‘They’re sick of doing the interview’: How Virginia Trioli gets famous faces to open up

Whether driving through Mad Max country near Broken Hill with director George Miller, strolling with Kate Ceberano to St Kilda’s iconic live music venue, the Palais Theatre, or meeting Tim Minchin at his “home”, the Sydney Opera House, Virginia Trioli strikes an instant chord with the artists.

It’s into their “wild minds” that she delves for the second season of the ABC’s Creative Types with Virginia Trioli. As she draws out the inner workings of people whose bodies of work have helped shape Australia, the former ABC radio host quietly delivers a masterclass in her own art form – that of the interview.

Virginia Triloi interviews Mad Max director George Miller where the film was set, outside Broken Hill.

“These people have been interviewed over and over again,” says Trioli, who also speaks with designer Jenny Kee, violinist Richard Tognetti and Aboriginal artist Tony Albert. “If you ask them privately, they’ll probably tell you that they’re sick of it. They’re sick of doing the bloody interview when you’ve got a new film or a new piece of music, or a new production or new work. So, for me, it’s very important that, from the get-go, I show them that I am there to talk about the creative process. It’s remarkable how many times they say, ‘No one talks to me about that stuff’.”

Trioli credits series researcher Katey Grusovin with collating the “inches thick” background information and executive producer Jaya Balendra with making “This is Your Life” moments happen. But it is Trioli who gently guides the artists – not all of whom come willingly to the exercise – through the intimate details of their unique creative journeys.

“This is where the rapport is established,” says Trioli. “You’re saying, ‘Yes, you’re creating in a competitive world, but you also live an internal life that we don’t know about. And if you take my hand, and we go into this together, in trust, then I promise you we can reveal that world in a way that will make sense to the people who have wondered about you’. And then it just becomes a conversation that’s based on listening. I think that’s always been the skill set I’ve worked hardest on, for all of my career, just to try and master the art of listening … I’ve really had to learn that.”

Vriginia Trioli with musician Kate Ceberano, who she interviews at St Kilda’s Palais Theatre.

So much so that when she started her newspaper cadetship in 1990, as a court reporter for The Age, she tried to enrol in a barristers’ course in cross-examination at the Leo Cussens Centre for Law to improve her “weak” interviewing skills.

“They basically told me to piss off,” she says, laughing. “Like, ‘No, we don’t teach journalists’. But that was the beginning of me consciously studying the interviewers who I admired (Laurie Oates, Ellen Fanning, Jana Wendt), and I paid attention to what they were doing. I realised that they were listening – very, very carefully. And sometimes their best question was something like, ‘How so?’ Or, ‘What do you mean?’”

Trioli finds she now pays more attention to conversations in her personal life. “We have lost the art of the interview in our day-to-day conversations, where we sit there just waiting for our turn. I think listening is everything.”

She hopes the conversations on Creative Types not only offer windows into how these prolific artists, as George Miller puts it, “make meaning of the world”, but keep viewers connecting with the arts.

“With the cost of living, there’d be so many people who would think, ‘I would love to go on eBay and get myself an original Jenny Kee Flamingo Park [knit]’ or, ‘I’d love to go and see the Australian Chamber Orchestra’, but can’t afford a ticket,” says Trioli.

“You might love to buy a Tony Albert [painting], but there’s no way you could afford that. At the ABC, we have an absolute mission and responsibility to bring that stuff to people’s homes. Many can’t afford the tickets, but it does not mean that creativity isn’t huge in their life.”

Creative Types With Virginia Trioli returns at 8.30pm on Tuesday, April 1, on the ABC.

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