This programme contains some strong language.
Hi, I'm Daniel Kaluuya, and welcome to the Graham Norton show.
CHEERING to the Graham Norton show.
Woo!
Hello!
Good evening.
You're all so welcome to the show.
Yeah, keep clapping.
No, stop.
Hello.
Welcome to our virtual studio audience.
There you are.
And you, yes.
Now, it looks like you've all set up your
cameras properly, unlike that poor lawyer in America this week.
Did you all see this?
Yeah.
This lawyer that appeared in front of a judge on Zoom
and realised he had a filter on his screen.
Here he is.
Uh...
I'm prepared to go forward with it.
I'm here live.
I'm not a cat.
LAUGHTER
I like this guy, having a bit of a
sense of humour failure about the whole thing.
Though not as humorless as the judge who joined the call.
Yay!
We didn't even make that picture.
It already existed.
Very good.
OK, so who have we got for you on the show tonight?
A treat for Valentines weekend, it's the Mr and
Mrs of mirth, top comic Marcus Brigstocke and even topper
comic Rachel Parris.
He's the star of Primary Colours and Hustle, now bringing
theatre to your home with a new play, Hymn.
It's Adrian Lester!
And she's the star of Layer Cake, American Sniper and Foxcatcher,
now bringing us the dark romance Wander Darkly, it's Sienna Miller!
And joining us later, the star of Blossom and the Big Bang Theory,
Mayim Bialik will be here.
And we'll be meeting the Oscar-nominated
star of Get Out, Widows and Black Panther, our very own
Daniel Kaluuya will be joining us.
Plus, here in the studio we will have stunning
music from rising star Arlo Parks.
Welcome, everybody.
Lovely to see you.
As you were noticing, Adrian, look, people touching.
This is all legal, it's fine.
We're married, and yet somehow you're still making
it creepy.
And now, Sienna, you've been locked down with your daughter.
Yes.
And, now, this is top parenting, I would say.
So you already had in your house, what do you call
them?
They're like a skate...
A hover board.
A hover board?
Yeah.
These are the things you stand on...
Lethal, but yes.
And you balance on them.
And you hover and they move.
OK, but you took the hover board, you took your daughter, and you said
I can make something better than that.
Yes.
What did you create?
We made a car with a cardboard box.
I mean, it's time for creativity.
Obviously, it's a nightmare.
There's only so much that you can do with what you
have in your house, and we found this cardboard box and turned it
into a car and put it on the hoverboard and then
she could somewhat drive around.
Now, that sounds a bit lame, I'll give you that.
But here it is in action.
This is your daughter in action.
Here we go.
There it goes.
Oh, wow!
By the way, the balance required to do that is
quite impressive.
That's all her.
And she's in the box.
LAUGHTER
She was,
she was in the box.
Oh, no.
Here she is.
CHEERING
That is brilliant.
It sort of sums up 2020, especially with the crash at the end,
yeah.
Adrian, I know you are a keep fit fanatic, so how is lockdown
going?
It's been going OK.
I'm out of the house now, I'm working.
Doing some theatre.
Of course, yes, that's why you're here.
We'll talk about that.
"What are you doing?"
Oh, yes, that.
No, because I remember, when you were on the radio, you had special
stretchy cycling jeans.
You said it out loud.
Everyone knows now.
That's not them, though, is it?
This's not them.
Yeah, we talked about cycling a lot, and I remember telling you
about a climbing shop and in these climbing shops, you know you have
got climbing walls and things like that, the shops there,
and every item of clothing in there is
stretchy - shirts, jeans, you know, really good for climbing.
And they look like denim.
Like a jegging?
But great for the bike.
Great for life as well, because all of my clothes have
mysteriously shrunk during lockdown.
But literally all of them, which is weird.
I think it is weird.
What a terrible wife you are.
And, Marcus and Rachel, you've been amusing
yourself in lockdown.
What is the thing you're doing on Twitter?
Yeah, well, we've listened obviously during
lockdown to a lot of daytime radio, and the Jeremy Vine show became a
bit of a fixture that we would listen to.
It's amazing.
So, basically, if you haven't heard, the
Jeremy Vine show, you'll know from years at Radio 2, the Jeremy Vine
show is a phone in show where Jeremy just gets the subject from the day's
news, so he doesn't always know everything about it, and the people
bringing in no absolutely fuck all, but very opinionated, so Jeremy
will kick it off, and the bigger the subject the better.
AS JEREMY VINE: So loads of people phoning in to Radio 2 91
the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2.
Should we be putting people in quarantine arriving here?
We've got a phone.
You have we got on line one?
IN CORNWALL ACCENT: Hello, Jeremy...
This is Margaret from Cornwall.
