There comes a point in every interview when the awkward question must be posed—the one about your star’s bitter divorce, or alarming weight gain, or extended hospital stay due to that old euphemism “exhaustion.” Alternately, there is the question that will never go away, the one that will be asked in perpetuity: Kate Winslet will always be made to discuss her nonexistent weight problem, Jennifer Lopez will forever be asked about her tuchis, George Clooney cannot elude questions about why he won’t “settle down.” These tired perennials never fail to irritate your subject, and rightly so, but there is, for reasons that mystify, an insatiable demand for endless variations of the same answer.
There is no method to erase the dread of asking the awkward question, but there is one way to at least minimize the damage, should your star become incensed. Remember above all else that if you are in a restaurant with your subject (and as I have pointed out, 95 percent of the time, that is where you will be), get the check and pay for your meal before the question is asked. Otherwise, if you flame out, that wait for the check will be long. And tense.
Every interviewer goes about this process in the same way. After you have safely signed the bill (do not attempt to ask the question if the waiter has just taken your credit card, because God only knows when he might return and it’s just too risky), affect a sheepish, self-effacing demeanor. Then say, “I certainly don’t want to pry into your personal affairs, which are absolutely none of my business (light chuckle), but my editors wanted me to ask about your eating disorder/felonious brother/lip augmentation, even though (bemused headshake, derisive, empathetic snort) I don’t really understand when it became the public’s right to know this stuff.”
It is useless to try to wriggle out of the awkward question, because prior to your interview most magazine editors will send you an e-mail in all capital letters saying ESSENTIAL TO THE PIECE, even though in many cases, they are questions that you wouldn’t ask some of your closest friends. How’d the abortion go? Why, exactly, are you and your husband getting divorced? Was it the whole hooker thing?
In a different setting, many people would throw down their napkin in disgust and stalk off at this sort of prying, but not in this particular zone. If you have softened the person enough, or if they’re still new to the game, they may offer up a personal anecdote. Or they may provide a general comment, which will at least result in your getting paid. You simply preface the parsimonious quote with a wordy, inflamed lead-in: “Of the shocking charge that she had her housekeeper act as her drug runner and subsequent grim stretch in rehab, she says simply, ‘I just want to move on with my life.’”
This sends a message to your editor: Hey, I tried. Me, I’m not scared to ask the tough questions. It’s not like I can physically force her to go into detail.
My check-grabbing lesson came courtesy of Flashdance and The L Word star Jennifer Beals. At that point, I was pursuing in earnest more work at women’s magazines. Doing profiles for them was wonderfully pleasant. After years of dealing with hungover rock stars, I just wanted people to behave themselves, and to my profound relief, most of my subjects were affable female country music or sitcom stars, all of them roughly my age. I’d fly into Nashville or Los Angeles, have a just-girls chat on how they balance work and family and what bad habits they wish they could break. Then I’d fly home and write the piece. Easy. Painless.
My favorite was Lifetime magazine, a print extension of the network that lasted two years, during which time I had coffee or brunch with reliable sellers like Faith Hill or CSI’s Marg Helgenberger. “Couldn’t be nicer,” I would inevitably report back.
Then came Beals. She had a reputation for being a prickly interview, but surely, I thought, not for soft, friendly Lifetime. Beals, a well-traveled Yale graduate, just didn’t play the anecdote game—which I would have completely respected if I hadn’t had a job to do—and was known to be incredibly guarded about her personal life.
I met her at a restaurant in Santa Monica. Tall and serene, she glowed with yogic good health. She was wary but cordial—until, that is, I asked her about her husband.
“I just have to throw in one question about him,” I said apologetically. “Maybe something about how you met him.”
Her tight smile vanished, her eyes narrowed, and she snapped in a loud voice that she didn’t have to do anything, and no, she was not going to answer. As she went on, her voice rising, a concerned waiter hovered nearby.
There was something surreally appalling about being dressed down by Alex Owens: Pittsburgh welder by day, exotic dancer by night. I tried to maintain my composure after she calmed down, but the rest of our lunch was terse and uncomfortable, made more so by the interminable wait for the goddamn check.
I was still rattled when I arrived back at my room at the ritzy hotel that I had wrangled. As I closed the door and slipped into a robe, I was horrified to burst into tears.
“I can’t believe Jennifer Beals is making me cry,” I sobbed to Dinah on the phone.
“Who the hell is she?” Dinah said. “She was in a dance movie and she can’t even dance. Is something else bothering you?”
Celebrities were bothering me, and while I loved my fancy hotels, a creeping lonesomeness always set in by the second day. Some of my friends with kids couldn’t wait to travel for business to get away from the tumult at home. I didn’t have any tumult at home.
After I hung up with Dinah, the phone rang again. It was the folks, whom Dinah had obviously alerted.
“Hi, kid,” said my father.
“We heard what happened,” chimed in my mother on the bedroom extension. “Stupid bitch.”
“Too bad,” said my father. “She was really good in that movie where she had cancer.”
I stopped snuffling. “What?”
“The one where Shirley MacLaine was her mother. Remember?”
“Jay,” said my mother, “Jay. That was Terms of Endearment. This was the one who was in Flashdance.”
“Oh,” said my father. “Well, she was good in that, too.”
Someone was knocking on my door. “Folks, I’ve got to go,” I said.
I opened the door to a maid. “Do you want turn-down service, miss?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, ushering her in. It was embarrassing to have her turn down the bed while I was perfectly capable of doing it myself, but I wanted the chocolate that she put on the pillow.
She looked critically at me as I blew my nose. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Me? Oh, sure,” I said, throwing the tissue away. “I interview people for a living and I just had a bad experience. I don’t know why I’m upset. Some people get snapped at every day.”
She plumped the pillows with a neutral expression, but I saw her eyes flick toward me.
“It was Jennifer Beals,” I said.
“Flashdance,” said the maid, whose name was Ana.
“Right.”
She turned and looked at me. “Famous people,” she said. “Some are nice, some are so crazy.”
I stopped sniffling and suddenly felt ashamed. “I imagine you see a lot of strange behavior,” I said.
Ana pulled back the comforter on the bed and expertly folded the sheet. “Oh, honey, you don’t even know. And we can’t say a thing. We just do our jobs. Mariah Carey was here a few weeks ago with bodyguards by the door. I was sent up there to clean the room, but they wouldn’t let me in,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.” I pictured her hesitating in front of the door with her cart.
Ana reached over and patted my hand. “Don’t you worry about it,” she said, turning to go. “She doesn’t know you. That’s what I tell myself: They don’t know me.”
A half hour later there was another knock at the door. It was Ana again, accompanied by one of the bellhops, who carried a towering basket of fruit and chocolate.
“I told him what happened,” she said, “and we thought you might like this.” Somehow they had finagled it from Guest Relations.
Of course, I burst into tears again. I invited them in, and we spent fifteen minutes trading celebrity war stories—theirs far more gruesome because, as the bellhop pointed out, “they don’t see us, so for some reason they think we don’t see them.”
After we were through commiserating, Ana glanced at the clock by my bed. “We should go,” she said, making for the door. “Hope you feel better.”
When I got back to New York, I vowed to make a quick getaway in future interviews, after potentially explosive questions. I also sent Ana the biggest bouquet of flowers that I could find.