By all accounts, HBO’s The Young Pope is an interesting show with a beatifically stupid title. (It doesn’t help that its main character, Pope Lennie Belardo, sounds like an off-brand Michael Kupperman character.) The series has, thus, become a standing target for the slings and arrows of the assembled internet, with Twitter comedians of all stripes plugging the fledgling pontiff into song lyrics, images, and other exhibits of online lampoonery.
But if you were worried that series star Jude Law hasn’t seen your efforts to revamp Gary Puckett’s “Young Girl” for the 2017 TV season, rest assured: he has. Per Variety, Law has spent the last week or so of his press tour being asked about The Young Pope’s online presence, quickly apprising him of his memetic status. “Having spent the last week in New York and here doing lots of press, I’ve become very aware,” he said. “I didn’t even know what a meme was. But they’ve very funny and imaginative.”
Law didn’t lay out which of the many, many tweets that mash him up with Smash Mouth’s ”All-Star” was his favorite, but he did suggest that the online activity meant the show was connecting with young people, papal or otherwise. “I hope it will just provoke and prompt interest,” he said.