Why ‘Cousin Greg’ and the new Hollywood f**k boys say hooking-up is dead.

Cousin Greg has a problem.

The actor who plays the improbably tall Succession character, Nicholas Braun, is young-ish, pretty famous, heterosexual, and, until recently, single. And the problem is, he can't just enjoy, you know... enjoy his fame. 

Recently, on Dax Shepherd's Armchair Expert podcast, the host steered Braun towards discussing what it's like to be on a cool, hit show and be hunted down in bars and clubs by women who want to date him.

And Braun was terrified. 

"I'm so scared of this conversation," he said, several times, seat-squirming almost audible.

Why? Well, do a quick Google on Braun and dating (or don't, he'd really rather you didn't) and you'll see some things. Things about casual hook-ups in the bar he co-owns with Justin Theroux (that's a sentence that feels like a party). Things about him sliding into the DMs of young Instagram models. Things about him partying at Coachella with late-teen girls on his shoulders. 

And he thinks the Internet is trying to paint him as a bit of a d**k, and he doesn't want to go there.

Watch the trailer for Succession right here. Post continues after video.

Luckily, Dax Shepherd does. Because he has thoughts.  

"There is this weird bent right now which [is] like... Being sexual is somehow predatorial," he says.

"In exploring all these different power dynamics that needed to be explored, it did put a whole haze over anyone just f**king, which is a lovely activity for single people to have."

Dax is not wrong. F**king, as he so poetically puts it, is a lovely activity for single people. Or unsingle people. And he's also not wrong that in a post-me-too moment, famous men 'f**king' fans – particularly younger fans – is not cool. And it's certainly not cool to talk about it.

Of course, the power dynamic he's talking about is the mass realignment of #metoo, shorthand for a turning point when we started listening to women's stories about work and sex and power. They weren't always delighted by the way they were treated by men of higher status. Some of it felt dismissive and disrespectful, and some of it was dangerous and damaging.

So what this conversation was about was whether, in the aftermath, we've just decided that all casual male-female sex is... problematic. 

Do we just think now, as Dax Shepherd suggests: "That guy's a misogynist, he likes having sex with women."

Again, Nicholas Braun doesn't want to go there. But eventually, he does. And he discusses the problem of dating when you're famous and most of the world is not.  

"If you have a hookup and maybe it's weird or maybe it's awkward which is the nature of dating or hooking up," he finally says, almost under duress. "Two people are not always good for each other or the chemistry's not always there... and they kiss horribly and they don't know how to touch each other or one's really sweaty and they don't care. And at some point, one of them doesn't want to be there anymore. That goes both ways. I'm a man, trying to date a girl and I'm allowed to fail at it."

Hashtag truth, Cousin Greg. Trying to have sex with strangers is sometimes thrilling, and often just a soggy mess of mismatched expectations. 

But, Braun says, those mismatched expectations might find their way to a public platform and make him look at best, like a s**tty lover, or at worst, like a man who doesn't prioritise women's pleasure and treats them as disposable.

So, what's a modern-day celebrity F-boy to do?

It's all Aziz Ansari's fault, of course. 

Back in 2015, he wrote a book called Modern Romance. At the time, he was a young, red-hot comedian with his own TV show and a Millennial audience who thought he was the very model of a 'woke bro' boyfriend. And then, in 2018 a woman writing under the name Grace wrote a viral essay about her date with him on a now-defunct site called Babe.net.

Grace wrote that at Ansari's apartment, after dinner, his intentions were clear: “I had to say no a lot. He wanted to get me drunk and then f**k me.”

She detailed how she felt pressured into sexual acts she wasn't enthusiastic about. That she felt used, and disrespected, and ultimately, she told him so. And he apologised. 

People had – and have – a lot of different opinions about 'Grace's' Ansari essay, then and now. 

It was either a seminal moment in #metoo history, shining a light on a million grey-area sexual experiences familiar to women that leave them wondering whether what just happened was okay, since they feel so s**tty about it. The murky fringes of consent and respect. 

Or, that essay was just an extremely clickable blow-by-blow of one famous man's terrible seduction techniques. An old-fashioned kiss 'n' tell. 

Either way, it was a high-profile person's worst nightmare. 

“This was not what I expected," 'Grace' wrote about the encounter. "I’d seen some of his shows and read excerpts from his book and I was not expecting a bad night at all, much less a violating night and a painful one.” ”

Mismatched expectations, indeed.

Listen to this episode of Mamamia Out Loud, where Holly discusses the celebrity f**k boys. Post continues after podcast.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Colin Farrell, Jude Law, Gerard Butler, Justin Bieber, Zac Efron, Orlando Bloom... they've all had their f**k-boy times (Leo's streak, it must be said, is unmatched), and they've all had tales told about them, but they were all in their "bad boy" heydays before the rules changed.

Celebrity kiss 'n' tells used to be a very specific product for a very specific audience – The National Enquirer, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph. The publication had to have a chequebook, the celebrity had to have a big name, and the kisser had to prepare themselves for the backlash of betraying confidence. 

But now, a hook-up with an Internet famous person can be disseminated over Twitter and TikTok in minutes, 'celebrities' can be anyone from a big-name footballer to a reality TV contestant, and the kisser can claim a moral high ground – warning the culture at large that this person is morally impure. 

So back to Cousin Greg. Is it a Good Thing that horny young men have to think twice about how they treat the women they date, in 2023? Not through a sense of common decency but out of fear of a reputational thrashing if they don't? Well, yes, probably. Accountability works, as any boss knows. 

But if that behaviour is forced from fear, not decency, is it really reflective of a genuine change in attitude, or just resentment at play? Certainly, Nicholas Braun said the fear of girls "telling their story," and "basically getting to say whatever they want," was what had made him stop sleeping with the non-famous women he met in his bar. It wasn't that he didn't want to (although he told Shepard he is, now, in a relationship), but that it got too risky. 

"It isn't worth it," he said. "If you want to stop talking it feels like you have to have kind of a break-up. You want to leave them totally good, no matter what extent you had a thing." 

And exerting that level of emotional energy, friends, is NOT what the f**k boys are here for. 

Image: Getty + Mamamia.

Love watching TV and movies? Take our survey now to go in the running to win a $100 gift voucher.