Green Rider: Equity launch campaign to make film and TV production greener
More than 100 actors are backing calls for a Green Rider – an environmentally friendly contract between performers and film and TV production companies.
Stars including Bella Ramsey, Stephen Fry and Natalie Dormer all signed a statement created by Equity For A Green New Deal setting out proposals to improve sustainability in the UK’s film and TV industry.
Riders are a set of clauses that actors can add to their contract – often before a job is accepted – detailing their requirements on set.
However, they are perhaps most infamously known for being used by high-profile talent to make demands, with stories of stars asking for all-white furniture, cute puppies and kittens on arrival, or the use of a private jet.
In contrast, the Green Rider would insert commitments to eco-friendly practices into the contracts of the stars, with suggested clauses including:
• Artists avoiding large trailers, private air travel, or fossil-fuel powered road vehicles
• Producers providing low carbon transport options such as trains and electric vehicles
• Artists considering the carbon/environmental cost of additional food or comfort requests that require runners to go off site, and reducing them accordingly
• Artists sharing trailers and dressing rooms to reduce energy use
• Producers providing the artist with their carbon reduction plan
The Last Of Us star Ramsey, 19, called the Green Rider a “practical route to positive change” in the film and television industry.
They said: “We can make all the films in the world about climate change but unless we are environmentally conscious in the process of making them, our efforts are superficial”.
The average big-budget movie production produces 2,840 tonnes of CO2
Is it hypocritical?
However, some will greet the proposed contracts with scepticism, with the film and TV industry known for transporting both casts and crews around the world for filming, as well as many non-sustainable practices around costumes, props and promotional events.
According to a report created by BAFTA’s albert (an environmental organisation aiming to encourage the TV and film production industry to reduce waste and its carbon footprint) the average big-budget movie production produces 2,840 tonnes of CO2.
Meanwhile many celebrities have taken flack for contradictory behaviour with regards to their climate credentials. In 2019, actress Emma Thompson faced a backlash after taking a 5,400-mile flight from Los Angeles to London to join climate protests in London.
Celebrities themselves have noted the problematic nature of high-profile performers – who by their very nature have high carbon lives and work in industries with a huge carbon footprint – fronting climate change movements.
The same year as Thompson’s flight faux pas, more than 100 celebrities, including actor Jude Law, and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, called themselves “hypocrites” in an open letter backing climate change protesters Extinction Rebellion and urging the government to “tell the public the truth” about the climate crisis.
Equity says that it is currently discussing a scheme with the BBC, ITV Studios and Sky Studios to pilot the Green Rider in upcoming productions, with a view to it becoming part of future collective agreements.
The UK government says it wants to produce net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The campaign will be considered further at an Edinburgh TV Festival panel on Tuesday called The Green Rider: Actor/Industry Collaboration Towards Sustainability.
Entertainment
Robbie Williams says people from the 90s shouldn’t be shamed for how they think and feel
Robbie Williams has said people from the 90s “shouldn’t be held accountable for how we think and we feel now”.
The Rock DJ singer attended the European premiere of his biopic Better Man in London, calling it one of his “proudest moments” of his career to date.
Despite the film shining a light on the lows connected to being a young pop star, he told Sky News he holds no grievances for the past.
“People from the 90s shouldn’t be held accountable for how we think and we feel now,” he said.
“We didn’t know and now we do. So things can and will change. And I can already feel it around me, how I am treated and how we treat each other.
“But you can’t know what you don’t know, and we just didn’t know in the 90s and that has to be okay.”
Portrayed as a CGI chimpanzee, the film follows the rise, fall and resurrection of Robbie Williams as an artist – inspired by how the former Take That member views himself.
Robbie Williams as a chimpanzee in the film. Pic: Panther
Williams said after watching the film a number of times already, there is one part that continues to affect him.
“There’s the bit with Nicole Appleton that always gets me because she’s a wonderful person, she’s an angel,” he said.
“All the other people that I threw under the bus in the film, they did something to me…. I did something to her. I wasn’t a great boyfriend and I feel great shame about that. But we’re good [now]. I’ve got great love for her and she has for me, too.”
Directed by The Greatest Showman filmmaker Michael Gracey, the two-hour 11 minutes musical includes extended dance sequences and refreshed versions of his back catalogue of songs.
Gracey believes it is Williams’ vulnerability that allows this film to stand out from the other biopics.
