katie Holmes and he was on the set of Oprah
supposed to be promoting this film, but he talked about
the romance. He jumped on the couch, he.

Speaker 10 (02:00:06):
Was screaming, he was doing these fist pumps.

Speaker 11 (02:00:09):
He ended up going backstage and pulling Katie out and
like kissing her all over. It was like everything about
it was just so weird and inappropriate, and even Oprah Winfrey,
who is you know, a very composed woman, and she was.

Speaker 10 (02:00:21):
Just like, what is wrong with you?

Speaker 11 (02:00:24):
I mean, it just sort of made him a laughing stock.

Speaker 1 (02:00:27):
Those personal bad bets were followed by some professional downturns
as well. In two thousand and six, Paramount Pictures announced
it was ending its fourteen year relationship with Cruse. A
chairman from the company cited the economic damage to Cruise's
value as an actor and producer from his controversial public
behavior and views, but some industry analysts commented that the
real reason for the split was most likely Paramount's discontent

(02:00:50):
over Cruse's exceptionally large share of DVD sales from the
Mission Impossible franchise. Whatever the truth might be, the Unstoppable
Star faced difficulties for the first time, but it didn't
keep him from releasing a third and successful Mission Impossible movie.
He also welcomed his daughter, Surrey in two thousand and six.

(02:01:12):
Seeing the negative impact his religion and behavior had on
his career and legacy, Cruz has drastically changed his public
relations strategy since his OPRAH incident. The star has been
much more secretive about scientology and his private life in general.

Speaker 11 (02:01:26):
You know, he is an amazing actor, but he is,
you know, at the core, also a businessman, and he
didn't want his business and the business of Tom Cruise
to sort of be punished by.

Speaker 2 (02:01:38):
His behavior on the big screen. He has shown how
smart he is by playing.

Speaker 1 (02:01:42):
With his own image in the comedy Tropic Thunder, Cursing
and putting on a fat suit proved to be the
best way to win the audience back.

Speaker 11 (02:01:50):
He seemed to make fun of himself and also just
to genuinely be having a good time, so it helped
restore his reputation in that he It was sort of like,
you know, hey, he's still a fun guy.

Speaker 10 (02:02:02):
He's still a good guy.

Speaker 11 (02:02:04):
He's not the intense, crazy person that he's been.

Speaker 1 (02:02:08):
It even earned him a Golden Globe nomination in twenty eleven.
He even managed to release the biggest success of his
career to that point.

Speaker 2 (02:02:17):
Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol.

Speaker 23 (02:02:19):
I love making these movies.

Speaker 20 (02:02:20):
It's you know, because of all of that, because it
is such a challenge.

Speaker 1 (02:02:26):
Critics praised the action movie and Cruz was back in style,
but on a personal level, things were not getting better.
Only five years after their marriage, Cruse was shocked to
learn wanted a divorce.

Speaker 11 (02:02:39):
The rumor had always also been that they had signed
this sort of deal that it was going to be
five you know, five years, that.

Speaker 10 (02:02:47):
She would be married to him, or at least five
years kind of thing.

Speaker 11 (02:02:50):
Well, I mean, as soon as they hit their five
year anniversary, she you know, hit him with the divorce papers.
And the story is that, you know, they had been
seen together just a couple weeks before.

Speaker 10 (02:03:01):
She was still playing up the marriage and that they
were happy and this and that.

Speaker 11 (02:03:06):
As soon as he flew off to Iceland for a
film shoot, she called him up said we're getting divorced,
changed her phone number, changed everything.

Speaker 10 (02:03:15):
And now again, when he was.

Speaker 11 (02:03:19):
Married to Mimi Rodgers, he left her because he had
started this relationship in the Coole. When he was married
in Nicole, he left her. You know, she had been
very young when they married he.

Speaker 10 (02:03:28):
Sort of he left her, he took the kids.

Speaker 11 (02:03:30):
He controlled that situation, and this was really the first
time that anyone stood up against him, and she won.

Speaker 10 (02:03:37):
You know, she was pretty smart in the.

Speaker 7 (02:03:38):
Way she did it.

Speaker 1 (02:03:40):
In the midst of his divorce, CRUs filed a lawsuit
against in Touch and Life and Style magazine for defamation
after they claimed Cruz had quote abandoned his six year
old daughter. During deposition, CRUs testified that due to his workload,
one hundred and ten days had passed without him seeing her.
But apparently his relationship to his daughter didn't get better
with time.

Speaker 11 (02:04:01):
He saw her a couple of times, they did photos together,
and then as far as we know, he hasn't seen
her and they don't have a relationship. And that is
again because of the church. And that's because the church
sees Katie as a suppressive person, and therefore Surrey is
as well.

Speaker 1 (02:04:19):
He focused on his career more than ever, building back
his image. His movie career in the twenty tens seemed
less adventurous and versatile. He focused on movies he had
also produced that were mostly big action films in which
he can display his love for physical acting and stunts.
Tom cruise became synonymous with action.

Speaker 11 (02:04:37):
And these are the kinds of work that he's really
beloved for. You know, people, we're willing to accept him
sort of as this hero action hero. The films are brilliant, exciting,
well done, everything that people love.

Speaker 10 (02:04:51):
You know, he's a good businessman.

Speaker 11 (02:04:52):
He instinctually knew like, Okay, this is sort of where
I have to go back to, and he managed to
you know, he managed to do that with these actions.

Speaker 1 (02:05:00):
His drama years seemed far behind. He created a new
action franchise, Jack Reacher, and pursued the Mission Impossible saga
with Rogue Nation and with Fallout. In twenty eighteen, the
movies were more popular than ever and shape than ever
at over fifty years old. But even if he was
still silent on the subject, his link to scientology was

(02:05:22):
just as strong.

Speaker 11 (02:05:23):
I mean, at this point, he has now moved to
Florida and he lives five hundred meters from the door
of the head quarters.

Speaker 10 (02:05:33):
Like he is, he is very.

Speaker 11 (02:05:34):
Very much more entrenched in the church, and he's that
involved at this point and has been given a variety
of awards within the church that aren't necessarily real. But
he's sort of like I don't know all he's the
face of the church, he's the leader of the church.
He's the person that brings people in. I mean, he's
sort of everything.

Speaker 1 (02:05:55):
Since, of course, with Katie Holmes, he hasn't shown the
world any of his girlfriends or has failed to find
another fulfilling relationship. He seems married to his work and
is mostly focused on his legacy as an actor and producer.

Speaker 11 (02:06:08):
I did speak to him about the time of the
latest mission Impossible, you know, and he says that he's
going to continue on this path. And he says, you know,
I will still be doing stunts. If I have to
be in a wheelchair when I'm ninet years old, I'm
going to be doing my own stunts. So I think
that he very much intends to keep this up physically,
can he, because you know, he's almost a sixty year

(02:06:29):
old man at this point, and so that isn't easy
to jump from a building to building and hang out
of helicopters.

