Kitabı oxu: «Confessions of a Showbiz Reporter»
HOLLY FORREST
Confessions of a Showbiz Reporter
Table of Contents
Title Page
Cyber celebrities
Just another sunday night
College
Getting started
Publicists
London
Festivals
Premieres
Home life
Freelance
Bodyguards
Sources
Flirting
Johnny Depp
Junkets
The Family
The movie of my life
Almost famous
Press conferences
Sarah Jessica Parker
Boy bands
Old Rockers
No personal questions
Personal questions … please!
The good, the bad, and the interview
Beyoncé
TV Totty
The camera adds ten pounds
Food
Beauty
Clash of the egos
Money
Kate Moss
Cannes
Secrets
Rihanna
I’ll always have Paris
Reality TV
Adele
Los Angeles
Technology
Bruce Willis
Child stars
Middle Age
I Am Cynic
Watching films
Tom Hanks
Demands
Harrison Ford
Tom Cruise
Rappers
Obituaries
Hugh Jackman
Smells
A new age
Epilogue
Pop quiz
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Confessions of a Showbiz Reporter is part of the bestselling ‘Confessions’ series. Also available:
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
As you might have heard said before a film, everything here is ‘inspired by true events’. However, to protect confidentiality some names have been changed and certain elements of the stories have been fictionalised. Nonetheless, they remain an honest reflection of my experience working in showbiz journalism over many years. Enjoy!
Cyber celebrities
Top ten celebrity internet searches of 20121
Kim Kardashian
Justin Bieber
Miley Cyrus
Rihanna
Lindsay Lohan
Katy Perry
Selena Gomez
Jennifer Aniston
Nicki Minaj
Taylor Swift
These ten people are basically my bread and butter.
In my time as a showbiz reporter, the biggest change I’ve seen is just how much we rely on these internet searches. The web might have started out as a geek’s playground in the nineties, but it’s now entirely mainstream – and it’s my biggest outlet. I write stories that go up on it, I research celebs that I’m interviewing with it and I buy things from ASOS through it when I’ve got an event to attend. Like it is for many people, the internet is part of my job’s daily routine.
In my line of work, though, the internet has achieved a fairly unique breakthrough: it has given you more power. You’re my boss. True, someone needs to write features about these stars in the first place, but once they’re online, it’s up to you who you search for. Just look at the first two names for proof. Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber became global brands purely through the power of the internet; fans latched on to their appeal way before us in the press. I’m not sure the people watching grainy footage of Kim getting it on with her boyfriend were the same as those watching a 12-year-old Justin singing R’n’B on YouTube, but the principle is the same. The media can still do a lot to fuel a showbiz fire, but more now than ever, what’s hot is often out of our hands. With a largely free internet at our fingertips, the celebrity world is more accessible than ever before.
So after I’ve done my bit – writing and researching articles, interviewing celebrities, attending junkets – it’s over to you. Who you spend your time looking up determines who we spend our time focusing on. If you resent that eminent scientists and liberal thinkers are missing from the list, start searching for a few and maybe we’ll have to take notice. But that’s the great thing about modern media: it’s no longer so full of snobby journalists hiding out in their ivory towers, bleating about what they fancy and taking no notice of their audience. The internet’s too transparent for that. These days, we’re all in this showbiz world together.
And what a world it is …
Just another sunday night
Sunday 12 February 2012. It’s the night of the BAFTA Film Awards ceremony and I’m bloody freezing.
We’re in the heart of what we call the ‘season’ – those few months during which all the key awards ceremonies seem to take place, everything from the Brits to the Oscars, the BAFTAs and the Elle Style Awards. The trouble with the ‘season’ is that it’s always during the winter. Fine, maybe, for the celebs who party until the small hours in the heated surroundings of the Royal Opera House or the O2, but for us reporters standing outside on the red carpet waiting for them to talk into our microphones, the setting is just a few degrees away from being positively arctic.
I watch my breath blossom into steam in the icy air and crack open yet another hand-warmer pad, tucking it discreetly into the back of my knickers so that it warms the small of my back. Bliss. There’s the first lesson from the showbiz world for you: underneath the opulence there’s always something significantly more unglamorous.
I’m huddled behind a rope with a group of fellow reporters, all women in evening dresses as per the rules of such an upmarket event. Even at an occasion like the BAFTAs, it seems odd to see people so smartly dressed packed into a small space like animals. We’d probably look more at home in the orange suits worn by caged prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Still, we all courteously compliment each other on our outfits, despite recognising that it’s difficult to look fabulous when you’re shaking harder than a nervous X Factor contestant.
