Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal (2022) s01e03 Episode Script

1
Get ready for the hairy twat ♪
Can't believe I just said that
Did I really just say that? ♪
All I heard was "hairy twat" ♪
What's that? Get ready. Get ready.
Here's the honest truth.
Standing on a stage
in front of a massive crowd rapping
is embarrassing,
and amazing, and euphoric.
But it doesn't fix anything.
You wake up in the morning
and you're back to square one.
Back with your issues,
back with the baggage.
Nothing's really changed.
It's a distraction, a dangerous one,
as it happened.
I wanted something
that could make that feeling of fun
and freedom last forever.
An experience that would
jolt my mind permanently.
I didn't know what it was yet.
But I was getting closer,
and just one week later
I would finally find it.
I'd come here looking for answers,
and at the moment,
I only had the answer to the question,
"What's the Portuguese for vagina?"
It's "pachacha."
There was unfinished business.
And the man charged with
helping me find it was called Nil.
Thanks so much. Obrigada.
Cheers.
It's great to get
the full Brazilian experience.
- Kinda.
- Hmm?
This is a piña colada.
This is a hate crime on my country.
There's a Brazilian way of doing things.
Yeah, it's not necessarily
doing the wrong thing.
It's doing the right thing,
but in the wrong way.
It sounds like the wrong thing.
- No. It's the right thing.
- Okay.
- Like what?
- Done in the wrong way.
For example,
it's like 2:00 in the morning,
and you're coming home, right,
and the light's red.
- You shouldn't go through.
- No.
But you look around, there's no one here.
- Oh.
- No cars. Just cross and I'll get home.
This is making me anxious.
- Well, no one got hurt.
- You run a red light?
Yes, I did one just coming here.
I'm having a panic attack.
There are many ways to do those things.
I think the best way to do it
is just have at it.
But this is culturally difficult for me
because in Britain,
it's about rules, it's about queuing.
It's about obeying signs and signals,
and routines
Queues are not, like, what?
Pfft. It's not like it's a law, right?
That is the only law in Britain.
Sometimes you don't even know
what you're joining a queue for.
You just stay in it.
Sometimes we're late, so we just,
"Hey, can I please" and you just
- No, you don't!
- Of course, we do.
Oh, God, you're a queue jumper.
What am I supposed to do?
Miss my appointment because of a queue?
- Turn up earlier. Get in the queue.
- No.
- Oh, this is awful.
- For some reason, you love queues
more than I thought.
But we're going to break down that concept
and you're going to learn that queues
are not that much big of a deal.
So now, we got to go to the bathroom.
You got to cut the queue.
Yeah, you can do it.
- I can't jump a queue.
- Of course you can. You just say
May I?
- Do this?
- Do this.
What woman does this when they need a wee?
I don't know. I do this. I'm a guy,
but this is a universal gesture.
- This is horrible.
- Just go.
This is so horrible.
Excuse me.
No.
Please, please, please, please.
Please.
Come on.
She's gonna pee her pants.
She's gringa. Help her.
Just really quick. Just go.
Okay. Thank you so much.
That's the worst thing I've done.
I can never return to my homeland.
- Ah, it's okay.
- I have betrayed my people.
- Can I tell you a secret?
- Hmm?
It's not really a Brazilian thing
to jump queues.
We don't do that. We hate it.
But that was fun, though.
Right?
- You are such a bastard.
- That was fun.
Okay, it was admittedly very funny,
but I was never going to find
the life-changing experience
I craved in a toilet queue.
And so we made our way south
to Nil's hometown, São Paulo.
Won't slow down
Until I'm in the ground ♪
Holding out for something bigger now ♪
You've gotta chase me out
Sweetest sound ♪
Won't slow down ♪
In all honesty, there's only one thing
that could drag me
from the glorious beaches,
the fabulous cocktails,
the delightful people of Rio de Janeiro
and that's this place.
A municipal car park outside São Paulo.
But before I get into the nitty-gritty
of this great city,
here's what I've done so far.
So I have been on a sun lounger,
Erika Bronze, and that's her real surname.
She was destined
to go into the tanning business
and a bit of electrical tape
on the old boobies,
fabulous times.
Next, the sort of thing that
you could never dream you'd get to do,
so visited a favela
and a favela funk ball.