Should we be putting people in quarantine, Margaret from
Cornwall?
Well, it's a good question Jeremy, but let me first talk to you
about electric scooters.
They're taking over the road, Jeremy, I
won't have it!
They're dangerous.
Are they legal?
Do you need a licence for them?
OK, well, we do want to stick to the Covid situation
if we can.
I'll tell you one thing about Covid, Jeremy.
There's too many repeats on television.
I've watched the same film three times.
This is Ed Sheeran.
AS HIMSELF: So we do that, but the lovely thing is that when we
put it out there, Jeremy Vine retweets them.
He finds it absolutely hilarious, so it's
lovely.
It's really fun.
Now, we start tonight with Sienna Miller
and her film Wander Darkly.
In the introduction, I described it as
a dark romance.
It's one of those films...
Good luck, because it's quite hard to tell people about it.
What are you saying?
Who are you, I guess?
OK, it's really difficult to describe.
It's a very surreal love story and essentially we get into a
car accident and we are not sure whether I died or survived and Diego
Luna and my character go back on a journey to the inception
of their relationship and kind of track where
they went wrong, so they go on this surreal journey back in time and
through time.
Honestly, I've never been able to...
Because, oddly, it doesn't sound like it
would be, but it is kind of based on a real event.
It's based on a true story, yeah.
And we've all gone mad this year.
No, it is, the writer-director Tara Miele, she was
amazing, she had a car accident with her husband
and was very concussed.
They were both all right.
It wasn't great.
But nowhere near the tragedy that she kind of embellished it to
be in the film.
And there was a moment where she wasn't sure whether
she had died.
She called her child.
She was in a concussion.
And the child ignored her, which kids do,
but for a split second she was like, what if I died and I...
And it was that one tiny little thought that
inspired this.
Wow.
Well, listen, we've got a clip.
This is you after the accident, being reunited with
your husband Matteo, played by Diego Luna.
You can see me.
What?
I died.
I died, Matteo.
OK.
It so wrong that that was it.
It was just headlights and a half gasp and...
Stop.
You're confused.
We had an accident.
Oh, my God.
You're dead too.
You're concussed.
That's it.
No.
I'm dead.
I can step into traffic now.
It wouldn't matter.
Hey...
Hey.
It's OK.
What is this, like purgatory?
What's happening to me?
It looks really good.
I like it.
Very good.
That summed up lockdown for me.
You know, it's very...
She has no idea where she is or what's happened to
the world that she's living in and the fact that this film
is coming now is just like, everyone's like, I
get it.
And you went to do filming in LA, but you didn't have the money
to lock down streets.
Yes, yes.
On a big film, they can block traffic for
five minutes or so, but this, we had 60 seconds and a lot of the scenes
that were on the street were kind of really intense drama and emotion
and, yeah, I'd have to jump out of a moving car and kind of attack
someone and break down sobbing and they'd be like, OK,
cut, release traffic, and it was then 20 minute
break and then back into it, so it was...
It was really...
I wish that I could say that I loved making it.
It one of the more...
It was one of the ones where I was dragging my
carcass to the finish line, convinced I'd
ruined the entire thing
and then it got into Sundance and it's kind
of done much better than I
thought.
No fault of anyone else.
Did you have to cut because there were like passers-by who were just
like...
No, annoyingly, no.
That doesn't happen to me.
Do you think in LA, maybe they're more used to it?
I feel like if that was here they would be like,
"hey, look, there's a
film."
I've had a few kind of "oi, oi".
No, not there yet.
When you were in Hustle, you filmed a lot
in London, just on the streets of London, so you must have had that,
people going, "oh, look."
Yeah, we had people going over...
There's one moment that comes to mind, and
it's...
We did the sequence where we had to run naked
across Trafalgar Square, and I never imagined
when I was trying to be an
actor in those voice classes and studying a text that
I would just get me kit off and run across Trafalgar
Square.
Hey, you should have been doing squats.
There it is!
Beautifully toned.
Thank you.
If I looked like that, I'd run naked round
Trafalgar Square.
But you can't shut Trafalgar Square.
You can't shut it off, and you can't
stop the public going where they want to go.
You can ask them.
But if they refuse...
"I'm going, I'm going shopping."
They just go through.
So we had 100 extras on that day and we
had scattered them about, and in Trafalgar Square, that meant
nothing.
So we jump out of the back of this van, and they
shoot us running across the square and no one shouts cut and so we run
across the square and we keep going and we are clutching things, junk,
and we cross the square and we run up the stairs and then they shout
cut from way back, but by then with one take,
I'd run across the square, I'd done my bit, I'd got to the top
of the stairs, I knew where I was going, and I turned
right and there was a woman, a tourist,
who'd just come to London to see the sites...