An ice-cold wind blows up this back street of London’s Covent Garden area, a road that has been transformed into something truly special, with huge spotlights, advertising banners and that all-important crimson flooring. On one side of the carpet are scores of reporters; on the other are crowds of fans. Every reporter is required to wear an all-important accreditation around our necks and be in position about an hour before the famous people actually start turning up. We’ve now been here about 55 minutes. The tension is palpable. So is the frost forming at the end of my nose.
… And then it begins, not the celebrity procession, but an unstoppable thought growing in my brain. Every time I have to cover one of these events, it’s always the same. I can’t help it. I’m gritting my teeth; it’s still there, a loud scream in my head, shouting out in capital letters as I check my watch for the millionth time:
‘I BLOODY HATE THIS JOB!’
The bubbly girl huddled next to me is someone I’ve only seen reporting from the red carpets for the last few months; she smiles at me and giggles. Newbies – they’re the only ones that look happy.
‘You okay?’ she asks.
‘Hmmmmm,’ I mumble back.
On the outside I smile back at her. Inside I’m crying. She’ll understand one day.
Then, suddenly, a roar of excitement erupts from down the line. I crank my head around to see what’s happening. Someone is arriving! I rise up from my frozen slouch, microphone at the ready. The carpet is finally starting to fill, a stream of invited guests, not all famous, but each lucky enough to have a ticket to the British movie world’s most important night. The screams in the distance suggest a big star has stepped out of their limousine and is beginning the long walk past the crowds. Around me I hear mumbled suggestions as to who it could be:
‘Is it Clooney?’
‘Please let it be Michael Fassbender!’
‘Knowing our luck it’ll be Peter Andre.’
The shouting is getting louder, deafening almost. Camera flashes spark out from the crowds. Okay, Holls, I tell myself, here we go. It’s time to snap out of the black mood. Women with clipboards are scurrying about at the fence in front of me, talking into headsets and suddenly pointing in my direction. So much action after so much nothing. I shift the hand-warmer pad on my back slightly and take a deep breath. Then someone says …
‘Brad, this is Holly Forrest.’
In the blink of an eye, Brad Pitt is standing in front of me. Shit! Brad ruddy Pitt! He’s smirking, rubbing his hands together to keep warm and looking at me expectantly. The PR girl who’s introduced him stands silently to his side. After an hour of twiddling my thumbs, I have about half-a-second to crank into gear.
‘Hi,’ I say. Except I don’t. What I actually say is more like ‘huh’. My mouth has become so frozen from the cold that my face is more like a ventriloquist’s than a professional journalist.
‘Oh. Hi, Holly. Are you okay?’
‘Yersh, fine.’
Brad Pitt is looking at me weirdly. In an attempt to regain feeling in my lips I’m pouting like a Page 3 girl, and it’s clearly got him a little worried.
‘We’ve met before, right?’
Suddenly, my face flushes. I can feel warmth in my skin again. In fact, I’m blushing. Well, that’s certainly one way of getting my facial features back into working order, I think – get a major Hollywood heart-throb to say that he remembers you. Who cares if I’ve just been doing ridiculous mouth acrobatics in front of one of the world’s most famous men? None of that matters any more because Brad Pitt has said that he remembers me.
Of course, the second lesson of the showbiz world is that celebs often pretend to recognise you, because they know how great it makes you feel. Does Brad really remember me? I quickly calculate that I have interviewed him at least three times before so although it’s unlikely, it’s not actually out of the question. In truth, the warm buzz of excitement now washing over me doesn’t mind whether he’s lying or not. If you want to play that game, Bradley, I’ll go with it.
The hour that I’ve been waiting here, slowly freezing and losing the will to live, begins to feel like a distant memory. Cold? What cold? The passion of the crowds, the importance of the night and the fact that I’ve now got Benjamin Button at his most beautiful standing just a couple of feet away and claiming to know me are all combining to remind me of something very important, something that up until a few minutes ago I’d completely forgotten. It’s a feeling that always comes back. It’s all I can do now to stop myself from running up the length of the red carpet in front of me and blurting it out to the crowd.
‘I BLOODY LOVE THIS JOB!’
Shaking any distractions out of my head I focus and the interview begins, a well-rehearsed two-hander that Brad and I have both performed many times. Now my mouth has defrosted I’m quickly into the usual line of investigation.
‘What do you think are your chances of winning?’
‘What attracted you to the role?’
‘How’s the family?’