Speaker 1 (02:06:35):
Ever since the audience discovered his darker side has managed
to stay relevant and incredibly successful. No one has forgotten
his antics about scientology or about his thoughts on psychiatry,
But somehow people are willing to separate the actor from
the man. His personal life is as chaotic as his
professional life is steady. He will soon be an action

(02:06:57):
hero in his sixties, and his career seems far from
a Maybe the last chapter of his filmography will see
him settle down to more grounded dramas, and who knows,
maybe one day he will turn his back to the
Church of Scientology. Both scenarios seem unlikely, but Tom Cruise
is used to surprising his audiences. She was one of

(02:07:17):
the biggest revelations of the nineties. She became one of
the most sought after actresses of the two thousands, and
ended up creating a successful company that brought her millions
of dollars, several trials, and a lot of mockery. Gweneed
Paltrow is more than an actress praised by critics, she
is the emblem of an extremely healthy lifestyle, often seen
as eccentric and completely disconnected from everyday reality. Her love

(02:07:41):
life has been on the cover of tabloids since the nineties.
Her career has been through ups and downs.

Speaker 2 (02:07:46):
She even got involved in the Weinstein scandal.

Speaker 1 (02:07:49):
Not a week goes by without a crazy new anecdote
about her multi million dollar brand Goop, or about.

Speaker 2 (02:07:55):
Her crazy lifestyle advice.

Speaker 1 (02:07:57):
How did this darling of independent cinema becomes such a
controversial figure. Let's discover who Gwyneth Paltrow really is from
movie star to help guru. Gwyneth grew up in the
seventies in California. Her dad, Bruce, was a television producer,

(02:08:17):
and her mom, blythe Danner, was a Tony Award winning actress.

Speaker 6 (02:08:21):
Bruce Paltrow is probably best known in Gwyneth's circles for
directing duets, which starred his daughter, but he's also the
producer of a show called Saint Elsewhere, and blythe Danner
she's a very prolific actress, so there's really no surprise
that Gwyneth Paltrow ended up in show business.

Speaker 1 (02:08:38):
She evolved in a very wealthy community, most of her
parents' relatives being renowned figures in the entertainment industry.

Speaker 6 (02:08:45):
From the very beginning, Gwyneth has been surrounded by show
business elite, and she also had access to some of
the finest schools, both in New York and Los Angeles,
where she was born.

Speaker 1 (02:08:55):
She studied in a private girls school, and since the
Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Gwenna began acting
as a child thanks to her father, who got her
a role in a TV movie he was directing. But
the most shocking example of how disconnected from the real
world her childhood must have been is the name of
her godfather.

Speaker 6 (02:09:12):
Gwyneth Palchow's godfather is Steven Spielberg of Indiana Jones E. T.
Schindler's List fame, and one of her first roles was
actually in his film Hook.

Speaker 1 (02:09:22):
This nineteen ninety one movie, a variation on the theme
of Peter Pan, was her first opportunity to appear in
front of a worldwide audience, but she was only cast
for a brief appearance in the role of young Wendy.
Her big break would still have to wait for a
few years. In the following years, she transitioned from child
actress to a more mature and character driven actress, and

(02:09:44):
she quickly had the opportunity to prove she was not
only a product of nepotism, with more serious roles that
caught the professional's attention. She played alongside legendary actor James
Cann in Flesh and Bone in nineteen ninety three, but
it was in nineteen ninety five that she appeared in
a movie that stunned an entire generation, David Fincher's Seven.

(02:10:05):
She was a supporting actress alongside Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman,
and for many reasons, this role was the start of
her worldwide fame. Not only was the movie an international
success praised by critics, but she also started dating her
co star Brad Pitt, making them one of the most
glamorous couples of the nineties. They were engaged and stayed

(02:10:25):
together until nineteen ninety seven, but Paltrow was not ready
for marriage yet and they broke up. The rest of
the nineties were very successful for Paltrow. In nineteen ninety five,
she was a supporting actress in Jefferson in Paris, directed
by James Ivory, but her real breakthrough role came in
nineteen ninety seven.

Speaker 6 (02:10:44):
Gwyneth's first starring role was in the film adaptation of
Jane Austen's Emma, where she played the lead role to
critical acclaim. After that, she had a year where she
starred in five films, including Shakespeare in Love.

Speaker 1 (02:10:59):
Gwyneth was now a renowned actress and a star, and
nineteen ninety eight was her biggest year yet with her
lead role in Shakespeare in Love.

Speaker 2 (02:11:07):
She was praised like never before.

Speaker 1 (02:11:09):
She won both the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress
and the Academy Award.

Speaker 6 (02:11:13):
Gwyneth won the Academy Award when she was only twenty
six years old, making her one of the most coveted
actresses of her time.

Speaker 1 (02:11:21):
Everything should have been fine, but a darker secret lied
behind the shiny facade and was not revealed until twenty seventeen.
The man behind the success of Emma and Shakespeare in
Love was none other than Harvey Weinstein, and many have
said that Shakespeare in Love would have never won an
Academy Award if it wasn't for Harvey's merciless method.

Speaker 8 (02:11:44):
I will admit that my company is aggressive, you know,
and in our marketing campaigns.

Speaker 1 (02:11:49):
But beyond his aggressive desire to win awards, Gwyneth also
had to deal with the worst aspects of.

Speaker 2 (02:11:54):
The infamous producer.

Speaker 1 (02:11:56):
Before shooting Emma, he summoned her to his suite for
a work meeting, and it ended with Weinstein placing his
hands on her and suggesting they head to his bedroom
for massages.

Speaker 2 (02:12:06):
I was a kid, I was signed up. I was petrified,
she said in an interview.

Speaker 6 (02:12:11):
She got out of the hotel room and she went
straight to her boyfriend at the time, Brad Pitt, and
told him what had happened. The next time they all
saw each other was at a Broadway premiere for Hamlet,
and brad Pitt approached Weinstein and told him if he
ever made Gwyneth uncomfortable ever again, he would kill him.

Speaker 2 (02:12:31):
Gwyneth recalled, it was so fantastic.

Speaker 1 (02:12:34):
He leveraged his fame and power to protect me at
a time when I didn't have fame or power.

Speaker 10 (02:12:39):
Yet it stopped.

Speaker 6 (02:12:41):
The harassment stopped there, but not before Weinstein told Gwyneth
not to tell anyone ever again.

Speaker 1 (02:12:46):
She apparently made peace with him, and in the end,
the man who sexually harassed her helped her win an
Academy award the next year.

Speaker 25 (02:12:53):
I would like to thank miror Max, especially the bomber
Weinstein my godfather.

Speaker 1 (02:13:01):
And despite this personal setback with the disgraced producer, she
pursued her career successfully with another Weinstein movie, The Talent
in Mister Ripley co starring Jude Law and Matt Damon.

Speaker 26 (02:13:11):
She was the first person I cast, and again I
tried to write into her, and so I think that
the Marge in this film has as much to do
with Gwyneth Paltrow as it does to do with Patricia Highsmith.

Speaker 1 (02:13:23):
At the same time, her personal life was still making
headlines since she was in a new relationship with another
Hollywood darling, Ben Affleck. They share the screen in the
two thousand movie Bounce, but they broke up when Afflick
began having a relationship with Jennifer Garner. Despite her tumultuous
love life, Gwyneth was everywhere.

Speaker 2 (02:13:40):
At the beginning of the two thousands.

Speaker 1 (02:13:42):
She showed her versatility by acting in Shallow Hall, a
two thousand and one movie directed by the comedy geniuses
the Farley Brothers.

Speaker 15 (02:13:49):
My mother's very worried about what I have to do
in the movie, she was. The question she asked me
the other day was how off color or what's the
most off color thing.