Lucky her.
And she was with her daughter and I remember this
poor woman, I turned and I ran towards her, and she went...
Argh!
And she covered her daughter's face like,
"You can't look."
Was that this moment?
Yeah, that's that moment, just before I turned right.
I'm sure one day I'm going to get a bill from
that kid for therapy.
It would be funny if they're watching this
going, "That was the man!
That was the man!"
It was real, it actually happened!
I'm a huge Hustle fan.
I've seen it from start to finish twice.
It was one of...
It was before I was with you.
Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if it could be
seen, but it was mentioned about you running naked across the square,
Rachel went...
Now, I don't know what this mime is, but it's
something.
It was just like, oh, I know the scene you mean.
I didn't notice that.
Yeah.
You were looking over there.
And we ran naked across the square.
I thought you were holding them, but clearly something
was out.
I was just going, "oh, yes."
Ladies and gentlemen, Sienna's film Wander Darkly is available from
digital download from the 8th of March.
Right, it's time for our first virtual guest tonight.
He's the of star Get Out and Black
Panther.
Please say hello to Daniel Kaluuya.
Hey!
Daniel Kaluuya!
Pipe smoker extraordinaire.
Yeah, on Friday night I'm going to do one.
I'm going to get a pipe.
Now, apparently, I hear...
You look amazing.
I hear in first lockdown you slightly pulled the ripcord.
You let go.
I don't even let go, I just let love happen.
I let love happen.
I just like eating takeaways.
I decided I didn't want to cook.
I just decided I was just living my life.
I was living my life.
I don't know.
I was having everything.
I was eating everything, so I was just, just living, Graham.
What about you, man?
How did you handle lockdown?
Well, I didn't like it because I had to do a show in my
back bedroom, a television show, not like for neighbours.
Doing a stripper gram.
"Check this out!"
Babestation.
Graham's on Babestation.
I just kept working.
You, apparently you have also learnt skills in
lockdown.
Yeah, I learned how to write with my left hand.
Wow.
It's useful.
None of us thought of it.
That sums it up, doesn't it?
2020.
I don't know, because I write a to-do list every morning, you
know, because it helps my brain, because my brain's like...
So I just thought, let me just like...
I've always wanted to learn with my left hand,
so I just did it every day, and what happens is the first
day I did it, I looked like...
I don't know.
I looked like my house had been bombed, that's how it looked,
it was shaking.
But seeing the progression in six months was
amazing.
It kind of makes you realise that, yeah, if you just put
your mind to it and show up every day, you can really make some
advancements.
Yeah.
That's really useful.
You did them at the same time?
Adrian, you're giving me ideas there.
I'm thinking about that.
I want to see everyone's faces when you do it,
when you go, "I'll make a
note of that."
Oh, yeah.
Or in meetings, "I'll sign all the checks.
I'm signing all the cheques."
OK, let's talk about your new film.
This is Judas and the Black Messiah.
Already Golden Globe nominated.
Congratulations, Daniel Kaluuya.
And so this is a really...
It is an important bit of American history,
which certainly I didn't know.
Tell us about it and who do you play?
I play Chairman Fred Hampton, who is a leader
Black Panther party,
and so basically the Black Panther party has a
history of being antagonised by the US Government
and by the mainstream US media.
And but the reality is that they were, like, feeding kids
with a breakfast programme, they were setting up
free health clinics, they were educating kids, they were
doing so much amazing stuff for the community,
and because they were doing that, people thought, they are
an issue, they are a problem, they're an issue, they're a problem,
through William O'Neal played by LaKeith Stanfield
and basically he's
trying to bring down the Black counterparty from within, but he
starts believing in what Fred is saying.
I certainly wasn't aware of this part of that story.
Where you are how did you prepare for
this?
How does it work?
I had to do so much stuff.
I sat down with an opera singing coach because I have
all of these speeches.
I have all of the speeches, and I realised, like,
oh, I'm in a play and everyone else is in a film, you know?
And so I have to, like, project my voice for
like 12 hours.
I have to do a scene that day or do a scene the next day,
so I had to go to an opera singing coach and sit down with her, do
gospel songs, do songs that felt like the speeches, and then do the
speeches, like, to engage your diaphragm and condition your vocal
cords and then, like, study cadence because he had a different cadence
to when he spoke to when he did speeches,
so I would do all that, do
you know what I'm saying?
So it was a lot.
It was a lot.
You did an amazing job, because at the end of
the film we see a little clip of the real man,
and it's extraordinary what you've done.
Thank you for that, Graham.
Yeah, I worked really hard, man, yeah.
Well, listen, we've got a clip.
And funnily enough, it is you as Fred Hampton,
doing one of those famous speeches.
It's not a...
