May 10, 2024 • 40 mins
Hanging out with Monica Lewinsky for her first profile in a decade. Booking Jessica Simpson for a weight loss reveal that never happened. Searching for Casey Anthony…. and not finding her. Wondering how many members of a polycule is too many to put on an expense report (!). In this episode, Jess and Susie revisit some of their most memorable, and sometimes cringey, adventures in journalism.
FOR MORE:
- Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution? (By Jessica Bennett, Newsweek, 2010)
- Monica Lewinsky Is Back, But This Time It’s On Her Terms (By Jessica Bennett, NY Times, 2015)
- Jessica Simpson Reveals Post-Baby Body on Katie Couric’s New Show (People, 2012)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The person who had hired me told me I would
never work in journalism and that I was blacklisted, and
I was so traumatized and ashamed, and oh.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, I was also told at one point that I
would never work in journalism again. I guess that's just
like a write of passage that at some point in
your career someone says to you, like, you're not going
to make it, and you just have to be like,
who are you to tell me what I can and
can't do.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bannacaram.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
a moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Today, we're revisiting a few moments from the past, our
past that we've in fact tried to stop thinking about.
These are some of our most memorable and sometimes cringy
adventures in journalism, Susie. We've talked on an earlier episode
about some of our journalistic regrets. We have also talked
(00:58):
about our crazy some better or more crazy than others.
We've talked about hurdles, being women in leadership or climbing
the corporate ladder or whatever you want to call it.
But I actually thought it would be fun to tell
people a little bit more about some of our reporting
adventures really go behind the scenes, to show people that
(01:18):
it's not always as glamorous as it might seem, or
maybe it doesn't seem glamorous at all.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Honestly, Yeah, I don't know if it's glamorous, but we'll
let others decide. I think for me personally, it has
not always felt glamorous. I know that I've been lucky
to interview some really famous people and we'll talk about that,
but often it just feels a little cringey. So we'll
see how people respond.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I actually started going down this drabbit hole and thinking
about this during our Wreckers episode because in that episode
we talk about don Imus, the shock jock who said
this terrible racist slur about the Wreckers basketball team, and
in my mind, don Imus had yelled at me when
I was a young reporter at the Boston Globe and
tried to get me fired. So I know you and
(02:03):
I chatted briefly about this, and I was like, oh
my god, I have to look up the article.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, so I went and Nexus to look up this article.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
That I was talking about, in which I remember Don
I was screwing at me, and it was actually a
totally different shock jock radio host one in Boston named
j Severn.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I mean, they're all the same guy.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I mean, right, It was around the same era. It
was a similar thing. He had said something offensive about
Muslim people. I had then called him up for comment
when I was working the night shift at the Boston
Globe and whatever wrote down what he said, we published it,
and then he called my boss to try to get
me fired over claiming that he hadn't really said this thing.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
That sounds like a classic.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I've been yelled at so much in my career I
can't even remember most of the instances.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
People just get upset about being covered.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
They don't like the way they're covered, they don't like
us being honest about things they've said, and when it happens,
it always feels really scary. But then I think you
just kind of get used to putting him behind you,
and it's not actually that surprising to me that you
didn't even remember his name, or that you had to
go back into your own archives. I have to sometimes
google myself to find something about something I did or
(03:18):
look on my LinkedIn to be like what year did
I do that? It's really hard to remember your own career.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I find it is, and I think for me anyway,
some of the more uncomfortable memories I've tried to block out.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Perhaps, Yeah, so I think that's partially.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And especially when you're coming up, every little thing that
you get wrong, you think is going to mark you
forever and you'll never recover.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Well.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Also, I can still remember like certain mistakes I made,
and like shame washes over me. Luckily, I did not
make a lot of mistakes, but there are a couple
where when I think about them, even so many years later,
I feel terrible. And I do think that's some thing
that people don't really realize. Like I think there's this
sort of casual notion about journalists being kind of callous
(04:07):
or making mistakes and moving on and not caring. But
all the journalists I know or I'm close to really
hate making mistakes. We recognize that it's a responsibility to
get things right. That shit stays with you, at least
it does for me. I mean, in some ways you
can't be that sensitive to do this job, but in
some other ways you can't help, but be a little sensitive.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Well, and you should be a little sensitive.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I think, yeah, I mean that's true. You have to
be sensitive. That's what makes you a good reporter.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So what happened when he yelled at you? Were you scared?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's so funny because I can picture exactly where I
was sitting in the newsroom at this little sad table
where all the student reporters, which is what I was,
sat around in the Boston Globe, which was in Dorchester.
I was a student at Boston University at the time,
but this was six month job, full time paid, and
I was working the night cops. So it's sort of
(05:01):
like in the movies when you see journalists having to
work their way up and cover crime. That's what I
was doing. I don't know if that's a thing that
still exists. It's very much a relic of a different era.
But he called the communal phone, asked for me, screamed
at me. I don't remember what was said, and I
just remember being like, oh fuck. But ultimately it was fine.
(05:22):
I hadn't misquoted him. He was being an asshole. But
what remembering this did do was led me to read
some of the other articles that I had written during
that period, all of which were pretty pretty depressing. I
started my shift at four pm and went to midnight.
