Recovering from a tough interview
I’m sitting at my kitchen bench, processing, reflecting and reviewing after a live interview that took a turn. It wasn’t me being interviewed. It wasn’t even a client. But it was a situation where a client had collaborated with a wonderful person – a person with a challenging history – and it was the story of the collaboration and the reasons for it that we planned to tell via the media.
In this case, the person’s history was investigated in a live setting – we expected this – but the topic took over the entire interview. My client’s collab did not garner a single question.
The interviewee struggled with the relentlessness of it, rather than the line of questioning. And cried. This all formed part of the interview.
It was really hard to listen to. If I was feeling anxious and nauseous from hearing my client’s collaboration partner dissolve into tears during an interview, I could only imagine what it was like being in that studio.
A tough day at the office. Photo by Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas from Pexels
It wasn’t a bad interview, necessarily. But it was a hard interview. One that left my client’s collab partner, my client and myself utterly shaken. And, honestly, when it came to brand awareness for my client, it served absolutely no purpose.
It would be easy to have regrets, or to blame, or to respond in anger. But, shit happens, right? So what do we need to know when going into a potentially inflammatory interview situation? I have a few tips.
1. Preparation is key. Make sure you know your topic (we did). But more than that, know the angle the interviewer is likely to take. First of all, ask (we did this too – but the reply was vague). You might get a response you can work with, but some journalists either can’t or won’t tell you. Perhaps they have a million deadlines and haven’t begun to prep for this interview yet – or maybe they have an idea but want the answers you give to be fresh, rather than rehearsed.
An outline of the angle won’t be comprehensive - it will just be a starter for 10. But it IS a start. Either way, prepare for every eventuality you can think of.
2. Understand the journalist’s needs. Is it a news interview? A business profile? An entertainment feature? Know where the piece is likely to appear, and how it might be used. Find out a bit about your interviewer – what stories they tend to tackle, the angles they like to take. Also, understand that this interview is not an ad. It’s an opportunity to ‘get under the hood’ of a topic. You’re unlikely to be welcomed back if you start offering two for one deals during the interview slot.
3. Remain calm. Off topic questions may come. It might be something as simple as a question about family life, or it might be something harder hitting, that knocks the wind out of your sails. Answer the question as honestly as you can – then try and guide the interview back to the topic at hand.
For instance, “I’m the only girl in our family and had three brothers – one of which is involved in my business now, in fact.”
“Yes, my CFO was convicted of fraud in 2010. That person is no longer connected with our business – what I can tell you is that our most successful year yet in 2012 once we’d appointed our new Chief Financial Officer.”
In our situation, we knew there would be hard questions. We discussed it and my client’s brand partner was happy to answer them. We didn’t know there would be so many of them, and that they would wear the interviewee down – changing the tone, tenet and value of the interview entirely. It was a disappointment.
4. Tell the truth. If you’re not able to tell the truth, you probably shouldn’t be considering any of this. Step away from the microphone. This gig isn’t for you.
5. Follow up afterwards. This applies in several ways. Firstly, a thank you note to the journalist for their time. If you felt you were unable to get your point across, say so – perhaps offer new information or a follow up interview if feeling confident enough to do so. If that’s off the table, for whatever reason, you could consider a social media follow up, reiterating your message/s, with some helpful links, or a press release.
6. This will pass. Luckily, I’ve only really experienced a couple of really difficult or, in this case, traumatic interviews in my career as a PR consultant so far, but – honestly - it takes me days, sometimes weeks, to get over one. I go over it in my mind, I dismantle all the moving parts and wonder where it went wrong. I question my motives for placing my client in the interview setting in the first place and whether I judged the outcome incorrectly. I mull, dwell, and catastrophise.
Eventually, though, you detach. It’s old news before you know it. The media cycle moves at the speed of light and even the hardest interviews are only in the paper for a day/drop down the menu within a few days/are relegated to a distant page on Google within a few weeks.
Outtake? Hard interviews, or interviews that take a turn, like ours did today, are demoralising. They sting. But no matter how bad it feels on the day, it’s never as awful the next morning, or the one after that. Breathe deeply. Be kind to yourself.
And if that doesn’t work, consider faking your own death. That will really give them something to talk about.