This Celebrity Interviewing Series may have taken a few months more than expected to complete, but I couldn’t be prouder of the final edited posts here!
(Unfortunately, I couldn’t get around to including more foreign examples and red-carpet interviews. This may be something to do at a later time.)
And I couldn’t be more grateful for those who gave their time to speak and correspond with me! Mara Webster, Jenelle Riley, and Bethany Watson, you are some of my greatest heroes! You have wonderfully accomplished careers with plenty still in your futures, but also are genuinely good people who ask your celebrity guests some of the best project/career-focused questions!
The celebrity moderator is supposed to ask questions of the guest they’d like to know answers to, act as a medium by asking questions on behalf of others (the audience, the forum/venue, the project’s producers, and the guests’ representatives), and also share the space with the guest (but usually not take away their spotlight). The best moderators are able to have a professional but also positive rapport with their guest, know when to be serious or humorous, while also actively listening and appreciating their guests’ answers by keeping the conversation going for whatever running time they’ve been given.
Plus, a round of applause to the actors I featured in these posts: Michael B. Jordan, Dakota Johnson, Leo DiCaprio, Michelle Yeoh, Rebecca Hall, Jake Gyllenhaal, Nicole Kidman, Steven Yeun, Hilarie Burton Morgan, Sterling K. Brown, Pamela Adlon, Constance Wu, and others! You are all so talented!
From closely watching how actors are treated in various interview settings by different moderators, they are either treated like humans who happen to be famous, or terribly treated like objects for others’ amusement. There’s no doubt in mind that actors are happily willing to discuss their projects, the people they worked with, experiences on set, and certain aspects of the industry (excluding any spoilers). But they don’t appreciate (as anyone wouldn’t) the gossip, humiliating, and disrespectful questions or skits they’re dragged into discussing or playing. If there’s something the moderator needs to ask a celebrity guest that may be uncomfortable, it should be done with care. As Bethany Watson advises, you can “make light of the constant press” with a “wink in your voice” or a “heartfelt and genuine ‘how are you doing?”, but you shouldn’t push your guest on topics they don’t want to answer.
When I used Jennifer Lopez’ Z100 Morning Show interview from 2019 as an example, I interpreted her tone as somewhat reluctant to fully disclose details of her engagement to Alex Rodriguez, so Elvis changed the subject to his own wedding perhaps as a signal of respect to not dig deeper. This is in great contrast to how Hoda Kotb recently interviewed Jennifer Lopez on The Today Show. They were talking on Zoom also with Lin Manuel Miranda to discuss Jennifer and his honoring the 5-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting and their re-released song, “Love Make the World Go Round”. But Hoda mainly used the interview as an opportunity to ask Jennifer about her resumed relationship with Ben Affleck. After only 45 seconds focused on their song, and then just asking Lin how he’s changed in 5 years, she says, “Now Lin you can busy yourself with whatever business…I need to have a little girl talk with my girl Jen, just a little. You look happy.” And Jen’s face clearly took a second to realize the personal questions were about to roll instead of keeping it professional, and just said, “I am happy”.
Hoda:“You look happier,”
Jen said, “I’m always happy when you see me Hoda".
Hoda still pushed, “No, no you look happ-i-er! I just have to tell you every time I see a picture of you and Ben, ‘she looks happier, she looks happier’, are we happier?”
Jen then takes a real moment as her face shows clear dismay that Hoda kept going, but brings the focus back to what they’re promoting, “The song is out…” to which we see Lin cheer Jen for rejecting Hoda’s fixation, “…and love is never more relevant than it is right now.”
Hoda, not taking the obvious clue to back-off, says, “Wait, it’s me you’re talking to, you know that?” Jen said, “You can call me, you have my number.”
And then the video changes to some photos of Lin and Jen from their Instagram accounts, with Hoda narrating, “Well, we tried.” And moves into talking about Jen and Lin’s children, and Jen’s upcoming birthday. When the segment returns to the four anchors live in the studio (Hoda, Carson Daly, Al Roker and Craig Melvin), and Hoda says, “So what up with her and Ben?” looking like she lost the scoop. Well, much deserved Hoda, you didn’t respect Jennifer, or the incredible reason why she and Lin were being interviewed in the first place. Your interview could be summed up as, ‘Peace on earth, blah, let’s talk gossip!’ Ugh.
Turning back to some more revered moderators, one cannot go without highlighting the career of James Lipton (may he RIP). From 1994 to 2018, he hosted Inside the Actors Studio filmed initially with the New School and then at Pace University, featuring successful actors as guests and actual acting students in the audience. With an average hour’s running time and with Lipton’s “scary” diligent research, the guests were allowed to answer questions with moments to reflect and give deeper backstory to. With questions from a fully engaged audience, there was (usually) no BS. Aside from the guest-specific questions, he also had a standard list of 10 questions he asked each guest; yielding of a lot of interesting variety of answers.
Of the approximately 275 episodes, some notes to mention are that there were very few returnees (like: Val Kilmer, Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal, Anthony Hopkins, Sarah Jessica Parker (the only female second-timer aside from Mariska Hargitay who came first with a cast interview and then by herself), and Hugh Jackman), some were better known for not acting but rather as directors/producers/writers/musicians (like: Stephen Sondheim, Neil Simon, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Jay Leno, Barbara Walters, and Jon Bon Jovi), only a few television shows’ casts came together (like: Will & Grace, Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Guy, Modern Family, Glee, Mad Men, How I Met Your Mother, and The Walking Dead). In a 2008 special episode, Dave Chappelle interviewed Lipton. In the 2019 season without Lipton, actors interviewed the actor guests (such as: Greta Gerwig interviewing Laura Dern, Uzo Aduba interviewing Lupita Nyong’o, Ellen Burstyn interviewing Al Pacino (who shared leadership positions back in 1982 to 1984), and Pedro Pascal interviewing Willem Dafoe).
But Bradley Cooper holds the one-time achievement of being the only Actors Studio graduating student who also got to be an Actors Studio guest celebrity. He can be seen in a clip from Robert De Niro’s episode asking some particularly detailed questions, and then would get to work with him in Limitless (2011) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012)!
(*What does it mean for the Actors Studio’s program’s current rate of success? From just a little – not extensive – research, the Actors Studio’s list of notable alumni are of old age or long deceased. Well, perhaps this should be discussed in a series for the fall?)
And again, I say one of the best celebrity interview series is Sean Evan’s hosting the First We Feast’s Hot Ones. It blends what you'd expect from a late-night comedic bit (that itself got thrown into late-night shows), YouTube’s freedom from broadcast FCC rules, and Lipton-like structure of seriously researched questions.
Thank you my dear readers! Please stay tuned for a flurry of never-before-published and some updated previously published essays that span my student years through 2014!
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