Steve Coogan says plan to cut taxes for richest is ‘breathtaking in its audacity’
The government’s financial plan is “breathtaking in its audacity”, according to British actor Steve Coogan.
Speaking to Sky News, the comic – who is a long-time, vocal Labour supporter – says following last week’s mini-budget, which included tax cuts for top rate payers, even Conservatives are questioning the future of their party.
Tory MP Simon Hoare said earlier on Twitter: “These are not circumstances beyond the control of Govt/Treasury. They were authored there. This inept madness cannot go on.”
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Coogan said: “I almost don’t think we need an opposition at the moment because there are as many members of the Conservative Party who are alarmed at their own government as there are members of the opposition.”
“There are so many vulnerable people out there – not just people on the margins of society, people front and centre in society who have jobs and who contribute and who are taxpayers – who are going to be struggling,” he added. “And to see the government give tax breaks to the 1% is breathtaking in its audacity.
“And based on some theoretical idea that trickle-down economics will end up helping those at the bottom. There was a 30-year experiment in trickle-down economics, and it didn’t trickle down to those who needed it most, it stopped about halfway, and I don’t see any reason why it should be any different now.”
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‘I don’t want a tax cut’
Coogan, who is himself a higher rate taxpayer, says he’s very much opposed to the changes.
“I don’t want a tax rebate, I’m quite happy to pay income tax, I’m quite happy to pay 45% income tax, I don’t want a tax cut,” he added.
“Lots of people would like a tax cut, whether they deserve it or whether it’s right or moral or just is another thing.
“I certainly don’t want one, but I’m an individual – that money should be spent helping people in most need.”
‘The Conservatives don’t have a good record on the arts’
With question marks over the future of the BBC and Channel 4, Coogan, whose latest film The Lost King is about to come out in cinemas, says it could be a difficult time for the arts and entertainment industry.
“The Conservatives don’t have a very good record on subsidising the arts,” he said.
“They see it as the poor man’s choice, the arts have always been denigrated in our country, and they have a short memory because all great art at some point was subsidised.
“Shakespeare himself had to have patronage to be able to write his plays, he had royal patronage, people gave him money to make good art because that’s an immeasurable, you can’t put a price on it.
“You know, Oscar Wilde said a fool is somebody who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing; I think that’s the sort of definition of certainly the more crude conservative mindset.”
Sally Hawkins and Steve Coogan in The Lost King. Pic: Warner Bros
Coogan wants to help people tell their stories
The Lost King tells the story of middle-aged amateur historian Philippa Langley who led the search to find the remains of King Richard III but was later sidelined when the University of Leicester claimed credit.
It sees Coogan reuniting with co-writer Jeff Pope and director Stephen Frears – the trio last worked together on 2013’s Philomena, which also told the true story of a woman fighting the establishment.
Coogan says he does consciously try to fight against what can be a misogynistic industry.
“As a privileged, white, middle-aged man, there is the question mark of whether I should be telling that story or I should be involved in telling that story,” he said.
“But when you are in that position, it makes you work doubly hard trying to make sure you do justice to someone else’s story, especially a marginalised woman. In our enlightened times, I think it’s important you don’t have to be one of the marginalised to help them tell their story.”
Sally Hawkins in The Lost King. Pic: Warner Bros
The film is based on books written by Langley, and Leicester University has said it is not happy with how the institution is portrayed in the film.
“We appreciate that while The Lost King is based on real events, it is a work of fiction, and recollections will vary from various people of what happened during such an incredibly exciting moment in history,” it said.
“It is our view that the portrayal of the University of Leicester’s role in the project is far removed from the accurate work that took place.”
But Coogan says ultimately the film is entertainment and that satire “involves poking fun at the powerful”, which he doesn’t apologise for.
“As my grandmother used to say – what goes around, comes around,” he said. “And had they been more generous or just more fair, in their telling of the story of the search for Richard, then the film probably wouldn’t have happened.
“There are too many instances that I could use as examples of how she’s been relegated to the side of the story.”
“Some of the fundamental facts are this: Philippa Langley led the search, spent eight years researching where she thought it was, she alone arrived at the conclusion of the location of Richard’s body, she raised the majority of the money herself through members of the Richard III society – the university put in a small amount,” he said.
“When some bones had been discovered, she alone insisted that those bones be excavated and when they’re excavated, and they found those scoliosis and injuries to the skull consistent with those sustained in battle and at that point – the university stepped in and said, ‘we’ll take control of this’… Well, of course they might, because she’d just found him.”
