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What makes a character so compelling that readers will forgive almost anything about the plot? How do you move beyond vague flaws and generic descriptions to create people who feel pulled from real life? In this solo episode, I share 15 actionable tips for writing deep characters, curated from past interviews on the podcast. In the intro, thoughts from London Book Fair [Instagram reel @jfpennauthor; Publishing Perspectives; Audible; Spotify]; Insights from a 7-figure author business [BookBub]. This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn This episode has been created from previous episodes of The Creative Penn Podcast, curated by Joanna Penn, as well as chapters from How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book. Links to the individual episodes are included in the transcript below. In this episode: Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest' trifecta, how to hook readers on the very first page Define the Dramatic Question: Who is your character when the chips are down? Absolute specificity. Why “she's controlling” isn't good enough Understand the Heroine's Journey, strength through connection, not solo action Use ‘Metaphor Families' to anchor dialogue and give every character a distinctive voice Find the Diagnostic Detail, the moments that prove a character is real Writing pain onto the page without writing memoir Write diverse characters as real people, not stereotypes or plot devices Give your protagonist a morally neutral ‘hero' status. Compelling beats likeable. Build vibrant side characters for series longevity and spin-off potential Use voice as a rhythmic tool Link character and plot until they're inseparable Why discovery writers can write out of order and still build deep character Find the sensory details that make characters live and breathe More help with how to write fiction here, or in my book, How to Write a Novel. Writing Characters: 15 Tips for Writing Deep Character in Your Fiction In today's episode, I'm sharing fifteen tips for writing deep characters, synthesised from some of the most insightful interviews on The Creative Penn Podcast over the past few years, combined with what I've learned across more than forty books of my own. I'll be referencing episodes with Matt Bird, Will Storr, Gail Carriger, Barbara Nickless, and Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer. I'll also draw on my own book, How to Write a Novel, which covers these fundamentals in detail. Whether you're writing your first novel or your fiftieth, whether you're a plotter or a discovery writer like me, these tips will help you create characters that readers believe in, care about, and invest in—and keep coming back for more. Let's get into it. 1. Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest' Trifecta When I spoke with Matt Bird on episode 624, he laid out the three things you need to achieve on the very first page of your book or in the first ten minutes of a film. He calls it “Believe, Care, and Invest.” First, the reader must believe the character is a real person, somehow proving they are not a cardboard imitation of a human being, not just a generic type walking through a generic plot. Second, the reader must care about the character's circumstances. And third, the reader must invest in the character's ability to solve the story's central problem. Matt used The Hunger Games as his primary example, and it's brilliant. On the very first page, we believe Katniss's voice. Suzanne Collins writes in first person with a staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short declarative sentences—that immediately grounds us in a survivalist mentality. We care because Katniss is starving. She's protecting her little sister. And we invest because she is out there bow hunting, which Matt pointed out is one of the most badass things a character can do. She even kills a lynx two pages in and sells the pelt. We invest in her resourcefulness and grit before the plot has even begun. Matt was very clear that this has nothing to do with the character being “likable.” He said his subtitle, Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love, doesn't mean the character has to be a good person. He described “hero” as both gender-neutral and morally neutral. A hero can be totally evil or totally good. What matters is that we believe, care, and invest. He demonstrated this beautifully by breaking down the first ten minutes of WeCrashed, where the characters of Adam and Rebekah Neumann are absolutely not likable, but we are completely hooked. Adam steals his neighbour's Chinese food through a carefully orchestrated con involving an imaginary beer. It's not admirable behaviour, but the tradecraft involved, as Matt put it—using a term from spy movies—makes us invest in him. We see a character trying to solve the big problem of his life, which is that he's poor and wants to be rich, and we want to see if he can pull it off. Actionable step: Go to the first page of your current work in progress. Does it achieve all three? Does the reader believe this is a real person with a distinctive voice? Do they care about the character's circumstances? And do they invest in the character's ability to handle what's coming? If even one of those three is missing, that's your revision priority. 2. Define the Dramatic Question: Who Are They Really? Will Storr, author of The Science of Storytelling, came on episode 490 and gave one of the most powerful frameworks I've ever heard for character-driven fiction. He explained that the human brain evolved language primarily to swap social information—in other words, to gossip. We are wired to monitor other people, to ask the question: who is this person when the chips are down? That's what Will calls the Dramatic Question, and it's what he believes lies at the heart of all compelling storytelling. It's not a question about plot. It's a question about the character's soul. And every scene in your novel should force the character to answer it. His example of Lawrence of Arabia is unforgettable. The Dramatic Question for the entire film is: who are you, Lawrence? Are you ordinary or are you extraordinary? At the beginning, Lawrence is a cocky, rebellious young soldier who believes his rebelliousness makes him superior. Every iconic scene in that three-hour film tests that belief. Sometimes Lawrence acts as though he truly is extraordinary—leading the Arabs into battle, being hailed as a god—and sometimes the world strips him bare and he sees himself as ordinary. Because it's a tragedy, he never overcomes his flaw. He doubles down on his belief that he's extraordinary until he becomes monstrous, culminating in that iconic scene where he lifts a bloody dagger and sees his own reflection with horror. Will also used Jaws to demonstrate how this works in a pure action thriller. Brody's dramatic question is simple: are you going to be old Brody who is terrified of the water, or new Brody who can overcome that fear? Every scene where the shark appears is really asking that question. And the last moment of the film isn't the shark blowing up. It's Brody swimming back through the water, saying he used to be scared of the water and he can't imagine why. Actionable step: Write down the Dramatic Question for your protagonist in a single sentence. Is it “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you brave enough to love again?” or “Will you sacrifice your principles for survival?” If you can't answer this with specificity, your character might still be a sketch rather than a person. 3. Get rid of Vague Flaws, and use Absolute Specificity This was one of Will Storr's most important points. He said that vague thinking about characters is really the enemy. When he teaches workshops and asks writers to describe their character's flaw, most of them say something like “they're very controlling.” And Will's response is: that's not good enough. Everyone is controlling. How are they controlling? What's the specific mechanism? He gave the example of a profile he read of Theresa May during the UK's Brexit chaos. Someone who knew her said that Theresa May's problem was that she always thinks she's the only adult in every room she goes into. Will said that stopped him in his tracks because it's so precise. If you define a character with that level of specificity, you can take them and put them in any genre, any situation—a spaceship, a Victorian drawing room, a school playground—and you will know exactly how they're going to behave. The same applies to Arthur Miller's Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, as Will described it: a man who believes absolutely in capitalistic success and the idea that when you die, you're going to be weighed on a scale, just as God weighs you for sin, but now you're weighed for success. That's not a vague flaw. That's a worldview you can drop into any story and watch it combust. Will made another counterintuitive point that I found really valuable: writers often think that piling on multiple traits will create a complex character, but the opposite is true. Starting with one highly specific flaw and running it through the demands of a relentless plot is what generates complexity. You end up with a far more nuanced, original character than if you'd started with a laundry list of vague attributes. Actionable step: Take your protagonist's flaw and pressure-test it. Is it specific enough that you could place this character in any situation and predict their behaviour? If you're stuck at “she's stubborn” or “he's insecure,” keep pushing. What kind of stubborn? What kind of insecure? Find the diagnostic sentence—the Theresa May level of precision. 4. Understand the Heroine's Journey: Strength Through Connection Gail Carriger came on episode 550 to discuss her nonfiction book, The Heroine's Journey, and it completely reframed how I think about some of my own fiction. Gail explained that the core difference between the Hero's Journey and the Heroine's Journey comes down to how strength and victory are defined. The Hero's Journey is about strength through solo action. The hero must be continually isolated to get stronger. He goes out of civilisation, faces strife alone, and achieves victory through physical prowess and self-actualisation. The Heroine's Journey is the opposite. The heroine achieves her goals by activating a network. She's a delegator, a general. She identifies where she can't do something alone, finds the people who can help, and portions out the work for mutual gain. Gail put it simply: the heroine is very good at asking for help, which our culture tends to devalue but which is actually a powerful form of strength. Crucially, Gail stressed that gender is irrelevant to which journey you're writing. Her go-to examples are striking: the recent Wonder Woman film is practically a beat-for-beat hero's journey—Gilgamesh on screen, as Gail described it. Meanwhile, Harry Potter, both the first book and the series as a whole, is a classic heroine's journey. Harry's power comes from his network—Dumbledore's Army, the Order of the Phoenix, his friendships with Ron and Hermione. He doesn't defeat Voldemort alone. He defeats Voldemort because of love and connection. This distinction has real practical consequences for writers. If you're writing a hero's journey and you hit writer's block, Gail said, the solution is usually to isolate your hero further and pile on more strife. But if you're writing a heroine's journey, the solution is probably to throw a new character into the scene—someone who has advice to offer or a skill the heroine lacks. The actual solutions to writer's block are different depending on which narrative you're writing. As I reflected on my own work, I realised that my ARKANE thriller protagonist, Morgan Sierra, follows a hero's journey—she's a solo operative, a lone wolf like Jack Reacher or James Bond. But my Mapwalker fantasy series follows a heroine's journey, with Sienna and her group of friends working together. I hadn't consciously chosen those paths; the stories led me there. But understanding the framework helps me write more intentionally now. Actionable step: Identify which journey your protagonist is on. Does your character gain strength by being alone (hero) or by building connections (heroine)? This will inform every plot decision you make, from how they face obstacles to how your story ends. 5. Use ‘Metaphor Families' to Anchor Dialogue and Voice One of the most practical techniques Matt Bird shared on episode 624 is the idea of assigning each character a “metaphor family”—a specific well of language that they draw from. This gives each character a distinctive voice that goes beyond accent or dialect. Matt explained how in The Wire, one of the most beloved TV shows of all time, every character has a different metaphor family. What struck him was that Omar, this iconic character, never utters a single curse word in the entire series. His metaphor family is pirate. He talks about parlays, uses language that feels like it belongs in Pirates of the Caribbean, and it creates this incredible ironic counterpoint against his urban setting. It tells us immediately that this is a character who sees himself in a tradition of people that doesn't match his immediate surroundings. Matt also referenced the UK version of The Office, where Gareth works at a paper company but aspires to the military. So all of his language is drawn from a military metaphor family. He doesn't talk about filing and photocopying; he talks about tactics and discipline and being on the front line. This tells us that the character has a life and dreams beyond the immediate scene—and it's the gap between aspiration and reality that makes him both funny and believable. He pointed out that a metaphor family sometimes comes from a character's background, but it's often more interesting when it comes from their aspirations. What does your character want to be? What world do they fantasise about inhabiting? That's where their language should come from. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a spiritual hermit, but his metaphor family is military. He uses the language of generals and commanders, and that ironic counterpoint is part of what makes him feel so rich. Actionable step: Assign each of your main characters a metaphor family. It could be based on their job, their background, or—more interestingly—their secret aspirations. Then go through your dialogue and make sure each character is consistently drawing from that well of language. If two characters sound the same when you strip away the dialogue tags, this is the fix. 6. Find the Diagnostic Detail: The Diagonal Toast Avoid clichéd character tags—the random scar, the eye patch, the mysterious limp—unless they serve a deep narrative purpose. Matt Bird on episode 624 was very funny about this: he pointed out that Nick Fury, Odin, and eventually Thor all have eye patches in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Eye patches are done, he said. You cannot do eye patches anymore. Instead, look for what I'm calling the “diagonal toast” detail, after a scene Matt described from Captain Marvel. In the film, Captain Marvel is trying to determine whether Nick Fury is who he says he is. She asks him to prove he isn't a shapeshifting alien. Fury shares biographical details—his history, his mother—but then she pushes further and says, name one more thing you couldn't possibly have made up about yourself. And Fury says: if toast is cut diagonally, I can't eat it. Matt said that detail is gold for a writer because it feels pulled from a real life. You can pull it from your own life and gift it to your characters, and the reader can tell it's not manufactured. He gave another example from The Sopranos: Tony Soprano's mother won't answer the phone after dark. The show's creator, David Chase, confirmed on the DVD commentary that this came from his own mother, who genuinely would not answer the phone after dark and couldn't explain why. Matt's practical advice was to keep a journal. Write down the strange, specific things that people do or say. Mine your own life for those hyper-specific details. You just need one per book. In my own writing, I've used this approach. In my ARKANE thrillers, my character Morgan Sierra has always been Angelina Jolie in my mind—specifically Jolie in Lara Croft or Mr and Mrs Smith. And Blake Daniel in my crime thriller series was based on Jesse Williams from Grey's Anatomy. I paste pictures of actors into my Scrivener projects. It helps with visuals, but also with the sense of the character, their energy and physicality. But visual details only take you so far. It's the behavioural quirks—the diagonal toast moments—that make a character feel genuinely alive. That said, physical character tags can work brilliantly when they serve the story. As I discuss in How to Write a Novel, Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike is an amputee, and his pain and the physical challenges of his prosthesis are a key part of every story—it's not a cosmetic detail, it's woven into the action and the character's psychology. My character Blake Daniel always wears gloves to cover the scars on his hands, which provides an angle into his wounded past as well as a visual cue for the reader. And of course, Harry Potter's lightning-shaped scar isn't just a mark—it's a direct connection to his nemesis and the mythology of the entire series. The rule of thumb is: if the tag tells us something about the character's interior life or connects to the plot, it's earning its place. If it's just there to make the character visually distinctive, it's probably a crutch. Game of Thrones takes character tags further with the family houses, each with their own mottos and sigils. The Starks say “Winter is coming” and their sigil is a dire wolf. Those aren't just labels—they're worldview made visible. Actionable step: Start a “diagonal toast” notebook. Every time you notice something strange and specific about someone's behaviour—something that feels too real to be made up—write it down. Then gift it to a character who needs more texture. 7. Displace Your Own Trauma into the Work Barbara Nickless shared something deeply personal on episode 732 that fundamentally changed how I think about putting pain onto the page. While starting At First Light, the first book in her Dr. Evan Wilding series, she lost her son to epilepsy—something called SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy. One day he was there, and the next day he was gone. Barbara said that writing helped her cope with the trauma, that doing a deep dive into Old English literature and the Viking Age for the book's research became a lifeline. But here's what's important: she didn't give Dr. Evan Wilding her exact trauma. Evan Wilding is four feet five inches, and Barbara described how he has to walk through a world that won't adjust to him. That's its own form of learning to cope when circumstances are beyond your control. She displaced her genuine grief into the character's different but parallel struggle. When I asked her about the difference between writing for therapy and writing for an audience, she drew on her experience teaching creative writing to veterans through a collaboration between the US Department of Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts. She said she's found that she can pour her heartache into her characters and process it through them, even when writing professionally, and that the genuine emotion is what touches readers. We've all been through our own losses and griefs, so seeing how a character copes can be deeply meaningful. I've always found that putting my own pain onto the page is the most direct way to connect with a reader's soul. My character Morgan Sierra's musings on religion and the supernatural are often my own. Her restlessness, her fascination with the darker edges of faith—those come from me. But her Krav Maga fighting skills and her ability to kill the bad guys are definitely her own. That gap between what's mine and what's hers is where the fiction lives. Barbara also said something on that episode that I wrote down and stuck on my wall. She said the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul. I've been thinking about that ever since. On my own wall, I have “Measure your life by what you create.” Different words, same truth. Actionable step: If you're carrying something heavy—grief, anger, fear, regret—consider how you might displace it into a character's different but emotionally parallel struggle. Don't copy your exact situation; transform it. The emotion will be genuine, and the reader will feel it. 8. Write Diverse Characters as Real People When I spoke with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673—Sarah is Choctaw and a historical fiction author honoured by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian—she offered a perspective that every fiction writer needs to hear. The key message was to move away from stereotypes. Don't write your American Indian character as the “Wise Guide” who exists solely to dispense mystic wisdom to the white protagonist. Don't limit diverse characters to historical settings, as though they only exist in the past. Place them in normal, contemporary roles. Your spaceship captain, your forensic scientist, your small-town baker—any of them can be American Indian, or Nigerian, or Japanese, and their heritage should be a lived-in part of their identity, not the sole reason they exist in the story. I write international thrillers and dark fantasy, and my fiction is populated with characters from all over the world. I have a multi-cultural family and I've lived in many places and travelled widely, so I've met, worked with, and had relationships with people from different cultures. I find story ideas through travel, and if I set my books in a certain place, then the story is naturally populated with the people who live there. As I discuss in my book, How to Write a Novel, the world is a diverse place, so your fiction needs to be populated with all kinds of people. If I only populated my fiction with characters like me, they would be boring novels. There are many dimensions of difference—race, nationality, sex, age, body type, ability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, class, culture, education level—and even then, don't assume that similar types of people think the same way. Some authors worry they will make mistakes. We live in a time of outrage, and some authors have been criticised for writing outside their own experience. So is it too dangerous to try? Of course not. The media amplifies outliers, and most authors include diverse characters in every book without causing offence because they work hard to get it right. It's about awareness, research, and intent. Actionable step: Audit the cast of your current work in progress. Have you written a mono-cultural perspective for all of them? If so, consider who could bring a different background, perspective, or set of cultural specifics to the story. Not as a token addition, but as a real person with a real life. 9. Respect Tribal and Cultural Specificity Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673 was emphatic about one thing: never treat diverse groups as monolithic. If you're writing a Native American character, you must research the specific nation. Choctaw is not Navajo, just as British is not French. Sarah described the distinct cultural markers of the Choctaw people—the diamond pattern you'll see on traditional shirts and dresses, which represents the diamondback rattlesnake. They have distinct dances and songs. She said that if she saw someone in traditional dress at a distance, she would know whether they were Choctaw based on what they were wearing. She encouraged writers who want to write specifically about a nation to get to know those people. Go to events, go to a powwow, learn about the individual culture. She noted that a big misconception is that American Indians exist only in the past—she stressed that they are still here, still living their cultures, and fiction should reflect that present reality. I took a similar approach when writing Destroyer of Worlds, which is set mostly in India. I read books about Hindu myth, watched documentaries about the sadhus, and had one of my Indian readers from Mumbai check my cultural references. For Risen Gods, set in New Zealand with a young Maori protagonist, I studied books about Maori mythology and fiction by Maori authors, and had a male Maori reader check for cultural issues. Research is simply an act of empathy. The practical takeaway is this: if you're going to include a character from a specific cultural background, do the work. Use specific cultural details rather than generic signifiers. Sarah talked about how even she fell into stereotypes when she was first writing, until her mother pointed them out. If someone from within a culture can fall into those traps, the rest of us certainly can. Do the research, try your best, ask for help, and apologise if you need to. Actionable step: If you're writing a character from a specific culture, identify three to five sensory or behavioural details that are particular to that culture—not the generic version, but the real, researched, lived-in version. Consider hiring a sensitivity reader from that community to check your work. 10. Give Your Protagonist a Morally Neutral ‘Hero' Status Matt Bird was clear about this on episode 624: the word “hero” simply means the protagonist, the person we follow through the story. It's a functional role, not a moral label. We don't have to like them. We don't even have to root for their goals in a moral sense. We just have to find them compelling enough to invest our attention in their problem-solving. Think of Succession, where every member of the Roy family is varying degrees of awful, and yet the show was utterly compelling. Or WeCrashed, where Adam Neumann is a narcissistic con artist, but we can't look away because he's trying to solve the enormous problem of building an empire from nothing, and the tradecraft he employs is fascinating. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, readers must want to spend time with your characters. They don't have to be lovable or even likable—that will depend on your genre and story choices—but they have to be captivating enough that we want to spend time with them. A character who is trying to solve a massive problem will naturally draw investment from the audience, even if we wouldn't want to have tea with them. Will Storr extended this idea by pointing out that the audience will actually root for a character to solve their problem even if the audience doesn't actually want the character's goal to be achieved in the real world. We don't really want more billionaires, but we invested in Adam Neumann's rise because that was the problem the story posed, and our brains are wired to invest in problem-solving. This connects to something deeper: what does your character want, and why? As I explore in How to Write a Novel, desire operates on multiple levels. Take a character like Phil, who joins the military during wartime. On the surface, she wants to serve her country. But she also wants to escape her dead-end town and learn new skills. Deeper still, her father and grandfather served, and by joining up, she hopes to finally earn their respect. And perhaps deepest of all, her father died on a mission under mysterious circumstances, and she wants to find out what happened from the inside. That layering of motivation is what turns a flat character into a three-dimensional one. The audience doesn't need to be told all of this explicitly. It can emerge through action, dialogue, and the choices the character makes under pressure. But you, the writer, need to know it. You need to know what your character really wants deep down, because that desire—more than any external plot device—is what drives the story forward. And your antagonist needs the same depth. They also want something, often diametrically opposed to your protagonist, and they need a reason that makes sense to them. In my ARKANE thriller Tree of Life, my antagonist is the heiress of a Brazilian mining empire who wants to restore the Earth to its original state to atone for the destruction caused by her father's company. She's part of a radical ecological group who believe the only way to restore Nature is to end all human life. It's extreme, but in an era of climate change, it's a motivation readers can understand—even if they disagree with the solution. Actionable step: If you're struggling to make a morally grey character work, make sure their problem is big enough and their methods are specific and interesting enough that we invest in the how, even if we're ambivalent about the what. 11. Build Vibrant Side Characters Gail Carriger made a point on episode 550 that was equal parts craft advice and business strategy. In a Heroine's Journey model, side characters aren't just fodder to be killed off to motivate the hero. They form a network. And because you don't have to kill them—unlike in a hero's journey, where allies are often betrayed or removed so the hero can be further isolated—you can pick up those side characters and give them their own books. Gail said this creates a really voracious reader base. You write one series with vivid side characters, and then readers fall in love with those side characters and want their stories. So you write spin-offs. The romance genre does this brilliantly—think of the Bridgerton books, where each sibling gets their own novel. The side character in one book becomes the protagonist in the next. Barbara Nickless experienced this firsthand with her Dr. Evan Wilding series. She has River Wilding, Evan's adventurous brother, and Diana, the axe-throwing research assistant, and her editor has already expressed interest in a spin-off series with those characters. Barbara described creating characters she wants to spend time with, or characters who give her nightmares but also intrigue her. That's the dual test: are they interesting enough for