Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - June 27, 2025


Ep 5： Hollywood’s Golden Men — and the Wreckage They Leave Behind

Topics
men's mental health
Hosted by
Kjersti Flaa
Mentioned
Brad Pitt Tom Cruise Johnny Depp Melanie Jolie Leonardo DiCaprio Katie Holmes Candy Crush Will Smith Justin Baldoni Legal Feud Jennifer Anderson Flossom Talk Chris Rock Tom Hanks Kjersti Suri
Ep 4： Hollywood’s Greatest Scam： The Celebrities You Thought Were Real Ep 6： Hollywood EXPOSED： Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know !!？

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

169.11

Word count

3,428

Sentence count

310

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the 4 most powerful movie stars in Hollywood: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Johnny Depp. They all have a lot in common: they are in their 50s, they re in their 60s, and they re a mess.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This January on Paramount Plus, 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 Plus.
00:00:19.780 Hi and welcome to Flossom Talk, the podcast.
00:00:24.060 Every Friday, I post these episodes on YouTube and on Spotify, Apple, iHeart and Amazon,
00:00:30.860 where I talk about other things that I usually talk about on my YouTube channel,
00:00:34.700 which is the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni Legal Feud.
00:00:38.200 So if you're very interested in that, go to my YouTube channel.
00:00:41.240 I post about that every single day.
00:00:43.220 But here on this podcast, I talk about other things that I find interesting about Hollywood.
00:00:47.800 And this episode is dedicated to the male movie stars.
00:00:53.740 I realized the other day, I was watching a video with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
00:00:59.780 The two of them hugging it out on the red carpet.
00:01:02.660 And everyone was like, oh my God, look at them.
00:01:04.860 They're together.
00:01:05.760 They're the biggest movie stars in the world.
00:01:07.740 And I was thinking, what do these guys have in common?
00:01:11.360 Except that they're big movie stars.
00:01:13.580 Their personal lives are a big mess.
00:01:15.620 And then I started realizing, when you look at all the biggest movie stars we have today,
00:01:20.260 of the male movie stars, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.
00:01:27.420 What do they all have in common?
00:01:29.260 They're in their 50s.
00:01:30.540 They're in their 60s.
00:01:32.300 And they're a mess.
00:01:34.740 I mean, we love them.
00:01:36.300 We admire them.
00:01:38.000 They're super famous.
00:01:39.260 They have so much power.
00:01:40.980 They have so much charisma.
00:01:42.880 Now, I've met all of these guys and I have to say, I've been swooned by all of them.
00:01:48.440 They all know how to charm someone.
00:01:50.940 They all know how to show the best sides of themselves when they're in the press.
00:01:55.760 They all have this star power that you can feel when you're around them.
00:02:00.600 Tom Cruise is in his 60s.
00:02:03.040 He can hang from a plane mid-flight, but he hasn't seen his daughter in 11 years.
00:02:08.420 Brad Pitt reportedly does not have contact with any of his six kids.
00:02:14.420 Johnny Depp's addiction battles have been played out in court.
00:02:18.940 It was devastating to watch what his life was really like with Amber Heard and also Leonardo DiCaprio.
00:02:25.860 He can't date a woman that's over 25 years old and all he cares about is partying on yachts or playing Candy Crush.
00:02:33.520 So why are these men the most powerful movie stars that we have today?
00:02:39.660 These four men, I think, are the four names that can actually still kind of sell a movie just by their names.
00:02:49.380 In the old days, you know, we used to go to the movie theaters to watch the newest Leonardo DiCaprio movie
00:02:55.560 or the newest Tom Hanks film or the newest Will Smith movie.
00:02:59.000 We didn't even refer to the movie's names.
00:03:01.620 We were just saying, have you seen the last Brad Pitt movie?
00:03:04.580 Have you seen the last Tom Cruise movie?
00:03:06.300 Very few people in Hollywood can do that.
00:03:09.320 This is what Hollywood calls bankable, a bankable name.
00:03:13.520 Not many names are bankable anymore.
00:03:16.100 But these guys would draw audiences just by their names.
00:03:20.580 Here's the thing.
00:03:21.480 I think it's so easy to just fall for their charm.