Speaker 10 (02:14:00):
I have to do?

Speaker 15 (02:14:00):
But there's really nothing.

Speaker 10 (02:14:02):
It's very sweet.

Speaker 16 (02:14:03):
You know, there's a lot of beautiful, beautiful women in Hollywood,
more so than anywhere in the world, but there are
not a lot of people with inner beauty in Hollywood,
not nearly as much. And you know it seems not
like as much as in normal places. Gwyneth has both.
She's a stunner. You know, she's just beautiful, and she's

(02:14:24):
certainly more pretty in person you know when you meet her.
But she's also got something in here.

Speaker 2 (02:14:28):
She got hard for that movie.

Speaker 1 (02:14:30):
She had to wear a twenty five pound fat suit,
showing she wasn't scared to break her image and try
something unexpected.

Speaker 15 (02:14:37):
Hal is looking at me or I'm in a scene
with how I look like this because the inner beauty
that I possessed is sort of what he sees transformed
into outer beauty. And anytime anybody else looks at me,
I look the way I really look, which is very heavy.

Speaker 2 (02:14:55):
Her range was great.

Speaker 6 (02:14:57):
She said that she divided her films between movies that
she loved in movies that she made for money.

Speaker 1 (02:15:02):
That same year, she was in another cult movie, The
Wes Anderson directed The Royal Tenenbombs.

Speaker 24 (02:15:08):
I basically knew I was going to do it before
I even read the script, because I'm such a fan
of Lesses and I sort of missed out on the
opportunity to work with him before and I was sent
the script and I just thought it was brilliant. And
I was so excited.

Speaker 1 (02:15:21):
But that movie, with its star studded cast, marked the
end of a golden era for Pultrow. Her impressive movie
run that went from seven to the Royal Tenant Bombs
stopped in two thousand and two. For several years, she
would fail to find a successful movie project. She joined
several box office bombs, such as Possession in two thousand

(02:15:42):
and two, where Skycaptain, and the World of Tomorrow. This
last film, released in two thousand and four, was an
ambitious action movie co starring Jude Law and Angelina and
Joe Lee.

Speaker 27 (02:15:51):
I don't think anybody's ever seen anything like it.

Speaker 10 (02:15:53):
I certainly have never seen anything like it.

Speaker 1 (02:15:55):
Unfortunately, the movie that cost seventy million dollars only grossed
fifty eight million at the international box office. Between two
thousand and four and two thousand and seven, she mostly
landed small parts in forgettable movies or lead roles in
movies that failed to connect with the audience.

Speaker 6 (02:16:11):
Gwyneth withdrew from acting by two thousand and four. She
said that it was partly to raise her two young children,
but it was also because she wasn't equipped to handle
the pressures of that came with winning the Academy Award,
which to some can be a curse as well as
a blessing.

Speaker 1 (02:16:28):
Her personal life, on the other hand, was much richer
than her professional life and could explain why her movie
career didn't seem to be her priority at the time.
In October two thousand and two, Paltrow met Chris Martin,
the leader of the British band Coldplay. They started a
relationship right away, and the next year Paltrow was pregnant
with Martin's child.

Speaker 2 (02:16:48):
They married in December two thousand and three.

Speaker 1 (02:16:50):
Paltrow and Martin have two children together, a daughter named
Apple born in two thousand and four and a son
named Moses born in two thousand and six. Did cut
down on work after becoming a mother, and she also
revealed that she suffered from postpartum depression after the two
thousand and six birth of her son. This new focus
on her family and lifestyle led her to become a

(02:17:11):
new Gwyneth that she would soon reveal to the public.

Speaker 2 (02:17:14):
In two thousand and eight.

Speaker 1 (02:17:15):
She would not only reconnect with her movie career, she
would also start what would become a multi million dollar company.
For a brief moment, her movie career seemed to be
back on track.

Speaker 2 (02:17:28):
In two thousand and eight, she was.

Speaker 1 (02:17:30):
Cast in her first high profile movie in years.

Speaker 6 (02:17:33):
Gwyneth attended the Ken Film Festival with the film Two Lovers,
starring Joaquin Phoenix, and it received critical acclaim.

Speaker 1 (02:17:39):
This film showcased the best of her acting abilities and
allowed her to work with a director and an actor.

Speaker 2 (02:17:44):
She admired, I had.

Speaker 28 (02:17:46):
Known Gwyneth socially for many years, and she was the
person I had in mind, because I frankly think she's
a fantastic actor and very underutilized right now.

Speaker 25 (02:17:56):
I just feel appreciative to be in a position to.

Speaker 2 (02:18:02):
Work with really good people.

Speaker 25 (02:18:03):
Sometimes James is exceptional is he really loves the actor,
and you feel very valued and very supported. Working with
Joaquin has been one of the top two experiences of
my life in terms of working with an actor.

Speaker 2 (02:18:22):
But this James Gray directed movie would prove.

Speaker 1 (02:18:25):
To be an exception and one of her last ventures
in independent cinema.

Speaker 2 (02:18:29):
On a very different note, she.

Speaker 1 (02:18:31):
Was cast that same year in a movie that would
launch the most successful saga in movie history.

Speaker 6 (02:18:36):
In two thousand and eight, Gwyneth Paltrow returned to the
screens in Iron Man as Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's assistant
and love interest. While it was a role that put
her back in the spotlight, it wasn't one that maybe
demanded so much of her, as it's a very small part.

Speaker 2 (02:18:52):
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Pepper Potts my assistant.

Speaker 8 (02:18:55):
Can you imagine? I mean, how silly is that? And fantastic?
Who's your assistant?

Speaker 1 (02:18:59):
Gwynneth movie that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe changed Cultural's career,
and not necessarily.

Speaker 2 (02:19:05):
For the best.

Speaker 1 (02:19:06):
For the next decade, she would appear in no less
than seven Marvel movies, including some of the most successful
movies of all time.

Speaker 6 (02:19:14):
But it seemed that even though she was doing really
well in her acting career and she even won an
Emmy for her rolling Glee in twenty eleven, her interest
in acting was starting to wane.

Speaker 1 (02:19:24):
And she was only a supporting actress in movies that
didn't require the best out of her.

Speaker 27 (02:19:28):
So many people said about The Avengers, like, I'm so
happy Pepper was in The Avengers because it gave the
movie like a center, you know, even though it was
one scene. I think, you know, Pepper's relationship to him
is something that keeps the movie grounded. It's always in
reality and there it's always funny and full of love,
but always witty. And I think it's a good it's

(02:19:52):
a real relationship.

Speaker 1 (02:19:53):
But her involvement in the Marvel movie franchise was a
perfect way for her to stay relevant in the movie
industry without investing too much time in it. She had
something more important to focus on, something completely unrelated to cinema.

Speaker 6 (02:20:06):
Around the time that she was doing Iron Man, Gwyneth
Paltrow started a newsletter, which was initially just intended for
her friends for tips for healthy living.

Speaker 1 (02:20:15):
When I hit send on the first Goop newsletter at
my kitchen counter in two thousand and eight, I had
no expectations. A weekly newsletter seemed like a fun thing
to do, not a serious business.

Speaker 2 (02:20:25):
Paltrow explained. This weekly newsletter was composed of her travel.

