Original subtitles

Bye.

much for joining us it has been a busy week europe got to enjoy a solar eclipse

nigel farage won a by-election so stupid the candidate in second place with over

a quarter of the vote by the way was count bin face and the iran war dragged

on with a series of humiliating news headlines including this revelation

about trump's trip home from last month's nato summit New details of the

elaborate operation by the Secret Service to covertly swap President

Trump's planes amid fears of an Iranian assassination plot. The president had

arrived aboard his Qatari gifted Air Force One, but raised eyebrows by

announcing he'd take an older plane home, sending the new plane ahead to a

British airbase.

The Washington Post now reports that the president immediately sneaked off the

plane and onto a catering truck that whisked him off to a smaller military

jet. In video from that day, you see the president boarding with a wave.

But as the camera pulls back, there's a catering truck below.

Five minutes later, the press seem boarding the back of the plane as that

catering truck pulls away, reportedly with the president concealed inside.

Fantastic.

The only problem I can see there is, next time he needs to escape, he's not

going to be able to use the catering truck trick again because everyone knows

about it now. People are going to be suspicious from now on if they see a

plane go one way, a catering truck go another, and an enormous man-sized cake

get wheeled away by two suspiciously jacked chefs.

For one, it clearly doesn't look great.

for a president to be emergency hiding in a catering truck. It looks even worse

when you remember a lot of other people were still on that plane that he was

smuggled off on.

Still on board the 747, though, dozens of journalists and White House staffers,

as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott

Besnick. That plane lifting off, believed to be the intended target.

Yeah, not great.

There were a lot of innocent people on that plane, and also Marco Rubio.

Meanwhile, for those actually having to fight this war, it's been grim. Just

this week, we learned horrendous details about conditions on the USS Abraham

Lincoln, which has been deployed for more than 250 days, including over 200

without a port call, which is apparently more than any other aircraft carrier in

the modern era.

Life on that ship sounds like it's been desperate.

Families reportedly confronted Navy leaders at town halls last week,

describing moldy showers, broken toilets, food shortages, and no soap or

toothpaste. Families of those on board told the Military Times at least two

sailors have tried to jump from the carrier.

Danielle Rapa's son is on board.

He describes the overall experience as a scene out of the American Horror Story,

where he feels like everybody is dead, but they don't know it yet.

Well, that's not good. You never want to be in a position where you describe your

job as a scene out of American horror story.

Honestly, if you absolutely have to choose a Ryan Murphy show for your

workplace to resemble, the obvious answer is all's fair. Kim Kardashian,

Nisi Nashbet, Tiana Taylor, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, and Glenn Close in

different shades of magenta suits, as well as dialogue like this.

Car. Sweet. How are you?

Never mind me. How are you holding up, you poor discarded comrade?

Yeah, that's the Ryan Murphy production you're going to want to be sucking.

Not this floating fucking nightmare.

Now, Pete Hegseth has claimed that the ship conditions are being completely

misrepresented by those who are actually experiencing them, saying, we make sure

that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide at

every single moment. And if he means to go certifiably insane, I'm inclined to

agree with him there. But the administration's list of the resources

offered on board has not been reassuring.

A U.S. official tells ABC News they have not seen an uptick in mental health

issues and say the Lincoln has a variety of resources on board, including one

clinical psychologist, five chaplains, and three behavioral health technicians.

They also have one therapy dog on board named Captain Fathom, whose job it is to

ease anxiety among the crew.

Holy shit, that is way too much pressure to put on one dog.

Especially one with a thousand-yard fare like that.

He doesn't seem like a therapy dog so much as a dog who desperately needs

therapy.

I'm just saying there is absolutely a CVS that has a bottle of Lexapro with

Captain Fathom's name on it.

And look, there'll clearly be more to say about Iran going forward, but for

now, we're actually going to dive straight in with our main story this

week, which concerns pregnancy.

A great way to still not get a seat on the subway.

Specifically, I want to talk about something called fetal personhood, the

concept that a fetus is, from conception, a separate, unique human

with its own rights distinct from the person it's rather unavoidably inside.

The concept is, unsurprisingly, usually associated with the anti-abortion

movement, and post-Dobbs, it's been getting a lot more attention.

Fetal personhood is a once fringe idea now at the centre of anti-abortion

advocacy. The fetal personhood movement aims to grant full legal rights and

protections to fetuses, and in some cases, embryos. About a third of states

have established fetal personhood by law or judicial decision.