you to write, and interesting enough for readers to demand more? As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, characters that span series can deepen the reader's relationship with them as you expand their backstory into new plots. Readers will remember the character more than the plot or the book title, and look forward to the next instalment because they want more time with those people. British crime author Angela Marsons described it as readers feeling like returning to her characters is like putting on a pair of old slippers. Actionable step: Look at your supporting cast. Is there a side character who is vivid enough to carry their own story? If not, what could you add—a specific hobby, a distinct voice, a compelling backstory—that would make readers want more of them? 12. Use Voice as a Rhythmic Tool Voice is one of the most important elements of novel writing, and Matt Bird helped me think about it in a technical, mechanical way that I found really useful. He pointed out that the ratio of periods to commas defines a character's internal reality. A staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short sentences—suggests a character who is certain, grounded, or perhaps survivalist and traumatised. Katniss in The Hunger Games has a period-heavy voice. She's in survival mode. She doesn't have time for complexity or qualification. A flowing, comma-heavy style suggests someone more academic, more nuanced, or possibly more scattered and manipulative. The character who qualifies everything, who adds sub-clauses and digressions, is a different kind of person from the character who speaks in declarations. This is something you can actually measure. Pull up a passage of your character's dialogue or internal monologue and count the periods versus the commas. If the rhythm doesn't match who the character is supposed to be, you've found a mismatch you can fix. Sentence length is the heartbeat of your character's persona. And voice extends beyond rhythm to the words themselves. As I discussed in the metaphor families tip, each character should draw from a distinctive well of language. But voice also encompasses their relationship to silence. Some characters talk around the thing they mean; others say it straight. Some are self-deprecating; others are blunt to the point of rudeness. All of these choices are character choices, not just style choices. I find it useful to read my dialogue aloud—and not just to check for naturalness, but to hear whether each character sounds distinct. If you could swap dialogue lines between two characters and nobody would notice, you have a voice problem. One practical test: cover the dialogue tags and see if you can tell who's speaking from the words alone. Actionable step: Choose a key passage from your protagonist's point of view and read it aloud. Does the rhythm match the character? A soldier under fire should not sound like a philosophy professor at a wine tasting. Adjust the ratio of periods to commas until the voice feels right. 13. Link Character and Plot Until They're Inseparable Will Storr made the case on episode 490 that the number one problem he sees in the writing he encounters—in workshops, in submissions, even in published books—is that the characters and the plots are unconnected. There's a story happening, and there are people in it, but the story isn't a product of who those people are. He said a story should be like life. In our lives, the plots are intimately connected to who we are as characters. The goals we pursue, the obstacles we face, the same problems that keep recurring—these are products of our personalities, our flaws, our specific ways of being in the world. His framework is that your plot should be designed specifically to plot against your character. You've got a character with a particular flaw; the plot exists to test that flaw over and over until the character either transforms or doubles down and explodes. Jaws is the perfect example. Brody is afraid of water. A shark shows up in the coastal town he's responsible for protecting. The entire plot is engineered to force him to confront the one thing he cannot face. Will pointed out that the whole plot of Jaws is structured around Brody's flaw. It begins with the shark arriving, the midpoint is when Brody finally gets the courage to go into the water, and the very final scene isn't the shark blowing up—it's Brody swimming back through the water. Even a film that's ninety-eight percent action is, at its core, structured around a character with a character flaw. This is the standard I aspire to in my own work, even in my action-heavy thrillers. The external plot should be a mirror of the internal struggle. When those two are aligned, the story becomes irresistible. Will also made an important point about series fiction, which is where most commercial authors live. I asked him how this works when your character can't be transformed at the end of every book because there has to be a next book. His answer was elegant: you don't cure them. Episodic TV characters like Fleabag or David Brent or Basil Fawlty never truly change—and the fact that they don't change is actually the source of the comedy. But every episode throws a new story event at them that tests and exposes their flaw. You just keep throwing story events at them again and again. That's a soap opera, a sitcom, and a book series. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, character flaws are aspects of personality that affect the person so much that facing and overcoming them becomes central to the plot. In Jaws, the protagonist Brody is afraid of the water, but he has to overcome that flaw to destroy the killer shark and save the town. But remember, your characters should feel like real people, so never define them purely by their flaws. The character addicted to painkillers might also be a brilliant and successful female lawyer who gets up at four in the morning to work out at the gym, likes eighties music, and volunteers at the local dog shelter at weekends. Character wounds are different from flaws. They're formed from life experience and are part of your character's backstory—traumatic events that happened before the events of your novel but shape the character's reactions in the present. In my ARKANE thrillers, Morgan Sierra's husband Elian died in her arms during a military operation. This happened before the series begins, but her memories of it recur when she faces a firefight, and she struggles to find happiness again for fear of losing someone she loves once more. And then there's the perennial advice: show, don't tell. Most writers have heard this so many times that it's easy to nod and then promptly write scenes that tell rather than show. Basically, you need to reveal your character through action and dialogue, rather than explanation. In my thriller Day of the Vikings, Morgan Sierra fights a Neo-Viking in the halls of the British Museum and brings him down with Krav Maga. That fight scene isn't just about showing action. It opens up questions about her backstory, demonstrates character, and moves the plot forward. Telling would be something like: “Morgan was an expert in Krav Maga.” Showing is the reader discovering it through the scene itself. Actionable step: Look at the main plot events of your novel. For each major turning point, ask: does this scene specifically test my protagonist's flaw? If not, can you redesign the scene so that it does? The tighter the connection between character and plot, the more powerful the story. 14. The ‘Maestra' Approach: Write Out of Order If you're a discovery writer like me, you may feel like the deep character work I've been describing sounds more suited to plotters. But Barbara Nickless gave me a beautiful metaphor on episode 732 that reframes it entirely. Barbara described her evolving writing process as being like a maestra standing in front of an orchestra. Sometimes you bring in the horns—a certain theme—and sometimes you bring in the strings—a certain character—and sometimes you turn to the soloist. It's a more organic and jumping-around process than linear writing, and Barbara said she's only recently given herself permission to work this way. When I told her that I use Scrivener to write in scenes out of order and then drag and drop them into a structure later, she was genuinely intrigued. And this is how I've always worked. I'll see the story in my mind like a movie trailer—flashes of the big emotional scenes, the pivotal confrontations, the moments of revelation—and I write those first. I don't know how they hang together until quite late in the process. Then I'll move scenes around, print the whole thing out, and figure out the connective tissue. The point is that discovery writers can absolutely build deep characters. Sometimes writing the big emotional scenes first is how you discover who the character is before you fill in the rest. You don't need a twenty-page character worksheet or a 200-page outline like Jeffery Deaver. You need to be willing to follow the character into the unknown and trust that the structure will emerge. As Barbara said, she writes to know what she's thinking. That's the discovery writer's credo. And I would add: I write to know who my characters are. Actionable step: If you're stuck on your current chapter, skip it. Write the scene that's burning in your imagination, even if it's from the middle or the end. That scene might be the key to unlocking who your character really is. 15. Use Research to Help with Empathy Research shouldn't just be about factual accuracy—it's a tool for finding the sensory details that create empathy. Barbara Nickless described research as almost an excuse to explore things that fascinate her, and I feel exactly the same way. I would go so far as to say that writing is an excuse for me to explore the things that interest me. Barbara and I both travel for our stories. For her Dr. Evan Wilding books, she did deep research into Old English literature and the Viking Age. For my thriller End of Days, I transcribed hours of video from Appalachian snake-handling churches on YouTube to understand the worldview of the worshippers, because my antagonist was brought up in that tradition. I couldn't just make that up. I had to hear their language, feel their conviction, understand why they would hold venomous serpents as an act of faith. Barbara also mentioned getting to Israel and the West Bank for research, and I've been to both places too. Finding that one specific sensory detail—the smell of a particular location, the specific way an expert handles a tool, the sound of a particular kind of music—makes the character's life feel lived-in. It's the difference between a character who is described as living in a place and a character who inhabits it. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, don't write what you know. Write what you want to learn about. I love research. It's part of why I'm an author in the first place. I take any excuse to dive into a world different from my own. Research using books, films, podcasts, and travel, and focus particularly on sources produced by people from the worldview you want to understand. Actionable step: For your next piece of character research, go beyond reading. Watch a documentary, visit a location, talk to someone who lives the experience. Find one sensory detail—a smell, a sound, a texture—that you couldn't have invented. That detail will make your character feel real. Bonus: Measure Your Life by What You Create In an age of AI and a tsunami of content, your ultimate brand protection is the quality of your human creation. Barbara Nickless said that the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul, and I believe that with every fibre of my being. Don't be afraid to take that step back, like I did with my deadlifting. Take the time to master these deeper craft skills. It might feel like you're slowing down or going backwards by not chasing the latest marketing trend, but it's the only way to step forward into a sustainable, high-quality career. Your characters are your signature. No AI can replicate the specificity of your lived experience, the emotional truth of your displaced trauma, or the sensory details you've gathered from a life of curiosity and travel. Those are yours. Pour them into your characters, and they will resonate for years to come. Actionable Takeaway: Identify the Dramatic Question for your current protagonist. Can you state it in a single sentence with the kind of specificity Will Storr described? Is it as clear as “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you the only adult in the room?” If you can't answer it with that kind of precision, your character might still be a sketch. Give them a diagonal toast moment today. Find the one hyper-specific detail that proves they are not an imitation of life. And then ask yourself: does your plot test your character's flaw in every major scene? If you can align those two things—a precisely defined character and a plot that exists to test them—you will have a story that readers cannot put down. References and Deep Dives The episodes I've referenced today are all available with full transcripts at TheCreativePenn.com: Episode 732 — Facing Fears, and Writing Unique Characters with Barbara Nickless Episode 673 — Writing Choctaw Characters and Diversity in Fiction with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer Episode 624 — Writing Characters with Matt Bird Episode 550 — The Heroine's Journey with Gail Carriger Episode 490 — How Character Flaws Shape Story with Will Storr Books mentioned: The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love by Matt Bird The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book by Joanna Penn You can find all my books for authors at CreativePennBooks.com and my fiction and memoir at JFPennBooks.com Happy writing! How was this episode created? This episode was initiated created by NotebookLM based on YouTube videos of the episodes linked above from YouTube/TheCreativePenn, plus my text chapters on character from How to Write a Novel. NotebookLM created a blog post from the material and then I expanded it and fact checked it with Claude.ai 4.6 Opus, and then I used my voice clone at ElevenLabs to narrate it. The post Writing Characters: 15 Actionable Tips For Writing Deep Character first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Here comes the bride, here comes the groom- Being walked down the aisle by the daughter he loves but doesn't necessarily like. It's wedding day, b!tches! And the question of the hour is "Is it God or is it me?" We're all dying to find out the answer! Let me give you a hint: Thank you for joining me along this bumpy joyride that was covering "Fleabag". I am considering invoicing all of you for the free therapy I provided, or maybe Phoebe Waller-Bridge might decide to invoice us, and you know what? I would willingly pay what she charged me. Can we all say, "Thank you, Phoebe?" THANK YOU, PHOEBE! Oh, and remember, whatever you're going through "It'll pass". Stay strong, sweaties.