Speaker 1 (02:20:29):
Recommendations, her health centric recipes, and her shopping discoveries. Her
idea growing more and more popular, Paltrow decided to take
her newsletter to the next level.

Speaker 6 (02:20:38):
It quickly developed into something bigger because there was a
lot of interest in what she was saying, and in
twenty eleven she actually incorporated and Goop became a company.
Goop itself means nothing. It has Gwyneth Paltrow's initials on
the end and also two o's in the middle, because
she was told that any successful company needed a double ol.

Speaker 1 (02:20:59):
In its first year as an e commerce platform, Goop
generated almost one million dollars in sales, and the year
after approximately one point three million.

Speaker 2 (02:21:08):
But what is Goop all about?

Speaker 1 (02:21:10):
The shop has several sections, including beauty, Fashion, wellness, and home.
It covers a wide range of products from skin and
body care to cosmetics, hair care, fragrances, candles, and health products,
and the company's expansion during its first years was phenomenal.

Speaker 6 (02:21:26):
Goop has achieved an amazing amount of attention from the
time that it was a newsletter to now having pop
up stores, collaborations with different companies, wellness summits, and a
TV show in the making. It really has grown into
something spectacular.

Speaker 1 (02:21:45):
But behind those figures lies a very controversial company. The
inner beauty section of the shop and the health products
Gweneth advertises and sells are both what made the brand
famous and what brought her harsh criticism and some problems
with the American additional system.

Speaker 6 (02:22:01):
The kindest critics of Gwyneth Paltrow's gup call it pseudoscience,
but the harshest critics call it snake oil salesmanship with
actual harmful consequences.

Speaker 1 (02:22:11):
The first obvious criticism Gwyneth had to face was when
she created the Goop website and the price she asked
for her products. People were quick to point out that
many things on her list were ridiculously priced, such as
a four hundred and twenty five dollars kitchen knife or
a one thousand, two hundred twenty dollars casserole dish. The
website also publishes what they call alternative studies about health

(02:22:34):
and lifestyle, and many people claim that most of these
studies have no actual evidence and data to back up
their claim. It has even been said that some of
Goop's advice was dangerous. One example among many is Paltrow's
article about beastings. She said she's been using apitherity for
years to cure her injuries, which means taking live bees

(02:22:54):
and making them sting her to get their venom in
her bloodstream. But there have never been any real studies
that prove beastings are beneficial for curing aches and pains,
and it can be dangerous or even lethal for people
with allergies. On a less dangerous but maybe even more
eccentric note, Gwyneth also promoted a beauty practice called the
vampire facial.

Speaker 6 (02:23:15):
A vampire facial is when your own blood is drawn
and it's placed in a centrifuge to separate plasmine platelets.
Then your face is prepared, either through micro needling or
something else that makes it more susceptible to your own
blood as it's being placed on your face to promote healing.

Speaker 2 (02:23:36):
That's what a vampire facial is.

Speaker 1 (02:23:38):
This medical intervention, also promoted by other celebrities such as
Kim Kardashian, might be one of the most ridiculous ways
to take care of your skin. It truly embodies how
far from the real world these personalities evolve.

Speaker 6 (02:23:51):
The thing is, the average group reader earns over one
hundred thousand dollars a year, and they can afford to
go beyond regular medicine and explore alternative ways to achieve
youth and health and all these things because there's often
nothing to lose, except for in those extreme cases when
it can actually cause harm.

Speaker 1 (02:24:12):
When she's not promoting crazy facial treatments, Paltrow and Goop
also organize events, but even there she would face harsh criticism.
In twenty nineteen, she held a Goup summit in London.
The tickets for the two day summit were priced around
six thousand dollars. It's unclear exactly what guests hoped would
be included for such a high sticker price, but clearly

(02:24:33):
whatever Paltrow offered did not meet their expectations.

Speaker 6 (02:24:36):
When you're organizing a summit and you're charging nearly six
thousand dollars for it, there are going to be people
who are not happy with what they get, calling it extortionist,
and to them, there wasn't enough Gwyneth at the summit.

Speaker 2 (02:24:51):
There weren't enough.

Speaker 6 (02:24:53):
Things that they received in return for their six thousand.
Of course, Goop has refuted that and said that they
did received plenty of Gwyneth during the summit. But the
point is for six thousand dollars, you can't satisfy everybody.

Speaker 1 (02:25:07):
But that's only a small part of what Goup is
mostly known for. Some of their products attracted the general
public's attention, but not always for good reasons, and they
even brought Gwyneth to court.

Speaker 2 (02:25:18):
More about those scandals. Later. In the meantime, Paltrow's personal life.

Speaker 1 (02:25:22):
Was going through ups and downs, and she managed to
tackle it as if her life was part of her brand.

Speaker 6 (02:25:27):
Since Gwyneth's engagement to Brad Pitt an on off relationship
to Ben Affleck in the late nineties, everyone has been
obsessed with her love life. She was married to Chris Martin,
the frontman of Coldplay, for ten years, with whom she
has two children, and when the two of them divorced,
Gwyneth didn't just want to walk away friends. She wanted

(02:25:47):
to redefine divorce itself, so she called it a conscious uncoupling,
which means that it's no one's fault, it's two individuals
needing to heal.

Speaker 1 (02:25:58):
Following her divorce, what she called called her conscious uncoupling,
Gwyneth quickly got involved in a new relationship. She met
Brad Falchuk, a screenwriter and director, on the set of
the TV show Glee, and after years of flying under
the radar, they got married in twenty eighteen. We feel
incredibly lucky to have come together at this juncture in
our lives, when our collective successes and failures can serve

(02:26:21):
as building blocks for a healthy and happy relationship, the
happy couple said following their wedding. But even though her
love life seemed healthier than ever, her company was going
from scandal to scandal.

Speaker 6 (02:26:33):
The most interesting thing about it is that the more
Goop is criticized, the more eyeballs it receives as a result,
and people are always fascinated by what's on the side.
Much of that website is dedicated to travel tips and
beauty advice and wellness tips, and it's not really absurd.

(02:26:55):
But what goup is actually most well known for are
the few things that the critics have latched onto, like
the coffee Anima machine. There's no evidence that inserting coffee
into your colon through your rectum does anything but harm.

Speaker 1 (02:27:14):
Another controversial product appears to be some stickers called body Vibes.

Speaker 2 (02:27:18):
The product, as.

Speaker 1 (02:27:18):
Described on the Goop website, uses NASA spacesuit material to
rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies. Body Vibe stickers,
made with the same conductive carbon material NASA uses to
line spacesuits so they can monitor in astronauts of vitals
during wear, come pre programmed to an ideal frequency, allowing
them to target and balances.

Speaker 2 (02:27:39):
Soon after the product was launched.

Speaker 1 (02:27:41):
Mark Shellhamer, former chief scientist at NASA's Human Research Division, declared, Wow,
what a load of bs this is.

Speaker 6 (02:27:49):
NASA immediately refuted this, saying they do not use the
same material in their spacesuits and Goop remove those claims
from the website.

Speaker 13 (02:27:58):
But.

Speaker 6 (02:28:01):
I'm guessing continued to sell the stickers for sixty dollars
per ten.

Speaker 1 (02:28:07):
But surely the most controversial products sold by Goop were
the jade egg and the rose quartz egg. These products,
also called vaginal eggs, were described as healing products that
could balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and
increase bladder control, and also help connect the second chakra,
the heart and yoni for optimal self love and well being. Unsurprisingly,

(02:28:31):
Goop was quickly accused of making claims that were not
based on scientific evidence.