“Not a lot of us know what it’s like to stand in front of 135 guys and perform, but I think strangely he has this incredibly relatable story,” he said.
“The thing I value the most is that he’s been really able to go to those dark places, which I think a lot of music biopics suffer from being sanitised or watered down.”
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He added: “No one could accuse this thing of those things, but I think you feel the light so much more when you go to those places.”
Better Man is in cinemas on 26 December.
Rapper Slowthai raped two women at a house party after a gig, along with a friend, a court has been told.
The Grammy-nominated star, whose real name is Tyron Frampton, 29, and his co-accused Alex Blake-Walker, 27, are accused of raping the two women at a flat in Oxford on 8 September, 2021.
Both men deny the charges, and say all sexual activity was with the participation and consent of the women.
Frampton, 29, arrived at Oxford Crown Court for the second day of his trial accompanied by his wife, singer Anne-Marie.
WARNING: Allegations that some readers may find upsetting
The alleged attack is said to have taken place following Frampton’s performance at The Bullingdon music venue in the city, the night before.
Oxford Crown Court heard that one of the complainants – described as a “huge fan” of the rapper – had seen Frampton in a restaurant before the show and after speaking with him had been added to the VIP list.
Heather Stangoe, prosecuting, told the jury that after the gig this complainant met a group of friends – including the second complainant – at Frampton’s tour bus.
Ms Stangoe told the jury the “sole purpose” of Frampton and Blake-Walker going to the house party “was to secure sexual gratification”.
Frampton arrives at Oxford Crown Court with his wife, singer Anne-Marie. Pic: PA
‘High-fiving’ and ‘tag teams’
She said: “It mattered not to them whether the subjects of their attention consented or not. As it happened the two women in this case did not but that did not matter to these two defendants.”
She alleged the women were raped simultaneously at one point, with the defendants said to have “high-fived, discussed ‘tag teams’ and contemplated swapping the girls”.
She went on: “Their behaviour whilst sexually assaulting two females – who they had isolated from their friends – the encouragement and the assistance they gave one another when they became concerned that the females would run away has resulted in them being jointly charged with oral and vaginal rape.”
Ms Stangoe says Frampton met the second complainant, who had not been at the performance, at the Bullingdon Bar, and shared a shot of tequila with her.
She said she “had been drinking for many hours” and had also taken ketamine and cocaine and continued to drink and take drugs until just before the incident.
The prosecution said that although she was intoxicated, rendering her vulnerable, her state did not mean that she was incapable of consenting.
‘No phones, and no boys’
She says the girls declined an invitation to remain on the tour bus and travel to the next tour date in Southampton, and instead went to their friend’s house.
Ms Stangoe says Frampton stipulated that there would be “no phones, and no boys,” before agreeing to attend the party, a restriction she says suggested Frampton and Blake-Walker’s “mindset from the outset”.
The prosecutor said Frampton, Blake-Walker and two other men went with the group of girls to the property. She said the attack took place on a flat roof through a window of the property, and “happened very quickly”.
When the attack was interrupted, after initially being impeded by Blake-Walker holding the window shut, she said: “Frampton immediately jumped from the roof into the garden, ran through and out of the house. Blake-Walker left the property. The other two men also left.”
Ms Stangoe says the incident was reported to the police that night, after which the defendants were arrested and interviewed, denying the charges.
‘The effect of celebrity’
The prosecution alleges Frampton had twice raped one of the complainants while being encouraged by Blake-Walker.
Blake-Walker is accused of raping the other complainant while being encouraged by Frampton.
It is said they both sexually assaulted the woman Frampton is alleged to have raped.
In opening remarks to the jury, Patrick Gibbs KC, representing Frampton, suggested the events that night between his client and one of the complainants were consensual.
He said there was a difference between on the one hand “willingly participating in something which is spontaneous and chaotic and in the excitement of the intoxication of the moment and on the other regretting it afterwards”.
He also said “the effect of celebrity” may have led people to “enthusiastically do things they wouldn’t otherwise do”.
Sheryl Nwosu, representing Blake-Walker, said her client had always denied forcing one of the women to engage in sexual activity, and denied any sexual contact with the woman Frampton is accused of raping.
Frampton, who was nominated for a Grammy in 2021 and a Mercury prize in 2019, was removed from the Glastonbury, Leeds and Reading festival line-up after being charged last year.
The trial – which is expected to last three weeks – continues.
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