My job was to show up, sit there, listen to
(05:43):
the police scanner, and when something happened, something terrible, inevitably
happened somewhere in the Greater Boston region, the editors who
were sitting at the city desk would shout pre slack.
They would scream across the newsroom to me and be like, Jessica,
get to Roxbury, get to Georgester, get to Southee, wherever
(06:04):
it was I needed to go. And I would grab
my map because this is pre so cute.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I love the idea of little Jessica in her map
and her little like notepad.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Oh my god. And you really had to get to
know the city because you were in a race.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
You were racing all the other local reporters to get
to whatever stupid, sad, horrible thing had happened. And so
typically these things were like a water man had broken,
or there had been an accident on the four ninety
five highway, or let's see, I looked up a couple
(06:39):
of headlines, so let me just read you a few
of them. Missing woman found dead, street voltage electrocutes dog,
crash kills two on I four ninety five, man shocked
to death in Jamaica, plant like. These were the stories
that I was writing during this time.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
And also just showing up at those scenes in a
little god like when you don't know the vibe. It's
really intense to show up to a police scene where
someone's just been killed.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
It's so intense.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
And at this time, you know, there were reporters from
all the local publications, of which there were a few.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Then it was winter and so.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Your pen would freeze, so you had to not to
bring a pencil for your notebook because otherwise you wouldn't
be able to take notes.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
It's an old reporter's notes.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
And people didn't want to talk to you. Of course
they don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Something awful has just happened, and then your job is
to go knock on doors. So that's another experience of
being yelled at in one of those cases where it
wasn't like you could be defiant.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Because this is some asshole just trying to intimidate you.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
These are grieving parents or people that have just had
a tragedy, and you're some dumb kid showing up at
the door me as a white person often in minority neighborhoods,
being like, can I get a quote for this stupid story.
I almost didn't become a journalist because of that job.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
I mean, it's such a different kind of journalism than
what you ended up doing.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It's such a different kind of journalism.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And we're finishing that my six month gig or whatever
it was, and I was also working at a restaurant
at the time and just being like, I don't know
that I can do this, But I guess some of
that is to say, like, the lows can be pretty low,
but the highst can also be pretty high.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Do you feel that what was your worst assignment?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I've had a lot of crazy assignments, but this
reminds me that I too, worked an overnight shift. So
my first job in journalism was at NBC News and
I was part of this fellowship program and they would
rotate us through the shows. And one of the shows
at NBC News is obviously the Today Show.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
So when I got to the Today Show, speaking.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Of sad cubicles, there weren't enough desks, so they had
me sit at an area that was actually designed to
hold a printer. And I had this friend who was
also doing the program with me, this woman Shoshana guy
who's amazing and has gone on to become a really
successful executive producer. She and I would literally just count
down the minutes until we could go to the cafeteria
(09:03):
and complain about our embarrassing jobs. I remember one of
the first things that happened. And I had had a
career before journalism, right, so I was an adult, and
I remember someone coming over to me and being like,
do you think you can make a photo copy of
this sheet of paper? And I was like, I think
I can't. Why are you speaking to me like I'm unwell.
(09:25):
He was so strange that experience, but also great. I mean,
I got to do so many things, but one of
the things I got to do that was not that
fun is work.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
The overnight shift.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
And basically, for a morning show like that, someone needs
to work. I think we would clock in at like ten,
and you need to work through the show the next morning,
and the show starts airing at seven, right, so maybe
even we got there a little earlier eight or nine
o'clock news breaks overnight, you have to book it or
find the guests, and you're just like polishing and finishing
things and then you go home afterwards.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
You go home at ten o'clock a long night. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
And one thing that happened that I have never forgotten
is that I actually did my first big booking during
the overnights. That's how I became a booker for a
time at the Today Show. And it was a story
about a nurse who was a serial killer, so he
was slowly killing his patients. They had discovered this, he
had been arraigned, and we were trying to figure out
(10:22):
what guests could lead the show the next morning to
talk about this. So somehow I track down his sister.
She says to me, I will come on tomorrow, but
I won't do it without the approval of my lawyer.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
And I don't have a home number for him.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And this was before cell phone rate, I guess, or
before cell phones were.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Like so common.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, so I do this whole rigormarole, Like I basically
have to track down this man's home number by going
to the law firm's website, finding the person with the
most unusual sounding name, googling that, getting their phone number,
talking to them, convincing them to call the lawyer, and
it does end up that we get them for the
(11:02):
morning show.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
The lawyer and the sister come on the.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Next morning, and you would think this is a triumphant
story right about how I booked this thing, But what
happens is in the morning, the executive producer shows up.