Okay, first, nice Horton here's a who sign there, though.

You should probably know, according to Dr Seuss' biographer, back in the 80s,

he actually threatened to sue an anti-abortion rights group that used

that quote on its stationery, after which they backed down, which is a

little surprising, given stay out of my fucking business is not usually a

message these groups tend to respond to.

The fetal personhood idea can be embedded in laws in a bunch of different

ways, and some can initially sound appealing, like ones that make it a

crime to cause the death of an unborn child during an act of domestic

violence. But once the law recognizes a fetus as a separate victim, if you get

pregnant, that same logic can quickly be weaponized against you and in all sorts

of ways.

Hundreds of women across the country have been arrested or lost custody of

their children for reasons related to their pregnancies.

Brittany Watts, a 33-year-old black woman, says she went to the hospital

multiple times after bleeding during her pregnancy.

Watts returned home where she suffered a miscarriage. Now she's being charged

with abuse of a corpse. A woman from Alabama suffered a miscarriage after

being shot. And now she's being charged with manslaughter for the death of her

unborn child.

Wow, that is bleak. If you suffer a miscarriage after being shot, you

shouldn't be charged with manslaughter.

That's one of those sentences I never thought I'd end up needing to say out

loud, like, cocaine pollution gives salmon wanderlust, or young Richard

Nixon was hot.

Yikes, by the way, I would let that guy break into my Watergate hotel.

And that is just the beginning here, because over the years, the fetal

personhood has been the basis of legal cases involving everything from a

pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs and who was charged with

attempted fetal homicide, to a bonkers story involving this woman. She was in

the middle of a long delivery and was a professional doula, by the way. She'd

had three prior C-sections and hoped to avoid a fourth, only to find the

situation suddenly out of her hands.

She was in her 12th hour of labor in the hospital when Sharice Doiley suddenly

found herself in front of a Florida judge from her hospital bed. A nurse

wheeling in a tablet with the judge, doctors, lawyers, and others on Zoom.

That was exactly when I found out that we were going to court.

Video obtained by NBC News shows the 32-year-old Black woman in her hospital

bed pulled into a virtual emergency court hearing as Florida state attorneys

on behalf of the hospital sought a court-ordered C-section.

Nobody is here to speak for me. When Doily asks if she can call a lawyer or a

patient advocate, the judge says... There's not a constitutional right to

counsel in one of these proceedings.

Holy shit, that is a fucking outrage.

Every part of that is wrong, including that it should be illegal to make a

woman giving birth get on a video call of any kind.

I don't even like being on a Zoom when I am not giving birth.

And for the record, how, 12 hours into Labour, was she composed enough to ask

for counsel so calmly there? She could have reasonably screamed, shit, piss,

cock, motherfucker, and changed her Zoom background into a million middle

fingers, and any smart judge would have said, you're right, that's an entirely

fair point.

Fetal personhood isn't just a fringe idea.

It's been a quiet goal of the anti-abortion movement for decades now.

But it's been picking up real speed in recent years.

In 2023, a group of anti-abortion lawyers and activists even explicitly

set a post-op goal of recognising fetal personhood. And with this Supreme Court,

I frankly wouldn't bet against them.

So given all of that tonight, let's talk about fetal personhood, where the idea

comes from, all the surprising ways in which it can be applied, and where

things could be heading next. And let's start with the fact that the basic

concept of a fetus being its own person with distinct rights is nothing new.

In fact, here is one of its major proponents laying out the argument in

1984. I believe that until and unless someone can establish that the unborn

child is not a living human being,

then that child is already protected by the Constitution, which guarantees life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all of us.

Yeah, there are you.

It seems you cannot trace the source of any modern problem without a cameo from

this messy bitch. He truly is the Forrest Gump of societal ills. But the

thing is, Reagan could believe that all he liked.

It still wasn't law in the US. In fact, when the Supreme Court decided Roe v.

Wade, it explicitly rejected fetal personhood, stating the word person, as

used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.

However, it did leave the door open a crack by holding that the state has an

important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human

life. And that was no small thing, because it meant that as long as states

didn't explicitly ban abortion...

They were legally able to expand protections for fetuses, and for years,

many did just that. Some states defined a person to include a fetus throughout

their criminal codes, while in other places, prosecutors expanded their use

of child abuse and neglect laws to police the conduct of pregnant women.

