Mamamia Out Loud: We Feel Weird About Harry's Live Diagnosis

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are talking about on Monday, the 6th of March.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Jesse Stevens.

And two out of the three of us.

And very many Out Louders across the nation.

I've had a close encounter with Harry Styles in the last week or so.

Mia and I were at his big Sydney show along with almost everybody on my Facebook and Instagram feeds.

I wasn't very close to my encounter.

He was the size of an ant because I was at the bottom of the general admission, so I was dancing at the back.

Oh, I was in the gods, so I was even further away.

I saw a very blurry, far away Harry, but we breathed the same air.

Was it everything you needed it to be?

It was everything.

And I met so many Out Louders.

And I want to thank Harry for giving us the excuse to get together.

It was just pure joy.

Like, I've been to a lot of concerts, although not for a while and not since COVID.

But there was something just so joyful about it.

Like, I've never been to a concert where everybody gets dressed up like that.

And there were feathers everywhere.

It was like, it added to the whole joy of it that because Harry Styles' sort of signature is a feather bower,

everybody was wearing feather bowers.

And so there was just like this sea of coloured feathers everywhere you walked.

It was like a trail, like a breadcrumb trail that took you there all the way from Central Station because I always went on the train

and every platform was littered with them.

And we were on the wrong train for a while and then Matilda, my daughter, was with me and she was like,

all the feather bowers are getting off, they're getting off, we better follow them and I'm like, okay.

And so it was actually very useful to just follow the secret of feather bower people around to get to where you needed to be.

I want to thank him.

He gave me several hours of enforced quality time with my teenage daughter.

That is a hard thing to get.

And also we were there for Horses, Darrell Brathway, coming on stage.

Unbelievable.

Like Darrell seemed quite overwhelmed, I think.

It's been a long time, probably he never performed in a stadium like that.

There are 100,000 people there screaming.

And it was just glorious.

Everyone just lost their shit when Darrell Brathway came on stage.

I kept saying, because I was there with my daughter and two of her friends and I kept saying,

how do you even know this song?

How do you even know Horses?

Yeah, Harry's been singing it for years.

So it's one of those events where it feels like while Harry Styles has been in Australia,

your feed is just Harry.

And I know the tickets are expensive.

Like if you've seen him on TikTok, you were closer than we were.

But it was an amazing night and lots of that loud love.

Anyway, on the show today, if you paid $45,

you could watch Prince Harry, the other Harry,

get a live therapy session last night,

on which he got a diagnosis for a condition.

Is that okay?

And in interviews over the weekend,

Tanya Plibersek said that family very much played into her decision not to take the biggest job in politics.

While over in the New South Wales election,

we're being asked to not consider the family's status of another political family who have seven kids.

And Chris Rock has addressed that Oscar slap in full for the first time,

and it's not really Will Smith who bears the brunt, but his wife, Jada, but first.

In case you missed it,

Julie Bishop, who is quite the fashion trailblazer,

has blazed some more trails by appearing on the cover of Stella magazine,

which is a newspaper insert magazine,

to celebrate International Women's Day wearing no pants.

She is 66, which is kind of neither here nor there,

but she's wearing a blazer, some tights, some high-heeled black patent slingback shoes.

No pants.

Tights constitute as pants, right?

She's got something between her and her pants.

Well, they're not leggings. No, because they're quite sheer.

They're more like stockings.

Now, you often don't like a bare bottom.

You don't like no pants.

No.

How do you feel about Julie Bishop?

I'd prefer she was wearing pants.

I don't think we necessarily need to celebrate International Women's Day by taking off her pants,

but there'll be people who'll say it's transgressive because she's 66

and she's wearing no pants,

and the perception is that 66 should be covering everything up,

which is not necessarily true.

I just don't see the point of it.

Isn't it fashion?

Is it edgy? I guess it's edgy because she's 63.

I think she likes her legs.

Which is fine.

I think she likes her legs.

I know women, as we get older, we often,

and I know that all of our bodies are beautiful in all of their states,

but we often pick something we like, like my fingers,

my ankles.

The thing with, I think Julie likes her legs.

Yeah, the thing with Julie also is that you can see that she's loving it.

Like she loves fashion so much.

She loves going to red carpet things.

She loves getting dressed up.