We've been there overnight, we've been scrambling all night to
get this arrange. And the first thing he does is
he's like, who is Susie. Why does the note say
Susie book?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I'm like, who is that? And I'm literally standing next
to him. I'm like, that'sy me and he's like oh.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And then the next thing he proceeded to do after
he found out who I was and that I had
booked the lead guest on the show, is to give
me some cash and tell me to go buy coffee
for the entire control room, so like twenty coffee orders, and.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That's what I did.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So it's like, even when you have wins in those
early years, they make sure you remember that you are nothing,
you know what I mean, They're like, go buy the coffee.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Oh my god, Well that just reminded me. And this
isn't a reporting assignment. But this is my first internship
when I moved to New York, which I quit in
the first week, which was at New York Magazine. I
had two internships at the time. This was after the
Boston Globe job.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
I've been working in a.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Bar saving money to moved to New York, and I
had lined up two internships for myself. This was in
the time when everything was unpaid, so you also had
to line up a bartending world waitressing job. Yes, I
had a day job at the Village Voice, working for
this amazing investigative reporter, the late Wayne Barrett, who taught
me so much. And then two days a week I
would go to New York Magazine and I really wanted
(12:35):
to work in magazines.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
And my first assignment there, my first.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And only assignment there was to travel across the city
in search of red velvet cupcakes.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And one of them.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
I had to go to Bay Ridge, so as far as.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
You can possibly go on the New York City subway
because there was one particular cupcake spot that they wanted
and it took me all day to get there, and
I was carrying like fifty cupcakes.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
And then I return and I had brought.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
The wrong red velvet cupcake, and so they were like,
you need to go back, and anyway, that's when I quit.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Wait, I have important questions.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Okay, were the red velvet cupcakes for a story or
were they just for someone's birthday.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I think they were for some sort of taste test
story or something along those lines. So like, fine, I
guess somebody has to get those cupcakes. But in my
other job, I was working for this investigative reporter, going
to the courthouse doing all this serious stuff, and then
for two days a week I would go get cupcakes.
So anyway, I quit, and the person who had hired
me told me I would never work in journalism and
(13:36):
that I was blacklisted. That's another one of those things
where I was so traumatized and ashamed and didn't know.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
What to do with that that I really blocked it
out for a long time.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Oh yeah, I was also told at one point that
I would never work in journalism.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Again. I guess that's just like a rite of passage
that at some.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Point in your career someone says to you like you're
not going to make it, and you just have to
be like, who are you to tell me what? I
can and can't do so at some point, if you're
not getting anything out of a free internship, it does
really feel like a waste of time. But I did
also have lots of internships where I really learned a
(14:13):
lot about the business, And even in some of my
early jobs when I failed at something, I still learned
a lot from it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Do you have examples of that?
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Oh, that's such a good question. I think I have
a lot of examples of that.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
But there are often times when stories just won't work out,
Like you'll have spent months reporting something and it will
never see the light of day, or some boss will
give you a crazy assignment. I think one of my
crazier assignments, like a doomed to fail assignment, came from
our former boss, Tina Brown at Newsweek, and she sent
(14:45):
me to quote unquote, find Casey Anthony.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Do you remember the story.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Anthony, who everyone in America was looking for?
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Remind our listeners who Casey Anthony was.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
So.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Casey Anthony was a woman in Florida, because where else
would she be from, who became the subject of tabloid
fascination because her daughter went missing.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Kaylee Anthony disappeared in June two thousand and eight, but
her mother didn't report her missing for a month.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Her skeletal remains were found in two plastic bags dumped
in the woods.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Her mother told police and nanny had kidnapped her.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Now almost three years later that mother Casey faces the
death penalty.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Really not since the nineteen ninety five acquittal and murder
charges of OJ Simpson have we seen this kind of
drama in a courtroom as when this jury also said
not guilty.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
She told like a bunch of wild stories about what
had happened to the child, and she was posting on
social media at the time about what a great life
she was living, So I think that made it also
a very fascinating story for people damning photos of her
dancing while her two year old decomposed in a swamp.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It's been a story that has captivated the media and
much of the nation.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
But to be fair, everything I remember about the story
I remember from the Law and Order SBUD so any times,
but I'm pretty sure she spent some time in jail
and now she's out. She did some kind of docu series. Yes,
that was very controversial.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Well, so there was a period of time when it
was before the trial, but she was being held in
jail and then she was going to be released waiting
for the trial to happen. And like you said, this
was the tabloid story. Every news channel was covering it.
All of the television news. Every reporter was down in Florida,
(16:30):
camped outside of the jailhouse to try to, like I
don't know, follow her somewhere, to try to get an
interview or figure out where she was going. So Tina Brown,
our editor, was like, I am assigning you to go
find Casey Anthony.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Had I been covering this story?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
No?
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Did I have any special skills to find her?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
No?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I got there.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I rented a car. I was with a photographer. We
had like some shitty, cheap rental vehicle. There were all
these black SUVs crowded around the jail. There were all
these and know, if you remember the time, they were
like weird, creepy male supporters who thought Casey Anthony was
this kind of ye pot.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
And then there were.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
People who thought she'd murdered her daughters. So there were
all these protesters and we were like.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
What exactly are we supposed to be doing here?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
And meanwhile, the tabloid stations and the news stations. This
was pre drones, I guess, so they had like helicopters
that were like hovering over the jail. So like when
her suv exited the jail, and I remember this happening
because it was streamed live on many channels and on
Court TV or whatever.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
It was followed all through the city.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
They went on this kind of chase through the city
and we are one of hundreds of vehicles trying to
figure out where she's going. We don't have a helicopter, like,
we're just like two random people in this car trying
to find her. And I remember there being so much
pressure to find Casey Anthony.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Anyway, we failed.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
We didn't find her, We didn't know where the hell
she was going or how to get there.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I mean, it makes sense that you wouldn't have succeeded
in doing this. You were up against profe bookers. I mean,
there is something that people don't always realize, which is
there are journalists.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And some people would argue that using the word journalist
here is.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Not applicable, but there are people who work in television
news primarily but sometimes other mediums, and their job is
literally to track people down when a story breaks right.