Funky as F.
Let's get these speakers stacked.
Bit of MC Carol
in the mix, chocolate milk.
Puta, puta, puta, puta, chocolate milk
Puta, puta, chocolate milk ♪
And now I find myself here, São Paulo,
one of the great mega cities of the world.
Can't wait to see what happens next.
Sue, this is São Paulo.
Welcome. This is where I live.
It's a great city.
Busy, isn't it? How many people live here?
Uh, twenty million.
- This is proper mega city, super city.
- Yeah.
Not that hot as well.
- Oh, that's a relief.
- Yeah.
You know, I was not bikini-ready for Rio.
Or indeed, for any major city.
In Rio, when we can't stop
and you keep moving on a red,
would you do that here,
is there carjacking?
They do that a lot.
Well, you know,
violence comes from inequality.
That's why we have a lot of armoured cars.
- Armoured cars?
- Yeah.
What do you mean? Like a tank?
Kind of. This car's armoured.
- Is it?
- Yeah, I'm a comedian.
- Yeah?
- Comedy sometimes upset people.
And if you don't piss anyone off,
what kind of comedian are you?
- Right?
- True. I've had a couple of death threats
after a difficult, you know,
Bake Off technical challenge.
I didn't feel the need to armour my car.
See, you have to remember that
in England we don't have guns.
Even our policemen
are only armed with sticks.
To warrant buying a bulletproof car,
you have to be very, very high profile,
like Prince Andrew,
or very, very unpleasant,
like Prince Andrew.
Brazil, by contrast,
has the largest market
for bulletproof cars
anywhere in the world.
- Smart!
- Yeah.
I wanna shoot them all right now.
Ooh, that is
Wow, that's a lot of cars.
You should know
the different levels of bullet-proofing
we work with.
They have
several levels of armoury.
In my country, if you want to
pimp your car up, add a few extras,
you might get heated seats,
or an extra cup holder, but here,
you get bulletproof that will prevent
you being attacked by a machine gun.
Each country has their problems. Yeah.
Lincoln explained
his factory will bulletproof any vehicle
from a luxury limo to a Nissan Micra
for a modest fee of around £10,000.
Seems like good value
if you're trying to avoid getting shot,
which I am,
unless I'm working on this show.
Look what it's done to the glass.
it's just the front.
I mean, look at that.
They shot a .44 Magnum.
- Gone Clint Eastwood on that car.
- Yeah!
Wow, that's heavy.
How strong is it?
Very strong.
You can hit it with a hammer,
and it will not
Whoo!
Hit it with a hammer and it won't break.
- Can I?
- Yeah.
Can we?
Whoo!
This just got fun, baby.
Check it out.
- Nothing.
- Oh, that's smooth.
That's the sound of safety, my friend.
- That was fun.
- Yeah.
Should we apologise
to the guy who owns that car?
Uh, well, fuck him.
When we arrived, I thought you were
gonna put me in a car and shoot me.
- No.
- Yes, I did.
Come on.
We don't like to shoot foreign people.
Relieved as I was
to not get shot, again,
Nil did have something
equally alarming up his sleeve.
An experience, he said,
that would challenge my prudish
British sensibilities to the core.
I got to show you something
in São Paulo, the love motels.
- "The love motels"?
- Yeah, love motels.
That sounds unsanitary.
No, actually not. It's very sanitary.
It's like a room that you rent
for like an hour or two,
just for like having sex with someone.
- Okay. Have you been there?
- Yeah. I've been with my wife.
Why can't you do that at home?
- You have a home.
- I have a couple of kids.
Sometimes you want to just fucking do it
loud and, whoo, go crazy.
- If I see a greasy swing, I'm out.
- No.
If I see a swing, I'm gone.
This is weird because it's just
off an A-road next to a furniture store.
No. Next to a church.
- That was a church.
- No. Doesn't scream sex, does it?
It sort of screams, "Hello.
We're here for a corporate buffet."
- There's a queue of people.
- Of course, it's lunchtime.
Olá.
- See, there's the type of suites.
- What do you fancy?
50 shades!
- So that's like a dungeon. Okay.
- Yeah.
- I've just seen the word swing.
- Ah, this one!
- Ah, let's get the swing.
- Get me out of here!