It's not a question of violence or nonviolence,
It's not a question of violence or nonviolence, it's a question of
resistance to fascism or nonexistence within fascism.
You can murder a liberator, but you can't
murder liberation.
You can murder a revolutionary, but you can't
murder revolution.
And you can murder a freedom fighter, but you
can't murder freedom.
I said...
I am...
I am a revolutionary.
I am...
A revolutionary.
I am...
A revolutionary...
Wow, wow, wow.
And this film sees you reunited with LaKeith Stanfield from Get Out.
Yeah, yeah.
So when you're out and about, people must have
loved it, seeing the two of you together.
Yeah, we went to a bowling alley in Cleveland, because we shot
in Cleveland, and then like people were coming up to LaKeith and were
like flashing stuff and doing something, and I thought, oh, man.
I thought it just happened to me.
I felt less alone.
I thought, oh, man, that happens to you as well.
Oh, man, that's cool.
But, like, I kind of sometimes to sit in the corner
with my hat low and just pretend I don't even exist to myself anyway.
I try and keep in the shadows and stuff.
Was it you, Rachel, who was watching?
You have watched it a few times?
To or three times, yeah.
Yeah.
We loved it so much, and I'm sure this is the point of the film
that we literally sat there going, get out, get out of there!
You must get out.
Yeah, when I have conversations now, I have to say
Yeah, when I have conversations now, I have to say you must leave.
Leave now.
And, like, that film did so well.
I mean, it took hundreds of millions of
dollars around the world, but is it true that you didn't go
you didn't go to the premier?
Why
did this happen that you didn't go to the Premier?
You weren't invited to the premiere?
No.
They didn't invite me, bro.
They didn't invite me.
No, that can't be true.
On the Sundance world premiere, yeah, I was
in Atlanta because I was shooting Panther.
I was shooting Panther and then I was chilling and I was like,
OK, my schedule is open and just didn't get the invite.
I wasn't invited.
And someone text me, it's gone really well.
I'm like, that's cool.
Oh, my God.
That's the industry, Graham.
You know what I mean?
Somebody fucked up!
I mean...
Has this come up since then?
Like, have you asked them about it?
Nah...
I don't ask questions.
I was just like, OK, man, that's cool.
That's not cool.
I would send a stern left-handed note.
wanted, you feel me?
But you mentioned Black Panther there and
Black Panther two, am I right in thinking that is now happening?
That's what the streets are saying.
OK.
Which will be very exciting, but also kind of tinged with terrible
sadness because Chadwick Boseman is no longer with us.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
It's...
You know, I don't even understand how it's going to...
We're going to have to honour him and
honour...
Give as much to his legacy as much as he gave to us, because he
gave us everything, you know, stayed here
to give us everything and an
incredible man and incredible soul, you know?
Black Panther two, we look forward to that.
Judas and the Black Messiah is coming to screens very
soon.
Do see it if you can.
Daniel Kaluuya, everybody!
Good night.
Love.
Appreciate you, Graham.
Bye.
What a nice man.
Such a kind of focus, amazing person, isn't he?
Yeah.
That won't last.
He's young.
Exactly.
Once he's got that left hand writing thing down, he'll
be fine.
He can work on his right foot and then the left.
Now, people
can't go to the theatre right now, so Adrian
Lester, for it is he, is
bringing the theatre to them.
So tell us all about it.
This is a new play, Hymn, as in a song in a
church, not a man.
Oh, there it is.
I didn't need to do that.
It's written up.
Go.
Well, OK.
Lolita Chakrabarti, the writer, my wife, wanted to write
a play about love between two men that was like not
physical or romantic,
and the more she thought about it, the more she thought about the men
that she knew, my extended family, cousins, brothers, uncles, brothers
and our friends, she realised she's never seen that on stage, really.
There's always some sort of excuse made for that kind of sensitivity
between two men, and she wanted to explore it, and she gradually
started putting pen to paper or finger to
keyboard and came up with
this story of two men who meet at a funeral,
think they have nothing in
common, and they gradually get to connect and become friends and it
gets deeper than that, and there's singing,
there's dancing, there is
body popping, there's break dancing.
We do all...
We do all sorts of things.
She...
She also wanted to make it a sort of virtuosic peace that we would be
really put through our paces and, yeah, we are...
So its live streaming from the Almeida Theatre
from this Wednesday, the 17th, to Saturday the 20th.
Tickets available now.
And what's great is the tickets aren't very
expensive and the Almeida
is one of those places, it sells out immediately,
so this is actually giving more people a chance.
Yeah,
more people, and so we are doing it purely to cameras.
There's nobody in the theatre.
It's live every night.
If something goes wrong, I mean, thousands of people are going to see
it.
