Tanya Gold, I think we all know why it wasn’t a good interview #richardarmitage
Tanya Gold resurfaces to slam Richard Armitage for being reticent. Ms Gold, we all remember that bash job of an interview. We knew what you wanted and you didn’t get. You spent as much time slamming Armitage’s fans as you did digging for your big scoop. If you don’t like doing these interviews, just don’t. Stop whining. I for one won’t miss you.
In this Thursday, June 26, 2013 photo, British actor Richard Armitage poses for the photographer at the Old Vic theatre in London. The British actor, who played dwarf warrior Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit” trilogy, stars at London’s Old Vic Theatre as John Proctor, the decent man in a world gone mad at the center of “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s modern classic about the Salem witch trials. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
Me + Richard Armitage 
Wow, she does sound bitter.
A deeper level of self reflection may help her figure it out, or she’s may simply not be the right person for the job. The way that piece is written, I’d probably be reticent and humming away too instead of answering her questions
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I used to really like her writing, but she really doesn’t get fandom and she seems to spend a lot of time hating herself and women, which comes across in her writing. Honestly, most people who are interested in celebrities are not self-loathers. It’s a really complex thing that most people don’t “get” until they are involved. She doesn’t need to love fans to do this work but she should try to get an idea of where they are coming from. In that original interview, she spent a lot of time slamming fans (maybe because Armitage wasn’t responding to her baiting around the question of whom he prefers to sleep with). What a shame for her, that he wanted to talk about the play. He doesn’t seem to have a problem talking extensively with friendly reviewers, as has been proven again and again. And although she interviewed him for The Crucible, for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award, she describes him as the hot dwarf actor. I imagine that Armitage could tell even then that she had little respect for him or interest in his actual project, and probably responded appropriately.
I think she’s right that celebrity interviews are not hard-hitting journalism. But it’s a bit weird for her to have chosen to be an editorialist as opposed to an investigative reporter if she has problems with this. My impression is that she doesn’t want to do the hard work of an investigative journalist, which is fine, of course. She just wants to have an opinion.
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That explains why the name is familiar to me, didn’t remember. Don’t know if she slams him but if the tone she approached him in was the tone in the old article no surprise. I had a laugh about Rylance hmming 🙂 If you tend to have this effect on people maybe you are approaching it the wrong way.
I don’t want to give this more importance than it has, an article about an interview that you’ve had nothing to do with is not really relevant.
The whole thing in my opinion misses the point. That is not an interview, it is a conversation between people who know and trust each other.
Interviews rarely start on that basis and interviews don’t have to be celebrity profiles. It’s absolutely not the same thing.
That’s why i vastly prefer longer conversations and more limited topics, predetermined but more in depth which make for more interesting reads and certainly more willing and open participants. Like theatre talks, the Times talks, the SAGA and similar. Where the topic is central and the insights and not selling papers/the profile of the interviewer/extracting hidden information etc.
On the same topic i saw a.. almost said interview, but it wasn’t, it was another conversation with Kirsty Young from Desert Island discs http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr
That’s where i had hoped to hear Richard one day by the way, format would suit him like a glove and we’d finally get to hear some of his music choices.
But that kind of talent to talk to people and listen is rare these days.
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just to clarify i meant this as in ‘writing an article about an interview you, the writer, have had nothing to do with’.. to avoid any misunderstandings.
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One of the thing that’s frustrating about her take on that conversation, frankly, is she seems not to get that the fact that these people work in the same profession means that they are things they don’t have to say to each other because they know how things go. It’s also fascinating to me that she spends so much time on Hiddleswift if it’s true, as she claims, that she’s not interested. These are basic points of rhetorical analysis and I think she’s an Oxbridge product — she should know these things. I stopped reading her after 2014 but one thing that definitely projects from this article is her own self-loathing.
I don’t know how intelligent Mark Rylance is but he was amazing in Wolf Hall and he exudes the vibe of being smart and balanced. I also don’t know if he’s given great interviews to anyone — but it sounds like Armitage and Rylance were on the same page about her.
I also think there is some great writing about and with celebrities out there — Vanity Fair, for instance, houses a lot of it. It’s possible to do good work in this genre, but not, of course, if you go into it resenting that you are doing it.
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This makes me think of a quote I posted in my ‘world smile day’ post just an hour or so ago:
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”
Feels applicable here. 😉
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‘ggg’ 🤓
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It’s true and I think truly reflective people know this — I know when I am having a bad day and should try to shield other people from myself (whether I am always successful at that is another matter, but I do try).
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You’ve just described my last two weeks.
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I saw your post and then read Gold’s piece and thought of that Raylan quote immediately. She’s the common denominator in most of these interactions.