But after Dobbs, the guardrails fully came off, because state legislators felt

that they could push much more aggressively for fetal personhood

legislation, with some pretty creative arguments.

Probably none more so than the one this North Dakota state legislator made last

year. We have to be brave enough, righteous enough, and have enough

integrity, not only to our oath of office, but to all the claims of being

pro-life and to being Christian, and actually do what the word of God says.

And in case you don't know if a baby at conception is human or not, I would like

you to show me the first kangaroo or plant that came out of a woman's womb.

What?

On earth are you talking about?

Obviously no woman is pregnant with a kangaroo. I wouldn't blame any woman who

wanted to fool around with one, especially this guy, or indeed this one

right here. But that is not the point, is it?

The point is, here is what's tricky about all of this. One side is saying,

hey, a woman should have a right to control what happens in her own body.

And the other is saying, so you think you give birth to a kangaroo?

And I honestly don't know how we meet in the middle there.

But the obvious consequence of these laws is they treat the individual

carrying the fetus as something less than a full human. And the very moment

you're pregnant, you become merely a means to an end. And it is not like some

legislators have needed much encouragement on that front. During an

interview about an abortion law in Oklahoma in 2017, this guy, its sponsor,

referred to pregnant people as hosts.

And his justification for doing so wasn't ideal.

When I used the term host, it's not meant to degrade women.

I actually went and Googled that and I went to Webster and I couldn't find a

better term.

I mean, look, congratulations, I guess, on going to Webster or whatever.

But there are only a handful of situations where it's acceptable to call

a woman a host if she works front of house at a restaurant, if she invites

you over for dinner, if she has her own talk show, or if you're talking about

Annabelle, host of the demonic spirit permanently trapped inside her.

And the thing about fetal personhood is it can be used not just to limit

abortion, but to criminalise other conduct during pregnancy seen as

jeopardising a fetus in any way, like drinking or drug use. And look, no one

is saying... that it's a great idea to drink or take drugs while pregnant.

After all, you don't want your kid to come out too cool.

But for many substances, the risks to a fetus, while real...

are actually far more complex and often far less clear cut than the law assumes.

The problem is the law can take a zero tolerance approach and unfortunately

many hospitals drug test pregnant women and their newborns often without their

knowledge and in at least 27 states they're required by law to alert child

welfare agencies about a positive test. But that is a big issue especially given

drug tests can be notoriously inaccurate.

Just listen to this woman describe what a nurse told her right after she'd given

birth to her second child.

She told me that my drug screen tested positive for opioids, for morphine

specifically. Katie says the test results didn't make sense.

She had never taken any opiates or illicit drugs.

But that day before coming to the hospital.

She did have an everything bagel. For nearly a month, Katie was only allowed

supervised time with her children.

And although she was breastfeeding, she had to leave her house at night.

I would leave the house and I would scream in my car because I was so

devastated to leave her.

Sorry. That's okay. What was that like? It was torture. I mean, it was pain I've

never felt before.

Katie, did you feel that there was a risk that if you didn't follow

everything you were told to do, you could lose your children? Absolutely.

Yeah, all of that over a fucking bagel.

It should not be possible for your life to get fucked up that badly just based

on what you had for breakfast. Unless, of course, the breakfast in question is

honey smacks, in which case, honestly, you kind of deserve whatever happens to

you. You're a bad person.

And the thing is, it's common knowledge that those drug screens are easily

misinterpreted and often wrong, with false positive rates as high as 50%. But

if you need convincing any further, please enjoy this lawyer that they

talked to for that story, who brought a magnificent visual aid with her.

Here's a cup of my urine.

If I give it to you, you can test it. Maybe it's positive.

But it can't tell you if I'm a...

addicted, undependent, and yet for thousands of women in this country and

families, probably millions, a drug test is used as a parenting test.

Okay, so a few things. First, I'm not sure that's quite as exonerating as you

want it to be, as being able to produce a jar of piss unprompted might be the

most definitely on drugs behavior I have ever seen.

And also...

Well, I'm completely on that lawyer's side. I can't help wondering if she's

had a cup of water today.

And even if she has, would she like me to get her another one?

And referrals to law enforcement over alleged drug use during pregnancy are

not remotely uncommon.

One investigation found in a six-year period at least 70,000 such cases across

21 states, a number which is almost certainly an undercount.