And I had to get my head around that, that actually over a thousand
people could be watching each performance, and yet we are in a
theatre that seats 300 and something, so that is kind of weird,
but we are socially distanced all the way through.
We have to stay two metres apart.
I can't touch any prop that he uses.
Different props, different chairs,
it's been...
Tricky to rehearse, but it's been really, really good to get
some theatre at the moment.
We've got a picture of rehearsals here.
So is that pool noodles to keep you two
metres away?
As in I get close to him, he can shout, back
off!
It's a noodle.
And it's being used...
This is a sort of gym scene, and it's being used
as one of the props.
Oh, so it's a prop.
It's a prop.
Because I thought...
People do use those noodles for the two metres.
He's using it as a prop and we are just working
a scene out there, but
it was useful.
All the markings on the floor we had, so that is one
metre one way and I meet at the other way.
We were very careful about everything.
The idea of a live show now, I mean, I'm craving that.
We are in one right now.
A good one.
Oh, to see a good one!
You two are far too close.
I don't know what's going on there.
Yeah, this is outrageous.
Where's my noodle?
And do you run naked across the square
towards a mother and child at any point?
I've been trying to get that into the script.
Nearly as exciting, you do break dancing.
Where you able to break dance before, or did
you learn for this?
I was able to break dance before, and I can break
dance less now.
Because it's not a skill...
I mean, is it a skill you've kept up?
It's kind of.
OK, I'm going to stand up...
Can I stand up and do this?
Yes.
You've got to do it.
Don't spin around because sweat will fly off
and hit us all.
Break dancing is the stuff you do on the floor, OK?
So body popping is the stuff you do when you're standing up.
So when we started I was about 13, 14.
Body popping started with kind of mime.
We would do things like this.
That was kind of...
Oh.
Sort you would do that.
Then it moved into robotics, which everybody knows what robotics
is.
That kind of...
He's a robot, he a robot!
And then you get electric Boogaloo, which is where you chase
a ball of energy around your body, so you get things like that.
CHEERING so you get things like that.
They're loving it.
I mean...
Screw friendship between two men.
That's what people want to see.
They want to see some Boogaloo.
Electric Boogaloo.
So there's a bit of that, but they reminisce and they go back
and they talk about music they used to listen to and dancing they used
to do and it has a lot of that in it as they connect and find this
affection for each other.
The amount of people that are doing that right
now at home.
If I was on my own, I would be really trying it out.
Well, because Marcus and Rachel, you're
kind of doing a similar thing.
But you're doing stand-up, but a live stream.
But with much cheaper tech.
And we can touch each other.
In fact, often the audience insist on
it.
So this is weekly.
It's every Tuesday night.
Yeah, we started off doing some online gigs when lockdown
first happened, and we were obviously a bit sceptical at first
because it's so different to what we're used to, but then we
started...
We got offered a weekly online gig with just as, which we
thought we would have enough material for like ten minutes.
Yeah, because it was three quid for people to watch
and we said to the guy, it was James Gill, who runs this
brilliant comedy club called Always Be Comedy and they've smashed
it for online shows.
And we said, "Sure, we'll probably manage half an hour or so".
We've done about an hour and 20 minutes every single Tuesday
for the last eight months or so.
Wow.
It's great, so we spend a week writing notes,
coming up with stuff and games and bits that we do, and it's fab.
But for comedy, it can't be like Adrian was saying.
You must be able to hear them.
Yes, so there's a front row, basically.
About 20 to 30 people?
Yeah, enough to feel like you can see and feel people laughing...
And not laughing.
"Oh, never going to say that again".
We can see right into their homes as well.
So in terms of the interplay, you can just go for it
and slag off their houses.
But isn't this weird?
So here you are, you both have these successful stand-up careers,
but lockdown has turned you into a double act.
It really did.
We'd done a bit of improv together in the past,
before we got together.
So we'd worked together before sporadically,
but since lockdown, we've had to.
Huh?
That's not how I see it.
Because we were both ill.
We both had Covid very early on when the pandemic hit,
and when we came out of that and then realised,
"Oh, everything's gone, our tours have gone,
the Edinburgh Festival's gone, everything we're doing has gone",
we were playing around doing these lip-synch videos.
They went mad.
They went nuts.
Literally, what was the first one you did?
Some massive thing.
We've got a clip.
They start quite simple.
Is that the first one?
Yeah.
Then you did a reply.
Then you started involving costumes.
And look at this.
The comedy value is through the roof.
And then a smoke machine...
# Each move you make...
Oh, my God, Keith.
But did you have all this stuff in your house,
the smoke machines and things?
Yeah, from so many Edinburgh shows and festivals that we've been to.
So we do have things like costume and the rest of it.
And people started getting really picky, didn't they?
