Are Celebrity Interviews Broken?

Fixing the curse of boring interviews

Checking my inbox or doing any other routine actions, I used to listen to music. I would listen to all the tracks I loved until I could no longer put a song on a repeat. To call it by its name, I was bored.

The cure has come. Instead of listening to music, I turned on the interviews of famous people — politicians, celebrities, and so on. That worked out so well — not only I was up to date on what’s happening in the world, I was learning as well.

Yet, I started to get bored as soon as I watched a few interviews with one person. The problem was obvious — in each next interview, celebrities and famous people were essentially telling the same things.

I was startled for the fact that seemingly smart people have nothing to talk about.

In a few interviews for several networks, Taylor Swift was still discussing relationships and feminism, Donald Trump was so commonly speaking of immigrants, taxes, and the wall. Soon enough I could give interviews the way Karlie Kloss or Rihanna, or anyone else would.

Who is to blame?

Truth is, I was quite often blaming people who were interviewed on talk-shows. I’d end up calling them narrow-minded, calling the blame on their publicists and agents who made them memorize a few questions and repeat them at each gig for the sake of the personal brand.

I was wrong.

Sure, celebrities are instructed as to what to say during the interviews. They are given advice and counsel. And still, on every interview, a celebrity simply answers a list of questions. It could be so that the answers are boring because they are bad. But what if the quality of the questions is to blame?

We answer what is asked of us

Having this post in mind, I started to re-watch the interviews. And here the thing was. Taylor Swift was asked about relationships just as Donald Trump was asked about the wall and immigrants.

Journalists know that a unique story is important. We fight for revelations. We seek something no one else talks about. Yet, we often kill our very own interviews, turning what could be a beautiful story into yet another mediocre headline.

An example, maybe? Sure, get it.

Here’s an interview that was given by Taylor Swift for ABC News in December 2014, aimed at her album promotion. She was interviewed by Barbara Walters whom I would not dare to bash or criticize.

Still, as I watched, I already knew a sad little pattern the interview will have.

Firstly, she’ll ask Taylor about her album and wonder why she went to pop. Then they’ll chat about relationships and sexism — and that’s when Walters or any other journalist will wrap up the interview by saying that “1989” is available.

And that’s basically what happened.

Why do journalists make boring interviews?

Now, to start with, I never did interview any celebrity. I don’t really have an inside view of what happens at the backstage of a talk-show interview. Still, having said that, I have observed some reasons of why journalists will be making boring interviews even when they have awesome, interesting, three-dimensional people that make the news by as much as opening their mouths.

1. Journalists want everything to go smoothly

When you have a guest on the show, it’s not just one interview that’s at stakes. You’re building a relationship, the one you’d like to last. That’s why a journalist wants to help his guest and make him comfortable. What’s the better way to do it if not to ask familiar questions that are easy to answer?

I’ve seen dozens of interviews where, out of personal respect, an interviewer helps his guest almost answering the questions in his place. I can’t judge, maybe it does help to create a working relationship. Still, turning a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview a guest and break the news into yet another boring interview doesn’t seem worthwhile to me.

2. Lack of research

The lack of research is such a common mistake that even best journalist make such. Here’s just an outtake of Jimmy Kimmel’s interview of Lilly Singh.

To me as a person who follows what she’s been doing, the interview did not feel revolutionary. Moreover, it felt borderline incompetent. Before you ask her whether she had the President on the show, just google it, man.

It seems that journalists sometimes do as little prep as simply googling the guest and not going any further than the first page of Google ranking. Coming out of that, how can you ask a unique question when you don’t even know the answers to common ones?

3. Following someone’s footsteps

There’s a way interviews have always been done. Some of the rules are common sense, others, though may not be written, are basic standards. That’s why, doing prep for an interview, a journalist looks at first at what his colleague has done interviewing the same guest.

Though we might not perceive it that way, every interview we watch as an example is transferred to our brains and is likely to influence the way we’ll write questions.

The problem of journalists following the standards of someone’s work is in general, highly discussed. By putting ourselves into limits, we don’t let creativity and innovation in the field.

4. Too much research

No, it’s not a joke.

As much as a lack of research, having too much information often plays the cruel joke with journalists. Not only they end up talking more than their guests (“See, I’m ready, I did my homework”) — that influences the way they ask questions. As a result, it might be an interview that’ll be interesting for a particular journalist to watch, yet not much so to the public.

Here’s the example of such behavior — watch how CloudyApples has interviewed Shakira. The celebrity has made only a few press appearances that day so a chance to get an interview was almost exclusive. Yet, meaning no offense to the blogger, a result of what happened will hardly be an example of the news or any kind of evergreen content whatsoever.