Major life stress leads to major hair changes, but thank God the hair cut is at least French. Tres chic. This is a chaotic episodes with a lot of ups and downs, but I can confirm that the episode both starts and ends at a high. Because every time my girl, Fleabag, gets her freak on- That's a high for me.

David, Romeo, and Alexia are diving into the brilliantly chaotic world of Fleabag. From the razor-sharp humor to the painfully raw moments of grief, love, and self-sabotage, we unpack what makes Phoebe Waller-Bridge's masterpiece so unforgettable. We talk about the genius of the fourth wall breaks, the complicated relationships at the heart of the show, and of course… the Hot Priest.Email: bingeessentials@gmail.comFacebook/Instagram: @bingeessentials

Few filmmakers have a style as bold, romantic and unmistakable as Baz Luhrmann. From his breakout debut Strictly Ballroom to the glittering spectacle of The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and the fever-dream energy of Elvis, Luhrmann has built a career on transforming familiar stories into cinematic events. In this episode, he takes us inside one of his most iconic creative decisions: the unforgettable fish tank scene in his 1996 adaptation of Romeo + Juliet - and reveals how that moment came to life. We also explore his latest project, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a return to Elvis Presley through newly uncovered footage from the legendary Las Vegas residency. Beyond the films, Luhrmann reflects on the journey that shaped him. Raised in Herons Creek, a tiny rural town in New South Wales, Australia, he grew up surrounded by performance and storytelling: his father ran a quirky petrol station and cinema, while his mother owned a dress shop and taught ballroom dancing. We discuss the setbacks that tested him, his unconventional audition process, his enduring creative partnership with his wife and the viral TikTok moment that sent the internet into a frenzy. I hope you enjoy this candid, wide-ranging conversation with one of modern cinema's great showmen. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 02:28 Creativity as Self‑Medication 05:52 Why Elvis? 09:22 The Romeo + Juliet Fish Tank Origin Story 11:01 Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen: The Accidental Hit 13:56 Failure #1: Losing Instincts, Depression and Finding the Way Back 26:16 Casting Without Auditions: Baz's Workshop Method 27:58 Creating a Fear-Free Room 28:47 The Big Break That Became a Public Flop 30:56 Rebounding with Strictly Ballroom 32:19 Choosing Collaborators 33:36 Marriage and Deep Trust 35:42 Criticism and Staying Humble (Plus the Viral TikTok Moment) 40:38 Future-Focused Filmmaking & Final Reflections

Can we all agree that church imagery is sexually charged? No wonder Fleabag kept getting distracted by it! She's just a mere mortal who desperately wants to hook up with a priest! I mean, we've all been there before... No? Just me? I know what you all tell your free voucher therapists! Stop trying to be prudes!