Speaker 10 (02:28:36):
So, yeah, this is our sexual health section. Some hair
are there.

Speaker 6 (02:28:41):
Apparently a jade egg is very porous, so by putting
it inside your lady parts, you can actually induce like
a bacterial infection. That doesn't sound great. Your pelvic flour
is apparently not supposed to contract all the time, which
is why Also, like exercising your muscles with a jade

(02:29:05):
egg is probably not the healthiest.

Speaker 1 (02:29:08):
The California Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force, which
is made up of lawyers from ten counties in the state,
attacked Gwyneth and her company. The scandal was growing bigger
and bigger, and Goop decided to settle the lawsuit four
days after it was brought to them.

Speaker 6 (02:29:22):
And they settled the suit for one hundred and forty
five thousand dollars, not admitting that they'd done anything wrong,
but saying that anyone who was unhappy with the product
that they had bought would be reimbursed.

Speaker 1 (02:29:35):
A Goup spokesman said this settlement does not indicate any
liability on Goup's part. While the company has not received
any complaints regarding these product claims, it is happy to
fully refund any customer who has purchased any of the
challenged products, and Gwyneth herself came forward to announce that
Goop would from now on hire a lawyer to examine
all claims on its website, as well as a full

(02:29:57):
time fact checker. Another one of Gwennet's passions is cooking,
and she has been vocal about it, creating tutorials on
her website and publishing cookbooks, but once again she had
to face attacks. Critics were keen on destroying her diet recommendations.
She has promoted raw eating that proved to be harmful,
and she has recommended diets that could help you lose

(02:30:17):
fourteen pounds in four weeks, which of course is unhealthy.
She even said that while you're doing your diet, you
could drink one to two glasses of wine per day,
which would actually be considered heavy alcohol use by many
health organizations.

Speaker 27 (02:30:30):
Maybe we need alcohol while this is gone. Yeah, that
would be one of you guys want to drink? I
think I have a martini.

Speaker 6 (02:30:35):
And mainly the criticism that she received is that her
elimination diet again is based on no scientific evidence. But
at the same time, she also brought back the avocado
toast and made it a phenomenon, so it's not all bad.

Speaker 1 (02:30:50):
Gwyneth was now more a CEO than an actress, but
she still found time to spend a few days on
the set of the twenty nineteen phenomenon Avengers Endgame, making
her a part of the biggest cinema successes of all time.

Speaker 9 (02:31:03):
It's amazing to me how much these movies mean to
the fans, and it's very wonderful to be a part
of it. And I've never been a part of something
that resonates so deeply with people and all across the globe.

Speaker 1 (02:31:20):
That same year, although she declared stepping aside from acting,
she appeared in the Netflix show The Politician, but for
a very personal reason. One of the creators of the
show is none other than her husband. He had to
convince me a little bit. I've got a pretty big
day job over at goop dot com, so I sort
of put acting on the back burner. But he was

(02:31:40):
writing and was like, I think I'm writing a part
for you, and I was like, I don't think I
can do a part, And lo and behold, here I am.
And it appears Gwyneth is not foolishly putting her acting
career aside. Despite the trials and the ongoing criticism, In
twenty eighteen, Goop was valued at two hundred and fifty
million dollars. In the end, all those scandals are Goup's

(02:32:02):
best publicity.

Speaker 6 (02:32:04):
These are things that just fascinate people endlessly, and even
when being criticized for it, more and more and more
people just want to know what It's about.

Speaker 2 (02:32:16):
What a ride.

Speaker 1 (02:32:17):
Gwyneth Paltrow's life has been so far, from a door
daughter to Hollywood darling, from the dark secrets of the
Weinstein scandal to the Oscars, from her declining career to
her company's success. Few actresses from the nineties have managed
to stay as relevant over three decades. Despite mockery, Gwyneth
shows no signs of fatigue, and she will certainly remain

(02:32:37):
a controversial figure, one of those stars who it's impossible
to fully grasp. If there's one member of the Kardashian
Jenner family who doesn't need an introduction, it's Kylie Jenner.

Speaker 10 (02:32:50):
She is at the.

Speaker 1 (02:32:50):
Forefront of every newsfeed, on the cover of every magazine.

Speaker 2 (02:32:54):
Questions about whether.

Speaker 1 (02:32:55):
Or not she's had plastic surgery, and news of her
makeup line making millions never stop. However, interview after interview,
Jenner claims the person you see online is not the
real Kylie, which begs the question who is Kylie Jenner exactly?
She spent her teenage years in the spotlight, but remained
the most secretive of all the Kardashian sisters, and against

(02:33:17):
all odds, she not only became the most influential member
of the Kardashian Empire. She also became the youngest self
made billionaire in history. But how from her transformation into
a beauty icon to her tumultuous relationship with her parents,
from the mysteries behind her business successes to the dark
side of her personal life. Let's dive in to Kylie

(02:33:38):
Jenner's secrets. The part of Kylie's life that is most
disclosed is, of course, her incredible family, but not many
know how it all really started. To understand who Kylie
really is and how she became such an icon, Let's
first focus on the woman who builds the Kardashian Empire.
Her mother, Chris Jenner Chris Mary Houghton, was not predestined

(02:34:02):
to become the mother and manager of the most powerful
family in show business. Born in the middle class family
in San Diego, her life took its first turn toward
fame when she met lawyer Robert Kardashian when she was
only seventeen years old. Robert was twenty eight at the time,
and they soon began a relationship and got married.

Speaker 2 (02:34:21):
They have four.

Speaker 1 (02:34:21):
Children together, daughters Courtney, Kim, Chloe, and son Rob. They
separated and divorced in nineteen ninety one, but remained close friends.
But it wasn't until nineteen ninety four that the Kardashian
name became famous.

Speaker 6 (02:34:37):
Before the Kardashians became the megabrand that they are today.
Chris Jenner was best known for being the ex wife
of Robert Kardashian, who was the defendant in the murder
trial of OJ Simpson, who was accused of murdering Nicole
Brown Simpson and Ronald Goleman.

Speaker 1 (02:34:51):
What has been described as the most publicized criminal trial
in history brought the Kardashian name under media scrutiny. She
and her family also suffered emotional turmoil since they were
close to OJ Simpson's.

Speaker 2 (02:35:03):
Ex wife, Nicole Brown.

Speaker 1 (02:35:05):
Chris was already remarried at the time of the OJ
Simpson trial.

Speaker 6 (02:35:09):
Bris Jenner is a former Olympian who in recent years
transitioned from being a man to being Caitlin Jenner.

Speaker 2 (02:35:17):
I saw o Kylee's using Instagram filter what.

Speaker 1 (02:35:21):
They have two daughters together, Kendall and Kylie, born in
nineteen ninety seven. The blended family lived the rest of
the nineties and early two thousands peacefully in la but
in two thousand and three, tragedy struck them once again.
Robert Kardashian was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died only

(02:35:41):
two months later at age fifty nine. The family kept
evolving under the radar, but not for long. Kim, now
in her twenties, was about to change her family's destiny
for good with a famous tape.

Speaker 6 (02:35:53):
Kim Kardashian at that point was fairly well known for having.