And in many cases, the referrals began with false positive results from flawed

drug tests. But look, let's acknowledge that sometimes a positive drug test does

indicate that someone has used drugs. Well, to hear some lawmakers tell it, we

need to criminalize that because how else are we going to encourage expectant

mothers to clean up their act?

You use the carrot and the stick. You know, the stick is, hey, this is hanging

over my head. If I don't get clean, if I don't get rid of this drug use.

then I'm going to go to jail and I may lose my child.

But if I test negative, if I do a good job of getting clean, I'm going

to get to lead a normal life with my child.

Wait, that is just a terrible analogy because if the stick is the fear of

going to jail and the carrot...

is getting to lead a normal life with your child. And it feels like the

scenario that you are describing there is the same as the answer to the

question, what has Owen Wilson been up to lately? By which I mean, mostly

stick.

But doctors will point out some key flaws with that approach. First,

quitting drugs cold turkey can cause complications that trigger miscarriage

or an early labour. And second, terrifyingly expectant mothers with the

threat of jail time carries its own set of risks.

Scaring the mom to the point that she's not coming to get health care during her

pregnancy or not disclosing her drug use so that she can get the support and

treatment that she needs, none of those things are protecting the baby.

Putting the mom in jail and taking the baby away is not protecting the baby.

There are lots of unsafe things that women do during pregnancy.

I might recommend that they take a certain medication for diabetes and they

don't take it, and their sugars are really high.

Very harmful to them and their baby, but no one's putting them in jail or taking

their baby away Of course right there are plenty of things women shouldn't be

allowed to do while they're pregnant But we let them anyway like eating sushi or

bungee jumping or driving or math or is anybody going to stop me right now?

I'm listing things that I, John, think women shouldn't be able to do. Someone

should have jumped in and stopped me by now. None of you are my real friends.

That was a test and you all failed. We are in a fight right now.

The point is, babies clearly do better when their moms go to doctor's

appointments and ideally are not thrown in jail as part of a bullshit carrot and

stick approach. And the way some of these laws work in practice...

is an absolute nightmare.

That woman you saw earlier is by no means the only one who wound up dragged

into court over a state's concerns for her fetus. Think what happened to this

Wisconsin woman who'd been using meth, but when she learned she was pregnant,

immediately stopped.

She voluntarily checked into a hospital seeking help for depression and other

issues. While there, a urine test came back positive for drugs. And when

doctors asked her about her past usage, she was completely honest with them. And

for good reason.

My decision to tell the doctors about my drug use was solely so that if I

did anything wrong and they could give me something that would help my baby

because of what I had done, I had no hesitation because he was the only thing

I was thinking about.

The ER doctor was like, don't worry. All that matters is that you're here and

you're getting help now.

He's like, your baby will be fine.

He left the room.

And it started from there.

Now, as you can probably guess, things didn't go great from that point on,

which shouldn't really be a surprise, because, and it started from there,

isn't generally the lead-in to an uplifting story. It's an ominous set-up,

right up there with, it was a dark and stormy night, or, welcome, welcome,

welcome to last week's night.

And what followed was a fucking nightmare, because when she tried to

leave the hospital, this happened.

When the social worker came into my room and said, there's a hearing, we need you

to come to the conference room right now, it was a shock.

And then all of a sudden, like, there's a speakerphone in the middle of the

room, and she's putting a judge on. This is the time and date set for a temporary

physical custody hearing.

The guardian ad litem for the unborn child is Michael Schiffler. Ms.

Gropp, what's the county's position on where Ms.

Blacher is going to be placed until the child is born?

I didn't know what was going on, and the first thing I said was, I don't want to

talk unless I have a lawyer.

The 14-week-old fetus had a lawyer at this hearing who was taking a position

adverse to Tammy and was represented by counsel, where Tammy, who had asked for

a lawyer, did not have one and was denied one.

Yeah, the fetus had a lawyer, but she didn't.

And remember, this happened when she was just 14 weeks pregnant. At that point,

you may not even be able to tell the sex from an ultrasound.

Honestly, if you tried to do a gender reveal that early, the closest you might

get is, it's a plaintiff!

And the state didn't allow her to leave the hospital on the grounds that doing

so was contrary to the unborn child's best interest. In the end, after she

refused court-ordered inpatient drug treatment, she was jailed for 18 days,

including about 36 hours in solitary confinement, which is arguably a weird

thing to do to someone whose health you're supposedly trying to safeguard.