What’s to be done?

A lot of journalists who have gotten into the news have a strong story to support them. Most of those stories have a negative shade — in that case, a journalist needs to be a little bit aggressive to “trick” a guest into answering.

But what can be done when it’s not the case nor the goal of the interview? When all you want, in fact, is to have a decent time and some fun?

I strongly believe that there are ways to leave the interview having a unique story without any need to start an open confrontation. Moreover, in order to not be predictable, questions don’t have to be difficult or ambiguous. Here are some ways I’ve seen great journalists practice while interviewing celebrities.

1. Have a conversation, not an interrogation

It’s basic, you might think. That is, indeed, a textbook rule: a journalist has to listen to a guest and adjust the list of questions to the answers given by his guest. Still, so many hosts seem to be completely detached from the reality and focused on their questions, that I decided to put that basic rule once again.

I’ve seen a great example of how to do it. In fact, you’ve seen it yourself already. While Barbara Walters was interviewing Taylor Swift in 2014, she had a moment I enjoyed with all my heart. Here’s the one:

Taylor: When I go online and I go on Instagram, and I see a post, you know, from Emma who lives in Philadelphia, and she’s talking about how her day was at school that day, that helps me.

Barbara: You still do that?

Taylor: It’s the only thing that keeps me not feeling overwhelmed by the abnormality of my life.

Barbara: What’s the most abnormal?

Taylor: The most abnormal thing in my life is having sort of crowds from everywhere you go [auth: here you can think that it’s some cool fan-related thing]. And just, everywhere. So that starts happening and then you have to take security everywhere you go. All of a sudden, you realize that you’ve not been alone, truly, for five years.

Watch how Barbara does the build-up to what’s, to my mind, the most prominent part of the interview. And, truth is, she doesn’t even do much. A question like “You still do that?” doesn’t bring much sense into the interview. In fact, it’s a Yes/No question — and journalists are recommended to not ask those at all.

Taylor answers and the interviewer could move on. Barbara doesn’t do it. What she does instead is taking one specific word out of the context and targets it with a question. And it’s the bit like the following one that truly makes this interview worthwhile to me and many fans.

2. Take the questions out of the context

We are used to understanding things in the context. Some things are appropriate to be asked of one person yet not of the other. You’d treat one person differently from the other no matter how many rules for equality are out there in the world.

For the sake of a good interview, it’s often helpful to take a question you asked someone else and apply it to an entirely different personality. Better yet, some questions might seem foolish and not make much sense but, at the end of the day, they make the interview truly memorable.

For instance, I still remember the interview where Taylor Swift was asked whether or not she still believes in the 5-second rule.

3. Be specific

It’s easy for a celebrity to answer an ambiguous question. Let’s imagine a scenario in which there’s a celebrity, on one side, and a journalist, on the other. While a celebrity aims to promote her book, a journalist would rather discuss her recent breakup rumors.

If he approaches it like this, the method will backfire.

Journalist: Do you feel like writing a book has been challenging for you personally? Is it possible to take time to do something big while caring about the ones you love? [a clear hint on the breakup]

A celebrity: Well, there are challenges, for certain. Still, at the end of the day, it’s worth it. Now I have the book that everyone was waiting for, that my fans have been asking for, and I’m proud of it. When you look at a chunk of work you’ve done, you know all challenges were worth it.

While a journalist does not have a right to ask specifically about breakups, if you have a goal to find something out, make sure you communicate it loud, clear, and easy to answer.

4. Play games

There are a lot of talk-shows that involve all kinds of game and fun. The crowd is tough, and yet, people watch this type of content and it still gets its hits. Why? Simple as it is, games are unpredictable.

Also, by playing, you can give a viewer a hint on a person’s actual personality — how competitive, rude, loyal, or talented one is. While playing games is not the way to actually get the story, you can ask all of your questions in a short game-like way to relieve the tension your guest is experiencing.

5. Use what you have

At least one reason that makes your interview different from those that came out before is the environment. All the studios and spaces are different though they might at times seem the same.

Still, if you want to make sure that your interview is authentic, use the settings to your advantage. Quite obviously, the best example of doing it is “73 Questions With Vogue” — I couldn’t enjoy the way the interviewer uses the environment more, and it truly adds some uniqueness to the outcome.

We are not all so fortunate to interview celebrities. Still, half the interviews on media today are kind of boring and lack authenticity. So, if you are to have a talk with someone for a blog or a local newspaper, try to get the most out of it and not be boring.

Wikipedia has covered that part.