Yeah, people would be like,
"I see you've ordered lederhosen off Amazon".
We were like, "No, Marcus owns lederhosen".
Of course I do.
It really blew up.
And then we got this phone call from Good Morning America,
and how many briefing calls did we have?
About seven.
With the most American man we've ever heard,
called something like Chad Todd.
Buck Warcrime.
And we went through it so many times, and then eventually
we were on Good Morning America and these two presenters,
who clearly knew nothing about what we were doing, went,
"And in the United Kingdom, a married couple have been amusing
themselves with whatever this is".
They were like, "Marcus and Rachel, we love you guys so much".
We were like, "You don't know who we are".
Did they think you were just a wacky couple?
I think so.
And throughout that time as well, Fox News were tweeting us
in caps once an hour, going, "This is Fox News.
You have to get back to us".
Capped e-mails to both agents.
We were like, "We're not speaking to you, you're Fox News!"
Well, it is Valentine's Day weekend.
Have you got lovely plans?
You don't have to tell us.
We've both got radio shows on on Valentine's night,
so we'll be listening to our own work.
There are things that people think are going to be romantic.
It's weird, the things that people think are going to be romantic.
Like this, the rose petals on the bed, I don't understand.
That looks like somebody died.
The wreath at the top.
But if that's too subtle, some people could go with something
more direct, like this.
That's what I want.
Or you can do what this man did and buy a rose floral
duvet and pillow set.
Oh, no!
Absolute crime scene.
It looks like, "I love you so much, I've eaten you".
Men, why not shave your chest and stomach hair into hearts?
This is why not.
The upside down heart on his tummy is so sinister.
But for Valentine's Day, you need stuff.
I found a shop where you can get all your essentials.
Covered.
And if you're alone on Valentine's Day, my local
supermarket has a lovely suggestion.
As far as I know, that's a real picture!
Happy Valentine's Day, well done.
Right, time to meet our final virtual guest tonight.
She is the star of Blossom and The Big Bang Theory.
Please welcome Mayim Bialik!
That's who that is.
How are you?
I'm OK, how are you?
All the better for seeing you.
Sienna Miller is here, Adrian Lester is here,
Rachel Parris, Marcus Brigstocke.
Hello!
Are you in Los Angeles?
I am in Los Angeles, which formerly had been the head
of quarantine central, but now we're doing a little better.
Yes, I believe we've taken that title.
So obviously, people in this country know you from Blossom
and The Big Bang Theory, but now you have a strange link to Britain
because you are kind of Miranda.
Yeah, we are doing an American adaptation, with all great
respect towards the BBC, the general United Kingdom
and Miranda.
We're doing an American version.
We like to point out to people that just like there are people
who understand Fawlty Towers and people who don't,
we have different senses of humour.
So this is definitely an American version.
It's called Call Me Kat, and it's called Call Me Kat
for a very good reason.
Well, her name is Katherine and her mother always
calls her Katherine when she wants to be known as Kat,
so we have that contentious mother-daughter relationship
which Miranda captured so nicely.
But also, she does own a cat cafe and instead of a joke shop,
we have a cat cafe.
We didn't think American audiences could handle a joke shop,
so we have a cat cafe.
But it's all very well in a script to go, "She opens a cat cafe",
but then you need to...
open a cat cafe.
So how many cats are in the cafe on a good day?
Well, depends if you like cats or not.
We have about six to ten cats, depending on the scene.
And I'm very proud to say our cats are not drugged or tethered.
But that means our cats are not drugged or tethered,
so it can be very challenging.
So this is Call Me Kat and it should be coming
to our screens later in the year.
I mentioned Blossom, which we know from the '90s.
But before that, you played the young Bette Midler in Beaches.
Correct.
Was that the first thing you did?
That was the first thing that got me a lot of notice.
I'd done a lot of appearances on American sitcoms like Webster
and Facts Of Life, some of the best culture we export
to the rest of the world.
So I'd done lots of sitcom work that year, but I was considered
a late bloomer as a child actor.
I started acting at 11, which sounds young, but most child
actors start when they're two and three in commercials and such.
So Beaches came out when I was 13 and I'd just started
acting a year before.
And it was from that that I got the series Blossom.
You're not the only child actor here, because Adrian Lester,
how old were you when you appeared in the seminal drama Crossa-Roadsa?
You were in Crossroads a lot.
I was in Crossroads.
I got my Equity card when I was about 15.
Wow.
So they used me as a young walk-on
in this long-running series that was shot in Birmingham, north of London.
Every summer when I finished school, I would do this before
I went to drama school.
For about three years, I would do some Crossroads.
We've got a still of you in a later episode.
Rachel, there's going to be a lot of this.
Check out Adrian Lester in Crossroads.