And amazingly, it can get even worse, because under fetal personhood laws...

Pregnancy loss can create yet another path into the criminal system, with

miscarriages and stillbirths sometimes treated as suspicious.

There are multiple stories of women being investigated or even charged with

crimes, including murder, following a pregnancy loss, which is utterly

bonkers, given that every year in the US there are approximately 5 million

pregnancies. And of those, about a million end in a miscarriage, and over

20,000 end in stillbirth. And some of the worst consequences of everything

that you've seen tonight have fallen on women like Cherry Mason, who tested

positive for drugs at the hospital after a stillbirth.

She wound up taking a plea deal for manslaughter as a result, not because

she thought she was guilty, but because, in her words, I knew the way that it

works here in Oklahoma.

She not only got a 12-year prison sentence, which took her away from her

other children, She was also required to register with the state as a violent

offender upon her release. And the whole situation is summed up by her daughter

pretty nicely.

They want to help people with addiction. I think they just want to make the

people with addiction go away.

Yeah, that is fucking awful.

And honestly, if that had happened to my mom, I think I'd also have smoked one

K2's worth of cigarettes.

And look, those who push fetal persons will insist that it's based on a

principled stance about the sanctity of life from the moment of conception.

But there was an interesting moment two years ago that exposed a bit of a crack

in that argument, and it concerned this bizarre news story out of Alabama.

This morning, a first of its kind decision by the Alabama Supreme Court

that could put families' access to fertility treatments in the post-Roe era

at risk.

The court determining frozen embryos qualify as people under its state law,

ruling unborn children are children without exception based on developmental

stage. The chief justice, in a concurring opinion, quoting the Bible,

citing the sanctity of unborn life.

The case in question involved a patient who managed to access the freezer

storing frozen embryos at an Alabama fertility clinic.

The patient picked up multiple embryos and mistakenly dropped and destroyed

them. The state's high court says that patient can now be held liable in a

wrongful death lawsuit.

Okay, setting aside the weird Mr. Bean antics of that person walking into a

freezer and juggling frozen embryos for some reason, that might actually be a

pretty useful logic test, because I would argue anything that you can

accidentally spill just isn't a person yet.

That ruling was following the fetal personhood argument to its logical

conclusion, because if...

Every fertilised egg is a person. That would mean that every IVF clinic, which

need to produce a lot of embryos to ensure success, probably then needs to

be shut down, as they wouldn't just be storing extra embryos to maximise the

chance of successful implantation. Under that logic, they'd essentially be

warehouses where human beings regularly die. And we frankly don't need any more

of those, given that Amazon has got that beat nicely covered for us.

But in the wake of that ruling, there was intent public outcry. And Alabama

suddenly rushed through a law aimed at protecting patients and providers from

legal liability when embryos are damaged or destroyed during IVF. And I've got to

say, it is pretty telling that many of the often men pushing for fetal

personhood are completely unable to defend that double standard. In fact,

just watch Senator Tommy Tuberville pictured here in natural poses that

scream, I've touched footballs.

Get asked about that judge's ruling right after it happened.

Do you have a reaction to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on the fact that

embryos are children?

Yeah, I was all for it. We need to have more kids. We need to have an

opportunity to do that. And I thought this was the right thing to do.

IVF is used to have more children. And right now, IVF services are paused at

some of the clinics in Alabama. Aren't you concerned that this could impact

people who are trying to have kids?

Well, that's for another conversation.

People need to have that. We need more kids. We need the people to have the

opportunity to have kids.

Well, that's a hard one. It really is. It's really hard.

Because, again, you want people to have that opportunity.

And that's why I was telling her, we need more kids.

Okay, okay, enough.

Can we please agree? No more laws about women's bodies made by men who've at

some point definitely Googled, when girl put in tampon, why not cum?

Look, whatever the rhetoric used to justify fetal personhood, in practice,

it effectively treats women as incubators. As that piss lawyer from

before, complimentary by the way, points out, they're effectively stripping women

of their rights and autonomy.

There is no way.

to add fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses to the Constitution without

subtracting pregnant women. If we pass laws that treat fertilized eggs,

embryos, and fetuses as if they're entirely separate, then women will also

be subjected to a permanent second-class status.

Exactly. Women would effectively be second-class citizens, or as this

arsehole likes to call them, hosts.

Though remember, he looked it up in Webster's and apparently that makes it

fine.

