Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - Ep 4： Hollywood’s Greatest Scam： The Celebrities You Thought Were Real

00:00:00.000 This January on Paramount+, it began on the shores of New Jersey.

00:00:04.900 Now, a new pack emerges in the great white north.

00:00:09.260 Canada Shore, new original series, now streaming on Paramount+.

00:00:14.440 Hi, and welcome to Flossom Talk, the podcast.

00:00:22.920 I'm Tashli Flau, and this is my fourth episode of my special podcast that I do once a week.

00:00:28.340 Most of you might know me from YouTube, where I do everyday updates about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni's legal feud.

00:00:36.980 But here on my podcast once a week, I will talk about other things as well.

00:00:40.760 A lot about my experiences in Hollywood, good or bad, and about working as an entertainment reporter,

00:00:46.820 and other interesting trends in pop culture that I find interesting.

00:00:51.260 Today, I put out a post on my YouTube channel asking people if there's anything you want me to talk about,

00:00:56.300 specifically here on this podcast, and I got so many amazing suggestions.

00:01:00.220 So I will go through that list and find things.

00:01:03.000 And if you haven't seen that yet, please check out my YouTube channel, Flossom Talk.

00:01:07.640 Last week, I spoke about big egos in Hollywood,

00:01:10.620 and how these big egos are protected by the machinery around them.

00:01:14.820 As I said before on my YouTube channel, I think that's one of the things that surprised people,

00:01:18.860 maybe the most about this, is how protective everything is.

00:01:22.660 In this episode, I want to dig a little bit deeper on what happened to the mystery of Hollywood.

00:01:29.060 How did this endless access that we have to celebrities change the way we look at them?

00:01:34.180 And how has it stripped away the glamour?

00:01:36.920 Where did the magic go?

00:01:38.700 And what does that mean for the authenticity that we expect?

00:01:42.120 Is real celebrity dead?

00:01:44.320 I remember the time when celebrities were kind of enigmas.

00:01:48.380 There were these mysteries surrounding them.

00:01:50.360 They were kind of larger than life, and they were so untouchable and so unreachable.

00:01:56.720 Of course, we never knew what they were eating for breakfast.

00:01:59.540 We didn't know their skincare routine, or what their bathroom looked like,

00:02:03.960 or who they texted at 2 a.m. in the morning.

00:02:06.700 I think that mystery and that distance we had to the celebrities is what made them stars.

00:02:12.000 Think about it.

00:02:12.680 Old Hollywood icons like Paul Newman, Audrey Hepburn.

00:02:16.360 They weren't constantly exposing themselves and explaining themselves.

00:02:21.280 Everything we saw from them was curated interviews, black and white portraits,

00:02:26.240 or we saw them on a big screen.

00:02:28.120 There was a space between us, and in that space, we could project whatever we wanted.

00:02:33.160 Elegance, glamour, wisdom, even perfection.

00:02:37.460 But today, that space is gone.

00:02:40.320 We know what celebrities eat.

00:02:42.060 We know what they think.

00:02:43.160 We know what they feel.

00:02:44.600 We know what they vote.

00:02:46.040 We know what they fear.

00:02:47.480 And we hear about it all day long.

00:02:49.800 The mystique has been replaced by content.

00:02:52.540 We have traded mystery for access.

00:02:55.060 I actually did a documentary on this that you can find on my YouTube channel

00:02:59.520 about how social media killed the movie star,

00:03:02.200 and how as soon as we got so much access to their real lives,

00:03:06.660 they became just like us.

00:03:08.880 Remember in the magazines, they used to have these columns or pages

00:03:12.700 that was devoted to celebrities or stars.

00:03:16.580 They're just like us, and you would see a star drink a cup of coffee

00:03:20.380 or maybe fill up their car with petrol,

00:03:23.020 and we were like, oh, wow, she filled up her car with petrol herself.

00:03:28.620 Oh, look, he went to Starbucks, and he's got his name on the cup.

00:03:33.000 Wow, that's really unique.

00:03:34.920 Like, today, we see that every single day on social media.

00:03:40.360 The celebrities have become influencers,

00:03:42.620 and the influencers are also celebrities.

00:03:45.240 They don't feel elevated anymore.

00:03:47.680 They feel like a part of the algorithm.

00:03:50.220 And maybe that's why we stop being so forgiving,

00:03:53.160 as we've seen with Blake Lively.

00:03:55.360 I mean, she has been the same person for the last 37 years,

00:04:00.360 but we never spoke about it before.

00:04:02.960 Maybe we didn't know, maybe because she was hiding it really well,

00:04:07.120 but now we've seen what kind of person she really is,

00:04:10.880 and we are not forgiving her.