Speaker 2 (02:35:58):
A sex tape that leaked.

Speaker 6 (02:36:00):
Into the press, and the reason that meant anything to
anyone was that Kim Kardashian was also a friend of
Paris Hilton's, so the two of the combination of that
made her an interesting character.

Speaker 1 (02:36:15):
Just like it happened with Paris Hilton before her. The
six tape made Kim Kardashian the paparazzi's new favorite target.
That's where her mother, Chris Jenner, who was already the
manager of her daughter Kim at the time, entered the
game and had a crazy idea. From her daughter's fame,
she would create an empire no one.

Speaker 2 (02:36:31):
Could have imagined.

Speaker 6 (02:36:35):
Chris Jenner had an idea that her family was interesting
enough to be a reality TV show. At the sort
of start inception of reality television, and she took this
idea to Ryan Seacrest, who was the host of American
Idol but at the time was getting into producing, and
Ryan Seacrest sent a camera crew to a Kardashian barbecue

(02:36:58):
and shot footage of the fan emily that we now
know today on television.

Speaker 1 (02:37:02):
In an interview with Vogue in twenty nineteen, Kim declared
her mother is the person she admired the most. At
fifty years old, she really honestly didn't know how she
was going to make ends meet and take care of
all these kids, and after fifty she built this huge empire.

Speaker 6 (02:37:18):
Chris Jenner is the mastermind behind the Kardashian She is
not just the person who came up with the idea
for the television show. She's a fierce proponent of capitalizing
on it. She is the manager of all her daughters
and receives ten percent of the profits, and she has
no qualms about using their notoriety to make more money.

Speaker 1 (02:37:38):
The show premiered on October fourteenth, two thousand and seven.
It met success immediately and was renewed for a second
season only one month after its premiere due to high ratings.
It has since become one of the longest running reality
television series in the US. The Jenners and the Kardashian
supremacy in show business was only starting, but the Genner
name was at the time still overshadowed by the Kardashian brand.

Speaker 6 (02:38:01):
The Kardashians have definitely evolved since the beginning, but when
it started, there was Courtney, the oldest sister, who was
the hot sister and that was her character. There was Kim,
who was the well known kind of fame hungry, celebrity sister.
There's Chloe, who had a hard time fitting in because
she didn't fit quite the beauty standards of her older sisters.

Speaker 2 (02:38:20):
And Rob, who as.

Speaker 6 (02:38:24):
The only man, felt like the odd men out I'm
guessing most of the time. And then there was Kylie
and Kendall who were just children. They were just there
for sort of comedic value in the beginning, little funny
clips of them acting out. The greatest difference between the
Kardashians and the Genners is that the Kardashians were in
their twenties when the show started, so they made a

(02:38:46):
very adult decision to be part of the series, whereas
the Jenners, Kendall, and Kylie were ten and twelve at
the time, so they didn't really have much of a
choice they were asked, But the kind of decisions you
make at that age really up to you.

Speaker 1 (02:39:01):
The Kardashian phenomenon quickly went beyond high ratings. Their omnipresence
on TV, on magazine covers, and on social media quickly
turned the three older sisters into beauty icons. They truly
have set new beauty standards for an entire generation.

Speaker 6 (02:39:15):
So prior to the Kardashians, the beauty standard was very eurocentric,
the skinny women like Paris Hilton, who was very famous
at the time, and then as the Kardashians came onto
the scene, that all changed and curveer bodies were being
more celebrated now. Mind you, at the same time, as
much as they're being celebrated for their natural curves, this

(02:39:38):
is also a group of people who do everything in
their power to change their appearance with by any means possible,
whether it's makeup or allegedly plastic surgery.

Speaker 10 (02:39:48):
So with half a billion.

Speaker 6 (02:39:49):
Social media followers, they are the greatest influencers that we
know right now, and they've managed to parlay that into
different businesses Chloe, for example, has managed to parlay it
into hosting and health and fitness products. There's makeup lines,
there's collaborations with clothing lines. That all they've all kind

(02:40:11):
of found their niche, but at the same time, at
the core of it is the Kardashian brand.

Speaker 1 (02:40:16):
At the time, Kylie, the youngest of the family, was
growing up silently in the shadows casted by her older siblings,
and celebrity wasn't always an easy load to carry.

Speaker 2 (02:40:24):
For the young girl. No one could have guessed what
was about to happen.

Speaker 1 (02:40:28):
Her entry into adulthood would prove to be one of
a kind. All the money and fame in the world
can protect you from feeling anxious, and Kylie Jenner is proof.
She suffered during her teenage years from different forms of
harassment online and at school, so she didn't enjoy being
famous as much as her older sisters. She told Interview

(02:40:50):
magazine that reading mean things about herself online is her
biggest fear. I wake up every morning with the worst
anxiety at like seven or eight because I I think
that there's a bad story about me and I have
to check. She also wrote in an Instagram post, people
are so quick to say horrible things about me every day,
over and over, and sometimes I can't take it. It's resulted

(02:41:11):
in a lot of anxiety for me that I've never
had to deal with before. Ever, my every move has
been documented for the whole world, and it's been a
nightmare trying to find myself through all of this, and
I've absolutely lost a part of myself.

Speaker 6 (02:41:26):
Kylie has said that she doesn't know or remember any
other kind of life, so in a sense, it's normal
for her because it's all she's ever known. At the
same time, she has also released several video clips saying
that she felt bullied by the world since the age
of ten, so in that sense, I don't know that
if she could make that decision as an adult, that's
what she would do.

Speaker 1 (02:41:46):
However, her popularity also gives her a huge platform to
fight back, and not just for herself, but for anyone
who's been a victim of bullying. She used her experiences
to create a social media campaign called hashtag I Am
More Than as a vehicle to support those who've also
struggled with bullying. I wanted to show my fans the
people who inspire me, who have been through the darkness

(02:42:07):
of bullying and not only overcome it, but done something
better with it. Another dark aspect of her life is
her insecurity about her own body, an anxiety that would
lead her to an extreme transformation and endless controversy.

Speaker 6 (02:42:20):
Kylie grew up watching her sisters indorse a lot of
beauty products and becoming sex symbols in their own right
because of their body shapes, and I think for someone
of her age, that must have influenced her a lot
in how she wanted to appear and what she wanted
to look like.

Speaker 1 (02:42:39):
Kylie first started making waves on the internet around twenty
fourteen when she debuted noticeably fuller lips. At first, she
claimed her bigger lips were an optical illusion attained by
overlining her lips. I love lipliner and overlining my lips,
she told E News in twenty fourteen.

Speaker 6 (02:42:55):
Because we've followed Kylie from the age of ten, of
course her body has changed over the course of time,
but today she seems like a completely different person physically
than she was when we started. Of course, part of
that can be attributed to puberty and to pregnancy, but
I also think that she wanted to look more like
her sisters. I don't think Kylie Jenner has ever explicitly

(02:43:17):
said that she felt like the ugly duckling of the family,
but her action seemed to imply that she wasn't quite
comfortable in her own skin. There's been a lot of
speculation in the media about Kylie Jenner having plastic surgery
because her body and her face have changed so dramatically
over time.

Speaker 2 (02:43:32):
But the only thing that.

Speaker 6 (02:43:33):
Kylie herself is admitted to is getting lip injections.