I know – not exactly Paxman, right? Red carpets, though, aren’t the place for intensity. It’s all just a show and everyone’s got a script to follow. Even Brad:
‘I’m just proud to be nominated … The role had a lot of scope to it … Angie and the kids are hanging at home right now …’
Despite the formality, I’m loving it. ‘How could I ever complain about this job?’ I’m thinking, as I occasionally lose myself in his sea-blue eyes. This is my home. The chaos going on around me as more stars arrive; the screams of fans, the hails of reporters and photographers; the antenna in my head constantly listening out for a headline or a scoop: these are my comfort zones. The third lesson in showbiz reporting is that this job has a habit of stirring up conflicting emotions, highs and lows – but ultimately I always come back to the same happy conclusion. Right now, there is no other place I’d rather be.
The beaming new girl calls over to me and I’m back down to earth. My 45 seconds with Brad has finished and he’s moved on up the line.
‘I saw you, Holly Forrest! You were flirting with Brad Pitt.’
‘What? And you wouldn’t?’ I call back. It’s true, though, and I’m still flushing. It’s not just that I’ve forgotten about it being cold. I’m now actually hot under the collar.
Brad Pitt, ladies and gentlemen. When it comes to heating you up, he’s significantly more effective than a hand-warmer pad down your pants.
College
I had been fascinated by showbiz for a long time, probably because I came from a very average background. The god-like looks and lifestyles of the rich and famous were far removed from my own sedate upbringing; I couldn’t help but be dazzled by their tropical allure. But as a child sat gawping in front of Top of the Pops every Thursday night, it never occurred to me that I could make a living from the entertainment world. I was far too meek and mild a character to ever be a performer myself; that celebrities had the guts that I lacked to be in the spotlight was part of their mystique. It was only when I grew older, crucially in those final weeks of my English degree when I really needed to start thinking about how I would earn a salary, that it occurred to me that the life of a showbiz reporter could be the one for me. While I might never emulate my teen heroes – acting like Julia Roberts, singing like Mariah Carey or dancing like Paula Abdul – I could at least bask in their glow a little closer. And, who knows, by mingling with the glitterati, maybe some of their confidence would even rub off on me too? This career could be part enjoyment, part psychiatry.
How did I turn this into reality? First of all, like many career paths, I had to study, which certainly wasn’t as enjoyable as I’d hoped it might be. Journalism, I was convinced, could be exciting and revolutionary; the right words, the perfect questions, could inform, entertain and even shape history. Being taught how to do that, however, was a strangely monotonous nuts-and-bolts experience – and, like analysing a joke, often lost sight of what made it fun in the first place.
Let’s take a trip back to the late nineties, and I’ll tell you all about it. Britpop’s on the radio, Leo’s playing Romeo at the cinema and – like every student in the country – I’m ploughing my way through cult classic The Beach by Alex Garland.
Oh, I can taste the pints of snakebite and black just thinking about it …
I was studying at a small town college in northern England. I was actually only there for a few months but, because I was miserable, it seemed like a lifetime. After my interesting and undeniably free-thinking degree in English Literature, this much more practical postgraduate course felt very dry. Suddenly, after three years of fanciful theories and intellectual posturing, I had to be straight and serious. As an undergrad, I floated about quoting Virginia Woolf and had few worries about the future. Now I was knuckling down and preparing for an actual job.
I’d enjoyed writing for the student newspaper as an undergrad and had watched every episode of Press Gang as a young girl; I knew what I wanted to do and was aware that some kind of professional qualifications wouldn’t go amiss if I wanted to be a proper entertainment journalist. This was, after all, in the days before anyone could start up a blog and become a ‘writer’. Back then wannabe journalists felt the need to actually – shock horror – train. I’d plumped for this particular course simply because it had been the only one with a flyer in my university’s careers library.
This postgrad diploma, while adding another few thousand pounds to my student loan, should at least help me to fulfil my dream. By learning the ropes of writing a story and doing an interview I’d be able to then use that knowledge to focus on my chosen field of entertainment. It was a big commitment but – in my head at least – simple. I was confident I’d be joined by fellow open-minded arts students, so what could go wrong?
My peers and lecturers, of course, had other ideas. While the course I chose was no doubt a fabulous one for people wanting to be political heavyweights writing for the Financial Times, my showbiz goals were slightly less catered for. All traces of entertainment had seemingly been deleted from our lessons. I spent my days in shorthand classes – an utterly boring skill which teaches you, over many hours, to simply write a little bit quicker – and getting ‘vox pops’ on the streets. God I hate ‘vox pops’, the technical term for the soundbites journalists collect from people out doing their shopping which you see on news programmes and read in the papers (‘vox pop’, a rather slang Latin term, translates as ‘voice of the people’). Just one glimpse of my sullen face, giant microphone in hand, and the locals would scurry away from me. Chris Brown would get a better welcome at a women’s refuge. This, I would think to myself as I made my way back to college with only the wise words of the local street cleaner on my minidisc recorder, wasn’t as much fun as talking about gigs, gossip and the latest happenings on Hollyoaks. It was going to be a long few months …
Getting started
Part I: My First Story
‘Boyzone are outselling The Spice Girls by two to one.’
