ÖOne of my favorite things to do in the UK is Boxing Day. In the United States, we don’t have a name for Boxing Day, which is crazy because it has such a special feel that it obviously deserves its own nomenclature. Moving here and finding out on Boxing Day was like finding out that there was a specific name for 7pm on a Sunday or 5pm on a Friday as it absolutely should be, and Germany probably got that covered.
As regular readers know, this week is my favorite of the year, and not just because, as Bridget Jones once said, “normal service is ceasing and it is normal to stay. in bed as long as you want, shut your mouth and drink alcohol whenever you have the chance, including in the morning. “This is also the time to take stock of how the year is going and what the next will be. For a moment the future seemed unfathomable. Now that the vaccines are coming, that’s not entirely the case – but my job is still a bit lost.
Much of this so-called job consists of interviewing celebrities face to face. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the coronavirus’s greatest tragedy was putting an end to such encounters, but it is true that being interviewers at a time when face-to-face meetings were expressly banned has been an uproar are. A bit like a street lamp lighter at the start of WWII: it’s time to find new skills.
In the spring, I was skeptical when my editors told me I was going to do phone interviews or something completely made up called Zoom. The whole point of a celebrity profile is to give readers a sense of the person. How can you do this just by talking to them over a broadband connection? Also – she moans and pulls all the toys out of the stroller – where’s the fun in? me? Some of the greatest experiences of my life were interviewing famous people: taking Carl Hiaasen’s boat in Florida, walking around Key West with Judy Blume. I don’t want to go into my room at the front, but making a phone call from there isn’t that memorable.
My first telephone interview during the Covid era was with the writer Anne Tyler. I had low expectations, but I was wrong: Tyler’s delicacy shone on the transatlantic line. In fact, the only thing I mistakenly found pessimistic about this year was the interviews: They pretty much all went well, even though they weren’t in the same room.
Better than good: you were great. Interviewing is all about listening, and when I do it from a distance, I focus on it instead of being distracted by outsiders. The description of the extraordinary way of speaking of fashion editor André Leon Talley – all the polite manners of the South with European accents – probably at least conveyed his personality and described his equally extraordinary physical appearance. When she spoke to Geena Davis on the phone late at night, she gave our bed in LA, me in London, an intimate feel that I can’t imagine if we’d met in person.
Circumstances helped too. Everyone locked in the house was a leveler. There aren’t the usual hierarchies when we talk to Tom Hanks or Ethan Hawke when we know we’re all in our pants at home. This gave the process a new kind of slack, with celebrities willing to chat well beyond the allotted time (unknown under normal circumstances) and give up the usual publicist-approved speech for more personal matters. If I had met one of them personally, the interviews would of course have been different: but I don’t know whether they would have been better.
Many magazine editors are now concerned that interviews, Schmaccin vaccine, might look like this forever. Now celebrities know they can get away with the phone and zoom. How will you ever be convinced to meet dirty journalists in person again? But I think they’re getting this wrong: celebrities will do what studios and labels tell them to do. So the question is not whether celebrities will conduct face-to-face interviews after this pandemic ends – is it? Yes, I love to have experiences, but do I love them more than working without leaving my bed? Very definite. After all, it’s unlikely I’ll ever have to go to a yoga studio again now that I can take Zooms lessons.
I’ve always considered myself a sociable person who didn’t consider it a party unless 150 people were invited. But maybe the lock revealed my true hermetic self? I’ve gotten into the habit of sitting on the couch every night like someone born out of it. This poses a potentially more serious problem than Covid: If I am definitely, if only mentally, locked up, then how the hell am I going to do my job in the future? Fortunately, a celebrity might have solved that problem: during that brief window of time between this fall’s lockdowns, Helena Bonham Carter suggested that we do the interview in my house rather than her house, which we did too. So, Al Pacino, Madonna, Hilary Mantel? Go left at the kiosk and it will be the blue door on your right. I’ll see you on my couch.
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