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I was thinking the exact same thing. Also, one wonders why her job is to interview celebrities since she doesn’t seem to enjoy it.
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😀 😀 😀
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I don’t think she resents it the way she says. That’s what she would like to believe, that she feels dissatisfied with it because it is somehow ‘morally wrong’ or inappropriate. No, it isn’t unless you the interviewer make it so. What she is, just from the examples she cited, is not good at it. She knows she has not been successful at it, i suspect more times than she discloses and instead of moving on, learning from it or choosing something else she tries to produce pity in the reader for how hard it is these days in this profession and how wrong. I think she shouldn’t feel guilty about it, it is a very difficult thing to do and a very rare talent to know how to talk to people and above all how to make people talk. It’s not her talent and instead of admitting it and moving on she names and shames but pretends mea culpa and asks for pity from the reader implicitly. And she fails at the most basic hurdle and what she says is her profession. A sense of decency and tact. To the normal reader it is obvious why a certain subject would not come up in the conversation she mentions but she does ponder on it. And then she wonders why people clam up. That’s why, because she herself is more celebrity and gossip hungry than actually interested in the people rather than the celebrities she talks to.
I found it irritating and meaningless to read an article about what to me was a very interesting and relaxing conversation. I really didn’t need her meaningless side notes to it. It spoke for itself, thanks very much.
Rylance is very polite but discrete, very happy to talk about his work though. I’ve seen numerous interviews recently about WH, Bridge of Spies, Shakespeare, the BFG, etc.
End of. Honestly, parts of the conversations she mentions are so much more interesting 🙂
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I just now searched out the conversation (which I was unaware of as, unlike Tanya Gold, I’m not interested in either Cumberbatch or Hiddleston all that much) and yeah, although it was kind of pompously written (does Cumberbatch speak that way on a daily basis?) no one would mistake that for a profile or journalism written by a reporter. It was strictly insider baseball. Nothing wrong with it. But Cumberbatch also clearly wasn’t trying to put reporters out of business by doing it, either.
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Re – Mark Rylance I really like him – He is not only a consummate actor and former Artisitc Director of Shakespeare’s Globe but also a very articulate person. I saw him a couple of times off stage last year. On one occasion at the Royal Academy of Arts to discuss the importance of costume design and the detail that goes into it. They used his Olivia costume from12th Night to illustrate their point. Very informative and entertaining. IMO is has this very British understated subtle charm about him.
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He gives the impression of having his feet on the ground.
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She sounds downright mean – she sounds like someone with strong preconceived ideas, judgmental and harsh with no empathy. To me it sounds like when people don’t conform to her ideas or they don’t give her what she wants, she is disappointed and goes off on a rant. Like a little petulant kid, really. I always think journalists should be genuinely open and curious, not clouded by pre-judgment. That part about Stanley Tucci struck me harder than the Armitage part! She is surprised that someone doesn’t want to tell a stranger AND a journalist about how he feels about the death of his first wife? Sure, you can poke, journalists poke, but with a little empathy you should also be able to understand when a person does not want to share certain stuff! Deal with that professionally, not by slamming the person you interview. Nope, I do not like the sound of her!
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A kind of fundamental thing for talking to anyone, IMO, is that you have to understand why they are speaking to you in the first place. You may not value that or respect it in the same way that they do, but if people are involved and you want them to tell you things, you have to at least know where they are coming from. If you project that you do not respect their purpose, of course they will clam up, and that may become general, i.e., if you don’t respect that they don’t want to talk to you about their private lives, they may also become terse about the things they actually want to speak about. I also don’t respond to people who don’t appear to be listening to me in an average conversational situation.
As far as being annoyed that Tucci didn’t want to talk about his grief — I’m amazed that that would have surprised anyone. I don’t talk about my grief with that many people and I don’t expect my remarks to make the gossip headlines within hours. How much more careful a celeb must need to be. Tucci had three children with her — I’m sure he’s not going to say anything that might impact them, either. Sheez.
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Yes, exactly, on the respect!!!
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subject matter aside, a good journalist should be a good storyteller. this article was so hard to follow, I still don’t know what it was supposed to be about. it would have made more sense if it was constructed in bullet point format b/c that’s how it read to me: pot shots coming at me left and right like sniper fire. in the end, I’m not left wondering why Ms. Gold would write a piece like this (I think that was the only clear thing about this article: her low self esteem), but rather why would anyone go forward with it in the first place? shoddy work all around.
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It seems like the same version of bait and switch we’re often getting from the media — buy this thing, but we’ll make fun of you for being happy you bought it. Here it’s “loathe this thing, but we’ll make fun of you for loathing it.”