00:03:24.920 They have, all of them have played characters that we fell in love with.
00:03:28.460 Tom Cruise has this massive aura when he enters a room.
00:03:32.200 I've met him a few times.
00:03:33.680 I have showed on my YouTube channel when I met him on the red carpet and I hugged him or I asked him if he was a good hugger.
00:03:41.320 He hugged me.
00:03:42.080 There was a moment there which, you know, I was super excited about because I was like, wow, I got a hug from the biggest movie star in the world.
00:03:49.680 And then it's really easy to forget that Tom Cruise is a member of Scientology Church, which is a cult that hurt a lot of people.
00:03:59.680 And we all remember what happened with Katie Holmes.
00:04:02.360 If I remember right, I think she planned for months her exit out of her relationship or her marriage with Tom Cruise.
00:04:09.840 She wanted, of course, to bring her daughter Suri with her.
00:04:12.920 And it was really an escape plan to get out of the cult and to get out of the grip of Tom Cruise.
00:04:18.880 And Tom Cruise has not seen his daughter in 11 years.
00:04:22.500 But still, we love him.
00:04:24.940 We go to watch his movies.
00:04:26.420 And all he says in every interview, if you watch interviews with Tom Cruise, this is what you're going to hear.
00:04:32.140 He would say, I love storytelling.
00:04:35.440 I love making movies.
00:04:38.100 All I ever wanted to do was to make movies.
00:04:41.320 I want to make the audience happy.
00:04:44.460 I do this for the audience.
00:04:46.760 He's like a repeat robot in every single interview.
00:04:50.620 He said the exact same things when I met him on the red carpet.
00:04:54.380 That's why I wanted to ask him something different to get some kind of reaction from him.
00:04:58.280 So he would snap out of his robot mode.
00:05:00.420 And, of course, he talks about his stunts, which is his whole gig.
00:05:04.940 He is doing his own stunts.
00:05:06.660 And that's become his trademark.
00:05:08.280 And that's why a lot of people chose to go and watch his movies.
00:05:11.380 His latest Mission Impossible movie wasn't that successful, though.
00:05:15.980 But still, Tom Cruise is a major, major movie star.
00:05:21.720 And as I said, when he met Brad Pitt on the red carpet the other day,
00:05:25.620 everyone went crazy.
00:05:27.360 And they're like, look at them.
00:05:28.840 And, of course, people were excited about this because they hadn't seen them together for 30 years
00:05:33.860 since The Vampire Diaries.
00:05:36.980 And apparently there was a feud between them.
00:05:39.580 Brad Pitt didn't like working with Tom Cruise.
00:05:41.820 He thought he was controlling.
00:05:43.320 And he didn't like the way he was acting on set.
00:05:47.180 So he said that he never wanted to work with him again.
00:05:49.900 Anyways, when they were back together now, everyone was like,
00:05:52.660 oh, wow, this is a big moment in history to see them together.
00:05:56.680 So, yeah, let's talk about Brad Pitt.
00:05:59.000 I mean, who didn't fall in love with him in Legends of the Fall?
00:06:03.300 I watched that movie, I think, seven times.
00:06:06.000 He plays a character called Tristan.
00:06:08.380 And he's, I mean, he's this troubled soul that a lot of women, we recognize it and we see it.
00:06:15.000 And we're like, oh, I want him and I want to fix him.
00:06:18.080 Fight Club, the coolest guy ever.
00:06:20.880 Seven, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
00:06:22.480 There's so many good Brad Pitt movies.
00:06:24.520 And interestingly enough, when he left Jennifer Anderson, who he's married to, for Angelina Jolie,
00:06:32.320 Brad Pitt got out of that without being harmed really much.
00:06:36.500 It was all about how Angelina Jolie was the homewrecker. 0.87
00:06:39.960 No one put the blame on Brad Pitt.
00:06:41.980 He was actually the one that was cheating and leaving his wife for someone else.
00:06:46.980 Still, Angelina Jolie was the bad one. 1.00
00:06:51.060 Then, fast forward, when his marriage to Angelina Jolie started falling apart,
00:06:56.260 there was this incident that we all heard about on the plane.
00:06:59.560 And Brad Pitt admitted that he was drunk on this plane.
00:07:02.840 But he didn't admit to anything else than that, that he wasn't violent towards his kids or anything like that.
00:07:08.500 But then there was an FBI report coming out that leaked to the press that said otherwise that he had been pushing Angelina.