00:04:13.320 And I think when you sell yourself as just like us,

00:04:16.160 we start holding you to the same standard.

00:04:19.300 And when you fail, we don't see a tragic fall from Olympus.

00:04:23.580 We just see another person who lied for likes.

00:04:27.620 Were the stars different before than they are today?

00:04:30.860 Is this a cultural shift that we are seeing right now?

00:04:34.840 I'm not just talking about messy private lives,

00:04:37.400 because that's been a thing for celebrities for years. 0.71

00:04:40.420 There's always been scandals surrounding celebrities.

00:04:43.680 What I'm talking about now is how stars have built entire brands

00:04:47.900 around being relatable.

00:04:51.000 Stars didn't want to be relatable before.

00:04:53.180 They wanted to be an enigma.

00:04:55.040 Today, the stars want to be relatable.

00:04:57.380 And one of the reasons for that is because they want to sell us stuff.

00:05:00.520 They want us to buy their products.

00:05:02.600 So they're creating these relatable personas that are kind, funny, grounded.

00:05:09.360 And then we realize it was just a performance.

00:05:12.600 And then we get so disappointed because then we feel like they fooled us.

00:05:17.920 They lied to us.

00:05:18.880 We follow these people on Instagram.

00:05:20.720 We've shared their posts.

00:05:21.900 We bought their products.

00:05:23.060 And we realize it was all a lie.

00:05:26.060 I used to believe that fame revealed greatness.

00:05:28.420 So for me, coming from Norway, you know, the way I grew up with celebrity,

00:05:33.220 I never saw a celebrity.

00:05:34.760 Obviously, there weren't many Hollywood stars coming to Norway.

00:05:38.340 And I remember I was imagining things going on in Hollywood,

00:05:42.060 that there was like one red carpet, like going through Hollywood,

00:05:45.600 and people just walk up and down that red carpet.

00:05:48.400 I was very young when I thought that's the way things work.

00:05:50.800 But I had this idea of this mystery world where these people were like not really real people even.

00:05:59.200 I just adored Hollywood stars.

00:06:01.120 My mom used to buy these gossip magazines and I would cut out pictures of them 0.98

00:06:05.140 and I would hang them on the wall.

00:06:06.400 Sometimes there was a poster attached.

00:06:08.660 I would make, you remember Dynasty, that soap opera?

00:06:11.760 That was the first soap opera that I showed in Norway.

00:06:13.700 And I was obsessed with it.

00:06:15.520 I would cut out all the, I would cut out all the actors in Dynasty

00:06:20.760 and I would put them on a collage on my wall.

00:06:23.500 And then I had memorized how they do their autographs.

00:06:26.820 So I knew how to write Pamela Sue Martin, Linda Evans, Sammy, Sammy Jo.

00:06:34.220 I don't remember her real name now.

00:06:35.860 But I knew all these characters so well.

00:06:38.680 And I knew how to do their autographs.

00:06:40.700 My whole wall was covered with these people.

00:06:44.200 I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would meet any of these people.

00:06:49.160 Obviously, that was not on my list of what I wanted to do in my life

00:06:52.140 because I thought that they almost didn't exist.

00:06:55.300 And back then, I thought it was kind of exciting that these celebrities weren't like us.

00:07:00.200 You know, I thought it was really cool that they were like divas,

00:07:03.740 that some of them would ask these crazy things.

00:07:06.340 I only want to eat green M&Ms and you have to put them in a bowl for me.

00:07:10.880 Otherwise, I won't perform.

00:07:12.460 There were stories like, of course, people like Maria Carey,

00:07:16.220 who had these outrageous things that she wanted 20 white kittens 1.00

00:07:20.000 and 100 white does for a Christmas lighting event,

00:07:24.320 which was denied by organizers.

00:07:27.000 She would only drink champagne of certain straws.

00:07:29.600 She would also bring her own lighting with her to wherever she was going to interviews

00:07:35.140 so she would always have the perfect lighting on her face.

00:07:38.620 I remember Magnus told me he interviewed her, my partner,

00:07:41.980 and he said it was one of the worst experiences ever.

00:07:45.420 He waited for her like four or five hours in a hotel corridor.

00:07:49.840 She got there and she really didn't want to be there.

00:07:52.720 And he asked her, what are you dreaming about right now?

00:07:55.660 And she said, leaving this room, poor Magnus.

00:08:00.660 So he was sitting there waiting for so long to interview her and she just wanted to leave.

