The Telegraph
Frost, Oprah and the art of the TV interview: ‘You need to glimpse the real person coming through’
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey this Sunday is guaranteed to yield only one thing, and that is bumper ratings. The last time Oprah interviewed a global superstar who was wary of the public gaze it was Michael Jackson in 1993. Ninety million (90) people tuned in. That’s because once the camera rolls, the TV interview has a particular intimacy that a magazine profile or front-page article cannot match: stupid though it sounds to say it, you can see the person saying the words. Deep fakes and canny editing notwithstanding, a TV interview remains about as close to unmitigated truth as you’re going to get. The art of the TV interview (and the tedium of most TV interviews suggests that conducting good ones is an art) is to do with the relationship established between the interviewer and the interviewee. In her now-classic evisceration on BBC2 in 2019 Emily Maitlis had clearly won Prince Andrew’s confidence beforehand. Though we know not how, all she had to do was plonk him in a gilt chair, press record and let him go. The nature of the interviewer/-ee relationship, however, has changed over the years. The bindweed of the PR apparatus has made celebs and politicians cautious of doing interviews at all if they don’t have to. Think back to the chat show Friday Night, Saturday Morning in the late 70s and guests were chosen by the…