That is literally their only job. They track down contact
information for people they call, They fly to go there.
It's incredibly competitive on the morning shows especially. I don't
(18:30):
know what it's like now, but there used to be
stories of people stealing guests from each other, showing up
and bribing the guest. You know, there's this whole underbelly
which obviously isn't legitimate.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
You're not allowed to pay guests.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
And I remember when I was at the Today Show
a producer got in a lot of trouble because she
bought a potential guest.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Some genes, and even that was considered foreboden.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So you know, they're not supposed to do this, but
there are lots of stories of underhanded booking Shenanigan. So
to send like a you know, a reporter.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I'm just like some twenty five year old idiot.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, to compete against this group of sharks that
have been camped out there for weeks, making contact with
every single person that Casey Anthony has.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Ever spoken to, trying to find a way in.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Like you were never going to compete, It's true, and
a good editor would have actually assigned you a story
about that, about the circle around Casey Anthony instead of
being like, go find Casey.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Or like write some interesting thing about trying to find
her and not being able to write.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That's the story that actually would have been unique because
you weren't going to beat the Today Show for Casey Anthony,
you know, and I actually did booking for the Today Show, right.
The reason I know about this booking thing is that
after that overnight shift, they put me on booking, which
was an assignment you would be put on separately.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
You didn't produce segments.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Oh so you had done so well that they were like,
all right, now you're on books.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Well well enough to be the coffee girl and to
be put on booking.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Okay, okay, but this is perfect because I want to
ask you about some of these bookings.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
So I have two stories. The first one is pretty sad.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
The first time I was ever actually sent on location
to do a booking. A lot of what I did
was finding contact information and reaching people by the phone.
But the first time I was sent out, a senior
producer who I really loved pulled me into her office
and was like, listen, this girl was on spring break
with her friends and she fell off the balcony and
we would like her parents to come on to talk
(20:45):
about this tomorrow. And I don't remember a lot of
the other details. I'm not sure what the parents were
supposed to tell us. I don't know if it was
because they thought there might have been foul play, like
there must have been a reason. And I was like,
what do you mean, and she was like, yeah, we
need you to go to this house in New Jersey,
to where her parents live.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Go downstairs.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
There's a flower shop, buy some flowers, get a card,
write a nice note in it, put your phone number,
and drive out there. And I think they ordered me
a car. And I was like, really dressed up that
day for some reason. I'm not someone who dresses up
that often, but for some reason, I felt so self
conscious being in this very fancy, like knee high boots
(21:28):
kind of outfit. And I drive out there, and of
course there's a police officer stationed at the door because
people have been showing up all day.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Reporters have been showing up all day.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And I just remember being so embarrassed because the police
officer was so appalled by.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Me, despicable reporters.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
She was just like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And I was like, listen, I just want to bring
some flowers, and he was like, that's not why you're here,
Like yeah, whatever, And I was there for less than
ten minutes. I mean, there was nothing for me to do.
I left the flowers in the car, never heard from them.
And that was one of the first.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Times where I was like, oh, this is kind of shameful.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I have really complicated feelings about bookings like this isn't
a great example because in this case, it's hard to
justify yeah, showing up to these people's house. But I
do think part of the reason we go to people
right after tragedies is we do want to give people
the opportunity to tell their stories. And sometimes those stories
have real impact. Yeah, they are meaningful to the people
(22:28):
who hear them, but also it can feel really meaningful
to share your story and to try and make meaning
out of this thing that's happened to you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
So I don't think.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
That it's all just like vultures circling around people. I
know that that is a common perception. The next story
I'm going to tell, though, it's not as sad.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
So I was sent to Boston. There was a legal case.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I think it was one of the first legal cases
between a former wife and husband over embryos, like who
was going to get the embryos?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Oh, that's interesting, this is still the Today Show.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
So I get sent and that was still when there
was money slashing around. So I remember I was staying
in like a really fancy hotel and they were just like,
you're going to stay until there's some kind of ruling.
So I was there and one of the things I
was doing was buttering up the doctors so that one
of them could come on the doctors who had actually
extracted and fertilized the embryos. So I go to the
(23:24):
doctor's office and one of them is like, we should
all go to dinner tonight, and I'm like okay, and
I have a company card, like part of the thing
is you're allowed to pay for things. Yeah, so I'm
just like sure, I'm happy to take you guys to dinner,
let me know where. And we get to dinner and
they've all brought their wives. It's now a dinner with
six people and me. So it's seven people and it's
(23:45):
a fancy restaurant. But like, I'm not really paying attention
to what they're ordering, because you know, I'm just doing
my job.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
And then the bill comes and I swear to god
it's eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And I was like, oh my god, it'd be great
because it's like you have a corporate credit card, but
there's rules and limits.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, I'm not supposed to have been eight hundred dollars
on dinner. And also what was I supposed to do?
Like they were obviously taking advantage of my situation. They
knew that I wasn't supposed to do this. But so
then I remember, I was like, I'm gonna go to
the bathroom and I went outside and call it the
same senior producer I was working with, and I was like, Polly,
I just.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Spent eight hundred dollars on dinner, Please don't fire me.