00:08:05.060 Anyways, and then you have some people like Jennifer Lopez. 1.00

00:08:08.480 She's also known for having all these demands. 1.00

00:08:10.420 There was even rumors about her insuring her butt for $27 million, 1.00

00:08:14.440 which she claims is not true. 0.88

00:08:16.420 I don't know what to believe of these things.

00:08:18.580 Madonna, obviously, she only wanted to bath in Vos water 1.00

00:08:22.940 and she wanted a new toilet seat for every venue she went to. 1.00

00:08:27.040 Barbara Streisand, who asked people to turn their back when she was passing them in the hallway.

00:08:32.520 And more recently, younger stars like Justin Bieber,

00:08:35.560 who says he had a meltdown because he didn't get the right socks.

00:08:38.880 Yeah, these were stories about celebrities that I just ate them up

00:08:42.100 and I thought it was so, so exotic that some people were like that.

00:08:47.740 I never really questioned it.

00:08:49.860 And I don't know about you guys, if you've questioned these kind of behavior before

00:08:53.780 or you thought like me, like, oh, wow, that's pretty amazing.

00:08:57.440 These people are so famous.

00:08:58.580 They can do whatever they want.

00:09:00.000 And that was kind of cool.

00:09:01.600 But today things are very different.

00:09:03.100 And I think it has to do, again, with social media.

00:09:06.400 I think being famous isn't what it was because so many people can be famous

00:09:11.180 and so many people are famous today.

00:09:13.460 There's so many famous people on social media.

00:09:16.740 I remember in our apartment in West Hollywood,

00:09:18.980 I was walking around with Oscar one evening for an evening walk

00:09:23.200 and I saw this crowd, like huge crowd of people,

00:09:26.820 probably a hundred people following this guy around.

00:09:29.880 I didn't know who he was.

00:09:30.900 And someone was like, oh, he's a famous YouTuber.

00:09:33.120 And I was like, wow, I've never seen people behave like that in front of any celebrity.

00:09:38.880 So these new celebrities are, of course, taking up the space as well.

00:09:43.460 But side note there, someone told me, a photographer who's worked with a lot of big celebrities,

00:09:49.000 and he said the worst celebrities are the social media celebrities.

00:09:53.340 They are much more demanding.

00:09:55.260 My neighbor actually told me this story recently.

00:09:57.580 There was a movie with Julia Roberts and George Clooney premiering.

00:10:02.820 And they had this Instagram influencer that they were representing,

00:10:05.980 and she was going to walk the red carpet.

00:10:08.480 And then she was demanding all these things that she had to have a special car. 0.98

00:10:12.420 And she also wanted to walk the red carpet with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

00:10:16.920 And she was like, oh my God, this is crazy.

00:10:20.380 So yeah, I'm not saying that social media stars are any better behaved

00:10:25.000 than movie stars or rock stars.

00:10:28.500 But there are a lot more celebrities.

00:10:30.720 But because fame is so much more accessible, it's also a lot more replaceable.

00:10:36.100 And that's another reason that I think there are so few new movie stars.

00:10:40.420 And I think Hollywood is to blame.

00:10:42.160 They were pushing all celebrities to be on social media,

00:10:44.940 while at the same time, they were really doing them a disfavor.

00:10:49.860 They wanted to sell their movies through social media,

00:10:53.140 and they wanted the celebrities to have a lot of followers.

00:10:56.280 And they wanted the celebrities to be relatable,

00:10:58.780 because they thought that was a great marketing strategy.

00:11:01.880 And maybe it was for a while.

00:11:03.560 But now that has really backfired.

00:11:06.540 I think most celebrities we know are traveling with these teams of camera people

00:11:11.840 and everyone doing the social media for them.

00:11:14.400 Some are doing it by themselves.

00:11:16.060 And sometimes, like we're seeing right now with, for example, Justin Bieber,

00:11:20.880 who's obviously doing his social media by himself,

00:11:23.940 you can see into his world and how it's falling apart,

00:11:27.440 and we're watching it in real time.

00:11:29.920 And things like that never happened before,

00:11:31.840 because celebrities were so protected.

00:11:34.260 Now they're just like loose cannons.

00:11:36.660 And the PR and marketing machinery around them has kind of lost control.

00:11:41.400 And I think another reason why we're not worshiping celebrities anymore

00:11:43.960 is that we have learned more about how everything works.

00:11:48.700 We know PR manipulation when we see it.

00:11:52.140 And I think a lot of you have seen this now with Blake Lively,

00:11:55.440 how hard her PR people are working around her to try and save her image, 0.96

00:12:01.740 while she at the same time is doing the opposite.