Speaker 1 (02:43:36):
When Kylie admitted to having work done, she was asked
why she lied in the first place. It's just an
insecurity of mine. People are so quick to judge me
on anything. I might have tiptoed around the truth, but
I didn't lie. The rumors didn't stop there. In the
following years, media scrutiny about Kylie's body got more aggressive.
Every picture of her on Instagram seemed to start a

(02:43:58):
new controversy. Many claimed online that she did not only
get her lips done, but that other parts of her
body had also been modified. She never acknowledged any of
those rumors.

Speaker 8 (02:44:11):
That's so fund it.

Speaker 1 (02:44:13):
In this perpetual storm of comments on her body and style,
Kylie was still.

Speaker 2 (02:44:17):
Searching for her own self.

Speaker 1 (02:44:19):
Take one look through Jenner's Instagram feed and you'll see
she never sticks to one look for long. I've just
had this addiction to changing my hair. It makes me
feel like a new person. I started wiggs and now
everyone is wearing wigs. While it may seem like her
ever changing tresses are a fashion statement, Jenner says she
uses the changeups as a way to learn more about

(02:44:39):
herself as a person. What I think set everything off
is when I cut my hair off when I was
sixteen and dyed at blue. After that, I just felt
so free and wanted to experiment with my look.

Speaker 2 (02:44:51):
I thought I knew who I was and what I
wanted to look like.

Speaker 1 (02:44:54):
But then once I did that, I was like, WHOA,
there's a world of difference. I just felt like I
could be whoever I wanted to be, and I'm all
about experimenting.

Speaker 6 (02:45:05):
For someone who felt insecure in her own skin, Kylie
has now become a beauty icon in her own rights,
and she has also become the obsession of millions.

Speaker 2 (02:45:14):
With her lips and with the new.

Speaker 6 (02:45:18):
Beauty standards that she herself has set.

Speaker 1 (02:45:21):
But if Kylie has always refused to show her whole self, online.
It's because, according to her, it leaves more room for people.

Speaker 2 (02:45:27):
To say things about you.

Speaker 10 (02:45:29):
It seems.

Speaker 6 (02:45:29):
Compared to her older siblings, Kylie is more private than
the rest. She's submitted to holding back a part of
her for herself and creating a public persona because that's
what people expect from her.

Speaker 1 (02:45:41):
She learned very young the value of privacy, and she
slowly turned the scrutiny she suffered from into her main weapon.
From those endless rumors she would build an empire on
her own. Her teenage years saw many attempts to build
her own identity and make her voice heard in the
Kardashian's world. With her closest sister and best friend, Kendall,

(02:46:04):
she quickly formed a business duo and started developing projects
and collaborations to find out who she really was. For example,
they wrote a science fiction novel together. And of course,
Kylie and Kendall, always being around their older sisters, were
intrigued by fashion as well. They sharpened their business skills
by launching many clothing brands as well as a shoe brand.

(02:46:26):
Their first one was as early as twenty thirteen with pacsun.
It was followed in twenty fifteen by a collaboration with Topshop,
and in twenty sixteen they debuted their own line, Kendall
and Kylie. Those first business steps proved to be successful,
Kylie was starting to accumulate a small fortune on her own.

(02:46:46):
Kylie quickly proved she was incredibly smart and mature for
her age. The most impressive thing in that regard is
that she never let the media storm get her down,
and after the first rumors on her lip injections, she
managed to turn all the talk into cash. Her interest
in make up and some successful collaborations in the nail
polish industry led her to become a millionaire. Another part

(02:47:07):
of the strategy was using the insane scrutiny she was
under by multiplying social media endorsements. Some of her Instagram
posts are in fact ads for products, and an endorsement
deal post on her Instagram can.

Speaker 2 (02:47:19):
Earn her around one million dollars.

Speaker 1 (02:47:22):
It's no surprise she became the highest valued influencer on
social media and the ultimate proof of her supremacy over
social media is this tweet Kylie posted in twenty eighteen.
So does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is
it just me?

Speaker 10 (02:47:37):
Ugh?

Speaker 2 (02:47:37):
This is so sad.

Speaker 1 (02:47:39):
This tweet led that successful app to drop seven point
two percent, which represents a one point three billion dollar
loss in the app's market value. A single tweet from
Kylie could change a trend, but all that success is
still not enough to make any one a billionaire. So
how did she get on the cover of Forbes magazine?
How did she become the world's young this billionaire? We'll

(02:48:01):
get to that later, because her personal life still had
some crazy and unexpected surprises for her to deal with.
Her lips and body are not the only elements of
Kylie's life to make the news. Her love life is,
of course, on the cover of every tabloid, and it
began incredibly early. As early as her first teenage years.

Speaker 6 (02:48:21):
From twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen, Kylie was hanging out
with rapper Tiger, And the reason I'm using hanging out
is because they didn't call it a relationship, perhaps because
Kylie was fourteen at the time and Tiger was twenty two.

Speaker 28 (02:48:37):
Hey happy birthday? Stop Hey, happy birthday too?

Speaker 8 (02:48:47):
Yes, happy man.

Speaker 1 (02:48:51):
After Tiger, Kylie got closer to another rapper, the successful
and talented Travis Scott. They started dating in April twenty seventeen.

Speaker 6 (02:49:00):
Kylie's relationship with Travis Scott was actually fairly undramatic until
the spring of twenty nineteen, when she discovered allegedly some
messages on Instagram from fans who were a little too
flirty for comfort, and she accused him of cheating.

Speaker 2 (02:49:14):
According to media sources.

Speaker 6 (02:49:16):
Now he canceled his show, immediately, flew back and also
deleted his Instagram account for a certain period of time,
and they seemed.

Speaker 10 (02:49:25):
To be on track again.

Speaker 5 (02:49:27):
So maybe that was.

Speaker 1 (02:49:28):
Just a false alarm, But those rumors didn't outshine the
most important event in Kylie's life so far. Very soon
after they started dating, it was announced that Kylie was pregnant.
She was twenty years old at the time.

Speaker 6 (02:49:40):
Kylie has said in interviews that she always expected to
be a young mother. I think her pregnancy came as
a surprise, but she was prepared for it emotionally, and
the fairly recent lovers didn't let the early pregnancy transform
their still blooming relationship. By the time Kylie and Travis
had a child, they hadn't been dating for very long,

(02:50:02):
so they weren't living together and they're they're dating each other,
they're just getting to know each other. That also means
that when Travis does a show, Kylie shows up to
support him.

Speaker 1 (02:50:13):
It's actually really cute. Her older sisters all expose their
pregnancies to the world. Courtney and Kim both appeared pregnant
on their TV show. No line seemed to exist between
their public and private life.

Speaker 9 (02:50:25):
We've been a maternity with no because we've been filming
keeping up with her.

Speaker 1 (02:50:28):
Naturally, think in a reality show, you don't get miss
riney Lee.

Speaker 2 (02:50:33):
Just reality.

Speaker 18 (02:50:34):
If I'm in bed that he just said's.

Speaker 2 (02:50:36):
Going to be nursing and changing diapers.

Speaker 1 (02:50:39):
But Kylie once again proved how different she was by
dealing with her pregnancy in the exact opposite way.

