Many of you are here because you’re nosy and enjoy watching trailers. Others watched The Young Pope’s Pope Pius XIII (born Lenny) mature into the New Pope and thought, “Wow, this was a good show and I’m so excited to see what’s next.” Some of you might even want to have sex with Jude Law and his surprisingly perky pectorals. If you are any of these people, I’m sad to inform you that this is not a blog about The New Pope’s very new trailer. It’s a blog about the weather!
The New Pope takes place in an alternate reality where the Catholic papacy is still old and out-of touch, except for their leader the Pope, who is hot! As Variety reported in January, filming for the series began in Rome and eventually moved to Venice. The trailer above was also shot in Venice—on April 4th, 2019 to be exact. Here is what the beach in question looked like that day:
According to weather records, Venice, Italy was 66 degrees Fahrenheit with winds reaching 8 miles per hour and a humidity of 37 percent. It also rained. That’s a pretty cold day to be posing naked in the sand with no sun and a crew of grips and gaffers huddled around you in fleece jackets and beanies! For comparison, here is the fictional beach:
And here is the beach of our world:
As I pondered the quandary before me, I came to realize that perhaps this is the point. Like the Catholic Church’s love of artifice and Earthly wealth, The New Pope’s rigorous color correction is a visual reminder that nothing is real, especially some dude named Lenny! To contrast this—because the smart people at HBO love metaphors—the women surrounding him are unfortunately real. How many of us have been forced to prance naked on a ice-cold beach in Italy for (likely) meager pay and a credit as “Naked Sexy Woman?” Too many! But that’s curse of Tinseltown. Everything is fake, and the women posing spread eagle for a hot religious leader are, in reality, freezing extras with sand in their vaginas. The power of “movie magic” is unparalleled!
You can watch the trailer below. There’s no official release date, but like every other prestige drama this year, I’m sure we’ll collectively watch The New Pope on Twitter and think: “I’ll get to it someday, when I’m sick or maybe bored.”