Today’s stars are too controlling for their own good
In 2015, Beyoncé Knowles appeared on the cover of Vogue but, in an unusual step, refused to be interviewed by the fashion bible. Instead, the magazine accompanied its photo shoot with an essay written by a journalist who admitted they had “no contact with [Knowles’s] camp”.
Earlier this week, US Vogue released its coveted annual September issue, with Knowles on the cover again and this time, instead of a written-through interview, or even a question and answer piece, the article on her consisted of a series of direct quotes presented without context, “as told to” journalist Clover Hope.
And it seems clear who was in charge: justifying the piece last week, editor Anna Wintour commented: “Who is better to write about Beyoncé than Beyoncé?”
But while Beyoncé’s decision to shun conventional journalistic practice made international headlines three years ago, this time around it was roundly accepted – because in the interim it has quietly become the norm for heavyweight stars to be given carte blanche to determine their own press.
Last year, Taylor Swift submitted a poem in lieu of actual face-to-face conversation for her Vogue cover. Canadian Grammy-winner The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) conducted an interview for Harper’s Bazaar by email, while in 2015 Rihanna did the same for music magazine The Fader – with a limit of five questions. In 2017, meanwhile, Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris gave a notorious interview via the medium of text message. She subsequently expressed her gratitude for “not hav[ing] my words twisted for once”.
It’s easy to sympathise with Jackson’s caution, given the enormous pressure placed upon her father by the press. But media exposure has long been part of the celebrity dance: as long as there have been famous people, there have been hacks like me around writing about them – not to mention an army of thousands getting paid to link both up.
The past 20 years have seen a gradual closing in of the A-list ranks. Until the Nineties, it was not unknown for a magazine journalist to spend several days interviewing a star, often in their own home, but such access has become almost nonexistent. These days, writers are more often offered 20 minutes on the phone with a threat from the publicist to cut the call off if they stay on the line too long. Who or what is to blame for this new reticence? The answer lies partly in the growth of social media. Every word a celebrity publicly utters can now be scrutinised and spread by the masses, and it’s made stars petrified of the effect one throwaway comment could have on their career. But social media has also granted stars the power to control their image themselves, presenting only exactly what they like, when they like, through their social media accounts and stay determinedly “on brand”. Knowles didn’t give a big exclusive to the press about her pregnancy with twins; she just posted a self-commissioned photo shoot on her personal Instagram account.
It makes you yearn for the loose lips and relaxed manner of the oldschool star – someone like Kathleen Turner, who made headlines this week thanks to a searing, ferociously funny interview with US entertainment website Vulture, in which she took aim at Donald Trump, Jack Nicholson and Elizabeth Taylor, among others, while discussing the brutal treatment she received as an Oscar-nominated actress who had the temerity to develop rheumatoid arthritis. “The ‘difficult’ thing was pure gender crap,” she also said, in regards to her hostile reputation. “If a man comes on set and says, ‘Here’s how I see this being done’, people go, ‘He’s decisive’. If a woman does it, they say, ‘Oh, f---. There she goes.’”
The conversation generated a global reaction because such unguarded honesty from A-listers these days is increasingly and depressingly rare. And “old-fashioned” interviews such as Turner’s are important. They turn the artists we admire into humans, just like us, so we can challenge and understand them better. I don’t want my stars offering up antiseptic perfection: I want indiscretion, ribaldry, and most of all vulnerability.
But the best pop culture interviews can also be great fun; when celebrities micro-manage their image, it also makes their work far less interesting.
Many successful musicians and actors will piously argue that all they care about is “the craft”, not fame. But any album or film benefits from the unguarded glimpses we get of the people behind it: how their experiences, opinions and weaknesses have fed into its creation. When our stars have absolute control over their personas, and we, the audience, must feed off the scraps of the banal information they deign to offer us, it’s art that finally loses out.
Stars present only exactly what they like, when they like, through social media and stay ‘on brand’