Angela Mollard: Death of the celeb chat is a bad model for readers

The celebrity interview is on its deathbed. Social media now gives stars their own megaphones with which to deliver their monologues, writes Angela Mollard.

Cindy, Christy, Naomi, Linda.

As soon as I saw that the four original supermodels were appearing in the September issue of British and American Vogue I couldn’t wait to get my eyes on it.

I had some interest in how the glamorous foursome scrubbed up but the pictures were secondary. I wanted the story.

What would Linda say all these years later about her famous comment that she wouldn’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day?

How does Cindy now reflect on her former marriage to Richard Gere and their decision to buy an advert in The Times declaring that they were both heterosexual and monogamous?

As for Naomi, what’s it like being the single mother of a newborn at the age of 53?

The great thing about interviewing people who’ve had long careers is that they’ve had time to reflect.

How do the models feel about ageing? How has the death earlier this year from breast cancer of Tatjana Patitz, the fifth supermodel who starred with them in George Michael’s Freedom 90 video, impacted them?

What did they really think of heroin chic, the fashion moment so troubling that the American president, Bill Clinton, weighed in saying it was not necessary “to glamorise addiction to sell clothes”.

September issue of British and American Vogue.

Yet in the hullabaloo surrounding the photoshopping of the Vogue images little attention has been paid to what these middle-aged women actually said.

Unfortunately, there are few revelations in the Vogue interview and while I suspect that’s less to do with the skill of the journalist and more the reticence of the supers and their publicists, it doesn’t bode well for the TV show they’re promoting. It’s all very well controlling your own story – as the quartet have done for their forthcoming Apple TV docuseries – but if you want an audience you do have to offer some insights.

Sadly, the celebrity interview is on its deathbed. Social media now gives stars their own megaphones with which to deliver their monologues and when they do submit to an interview it’s typically advertising masquerading as journalism. Consequently, we learn all about Jennifer Aniston’s hair products or Jennifer Lopez’s cocktail brand and very little about what it means to be Jennifer.

The supermodels might argue that this is a good thing; that decades after they became household names it’s time to be the boss of your image and words.

And yet as someone who has interviewed celebrities for 30 years I know it’s a vital part of the fame economy. Interviews are not there to produce “gotcha” moments but to give fans a deeper understanding of a person and their work. Creativity does not exist in and of itself; it’s produced and inspired by people at the vanguard of a cultural moment. And magic can emerge from the interview process if you’re brave enough to give yourself over to it.

Every time I sit down with someone famous I have one purpose: to help the audience know the essence of them. I don’t want to trip them up or embarrass them.

Peter Overton clashed with the Hollywood star during the 2005 interview.

When I interviewed one star he continued to drink rum and cokes without offering me a beverage. I didn’t mention it in the resulting article because it didn’t represent who he was; he was so focused on telling me about some tough moments he’d been through that courtesies were irrelevant. And here’s a secret: the more an interviewee is willing to give about themselves, the less the writer has to scaffold the article with their own observations and interpretations.

If Evangelista was to say that her $10,000 remark reflected the times and that was the going rate because she and her ilk were so in demand, that’s more interesting than a writer referencing the quote in the context of her being lazy or greedy.

Interviewers rarely hang their subjects. If they come across badly it’s usually on them. Witness Tom Cruise’s interview with Nine’s Peter Overton. “Put your manners back in,” the movie star replied to a perfectly reasonable question from the broadcaster. Ditto Oprah Winfrey did not ask Cruise to jump on her couch.

It’s natural for an interested public to want to know more about those they admire. Fans have pumped up the Instagram followings of the Matildas in the past weeks and Sam Kerr had barely wiped the sweat from her brow on Wednesday night before she was quite rightly using her platform to call for more funding for her sport.

Anyway, in case anyone thinks I have a one-sided perspective, I was recently interviewed for the 5 of My Life podcast where the subject chooses a book, song, movie, place and possession as a springboard to tell stories about their life. Towards the end the host Nigel Marsh – he of the best-selling Fat, Forty and Fired – threw a curve ball: “In regards to the end of your marriage, do you look back and see a fork in the road, a sliding door moment where the issues were solvable?”

Brilliant question. You’ll have to listen to the podcast – out on Tuesday – to discover if I answered it.