Award winning actor, writer and star of stage and screen Jessica Regan. You'll hear:The Fleabag Beginnings: Jessica Regan was in the room when Phoebe Waller-Bridge performed a very early version of Fleabag . She reveals the original opening line that grabbed her attention and made her laugh. The Peep Show Confession: How Jessica got to be in the cult show and another big TV show by the same writers.The 18-Month Secret: Auditioning for a role in a made-up language, getting the job, and not being told what the project is for 2 years! Franchise surprise: Jessica explains how she accidentally ended up in one of the biggest franchises in history.Ben's Techno No-No: Why did Ben end up in a concrete basement listening to two big dogs fighting in a metal bin.Jessica's Best of London Secrets:The Venue: A hidden gem that feels like a David Lynch movie set, that you've probably walked right past.The Food: The dessert in Pimlico that is so good, the staff will stop working just to watch you eat it.The Shopping: Forget Oxford Street. Jessica reveals the specific road in West London where the charity shops are better than designer boutiques.The Walk: The "Golden Hour" route that beats the South Bank every time (and has better pubs).The Hack: Why you may avoid Members' Club and the secret free alternatives that are better.Jessica Regan's amazing new show 16 Postcodes is running at the King's Head Theatre in Islington from 25th February to 8th March. It's had 5 star reviews so get your tickets NOW. There are some £10 tickets for every performance so hurry and click this link:https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/16-postcodes-jhbyPlease FOLLOW and SUBSCRIBE to  BEST OF LONDON as we have great shows coming up. For links on all the platforms and social media, just click here:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/bestolondon ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ E-mail:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ben@lifemac.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ I read and reply to all your e-mails.Each week I ask a guest 7 questions including what's your best London venue, event, place to eat, area and London Lifehack. You'll find out the best things to do and places to go.Intro and Outro music by Ben HollandBest of London is presented and produced by Ben Holland and Ben Afleck.Ben's instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/benpodz/⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ben's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@benpodz⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben's X:⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/benpodz⁠⁠⁠⁠BEST OF LONDON logo by the brilliant bob@recolodesign.com for all your logo, artwork and design needs.Follow and subscribe to BEST OF LONDON for links on ALL the platforms including Apple, Amazon music, Audible, Instagram, Twitter / X / Facebook. Click here for links to all of those :⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/bestolondon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessica's website: https://jessicaregan.com/big-speeches/People Mentioned in this Episode:John Kearns (Comedian & Taskmaster star)Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Creator of Fleabag)Sam Bain & Jesse Armstrong (Creators of Peep Show & Succession)Lizzy Caplan & Chris Geere (Stars of Ill Behaviour)Jenny Agutter (Star of Call the Midwife)Sarah Snook (Star of Succession & All Her Fault)Andrea Mara (Crime Thriller Author)Zoë Wanamaker (CBE, Stage & Screen Legend)Lesley Manville (CBE, Star of Mum & Phantom Thread)Conleth Hill (Star of Game of Thrones)Millie Thomas (Playwright & Screenwriter)Ruth Everett (Artist & Illustrator)Claire Regan (Musician, Cordless)Natasha Jenkins (Set & Costume Designer)Lizzie Winkler (Actor)Maggie O'Herlihy (Producer, Avex Classics)Ludovico Einaudi (Composer)Tom Salinsky (Producer of 16 Postcodes)Deborah Frances-White (Host of The Guilty Feminist)Sarah Solemani (Writer & Actor)Nat Luurtsema (Author, Screenwriter & Comedian)Seán Burke (Comedian & Sketch Artist)Jamie Oliver & Nigella Lawson (Chefs)Lena Dunham (Writer/Director)Alan Rickman: Jessica mentions serving him Campari while working at the RADA bar Ian McKellen: Jessica mentions sneaking him rosé at the RADA barIra Mandela Siobhan Movement Director 

Bram komt net terug van een boeiende reis naar Taiwan, waar hij een kijkje mocht nemen in de fabriek van Google, waar onder meer de vernieuwingen in de Pixel-telefoons worden gemaakt. Ook sprak hij met Android-topman Seang Chau. Verder vandaag: opvallende uitspraak van Netflix en de HDR van Disney+, toch weer gedoe met de smart home-gadgets van IKEA, China heeft sci-fi-oorlogsdromen, een Europese browser is klaar met AI en in Australië hebben ze een doeltreffende manier bedacht om met illegale e-bikes om te gaan. Tips uit deze aflevering: 3D-printer: Op de redactie van Bright staat sinds kort een Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2: een best betaalbare 3D-printer waar iedereen enthousiast omheen dromt. Een aanrader voor elk bedrijf: 3D-printen blijkt prima teambuilding. Serie: Monarch seizoen 2 begint eind 27 februari op Apple TV. Mooi moment om het eerste seizoen te bekijken als je dat gemist hebt. De serie speelt zich af in het Godzilla-universum en volgt de oprichting van Monarch, de organisatie die Godzilla en andere giganten volgt en probeert te stoppen. Springt steeds tussen twee tijden, waarin Kurt Russell en zijn zoon Wyatt hetzelfde personage spelen. Onzin, maar wel leuke onzin met prima special effects. Serie: Wil je even geen tech of scifi? Ik heb net twee seizoenen Bodemvan maker en hoofdrolspeler Eva Crutzen back-to-back gekeken. Volgens Erwin de beste Nederlandse serie van 21ste eeuw: doet denken aan Fleabag van Phoebe Waller-Bridge, ook zo’n topserie.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Acclaimed debut novelist Rosie Storey spoke with us about her rejection advice for writers, chasing personal authenticity, and the "accidental catfishing" at the heart of DANDELION IS DEAD. Rosie Storey left her corporate career to finish her hotly anticipated debut novel, Dandelion Is Dead. The book received significant buzz in early 2026, including a January 2026 Indie Next selection, an exclusive excerpt on Today.com, an NPR interview, coverage from Reader's Digest, being long listed for the Bath Novel Award, and optioned for TV, among many others. Described as a “... witty, heart-wrenching debut that follows a woman who starts dating under her late sister's online profile,” and a “... ‘messy millennial' story that's Fleabag meets P.S. I Love You.”  Booklist said of the book, “Storey's debut novel is striking, with staggeringly complex characters and messy situations reminiscent of real life…. filled with intimacy and kindness….Fast-paced but never hurried.” #1 New York Times bestselling author Carley Fortune called it “... the perfect book club book.” Rosie Storey holds a master's in creative writing, and lives in East London, where she works as a writing coach. She is working on her second book. [This episode is sponsored by Ulysses. Go to ⁠ulys.app/writeabook⁠ to download Ulysses, and use the code FILES at checkout to get 25% off the first year of your yearly subscription."] [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Rosie Storey, Milena and I discussed: How it feels to be compared to your heroes The many opportunities she had to give up the writing life Getting support and much-needed advice from her editors early on The importance of pacing for the novel Writing about grief and the societal pressures on men and women Dancing at Studio 54 with Miranda July And a lot more! Show Notes: Rosie Storey on Instagram Dandelion Is Dead: A Novel About Life by Rosie Storey (Amazon) Rosie Storey's Rejection Advice for Writers TheNovelry.com Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I LOVE A FAMILY DINNER! Especially when it ends with three bloody noses and one black eye! Also, who's the cute/witty priest? He single? Oh, wait... Make sure to keep up with my coverage of Season 2 of FB so we can see all of the self-growth that all of the characters have accomplished since last season. Here's a hint: it's not much. Except my girlypop Fleabag! I'm proud of her.

What if the most important love story in your life isn't romantic at all?In our brand new episode, journalist and author Deepanjana Pal talks about her novel, Lightning in a Shot Glass. It's a witty, radical look at two Mumbai flatmates navigating love, life, and ambition on their own terms.Tara and Deepanjana dive into why female friendships are often the real love stories of our lives and how having chosen family keeps us grounded. They challenge the notion of genre hierarchies while showing that love stories can be smart and fun.Deepanjana also gets candid about the messier parts of life, from workplace politics and abuse of authority to age-gap and interfaith romance. By bringing these real-world messes into the conversation, she proves that fiction can be both joyful and deeply authentic at the same time.If you're looking to dive into something that's as smart and fun as it is unapologetically real, this episode is for you!Books and TV Shows mentioned in the episode:Younger (2015)Four More Shots Please! (2019)Call Me Bae (2024)Fleabag (2016)The Family Man (2019)A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie BrennanBeowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana HeadleyThe Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana HeadleyThe Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran DesaiCat's Eye by Margaret AtwoodImagine spending five days of uninterrupted creativity in a serene, century-old Indo-Portuguese villa. Join an exclusive group of twelve writers for a transformative writing retreat. 5 seats left, apply now!Learn more: https://boundindia.com/retreats/annual-writers-retreatApply now: https://tinyurl.com/46rhn7hz‘Books and Beyond with Bound' is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D'costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India's finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Who also wishes they were a fly on the wall during the Sexhibition? Anyone? Am I the only one raising my hand? I definitely know I'm not! I do really wish I had been there when Fleabag shattered those glasses, because I would have given her a standing ovation. Someone had to stand up to the evil Godmother! We've gotten to the final episode of this season but do not worry, cause we will go ahead and finish Season 2 before we move on to a different TV show. Keep tuning in every week to stay in touch with our girlypop, Fleabag.

Have you ever felt completely confused after talking to a British person?You understood every word — the grammar was clear, the vocabulary was familiar — but something felt off. You left the conversation thinking: Did they like it? Did they agree with me? Or were they being polite… or critical?If that has ever happened to you, you're not imagining things — and you're definitely not alone.In today's episode, we talk about The British Code: the polite, indirect way British people communicate and why what they say is often very different from what they actually mean.British people are famous for being polite, but that politeness often hides true opinions. Instead of being direct, we soften language, avoid conflict, and try not to “cause a fuss.” The result? A lot of confusion for non-Brits.In this episode, you'll learn:• What Brits really mean when they say interesting, original or that's a brave decision• How polite disagreement works in British English• Why Brits say sorry when they're not apologising• How words like just and a bit soften requests• Why understatement is such a key part of British communicationEnglish isn't just grammar and vocabulary — it's culture. And British English is full of hidden meaning. Once you understand the code, conversations start to make a lot more sense.

When push comes to shove OR slap- Just remember that no one is having a worst day than any member of Fleabag's family. Now picture them all together around the dining room table having interact with each other... This show is not a comedy- It's a horror movie.

She's narrated dozens of spicy romances, but nothing prepared her for weaponizing the “forced proximity” trope in real life. One meddling sister, one hot neighbor, and a whole lot of cheese dip. Welcome to the romcom multiverse. It's Romcom meets meta-fiction, with a wink at Hallmark-style setups and a dash of Gen-Z snark. Think To All the Boys I've Loved Before meets Emily Henry by way of Fleabag.Format: 9 episodes, 20-30 minutes each. Link: https://susancoopervo.com/the-romcom-formula RSS Feed: https://media.rss.com/the-romcom-formula/feed.xml

The silent retreat is not a success story when one of your attendees leaves because she needed a little bit of silence... Yikes! In this episode we find out why Claire brought such tiny batteries to the retreat, and why she has been acting so weird the whole weekend. Here's a tip: Money makes her cry!

