The No-Name’s Guide to Securing Interviews with Famous People
How you can score your dream interview with little experience or name recognition
I am a nobody. I have very few followers on social media and no one would recognize me in the streets. While I have written for some big-name publications, I’ve never won any awards or done anything that might make my name instantly recognizable to you or a publicist.
That said, there’s a solid chance I’ve interviewed someone that you’ve heard of, no matter your interests. For starters, I wrote a book featuring interviews with 12 College Football Hall of Fame coaches. Included in that list are icons of the college football world like Barry Switzer, Steve Spurrier, Tom Osborne, R.C. Slocum, Phil Fulmer, Vince Dooley, and more. Bob Stoops wrote the foreword to the book.
Not a sports fan? That’s fine. What about an interview with Emmy-winner Ben Schwartz, who played Jean-Ralphio on Parks and Rec and stars in many other TV shows and movies? Or how about star of Amazon’s Bosch, Titus Welliver?
More of a music person? Ever heard of a little group called Boyz II Men? What about Grammy-winning rapper Lecrae? Or creators of videos with almost a billion YouTube views, Walk Off the Earth?
Ok, ok, so I haven’t done a GQ cover story with Brad Pitt, but I have a rolodex of interviews with famous people, most of whom I interviewed when I was in my mid-20s working for an unknown start-up website that no longer exists. So not only was I requesting interviews with famous people as a complete no-name, I was asking them to do interviews for a site they’d never heard of either.
I was fortunate to have a mentor working with me at the time who taught me many tricks of the trade. I was never taught these skills in journalism school. Instead, I was taught how to interview a school administrator for a boring newspaper-style story, but no one ever taught me how to reach for the superstars.
As a caveat I will say this, interviewing famous people isn’t usually the best part of my job as a journalist. Often the “normal” people with fascinating stories are much more interesting to write about, especially because no one else has told their story before. However, interviewing famous people is often a nice résumé builder to show that you are a real writer who isn’t nervous to talk to anyone.
So here are some ways that I’ve been able to consistently score interviews despite my lack of name recognition.
Start Small
My first interview ever wasn’t with a Grammy winner. When you are just starting out, think of your dream interviews. Is it a famous musician? A billionaire CEO? A brilliant stand-up comedian?
Write down some names that you’d love to interview some day. Now start thinking about smaller, similar names that you might have a better chance to interview.
I’ll use a musician as an example. I grew up listening to Christian Hip-Hop, and Lecrae is considered by most to be the GOAT of the genre. So, of course, an interview with Lecrae was a dream for me, but that wasn’t going to be possible until I had some experience.
Lecrae owns the Reach Records label, so I decided to try to interview one of the other rappers on the label. Trip Lee is one of the Reach Records’ original artists and a super-talented rapper, but he also spends a lot of his time as a pastor. He’s never achieved the mainstream success that Lecrae has. I had already done a few musician interviews so I thought I had a decent chance of securing an interview with Trip.
So I sent an email to his reps. In the email I detailed as succinctly as possible that I had not only written other musician profiles, but that I was intimately familiar with Trip’s career. I wasn’t just looking to use my interview with Trip to later speak with Lecrae. I really thought it would be super cool to interview him. I didn’t say a word about my desire to interview Lecrae, I only spoke about my interest in Trip. You want to be careful not to appear overeager or like a fanboy/girl in your email.
It’s important to strike a balance between showing a strong knowledge and history with the celebrity while not looking like a superfan.
Luckily, Trip’s representative’s agreed to the interview. It turned out well. I was happy with it and so were his people. This not only helped me later get an interview with Lecrae, it continued to build my portfolio of artists in different genres.
Be Patient
I didn’t immediately turn around and email Lecrae’s people asking for an interview. I waited several months, interviewed many other people, and kept tabs on Lecrae’s career.
Once something happened that I felt warranted a story for the website I worked for, I pulled the trigger. In the email, I mentioned my story with Trip Lee first to show that I knew Reach Records and had done a good job with another of their artists recently. I didn’t know if it would work, but fortunately it did! In the end, they were happy with the story and shared it on their social media pages. Other celebrities who admired Lecrae also shared the story and it resulted in one of the most popular pieces we ever had on our site.
It doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes, you get a no (more on that later). Sometimes you don’t get a response (also more on that). But sometimes you get a response like “He/she is not currently doing interviews as he/she is working on a new album.” In fact, that’s often the case.
That can be disheartening, but you just got a response from a PR rep for the person that you want to interview! This is a big step. Now, here’s a way to take advantage of that. Research the PR agency’s other clients and find a few that you might want to interview.
Respond relatively quickly with a short email that says something similar to this:
Name,
Thank you for the response. I’m excited to hear some new music from him. I’ll follow up with you when he’s doing promo for the next album.
In the meantime, I see that [PR Company] reps [a few other bands]. I’d love to do a story on those bands if they are promoting an album at the moment*. Or if you’ve got any other artist who you think would make for a great interview for [your site], let me know!
*ideally you’d know if they were. You could also be very specific about one particular artist instead.
This has worked for me many times. A PR rep’s job is to secure positive press for their clients. It’s possible that they were giving you an excuse when it came to the client you first asked for because they didn’t know you and they are more protective of the bigger names.