00:07:17.980 He had poured red wine on her.
00:07:19.940 He had poured beer on his kids.
00:07:21.900 He'd been slapping.
00:07:23.300 I think it was Maddox.
00:07:24.940 Angelina Jolie had to hid in the bathroom for a while. 0.99
00:07:28.180 She was one of her kids tried to pull him away from Angelina. 1.00
00:07:32.360 It was a big mess.
00:07:34.380 And to me, when I read about that, I was like, I don't want to believe this.
00:07:37.420 I really don't want Brad Pitt to be that kind of person.
00:07:41.120 And the thing is, we don't know what happened on that plane.
00:07:44.360 But I feel like Angelina Jolie wouldn't make all those things up.
00:07:48.140 I also have to admit that I have a soft spot for Angelina Jolie.
00:07:51.480 She's one of those people.
00:07:52.480 I've met her many times.
00:07:54.680 And she has this warmth and intelligence and presence about her that makes me just like really like her.
00:08:02.180 But I don't know anything about these people in their personal lives.
00:08:05.760 So I can't say that she's a good person.
00:08:08.300 He's a bad person.
00:08:09.360 All I can base my things on are my experience meeting them and what I read about them in the press.
00:08:15.580 Still, we forgave Brad Pitt.
00:08:19.000 Again, after all of this, he said that, oh, he went to rehab.
00:08:23.320 He changed.
00:08:24.120 He did.
00:08:24.520 I think it was in GQ.
00:08:25.860 He gave this big interview where he talked about all his regrets.
00:08:28.620 And he was a changed man.
00:08:30.040 And everyone was like, yay, Brad Pitt.
00:08:32.120 He did something smart.
00:08:33.720 He went away for a little while.
00:08:35.400 And then he came back and he said that, you know, I have worked on myself.
00:08:41.120 You know, kind of what Will Smith did back in the day after he slapped Chris Rock.
00:08:46.380 Yeah.
00:08:46.840 And the times that I've sat down and interviewed Brad Pitt, you know, he has this thing about it.
00:08:52.000 He has this boyish charm about him.
00:08:54.420 And, of course, he's a very good looking man.
00:08:58.040 He still is.
00:08:59.500 And as a woman, I feel like, I don't know, I just love watching him on screen as well.
00:09:06.060 Then there's Johnny Depp.
00:09:07.980 I mean, for all of you guys who watched him during the trial with Amber Heard, he seems like such a broken soul.
00:09:16.660 And he's such a vulnerable man.
00:09:19.660 And he's kind of, he was portrayed as the victim in that.
00:09:23.900 And as I said so many times, my experiences with Johnny Depp when I met him, when I've interviewed him, has always been so lovely.
00:09:33.320 He is one of those few people who gets out of his chair to greet people when they enter the room to interview him.
00:09:39.720 He's one of those few people who gives people hugs, even though you don't know him.
00:09:43.180 I just really have a soft spot for Johnny Depp.
00:09:46.100 But I don't know what happened between those walls when him and Amber Heard were having those big fights.
00:09:53.980 I mean, of course, we got to learn a lot about how messy everything was.
00:09:58.100 And, of course, we all got to see how he struggles with addiction and where it comes from, his childhood and all those things.
00:10:05.620 That makes us even feel more for him.
00:10:08.300 And I saw this interview, I don't know if you saw the interview he did in Sunday Times last Sunday, where he talked about his childhood a little bit.
00:10:17.660 He talked about Amber Heard and how it all affected him and how he didn't regret any of this.
00:10:24.220 And during that interview, he also was pouring alcohol to the journalist.
00:10:28.300 He was the journalist was describing all the different drinks that Johnny Depp served him.
00:10:34.220 So he obviously hasn't worked on that part of his problem yet.
00:10:38.600 But I am still so forgiving towards Johnny Depp.
00:10:41.780 And I do believe that Amber Heard was lying in court.
00:10:45.080 I'm not going to say anything else than that.
00:10:46.780 But I also do believe that Johnny Depp has some serious issues that he should be working on.
00:10:51.420 Now, there's talk that he's having a big comeback, and I really applaud that.
00:10:57.320 I think he deserves it.
00:10:58.900 He also talked about how disappointed he was in people who didn't stand up for him, which I completely understand. 1.00