00:12:04.640 And they're posting and planning and planting stories about her

00:12:08.540 that puts her in a positive light. 1.00

00:12:10.100 And then she goes out and says something stupid or shows off on social media 0.99

00:12:14.840 and everyone's probably just like pulling their hair out. 0.99

00:12:18.600 I think another reason why celebrities have fallen from grace

00:12:22.560 is that we are not impressed with their fortune

00:12:26.540 and how they're flashing money, how they're showing off,

00:12:30.640 how they travel in private jets, live in their eight-bedroom houses

00:12:35.080 and have drivers and housekeepers, seven cars. 1.00

00:12:39.680 These things are kind of gross.

00:12:41.520 And it's not a good way of living.

00:12:43.440 You don't need seven cars.

00:12:44.980 You don't need seven bedrooms when you're two people.

00:12:48.260 And I think people aren't really admiring that kind of lifestyle anymore.

00:12:52.380 It's like, why do you need to have a yacht?

00:12:55.100 Why do you need to have a private jet?

00:12:57.100 Why do you need to pollute?

00:12:58.160 Why do you have a carbon footprint?

00:12:59.720 That's probably a thousand times more than a regular person.

00:13:03.620 And then you brag about it.

00:13:05.260 It's not sexy.

00:13:06.640 I also think a lot of people started being turned off by celebrities

00:13:10.380 when we saw examples on how some of them have been huge frauds.

00:13:17.420 They branded themselves as kind, real, grounded.

00:13:22.460 Often they ended up being the worst people.

00:13:25.300 We have people like Ellen DeGeneres. 1.00

00:13:27.500 She was the be-kind queen.

00:13:31.200 And guess what?

00:13:32.100 She wasn't.

00:13:33.420 She was warm, quirky, and kindness was kind of her brand.

00:13:38.520 And then we realized that she was not very kind to people she worked with.

00:13:44.820 And it kind of really blew up.

00:13:47.000 And I think people got so disappointed in her.

00:13:50.360 She was accused of having a toxic workplace. 0.99

00:13:52.920 She was accused of bullying.

00:13:54.620 It was really nasty things.

00:13:56.020 And I think people got really heartbroken by that

00:13:58.800 because they have bought her brand for so long.

00:14:01.860 They chose to believe in her.

00:14:04.000 They chose to believe that she was the person she portrayed.

00:14:07.700 But then it was all a big, fat lie.

00:14:11.000 Same with Chrissy Teigen.

00:14:12.440 She was like the queen of Twitter, funny, outspoken, unfiltered.

00:14:17.520 Everyone was kind of like, oh, I love her.

00:14:19.360 She's so quirky. 0.89

00:14:20.120 And then, bam, she turned out to be a bully. 1.00

00:14:23.960 Her relatability was not genuine. 0.99

00:14:27.300 She was a mean person. 1.00

00:14:29.900 Same kind of with James Corden, who also, I thought, I was so shocked when I heard that

00:14:35.740 he wasn't a nice person.

00:14:37.580 He was also sold as this warm, cozy, funny.

00:14:41.860 He was kind of like the humble British guy.

00:14:44.460 He was like one of us.

00:14:45.740 But then, voila, he was rude.

00:14:49.060 He was rude to stuff.

00:14:50.740 He was rude in restaurants.

00:14:52.360 People, I remember I was reading stories about him.

00:14:54.740 People were sharing online about how rude he was.

00:14:57.600 And I was like, wow, I would never, ever have guessed that.

00:15:02.800 Then you have someone like Gwyneth Paltrow, who was selling us this wellness guru thing

00:15:07.720 that she was so relatable.

00:15:09.240 She was disciplined, afflifting, she was spiritual, she had all these qualities and very relatable.

00:15:16.640 Not so much, actually.

00:15:17.680 I never thought she was relatable.

00:15:19.600 But then it all seems like this elitist wellness scam.

00:15:23.700 Like all her products that she was selling on Goop were just like super overpriced. 0.99

00:15:29.040 And she was selling us a lot of just crap. 1.00

00:15:31.840 I think for me, the biggest shock was probably Will Smith. 0.98

00:15:34.480 When he walked up and slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, I thought that was planned.

00:15:38.220 I was watching it live and I was like, wow, that didn't happen.

00:15:41.320 Because Will Smith is one of those people.

00:15:43.380 If you would have asked me a few years ago, who were my like top list of favorite people

00:15:48.380 to interview, Will Smith would be on the top of that list.

00:15:52.340 And Ryan Reynolds would follow very close.

00:15:55.340 He was also super nice to interview.

00:15:57.860 So if someone would have told me today what I know about Ryan Reynolds, I wouldn't believe

00:16:02.440 them.

00:16:02.800 I would be like, no way he's like that.