Come on, let's do it!
It's like a lock up.
You have a garage door.
We just park the car.
Then we close it and, you know.
Genuinely. This is the least
sexual place I've ever been.
- Calm down.
- I've been to hotter abattoirs than this.
- It's great it has got parking.
- Yeah.
- I will say that.
- See in the shade.
This is ringing alarm bells.
- Milady. Ladies first.
- Oh, you're such a gentleman.
Oh, thank you. I tend to do that
when I come into motels.
First thoughts.
It reminds me of my parents' room.
- Your parents' room?
- I'm joking.
Wow. There's a real atmosphere
when you walk in,
there's a kind of funk of filth.
- Yeah, totally. The good filth.
- Yeah.
Well, there's a dirtiness and on top,
it's just sort of nose-destroying
sort of bleach smell.
See, I told you it was clean.
Look, you can do, like, lights
So presumably these mirrors
If you want to have sex whilst thinking
you're in the middle
of a James Bond movie.
- You're the fucking supervillain.
- You are, baby.
But why? Why does this place exist?
In the '80s, it was for people
who wanted to cheat on their spouses.
Middle of work in the afternoon,
pretend they're working
and just fuck each other
and then go away with no one knowing that.
But that worked with young people,
'cause us Brazilians
normally go to the university
in the same city that we live.
- Stay at home with Mum.
- Yeah, and Mum and Dad.
You're still studying.
So just stay home
and don't spend that much money.
But we also kind of have to fuck,
and, uh, I used it myself a lot
when I was like younger, like 18, 19, 20.
So you rent a room for an hour.
- Three hours. I was 18.
- You're an absolute titan.
I love that there's a snack area
next to the dildo station.
Exactly.
You fuck and then you smoke a cigarette
and then you eat something.
- Not if you're me.
- No?
The first thing I go for is the sweets.
- What is this?
- A condom brand.
- Of course.
- This is a regular one.
But this one has, like,
a retarding effect.
It kind of makes your dick
take longer to come.
Who wants a retarding condom?
- Quick fuckers.
- Okay.
Those guys who just
in two seconds.
So it's like a sort of cock noose.
- Yeah.
- It just sort of
Yeah. Your cock gets kind of
It gets kind of moronic.
- It just
- Wow.
You lose comms with your dick.
Your dick is just fucking
I am a little confused
'cause this is the swing suite,
and I was expecting
to be pushed gently on a swing,
fall asleep with a gentle rocking motion,
and then smash a bag of M&Ms.
That would've been good,
but it's not that kind of swing.
- All right.
- It's more like, uh, swingers.
Ah.
So check this out.
- Initiate contact.
- Oh, God.
And this is an intercom. I think.
Yeah. Hello?
Hi.
How you doing?
Let's do it from the panel.
So I'm going to ask him, let's meet.
He said yes.
- Oh, we've been hooked up.
- Yeah.
Is there any more romantic way
to meet somebody?
Yeah, there's one on their side too.
It's closed.
I just feel like
I'm at the opening of a newsagents'.
Olá. They're the most beautiful people
I've seen.
Oh, yes! They're hot.
Look how beautiful they are.
Yeah. Hi. Oh, no, that's
- Okay
- The shutter of shame.
I'm still wondering
what might've happened if they'd said yes.
- We got shamed.
- We got shuttered.
I know I said I wanted to do something
that profoundly changed me.
But filming an impromptu porno
and broadcasting it to the world
really wasn't what I had in mind.
Love motels are a fun way
to get a quick thrill.
What I yearned for was something deeper.
Stop it.
Something that would shift me forever.
The trouble was,
I had no idea where to find it.
What are you looking to get out of this?
Well, I feel we've really
rinsed the physical stuff, you know?
I've been dropped off a hill
and been shot at,
and stage dived and all the rest of it.
So my body feels like it's been pushed.
But I guess I want to go
somewhere with my mind.
Well, you can have some ayahuasca
in the Amazon Rainforest.
Don't you puke on ayahuasca,
and shit yourself?
- Some people do.
- Yeah, I don't want to do that.
Maybe if you want to go to Bolivia,
you can try San Pedro.
- What's San Pedro?
- Oh, it's a mind-expanding drug.
I have a friend, he tried once.