Not, I realise, a groundbreaking scoop up there with Kate Middleton topless or George Michael caught getting naughty in an LA loo (thank you to The Sun for their headline: ‘Zip me up before you go go’). Still, the battle between the Irish crooners and girl power will always be special to me. It was my first attempt to liven up my journalism course, and my first ever showbiz story. It was the scoop that showed me the way.
On that fateful day, half-asleep after another lesson in local government, I was instructed by my tutor to head into town and simply ‘find a story’. This is what, we were told, real journalists do when their publication or broadcaster is short of material. They just find out stuff and record it, like a nosey neighbour with a notebook. So, jotter in hand, I shuffled off into the streets to find a scoop. But I had a problem – if I tried to bluff my way through a chat about politics, the person I was talking to would easily catch me out. That I didn’t know the first thing about NHS funding or interest rates was written on my face. But if could find an entertainment story, I would be on safe ground. My fellow students could do with a bit of frivolity too.
An hour later, the whole class was back in our makeshift newsroom, preparing to share our freshly unearthed breaking news stories with our sniffy lecturer.
‘The housing market in the area has seen a significant rise in the last few weeks according to a local estate agent,’ said one girl, a 21-year-old like me, but with the smug air of a City banker on 200 grand a week, before snapping her notebook shut with a what-do-you-think-of-that? flourish.
‘Very good,’ replied my tutor. ‘That’s just the kind of thing we’re hunting for. Strong, clear stuff. Who’s next?’
A boy who had annoyed me from the beginning of term now piped up. Vocally religious to the point of tedium, he never wasted any opportunity to harp on about his piety.
‘The priest at St Michael’s is strenuously opposed to the prospect of a casino opening on the outskirts of town. I called by the church and he was more than happy to talk to me.’
‘Excellent,’ responded our tutor with ever-growing jollity. Our tutor was a dapper little man with an upper-class way of expression: ‘A top notch story. Follow that one up please.’ The Archbishop of Canterbury in front of me seemed to momentarily forget his modesty and looked extremely pleased with himself.
And then, it came. ‘So … Holly. Over to you. What eye-opener have you got for us?’
Okay. Here we go. I looked down at my notes then back up at the faces staring at me. I knew they wouldn’t like it. My peers were a surprising bunch, all of us were barely out of adolescence, but their earnestly worthy approaches to life were a real downer for me. Their heroes were Kate Adie and Trevor McDonald. Mine were French and Saunders.
‘Boyzone are outselling The Spice Girls by two to one,’ I blurted out, fully aware that this would probably go down about as well as a supermodel at a slimming club.
A couple of snorts came from the audience then a painful silence. The tutor in charge raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘And this is news because …?’
‘W-well,’ I stammered. ‘This is the big pop battle of the moment. Boys versus girls. And these sales figures, well they’re a sneak preview into who’s going to win the fight. The guy in HMV said he wasn’t even supposed to tell me but I bought the new Jamiroquai CD from him to help sweeten the pill. Midweek sales figures are a bit of a secret, you know.’ (A few years later websites would proudly print the official midweek sales figures without hesitation. Back then, things were a little more surreptitious.)
Silence. I suspected that the kind of numbers I was interested in – the Top 40 broadcast on the radio every Sunday – weren’t the kind he thought I should be spending my time on. That day’s FTSE figures, fair enough. But new entries and highest climbers? Big mistake.
‘Hmmm, I don’t think so,’ he replied with his military air. ‘It’s not really front-page stuff is it? A bit frivolous. Anyone got anything that’s proper news?’
The Spice Girls, I don’t need to remind you, went on to dominate both the music industry and the media all over the world. Everyone wanted to know about them. Posh Spice changing her hair from a bob to a pixie cut might not be as politically significant as the property market or Sunday trading, I knew that, but to suggest it’s not headline-worthy nor interesting to millions of people is to underestimate the power of the entertainment world – the industry, incidentally, that is Britain’s biggest export. Among my peers my interests appeared frothy, but I knew that when a star arrives that offers something fresh, something different, something exciting, millions of people want to know more. Passions are ignited and we can’t get enough. Sat there, head hung low, feeling as out of place as a porn star at Disneyland, I was more determined than ever to immerse myself in this business of escapism. I would prove to these squares that it did have a point. Showbiz was an inspiration to the world and I wanted to be inspired for a living. And to inspire.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
