Last year, the former This Morning presenter got dropped by his talent agency and said he wasn’t sure he’d ever work in TV again after it was revealed that he’d had an affair with a younger man while he was still married to his wife.
Schofield then announced he’d left This Morning after the revelation of a relationship with a younger male colleague which the presenter said was ‘unwise but not illegal’.
ITV said they’d investigated rumours of a relationship between Schofield and a This Morning employee, but the pair had ‘repeatedly denied’ it.
He’d not really been on TV since then, but Schofield recently returned to screens for the Channel 5 show Cast Away which basically had him spend 10 days on a deserted island with a camera.
Viewer reaction to the series hasn’t been glowing, with people calling it a ‘masterclass in impertinence’ and a ‘pity party’.
Others commented their displeasure at seeing Schofield strip naked and run into the sea, while at one point he said he felt he’d been ‘chucked under a bus’.
The reaction to Cast Away hasn’t been greatly positive (Channel 5)
He said: “I have been chucked under a bus and I could drive the same bus over so many people, but I am not that sort of person. I never have been.
“But if I sit down with a camera and the lights going, who knows what I will say…”
Schofield said he felt abandoned by some people in the TV industry and called their lack of support an ‘utter, utter betrayal’.
Some viewers reckoned he was getting in some digs at former co-presenter Holly Willoughby too.
Now, the Gogglebox cast have given their verdict on Cast Away, and there wasn’t much sympathy for Phillip Schofield’s self-imposed public penance.
The Gogglebox crew gave their verdict on the Channel 5 show (Channel 4)
Gogglebox stars Pete and Sophie, from Blackpool, didn’t think much of his claims that he’d been ‘chucked under a bus’, with Sophie saying ‘you created the bus and then put your foot down on it’ while Pete agreed that Schofield ‘threw yourself under the bus’.
Sophie then said she felt sorry for ‘his wife and daughters’.
While over in Manchester, Julie Malone wondered ‘is it all woe is me, what’s it for’, while Jenny from Hull said he was ‘bearing a bit of malice’.
The former This Morning host gave us all a bit of a surprise when he announced this week he’ll be making his TV return with Cast Away on Channel 5.
After exiting the ITV show in 2023 following what he describes as an ‘unwise but not illegal’ affair with a young member of his team, the bloke is off to an island for 10 days with nothing but some cameras to film himself.
While having to find all his own food and water, the show sees Schofield opening up as he claims it gives him chance to tell his side.
Revealing he was ‘so, so close’ to taking his life and appearing to make a dig at Holly Willoughby, he also spoke about his time at Television Centre.
He explained how he was able to go there when he started out at the BBC as a booking clerk at 19 before This Morning was later filmed there where he ‘loved being’.
“When what happened to me happened to me, it screwed up my favourite building in the world, and it pretty well blew away all those happy memories, and suddenly the place became hostile to me, and that was heartbreaking,” Schofield said.
Phillip Schofield is making his big TV return by getting stranded on an island (Channel 5)
“And the people who did it to me know, they know how important that building was to me.
“They know that when you throw someone under a bus, you’ve got to have a really bloody good reason to do it. Brand, ambition is not good enough. It’s not a good enough reason to throw someone under a bus.”
Schofield added that ‘people can be so fake with you when it’s all going well, and suddenly utter, utter betrayal’.
Having a bit of reflection time while putting some wood on his fire, he pauses before really ramping up the gas.
He left This Morning in 2023 (ITV)
“There are only three sh***,” he slammed. “One of them is a coward who never stepped up in queue gate. One of them is a coward because they never stepped up when I was being battered by one journalist… and the other one is just brand orientated.
“Not what you expect, not what you think you’re going to get. When it all came to a sudden and very abrupt end, questions were asked about our toxic environment in parliament!”
Schofield went on to say that after it all kicked off, it was the people ‘still standing’ that matter.
“They’re the ones that matter. And I thought: ‘How many friends do you need?’ I don’t need 200 fake friends. I’ve got, what? Ten, 15 friends that I would die for; they would die for me,” he added.
Phillip Schofield: Cast Away will air its first episode on Channel 5 at 9pm on Monday (30 September).
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The two mates from Hull, settle down in their caravan every week to share their thoughts on the latest news, soaps, and films hitting our small screens.
And during their hilarious – and often every bizarre – conversations, you will have noticed Lee mentioning his boyfriend, though he’s never actually made an appearance on the show.
No? Well, you’re obviously not as big a fan as you might think.
Instagram/@jennyandlee_gogglebox
Steve, who Lee has described as the ‘love of his life’ spend half the year in the North East and the other sunning it up in Cyprus.
If you look on his joint account with Jenny, Lee often posts sweet snaps of him and Steve together.
Back in 2019, the couple celebrated their 25th anniversary.
Taking to Twitter, Steve shared a heartfelt message to Lee, writing: “Happy 25th anniversary to @leegogglebox the love of my life and my best friend love you to the moon and back here’s to many more.”
With Lee replying: “Happy anniversary Steve 25 years of hell ermmmmmm I mean bliss you no your the love of my life xx.”