He said it was the most
ultra-transdimensional experience,
you go in and out of consciousness.
Fucking amazing, he said.
You should go to La Paz.
Easier to get a flight.
Nice place?
Yeah, but there's the altitude issue.
You have to get used to it
for a couple of days.
It's very, very high.
No, I get altitude sickness.
It's very simple.
You just have to learn how to breathe.
No.
So, drugs.
I don't take drugs. No, really.
And not just because they're illegal.
I don't like drugs because
I've always been
terrified of losing control.
But the longer this journey went on,
the more I wondered
if completely losing control
was exactly what I needed.
So I flew to Bolivia in search
of the ultimate perfectly legal high,
landing in the capital, La Paz.
Altitude, 4,000 metres.
Oh, God.
I feel absolutely awful, do you?
No.
Sue? Hi!
- How you doing?
- Welcome.
Nice to see you finally.
- Welcome to Bolivia.
- Oh, it's nice to be in Bolivia.
So how are you feeling?
Awful. I feel like 100,000 years old.
I can't breathe.
- Really?
- The altitude has really got me.
Did you do what I told you to do?
Eat light and things like that.
I'm really sorry.
I didn't sleep and I can't breathe.
And I tell you, I need you
because in 48 hours
- Uh-huh.
- I'm taking this mind-altering drug.
So I need to be in a fit state
to get in a state. Okay.
We have the best doctors in Bolivia
and the best medicine.
- All right.
- Come, let's go.
Is it possible we could find
like a downhill pharmacy?
We are not going to the pharmacy.
Now, those white things
that you're seeing over there hanging
are like llamas' foetus.
What? I thought they were soft toys.
- No.
- I thought they were children's gifts.
What do you mean they're llama foetuses?
I was about to buy one
and take it home for my little niece.
And now I realise it's a foetus?
Okay, so you have the different,
like, animals.
And all of them have a symbol.
- You have the big llamas.
- Oh, God.
These ones I know.
What have they done?
Freeze dried them like mangoes?
Yeah, they dry them. Yes.
I'm loving A, the name of the store,
but also, underneath the dried llamas,
we've got some weird drinks for colon,
haemorrhoids, ultra vaginal.
There's lots going on in this store.
This is the one
you can take to your niece.
I don't know what I trust any more.
Have you ever been spit by a llama?
No, but I've had
a bull rhino ejaculate on me.
They have a lot of strength.
- They really do.
- And they go very far. Yes.
He was called Jake.
I should've seen it coming.
Forgive the pun.
- Oh, God.
- Yeah, the force.
Was that good for your skin,
at least?
Uh Well, I don't remember.
That wasn't my takeout.
Well, they always say
that any sort of sperm is very good
- for the skin.
- Well, they might.
That's why I look so haggard.
Yeah, exactly.
You'll be pleased to hear
Carla wasn't going to get
an animal to ejaculate on me.
Instead, we took a trip,
up yet another hill
to visit a sort of witch-come-doctor,
a witch doctor, I guess,
who she promised would cure me
of my altitude sickness.
I had come to take drugs,
and so tried to think of this
as a little appetiser.
I was already high.
3,460 metres high, to be exact.
And I reasoned that
I might as well get on with it.
Okay, so this one is like my casera.
I come here always.
- This is your top casera?
- Yeah.
- My top casera.
- Okay.
Hi, Ivet!
I thought
she was Casera.
- Hi, how are you?
- Hello.
This is my friend, Sue, from England.
Yes.
And she has altitude sickness.
- Altitude sickness.
- Altitude sickness.
What do we give her?
We can give her some coca leaves.
That's good.
So what you have to do is
This is very, very fresh.
Coca leaf. It's not cocaine.
But it's what cocaine's made from?
Yeah, but you need basically
3,000 of these ones
- to make a gram of cocaine.
- This is legal?
You're gonna find
a lot of things that are very legal here
and very illegal in the UK.
You're going to put like
five coca leaves underneath over here.
Here. Like this, okay?
And you're going to feel really well.
This is my first coca.
And you'll feel really well. Here.
Don't move it around,
only take it over there and just suck it
and it'll make you feel better.
But first
She wants you to pray.
It'll bring luck.
These ones are all candies.
Yes, okay.
Ask all your wishes.
