I’m not a big fan of the interview. It’s a lot of questions I don’t have answers for, a lot of questions about the music industry.
The first interview I gave to the press was in 1987 when some people thought a previous machine at Cern, called LEP, might have enough energy to produce the particle.
A lot of times, going into the interview, you have an idea of maybe what you want to talk about. And the people you are interviewing have an idea of what they want to talk about.
I don’t have a real plan when I do an interview. I have some themes that I want to hit. But I don’t have a set list of questions that I knock off.
Whatever it is, if you draw, you paint, you’re a carpenter, you play football, the more you do it, you’re a journalist, the more stories you write, the more people you interview and navigate your way through these different personalities to get your story, the better you’re going to get at it. Acting’s no different.
Oprah was famous for going to a garden party and ad-libbing. She could literally interview people for a half hour about nothing, and it was entertaining. She had her own show before she had her own show.
I don’t think I’m better than everyone else at anything, but I am very quick at organizing a big mass of interview tape into a structure.
For almost every interview, I had to have others translate for me, and look for someone to do that. I had a lot of miserable moments. But my teammates treated me well and helped me gain confidence.
Sometimes I will tweet an interview I have coming up and ask my followers what questions they have for the celebrity. I feel that way I can really know first hand what people want to hear answered.
Every black American is bilingual. All of them. We speak street vernacular and we speak ‘job interview.’
I don’t understand these politicians who want to be president and complain when they get a tough interview.
I want to interview the most important people in the world and have everyone in America the next day going, ‘Did you see that?’
Tons of people inspire my music, and now when I do an interview, I’m scared to say who they are.
I flew to Los Angeles to interview Vinnie Jones and Piers Morgan for the BBC and spent 11 hours in economy on BA, and the leg room was fine. In business class, Virgin, BA, and Emirates are good. I’ve flown business class on Kingfisher, which has proper couches.
I applied to Oxford in the ’80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene from ‘Billy Elliot.’ People were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life.
It is harder to lie in an interview. A good interview – and it can be polite – is not a one way street like a candidate controlled ad. An interview is not programmed by the candidate and so the candidate can’t be exactly sure what will be asked.
I started getting Twitter followers after I started doing press for ‘Fargo.’ One of my best friends from college is a librarian, and she started tracking after each interview how many Twitter followers I got. She and her librarian friends were like, ‘We’re going to make a graph.’ And I was like, ‘Alright, nerds.’
I’m a reporter – if I don’t interview someone, I don’t have much to say, and I definitely can’t just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me.
I actually find it a lot easier to interview people I don’t agree with because I’m far more curious about how they’ve arrived at that place.
I was doing an interview with a curator, and he asked me to sum up art in one word. Before he even finished asking the question, I said, ‘Impurity.’ Because that’s it.
I’m not really that private of a person. I live in a small town and I’m very neighborly. I go out to dinner just about four nights a week and sit and talk to people. I’m not that private, so it’s not that strange to do an interview and try to share a little bit of your life.
And the Institute sent me a little film footage of Kinsey himself preparing to do an interview for television to talk about his work, so that was quite valuable for me.
If you’re coming to do an interview with me, you should know about me. It’s not that it’s ‘cos I’m Wizkid; I’d even hate it if you were coming to interview my friend and asked him the same question. You’re here for an interview, so you should know who you’re doing the interview with.
Honestly we never lied to people about who we were. Usually the wackier interviews came to pass because the interview subjects, aware that we were Comedy Central, just wanted to get their stories out.
Courtney Love is so famous among journalists for her loquaciousness that the joke is that you don’t have to worry about questions when you interview her – just be sure you have lots of tape.
I’m very private, not the interview type.
News channels have always had interview shows, but we need different kinds of interviews with different kinds of interviewers – interviewers who bring different life experiences to the table.
Of course ‘Horizon’ had made an impact on me from a young age, but it was also humbling to meet and interview eminent scientists, and hear their high opinion of the series and of the science presented on the BBC more generally.
Before an interview, I’ll go down a rabbit hole of research – it’s amazing how many little nuggets you can pick up from watching YouTube videos.
I’ve been reading a lot about North Korea ever since I got the part in ‘The Interview’ because it’s just such a fascinating place. There are so many amazing stories of bravery coming out of there.
My brain is always whizzing around with worries: could I have done an interview better? Have I prepared enough for the next one? If it’s really bad, I’ll listen to an audiobook or use the Headspace app, and then my brain usually goes back to sleep.
The biggest deficit in terms of gender equality at Ozon lay in our IT department. So we made a decision, along with our key IT leaders, to remove all filters and systemically interview all the women who apply.
Movies like ‘The Interview’ and ‘Team America: World Police’ don’t often show the realities of life in North Korea and the human rights violations perpetrated by the government there.
My first ever interview for ‘Blue Peter’ was a film with JK Rowling.
When I reflect on the Colbert interview, it moved so quickly that what we didn’t do was define white privilege, and I wish we had done that. White privilege is the benefit resulting from white being seen as the standard, regardless of gender and income.
I came to darts from rugby and I was chucked into the deep end. Back then I never thought I could talk to anyone in an interview. But if you put me up to speak in front of 10 or 20 people now I still couldnt do that.
I don’t mind anyone asking me any questions, I’ve got nothing to hide. I like it to be as real as it is, that’s what I call an interview.
I’ve learned that people latch onto labels and stereotypes. There was a period when I was asked in every single interview how I liked being the new Frank Sinatra… I think people will soon realize that I do a lot more than interpret old songs.
I had always liked, well, who didn’t love Lestat and fall in love with ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ and ‘Nosferatu,’ and Coppola’s ‘Dracula’ with the awesome costumes? So I loved all that.
I remember failing my Princeton interview. My mom wanted me to apply because ever since I was a kid she had this dream that I would apply to Princeton, but it was just not happening.
I don’t want to be a lobbyist. I want to provide strategic advice to companies. I said both of those things in the course of the interview, and I made clear this is a matter only for after I had become a private citizen and I was no longer a member of parliament.
The fact that the Meghan and Harry interview was aired while Philip was in hospital did not trouble him. What did worry him was the couple’s preoccupation with their own problems and their willingness to talk about them in public.
When you are interviewing someone, never let your camera person turn off the camera. The second you turn off the camera, they’ll say the magic thing that you’d been looking for the whole interview. People want to relax after the performance is done. Don’t be afraid of awkward silence. That is your friend.
I feel like in an interview situation, it’s a kind of intimacy that I can understand and handle – versus in real life, when I’m much more of a bumbler and have a hard time.
I will interview bigwigs if I get the chance, but you are seldom surprised by people in power – you’ve got to get awfully damn close to get anything new.
I’d love to interview Mark Cuban!
Every reporter inhales skepticism. You interview people, and they lie. You face public figures, diligently making notes or taping what is said, and they perform their interviews to fit a calculated script. The truth, alas, is always elusive.
I’m persistent. In the early ’60s, when I first started making the rounds in New York for theater work, I became more and more enraged every time I had an interview or audition that went nowhere, and became more determined. I haven’t lost that.
Every drummer I’ve ever spoken to or read an interview with – my dad is always in their top three. I’m honored to share his name and represent him all these years after he’s gone.
I’ll never forget my interview with Barry Humphries – one of the oddest I’ve ever done. He insisted that for half the time he appeared as Dame Edna. So I interviewed the real Barry Humphries in a suit and tie, and then I interviewed Edna in full fig in her dressing room, where she criticised Barry mercilessly.
