Yesterday, with little or no warning, Armie Hammer resurfaced. You might do not forget that in 2021 Hammer’s profession ended instantly, after a number of ladies got here ahead to accuse him of various levels of abuse. His representatives dropped him, his work dried up and he was compelled to promote timeshares within the Cayman Islands to get by. That, all people thought, was that.
Nonetheless, in current months, Hammer has began to re-emerge into public life. He moved again to Los Angeles and made an enormous deal about promoting his automotive. He was on Piers Morgan’s YouTube channel, and Invoice Maher’s podcast. And now it seems to be as if he’s again for good. Yesterday noticed the launch of the primary episode of Hammer’s new podcast, Armie HammerTime.
The podcast looks like a reasonably irresistible proposition to a number of marginal teams. The longterm Armie Hammer believers, the devoted minority who vowed to stay by their hero by thick and skinny, lastly have an outlet for his or her help. However, the podcast guarantees to be a contemporary supply of shock for many who imagine he doesn’t deserve any type of outlet in any respect. And for the hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of rubberneckers who get a bizarre thrill from watching a good-looking former film star sift by the self-inflicted wreckage of his life? Nicely, that is good for them too.
Only a reminder, although. Launching a podcast doesn’t imply that Armie Hammer has been uncancelled. Hollywood hasn’t unshunned him. He spends a few of the first episode saying that the one work he has on the horizon is a bit half job on a low-budget Asian-shot movie that no person will ever see. Plus, he’s podcasting, for crying out loud. Making an unbiased podcast doesn’t imply that Hollywood has let Armie Hammer again in. If something, it’s a reasonably brutal reminder that it hasn’t.
The Armie HammerTime podcast is, at coronary heart, an interview podcast. The interviews are carried out in Hammer’s house, a tiny rent-controlled condominium with scuffed floorboards and a settee sourced from Fb Market for $150. The primary episode’s visitor is Tom Arnold, a person who additionally is aware of a factor or two about imploding his life in full glare of the general public.
This may not have been the best alternative. Arnold has made a lot hay from mining his misplaced years for comedian materials, and so it’s right here. Need the anecdote concerning the time Roseanne Barr stabbed him for taking some cookies from her? Need the anecdote concerning the time he heard that the drummer from Kiss was a homeless crack addict dwelling below a pier, so he kidnapped a homeless crack addict from below a pier, nevertheless it wasn’t the drummer from Kiss, after which the drummer from Kiss sued him for $50m? Arnold is very happy to supply these tales up unprompted and at size.
You’ll be able to sense Hammer’s frustration with this because the episode wears on. He is aware of that he’s the story right here. The folks listening to the podcast need to hear how issues have been for him, and the way he blew his life up. In the long run he’s so constrained that he actually has to ask Arnold to ask him a query, simply in order that he can get a phrase in.
The success of the Armie HammerTime podcast will in the end rely on the extent of sincerity with which Hammer has entered into this. If that is as transparently cynical because it might be – if this can be a approach for him to remind those that he’s again on the town and rehabilitated and obtainable for rent – then its failure is all however assured.
But when he’s doing a podcast to work on himself – if this actually is the place his intentions lie – then there may be hope for it but. In a way, the endeavour jogs my memory somewhat of Marc Maron’s WTF. That podcast was began out of desperation, as Maron discovered himself divorced and jobless and beached, a pariah in his personal neighborhood. Take heed to an early WTF episode and also you’ll hear a person saturated in bitterness. His early interviews had been much less conversations and extra alternatives to attempt to get issues straight along with his estranged friends.
Little by little, by the straightforward act of speaking it by, Maron modified. He started to interact with the world, studying to behave with empathy and never defensiveness. A decade and a half down the road, and Maron has not solely fastened his personal flaws, however has a Hollywood profession as well. If Armie Hammer is able to put the work in, and to podcast for the sake of podcasting, then who is aware of? Fifteen years from now he may additionally be allowed again in.
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