- Ask for all you wishes.
- Okay.
I didn't tell the witch doctor
what I was wishing for,
but I will tell you.
I was wishing that somehow
this mind-expanding San Pedro drug
would help resolve all the issues
that've been knocking
around my head for years.
I have quite a few.
Things I've been fighting
to keep under control.
Things I generally
keep hidden from the world.
I had my doubts that anything
as mundane as a cactus could help me,
but I'd been told to make a wish,
so I did.
Thank you very much.
That's the most emotionally
freighted candy in Bolivia.
And then I watched as Ivet "the Witch"
tried to make it come true.
So all the bad things are going to
go out and it's going to bless you.
What else?
It's like I've been attacked
by a florist, but in a really loving way.
No bartering, no hanging around.
No "what kind of ceremony do you want?"
This is for it to go out.
It was get a foetus
Good luck,
success, good work.
For the tiger, for happiness.
Pop some candy in a basket
Immolate it.
- You're giving it to Mother Earth.
- I am praying.
Praying that
I'm not going to be set fire to.
You're cured. Next.
One-stop spiritual-cleansing shop.
It was great.
Plus, you could buy drill bits.
I hope everything goes well on you
and in good times.
Thank you.
Good luck.
Woke up this morning,
blinding headache, dizzy
and having had a ceremony,
I feel very held and I feel I can breathe
and I genuinely feel in a good space
to do something crazy.
Thing I'm most frightened
of opening up this and this
because, for me, I like to just
keep things quite closed in.
If I've suffered
or gone through something,
I'd rather just retain it,
and over time it feels like
that retention's really unhealthy
and hopefully,
maybe something will change.
Maybe something will shift.
Okay.
I know, this feels super weird.
Oh! That's amazing.
How amazing is that, huh?
This is the Wonder City.
Great. You can buzz around
the whole city on these?
The whole city.
There are different lines
and this one is taking us
to the highest point of La Paz.
You have the Andes Mountains in the back.
And then you have the hills
- that come from the Andes.
- Yeah.
When you're milling around the streets,
you don't get any sense of scale.
Yeah, because you're inside a hole,
so you can't really see the dimension.
In London,
everything is subterranean.
You move from A to B underground.
Here, to be able to get
this amazing vista.
Absolutely.
Why does everything look
like it's not finished?
Because it means that
your home isn't finished,
so you don't have to pay taxes.
You only pay when the home is finished?
Yes.
There's a lot of tax dodgers.
That afternoon, 12 hours ahead
of venturing into the Bolivian mountains
to take mind-expanding drugs,
Carla took me to meet Wara.
Hi, beautiful!
The shamanic healer
presiding over my San Pedro ceremony.
Apparently, they call it a ceremony,
not a binge.
Wow, that's a banger of a pipe.
During a coca-leaf reading
designed to help me
get the most from the experience,
Wara told me two key facts.
Firstly, San Pedro, a hallucinogenic drug
which occurs naturally
in certain types of cacti,
isn't, to her at least, a drug at all.
It's a medicine.
This medicine comes from
the heart of the cosmos
and this medicine,
going to hear your prayer.
And secondly,
that consuming San Pedro
would induce an eight to ten-hour trip
where the walls between my conscious
and subconscious mind would collapse,
opening me up to all those
fantastic things Nil had mentioned.
Euphoria, hallucinations,
multi-transdimensional understanding.
But she also stressed
it would bring me face to face
with any past unresolved trauma.
Trust. Just trust.
And as I mentioned,
I do have quite a lot of that.
The father huachuma going to give you
what you really need,
not what you want.
I'm so emotional and terrified
because I have spent
20 years of my adult life
using my brain to stop thinking
about stuff that I find too much.
So slowly, over time, this bucket of shit
has been filled to the brim
and what she's saying is
we're going to tip it all out,
and tipping out that is everything
that I have been working on avoiding.
To feel it all tomorrow,
I can't even
I'm just literally shaking at the thought.
Hi.
I took my pants off the floor for you.
I want you to know that.
How you feeling today?
I'm all right, actually.
I'm all right. I, um
She says distractedly,
taking a scarf on and off,
I'm absolutely fine.
I've been doing this
since 3:00 in the morning.
Anyway. No, I'm really good.
I actually feel okay.