00:16:05.020 And that's also one of the reasons I was so shocked when Will Smith did what he did.

00:16:10.180 Because I've met him so many times and he's always been the most generous and nice and

00:16:15.760 polite and energetic and positive person.

00:16:19.700 And I was like, wow, who is this man?

00:16:23.180 And I think the more of these celebrities that slip up like this and show us who they really

00:16:27.640 are, we start questioning the other celebrities.

00:16:30.940 Who are these people?

00:16:31.900 Why are they, are they all selling us something fake or are some of them actually nice people?

00:16:38.380 I would say that I've met a lot of nice celebrities too, that I'm hoping are those kind of people

00:16:43.200 in real life.

00:16:44.200 I think when you see celebrities out and about, I've seen some of them in New York and you

00:16:48.820 see them, how they react with regular people.

00:16:51.020 That's when you see who they really are.

00:16:53.940 You know, most people are smart enough to behave nicely in front of a journalist, except

00:16:59.840 like lovely.

00:17:00.980 But I think a lot of celebrities show their real self when they are dealing with people

00:17:06.280 that they see as beneath them, like drivers, waiters, even cleaning personnel.

00:17:12.820 If you're being rude to anyone, I think that says a lot about you, especially if I'm going

00:17:17.600 to a restaurant and I see someone being rude to a waiter.

00:17:20.000 I'm like, I don't like you and I don't want anything to do with you.

00:17:23.640 I know exactly what kind of person you are.

00:17:25.900 I think a problem for celebrities now that are trying, that have slipped up and they're

00:17:30.120 trying to apologize.

00:17:32.000 We don't really buy it.

00:17:34.940 I saw, I remember I saw that video with Will Smith when he was trying to apology, apologize.

00:17:41.420 He, he just came back from India.

00:17:43.240 I think he went there to find himself and he was talking on this video about how he had

00:17:48.860 forgiven himself.

00:17:50.200 And I'm like, no one cares if you forgave yourself.

00:17:54.280 You're not apologizing to yourself.

00:17:56.820 I mean, that to me was just like how your ego is so big that you think that people care

00:18:03.400 if you actually forgave yourself.

00:18:06.480 The people that you should ask for forgiveness to, which he really didn't until after a really

00:18:11.680 long time, I don't remember exactly what happened there, but Chris Rock said he never heard

00:18:16.440 from him.

00:18:17.340 As we all see when we follow the Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds drama, we have seen a couple

00:18:22.720 that everyone thought were someone else.

00:18:26.180 We've seen this loving couple who love to joke around.

00:18:30.380 They sold us like this perfect image of their marriage.

00:18:34.140 They have all these kids.

00:18:35.900 They even have, they even managed to keep the kids out of the public eye, which seems like,

00:18:40.240 oh, they're really protecting their kids.

00:18:42.480 They were both charming and witty and grounded down to earth.

00:18:47.100 And both were like effortlessly cool.

00:18:49.640 Even Blake was like a fashion icon.

00:18:52.300 And they made fun of Hollywood.

00:18:54.100 And they gave us just enough to make us believe that we knew who they were, which we obviously

00:19:00.820 didn't.

00:19:01.820 Now we realize that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were just products.

00:19:05.980 They were just a marketing campaign.

00:19:08.400 They're just a brand.

00:19:09.560 Everything is curated.

00:19:11.920 Their soundbites, their magazine spreads, their Instagram posts, everything is curated

00:19:18.500 for us to believe that they are something they're obviously not.

00:19:23.120 That they're a gorgeous, relatable, philanthropic, funny couple who we all should aim to be like.

00:19:30.100 What I have realized is the more educated or intelligent that the celebrity is, the nicer

00:19:36.060 they are, I think some of the people that I have to be rude to people are not very smart.

00:19:41.100 And I think sometimes some celebrities aren't really smart in general.

00:19:45.440 And I think that to me has been kind of a disappointment too.

00:19:48.440 I'm not going to mention names of people that I don't think are very smart.

00:19:51.580 But I can say that some people that I thought would be a lot more interesting turned out

00:19:57.280 to be really boring.

00:19:59.180 Anyways, that's it for me, you guys.

00:20:00.920 Please keep sending me suggestions for what you want me to talk about here at

00:20:04.140 flawsometalk at gmail.com or just put a comment on this video if you're watching on YouTube.

00:20:11.540 And again, thank you so much for all your support.

00:20:13.460 You guys are amazing.

00:20:14.440 And I'll see you in my next episode or I'll see you every day on YouTube.

Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - June 20, 2025

Ep 4： Hollywood’s Greatest Scam： The Celebrities You Thought Were Real

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