But Steve isn’t the only family member of the main cast that has yet to make an appearance on the hit show.
Marcus Luther’s eldest son, the boxer Shiloh Defreitas, almost made it onto Gogglebox alongside his dad but ultimately it wasn’t to be.
James Chance/Getty Images
Shiloh is Marcus’ son from a previous relationship, while Mica has daughters Sachelle and Shuggy, and together the couple have son Yash.
Marcus told LADbible that they ‘had him in there for one’ preamble of the show which is ‘basically just talking about normal life’.
“He sat on the sofa with us and he did that with us, but it wasn’t a success so we left him to it, sent him back to the boxing gym instead,” Marcus explained.
As much as you or I, dear reader, might think we’d love to spend our time watching telly while being on telly it’s not for everyone and it doesn’t seem to have hampered Shiloh much.
Nicknamed ‘Sugar Shy’, he’s a boxer who won gold for Team England at the Commonwealth Youth Games in 2017 and has since enjoyed great success after going professional.
Some aspects of the festive rom-com haven’t aged too well either, including some of the impolite puns and attitudes towards women.
Take a look at one example here:
He admitted he was ‘behind the curve’ when penning the script and regrets making the weight of one of the leading ladies a punchline throughout Love Actually.
Martine McCutcheon’s character Natalie was the butt of the joke in a string of scenes, despite being absolutely stunning.
She is described as being ‘massive’ and her colleague Annie refers to her as ‘the chubby girl’ who has a ‘sizeable arse and huge thighs’.
Natalie also explained she got dumped because ‘nobody wants a girlfriend with thighs the size of tree trunks’, while her on-screen father also calls her ‘plumpy’.
Two decades on, viewers now watch the film through a completely different lens and have called out its creators for ‘body shaming’ Martine, who was then 27 years old.
Universal Pictures
Discussing the controversy at the Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, Curtis expressed his regret.
He said: “I think I was behind, you know, behind the curve.
“Those jokes aren’t any longer funny, so I don’t feel I was malicious at the time, but I think I was unobservant and not as, you know, as clever as I should have been.”
Martine has also previously opened up about some of the problematic aspects of Love Actually.
Dave Benett/Getty Images
She told Metro that she was sure if Curtis was making the beloved movie now he would have never included the jibes about her weight.
The actor, 47, said: “There’s a lot of things that happen in it that aren’t PC, that aren’t perfect, that aren’t something you should want ideally. But they are real human emotions, and human beings aren’t always perfect.
“And there’s something about Natalie’s vulnerability, and I think Richard wanted a character who didn’t realise what she had.
“She didn’t realise that actually it was her boyfriend who was the idiot and there was nothing wrong with her at all, she was lovely as she was.
“The fact she was so open to the most powerful man in the country about her little vulnerability about herself was a very human thing. I think that’s part of what makes it human, and the fact it’s very real.
“Because, sadly, women are hard on themselves, and we’re hard on each other, still. The main comments are from Natalie herself and from another woman in that film.”
Curtis also revealed how he decided on one of the most memorable Love Actually scenes, where Mark (Andrew Lincoln) declares his love for Juliet (Kiera Knightley) using handwritten cue cards.
He explained: “I came up with four things Mark could do as his big gesture. The people in the office chose their favourite and I went for it.
“I wonder: do we all regret the choice now?”
The actor spoke out about the controversial scenes in a new interview, explaining why they were ‘extremely important’ to the movie.
The flick – which hit cinemas just one week ago – follows Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a Victorian era woman brought back to life by a scientist, as she goes on a sexually liberating journey with lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), travelling the world and discovering herself.
Robert Smith/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
The black comedy fantasy film – titled Poor Things – received several nominations at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards, with Stone taking home Best Actress at both ceremonies.
The film also won Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes.
Despite the film being received well by critics though, it hasn’t stopped members of the general public from questioning the number of graphic scenes in the film, or just how explicit they were.
Stone has responded to all of these claims in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Front Row show.
Host Samira Ahmed remarked that the explicit scenes were ‘quite graphic’ and ‘unusual’ as we don’t see them ‘these days in Hollywood’.
Film4
The 35-year-old responded: “I see it [sex] as just one aspect of many [in the film]: her discovery of food, philosophy, travel and dance. Sex is another aspect.”
The Oscar winner added: “One of the things that we had talked about from very early on, and I thought was extremely important, was that Bella is completely free and without shame about her body.”
She went on to explain that Bella ‘doesn’t know when to be embarrassed’ by these things and emphasised how important it was to include the scenes to stay true to the character and the film.
“So for the camera to sort of shy away from that, or to say, ‘OK, well, we’ll just cut all of this out because our society functions in a particular way’…felt like a lack of being honest about who Bella is,” she added.
The La La Land star made it clear that she doesn’t want to be ‘naked all the time’, but felt that it was necessary to represent Bella in Poor Things.
“But I am someone who wants to honour the character as fully as I possibly can. That’s part of her journey, so who am I to say that should be shameful?”