So what can be done here? Well, in some states, legislators have introduced

bills designed to highlight just how stupid these laws are, like

Mississippi's Contraception Begins at Erection Act, which proposed...

imposing fines of up to $10,000 on those who discharge genetic material without

the intent to fertilize an embryo, which frankly means I'm about to owe a lot of

money because I've now seen this picture and I need to do something about it. But

look, much more serious solutions can include states repealing or removing

fetal personhood language embedded in state law, or at the very least, When

they pass laws that recognise the loss of a pregnancy, do so without punishing

the person who was pregnant.

We could also end secret drug tests in hospitals, which, to their credit, some

have done. At one in Connecticut, doctors are now directed to test only if

doing so will inform medical care.

And since that policy changed, it's curbed unnecessary child welfare

reports, which dropped by almost 50% without harming babies. In fact, since

then, not a single baby came into the hospital with uncontrolled withdrawal

symptoms. And I know this story has been bleak and very scary.

So if you are pregnant...

and live somewhere where you're vulnerable to the legal perils that

you've seen tonight. You should know organisations like Pregnancy Justice and

If, When, How run legal helplines that you can contact at these numbers. I hate

that that is necessary, but we are where we are.

And with any luck, we won't stay here for long.

Because look, even planned, relatively low-risk pregnancies are obviously life

and body-altering experiences. And it does not seem radical to me to want to

be able to control your own life and body throughout that experience.

And hopefully one day we'll be able to finally get to a point where no one and

nothing, from idiot politicians to fucking everything bagels, can take that

from you. And now, this.

And now, these fan hosts have just one request for their callers.

There's only one thing we should be concerned about right now, and I believe

that it is January the 6th.

Turn your TV down, Ted. You're already on.

Wendy, you're going to have to turn down your television.

Are you there?

I'm here. Okay, you're going to have to turn down your TV real quick.

Hello?

Yes,

I'm here.

I'm on the air, huh?

Yes, you're on the air, but you've got to mute your TV and talk on the phone.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I just woke up to this, so give me like a second. Let me turn this down.

Good morning. How are you?

Everybody good?

Everybody's good. Go ahead, Ray.

I'm wanting to discuss the... Hey, Leonard, I'm going to put you on hold

because you've got to turn down your television. Go ahead, Jesse. You turn

down your TV and talk through your phone. And, Jeff, you've got to turn

that TV down. And, Dan, it's best if you turn your TV down. Hey, how are you

doing today?

Doing well. Turn your TV down and just go ahead with your comment. All right,

Helen, Helen, Helen, please turn down the TV.

Listen and talk through the phone.

Okay. Randy, turn down your TV so we can hear you, please.

Okay. I'm sorry.

It's all right. I can't hear the program. You guys keep cutting me off

from the program.

When you ask me to turn my TV down, I hear the program.

What's your question or comment? And then you can go ahead and turn your TV

back up and listen.

Okay. I'll give it when I get to the person there.

It's not okay?

You're on with Thomas Honig. What's your question?

Oh, okay. I didn't know that was on the program.

Good morning, Greta.

I have a pet peeve. People, turn down your TV sets when you come and talk. Why

do you think that you sound intelligent if you can't turn down your TV?

Moving on.

Before we go, a quick update about soap operas. You may remember back in March

after discovering Stephen A. Smith.

I've been a character on General Hospital for a decade. I offered myself

to any soap opera that would have me on a few conditions.

One, I wanted to play a character with a ridiculous name. Two, I wanted a juicy

storyline. And three, I wanted to be slapped.

Well, as I've mentioned, both General Hospital and Days of Our Lives came

through with offers and both have now aired. So, given that, my hot soap

summer is now done.

I wanted to take a moment to let you know exactly what happened. Let's start

with General Hospital, where I looked like this. That's right.

I got to act while sporting hair that looks like if L'Oreal sold a colour

called Midlife Crisis Black.

And to General Hospital's credit, they met all my requirements and more. First,

my character got to arrive by helicopter, flanked by a pair of armed

goons. And I got to do a dramatic walk, during which I bravely shot in the

general direction of a guy who was already on the ground.

It's called being an action star, by the way. Unless you're me or Vin Diesel, you

really wouldn't understand.

And then in my next scene, I revealed my true identity.

Good morning, Agent Jax.

Drew? I am indeed.

You're the head of the WSB.

Feel free to call me Z.

