Tell me who you are
From Nardwuar to David Frost, an eclectic list of on-cam interviewers to check out
Sometimes you lose things that were important to you. They get lost during moves and breakups, to time and disrepair and sometimes just to overzealous spring cleaning. One of these losses for me were the tapes and audio files of phone interviews I’ve done over the years.
Writing for alt-weeklies meant doing lots of phone interviews in advance of shows and events. It’s a specific skill that started with research and prepping questions. Given that you were talking to people often in the middle of an interminable day packed with interviews just like yours, there was some strategy to finding the angles and insights that would not only make the piece interesting but manage to break through their press day haze long enough to get some good answers.
The interview itself requires a different muscle. Though a question list is a solid foundation, the more a short, forced interview could feel like a real conversation the better. Sometimes this meant following tangents down winding roads, sometimes it meant inserting your own anecdotes and observations into the mix to keep things flowing.
This last part is maybe why I’m fine with the loss. A frequent thought I had when listening back to early interviews was “for fuck’s sake, Murphy, shut up.” There’s a fine line between keeping it moving and using up someone’s else precious, monetized time to hear yourself speak.
My other major complaint was learning, time after time, that I sounded a lot less cool in real life than I did in my head. It didn’t help that the other voice on the line was usually someone inherently cool who was often employed in part because they had a great voice.
When I first moved into advertising, this skill started to atrophy from lack of use. But in recent years, it’s come back and I often do interviews for cultural research, casting, building content storylines or conducting off-cam interviews.
This specific background means that one thing I’m not great at is being on camera while doing interviews. Which is why I have so much respect for those that can do it well. Maybe I’ll return some day to share some of my favourite print profiles and podcast and radio interviewers, but for now let’s start with some great on-cam interviewers with archives worth checking out.
This list is by no means exhaustive and perhaps I should be reaching back to also showcase boomer legends like Dick Cavett, Howard Stern, Barbara Walters and Oprah (though this New Yorker profile is a must-read.) But, since this a free newsletter, I don’t have to, so I won’t.
Nardwuar: For many, Nardwuar the Human Serviette is the first (insane) name they think of when the subject of good interviewers comes up. Born John Ruskin, Nardwuar (“just a dumb stupid name like Sting”) was a radio show host that many people first encountered in a legendary interview with Pharell. Dressed in his customary and truly ludicrous tartan outfit, the interview unfolded like many of them would come to: skepticism giving way to incredulity giving way to respect in the face of a barrage of research and obscure flyers, records and memorabilia from their past. For Pharell, it begins with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.
There’s great interviews with a young Mac Miller, multiple meetings with Snoop and raucous and chaotic sessions with Odd Future and the entire A$AP Mob. But maybe my favourite is Questlove, someone known for having his own deep troves of arcane knowledge. Quest knows what’s coming, has been prepping for the interview and is ready for the “jackpot moment”, but, even still, he’s immediately stunned and can only laugh.
Not everyone is such a fan. He prompted Sonic Youth and Blur to behave like high school bullies, Henry Rollins cut him off quickly, as did Nas who called “a fucking psychopath.” Lil Uzi Vert seemed truly shook by the experience, saying “he knows too much” before actually running away from the interview (later sampling from the encounter for the end of “Futsal Shuffle 2020”.)
So how does he do it? Well it’s probably worth mentioning that his mom, Olga Ruskin, was journalist and he credits her for a lot.
“She proved to me that the next door neighbour had just as interesting a story as the celebrity. So she installed that in me, that everybody has a story. In other words, it is the interviewer's job to make the interviewee look exciting. Afterwards you can't go and say 'oh that person was boring.' No, it is up to you to bring out the best in that person.”
In terms of his research process, there’s a very specific answer on Quora that claims that he preps by visiting the subject’s family and interviewing them off-cam. But given that the source is Quora, I’m dubious. The answer he gave in this Nylon interview was much simpler and, for me, more satisfying:
“Most people are too busy… to delve into a subject, or too lazy. But it's right there. It's not that difficult for people to find.”