The Lost King is out in cinemas on the 7 October.
Entertainment
The Golden Globes kicks off the awards party tonight – and there could be a few surprises
While the Oscars bestows the film industry’s highest honours, the Golden Globes is the ceremony that gets the awards season party started.
Emilia Perez, which stars Selena Gomez and tells the story of a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, leads the nominations with 10, while postwar epic The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, has seven, and papal thriller Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes, has six.
After surpassing Mamma Mia earlier this week to become the highest-grossing film ever adapted from a Broadway musical, Wicked has four nods – and seems certain to follow in the perfectly arched footsteps of Barbie by clinching the prize for cinematic and box office achievement.
The Golden Globes also celebrates TV – with The Bear, Shogun, Only Murders In The Building, Baby Reindeer, The Penguin and Monsters among the big nominees.
This year’s ceremony takes place in Los Angeles later today, so you’ll have to stay up late if you plan to follow in the UK.
Ahead of the show, here are a few things to look out for.
Musicals lead the way
Selena Gomez as Jessi in Emilia Perez. Pic: Shanna Besson/Page 114/Why Not Productions/Pathe Films/ France 2 Cinema
All singing, often dancing – it seems the world has really been holding space for musicals over the past 12 months.
Operatic musical Emilia Perez comfortably has the most nominations of all the films in the running, while Wicked, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, has been the most talked about film of the year (not least because of the viral press tour).
Both Erivo and Grande are nominated in acting categories – for Grande, it is her first Golden Globe nod for her performance as Glinda, and she competes in the best supporting female actor in a motion picture category against fellow pop star Gomez and Zoe Saldana, who also stars in Emilia Perez.
Erivo is up for the award for best female actor in a motion picture musical or comedy, alongside Zendaya for romantic sports film Challengers, Karla Sofia Gascon for Emilia Perez, Demi Moore for The Substance, Amy Adams for Nightbitch, and a breakout performance from Mikey Madison for Anora, a film about a young sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch.
Read more: Anora – the film opening the conversation about sex work
Surprise surprise
Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence in director Edward Berger’s Conclave. Pic: Philippe Antonello/Focus Features 2024
Last year’s nominations were led by Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the latter of which went on to win pretty much every award going, including best picture at the Oscars.
While the Barbenheimer buzz was fun for a while, Oppenheimer’s domination made awards season pretty predictable (and, some might say, a little dull). This year, Wicked aside, there are no such obvious contenders.
The Brutalist, which follows Brody as a Hungarian architect attempting to build a life in the US after the Second World War, seems to be a favourite for best drama, as well as a best actor win for its star, and best director for Brady Corbet.
But it faces tough competition from Conclave, in which Fiennes plays a priest who has to select a new pope, as well as A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. Awards voters love a biopic, after all.
In the musical/comedy category, experts for awards prediction site Gold Derby seem to be split three ways, between Wicked, Emilia Perez, and Anora – whose star Madison is also tipped to beat the likes of Erivo and Moore in her category.
Read more: The full list of nominations
Celeb spotting
Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl. Pic: Roadside Attractions
After a difficult few years, the Golden Globes are still in comeback mode.
Following an expose over a lack of diversity among members, the ceremony was held in private and boycotted by celebs in 2022 and didn’t quite fully bounce back in 2023.
Now, with a new organising body and after appearances by lots of A-listers last year, it looks set to bring some mega-watt star appeal once again.
Angelina Jolie – a favourite for best actress for her portrayal of opera singer Maria Callas in Maria – Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman, Chalamet and Moore are just a few of the big-name nominees, alongside Grande and Gomez. Pamela Anderson is also on the list – nominated for best actress in a drama for her performance in The Last Showgirl.
Read more: Ralph Fiennes on Conclave: ‘It’s not a facile takedown’
British and Irish hopefuls
Eddie Redmayne in The Day Of The Jackal. Pic: Sky UK/ Carnival Film & Television Limited 2024
And it’s not just Hollywood making up the star-studded guest list, as loads of British celebs are in the running for awards, too, from Eddie Redmayne for his performance in Sky’s The Day Of The Jackal, to Keira Knightley for Netflix’s Black Doves.
Other British stars on the shortlists include Kate Winslet (nominated in both the TV and film categories for The Regime and Lee), Gary Oldman for hit Apple TV+ series Slow Horses, Hugh Grant for horror movie Heretic, Felicity Jones for The Brutalist, Colin Farrell for The Penguin, and Daniel Craig for his film Queer, based on the 1985 novella by William S Burroughs. And Erivo, too.