It's finally Claire's non-surprise SURPRISE party, and it's just as chaotic that you would expect it to be. Bad dates are brought, kisses are flung, partygoers were passive aggressive with each other and stolen items were given as birthday gifts. Also, can we all agree that Martin is horrible? We can? Great!

This episode contains description of addiction, eating disorders and discussion of suicide. Our guest today is the pioneering comedian, actor and activist Margaret Cho. She began performing comedy as a teenager, opening for Jerry Seinfeld at just 14, before becoming one of the most influential stand-ups of her generation. Now in her 50s, Margaret reflects in this episode on the cancellation of her groundbreaking sitcom, All-American Girl, and the surreal "miscalculations" of a network that hired consultants to ensure she was "doing Asian right". She speaks candidly about the "mind f***" of being told she was "too fat to play herself", which triggered a dangerous spiral into disordered eating, 90s diet drugs and eventual kidney failure. She opens up about a suicidal near-death experience that she was initially too afraid to admit even to herself - and about the intervention by friends that finally led her to sobriety. This conversation explores shame, rage and the life-saving importance of humour. Because, as Margaret says, sometimes laughter can be the thing that keeps you breathing. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Introduction 04:37 Childhood Reflections 06:59 Political and Social Commentary 10:43 The Sitcom Experience 18:35 Body Image and Health Struggles 26:13 Legacy and Influence 26:54 The Struggle with Diet Culture 28:34 Embarrassing Moments on Stage 32:10 Family Influence on Weight Issues 33:22 Seeking Help and Therapy 34:05 Childhood Abuse and Its Impact 37:27 Battling Drug and Alcohol Addiction 43:09 Intervention and Recovery 46:51 Finding Hope and Happiness

Men, please learn to love yourself just a tiny bit or else you will keep coming back to someone who LITERALLY does not like you and neither does she R-E-S-P-E-C-T you... Cough, cough: I'm talking to you, Harry! Also, Fleabag deserves to be with someone who would find her "surprise" funny- Not someone who will be traumatized for life because of it. LOL. Enjoy episode 2!

On this episode of Hyperion to a Satyr, Siskoid and his guest Ryan Daly discuss the 2018 production of Hamlet, with Andrew Scott (Sherlock, Fleabag) in the title role. Watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR28oIFTzNY Listen to the episode below or subscribe to Hyperion to a Satyr on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: https://fireandwaterpodcast.com Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Credits: Theme: "Fanfare" from 1996 Hamlet, by Patrick Doyle, with clips from that film, starring Ray Fearon; and the 2018 Hamlet, starring Andrew Scott. Bonus clips: Hamlet (2018), directed by Robert Icke, starring Andrew Scott, Juliet Stevenson, Joshua Higgott, Angus Wright and Jessica Brown Findlay. Leave a comment, I love to read!

Welcome back to a new season, f*cked up fam! After 19 seasons, I am finally brave enough to cover this gem of a show. I'm also attempting this new thing where I try to summarize instead of giving you a play-by-play recap of the whole episode, and guess how that is going...? Not great. I genuinely think I am incapable of summarizing OR I just love the writing in this show so much that I want to share it with y'all

Oh neat, Fleabag is here. Join us as we decide which one is the best and which one blames continental drift for a 21,000 year time travel mishap. Donate to the below causes: https://translifeline.org/donate/ https://www.pcrf.net/ https://www.newdisabledsouth.org/donate Timestamps: Corporate Hell - 0:00 Intro - 0:17 Audience Review - 1:30 First Watch - 2:29 Film Talk - 4:06 Ranking Time - 1:15:18 Follow or contact us at: the3rdonesucks.bsky.social the3rdonesucks@gmail.com https://letterboxd.com/dellismulligan https://letterboxd.com/brianglowienke Hosted by Mark Beall, Dan Ellis and Brian Glowienke. Mixed & Edited by Mark Beall. Intro/Outro Music by Dan Ellis. The 3rd One Sucks is a Retrograde Orbit Radio production. Find more great shows like this at www.retrogradeorbitradio.com

In today's Daily Fix:PlayStation and J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Games have announced a new multiplayer game as part of the companies' partnership. While PlayStation's multiplayer-centric offerings have not hit as of late (except Helldivers 2), there is hope that this game will find an audience considering it's being helmed by Left 4 Dead's Mike Booth. In other news, Amazon's Tomb Raider series is not only rebooting the live-action Lara Croft adventures, but will "reinvent the franchise on a massive scale" by connecting the show to the games in a "unified storytelling universe." Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge is showrunning, and the series is expected to go into production early next year. And finally, Creative Assembly hosted a 25th Anniversary showcase, featuring new Total War projects, including the next mainline historical game: Total War: Medieval 3. A new game engine, Warcore, will also power new entries on console for the first time.

Today we're speaking with Oscar-nominated Australian-born editor, Paul Machliss, ACE. We'll be talking about his latest collaboration with director Edgar Wright, “The Running Man.”Paul last chatted on Art of the Cut when he cut Wright's “Last Night in Soho,” and before that for “Baby Driver” for which he won a BAFTA, and was nominated for an ACE Eddie and an Oscar. Paul was also nominated for an ACE Eddie for his work on “Scott Pilgrim versus the World.” He's edited TV, including “Fleabag.” And dozens of musical specials, documentaries and concerts for the likes of Led Zeppelin and Diana Krall.This interview discusses how Paul's early career as an on-line editor helped him on this film, the value of editing on-set, and the technology that kept the whole post machine whirring.If you want to read along with this interview, you can check it out on BorisFX.com's blog site:borisfx.com/blog/aotc

Kaç Seansı'nın canlı bölümünde Evrim Kaya ve Hasan Cömert, son dönemde sinemanın yeni hastalığını, "her şeyi söyleyen" filmleri konuşuyor.

This week's topics: • Netflix's prestige season • Fleabag being the top 5 programmes of all time • What we want at our funerals • Waakye v Rice & Peas • Broken promises at funerals • Walt Whitman's Song of Myself poem • No Limit v Cash Money Verzuz • Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin is mad at Black & Asian faces on TV • Tory MP, Robert Jenrick not seeing any White faces in Birmingham • Are the above two statements racists or no • Who does integration help • Prisoners set free by mistake • Racial tint on mistaken prison release reporting • Racial disparity in prison and why • Train stabbing attack • Tanzanian election troubles, first hand • Nigerian Muslims killing Christians? • #StavrosSays : Fleabag [https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p070npjv/fleabag] Connect with us at & send your questions & comments to: #ESNpod so we can find your comments www.esnpodcast.com www.facebook.com/ESNpodcasts www.twitter.com/ESNpodcast www.instagram.com/ESNpodcast @esnpodcast on all other social media esnpodcast@gmail.com It's important to subscribe, rate and review us on your apple products. You can do that here... www.bit.ly/esnitunes

Join Anna of Stone's Top Tens and Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity as we watch Fleabag! This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first time watching. In this episode we look back at the series as a whole (including a secret tally of how many predictions Anna got right) and consider what we will take away from the show.Follow on socials @stonestoptens and @postfilmclaritypodEmail stonestoptens@gmail.com and postfilmclaritypod@gmail.comCranes in the Sky by SolangeKeywordsFleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, character analysis, relationships, unrequited love, self-discovery, finale discussion, Claire, Martin, Godmother, Priest, Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, grief, emotional growth, TV recommendations, Catholic traditions, sisterhood, love stories

Send us a text(Life continues to kick my behind, so I'll be releasing episodes every few weeks or so through the rest of the year. Follow me on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss a thing. As always, thanks for listening!)Season 2 of Nobody Wants This was just released on Netflix, and it's different show runners, but equally heartwarming, sexy, touching and hilarious – if not more so. I'm only a third of the way through the latest season, but had to pop in and say: it's 100% fresh, so don't miss it. https://www.confessionsofaclosetromantic.comFirst comes love, then comes life.Episode descriptions, in case you need to catch up."I didn't know I wrote a romcom...I thought I wrote Fleabag." Fascinating interview with Nobody Wants This creator/screenwriter Erin Foster at the American Film Institute.Support the showIf you enjoyed this episode, please click share in your podcast app and tell your friends! Thanks for listening!