She genuinely loves fashion so much.

And so if it gives her joy,

happy International Women's Day to Julie's pantless form.

And then at some point you say towards the end of the book,

when is someone in this family going to break free and live?

Have you done that?

I have now.

Yeah.

What was the feel like?

It was great.

For the low, low price of just 25 pounds or 45 Aussie dollars,

people in the US, Canada and the UK could watch this weekend.

Prince Harry sit down inside his Montecito home across from physician

Gabor Marte, a childhood trauma expert and essentially sitting.

I can't.

I just can't with this story.

On a 90 minute therapy session.

I can't.

I just, he was just coming back from all of the embarrassment and the,

his book called Wow.

And now he's just, Harry, why?

90 minute therapy session with Marte.

Is he the real deal, this guy?

Marte is a big deal.

He's a big deal, but I think we should have it on the record.

He's a little bit controversial with some, right?

And you're going to get controversial when you're that big.

I'm going to get to it.

Right.

Now that ticket price did include a copy of the book.

I already got it.

So you've already got the book.

So it's not for you.

But if you did get the book, then really you're paying what,

like $10 probably for the therapy session behind the table.

Marte sort of started the interview by saying,

whether you like it or not, I've diagnosed you with ADD.

You can agree or disagree.

And he added, I don't see it as a disease.

I see it as a normal response to abnormal stress.

And Prince...

That's also not true.

That's what I'm getting to.

That's the controversial part.

Exactly right.

Now, Prince Harry wanted to know whether he should look into that.

And Marte was like, you can do with it what you want.

But Marte's views on ADD are really contentious within the medical community.

So Marte believes that ADD is not an inherited illness,

whereas a lot of prevailing wisdom says it is.

And he also reckons it's reversible.

I also want to note, I'm saying ADD, I'm saying that on purpose.

Firstly, because that's the language that Marte used

and because it refers to something specific.

I know a lot of people will call it ADHD.

I don't think Marte is very credible,

even from what you've just said now.

Like ADHD is not something that you can develop

and it's not something that you can cure.

It's something you can treat,

but it's something that you're born with.

Yes, but this guy does not agree with that.

And he is a physician.

So he is an expert in the field.

Lots of people are physicians.

Yes, he's an expert in the field,

but he definitely is contentious for that reason, right?

And so that point number one,

this is the person that Harry has chosen to elevate.

Exactly.

And Harry also said in the interview that he felt different from his family,

which he knew his mother did too,

and described himself as having grown up in a broken home.

He said that Meghan saved him.

Marte acknowledged that Harry endured a lot of trauma and suffering

during his upbringing.

And look, mostly it appears,

and we should all probably acknowledge,

none of us have the cash.

I haven't watched it.

We couldn't get behind the paywall.

And the thing is interest rates are going up.

My first instinct is to go hard on this, right?

I'm like, making people pay cash money

to watch a therapy session of yours.

But it's a free world.

They're not making.

No, no, I know.

Okay, making is the wrong word.

But asking people to pay cash money

to watch an actual therapy session with you

strikes me as intensely narcissistic.

But I also want to say that I try and avoid

having learned a lot of lessons through my 50 years,

being really hard on things I have not watched.

I didn't want to pay $45 to watch Harry do this.

So maybe it's amazingly sensitive and nuanced and interesting.

But also, like, it feels cheap.

I don't mean $45 is cheap.

It's not cheap.

It's actually expensive.

I might want to put that towards our own therapy sessions.

But, like, it feels like a cheap thing to do.

Don't you think?

Even if it's great.

Even if it's great.

And Harry has said this himself.

Therapy across, you know, US, Australia, Canada, UK,

where Australia wasn't included in that,

but basically where this was being broadcast,

is prohibitively expensive.

And so Harry has said that the reason he wants

to do things like this is to really democratize

our access to looking at things like PTSD

or, I guess, ADD now.

But it's behind a paywall.

And he really wants to raise awareness about mental health,

which I get.

But is it excusable?

Look, my biggest problem with it, and again,

I haven't watched it either, but I'm disturbed by this idea

of firstly diagnosing someone who has not asked for a diagnosis.

And secondly, diagnosing him just like,

I've just decided you've got this.

From a book.

That's not how ADHD diagnoses work.

And I think that this is what causes people

to have this big eye rolling.