And she was just dying. She was laughing so much.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
She's like, Okay, not great. Yeah, she was like, are
they great? Don't do that again? But like, have you
booked them?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
And we did? Oh you did it in the end,
Oh my god, yeah, But was it worth all that?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
But sometimes these stories are really sad and sometimes they're hilarious.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
You know, it just depends.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Oh my god, wait, this reminds me of a bill
story that I'll tell. So you're eight hundred dollars, Bill,
I can top that by a couple of thousand, because
in around twenty ten, by the time this are is
we probably will still be in this moment where everyone
seems to be talking about and having just discovered polyamory.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Everyone's obsessed with polyamory.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Now everyone is obsessed with polyamory. There's a new book
out right now there. It was the cover of New
York magazine.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I'm just gonna go on the record here and say
that I am too lazy for polyamory, Like one relationship
is enough work.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Yeah, well, definitely too. It's scheduling.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It's scheduling, Like it's not about sex, it's about scheduling,
which I know because in twenty ten I spent a
lot of time with a polyamorous family in my hometown
of Seattle, because obviously we've been poll out there, and
so part of this was we were producing this documentary
short on them, and I was also writing this feature story,
(25:44):
and it was based around a triad, as they called themselves.
Is one woman, Teresa, and then her two partners who
were men, but then each of them also had secondary
partner ships. The two men each had a girlfriend who
then had a husband or a boyfriend. I had to
map these people out to keep track of them all. Anyway,
(26:07):
I needed to take them all out to dinner because
we needed to do this photo shoot and I needed
to have them all in one place and blah blah blah,
And so we go to this restaurant. This was not
long after I had been working in restaurants in Seattle.
So I had a friend who was managing a restaurant.
He got us a good table, and the extended poly
members of the clan kept showing up. So the table
(26:30):
just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I,
similar to you, I had this corporate card. I had
to like fight really hard to get this corporate card.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
It was very.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Controlled, and I left the dinner at one point to
go call my editor to be like, oh my god,
this bill is going to be so fucking big. I
think you're gonna have to get approval from finance and
is this okay? And oh my god, and what am
I going to do because it was like twenty five
hundred dollars or something, because oh my.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
God, it's so manrifying. I would have been terrified.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
But anyway, moral of the story, it all worked out.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
We all ate our food, we put out the piece,
we put the mini documentary out.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Everyone was happy the.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
End, and you got a great picture.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I'm sure, like I'm sure that was a great picture
of all those people together. Okay, so we've talked about
some of the more harrowing stories from our reporting. Let's
(27:29):
talk about a fun one, yes and expensive. Who would
you say is the most interesting or fun person you've
ever interviewed.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Yeah, that's such a good question.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Often it's not the famous people who end up being
the most interesting, but it's certainly interesting to see how
famous people concoct their lives and their press interviews. So,
for instance, I interviewed Jennifer Aniston at one point, and
I got to go to her house and it was
all very fun, and her dogs were there and they
were super cute. But it was such a controlled environment
that it didn't really feel like you were getting into
(27:59):
a ton of death. But one person actually who was
just really complex and interesting to interview was Monica Lewinsky.
I've profiled her twice now, first was in twenty ten.
This was when she really hadn't been in the public eye.
This was before her ted talk in some years. Like
the last public thing she had done was she had
(28:21):
launched this failed handbag line and people kind of mocked
her for it. And she was super super wary of
talking publicly and of the media, as you can imagine
based on what happened with her. And so that was
a real exercise in trying to make somebody feel comfortable
but also recognizing that you had to be firm in
(28:41):
certain cases, because she was like in and then out,
and then in and out, and like months into the
profile process, she would pull out of the profile and
then I would have to call and I would call
her publicist and I'd be like.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Look, we're really not trying to screw her over. We
have to move this forward.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
And at the same time she was so cautious and nervous,
she was also really open and raw. And she did
have a publicist, but the publicist was not with her
in New York when I was profailing her the first time,
and so it was just her living her life. We
went to a play together, she was doing a couple
of public speaking things. She would take me with her.
(29:19):
We would get in taxis. She at this time was
preparing to give her big ted talk that she would
do that would go viral about bullying and online shaming,
which would sort of catapult her into a new realm
as an anti bullying activist and advocate as opposed to
just the woman caught up in the scandal with Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
So she was.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Pretty raw and normal and like funny.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
She has a really funny sense of humor and is
very self deprecating and like we would go sit in
a corner booth at a restaurant and order French fries
and it was pretty fun. It was fun to get
to know her, Yeah, and a challenge to convince her
that she, I guess could trust me.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
I mean that makes sense, right, You can imagine and
why she was so wary of journalists given what she'd
been through. But I do think all of that came
through in your profiles of her. I really do think
I got to know her a little bit, which is
the best case scenario, after those profiles, and in a
way that felt really human and authentic. I've been thinking,
who is the most interesting person I interviewed? And I've
(30:18):
done a lot of celebrity interviews partially because I did
a celebrity segment for some period of time. For a year,
I worked randomly in Washington, but my job was to
interview celebrities about the causes they cared about. So every
week I would interview someone famous. It was kind of
an intense experience. And there were lots of amazing people.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman, Michael Douglas, all these wild people.
(30:42):
But the one that I remember the most, well, there's two.