I feel Wara's really cool
and, um, she puts me at my ease.
Calm. I feel really calm.
Oh, shit! I forgot my key card.
It had taken me over two years,
but my Latin American odyssey
was finally reaching its end.
Along the way, I'd caught fire,
been blown up and shot,
I'd smoked, and I drank, and I danced,
I'd soared down and smashed shit up.
I'd freaked out and spun out,
been switched on and turned off.
And I'd laughed.
I'd laughed more than
I can remember laughing for years.
But this was different.
I'd resisted the temptation
to take drugs my entire life,
and now I was going
to take them on camera.
To induce a trip that would bring
every fear and anxiety
that was bubbling around
under the surface,
out into the open
for the whole world to see.
I was shitting myself.
Shitting myself about what might happen.
Shitting myself about the possibility
I might shit myself, actually shit myself.
But I've been running
from this for a long time,
and having come this far,
I felt I needed to see it through.
Yeah, good trip, sister.
It was too late to back out.
Wara said it was likely I'd vomit soon,
but we should walk through the hills
while we waited
for the effects to take hold.
The drugs were inside me,
and it was apparently now
only a matter of time.
Sorry about that.
Just so you know,
I went on to puke for five hours straight,
but I'll leave that to your imagination.
It felt like
my brain had turned to stone,
heavy and useless in my head.
Conscious, rational thought
was no longer possible.
All I was left with was a sense
of connection to the universe,
and my raw, unprocessed feelings.
I went deep into my trauma.
I felt it. Really felt it.
I felt my ancestors around me,
and held the hands of unknown children.
And in between the bouts of vomiting,
I cried my eyes out until eventually
the effects started to wear off.
It was, um more interior
than I thought it would be.
Try to share the most of the information
that you have received.
It's a message that is not only for you.
Some message that is for all of us, too.
I am Sue, and my process
was to expel everything
dark and sad,
painful and difficult,
which I have never expressed
because I did not believe
there was anything big enough to hold in.
And so I kept it inside.
And to the point it would make me ill,
or it would make me behave
badly to other people sometimes
'cause things would spill out.
I couldn't hold everything.
So I took the medicine
I could see light.
And the lights went from my head
and every part of my body, my hands,
and they carried tiny things,
tiny, tiny specks of light like ants
and carried them across.
What was the colour of the light?
Every colour.
And then I saw the babies.
How simple to hold your hand
and have somebody you don't know
take your hand.
It's everything always.
But I knew that already.
And then to know
I could not have my own babies.
But that it's okay.
Because I have people who are my family,
who don't come from here.
It's okay. It's okay.
And I could be with the children,
and feel this connection.
But I could also go on because
there will be other things, and other
So not to stay in the sadness but to move.
Like water.
I was connected to my ancestors.
My dad died.
- How long?
- Five, five years ago.
- Aw.
- Six maybe, six.
- And he was there and in here.
- Yeah.
I had my hand over his heart.
And as it was stopping,
I heard my grandma.
It was like I was,
I was her and she was me.
And she was calling him like he was a boy,
saying, "Come on, come on, it's time."
And all the people
that went before him called him
because he was hanging on, and they said,
"Here's the best place."
- Yeah
- And his heart went
And I didn't feel sad.
I just felt like he'd he's here.
- I don't wanna be in the past any more.
- Mmm-hmm.
No more.
Afterwards, I felt lighter, freer.
All of the baggage that had
made me take this trip in the first place
began to fall away.
I could just enjoy my life
and not worry any more.
The weight, the fear,
it had gone and it's still gone.
Even now.
That was almost the end of the story.
Almost.
Four days later, I flew back to São Paulo,
was picked up by Nil at the airport
in a bulletproof car.
For one final piece
of unfinished business.
Holy shit!
What the fuck?
I have fully risk assessed
this whole shoot.
We have an ambulance
on standby with a paramedic.
The car is armour rated
to a Level III Alpha.
All the risks have been mitigated
as much as humanly possible.
So, on that note, I am off, mate.
- What?
- What do you mean?
- Aren't you staying?
- Fuck off.
- What do you mean?
- Fuck off!
- Oh, fuck!
- Fuck!
- Fuck! Fuck!
- Fire.
Damn it.
Oh, fuck! Shit!