Everyone's got ADHD.

Everybody's on the spectrum.

These neurodiverse conditions, they're really complicated.

They're not just something that you can diagnose

by reading someone's book or having a conversation with them.

And I think that it makes, for those people

who have been diagnosed, and the process is quite arduous

and can be difficult, but it cheapens is the wrong word.

But it just dilutes everything.

It's interesting though, because you can't diagnose it

and you shouldn't diagnose it.

But if you've read Harry's book and he talks about how at school

he was clever, but he couldn't focus and he couldn't read a lot.

I mean, I can see where I make that right.

Joining some dots, getting this information from.

But I think what you're saying as well is that it gives licence.

And this is something I've been growing increasingly uncomfortable with

for people who think that they know a lot in this space.

Marte is, he has qualification.

So let's put him to the side.

But the idea that you can watch someone or read their work

or even look at their behaviour or be in a work place

and come across someone and start sort of willy-nilly diagnosing people

with really serious neurodiverse conditions.

That makes me really uncomfortable.

What about the argument, and I'm not saying I agree with this argument,

but I'm putting it on the table, that the rising kind of self-diagnosis

that's coming hand in hand with raised awareness of neurodiverse issues

is democratising because it is very expensive and very difficult to get an official diagnosis.

So anyone who's been through that process, whether for themselves or for a child,

knows that the waiting lists are out of control.

The costs associated with seeing specialists are exorbitant.

There is an argument out there, not condoning it,

that actually having this information much more readily available on social media

for people to go, oh, maybe that's me, maybe that's me, is actually really helpful.

I think that what's helpful, and there are people who say it's very privileged,

this idea of an official diagnosis and you shouldn't gatekeep,

which I find a bit confusing because when you have something like a disability

or a neurodiversity or a condition like this or a disease, you can't self-diagnose.

I always get in trouble with analogies,

but I can't find a lump in my breast and diagnose breast cancer.

I can suspect it, I can fear it, I can have an informed opinion,

but then I need a medical professional to give me an official diagnosis

so that I know what to do next because given the fact,

I think a lot of this is about this erosion of trust in experts,

including doctors and politicians and governing bodies.

And so this idea that you can diagnose yourself with something

and then decide on your own best treatment, that's risky.

That's controversial.

I worry that disability and also neurodiversity then becomes a stuff of self-identity.

And so you look around and I mean a lot of us have gone,

oh, I think I'm feeling a bit anxious,

but where you go from there is kind of the big question.

I feel as though the issue of access is an entirely different one,

but even I thought it was very telling

that Marte then said to him, do with that information as you will.

Whereas in the UK, by their own guidelines,

Marte isn't able to diagnose Harry with ADD.

And it's like if neurodiversity just becomes about self-diagnosis

and self-identity and not going, this is causing me distress.

Even a GP can't diagnose you.

Like it's actually complicated, not in Australia.

They can in some places.

I just want to say that Prince Harry getting diagnosed with ADD

behind a paywall on the internet might be the most peak 2023 thing

I have ever heard of in my life.

And peak LA.

And I will say something quickly about paywalls

because in terms of branding, I thought this was quite sort of elucidating.

I know why you do it, right?

Because you make money and also sometimes you feel protected and safe.

Let's acknowledge Mama Mia has paywalls of course.

But what I learned from this is that you also shoot yourself in the foot

because with the documentary, even with the book, people could go,

all right, I'm hearing the commentary, but I'll go and have a look for myself.

The commentary gets to be its own beast here.

I think most people will read snippets.

The sun, the tabloids will make of this whatever they want to

and the average person isn't going to go to the primary source

and I don't know if that's going to work in Harry's favor.

But again, I'll wave the flag for consumerism and capitalism and business

and say, follow the money.

What is this about?

It's not about Harry having his trauma diagnosed.

It's about pushing sales of the book so that it can stay on the New York Times bestseller list longer

because staying on those lists longer becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So the more you stay on those lists, the longer you stay on those lists

because people often buy based on those lists.

And so the tell for me was that you get a free copy of the book

so that they can actually call this book sales.

So what it does is it gives another big boost to book sales,

puts it back on all the bestseller lists.

And again, no judgment about that.

But let's be clear about what this is, Harry.

It's not about two things can be true.

It could be about helping people with trauma or whatever.

But it just feels so undignified.

And I say that as someone who often vomits my life

and puts all sorts of things about myself and writes really intimate things.

But I just feel that the collective appetite and it shows to me what a tinny they have.

Harry and Meghan at times.

The collective appetite for hearing about Harry's trauma is done.

I think we are full.

Just a quick note that if you want to hear more about Harry specifically,

we've got a lot to unpack that we're going to do in a subscriber episode.

Hey, let's see what I did.

I put it behind the table.

Peak 2023 over here.

We're going to talk about him being kicked out of Frogmore.

We're going to talk about the coronation.

We're going to talk about Prince Charles' tell on interview.

Again, as previously referred to, interest rates and cost of living.

We're all doing what we need to to stay afloat.

Correct.

Hi Holly, Mia and Jessie.

This is just a quick note to say thank you to Jessie for putting a rocket under me.

I was listening to a recent episode where Jessie mentioned she had to get a freckle biopsied.

And it was just like a sign from the heavens because I've had this mole on my leg.

I've been worried about it for ages.

I keep putting off going to the doctor and it was just that was the sign I needed to book the appointment.

So here I am a week later with a bandage on my leg as I just got it removed.

So thank you for keeping me company.

And this is just a reminder to everyone out there to please get your skin checked.

In the endless circular discussion about women, work, parenthood, balance,

a new chat has been created and it's called Why Tania Didn't Run.

Let me fill you in a bit.

So you might have noticed that our Prime Minister is a man and he's called Albo.

Is everyone across this?

Yeah.

People seem to like him doing a good job, etc.

He was at the bridge on the weekend.

He was.

Pride much loved that for Albo.

Yeah.

But things could have been very different.

In 2019, after Labour lost the general election,

the Bill Shorten was supposed to sweep with a landslide, but definitely did not.

Not everyone was team Albo.

Many, many people who cared about such things wanted Tania Plibersek to run for the leader

and become a very own Jacinda Ardern, but she didn't.

And at the time, she said it was partly for family reasons.

She said, now is not my time.

At this point, I cannot reconcile the important responsibilities I have to my family

and the additional responsibilities of the Labour leadership.

Now, some people were sus about this because Tania Plibersek has been a very successful,

very high profile politician for years and years and years and all the years that she's

had her children.

And at this point, her kids were what a lot of people would say they're old enough now.

They were at the time 18, 15 and nine.

But this weekend, an extract from a new biography about Plibersek written by Margaret Simons

casts the whole thing in another very human light.

In it, she interviewed Plibersek.

She did lots and lots of interviews with Plibersek for the book.

She's obviously cooperated with this biography, but she also interviewed Tania's daughter,

Anna, who was the 18 year old at the time.

She's now in her early twenties and it turns out right about that time,

Anna was about to become a key witness in a sexual assault trial.

She was testifying against her former boyfriend.

Now I'm reading this next bit directly from the book.

And in it, she sets it up by saying that Anna and Tania,

even though Plibersek has traveled heaps for work throughout Anna's life,

they're close, they text, they discuss everything and then the book says.

But there was a period when Anna was in her mid teens when she didn't tell Plibersek

everything that was going on.

During this time, Anna's personality changed.

Already thin, she lost weight, she lost friends.

She withdrew from family and became moody and hard to reach.

This was during the years when Plibersek was deputy labour leader and working

to improve the party's culture.

Over this time, Anna was being abused by her then boyfriend.

The abuse began at the start of the relationship and the violence

and controlling behaviour gradually got worse, escalating to serious sexual assault.

Anna's abuser was eventually convicted of assault because of what he did to her.

He has also been convicted of serious crimes committed against other girls

but has never gone to jail.

There are legal reasons why few details can be published.

It says in the piece.

Now, Anna is studying social work but she's also a mentor to other young women

who face sexual assault and she started an organisation called the Survivor Hub

to do that.

We'll put a link in about the Survivor Hub.

And what Plibersek says now is that at that moment when she was faced with this

are you going to run, she said it was that she knew that at any minute

her daughter would have to face being a witness in this trial, although the date

wasn't set and Plibersek says, and this bit just makes me very teary,

and the thought of not being able to be there for her throughout that was just too much.

Now, I cried a few times reading this piece for obvious reasons.

I am a working mum of a teenage daughter.

I'm not working anything like the level that Tanya Plibersek has done,

but as a woman who's always been away from my kids a certain amount,

whether that's just for hours of the day or work trips or whatever,

you're always questioning, is this going to damage our relationship?

Will I be there when they need me?

Is there ever a time when you can pull back and all those things?

And I thought that this was very pertinent about obviously a very personal horrendous

issue they're going through, but also the complexity of those choices around,

is there ever a time when you can pull back?

Jesse, you're facing this from the very beginning.

How did you feel about this Plibersek story?

I loved this article so much.

My sister, Claire, who was the editor of Mamma Mia,

interviewed Tanya Plibersek in sort of a chat in just in front of the editorial team

a few years back around this exact time and was saying to her,

can you run, please, can you run?

All of us were like, geeing her up, we weren't the only ones.

Yeah, exactly.

And she was really emotional and she talked about family,

but Claire messaged me over the weekend and just said,

I feel like awful, I feel awful that I was putting pressure on her as well,

not knowing what was going on behind the scenes.

A few things struck me.

The first was how hard Tanya Plibersek would have had to work during this period

to keep this private and what a bloody good job she did from even political opponents.

And I didn't hear any whispers of it at the time.

No.

Because the word was that because she now by were both from the left faction

that you couldn't have two people from the same faction going against each other

because there's a lot of factions within the Labour Party.

So that was the understanding.

But there was also that confusion that Holly talks about that.

Hang on a second.

It's not like she's got little kids.

That must be an excuse.

No one bought that.

Everyone did think it was hiding something,

but no one suspected it was hiding this.

Exactly.

And there was speculation that it was a very political move rather than something family-related.

I'd argue it's not hiding something because obviously this is hiding a specific story,

but we've talked lots of times about that thing of, oh, her kids are older now.

She could go for it.

Yeah.

They still need you 9, 15, 18, like in some ways the stakes are higher.

The things that could go wrong seem worse.

Like, I don't know.

There was something in this article that made me uncomfortable, right?

And it was a comment that involved Jenna Price.

Jenna Price is a really well-respected journalist.

I love her work.

And she said, and I know where she was coming from,

but as for the kids, this is a quote from the article,

Jenna Price had telephoned PliberSexOffice offering to give up her own career to help care for them.

Now, she wrote a column.

So that was kind of a bit of a, what do you say?

It was sort of like a symbolic gesture.

And then on social media, her call was quickly shared.

And basically all these people came forward, majority women.

And we said, we'll look after your children.

We'll look after your children.

Because we want you to run.

There was something very loaded about the way that that was approached and discussed at the time.

And that looked at childcare primarily and only through the lens of labor that can be outsourced.

And this is something that I'm noticing more and more.

I even see it with the way that we frame anything to do with parenting.

It's as though it's another job rather than something that is actually made up of meaningful primary relationships that deeply affect us.

And so it's not so much about, oh, well, if I could just get someone to look after my kids.

And this is a struggle I hear with predominantly mums.

It's like, my heart is torn in half.

I want to be there.

And so I just thought it sort of overlooked the role of a parent.

And I heard a different parent at a different stage say this recently.

She had to step back from work because of something going on with her child.

And she said, it is the easiest hard decision you'll ever make.

And Tanya never in this article said this was a hard decision, really.

It was a decision that was forged, that was easy, that was, this is clearly what I'm going to do.

It doesn't mean it doesn't break your heart, but it's an easy decision.

Another thing that made me think about that was some headlines in an interview with the wife of New South Wales,

Premier Dominic Perotet.

Now Dominic Perotet and his wife, Helen, have seven children.

And the headline was Helen Perotet's seven children are the least interesting thing about her.

And I understand that's coming through a feminist lens saying, I talk about this all the time.

You know, I'm described as a mum in contexts that have nothing to do with me being a parent

and might be to do with me running a business.

I'm still described as a mum.

So I've railed against that descriptor in an unrelated context.

But in this case, someone having seven children, I don't think that's the least interesting thing about them.

I think that's the most interesting thing about them, whether they're male or female.

I thought it was a little bit undermining.

I knew exactly what they were trying to say.

The article itself was really good, but there was a quote by Helen Perotet in the article that said,

this is my adventure, which I wouldn't have thought before I got married, but I wanted this.

And it focused on her career before she's a career woman.

She works three days a week.

She is incredibly impressive.

But again, it is minimizing the importance of parenting in the lives of both men and women.

I felt the same way.

I read that headline about Helen Perotet and I was like, come on.

Are we now pretending that it isn't interesting to make a deliberate decision to have a family of that size in Sydney?

And her oldest kid is 13 and her youngest is, I think, 20 months old.

And she didn't say in there that she has ruled out having another one.

And that's entirely up to the Perotet family.

So fascinating to me.

But I'm sorry.

The thing is, I know this is a big discussion about whether any politician's private life is relevant in any way.

And I know that it isn't really.

But I'm sorry.

It tells you something about everybody, what their decisions are about their home life in a way.

Like, well, it tells me lots about Dominic Perotet that he has seven children.

It's not just about Helen.

Like, it tells me a lot about that family and how they've chosen to live their life.

And with no, I'm not casting aspersions either way about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

But it's an unusual thing.

And are we really going to pretend that it's not?

And the thing that's interesting about Plimisec, who is an incredibly impressive woman who has often spoken about,

I mean, she doesn't want to be defined by the fact she's a mum of three and all those things.

But she has made a point lots of times of saying the choices of high profile women shouldn't be represented as the choices of everybody.

You know, she's, and we all wrestle with that.

I wrestle with that.

I'll read about Tanya doing that, making that decision.

And I'm like, wow, you know, what an amazing person it's like.

And she didn't want to be used.

She didn't want running and then potentially, and that was the whole point of the article,

was that she thought she'd probably win.

And if she won, then that was going to change, you know, the next at least four years or so of her life.

And you could tell that she had seen that decision is really loaded because there are a lot of women looking at her going,

prove to us you can do it, prove to us that it's possible and that you get to a stage where you can lean back into your career.

But she went, my decision is not about everyone else.

And more women need to say that.

If you want to make out loud part of your routine five days a week,

we release segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays just for Mamma Mia subscribers.

To get full access, follow the link in the show notes and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, some say.

And guess what?

It's the Oscars next week, which means it's been almost a year since the slap stopped the world.

Oh, Richard.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Will Smith just smack the shit out of me?

A quick refresher because a lot happened in the last year.

Will Smith, who's 54, got up and slapped 58 year old Chris Rock.

Chris Rock was in the middle of introducing a segment.

He referenced the fact that Jada Pinkett Smith had no hair.

She has alopecia.

Whether or not he knew that is unclear.

Will Smith jumped from his chair said,

got up on the stage and hit Chris Rock in the face.

Now, Chris Rock hasn't ever really spoken about the incident.

Of course, everybody wanted him to until now because his 68 minute Netflix standup comedy special called Selective Outrage aired over the weekend.

Very, very notable timing and notable title.

And I didn't realize that was the actual title of it.

Yes.

Yes.

So I knew that because I went to see this show live Chris Rock.

When he was in Australia, I saw the Sydney show a few months ago, probably six months ago.

And in the final 10 minutes of the set, which is different from the set that he did when I saw it, he's added some.

Here's a little bit of what he had to say.

Yes, it happened.

I got smacked like a year ago and people like didn't hurt.

It still hurts, but I'm not a victim, baby.

But I'm not a victim, baby. You will never see me on Oprah, Gayle crying.

You never see it.

Never gonna happen.

I couldn't believe it.

And I love it in black.

No.

Will Smith practices Selective Outrage.

Because everybody knows what the f*** happened.

Everybody that really knows, knows I had nothing to do with that shit.

I didn't have any entanglements for people that don't know what everybody knows.

Will Smith and his wife was f***ing her son's friend.

Okay.

I normally would not talk about this shit, but for some reason these put that shit on the internet.

I have no idea why two talented people would do something that low down.

She hurt him way more than he hurt me.

So the entanglement that he's referring to is to do with the, I'd forgotten this.

This is very big context.

But do you remember how Jada Pinkett Smith has her show Red Table Talk where she's got a red table.

I think it's on Facebook and she sits down and talks to people.

Your mom's been in prison for a few weeks.

Your dad just went.

Yes.

How's that been?