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What a nasty person.
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Unfortunately, I can’t disagree with you this time around.
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She’s an idiot and it’s just as well if she gives up celebrity interviews. She needs to learn it’s not all about her…
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There are some celebrity interviewers whose interviews one looks forward to reading — the WSJ entertainment reporter who’s interviewed Armitage a few times comes to mind — but mostly because they have an informed, friendly POV.
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I think if she doesn’t like actors/entertainers (and won’t even try?? “Entertainers are, by profession, an abyss, because they are storytellers” – what the???) – then she should obviously quit trying to interview them.
I suspect she’s in some respect figuring that out (or worst case, been TOLD that by someone she HAS to listen to), and doing a weak “mea culpa” while attempting to haul a few people down the Abaddon hole with her as she falls….Interesting she felt this need to call names.
And making it painfully clear that some of the best actors in the business (including Richard) couldn’t have a good interview with you would seem to say more about her than them. She’s got a backstory that she can’t get past, obviously. Keep it moving, Ms. Gold…..
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I think she wants to be the storyteller and has found she can’t get control in this setting.
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A storyteller with a definite mean streak…. she “falls in love briefly” with the interviewee yet sees what she does as sadistic. Poking into people’s grief from a twisted sense of obligation rather than genuine interest, and she wonders why it doesn’t play well. She needs to become a financial writer or something.
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LOL. Well, that would certainly support her sense of self-righteousness. I don’t get from her the ambition to understand things that are not already inside her ken, though.
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In an article such as this, why mention a failed interview of a lesser known actor ( compared to Cumberbatch and Rylance?) I think this is another example of Tanya Gold trying to use the Richard Armitage fandom and capitalize on his name. I’m sure her article hits increased because his name was in the article.
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I’m sure that’s true, too — and he fits in a similar demographic with Hiddleston and Cumberbatch.
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[…] a failed interview for Tanya Gold. The discussion, with links to the old and the new, are here, on Me and Richard. Come on […]
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I don’t like her writing, I find it choppy and confusing. The whole time I read this new ‘article’? confession? bitch-fest? Jealousy of Benedict Cumberbatch?? all that kept repeating in my mind was ‘poison pen’ and self loathing – which made it hard to concentrate on her drabble. She doesn’t seem to like anyone else because to me it seems she sure doesn’t like herself. But that’s ok, I don’t like her either.
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it’s true, enjoyment of anything starts with the self.
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I enjoyed firs half of the article, you know that part aboutC. and H ;)..but then she wrote about interview with Stanley Tucci …what a stiupid ,cruel cow!
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yeah, that was mean.
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Just wondering if you ever got a response from Ms. Gold after your 2014 letter, Serv.
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I did not, although I did get one after the earlier email I wrote her. AND, amusingly, I got a phishing link from her email. At some point she must have clicked on a link to some malware that triggered all of her contacts.
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Somehow I’m not surprised that she didn’t respond, but it would have been interesting if she had.
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I don’t know which I think is more odd, that an entertainment writer feels the need to write an article about disliking actors, where she tries to make them look foolish (regardless of whether or not they are), or that a publication thinks that it’s what it’s readers are interested in reading.
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To be fair, I don’t think of her and I suspect she doesn’t think of herself as an entertainment writer specifically. She’s more of a cultural commentator or editorialist and entertainment is one of the things she writes about it among many things.
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NUTS! I click on the interview and immediately this request for a contribution comes up. I’d really like to read what the nutcase said.
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I’m going to modify this post to add screencaps to the original post, so look above in a bit.
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[…] But in 2013 I had also been trying hard to write about the fantasy level of RichLee, and attracting a lot of fan anger for doing so. After 2014, due to Armitage’s association with Pace, there was starting to be more evidence if you knew where to look, and there seemed to a concerted effort on the part of persons unknown to out them, which I always assumed was because someone had a problem with Pace. (By this, I don’t mean shippers, but rather whoever was responsible for photos that regularly appeared when Armitage or Pace had some other big thing going on, including at dates after when they were presumably no longer involved.) Unless you knew me well at that time, you probably never got an actual statement out of me about what I thought of the factual level of the question. You had to infer. I verbally stood by the idea that heterosexuality is the default assumption. I stood up pretty well even to private pressure to say what I thought — until in 2017 I admitted to a fellow fan what I knew, and devastated her. After that I just stopped talking about it most of the time, except elliptically, in response to that borderline offensive Tanya Gold article (here, and here). […]
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me + richard armitage’s sexual orientation + the new openness | Me + Richard Armitage said this on April 12, 2023 at 8:16 am |