A great way to prove yourself is to do a good story on one of their lesser-known clients. I won’t detail which celebrities and artists in my portfolio fall into this category, but I will say that some of the interviews I’ve done as a result of this strategy ended up being my favorite. And some of them opened up major doors with reps who then learned that they could trust me.
Doing a story like this keeps you in touch with the rep, shows that you know what you are doing, and makes them much more likely to respond positively the next time you ask them for an interview.
But what if they just say no?
Prepare for Rejection
Especially early in my career, I wasn’t getting a positive response with every email. A majority of people you try to contact are going to be nice about it when they let you down. They’ll usually say something about the celebrity being busy or that they aren’t doing interviews at this time. Every once in a while, especially if you aren’t working through a PR agency, you might get a more curt response.
No matter what, always thank the person for their response and say that you hope to work with them in the future.
Rejection is an integral part of being a writer. It’s never easy, but never take it personally. If you think the rejection is because you aren’t well-known enough, then work to build up your portfolio more and come back six months or a year later.
Follow Up
Worse than a rejection is the lack of a response. This will be the most common experience that you have as a writer. It’s way easier for a PR rep to not respond to an email from someone they don’t know than it is for them to take the time to let you down easily.
But a non-response isn’t always a rejection. Many times it just means that the rep is busy. Wait a week or two after your initial email (depending on the timeliness of your request) and send a gentle follow up. I like to keep it short and to the point. Something like this:
[Name],
I just wanted to follow up on my interview request for [celebrity]. I’d love to speak with them about [upcoming project, subject, etc]. Please let me know their availability for a 10–15 minute phone interview.
Thanks,
You would be shocked how often a simple follow-up works. And even after almost a decade of doing this, I hate sending the follow-up every time. It’s so awkward. I feel like I’m being annoying and I think that each time will be the one time that I get an email back essentially yelling at me for being annoying.
But it hasn’t happened yet. Many times, it results in the PR person sending the rejection they meant to send in the first place. But so often it turns into a great opportunity because I had the boldness to follow up. PR people get hundreds of emails a day. They might not realize how serious you are until you send a personalized follow-up email.
I wouldn’t always suggest doing a second follow-up email, but it might be a good idea. It’s not something I often do, but I have done it sometimes and the results are mixed.
Research and Use Connections
You might be thinking that I left out a very important piece of information: How to find the contact information of the person you need to get in touch with.
It’s different for everyone, but musicians usually make it easy. Most of the time, the information is on their website somewhere. Whether it’s their PR team or their management team, there’s usually someone with an email address you can reach out to on the website. If, for some reason, that doesn’t work, you can figure out their record label and contact someone from the label.
One time I secured an interview with an artist who had recently switched representation. It was really difficult to figure out who to email, so I finally just emailed two people I found who represented him years before. They informed me that they were no longer his reps, but they were kind enough to point me to someone else. That wasn’t the right person either, but that person gave me another email address and I finally found his new management. Several months later I was riding around with the artist on his boat for the story.
Actors are often similar when it comes to representation, but I have much less experience finding them.
But what about athletes? Now that’s a totally different animal. Athletes can be really difficult to get in touch with. Sports organizations often spend more time saying no than saying yes. Of course, it always depends on the sport and the team specifically, but in general sports are really hard.
I was fortunate to work for an organization with ties in the college football world that allowed me to make connections with Sports Information Directors all around the NCAA. These people hold the keys to the kingdom if you ever want to interview a player or a coach. Typically their information is available online.
Professional sports leagues can be nearly impossible to contact without connections. Even finding the emails of the PR reps can be difficult. I’ve typically had to use some personal connections built over time in order to find out this information.
If you’re looking for a big sports break, I’d suggest starting with retired athletes and coaches. Often, retired athletes have management teams that aren’t fielding thousands of requests per day. Sometimes, they don’t have management teams at all and you can contact them directly. And most athletes love reliving their glory days. So starting with a retired star player or coach is a good way to build up a portfolio of interesting sports stories.
That’s one of the reasons I secured so many legendary names for my book. Retired football coaches love nothing more than talking about football and teaching. My book gave them an opportunity to do both and have it written down and preserved for future generations.
But to convince 12 coaches to give me their time, I needed to seem legit. So, I started with a coach who I was pretty sure would say yes. This wasn’t because he was a small-time name, it was because of a connection I had. Once that coach was in, my requests to all the other coaches said “Coach [Name] is already in, I’d love to include you in the book as well.” And as more and more agreed, the email to the next coach included the names of all of the coaches that were in.
Maybe that lit a little competitive fire in some former rivals, but more than anything it allowed them to trust me more. If coaches they respect and trust believed in me enough to do an interview, then they can too.
Just Ask!
I’ve spent far too much time in my life being nervous about asking for an interview as if someone will blast out my information to all the PR reps in the world and they’ll all blacklist me for asking for an interview.
The worst thing they can say is “no.”
Well, actually, the worst thing they can do is not respond at all. But we’ve already gone over what to do in that situation.
So, get out there and start making requests!
It doesn’t matter if you work for a small, local publication, you’re just starting at a big publication, or you’ve decided to start your own website. It only takes one “yes” to start building up a rolodex of stars.