Robbie Williams also gets a nod for best original song for his unique biopic, Better Man – his life story told through the medium of a computer-generated monkey.
Read more: Robbie Williams on Better Man
The stars who missed out
There’s no Golden Globe nod for Paul Mescal this year. Pic: Paramount Pictures
Unlike the Oscars, the Globes covers both TV and film and also includes genre splits – with separate awards for dramas, and comedies and musicals. It means there are a lot of nominees in the running for awards.
Still, there were a few big names absent from the shortlists.
While his co-star Washington is up for a supporting award, Gladiator II star Paul Mescal missed out on a nod – as did director Sir Ridley Scott.
The original film won the best picture Golden Globe in 2001 and star Russell Crowe was nominated in the best acting category for his performance.
British director Sir Steve McQueen’s Second World War drama film Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan, is also absent from the nominations.
And while Dune: Part Two is up for best picture and best original score by Hans Zimmer, director Denis Villeneuve has not been recognised.
Read more: Paul Mescal on Gladiator II
First female solo host
Host Nikki Glaser is ready for the Golden Globes. Pic: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Yes, you read that right. While Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the ceremony several times as a double act, comedian Nikki Glaser will be the first woman to take the reins solo.
Some of the ceremony’s most memorable moments have come not from the stars, but the hosts themselves – Ricky Gervais‘s caustic takedowns of the A-listers in the audience were always a favourite.
It’s a big gig, with not just the audience to impress, but the millions who will watch and see the clips all over social media later on. Jo Koy, who hosted last year, didn’t go down particularly well.
Fortunately, this year’s show should be suitably sharp in the hands of US stand-up Glaser, a comedian who is not afraid of being savage.
“It’s the best of TV and film coming together with one common goal: to receive the love and validation they never got as children from their parents,” she said. “Sunday night is a night to celebrate TV and film, actors and directors, Xanax and tequila.”
The Golden Globes take place in LA, with the red carpet starting at about 11.30pm UK time and the ceremony starting at 1am on Monday.
Entertainment
Creatives having to be even more creative as National Theatre overhauls how it stages productions
The National Theatre is overhauling how it stages productions – as its ambitious climate targets mean creatives are having to be even more creative.
After setting itself the goal of achieving net zero as an organisation by 2030, off-stage quietly radical changes are under way.
Pic: Reed Watts
Sky News was invited to see how the theatre, based in Southbank, central London, has gone about overhauling its approach to staging productions, meeting with some of those who’ve worked on its adaptation of the much-loved children’s classic Ballet Shoes.
While critics have been full of praise for the visual spectacle on-stage, how the whole look was created required a fundamental shift in approach.
“All of the team have had to be on board with reinventing, recutting and reimagining items rather than just making them from scratch,” costume designer Samuel Wyer said.
A new resource they had to work with was the National Theatre Green Store in Bermondsey, southeast London.
The warehouse has more than 131,000 items of costume and almost 22,000 props now housed under one roof so that designers can repurpose items from previous productions to try to cut their carbon footprint.
It’s a surprisingly satisfying challenge.
Mr Wyer said they were able to “dip and cut clothes… which meant I was finding things even outside my imagination that were more perfect than I could have drawn on a piece of paper”.
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Trying to lead by example, the theatre hopes to demonstrate how the industry needn’t take a fast fashion approach to making sets, props and costumes from scratch.
“I think if it’s demonstrated that we can do things in this way that helps all of us imagine a world where we can use what we’ve got rather than new, new, new, because we need that balance,” Mr Wyer said.
“Theatre is where we come to imagine who we could be.”
Pic: Reed Watts
‘Every piece has its own little quirks’
Last year, the National set itself targets of 50% of the materials used in its productions having had a previous life, and 65% being repurposed at the end of each production.
For set designer Frankie Bradshaw, hitting those targets has meant working with a lot more repurposed furniture.
“Lots of second-hand cabinets, bookshelves,” she said. “Ordinarily [carpenters] would have been used to building from scratch following a drawing and this has been quite different.
“Every piece has its own little quirks, and they’ve had to adapt their processes to fit that way of working.”
While it’s by no means straightforward, the process is proving rewarding.
“It requires everyone to be a little bit more flexible, a little more patient, but it does mean you can end up with a product you’re a lot more proud of,” Ms Bradshaw added.
Ballet Shoes runs at the National Theatre until Saturday 22 February.
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