Look at those in the short shorts!
Look at the hair!
I can't stop looking at the shorts.
No, look at the hair!
We all stopped at the shorts.
Marcus, you were very young, was it Oliver you were in?
This was tragic!
Yeah, I was cast as Mr Bumble in Oliver and we
rehearsed it for two weeks.
And just before we did the first one, they said,
"We thought it would be lovely if Mr Bumble didn't
sing so much as speak.
So we'll play the music, but you come on and you hold
Oliver and you say, 'Boy, boy for sale'".
And I thought, "That's good".
They were being very kind.
So I do it and go, "Boy, boy for sale".
# He's going cheap!
And they go, "Ah, b-b-b...remember we said about no singing?
..Remember what we said about no singing?
Let's do a lovely big speaking voice".
I knew.
I was like, "I'm shit, aren't I?"
But Sienna Miller, of all of us, you nearly appeared in theatre
the youngest of all.
Oh, I did!
My mother went into labour with me during the Nutcracker Suite
in New York City.
And she's such a trouper.
It's a lot to hear, but her waters actually broke
during a performance and she stayed.
Just after Christmas.
Apologies to the people next to her, but she just rode it out,
full contractions, and I was born the next day.
It was the 27th of December.
Jo Miller, ladies and gentlemen.
I guess it's less embarrassing to sit there after your waters break
than to get up and...
She said, "I wrapped my coat around me and I was not going to miss..."
But you know what British people are like.
I'm thinking of the people sitting next to her trying
to pretend nothing's happened.
Clearing their throat.
So Mayim, you had this huge success early, and then you did that
thing that nobody does.
You walked away.
You decided, "I'm going to get an education".
But you didn't just get an education, you're a PhD.
Yeah, I have a doctorate in neuroscience.
I left the industry for 12 years, actually.
I really wanted to experience life where you're valued for what's
between your ears and not just what you can provide
for other people.
And I was really ready.
I come from an immigrant background.
My grandparents were immigrants, so I was raised that you go
to college no matter what, so when Blossom ended, I was 19,
two years out of high school, and I went to college and ended up
meeting the person I married.
We both applied to grad school together and I had my first son
in grad school, he's now 15, and I had my second son.
At eight months pregnant, I was that lady on the stage, really pregnant.
And I taught neuroscience for about five years
after getting my degree and literally was running out
of health insurance and figured, "If I can just
get a couple of parts, I'll get my insurance back".
I had never seen The Big Bang Theory, I didn't know
what it was and was cast and literally, my life changed.
I had at that time a toddler and an older toddler.
So were you the only one on set who knew what you talking about?
Well, Jim Parsons would say I was the only one who knew
what everyone's lines were, not just mine!
Presumably if they got things wrong, would you step
in and go, "Excuse me, I have a doctorate in neuroscience"?
Well, no one wants to be the actor, especially when you come on a show
Well, no one wants to be that actor, especially when you come on a show
that's incredibly successful.
You don't need this nerd coming on being like,
"Excuse me, you got that wrong".
But yes, if there were biology-specific things,
I was often asked to fix it, "Make it right, tell us
what you would be doing in a lab".
Because you worry that you know all this stuff, where's it going?
But you're using it now.
I psychoanalyse everyone that I meet, use it all the time.
But you're using your knowledge now in your new podcast,
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown.
Tell us about it.
So 2020 was quite a doozy, and I decided to start saying no
to a lot of other requests in my life and hunker down
and create a podcast exclusively about mental health.
I grew up in a home riddled with mental illness.
I don't want to say I've suffered from, but I've lived
with OCD and depression and anxiety my whole life.
And breaking down the stigma is also something I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to share what I've tried, what's worked and what hasn't.
I've gone to shamans, taken pharmaceuticals,
I've done a lot of things and I'm still figuring it out and that's
what my life is now, podcasts and working on trying to be
a normal person for my children as much as possible.
Well, you are an inspiration.
The podcast is available wherever you get your podcast,
and Call Me Kat will be heading here shortly.
Mayim, a pleasure to meet you.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mayim Bialik!
Thank you.
Goodnight.
Before we hear tonight's musical performance,
I need a volunteer to sit in the red chair.
Anyone up for it at all?
Yeah, all right.
I've actually always wanted go in the red chair.
I like the way he's upselling it.
All right, it's time for music.
This breakthrough artist has been called the voice of her generation.
Here performing Caroline from her debut album, it is Arlo Parks!