Speaker 6 (02:50:45):
When Kylie found out that she was pregnant, she stopped
doing the show entirely and also jumped off social media
because she felt like her hormones were crazy and she
was very emotional and that was the better thing to
do for both her and her child. As soon as
she had her baby, she then released sort of a
Here's where I was for the past nine months, and

(02:51:07):
then we all got to follow her journey.

Speaker 1 (02:51:10):
Her daughter's Stormy, was born on February first, twenty eighteen,
Kylie's life was changed forever, but more importantly, her own
self image has changed.

Speaker 6 (02:51:19):
I think Kylie has finally found peace in her own
body since having a baby. It certainly seems like she's
found calm and all those those pressures, like the problem
she had with image before, Not that they're gone, but
certainly she has something more important to focus on right now.

Speaker 1 (02:51:36):
She declared, I feel like having a daughter and thinking
about beauty in the future has definitely changed me, and
I feel like it has made me love myself more
and accept everything about me, even my ears.

Speaker 2 (02:51:49):
I always felt like they stuck out.

Speaker 1 (02:51:50):
Too far, and she Stormy has the same ears as me,
and so now I love my ears.

Speaker 6 (02:51:56):
In having a child, Kylie has realized that this daughter
will look like her natural self, and that's made her
fine self acceptance and tried to step back and become
her natural self as well.

Speaker 1 (02:52:08):
Indeed, after her pregnancy, something has changed in Kylie's look.
Some noticed her lips looked smaller and that Kylie looked
more like her old self. She admitted her lib filler
was gone, but it wasn't gone forever. Short after, she
went back to the more excessive look she became famous for.
Another important event occurred in Kylie's life, something very few

(02:52:29):
have had to face before her. Her and Kendall's father,
formerly known as Bruce Jenner, came out as a transwoman.

Speaker 6 (02:52:36):
When her father transitioned into a woman, now Kitlyn Jenner,
it was initially very traumatic for Kylie and her sisters
as well, because they felt like they were losing apparent.

Speaker 2 (02:52:50):
As time has progressed.

Speaker 6 (02:52:52):
I think that it's been a huge relief for all
of them because it was a secret that these girls
had carried with them since childhood. On a certain level,
they always knew that everything wasn't the way it appeared
on the surface, and now they actually have a better
relationship because everybody gets to live their own true lives.

Speaker 1 (02:53:13):
Despite all those challenges, the still very young Kylie Jenner
never stopped aiming for more. Let's see how she changed
the game for good and met the most astonishing success.
How did Kylie Jenner become the youngest self made billionaire
in history? We already mentioned how she met her first
business successes and became a millionaire during her teenage years,

(02:53:35):
but her genius move was to invest her money to
create her own company Kylie Cosmetics. She started small in
twenty fifteen by launching right after her lip filler controversy,
the Kylie Lipkit, a twenty nine dollars lipliner and lipstick duo.

Speaker 2 (02:53:50):
She put two hundred and.

Speaker 1 (02:53:51):
Fifty thousand dollars of her own money to produce the
first fifteen thousand kits, and the success was absolutely unbelievable.
The figures are hard to believe.

Speaker 10 (02:54:02):
This is just so exciting.

Speaker 1 (02:54:05):
The first collection sold out in less than a minute,
and in twenty sixteen, when she started producing more, each
product launch became an event. Another collection was sold in
less than a day and earned her nineteen million, not
too bad for a starting business.

Speaker 6 (02:54:27):
The reason Kylie Jenner did so well so fast is
because she's been on a television show since the age
of ten. So in twenty fifteen, when she launched her product,
she had one hundred and sixty million followers who bought
out her lip Kit.

Speaker 10 (02:54:40):
In mere minutes.

Speaker 1 (02:54:42):
She was then the one hundred percent owner of a
company that wouldn't stop expanding. In twenty seventeen, the net
worth of Kylie Cosmetics was three hundred thirty million dollars. Shockingly,
Kylie's mother Chris, who was the manager of all her daughters,
was still taking ten.

Speaker 2 (02:54:59):
Percent of her earnings.

Speaker 1 (02:55:01):
Her plan to turn her daughters into an empire was
a smashing success or.

Speaker 22 (02:55:05):
It's on my way to my mom's house to surprise
her with her birthday guests.

Speaker 25 (02:55:11):
I can explain, I don't even know what to do.

Speaker 2 (02:55:17):
You started.

Speaker 1 (02:55:18):
One of the most surprising aspects of this success story
is the fact that the only thing Kylie needs to
market and sell her products is herself. She managed to
create the most direct line between herself and her customers.

Speaker 6 (02:55:29):
As the seventh most followed person on social media, she
never has to turn to a third party for any
sort of marketing.

Speaker 2 (02:55:35):
She is her brand.

Speaker 13 (02:55:37):
Halloween Flashsdale starts.

Speaker 6 (02:55:44):
Now, and if she needs models to promote her brand,
she turns to her own family Altogether.

Speaker 1 (02:55:51):
Kylie was in twenty eighteen worth nine hundred million dollars,
already far ahead of her sisters, and in August eighteen
it was the ultimate consecration for the young businesswoman. Kylie
appeared on the now famous cover of Forbes. They estimated
that she was on the verge of becoming the youngest
self made billionaire. This would beat out Mark Zuckerberg, who

(02:56:14):
became a billionaire at age twenty three.

Speaker 2 (02:56:17):
However, the publication's use of the term self made sparked controversy.

Speaker 6 (02:56:22):
When Kylie ended up on the Forbes list as the
youngest self made billionaire, she faced criticism because she comes
from a position of privilege. Now, the way Forbes defined
self made is that your business is not inherited, and
she did, in fact start her own business, and she
also says she started her business with her own money.

Speaker 1 (02:56:42):
Her mother, Chris, has defended Kylie's self made status, saying
that while Kylie had an advantage as a famous Kardashian Jenner,
she built her business on her own and that should count.

Speaker 2 (02:56:52):
Listen, my girls, you can say that certain things.

Speaker 1 (02:56:54):
Have been handed to them, but it takes a lot
of work to do what they're all doing. We're talking
about money, and the money she's made is her own.
It began with her own savings. She put her own blood, sweat,
and tears into it.

Speaker 2 (02:57:06):
It was her idea.

Speaker 1 (02:57:08):
Kim also came forward to slam Kylie's haters, and she
made a valid point. What because we came from a
family that has had success. To me, that doesn't really
make sense. I know so many people like that who
haven't turned out to be as successful as Kylie. Kylie
has come full circle. She grew up before our eyes
and we witnessed one of the most impressive transformations.

Speaker 6 (02:57:29):
Kylie has really gone through an evolution. We got to
know her as the comedic relief on the show, and
since then she's evolved into a beauty icon, a social
influencer more powerful than her sister's, a businesswoman, an entrepreneur,
and a grown up.

Speaker 1 (02:57:48):
Her company is still expanding, and just like her company,
Kylie's influence in media, business and entertainment is not about
to slow down. We now remember the younger Kylie, the
little ten year old no one paid a tenition.

Speaker 2 (02:58:00):
No one could have guessed the success she would become.

Speaker 1 (02:58:03):
What she has managed to create before she turned twenty
one was simply unheard of. Kylie Jenner's adult life is
only starting, but she has already made history.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Behind The Oscar Glow: Hollywood's Dirtiest Secrets 2025

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

Behind The Oscar Glow: Hollywood's Dirtiest Secrets 2025

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal