S22 E17 The Graham Norton Show Full Episode Saoirse Ronan Eric McCormack Rob Beckett

Actor interview
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3 Video Views·Feb 16, 2026
Good evening, everyone. I'm Saoirse Ronan and you're watching The Graham Norton Show.
I've never heard applause like it.
Well, everyone well?
Yes, because this week it was announced the Spice Girls are back. Yes, they are.
Good luck with the ticket sales.
Victoria's already been practising her singing at home.
I wonder what requests the audience will be shouting at the first gig.
I'd go with stop right now, thank you very much.
Now, what else has been happening this week?
Well, despite there being doubts over her leadership, Prime Minister Theresa May was out and about having fun.
Here she is playing ball with a dog.
Leave, leave, is what everyone is telling her.
Now, if Theresa were to quit, some Conservatives would like to see Jacob Rees-Mogg put his hat in the ring.
Yeah, better there than on his head.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the man of the people, he wants to drag the Tory party kicking and screaming into the 18th century.
Now, he doesn't have a job in the Cabinet at the moment, but earlier in his career he was the Minister for Silly Walks.
Supporters claim Jacob embraces the Churchillian spirit, although it's not actually Churchill he reminds me of.
No.
And the greatest showman, Keanu Settle.
Please welcome the man from the South, it's Rob Beckett.
Now, after 11 years away, they've made a happy return to our screens.
Please welcome Will and Grace themselves, Eric McCormack and Deborah Messing.
And triple Oscar nominee, who's wowed us in films like Atonement, Brooklyn and now the critically acclaimed Lady Bird.
My Irish eyes are smiling, it's Saoirse Ronan.
This is good, good fake showbiz halloween.
We were making out backstage.
But now, before we do another thing, huge congratulations on the Oscar nomination, Saoirse Ronan.
You're so young.
I know the one.
I know another one, you must be like, whatever.
So, good luck to you, but also good luck to the person reading out the nominations, because Americans do struggle with your name.
They don't, they can't get it.
Because like, Eric, Deborah, did you practice before you came out here tonight?
Well, we actually had a kind of practice, because you were going to be a joke in the opening scene on Will and Grace a few weeks ago.
Swear to God, stop.
Well, it was nice.
Well, it was because we never could get it right.
It was cut.
No, it was a joke about how hard it is to program your Netflix or whatever.
So, she said, what's the name of that actress that we like so much?
Well, we can't pronounce her name.
And I said, Saoirse Ronan.
And so, the whole thing was just her going S-E-R.
You were almost.
I was almost on Will and Grace.
Yeah, then I got caught.
But now, when you hosted SNL, you did come up with a handy way to tell Americans how to say your name.
I did.
It's a little kind of dissy, can you do it?
It goes, if I can remember it.
It's Saoirse with an R, not Saoirse with an R, cos Saoirse with an R goes R, not R.
Instead of E, simple as can be, say Saoirse.
Very good.
So charming.
Am I the only one that's more confused?
The whole week leading up to it, that was the only thing I kept thinking about, cos it's so difficult to say.
It's supposed to make it easier, but it was just in my head.
It's Saoirse with an R, not Saoirse with an R.
So that's what I had in my head for the whole week leading up to it.
Now, talking of awards, congratulations, you won the Golden Globe.
Yes.
Very good.
Will and Grace has been nominated for something, is it 29 or 30 Golden Globes?
It's 29.
Never won once.
We are the biggest losers in the Golden Globe, we actually have it right now.
No one has lost more than us.
We got to a point, it's good, thank you.
You guys, but we got to a point after about season three, where the show was always nominated,
all four of us nominated, lost, lost, and one, I think it was when the show lost,
or maybe Sean lost or something, Max, who created the show, suddenly went,
Yes!
And we cheered, we toasted, and the cameras got confused and went to us,
though we had just lost, and we started to do it every nomination, every loss, every year.
Every time anyone lost, we would have another drink of champagne.
Confuse the hell out of them.
And they always put a big thing of chocolates on your plate,
and so I would wait until I lost, and then I would open up the box,
and I would eat the whole thing, and I'd be like, it doesn't matter, no!
You won 29 unused acceptance speeches.
I was nominated this year, and I almost recycled the same thing,
and I thought, you know, I can't reference Al Gore, that makes no sense.
But now, I feel that maybe the Golden Globes realise you're not taking it that seriously.
I think this is you guys at the Golden Globes.
That is not how winners behave.
That was the last Golden Globes, remember?
And we got in front of the press, and we weren't even nominated anymore,
we were there just because it was our last season,
and the press so didn't care that I said, **** this, I'm dropping my pants.
And they still didn't care.
They took that picture, look at Sean, he doesn't care, nobody cares.
Looking away, whatever.
But now, Rob Beckett, you, welcome to the world of show business,
working the red carpet at the NTA's...
You didn't bring up my award, though.
I was second place in Bath New Comedian of the Year 2009.
I'm so sorry!
It's not an Oscar or a Golden Globe, it meant to me a lot of the time.
Runner-up in Bath.
Who came first?
Are you saying barf?
Bath.
I knew this was going to happen.
We need an interpreter.
In Bath, you know Bath, near Bristol.
Oh, Bath.
Barf.
But you were on the red carpet at the NTA's with your new friend,
Gerry Horner, Spice Girl, Ginger Spice.
Looks great.
Yeah.
Do you enjoy working the red carpet with her?
Well, it's interesting doing the red carpet,
because when you're walking the red carpet with a Spice Girl,
no-one cares about you whatsoever,
to the point that photographers go, get out of the photo room!
Get out of the way, cos they get more money for one of her.
I actually devalue a photo.
For five minutes, they're earning less money.
So I just stand there now and go, how much?
Big film tonight is Lady Bird.
Lady Bird, it's out the 23rd of February.
So this was always meant to be a kind of an arthouse,
kind of indie film.
Yeah.
But it's, you know, defied all expectations.
It's a big hit in America.
I know, it's mad.
It's done so well.
It came out in November and, yeah, it was a tiny little film.
It's Greta Gerwig, who did Frances Ha and Mistress America,
and, you know, really great films, but very small films,
and sort of within the industry, people really respected her.
But this has become this big sort of commercial hit.
And just, I don't know,
just the way young people in particular have reacted to it
is amazing.
Like, girls coming up to you kind of going,
oh, I feel like somebody gets me now, you know?
So it's really nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, everyone's calling their mama after the film,
because they feel so guilty about being horrible to them
when they were younger.
And I like the story, you know,
the movie's doing gangbusters in America, it's doing really well.
Yeah.
And then your mum arrives in America and wants to go and see it.
Yeah, so, yeah, she really wanted to go and see it,
and she was really proud and had heard it was doing really well
and all that sort of stuff.
And I was like, man, it's doing really well,
let's go see it with a real audience.
It's probably going to be sold out,
but we'll just go and see if we can wing our way in there.
So I got us tickets to, like, a four o'clock screening
or something like that in LA.
I was like, keep your head down.
There's posters everywhere, it's been sold out, you know,
the film's doing well, all that sort of stuff.
We go into the cinema, there's a total of six people in there.
All on their phones.
Nobody was interested at all.
I was like, just keep your head down, keep your head down.
We go to the back, and there was this girl that was, like,
texting for the first ten minutes of the film.
I was like, get off your phone.
Then her friend turns up late for the film.
But she loved it, she loved it,
and I think the other six people loved it as well.
They probably all texted the mate scan,
the girl from the film's in the cinema!
Trying to spell it.
Give me a Scrabble bag.
A scheme is here.
And your own mum you've got a great relationship with,
but apparently cars are the one place where you and your mum...
We just don't see eye to eye in the car.
I don't know about you guys,
but it feels like pressure is just immense
when you get into the car with someone that you really love.
And we get on so well in our normal life,
and then we get into the car, and something happens.
And, like, we learn to drive the car at the same time.
We share a car.
And because of our love of Barbra Streisand,
we called her Barbra Streisand.
So whenever we're driving Barbra around,
she'll give me directions if she's the co-pilot.
And she's terrible at it, and she's got a great sense of direction,
but when we get into the car, she's just sort of like,
right, you're taking the next left, and I'll, you know,
check the mirrors, indicate into the left lane, take the left.
And she's like, what are you doing?
It's like, you told me to turn left.
No, I didn't mean that left, I meant the next left, obviously.
So we've gotten into, like, full-blown arguments,
but, like, in the confines of Barbra Streisand.
Then you park Barbra, and you're fine.
And then we park Barbra, we get out of Barbra, and we're fine.
Because, Rob, you had to drive your...
Is it your dad you've had to drive?
Yeah, so my dad was a lorry driver, then a cab driver,
so proper, you know, loves a bit of driving.
And I'm rubbish at it. I can't get enough of it.
He's always driving.
And I passed an automatic,
because I just couldn't get my head round gears.
It just stressed me out, and I thought, I'm quite busy,
I don't want to change gears.
There's no point having gears.
But I'm rubbish at driving, and I think my dad's slightly ashamed
of me, that I'm not a proper driver.
Anyway, I picked him up from the hospital,
he had a cataract operation, right, so I picked him up,
and he's half-blind, he's got all the bandages over his head,
and I'm like, I can't get into this space.
And it was one of the most emasculating things
that's ever happened.
He gets out, pulls me out of the car, parks it blind.
I was sitting there like...
I was so degraded.
I don't think you've ever seen a blind man park a car.
It's quite a sight.
LAUGHTER
So, you're 23 now.
Yeah.
The odd thing for you is that because you've grown up
being on screen, you've never kind of had to do
the awkward teenage thing.
You've never had...
I did, but it was on camera.
We didn't notice it.
We really didn't notice it.
I think I can speak freely that we've probably all had
slightly awkward teenage...
Eric McCormick, you posted this picture,
so it's not like I broke into your house and found it.
How old were you in this picture?
Oh!
My Bay City Rollers phase.
I was 15.
Oh, my God.
You look 32.
LAUGHTER
You look younger now.
I think I was...
You've grown into yourself.
I haven't yet figured out how to pluck the centre.
There's still a good amount of hair there.
Who was the guy who played the Incredible Hulk?
Was it Lou Faringo?
There's a whiff of Lou about this.
And a little David Cassidy.
Thank you.
I was just about to star in my high school production
of Godspell when I did that.
I've never seen such a short fringe,
but such long at the back.
So precise.
It's not a mullet.
You're all being very...
It's more like a Farrah Fawcett flip.
LAUGHTER
Let's calm down.
Let's calm down, Debra, because we've all got a picture of you.
OK.
I think it's a particularly American thing
that some American girls do look about 45.
LAUGHTER
Mistress!
I mean, that hair...
It's got life in it, doesn't it?
That is solid.
You could hide pencils in that.
There's a postcode as well.
That's right.
What was that photo for?
That was my high school graduation photo.
Did you think you were supposed to face this way
and then the camera's over here?
I grew up in rural Rhode Island
and I think that I knew
that I had to find some drama in my life.
So I think that I felt like,
OK, I'm here.
It's not perfectly lit as well.
The school did an amazing job.
They did, right?
Because that's more than one light.
Yes.
They went all out in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.
Yes.
I feel in Lewisham they didn't.
Here's Fraw.
LAUGHTER
That's just one light.
What are you laughing at?
I understand there's a lot of questions.
LAUGHTER
I like to refer to these as the bad years.
Well, I think that...
I'm 15 years of age.
I'm on an Easter egg hunt
that I'm too old for, let's be honest.
I've absolutely demolished the hunt,
though, to be fair to them.
I've tamed them.
Yes.
There's a lot of children over here crying.
It currently feels like an anxiety dream.
It's awful, isn't it?
Yeah, so I just smashed the Easter egg hunt.
It looks like police evidence,
doesn't it?
Yeah.
The glasses.
Let's talk about the fringe.
You were talking to him about the fringe.
We're the same age in those photos.
LAUGHTER
Who made it in Hollywood, is it?
LAUGHTER
Let's put a bet on those two photos
next to each other.
The Easter egg serial killer.
LAUGHTER
Eric looked like a porn star.
LAUGHTER
Will and Grace is back.
Every Friday at ten o'clock.
It's one of those things...
We knew it would be in a way,
but then you heard 11 years.
Was it really 11 years?
The method of it coming back is so bizarre.
No-one was talking about it coming back.
No.
Go on.
I had been campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
We were talking about
trying to help her.
It turned out
that our entire set
had been stored pristinely
on the college campus
of our executive producer
for ten years.
Emerson College.
They got a call and said
we need you to move the entire set to storage.
We need to do some fixes.
He realized
I have the entire set of Will and Grace.
Maybe there's something I can do with it.
That's when he wrote
the four of us and said
would you guys want to do
a seven-minute little film
on YouTube to try and help
Hillary? Within ten minutes
all four of us had said yes.
We came back and we did it.
We really thought it was going to be
just a one-off. We said goodbye
and we were like how lucky.
Ten years later we got to play with each other again.
Seven and a half million views
and they were like wait a second.
LAUGHTER
It was really expensive.
We did this thing entirely
in secret. Nobody knew
except our few crew members.
Nobody knew?
Even the people that showed up.
An invited audience of 100 people
weren't told what they were about to see.
When the curtain parted and it was
that set and the four of us in costume
it was very awesome.
Because it came from a pro-Hillary
place, when Trump won
did that put you off
bringing it back?
Ten minutes didn't work. What about if we do
a whole scene?
LAUGHTER
That was rough.
It's still
more rough than ever.
It's embarrassing to be here from America
at the moment, but refreshing. Nice to be here.
LAUGHTER
The idea that
if Hillary had won and we could have taken some
small credit, if we had come
back, it would have been just a funny comedy show.
But now it feels like we're the resistance
somehow.
In terms of restarting
it, rebooting it,
how much discussion was around
because you ended up
in that last episode, you ended up in a very
different place to where you started
this series.
We had kids. It was 25
years in the future.
We're like, how are we going to do this?
They're like, oh, you're not going to have kids.
The first scene
of the first series,
the ninth series, which just started here,
basically we wrote the whole thing off as a dream.
LAUGHTER
The idea of Will and Grace having
kids and making the whole show about that was like,
can we just be gay?
LAUGHTER
I don't want to be parents.
Huge success, and then you had all those
incredible celebrities
and star cameos and things.
You were in scenes with Madonna.
And she didn't even know who I was.
I heard that.
Is that true? It's true.
Or me. She came in
late to the first read-through. She kept her sunglasses
on and she sat down
and she talked like that.
I think it was a vaguely Sacramento accent.
I'm not sure.
She said, I'm so not sorry.
And then she started reading
the script, and at one point she said,
listen, Jack, which one's Jack?
And Sean went,
hi, hi, Sean Hayes.
Hi, hi.
And most of her scenes were with Megan.
But every day she went to
Debra and to I, and she said,
I'm sorry, I don't remember your name.
And finally,
this was when she was really into
Kabbalah, and I said,
oh, I'm Rachel.
And she went, Rachel?
That's my Kabbalah name.
And I was like, how about that?
And literally for the rest
of the week she called me Rachel.
And that night, we always have a tradition
where we hug and kiss each other right before we go
on, and he said,
okay, have a good show, Deb.
And Madonna turned to him and was like,
her name's not Deb, her name's Rachel.
And that's when he informed her
that my name was Debra.
And the next day, after the whole
episode was over, I got
six dozen roses that said,
dear Debra, thank you for a
great week, Madonna.
So I, yeah, so I,
same thing, on the Friday, we'd been rehearsing
for three days, she said, I said,
this is the third time,
my name is so easy to remember.
It's the one at the very, very
beginning of every single episode of the
show you're on.
So same thing, I got a giant box
of roses with a card that I just found
the other day, I thought I'd lost it, which said,
if my husband would let me, I'd tattoo your name
on my arm. Love, Madonna.
So all's forgiven.
All's forgiven.
Well, my thing was...
You've opened up a rift.
My thing was s***.
If you've seen
pictures of Madonna lately, it's got Rachel
right there.
Were you responsible, Eric, for
getting Elton John on the show?
Well, yeah, so
I mentioned my high school production of
Godspell. You know who starred
in it with me in 1979
was David Furnish.
We grew up together outside... Good trivia.
Outside Toronto.
So we lost touch for a number of years,
but when I finally ran into him again, I was like,
I'm dating a girl, I think I'm going to marry her.
And he's like, great, I'm dating Elton John.
And so we got to
know Elton a little bit, but never
really close, and there was one day
David
phoned, and this was before Elton did
the show, and he said,
I'm in town, and my wife said, have him come over.
I said, come over to the house for dinner. He said, okay,
we'll be there at eight. I said,
my wife, he said, we.
He said, we? I think Elton John's
coming to our house for dinner.
Sure enough, they show up, and they're
both in velvet track suits,
and they sit down,
and I'm trying to be cool, we have dinner,
just the four of us, my kid is like six months old,
and we have a new piano that I
can barely play, but I had just
enough wine at one point that I said to Elton,
you know you're going to have to christen the piano.
And he got up, and he walked into the next
room, and he sat down,
and he looked up at me and said,
what would you like me to play?
And I said,
this is my moment, because I want him to know,
I'm not going to say Rocket Man, like some schmuck,
so I said,
I've seen that movie too,
from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
And he looked up at me and said,
oh, f**k off, I don't remember that song.
So he came on,
he was himself, and it was such a funny scene.
It was amazing.
Now talking of hanging out with big musical stars,
Ed Sheeran, the Galway Girl video,
so how did that happen?
Did you know him already?
No, I didn't know him, but we have a lot of
mutual friends,
friends from Suffolk,
which is where he grew up, and friends
in New Zealand, and things like that.
And I was out one night,
I was out with my friend in London,
and the casting agent
who was casting for the video
just emailed me and said,
do you want to be in an Ed Sheeran video?
And I was like, yeah, alright.
And it was going to be on my birthday,
the 12th of April,
just so you know.
And I did it,
and it was brilliant,
and he filmed the whole thing,
he had a camera on a rig,
and we just ran around Galway
for an entire night,
and he had, like, because he's, I mean,
he's huge everywhere, but he's
beloved in Ireland, like, everyone loves
him so much.
And so all of Galway just, like,
followed us around from place to place.
But the tattoo in the video,
the Galway Grill,
so that, he really did get,
he got that really tattooed?
He did, yeah. That's your handwriting?
That's my handwriting. So you wrote it on him?
I wrote it, no,
I was very, very nervous about it,
so I practiced for about half an hour
before they actually tattooed it on him.
And that's what you came up with?
To be fair, the state of his arm,
he ain't picky, is he?
You did better than that.
What is that, actually?
It's from a nightclub.
Did you mean to do the bad spelling?
No, it wasn't my idea to do the bad spelling.
I've been saying to people
at his gig that I just misspelled
the word girl, but I didn't.
The tour manager
in Dublin, we'd had a few drinks
during the show, because he did two shows
in Dublin, after we did the music video.
And the tour manager was gone by
and he was like, you know what would be gas
if you misspelled the word girl
and tattooed something else onto him?
And so we did Galway Grill
instead, and they got a tattoo artist to come in
at like 12 o'clock at night to Dublin.
During a birthday party
that was being had
in town.
You can't get good ones that time of night, though, can you?
The emergency ones
tend to be not so good.
The locksmiths that come out at night, they just kick your door in.
But he came in and he was terrified
like this poor fellow was having to
tattoo onto Ed Sheeran's arm.
With the arm that he plays
the guitar with, so.
I've been told to spell it wrong.
Now was there a Galway Grill that
actually benefited from this thing?
Probably is now.
It's a thing now.
Look it up. Now talking of
working with ginger musical icons.
That is the greatest segue.
Good segue.
That is incredible.
Who knew that we'd have two of them?
Spice Girls, Gerry Horner.
So did you have meetings with Gerry beforehand?
How does it work?
We were supposed to meet up for a cup of tea, but then it never happened
because it was quite a short time between she was confirmed to do it
and we started filming, so I met up with her
at the studios when we were filming it.
She's amazing. She's so lovely.
But have you broken it to her that growing up now, she wasn't your favourite?
She was.
She was my favourite.
I dressed up as Baby Spice for a school
assembly at primary school
because I was the blonde one
and there was a ginger kid in the class
and I couldn't nick Ginger Spice off him.
It was all he had.
I'm sure it hadn't been invented.
We got the egg hunt picture,
but we didn't get the Baby Spice picture.
I know. I was saying to the researcher,
did we get that?
I was quite cute when I was about eight.
It was 15, it all went wrong.
That's the worst it got, I think, the Easter egg hunt.
Because, Debra, did Ginger Spice do great things
for redheads all over the world?
I don't know.
Did she?
You don't know.
You know what, in America,
redheads on television,
it's equated with being funny.
Like, I love Lucy,
Carol Burnett,
and so, well,
I was a dark auburn
and when I got my first comedy,
my TV show, they were like,
oh, you've got to make your hair redder.
And I was like, well, why?
And they were like, it's funnier.
Clown-like.
Like, Ronald McDonald?
Like, what are you talking about?
So I guess that's the rule in America.
Well, Rob's new show
with Gerry is this new singing competition
All Together Now,
and we're two weeks in, it's going really well,
and it is, it's a really,
well, I just think it's a big-hearted show.
It's kind of a lovely watch.
So, talk us through the premise.
Well, it's not like another singing show,
it's more of a game show with singing in it,
and instead of like the classic two or three judges,
there's a hundred judges made up of people
that have worked in the music industry,
and they're all characters in their own right,
and they're all mic'd up.
So when there's someone singing,
you can hear what they're thinking and saying
during the performances.
Gerry's in there, she's sort of the leader of them.
And then when someone comes up, they start singing,
and then if they like it, the judges,
they stand up and join in and sing along.
And if they don't, they stay seated.
So, seated. Stay seated.
I mean, I've already got the PR patter down,
but I learned the word seated.
They stay seated.
And then I come out
and tell them what score they got,
and the thing is, I really take the mickey and mess about,
which doesn't normally happen, so, you know,
it doesn't happen on those sort of talent shows.
It's just so much fun, it's really, like, warm-hearted
and silly, it doesn't take itself too serious,
and it was a joy to make.
No, it looks like it was fun. I know it was decent,
because all the camera crew were enjoying it,
and I've not seen cameramen smile for about 15 years.
LAUGHTER
And the running around... Yes.
See, I just think, if I was you, I'd have gone,
no, I won't be doing that.
I think we're at different points of our career, Graham.
LAUGHTER
You know, give me a few years, I might ask for, you know,
some help hopping down the stairs.
Yeah, I'll have a chair right there.
Can I have a stair lift?
No, it was fun, it was pretty tiring,
but, you know, I've done proper jobs.
I used to work at a flower market, so chatting to people
about a song ain't a killer on my feet.
I actually sold you a bag of compost.
LAUGHTER
What do you mean? At Columbia Road Flower Market.
Oh, my God. I worked there from 14,
and I remember seeing you and I sold you a pot.
I think I actually carried it for you, you gave me a tip.
Thank God!
LAUGHTER
Always tip, ladies and gentlemen.
This could happen.
That's what I know, it's what I know.
Well, I think that's the only bag of compost
I've ever bought.
I even sort of remember it.
LAUGHTER
That was my first job, selling bags of s*** in the street.
LAUGHTER
So, in the morning in East London,
brutal.
I don't want a bag of s***!
Can I have two for a fiver?
Can I have a 50p?
So, running up shiny stairs.
Oh, it's fun. It's quite good exercise.