One is Clare Dances, who I think I've talked about before,
who complimented me on my shoes and I will never forget,
and it's.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Really all a duck to win me over because I
was already such a fan.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And then the most memorable one is Loretta l Okay.
So Larelyn, for those who don't know, is this very
famous country singer. She was a bit older by the
time I interviewed her. I got to go down to
where she lived, and she had this museum on her property.
It was literally a double wide trailer that she had
(31:17):
turned into a museum of all of her costumes that
she made herself. She was so so famous, but she
had sewn all her own costumes for a long time,
and she took me by the hand and she walked
me through the museum and told me a story about
each item. It really was such a moving and beautiful experience,
and she was such a lovely person, and I just
(31:38):
felt really lucky that I got to have that experience
with her. I think it's an experience so few people
get to have. And you and I've talked about this.
I did interview and meet a lot of people who
I admired, like at one point I interviewed John Cusack,
who you know growing up, Say Anything was one of
my favorite movies. But part of the reason I think
a lot of these interviews don't stay with you is
what you're talking about in terms of how how control
(32:00):
the environments are. Like often I would meet this person,
talk to them for ten minutes, and then they would
be gone, and it would be in this very controlled
environment with a publicist. So while I think from the
outside it can feel like, oh, you've met so many
famous people, like I don't feel like I've.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Really met these people.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I feel like I'm like I've been in the same
room as these people and they have spoken to me,
and I've spoken to them, But that's not the same
thing as what I'm describing with Loretta, where I feel
like we genuinely spent time together and shared herself with me. Right.
You know that feels really rare because for good reason,
celebrities are wary of sharing themselves with every person who
(32:39):
wants a piece of them. That makes sense to me.
I think you do have to protect yourself a little
bit when you're in the public eye.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Okay, I need you to talk about Jessicus Simpsons, Okay,
because I feel like we've talked about the Justicas Simpson
mom James moment. I discussed if we should do an
episode on that. Yes, and that was when she performed
and she was wearing these high waisted jans and looked
absolutely normal by.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Yes, by any measure.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
For the measures of that time of the early two thousands,
when we thought that made someone look like a fat, mom.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Literally headlines four weeks like covers of magazines about how
she was fat, which really blows my mind. Jessicas Simpson
was never fat by any objective standard.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
But you actually have a real experience with Jessica Simpson
to some degree.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
So in the same way that I was saying that
I have met and spoken to Jessica Simpson.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
I don't mean like you are close.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean I wish because I think
Jessica Simpson is fascinating. A lot of people don't know that,
even though she has not done a lot of acting
or singing, Jessica Simpson is a bajillionaire and she's.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
A wildly successful business.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
She's a wildly successful business. It's a fashion business.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
She is one of the most successful celebrities ever to
launch a fashion business. And another thing people might not
know is that she has an incredibly high Q score,
which is a way in which celebrity popularity is measured
formula that's basically like, how many people like this person,
how many people don't like this person? And to have
a high Q score, it's not just that a lot
(34:08):
of people like you, but there's not very many people
who dislike you, and Jessica Simpson is at the top
of those charts. People just love her. They don't have
a lot of negative impressions of her. I think partially
because she's gone on to live a pretty quiet life
by any celebrity measure. And when we launched Katie Kirk's
talk show, we spent weeks and weeks trying to figure
(34:28):
out who our first guest should be, right, because you
want to come out of the gate.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Strong, Remind me what era this was in.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
So the show launched in twenty twelve. It launched in September.
We started working on it in March, So there were
many months of planning that went into the first four
or five episodes. I mean, they was planning that went
into all of them. But those first few episodes, you
know you're going to get a lot of scrutiny. One
and as I've said, I think before we genuinely thought
we were launching the next Oprah show, Like we thought
(34:54):
this was going to be a juggernaut that was on
television for years. So we felt a lot of pressure
just as a team, and I think Katie felt a
lot of pressure for good reasons, to come out.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Of the gate really strong.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
So eventually we landed on Jessica Simpson and Cheryl Crow,
and I produced the Jessica Simpson section and someone else
produced Cheryl Crow.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
The thing about this that's relevant to.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
The Mom Jeans part of the story is that Jessica
Simpson was coming on in her capacity as a representative
of Weight Watchers, which she had just signed on too,
so we were negotiating with her people but also the
weight Watchers people.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Had she signed on with weight Watchers in the wake
of the Mom Jeans incident or whatever you call it.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
I mean, I don't know if it was right after
the Mom Jeans, but that picture was in two thousand
and nine and.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
This was twenty twelve, right, so it was that long after.
I'm guessing that it was part of it.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I mean, I can't imagine what she went through being
fat shamed in this incredibly public way. I just remember
it being on tabloid covers for months. So how we
were going to do this segment. She was going to
do a weight life reveal. Oh, so she was going
to come on the show. We were planning this for months,
and she was going to be in a bathing suit
and she was gonna wear a jacket, and then she
(36:08):
was gonna take off the jacket and there she was going.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
To be slim Jessica Simmons.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Okay, but as we get closer and closer to the recording,
it becomes clear that she has not lost the weight.