It's been hard.

I think for anybody, no matter what the situation is, you don't want to see your parents go to prison.

In 2020, she did an episode with her husband where she spoke about the affair she had with a guy called August Alsina,

who's 21 years younger than her and who she met through her teenage son, Jaden, in 2016.

They've long been rumours that they've got a bit of an open marriage.

And then she came out and said at the time on that Red Table Talk.

And then I got into an entanglement with August.

An entanglement?

Yes.

Yes.

A relationship.

Yes.

It was a relationship.

Absolutely.

And then in September, 2021, Will confirmed their relationship was open in an interview with GQ.

So it's interesting because Chris Rock's point is that the selective outrage that Will Smith had against him was perhaps misdirected.

And perhaps it was outrage at being, the word cuckold is such a Shakespearean word.

But cuckold basically is the word when your partner cheats on you and you're basically humiliated.

So he seemed to suggest that that's what this was about.

And he also brought up the fact that Jada had asked him a number of years earlier, him being Chris Rock,

to step down from hosting the Oscars because Will Smith wasn't nominated for his movie Concussion.

So that was all some very interesting context.

Jesse, do you think it was a satisfying conclusion to the whole slap debacle, the fact that he did it this way?

I do.

I watched it and I was prepared to be outraged because that is what the internet and all the headlines I'd read primed me to be.

A lot of the headlines kind of, and a lot of the commentary I'd seen was that he pinned the whole thing on Jada

and how inappropriate and how has this become about Jada and I went, oh, feeling a little bit defensive of her.

And then I watched it and I thought, you know what, this was my whole point at the time.

If you disagree with what someone has to say, articulate it. Don't hit someone on a stage.

So the fact that he didn't respond in the moment, he obviously didn't hit Will Smith back and he sort of makes some jokes about that.

Will Smith is a lot bigger than him, but he has been sitting on this for months and months.

He did not get into a Twitter fight.

He did not get into an Instagram fight where he went with every emotion he had.

He waited and business hat.

He monetized it, which is smart.

He didn't do an interview.

He didn't put out a social media statement.

He saved it for his special.

So he did the tour around the world and he spoke about it at every show, but you had to put your phone away so it couldn't be reported.

And then there was a whole extra bit in this last show that was broadcast on Netflix.

And I'm saying that's not a bad thing. I'm saying that's really smart.

He also, and this is what I wish more people did, he turned it into his art.

Like really, this is what he does. This is what he's good at. He turns his life into jokes.

And I thought it was a valid point.

It was a point that was made a lot at the time really clumsily that Jada had emasculated Will Smith so much that he felt he had to get on stage and violently protect her and blah, blah, blah.

I don't necessarily think that.

But what he pointed to was that he actually had quite personal beef with Jada.

So I think that he was... Chris Rock did. Chris Rock did.

He appeared as he talked about it.

I think he's still really angry. I think he's angry about that.

She said, me, a grown ass man should quit his job because her husband, they get nominated for concussion.

And then this gives me a concussion.

She said he should quit because Will didn't get nominated.

So did I do some jokes about her? Who gives a f***? That's how it is.

She started, I finish it.

And I also think it's not a terrible point that Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith put this August affair,

literally on the table.

But he didn't tell a joke about the August affair.

No, that's the thing is I also have a lot of respect for the way that Rock has handled it.

And I think these jokes are very funny.

But it's not entirely relevant.

It's definitely just punching at people who have annoyed you.

The whole affair situation, nothing is truer than when Chris Rock says in this,

who does that, who goes on the internet and tells everybody about cheating with their son's friend.

And like, yes, there are lots of it, Prince Harry, perhaps.

But there are lots of us who might roll our eyes about that and say, well, yeah, I want to start this fair game.

But it's not entirely relevant to the defense of the situation, right?

Because it is not what his joke was about.

It's also very much subjective version of events.

Because I actually think that the reason Jada Pinkett Smith asked him not to present at that Oscars,

was not because Will Smith didn't get nominated, but because it was the whole Oscars.

So why year? And so she was like, why are you endorsing that?

Whatever you think about that, whatever.

But again, it's like Chris's version of events.

And it's very complicated because obviously there's history and there are relationships.

And that's, it's amazing that he's waited and he's played it out so strategically.