Join Anna of Stone's Top Tens and Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity as we watch Fleabag!  This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing.In this episode the Priest backs out of the wedding, Claire gets a haircut, and the Priest visits Fleabag at her house.KeywordsFleabag, rewatch, themes, character dynamics, relationships, humor, insights, analysis, television, comedy

Join Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity and Anna of Stone's Top Tens as we watch Fleabag!  This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing.In this episode Fleabag and the Priest get dangerously close, she reminisces about her mother's funeral, then vulnerably confesses her sins.Follow on socials @stonestoptesn and @postfilmclaritypodEmail stonestoptens@gmail.com and postfilmclaritypod@gmail.comKeywordsFleabag, TV series, Phoebe Waller Bridge, Andrew Scott, British Comedy, Recaps, Rewatch,TV Podcast, character analysis, grief, sisters, relationships, humor, binge-watching, self-destructive behavior, coping mechanism, media consumption, fourth wall, Catholicism, feminism

What if the voice in your head didn't have to be your worst enemy? In this episode, we explore the exhausting cycle of perfectionism, why we replay our failures on loop, and what it takes to finally make peace with the messy, complicated parts of ourselves. Through the lens of one beloved TV character's journey from self-destruction to self-acceptance, we uncover what it really means to be worthy of love, flaws and all. If you've ever felt like you need to fix yourself before you deserve compassion, this conversation is for you. ----more---- Ready to stop living life on autopilot and start designing it intentionally? The Shop: Discover exclusive tools, curated workshops, and guides for the radical woman ready to step fully into her power. https://www.charliestoolbox.com/shop Substack: Read deep dives on money, self-trust, and building power outside of old systems. https://charliestoolbox.substack.com/ Website: Find more resources, learn about our methodology, and explore all our offerings in one place. https://www.charliestoolbox.com/ The KIT Newsletter: Get bite-sized tools to put sovereignty into action every week. https://charliestoolbox.kit.com/cad3ba22c6 The Podcast: Listen to real conversations with women who've built lives beyond approval, expectation, and limits. https://charliestoolbox.podbean.com/ Take the Free Assessment: Learn where you are on your decentering men journey. https://www.tryinteract.com/share/quiz/68b71e8eeb218c0015ec5c4f Your sovereignty is your foundation. My role is to help you use it as a launchpad. Follow for Daily Inspiration: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@charliestoolbox Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charliestoolbox/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/charliestoolbox Take Action Now: Hit subscribe if you're ready to stop waiting for permission and start choosing yourself. New episodes drop weekly with tools for building a life that's authentically felt and beautifully lived.

If I'm ever trying to buy your passive house, please don't listen to these podcasts to judge my character. This week we breakdown Asher's lack of a passcode on his phone, Fleabag (for some reason), getting shoplifted while working retail, and give a Mr. Fantasy update (for some reason)We talk about The Curse starting at 10:51Send us a voicemail! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on: IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@nathanforuspod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@nathanforuspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠NathanForUsPodcast⁠⁠⁠Send us an email: nathanforuspodcast@gmail.com

Join Anna of Stone's Top Tens and Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity as we watch Fleabag! This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing.This episode includes insights into Belinda's speech in the bar, lore about the symbolism of foxes, and mutual confusion over why Pam lives with The Priest.Follow on socials @stonestoptens and @postfilmclaritypod.Email stonestoptens@gmail.com and postfilmclairtypod@gmail.comKeywordsFleabag, rewatch, themes, character analysis, relationships, insights, humor, storytelling, feminism, monologues

Join Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity and Anna of Stone's Top Tens as we watch Fleabag!  This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing.This episode includes the deepening of Fleabag and Hot Priest's friendship, the lawsuit that Martin is bringing against Fleabag, and a revealing therapy session.Follow on socials @postfilmclaritypod and @stonestoptensEmail postfilmclaritypod@gmail.com and stonestoptens@gmail.comKeywordsFleabag, TV series, character analysis, themes, humor, relationships, therapy, Catholicism, Fiona Shaw, Andrew Scott

Join Anna of Stone's Top Tens and Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity as we watch Fleabag! This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing. This episode delves into the Season 2 premiere, picking up over a year after the events of the finale took place.  We discuss the developments of Claire's miscarriage, the engagement of Fleabag's dad and the Godmother, and THE HOT PRIEST FINALLY SHOWS UP!!!Follow on socials @postfilmclaritypod and @stonestoptensEmail postfilmclaritypod@gmail.com and stonestoptens@gmail.comKeywordsFleabag, Hot Priest, Claire, Catholicism, Miscarriage, Character Analysis, TV Review, Comedy, Drama, Relationships

Buy Caroline's book here. The Blurb: From the single ladies of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift songs to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's irreverent television series Fleabag (2016–2019) to as far back as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, the stereotype of the damaged single woman has long pervaded music, books, television, and Hollywood movies. Spinster tropes, witch burnings, and nineteenth-century diagnoses of hysteria have reflected and continue to inform the stories told about society's singletons, most notoriously in the original bunny boiler, Fatal Attraction (1987), and popularized in Single White Female (1992) and Promising Young Woman (2020). In Single & Psycho, author Caroline Young explores how broader social trends such as the antifeminist backlash of the 1980s, contemporary debates about tradwives and childless cat ladies, and the absence of single women of color on-screen shape the way women are (mis)perceived and (mis)treated. Young weaves the history of a stereotype with her own fight against stigma as a single woman as well as her struggles with infertility, infusing incisive analysis with personal experience in this approachable, savvy exposé of one of mainstream media's most enduring clichés. Single & Psycho: How Pop Culture Created the Unstable Single Woman is a dynamic addition to the ongoing dialogue surrounding the #MeToo movement and societal expectations of women. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Buy Caroline's book here. The Blurb: From the single ladies of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift songs to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's irreverent television series Fleabag (2016–2019) to as far back as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, the stereotype of the damaged single woman has long pervaded music, books, television, and Hollywood movies. Spinster tropes, witch burnings, and nineteenth-century diagnoses of hysteria have reflected and continue to inform the stories told about society's singletons, most notoriously in the original bunny boiler, Fatal Attraction (1987), and popularized in Single White Female (1992) and Promising Young Woman (2020). In Single & Psycho, author Caroline Young explores how broader social trends such as the antifeminist backlash of the 1980s, contemporary debates about tradwives and childless cat ladies, and the absence of single women of color on-screen shape the way women are (mis)perceived and (mis)treated. Young weaves the history of a stereotype with her own fight against stigma as a single woman as well as her struggles with infertility, infusing incisive analysis with personal experience in this approachable, savvy exposé of one of mainstream media's most enduring clichés. Single & Psycho: How Pop Culture Created the Unstable Single Woman is a dynamic addition to the ongoing dialogue surrounding the #MeToo movement and societal expectations of women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

EL BRINGS DOWN A HELICOPTER!! Stranger Things Full Reaction Watch Along:   / thereelrejects   Visit https://huel.com/rejects to get 15% off your order Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ As Stranger Things 5 draws near, Tara & Andrew RETURN To give their Stranger Things 4 Reaction, Recap, Commentary, Analysis, Breakdown, & Spoiler Review.! Stranger Things Season 4 Episode 8, “Papa,” continues Netflix's groundbreaking sci-fi horror series created by the Duffer Brothers, where small-town secrets collide with supernatural terror. In this penultimate chapter, the Hawkins kids rally to stop Vecna's rise while Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown – Enola Holmes, Godzilla vs. Kong) faces off against Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine – Full Metal Jacket, Dark Knight Rises) in a heartbreaking showdown that tests her strength and freedom. Meanwhile, Hopper (David Harbour – Hellboy, Black Widow), Joyce (Winona Ryder – Beetlejuice, Heathers), and Murray (Brett Gelman – The Other Guys, Fleabag) fight for survival in Russia, battling Demogorgons in a tense prison escape sequence. Back in Hawkins, Mike (Finn Wolfhard – IT, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo – Honor Society, Prank Encounters), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin – Concrete Cowboy), Max (Sadie Sink – The Whale, Fear Street), and the rest of the crew brace themselves for Vecna's terrifying endgame. With emotional goodbyes, shocking deaths, and a nail-biting setup for the season finale, Episode 8 delivers some of the most intense, highly searched, and unforgettable moments of Stranger Things. Tara Erickson & Andrew Gordon react, review, and break down every major twist, character arc, and Easter Egg in this pulse-pounding episode of Stranger Things Season 4! Follow Andrew Gordon on Socials:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MovieSource Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/agor711/?hl=en Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Agor711 Follow Tara Erickson: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TaraErickson Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/taraerickson/ Twitter:  https://twitter.com/thetaraerickson Intense Suspense by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Follow Us On Socials:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/  Tik-Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@reelrejects?lang=en Twitter: https://x.com/reelrejects Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ Music Used In Ad:  Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Happy Alley by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM:  FB:  https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity and Anna of Stone's Top Tens as we watch Fleabag!  This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing.This episode breaks down the Season 1 Finale as Fleabag's life implodes and the truth of her involvement in Boo's death is revealed.  We discuss the expectations of “acceptable” grief, the remarkable writing and camera work, and Anna predicts what's on the agenda for Season 2.Follow on socials @postfilmclaritypod and @stonestoptensEmail postfilmclaritypod@gmail.com and stonestoptens@gmail.comKeywordsFleabag, rewatch, grief, loss, character analysis, themes, personal stories, behind the scenes, predictions, fourth wall

Join Anna of Stone's Top Tens and Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity as we watch Fleabag! This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing. This episode revolves around the messy memorial dinner and includes a real time revelation.Follow on Instagram @stonestoptens and @postfilmclaritypodEmail at stonestoptens@gmail.com and postfilmclaritypod@gmail.comKeywordsFleabag, TV series, Phoebe Waller Bridge, British Comedy, Recaps, Rewatch,TV Podcast, character analysis, grief, sisters, relationships, humor, binge-watching, self-destructive behavior, coping mechanism, media consumption, fourth wall

Join Mariquita of Post-Film Clarity and Anna of Stone's Top Tens as we watch Fleabag! This is Mariquita's third rewatch and Anna's first viewing. This episode looks into the different expectations for men and women dealing with their emotions, Claire's decision about her promotion, and whether either Anna or Mariquita would ever attend a silent retreat. Follow on Instagram @postfilmclaritypod and @stonestoptensEmail at postfilmclaritypod@gmail.com and stonestoptens@gmail.com KeywordsFleabag, rewatch, silent retreat, gender dynamics, sibling relationships, vulnerability, grief, astrology, character analysis, predictions