And I don't know how much you know about weight
watcher's contracts. I happen to know a lot because of this.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
They are paid.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
To be a spokesperson, but then there are milestones they
have to hit to continue to make money. There's goals
they have to make for continued payments. So they are
really hopeful she's going to make the goal. But ultimately
she doesn't lose the amount of weight that was expected
of her to be able to do this reveal. So
they break this to us.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
It's like a.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Crisis, Like I just remember wearing like, oh no, Jessica
Simpson hasn't lost enough weight to imagine people talking about
you in this way.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
It's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And finally they tell us, listen, she's gonna be able
to do a bathing suit. She just doesn't feel comfortable,
and so instead she comes and she's in this black dress.
That was when peplams were really popular, so it's like
this black dress with a little peplam at the skirt.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Honestly, she's dressed for like a funeral. I'm like, what's happening?
And she shows up and they're like, she's not in
a good headspace. Nobody talked to her, so like, I
have to tell the team that, like no one but me.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
As well to wonder her.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And she comes in and you know, she's lovely and
she does a great job, but her weight loss reveal
is obviously like a little anti climactic.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
In the end, she didn't lead the show. We led
with Cheryl Crow from Studio one in New York. It's
the premiere of.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Katie Please Welcome, my dear friend Cheryl Crow, and.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
She was the second segment, I think because of this shift,
and that was my Jessica Simpson story. I mean, it
really made me feel for her because I feel like
there's so much pressure, as we've talked about, to be thin,
but to have all these people fixating on whether or
not you've lost enough weight by like a certain timeframe, right.
(38:08):
And then this is the craziest part is we find
out not long after that the reason she didn't lose
the weight is because she was pregnant. A couple weeks later,
Oh my god, she was pregnant and.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Basically she had to pause her Weight Watchers deal while
she had a baby.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
So, I mean, that is probably one of the wildest
stories I have.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Really is honestly so crazy and also maybe a good
place to end it.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, I feel like we've gone through a lot today,
and if people really love this, I'm sure we're willing
to do this again. But I don't know. These might
be my best stories. I don't know what else I
have for you.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
We might have to just bury them away now and
never repeat them again, Susie. Next week's episode was inspired
by a social media rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
Can you tell us about it?
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
For the past few years, there's been this growing movement
on social media and support of the Menendez Brothers, who,
as you know, are the two Beverly Hills brothers convicted
of killing their parents in a case that was really
huge in the early nineties, and now there are a
bunch of fan accounts dedicated to them and their story
and arguing that they deserve a new trial. So I
(39:18):
wanted to look into how that's happened, even though they've
been in prison for thirty four years. It's a fascinating case,
so there's a lot to discuss.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
about and want us to explore in a future episode?
Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist,
Fike Club, and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from pentagraem Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
your hosts Susie Bannaccarum.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
And Jessica Bennett. We are also executive producers.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
For even more.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Check out inretropod dot com.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
See you next week.
The person who had hired me told me I would
never work in journalism and that I was blacklisted, and
I was so traumatized and ashamed, and oh.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, I was also told at one point that I
would never work in journalism again. I guess that's just
like a write of passage that at some point in
your career someone says to you, like, you're not going
to make it, and you just have to be like,
who are you to tell me what I can and
can't do.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bannacaram.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
a moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Today, we're revisiting a few moments from the past, our
past that we've in fact tried to stop thinking about.
These are some of our most memorable and sometimes cringy
adventures in journalism, Susie. We've talked on an earlier episode
about some of our journalistic regrets. We have also talked
(00:58):
about our crazy some better or more crazy than others.
We've talked about hurdles, being women in leadership or climbing
the corporate ladder or whatever you want to call it.
But I actually thought it would be fun to tell
people a little bit more about some of our reporting
adventures really go behind the scenes, to show people that
(01:18):
it's not always as glamorous as it might seem, or
maybe it doesn't seem glamorous at all.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Honestly, Yeah, I don't know if it's glamorous, but we'll
let others decide. I think for me personally, it has
not always felt glamorous. I know that I've been lucky
to interview some really famous people and we'll talk about that,
but often it just feels a little cringey. So we'll
see how people respond.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I actually started going down this drabbit hole and thinking
about this during our Wreckers episode because in that episode
we talk about don Imus, the shock jock who said
this terrible racist slur about the Wreckers basketball team, and
in my mind, don Imus had yelled at me when
I was a young reporter at the Boston Globe and
tried to get me fired. So I know you and
(02:03):
I chatted briefly about this, and I was like, oh
my god, I have to look up the article.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, so I went and Nexus to look up this article.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
That I was talking about, in which I remember Don
I was screwing at me, and it was actually a
totally different shock jock radio host one in Boston named
j Severn.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I mean, they're all the same guy.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I mean, right, It was around the same era. It
was a similar thing. He had said something offensive about
Muslim people. I had then called him up for comment
when I was working the night shift at the Boston
Globe and whatever wrote down what he said, we published it,
and then he called my boss to try to get
me fired over claiming that he hadn't really said this thing.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
That sounds like a classic.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I've been yelled at so much in my career I
can't even remember most of the instances.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
People just get upset about being covered.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
They don't like the way they're covered, they don't like
us being honest about things they've said, and when it happens,
it always feels really scary. But then I think you
just kind of get used to putting him behind you,
and it's not actually that surprising to me that you
didn't even remember his name, or that you had to
go back into your own archives. I have to sometimes
google myself to find something about something I did or
(03:18):
look on my LinkedIn to be like what year did
I do that? It's really hard to remember your own career.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I find it is, and I think for me anyway,
some of the more uncomfortable memories I've tried to block out.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Perhaps, Yeah, so I think that's partially.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And especially when you're coming up, every little thing that
you get wrong, you think is going to mark you
forever and you'll never recover.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Well.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Also, I can still remember like certain mistakes I made,
and like shame washes over me. Luckily, I did not
make a lot of mistakes, but there are a couple
where when I think about them, even so many years later,
I feel terrible. And I do think that's some thing
that people don't really realize. Like I think there's this
sort of casual notion about journalists being kind of callous
(04:07):
or making mistakes and moving on and not caring. But
all the journalists I know or I'm close to really
hate making mistakes. We recognize that it's a responsibility to
get things right. That shit stays with you, at least
it does for me. I mean, in some ways you
can't be that sensitive to do this job, but in
some other ways you can't help, but be a little sensitive.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Well, and you should be a little sensitive.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I think, yeah, I mean that's true. You have to
be sensitive. That's what makes you a good reporter.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So what happened when he yelled at you? Were you scared?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's so funny because I can picture exactly where I
was sitting in the newsroom at this little sad table
where all the student reporters, which is what I was,
sat around in the Boston Globe, which was in Dorchester.