Yes!
But is it weird being recognised now?
It's weird in South East London because it's quite rough,
so the same look you get when someone thinks you're famous
is the same one they look at you with
if they want to chin you.
LAUGHTER
Sort of just like that.
Listen, it's time to meet our music act tonight,
and this is a real treat.
This singer shot fame as the bearded woman
in The Greatest Showman,
for which the soundtrack album has broken all records.
Here performing the Oscar-nominated
This Is Me, it is...
That was stunning.
We haven't had a reaction to a performance like that in ages.
That was amazing.
Is that a good thing?
Yes. It was a good reaction.
I counted 100 standing up. You smashed it.
Seriously, fantastic.
And that, of course, is from the soundtrack
of The Greatest Showman, and that is out now.
And, of course, one of the next times
you'll be performing that will be at the Oscars
with Saoirse.
I know. I saw Saoirse and I went,
Sorry, darling, you have to hear this another time.
How about whatever?
How does that happen?
When do rehearsals start?
No comment.
I'll get fired from the Oscars if I give you any information.
But I will tell you
that I do get to sing at it.
Presumably that.
I can't give you that information.
LAUGHTER
I'll still get fired.
So, listen, this is a really special thing.
Here you are in this movie,
the soundtrack's going well, you're at the Oscars.
But this was never meant to happen.
So how did you end up in the film?
Tell us your story.
Oh, it's Hugh Jackman's fault.
I was successfully hiding
from the world
in New York City for about 25 years.
And so, because the hustle
is the hustle when you're on a Broadway show.
You always book a show and then you try and find another one.
And they were trying
to find a bearded lady for a reading
of The Greatest Show on Earth, which is what it was called at the time.
And I said, yeah, sure, I'll do it.
How much is it? Great, I'll pay my rent.
Go ahead, hand it over, I'll do it.
And then I ended up doing it two more times.
And the last time ended up being the green light
that Fox gave for us to do it.
And you were in the room and...
Yeah, I did it.
And it was the first time that they
had heard This Is Me.
It was actually one of the last two songs written for the film.
And it was written a week before that
whole thing, and
they said, do you want to sing it? I said, absolutely not.
I'll find somebody else
and I'll sing soprano or alto, just go find somebody else.
And the story goes
with my director, he said,
what will it take for you to do this?
I said, you buy me a bottle of Jameson, I'll do it.
Nice!
He showed up the next day with them little black
liquor bags that you get in New York City,
pulled the bag down, and there was my bottle of Jameson.
I was like, dang it!
You're cheap!
I think you need a new agent, if I'm honest with you.
Let's ask for a case.
I didn't need a budget.
I had no idea what a budget was.
I'm so pleased for you. It's fantastic.
What a great story, and good luck
to both of you at the Oscars.
Keola Settle, everybody!
A quick visit to the big red chair.
Hello!
Hello! Hi, Graham.
What's your name? My name's Debbie.
Where are you from? I'm from Kent.
What do you do down there?
I'm an airline cabin crew member.
Can you tell which airline it is?
No.
That's good.
Maybe it reflects on the story.
It happened 30 years ago, almost.
My youngest daughter
was a baby,
just a few months old.
She was still being fed in the night.
My ex-husband had a particular
aversion to breast milk
for some peculiar reason.
Anyway, she woke up in the middle of the night
and I got her out of her cot,
took her into bed with me,
rested her in that arm, feeding her nicely.
The right side started to leak
profusely and was squirting
all over his face
and woke him up.
And he went,
get it off me.
And I thought, hmm, not a very nice reaction.
So the next day I made him
a lovely apple crumble with some very special
I know, ex-husband.
Ex-husband, yeah.
And the marriage went up.
At this address.
Sadly, that is it for tonight.
Please say a huge thank you to my guests,
Keala Settle,
new Lara Croft, Alicia Vikander,
rising British star, Daniel Kaluuya,
and from I, Tonya, the Oscar-nominated
Alison Janney and Margot Robbie.
I'll see you then. Good night, everybody.