00:11:05.640 It was a really heartfelt interview.
00:11:07.640 And if you haven't read it, I would suggest go and read that in Sunday Times.
00:11:11.560 And then, of course, we have Leonardo DiCaprio, who is very he's controlled his image pretty well.
00:11:18.700 I don't know what it is with him, but he cannot have a relationship with a woman that's over 25 years old and usually tall, blonde model.
00:11:28.060 And he seems like he has this real big issue with actually becoming a grown-up.
00:11:35.120 And maybe that's why he keeps dating younger and younger girls.
00:11:38.560 One of my neighbors in L.A., she told me she knows one of his ex-girlfriends.
00:11:42.340 And she said that all he wanted to do was basically go party and play Candy Crush all day long.
00:11:50.100 So here's the big question.
00:11:51.820 Why are we excusing their behavior all the time?
00:11:55.700 Or worse, why are we admiring it?
00:11:58.320 As a woman, I think maybe if I'm talking from my perspective, I've kind of always loved a broken man.
00:12:05.160 I think it's in our instinct that when we see a broken man, we're like, oh, maybe I can fix him.
00:12:10.660 And that's why a lot of women end up with the bad guys until they realize that the bad guys are not good to live with. 1.00
00:12:18.060 You need to find a man that's really kind to you.
00:12:20.620 I still fall for the bad guys in movies, but luckily I don't do that in real life anymore.
00:12:25.680 Hollywood knows this and they're selling us this fantasy as well.
00:12:30.200 This fantasy of redemption and the fantasy that all these broken men just needs to find the right woman to save them.
00:12:37.960 But most of the time, these men, especially these four, don't change, but they do get forgiveness.
00:12:46.300 As I said, I'm guilty myself of being starstruck by all these men.
00:12:50.840 And maybe that's also why I would always kind of defend them.
00:12:54.600 When I see something bad about them in the press, I'm like, oh, but you know, he's a troubled soul.
00:13:00.300 Oh, but you know, he's had a bad childhood.
00:13:03.020 Oh, you know, he's gone through a horrible time and, you know, all these things.
00:13:08.200 And I kind of root for them.
00:13:10.360 Anyways, before I talk more about that, I just wanted to share a quick message from the sponsor of this video, BetterHelp.
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00:13:42.520 Men also faces huge pressure to perform, to keep things together and to provide.
00:13:48.260 Did you know that over 6 million men in the US suffer from depression every year?
00:13:53.180 Many don't even realize it.
00:13:55.080 They think it's okay to struggle.
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00:14:49.440 Okay, so let's talk more about why we love these guys so much and why we keep forgiving them.
00:14:54.680 It's not only women who admire and look up to and adore these men.
00:15:00.380 Men do as well.
00:15:02.160 Because some men admire these things.
00:15:04.140 They admire the fame, the wealth, the access to women, the global respect that these guys have.
00:15:10.400 And that they can act without really having any consequences.
00:15:14.420 Even when they screw up, they bounce back.
00:15:16.920 There's some kind of wishful fantasy around that.
00:15:20.260 To watch someone who gets to live without apology.
00:15:22.980 Like Tom Cruise, he stands for control, discipline, dominance.
00:15:27.840 Brad Pitt, he's cool, wounded, hyper-sexualized, rebel.
00:15:32.000 DiCaprio, eternal youth, intellectual power, detachment.
00:15:36.280 Johnny Depp, outsider, artist, tortured, genius.
00:15:40.140 They each tap into different male fantasy archetypes.
00:15:43.260 And for many men, that is compelling.
00:15:45.320 They're like living avatars of what society tells men that they should want to be.
00:15:50.460 Men admire winners.
00:15:51.720 These guys don't only win Oscars, they have billion dollar franchises, massive fanbases.
00:16:00.040 They have cultural relevances over decades.
00:16:03.340 They date younger women, which a lot of men like to do.
00:16:06.700 They walk away from family responsibilities without even getting judged for it.
00:16:11.940 They live in mansions and they never apologize.
00:16:15.060 They're reckless, but they're still adored.
00:16:17.720 For some men, that isn't even problematic.
00:16:20.720 It's aspirational.
00:16:22.380 In a culture where many men kind of feel silenced and disempowered,
