Celebrity Interviewing 105: Variety's Actors-On-Actors Conversations

Awards Season is a time of speculation and competition for those in the entertainment industry celebrating itself. The anticipated nominated persons in film & television all gather at various functions for interviews and photo-ops promoting the year’s works to be nominated and then hopefully win.

For those who work in the business, it’s a small world. So even when working against each other they’re also making connections for future collaborations. They’re all rooting for themselves but have to/should/usually remain at least cordial with and respectful of their peers.

Variety’s Actors-on-Actors series gives actors an opportunity to sit-down with each other, talk about their appreciation for each other’s works, their careers, share some behind-the-scenes stories, and also learn more about each other’s processes.

Celebrity Interviewing 104: Radio Interviewing with Some Advice from Bethany Watson

I think we are all guilty at times of even slightly interrupting someone. Not always because of self-obsession to hear your own voice or not waiting for the other person to finish, but because if we’re having a really good conversation, and points keep getting made that spark more ideas and mutual agreeing, we want to share that enthusiasm in the moment. Essentially, these kinds of interruptions are 'Yes, 100%! And…'.  

When you listen to a conversation on the radio, with multiple co-hosts and guests all expressing enthusiasm for something, you hear everyone talking over each other! Some personalities may like to talk more or be louder than others, but the best radio shows get along like a boisterous family dinner party! There is no such greater example of this than the 25-year running long 4-hour daily program, Elvis Duran and the Morning Show on Z100!

So far in this series of celebrity interviewing posts, I’ve examined some entertainment journalists from various publications, channels, and media formats. The inspiration to now include radio host interviewing only came to me last week. And I am so thankful that former Morning Show DJ Bethany Watson replied to my email with some of her tips for a successful and meaningful radio interview!

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Celebrity Interviewing 103: Daytime and Late-Night Talk Shows

I’ve been jeering on daytime and late-night talk shows a lot in these posts, when compared to the longer entertainment-industry Q&A interview series (like Mara Webster’s In Creative Company and Jenelle Riley’s SAG-AFTRA Conversations). But I do like the daytime and late-night format!

Whether it’s watching a television actor cook their favorite dish, a pop star singing competition the host, or still remembering when Oprah gave away cars to each of her audience members, they are indeed very amusing!

Celebrity Interviewing 102: Moderator Interview Styles (Part D - Jenelle Riley)

One cannot discuss celebrity interviewing without Jenelle Riley. She is (in my humble opinion) one of the best! She can talk to anyone, making them feel welcome, special, and like a real person who just happens to be famous.

According to her bio page on Variety’s website, she is the Deputy Awards and Features Editor, has won two Emmy Awards for “Actors on Actors” (a series I will discuss more in an upcoming post) as well as winning awards for her own short films. As an entertainment journalist she has covered EVERYTHING! Her published articles range from ranking an actor’s best performances to award season predictions to in-depth profiles, and of course, regular movie reviews. In a world with so many click-bait titles, Jenelle refuses to pander so low to readers. Instead, she gives them straightforward phrasing and yet still intriguing descriptions. You don’t have to read them twice just to figure out what she’s going to be writing about, and you don’t need to worry about that one item that is so completely wrong there are 100 outraged and disagreeing comments – which the writer was fully aware would cause that kind of controversy. (Looking at you Buzzfeed.)

Additionally, Jenelle has been one of the few preferred hosts of the SAG and then SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations series since 2012. And now that it is hundreds of interviews later, she has become even more of a tireless powerhouse whose passion for the industry has not waned. You can tell in every video interview her guests enjoy speaking with her. Perhaps only other than on James Lipton’s and Sean Evans’ in-depth researched interview shows, she is whom guests share unique memories from their professional lives that you wouldn’t hear elsewhere.

Choosing my favorite career retrospective interviews of hers to examine for this blog post would be impossible. Among the prolific diverse list of videos available on YouTube are all of Hollywood’s elite. So instead, I decided to study every 5^th(-ish) video on the search results list, which in (year release order) are:

1. Leonardo DiCaprio from 2014
2. Michael B. Jordan from 2018
3. Michelle Yeoh from 2019
4. Nicole Kidman from 2021
5. Jake Gyllenhaal from 2013 and then from 2016 to do a compare/contrast

…And, wow, this turned out to be a really great list!

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. 

Celebrity Interviewing 102: Moderator Interview Styles (Part A - Rebecca Hall)

From watching my in-depth interview with professional moderator Mara Webster, you have a background understanding of what preparation is required, and how one approaches their guest for a celebrity interview.

This article takes it a step further by using not only examples of Mara’s interview videos but how to compare her style to that of other professional moderators with the same people. It is interesting to see how these moderators approach their guest with what questions under what venue and circumstances, but also how the guests’ answers vary depending upon the moderator’s questions, their own interpretation or preparedness, acquaintance, the venue, and the project being promoted itself. 

Part A of this article features Rebecca Hall’s interviews from 2020 about her acting in Tales From The Loop and then in 2021 as the writer & director of Passing.

Part B features Steven Yeun for his interesting roles in numerous dramas and comedies, and of course in The Walking Dead, the latter of which allows analysis of Comic Con interviews. Part C features Hillarie Burton’s interviews over the years from acting in One Tree Hill in the early 2000s, then as an actor for the late 2020s’ Christmas-themed movies; with a side-note to her first career as an MTV VJ for TRL alongside Carson Daly. And Part D features the incredible Jenelle Riley for her prolific seemingly non-stop work on behalf of Variety.

(Part A is here and Parts B thru D will be posted separately.) 

Part A – Rebecca Hall 

A great place to start is Mara Webster’s interview with Rebecca Hall for Tales From The Loop for the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Conversations-At-Home in March/April 2020. You can watch their full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twujzahgses *And you can read my closer look at one of the show’s episodes here.