Sean Evans: People come to the Hot Ones videos for the premise and it’s a good one: guests are interviewed while eating chicken wings with progressively spicier hot sauce on them. The spice throw people off, which helps breakthrough the PR of it all, but it’s also just a clever structure that gives people something to do while talking.
But if they come for the wings and celebs, they stay for the host, Sean Evans. A former sports reporter, he’s renowned for solid research that leads to good, thoughtful questions. But like Nardwuar, he doesn’t think it’s rocket science.
“I saw an opportunity because most interview shows don’t do this level of research. They confuse their proximity with celebrity for actual celebrity and they don’t do the actual work. It almost sounds sad to say, but by virtue of taking it seriously and working really, really hard, we’ve kind of set ourselves apart from the pack.”
The series, born in Complex Magazine’s pivot-to-video era, has become a standard if odd stop on a publicity circuit. There are legendary episodes: chef Eddie Huang eating the wings in reverse order, Dave Grohl shooting Crown Royal, Eric Andre being Eric Andre and the Paul Rudd episode that spawned the “look at us” meme. But my fave remains the Key and Peele episode that was one the series’ early hits. There’s good questions, the two of them together are always gold, but it’s the naked, open hostility to Evans as heat host that does it for me (“Sean, you go to hell.”)
Amelia Dimoldenberg: Chicken Shop Date is a YouTube series where Dimoldenberg interviews musicians, athletes, actors and celebrities. In these interviews, loosely framed as dates in various chicken shops around London, she adopts a somewhat awkward persona. The combination of her profile, persona and premise, mixed with the fact the majority of her guests are black, have raised some valid questions about white privilege and occupying space in black culture.
While her commitment to the bit, to sit in the pocket of awkwardness, is commendable (actor Daniel Kaluuya seemed genuinely unsure how to proceed at times), the one I enjoyed most was with Rosalia. Maybe it’s because the persona seems to drop a bit, maybe it’s because I love Rosalia, but it’s honestly just a good hang hosted by someone who is secretly very skilled at it. Given that her hero is Louis Theroux, someone who could easily be on this list, maybe it shouldn’t be a shock.
Ziwe: Baited with Ziwe, the writer and comedian Ziwerekoru "Ziwe" Fumudoh’s first show, shares some similarities with Chicken Shop Date. It launched as a Youtube show, is intentionally awkward and brings up issues of race. However here confronting racial issues is intentional, intense and often uncomfortably funny.
Now an eponymously-titled tv show on Showtime, it’s sort of unclear to me why white guests would appear on the show, given how ruthless Ziwe can be. It’s presumably born of desire to participate in these discussions or maybe just look like you are, but it doesn’t usually go how they want. She talks to Gloria Steinem about the "WAP" lyrics, gets Fran Lebowitz to compare herself to Martin Luther King Jr and sort of tricks Phoebe Bridgers into accepting a “Bare Minimum Ally” award. Black people aren’t left off any easier: not sure I’ve ever seen anyone less comfortable than Micheal Che was the entire time he was with her. She’s so masterful at whatever this is exactly and in total command no matter who the guest is. Especially worth noting is her ability to using silence to help turn the tension up to 10.
David Frost: This one may seem out of place, but bare with me. British host, comedian and journalist David Frost conducted a series of interviews with former president Richard Nixon that were often referred to as “the trial that Nixon never had.”
The lead up to these conversations were intense, the stakes high for both of them and it led to a fascinatingly tense back and forth held over 12 days of taping. It was immortalized eventually in a play that became the basis for a movie but honestly they’re not better than the source material.
The reason I’ve always been fascinated with this interview is that one of the main reasons the interview even happened was because Nixon's staff thought that he could outsmart Frost, who had previously done something off a softball interview with him.
“Frost was criticized as a lightweight who wouldn’t have the gravitas to challenge the president, but he had prepared himself well — eventually confronting Nixon about previously unreleased White House transcripts. Perhaps more important, he spent the first eight days of interviews treating Nixon like a human being. He knew the journalistic cons and used them.”
The takeaway is clear: if you can’t bring hot sauce or obscure records to the interview, make sure you pack your research.