It does feel unfair to me still at the risk of sounding like one of the annoying people on Twitter that you're talking about, Jesse,

that a fight between two men on a stage is still going back on a woman and the decision she's made about her life.

I agree with that.

It's got nothing to do with her.

That's true.

That was a ridiculous show of masculinity when Will Smith went up there and smacked him.

And this is a ridiculous show of masculinity to basically be up there calling Will Smith a worse and less than a man

because his wife went and slept with someone else.

So I don't think it's necessarily entirely, you know,

I don't think it's necessarily related.

But when I saw a lot of the criticism saying how dare he bring that up,

I thought, well, Will and Jada put that in the public domain.

And that's what happens when you make content out of your life.

Yeah, but in the same way that we said the guy who diagnosed Harry with ADHD was out of line,

Chris Rock diagnosing Will Smith's motivations for coming on stage and behaving in a completely unhinged way

as being about his emasculation at the hands of his wife.

That's also completely speculative.

Yeah, but you know what?

When someone hits you in the face in front of the entire world,

I reckon you're allowed to just have a bit.

So there was something, and I think this is what was quite appealing about it in a way,

it felt like the way Chris Rock would talk to you if you cornered him in a pub

and asked how he actually felt about it.

There was something very candid, very loose.

Quite visceral, yeah.

Yeah, and visceral about it.

And his last line is might drop line is brilliant.

Yeah, we won't spoil that for you, but absolutely.

So you can see that on Netflix, it's called Selective Outrage.

Chris Rock stand up and the Oscars are next week.

Confession, I only watched the bit that was about Jada.

Is it worth watching the whole show?

Look, I didn't think it was an amazing piece of stand up

just because it felt a little bit like he'd find it in the show I'd watched.

I'll watch it again on Netflix because, you know, they always try harder

for their show that's going to be on Netflix.

So yeah, I'd watch it.

I have a recommendation before we go.

Brent and I watched the first episode of this amazing new documentary on the ABC

called Queer Australia.

I've heard about this in production, but I didn't know it had dropped.

I think not coincidentally because it's just been world pride wrapped up in Sydney yesterday.

But it is a documentary that is the history of Queer Australia.

So Queer Australia.

This is the unfinished dictionary of queer language.

Aboriginal forms of sexuality were eroded on this continent

while colonial sexuality was evolving.

It's very hard not to get emotional about it

because when I was a young person, my life was criminalized.

It was illegal for me to be myself.

And it's hosted by Zoe Koomsmar.

And the first one's already dropped.

You can watch it on iView anytime.

Now, if you've ever seen Zoe Koomsmar do any comedy,

she is not linear in anything she does, right?

She's very surrealist in her storytelling.

Even if she does a little skit, say, on the weekly with Charlie Pickering,

it will be this amazingly imaginative out there thing.

Like she's a very original comedian, right?

And as she calls herself a professional lesbian.

And this documentary, it is not like a traditional documentary.

It has the kind of pace and sort of supercut,

like endlessly sort of flashy flashing.

What's the word when you've just got lots of memes popping up

and all that kind of stuff?

Take on the queer history of Australia all the way back to,

back in 1727, apparently one of the first ever diary entries

of a Dutch explorer in inverted commas coming to Australia.

Writing, clear sky, good weather.

Two persons found committing the abominable sin

of Sodom and Gomorrah, a sorrowful and Godforsaken act,

like back at the day.

It kind of goes through all this history.

It's got impeccable guests.

So it's got, you know, Magda Zubansky and it's got Hannah Gadsby.

And then the First Nations stories are told by First Nations queer experts.

So Nakiwa Gori is on it.

It is funny.

It is really enlightening.

And the first one's about the law and it's really interesting

because they obviously talk about the fact

that if you want to go digging through queer history,

you're going to find a lot of it in the law

because, you know, Sodomy was illegal,

but you don't find much trace of queer women's stories at all

because that wasn't illegal.

Anyway, it's just really interesting but also super engaging

and well told and there are two more to come

and it's brilliant and it's called Queer Australia

and it's on ABC, I view right now.

That is all we've got time for on Mamma Mia Out Loud today.

This episode is produced by Emma Gillespie

with audio production by Leah Porges

and assistant production from Susanna Mnakin

and we will talk to you tomorrow.

Bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.