On this episode of the SheerLuxe podcast, Charlotte Collins is joined by Jenn George and Mia Luckie. The trio kick things off with what they're wearing and the affordable fashion pieces worth investing in right now – from COS tailoring and Dissh suede jackets to Primark's surprisingly brilliant long-length denim. They also reveal the new bag brand that feels cooler than Bottega, debate the rise of the Margiela Tabis, and discuss Zara's designer-inspired outerwear. They then share their ride-or-die beauty products and their thoughts on lash serums, lash extensions, brow microblading and polynucleotide facials. Finally, they dive into the cultural moment surrounding ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty' and why Gen Z's obsession has Millennials divided, followed by The Sunday Times' list of the top 100 British TV shows of the 21st century – from ‘Fleabag' and ‘Happy Valley' to ‘Peaky Blinders', ‘Chernobyl' and ‘The Office'… Subscribe For More | http://bit.ly/2VmqduQ Get SheerLuxe Straight To Your Inbox, Daily | http://sheerluxe.com/signup PANEL GUESTSCharlotte Collins | @charlotteleahcollins | https://www.instagram.com/charlotteleahcollins/?hl=en-gb Mia Luckie | @mialuckie | https://www.instagram.com/mialuckie/?hl=en-gb Jenn George | @jenniferrosina | https://www.instagram.com/jenniferrosina/?hl=en-gb Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The incomparable Kristin Scott Thomas—star of “The English Patient,” “Slow Horses,” and now writer-director-star of the deeply personal film “My Mother's Wedding” – joins the show. Over mushroomy eggs and quiche, we cover her extraordinary career in both English and French -- from her baptism-by-fire debut opposite Prince in “Under the Cherry Moon” to her viral “Fleabag” monologue. Kristin also tells me about reuniting with Scarlett Johansson as her on-screen daughter for the third time, and why Robert Altman's “Gosford Park” set was both thrilling and intimidating. This episode was recorded at La Mercerie in SoHo, New York City. Want next week's episode now? Subscribe to Dinner's on Me PLUS. As a subscriber, not only do you get access to new episodes one week early, but you'll also be able to listen completely ad-free! Just click “Try Free” at the top of the Dinner's on Me show page on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial today. A Sony Music Entertainment & A Kid Named Beckett production. Get 15% off your Saily plan with the code ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠dinnersonme⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Just download the Saily app or head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://saily.com/dinnersonme⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Stay connected — and don't miss your dinner reservation. Stay connected — and don't miss your dinner reservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No episódio de hoje discutimos sobre um contato imediato de terceiro grau, um espírito homofóbico e a verdadeira Fleabag dos apps de relacionamento!〰️Dicas Bizarras:▪️ Filme Together (Mabê)▪️ Álbum ⁠Maravilhosamente Bem, de Julia Mestre (Fabão)▪️ Álbum ⁠Cracker Island, de Gorillaz (Fabão)▪️ ⁠Álbum For the People, de Dropkick Murphys (Tiago)▪️ Documentários Desastre Total ▫️ Netflix (Tiago)▪️ Instagram @a_worldd_without (Fabão)〰️

En la edición de hoy de El ContraPlano, el espacio dedicado al cine dentro de La ContraCrónica, los contraescuchas nos traen los siguientes títulos: 0:00 Introducción 2:54 "Alrededor de la medianoche” (1986) de Bertrand Tavernier - https://amzn.to/4lKqjav 13:56 «Roma» (2005-2007) [serie] de Bruno Heller - https://amzn.to/4oPIUVc 43:26 "Fleabag" (2016-2019) [serie] de Phoebe Waller-Bridge https://amzn.to/4lELevq Consulta en La ContraFilmoteca la selección de las mejores películas de este espacio - https://diazvillanueva.com/la-contrafilmoteca · “La ContraHistoria de España. Auge, caída y vuelta a empezar de un país en 28 episodios”… https://amzn.to/3kXcZ6i · “Lutero, Calvino y Trento, la Reforma que no fue”… https://amzn.to/3shKOlK · “La ContraHistoria del comunismo”… https://amzn.to/39QP2KE Apoya La Contra en: · Patreon... https://www.patreon.com/diazvillanueva · iVoox... https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-contracronica_sq_f1267769_1.html · Paypal... https://www.paypal.me/diazvillanueva Sígueme en: · Web... https://diazvillanueva.com · Twitter... https://twitter.com/diazvillanueva · Facebook... https://www.facebook.com/fernandodiazvillanueva1/ · Instagram... https://www.instagram.com/diazvillanueva · Linkedin… https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-d%C3%ADaz-villanueva-7303865/ · Flickr... https://www.flickr.com/photos/147276463@N05/?/ · Pinterest... https://www.pinterest.com/fernandodiazvillanueva Encuentra mis libros en: · Amazon... https://www.amazon.es/Fernando-Diaz-Villanueva/e/B00J2ASBXM #FernandoDiazVillanueva #roma #fleabag Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

The guys are joined by Brett Gelman to talk texting vs calling and the highs and lows of showbiz. Brett also shares a chaotic moment on Curb Your Enthusiasm, what it's like working on juggernauts like Stranger Things and Fleabag, and why he dropped serious cash on a T-shirt (even though Dana hates it). Plus, a story about doing a commercial with David that they still wish got to air and the brilliance of Chris Elliott. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, we recap this week in pop culture news, including our thoughts on Justin Bieber's surprise album, Tom Brady and Sofia Vergara's rumored summer romance, and the new show announcement by Larry David and the Obamas. Plus, we make some Popcastic(TM) predictions for the Emmy nominations.Relevant links: Our full show notes are at knoxandjamie.com/616Catch the Pilot Program for one of our favorite (and most requested!) series, Fleabag, with a 7-day free trial at knoxandjamie.com/patreonSMK: Justin Bieber's New Album | Male Celebs getting Ab Etching Procedure | Tom Brady & Sofia Vergara | Larry David & the Obamas show | First image of the Harry Potter seriesCinema Sidepiece: Coming Soon: I Know What You Did Last Summer | Eddington | Smurfs | Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical | Untamed | The Summer I Turned Pretty S3 How Do We Feel?: Emmy NominationsRed Light Mentions: Propaganda that having curly hair is easy | Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires Green Lights:Jamie: movie- Superman | book - These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLeanKnox: book - My Friends by Fredrik BackmanBonus segment: Join our new Patreon tier to listen ad-free and get exclusive weekly and monthly content. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brett Gelman (actor and comedian) joins The SDR Show to talk about his wild audition stories, working with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg in The Other Guys, and the chaos of last-minute shoots for Fleabag and Without Remorse. He shares behind-the-scenes details from Stranger Things, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the upcoming McVeigh film, plus a few bizarre tales involving pornstars, poop, and podcasting with his wife, we also find out Brett Gelman's first concert, first drug and first sexual experience and so much more!(Air Date: June 28th, 2025)To advertise your product or service on GaS Digital podcasts please go to TheADSide.com and click on "Advertisers" for more information!You can watch The SDR Show LIVE for FREE every Wednesday and Saturday at 9pm ET at GaSDigitalNetwork.com/LIVEOnce you're there you can sign up at GaSDigitalNetwork.com with promo code: SDR for discount on your subscription which will give you access to every SDR show ever recorded! On top of that you'll also have the same access to ALL the shows that GaS Digital Network has to offer!Follow the whole show on social media!Brett GelmanTwitter: https://twitter.com/BrettGelmanInstagram: https://instagram.com/BrettGelmanRalph SuttonTwitter: https://twitter.com/iamralphsuttonInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamralphsutton/Dov DavidoffTwitter: https://twitter.com/DovDavidoffInstagram: https://instagram.com/DovDavidoffShannon LeeTwitter: https://twitter.com/IMShannonLeeInstagram: https://instagram.com/ShannonLee6982The SDR ShowTwitter: https://twitter.com/theSDRshowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesdrshow/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finishing strong today with Sequoia Simone (@sequoiasimone) as we dive into the final part of the 2022 adaptation of Persuasion. Topics discussed include: ruching, whether Elliot is a villain, octopus dreams, the Mandela Effect, gelatinous tears, the bunny, Mary in therapy, Mrs. Clay's happy ending, and the NON-FLASHBACK!Cast and Crew of Persuasion (2022)Glossary of People, Places, and Things: Old Navy crinkle shirts, Bridgerton, Lizzie McGuire, Fleabag, David Lynch, Marianne Afertoft, Sexy Beast, The City and the City, Poldark, Death Comes to Pemberley, Bolthouse Farms, Quietly Yours, Joe AndersonFor more from Sequoia, you can listen to her other podcasts But Make It Scary, Professional Talkers and You Pod It, Dude! For updates on her work, follow her on Instagram at @sequoiasimone.Next Episode: Eligible by Curtis SittenfeldTeepublic is now Dashery! Check out our new merch store at https://podandprejudice.dashery.com.Our show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon!Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://podandprejudice.dashery.com/

We have Irish acting royalty joining us this week – star of the stage, Killing Eve, Fleabag, Harry Potter, Star Wars, the list is endless – it's the incredible Fiona Shaw! Fiona is in the midst of promo for 2 films, Echo Valley and Hot Milk, and she found time to join us for a spot of brunch at Mum's. We heard about life between London & New York (and Sri Lanka), her routine of a smoothie for breakfast every morning, working with the formidable Julianne Moore, her mum singing daily when she was growing up, and discovering and cooking Sri Lankan food with her wife. Fiona's fantastic in both films – of course – don't miss Echo Valley, which is out now on AppleTV+, and Hot Milk, which is released in cinemas on the 4th of July. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.