Celebrity Interviewing 102: Moderator Interview Styles (Part C - Hilarie Burton)

With few exceptions there are two types of moderators in entertainment programming on television. The first type is who starts from journalism training and becomes well-known entertainer personalities. The second type is who started as performers and then because of their reputations and career change, joins/creates a show and learns to have a more journalistic approach; which I will go more into in the upcoming Section 103. 

One of the exceptions to these types is Hilarie Burton. From 2000 to 2003 (with frequent appearances until the show’s cancellation in 2008) she was an MTV co-VJ on Total Request Live (aka TRL) mostly hosted by Carson Daly (who was there from 1998 to 2003). And from 2003 to 2009 she starred as Peyton Sawyer on The WB turned CW’s teen drama One Tree Hill. Throughout her career Hilarie has balanced doing both self-appearances being the moderator and the guest in interviews as well as performing as an actor in narrative fictional projects. In 2020 alone she co-hosted with husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan their interview show, Friday Night in With the Morgans that featured conversations with friends and colleagues about their pandemic quarantine lives, was seen in a handful of Christmas themed movies, did an episode of The Walking Dead, as well as had a supporting character arc in Council of Dads – all projects which she was interviewed as a guest for. 

(*She’s also written an auto-biographical book called The Rural Diaries that was published in 2020 and she gave interviews about that!) 

Celebrity Interviewing 102: Moderator Interview Styles (Part B - Steven Yeun)

                                                                            

                                                                            Steven Yeun

Searching YouTube for Steven Yeun interviews, I found one top result of approximately 30 minutes running time that has him sitting between two other male moderators (Rob and Geoff) at a table with mics for the Toronto International Film Festival’s interview series Long Take featuring Steven’s role in the Korean film Burning (2018). 

Before the interview got underway, my initial thought was that for two moderators sitting on either side of Steven, in a semi-circular shape without much personal space between them, would make for a somewhat awkward dynamic. I imagined that it’d be a 'too many cooks in the kitchen' kind of chaos, like how when one guest is being interviewed by multiple DJs on a radio show. That perhaps there would be an overwhelming number of interruptions, talking over each other, each trying to take the spotlight’s attention, and that Steven would barely be able to comprehend the question let alone answer it cohesively. Instead, I was sincerely impressed with how well Rob and Geoff would let the other speak in turn, with consideration, and allow Steven’s detailed answers to take its time. 

The first asked question as per usual is “how did you get involved with this project?” Steven says it was a “crazy story” and Rob says “Perfect!” Following the “actually not so crazy” story but still nicely told, they wanted to know what kinds of films he is drawn to, having come from Korea and growing up in America, and then what may have influenced him to become an actor? For Steven, it was whatever was on television and in the theaters like Fresh Prince of Bel Aire and Terminator 2 but by the time he got to high school and college, he “start digging around to Korean film”, seeing Old Boy but “mind exploding” seeing Poetry.