# I was waiting for the bus one day.
# Watched a fight between an artsy couple escalate.
# Strawberry cheeks flushed with defeated rage.
# Then he spilled his coffee as he frantically explained.
# Maybe if you took a breath
# You would hear me when I talk to you
# Threw her necklace in his face.
# Eyes so bright with disappointment
# I saw something inside her break.
# Everybody knows the feeling
# Suddenly he started screaming.
# Caroline, I swear to God I tried
# I swear to God I tried
# Caroline, I swear to God I tried.
# I swear to God I tried
# I swear to God I tried, I swear to God I tried.
# Ripped the hem of her skirt as she ran
# Panicking and weaving through the crowds on Oxford Street
# Watched his world dissolve in his hands
# Tried to roll a blem then put his head between his knees, ooh
# Maybe if she took a breath
# She would know I did it all for her
# Agony and hints of sage
# Her eyes blind with disappointment
# I couldn't recognise her face.
# Shards of glass live in this feeling
# Have to somehow stop her leaving.
# Caroline, I swear to God I tried
# I swear to God I tried
# Caroline, I swear to God I tried
# I swear to God I tried.
# Caroline, I swear to God I tried
# I swear to God I tried.
# Caroline, I swear to God I tried
# I swear to God I tried
# Caroline, I swear to God I tried
# I swear to God I tried
I swear to God I tried.
APPLAUSE.
Oh!
Beautiful!
Arlo Parks and her band, come on over, Arlo.
Thank you, band.
Welcome, welcome, have a seat, Arlo.
I hope you ordered white wine, because that's what you've got.
How are you?
I'm doing well, how are you?
All the better for that.
I know we're not your ideal audience, but we loved it.
It's beautiful and absolutely gorgeous.
Caroline, that is off the new album, Collapsed In Sunbeams.
Here it is.
And look at this, how old school is this?
It comes with a poster, ladies and gentlemen, a poster!
How cool is that?
Yeah, it is funny because I grew up having so many posters on my walls
and I've been getting a few messages about me now being on someone else's
wall, which I think is amazing.
And I should say, that is out now, the album is out now
and the single is out now.
Indeed.
If you listen to Radio 6, it's on all the time
and I know all the words.
I was thinking, one of the nice things about doing this job
is that people come and go, but every now and again,
you hear a really special new voice like that.
Oh, I'm feeling so much love.
I was quite upset because last year, me and my husband were like,
"We've discovered this amazing new artist called Arlo Parks.
None of you will know her.
We know her".
And then whenever we mentioned your name to anyone,
everyone was like, "Obviously, we know who Arlo Parks is".
And you have a tour that probably will happen?
Fingers crossed.
It's towards the end of this year.
Come on.
Fingers crossed.
I mean, grannies can already book, so that's good.
That will be your audience.
Old people desperate to get out of the house.
Rocking out!
Filming it on their phones for the kids.
No, it is amazing and like I say, it's a really special voice.
So thank you very much for that beautiful performance
Arlo Parks, everybody!
APPLAUSE.
Right, that is nearly it.
Before we go, just time for a visit to the big red chair.
He's always wanted to sit there, always!
Marcus Brigstocke, hello!
I'm a bit nervous now I'm in it, Graham.
I don't think it's as dramatic as it looks.
We'll see.
They haven't given you a test run?
No, they have not given me a test run.
Well, let's see how we get on.
Maybe all the stories will be great and you won't be flipped.
Fingers crossed.
I'm pretty confident that I won't get flipped.
Good for you.
Who's up first?
Hello!
Hiya.
What's your name?
Anna.
And where are you?
I'm in London.
I live in London.
OK.
You are telling a story to keep Marcus Brigstocke in that chair.
Off you go.
Do all you can.
OK, crossing my fingers for you.
Years ago, I used to work as a professional horse rider
at a warm blood stud in New South Wales in Australia.
And at that time, yeah, we were serving mares naturally.
So the stallion gets on the mare, right?
I was holding the mare.
My best friend David was holding the stallion and when you're
holding the stallion, you are very close to where
the magic happens, right?
So the stallion hopped on the mare, missed a few times.
David was trying to help a bit.
He missed again and unloaded completely in his face.
Yay!
Well done, you can walk, Anna.
I cannot tell you how relieved I am that on the punchline
"Unload in his face", I wasn't suddenly swooshed backwards,
because I think it would have been too vivid.
I don't think you're as relieved as the horse.
OK, that really is all we've got time for.
If you'd like to go in the red chair yourself and tell
your story, you can.
Contact us via our website at this very address.
That is it.
Please say a huge thank you to all my guests, Arlo Parks!
Rachel Parris!
Marcus Brigstocke!
Mayim Bialik!
Adrian Lester!
Daniel Kaluuya!
And Sienna Miller!
Join me next week with singers Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan,
rugby great Gareth Thomas, comedian Judi Love,
super-chef Gordon Ramsay and Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike.
I will see you then.
Good night, everybody, bye-bye!