00:16:26.560 this becomes strangely heroic.
00:16:29.780 So why is this type of masculinity celebrated?
00:16:32.900 I think Hollywood loves the idea of a troubled genius.
00:16:36.900 The man who's so brilliant but broken.
00:16:39.420 tortured but talented, wounded but worth it.
00:16:43.520 Hollywood rewards men who show strength on screen but collapse in private.
00:16:50.060 Because we really don't want vulnerability.
00:16:53.320 We just want the illusion of it.
00:16:55.540 Brad Pitt can play the wounded father.
00:16:58.000 Tom Cruise can save the world.
00:16:59.760 But when it comes to actually showing up for their kids, they vanish.
00:17:04.520 Meanwhile, the industry protects them.
00:17:07.340 Publicists clean up their mess.
00:17:09.560 Fans defend them.
00:17:11.280 And women like Angelina Jolie and Katie Holmes are often left to pick up the pieces while being 1.00
00:17:16.520 labeled difficult.
00:17:17.740 It's kind of ironic when you think about it.
00:17:19.960 The very drive that makes someone a movie star.
00:17:23.100 The obsession, the ego, the hunger is often what destroys their ability to maintain a personal
00:17:30.580 life.
00:17:31.120 Tom Cruise hasn't seen his kids in 11 years.
00:17:34.040 Brad Pitt allegedly doesn't have much relationship with his kids.
00:17:38.760 Some of them refuse to see him.
00:17:41.620 Leonardo DiCaprio, who doesn't even have kids.
00:17:44.080 Johnny Depp, on the other hand, does seem to have a good relationship with his kids.
00:17:48.360 But his personal life is pretty unhinged.
00:17:51.180 So why do we rush to the movie theaters to see these guys?
00:17:54.780 Why do we still admire them?
00:17:56.740 Is this the biggest lie that Hollywood is telling us?
00:17:59.480 We're saying, he's a great actor, though.
00:18:02.180 He's just complicated.
00:18:03.700 Don't judge his personal life.
00:18:05.740 You have to separate the artists from their personal life.
00:18:08.780 Maybe we should judge a little bit.
00:18:10.500 Or maybe we should just stop pretending that it doesn't matter.
00:18:13.720 Maybe we keep forgiving this man because we need to believe that greatness excuses damage.
00:18:19.240 That power justifies absence.
00:18:21.900 That success means sacrifice.
00:18:24.040 But if we're being honest, that says more about us than it says about them.
00:18:28.240 We're not just watching a performance on screen.
00:18:30.400 We are participating in one.
00:18:32.520 We call them movie stars, icons, legends.
00:18:36.180 But maybe the more accurate word is haunted.
00:18:39.500 Because these men, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio, have one thing in common.
00:18:47.280 They can't keep a relationship.
00:18:49.340 They can win Oscars.
00:18:50.340 They can hang off planes.
00:18:51.780 They can seduce the camera. 1.00
00:18:53.420 They can reinvent themselves on screen.
00:18:55.720 But off screen, they're alone.
00:18:58.240 What makes most people fulfilled in life isn't fame.
00:19:01.420 It isn't money.
00:19:02.420 It isn't attention.
00:19:03.820 It is a meaningful relationship.
00:19:06.800 It is family.
00:19:07.900 It is connection.
00:19:08.700 The people who see you without makeup, without lighting, without applause.
00:19:13.120 So maybe we need to ask this.
00:19:15.200 Did they sacrifice happiness to sell us an illusion?
00:19:18.520 An illusion that they're everything.
00:19:20.460 They're unstoppable.
00:19:21.580 They're untouchable.
00:19:22.660 Eternal.
00:19:23.380 But when the cameras stop rolling, what's left?
00:19:25.680 They've played a thousand characters, but they never figured out how to be themselves.
00:19:31.560 How to be a person that loves themselves.
00:19:34.080 And maybe, just maybe, the real cost of becoming a Hollywood star is forgetting how to be a human.
00:19:41.320 Thank you so much for listening, you guys.
00:19:44.500 I really appreciate that you stopped by my channel on YouTube or wherever you're listening on whatever platform.
00:19:50.300 Please send me feedback.
00:19:51.460 You can either email me, flawsometalk at gmail.com or go on Instagram at my Instagram, sashtifloh.
00:19:58.820 Or if you're on YouTube, you can leave a comment and I'll see you next Friday.
00:20:04.340 Or I'll see you on my YouTube channel where I post, as you know, every single day.
00:20:09.480 So, yeah, take care and subscribe and have a wonderful weekend.
00:20:15.520 Bye.