As much as I like him as an actor, Johnny Depp is a very nervous and mumbling interviewee. I don’t know if he’s quit smoking but he chain smoked during his Actor’s Studio interview (as did Peter Falk).
Larry King said- many years ago- that Demond Wilson from Sanford and Son was the worst interviewee he’d ever had (he later amended that after a couple of really bad ones in the '90s and 2000s). He’s almost a non-celebrity now but I mention him because he was interviewed on the local news where I live (Montgomery, AL) where he was appearing in a play and is still obnoxious, interrupting the interviewer and then fumbling with his mike and taking it off before she’s finished with the breakaway. Apparently just a real jerkwad, a bit surprising since he left acting for the ministry.
Richard Lewis has been mentioned twice already but he gave a really clumsy and painful interview on The Daily Show a few weeks ago. Stewart was clearly pissed.
Dead now, but Jack Palance was a notoriously awkward interview subject. He didn’t get asked much until City Slickers made him briefly A-list, but then he quickly stopped being re-asked.
And of course Billy Bob Thornton had his famous little psychotic episodette on Jian Ghomeshi’s radio show a couple of years ago. There were threads about it at the time. He still blames it on Ghomeshi last time I heard him mention it, though Ghomeshi was (as he usually is) an excellent interviewer.
Lou Reed tends to take on an air of hostility when interviewed. John Lydon is fun in a similar fashion, and usually manages to drop a few pearls along the way - Tom Snyder interviewing him on the Tomorrow Show circa 1980 is one of the most antagonistic interviews I’ve ever seen.
Brando seemed kind of closed-off when Dick Cavett interviewed him in 1973. Don’t know if he was always like that.
Jodie Foster is another one that I feel gives bad interviews. It seems she so guarded and doesn’t want to do an interview but really just wants to come out and make a statement and leave.
I recently found a radio station that carries his show in the afternoon, but I didn’t realize he’d been at it for that long. I saw him back in his indie-rock days; does that ever get brought up on the show?
I saw Viggo Mortenson do an interview to promote that horse movie he was in. Probably the most boring interview I’ve ever seen. Lifeless and dull, with a monotone voice.
I often wonder why people like him, who make a living playing dynamic characters, seem to have no spark of their own.
I remember the Connie Chung interview with Brando from some years back, and although it was a little different, he was more talkative that I would have expected. I say the interview was “different,” in that in most interviews, there seemed to be a lot more conversation between the two as opposed to just Q&A.
Conan O’Brien did an interview with Don Martin from “Mad Magazine” in his first season. I thought it was a great idea for an interview, but it also ended up being pretty stiff and lifeless.
Brando did a lively interview with Larry King in the years before his death. The interview was taped at Brando’s home and Brando was in pretty good spirits. IIRC he even kissed Larry at one point.
John Davidson is one of the original Kings of Smarm (he might be god-emperor of it by now- I’m convinced he’s a high level CIA operative because there’s no way he’d have a successful show biz career except as a cover) and was always painful to watch on interview shows, though I haven’t seen him on one in quite a while. He’s trying so hard to be clever and funny and cute, and succeeding at none of the above, the host usually wants to slug him.
And speaking of comedians named Lewis: Jerry Lewis. Pompous, arrogant, bitter, thin-skinned, and convinced of not only his own greatness but of the world’s ungratefulness for somebody of his greatness. Tends to be morbidly serious in interviews save for an occasional “Laaaaaaaaady!” or other recall to his career. (Frankly I’ve never understood how enough people found that manic retarded-voice geek character he used to do funny to give him a living, let alone make him some kind of icon.)
The Late Tony Curtis could emit a similar vibe in interviews.
Someone else I remember as being a boring interview, Rue McClanahan. Actually, it wasn’t much of an interview. It was sometime in the 1990’s I believe and there were cameras in her home (she may have done some remodeling). Anyway, I watched her wondering how the hell somebody who could be funny and amusing could give such a dull and boring interview.
It does, but rarely and only when it’s relevant. It’s not like Nancy Grace’s “WHEN I WAS A PROSECUTOR WE MADE THE DEFENDANT WRESTLE A LIVE CHIMP {Squawk!}” my-show-means-all-about-me kind of way, just when he’s talking to a musical guest or one he’s met before when he was a rocker and it’s a valid point to make.
Kinky Friedman was on the show recently and said that Billy Bob had expressed some remorse about that interview. At the end of the show Kinky seemed determined to help Jian and Billy Bob bury the hatchet.
Yes it does. Sometimes guests who you wouldn’t expect to know of Moxy Früvous do bring it up. And when it happens you can almost hear him blush. This also just happened recently…Nick Lowe maybe?
That’s fair enough. I don’t have a good sense of him as an interviewer yet, but the band he was in used to do a great live show. I hope he’s a success and doing something he loves.
Thornton was there with his band and had specified that the interview was to be only about his music, not about his acting career. So, Jian did a short introduction, giving an overview of Thornton, just mentioning the fact that listeners might know him from his Oscar-winning acting career, but that he was there to talk about his music. From that point on Thornton behaved bizarrely, refusing to answer any questions coherently. It came out that he was pissed that Jian even mentioned the fact that he was an actor and suggested that Jian implied that music was some kind of farting-around hobby. Then Thornton also refused to play – he’s the drummer and singer – so his band played an “instrumental” version of the song they had planned to play.