Okay, what does Z stand for?

It's my nom de guerre.

Right.

Damn. I played Z, the head of an international spy agency, but for some

reason has agents in the fictional town of Port Charles. And quick side note,

you may remember, we only stumbled into this because one of our writers' mothers

is obsessed with General Hospital. So you'll be happy to know that when Connie

of Noonan, Georgia, saw my first episode, she texted her daughter and I

quote, Very James Bond.

Thank you, Connie, but you're actually wrong. And to be honest, not for the

first time either. Remember when you grounded your daughter for stealing the

cupcake tins that had gone missing in your house? You were wrong then, too.

She didn't steal those tins. She didn't even touch them. It was probably her

brother. And yet, she got the punishment, and look at her now, using

me to roast your ass for it on television.

So... So, general hospitals, I've already met...

Two of my conditions there. Stupid name, juicy storyline. As for getting slapped,

well, they knocked that and me out of the park, too, because it turns out that

agent's mother was not happy with me.

I spent the whole night praying that she was going to be okay, and I can't even

get into her room to check on her because your agents won't let me. At

oversight, I'll have your name added to the list of approved visitors. I don't

want to be added to the list.

I want my daughter back.

Then let me put this in language that you will understand.

That ain't gonna happen.

slap, a dramatic close-up, and me doing a voice so wrong it is genuinely

embarrassing. That was my honest attempt at an American accent.

I can't tell you why it's Southern. I can only tell you I was trying my

hardest. And frankly, I could have died happy after that. I got to have the shit

slapped out of me after an iconic soap actor screamed in my face, I want my

daughter back.

What more could anyone ask for? And yet, the soap gods smiled on me again.

Because this week, I also appeared on Days of Our Lives in scenes alongside

soap legends like Jack A. Harry and Susan C. Forth-Hayes. And the Days of

Our Lives team met my demands in a whole different way, because instead of being

an international spy boss, they wrote me a character a little more my speed.

I'm Devlin St. John, Chief City Water Inspector.

I'm the only thing standing between this town and a catastrophic plumbing

failure.

A literal sewage apocalypse.

Yeah. They made me Salem's chief city water inspector, which, let's be honest,

is perfect casting. If you were going to bottle my essence and sell it as

cologne, it would be called chief city water inspector.

Now... As for the hair, I agree, it's absolutely incredible.

It's been reported this week that it is a wig I brought to set from home.

And while it wasn't technically from home, we did actually provide that wig,

and for good reason. I've seen myself act. I knew the hair was going to have

to do 90% of the work.

I'll be honest, I was going for a healthy John Stamos look, but instead,

it appears I ended up looking more like Tina from Bob's Burgers.

And if you're wondering whether I got slapped on Days of Our Lives, not only.

was I slapped by a man wearing elegant silk pyjamas. I also got to slap him,

which felt utterly incredible. But wait, I was also stabbed with a syringe, and

not once, not even twice, but three different times.

And if that wasn't enough, this happened too.

You're right not to trust me. What?

Oh, not again.

Please, no, I don't want to...

you not entertained watching that makes me feel the way i assume matt damon felt

after seeing the first cut of the oddity both proud and impressed that my body

could even do that which again you wouldn't understand you're not an action

star like i am now and look i wish i could take full credit for what a feast

that clip is but it's all thanks to the days of our lives team i only demanded

to be slapped I didn't say anything about being tased, but even I admit,

it's pretty cathartic to see me incapacitated to the point of silence.

And look, I won't get into all the twists and turns that my character got

into, but in my final scene, I got a hell of a send-off.

You're a breath of fresh air, Mr St John.

You remind me of that man on television who calls himself a comedian, but mostly

just shouts the news.

At a speed no human can understand it. I just wish we would have met under

different circumstances.

Good night, sweet prince.

Hygienically frozen.

Meaning technically, I could always come back. In fact, neither show ended up

killing me off, though to be honest, that doesn't necessarily mean anything

anyway. In soap operas, no one ever really dies.

So a massive thank you to everyone at both General Hospital and Days of Our

Lives for welcoming me into your worlds and making my soap opera dreams come

true. I wish...

I could say that being surrounded by so many talented professionals has made me

a better actor. But I think deep down, we all know that ain't gonna happen.

That ain't gonna happen.

That is our show. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Good

night. That ain't gonna happen.

It ain't gonna happen.

Everything's gonna be okay.

I'm here to help.