I was a student at Boston University at the time,
but this was six month job, full time paid, and
I was working the night cops. So it's sort of
(05:01):
like in the movies when you see journalists having to
work their way up and cover crime. That's what I
was doing. I don't know if that's a thing that
still exists. It's very much a relic of a different era.
But he called the communal phone, asked for me, screamed
at me. I don't remember what was said, and I
just remember being like, oh fuck. But ultimately it was fine.
(05:22):
I hadn't misquoted him. He was being an asshole. But
what remembering this did do was led me to read
some of the other articles that I had written during
that period, all of which were pretty pretty depressing. I
started my shift at four pm and went to midnight.
My job was to show up, sit there, listen to
(05:43):
the police scanner, and when something happened, something terrible, inevitably
happened somewhere in the Greater Boston region, the editors who
were sitting at the city desk would shout pre slack.
They would scream across the newsroom to me and be like, Jessica,
get to Roxbury, get to Georgester, get to Southee, wherever
(06:04):
it was I needed to go. And I would grab
my map because this is pre so cute.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I love the idea of little Jessica in her map
and her little like notepad.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Oh my god. And you really had to get to
know the city because you were in a race.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
You were racing all the other local reporters to get
to whatever stupid, sad, horrible thing had happened. And so
typically these things were like a water man had broken,
or there had been an accident on the four ninety
five highway, or let's see, I looked up a couple
(06:39):
of headlines, so let me just read you a few
of them. Missing woman found dead, street voltage electrocutes dog,
crash kills two on I four ninety five, man shocked
to death in Jamaica, plant like. These were the stories
that I was writing during this time.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
And also just showing up at those scenes in a
little god like when you don't know the vibe. It's
really intense to show up to a police scene where
someone's just been killed.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
It's so intense.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
And at this time, you know, there were reporters from
all the local publications, of which there were a few.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Then it was winter and so.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Your pen would freeze, so you had to not to
bring a pencil for your notebook because otherwise you wouldn't
be able to take notes.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
It's an old reporter's notes.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
And people didn't want to talk to you. Of course
they don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Something awful has just happened, and then your job is
to go knock on doors. So that's another experience of
being yelled at in one of those cases where it
wasn't like you could be defiant.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Because this is some asshole just trying to intimidate you.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
These are grieving parents or people that have just had
a tragedy, and you're some dumb kid showing up at
the door me as a white person often in minority neighborhoods,
being like, can I get a quote for this stupid story.
I almost didn't become a journalist because of that job.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
I mean, it's such a different kind of journalism than
what you ended up doing.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It's such a different kind of journalism.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And we're finishing that my six month gig or whatever
it was, and I was also working at a restaurant
at the time and just being like, I don't know
that I can do this, But I guess some of
that is to say, like, the lows can be pretty low,
but the highst can also be pretty high.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Do you feel that what was your worst assignment?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I've had a lot of crazy assignments, but this
reminds me that I too, worked an overnight shift. So
my first job in journalism was at NBC News and
I was part of this fellowship program and they would
rotate us through the shows. And one of the shows
at NBC News is obviously the Today Show.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
So when I got to the Today Show, speaking.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Of sad cubicles, there weren't enough desks, so they had
me sit at an area that was actually designed to
hold a printer. And I had this friend who was
also doing the program with me, this woman Shoshana guy
who's amazing and has gone on to become a really
successful executive producer. She and I would literally just count
down the minutes until we could go to the cafeteria
(09:03):
and complain about our embarrassing jobs. I remember one of
the first things that happened. And I had had a
career before journalism, right, so I was an adult, and
I remember someone coming over to me and being like,
do you think you can make a photo copy of
this sheet of paper? And I was like, I think
I can't. Why are you speaking to me like I'm unwell.
(09:25):
He was so strange that experience, but also great. I mean,
I got to do so many things, but one of
the things I got to do that was not that
fun is work.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
The overnight shift.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
And basically, for a morning show like that, someone needs
to work. I think we would clock in at like ten,
and you need to work through the show the next morning,
and the show starts airing at seven, right, so maybe
even we got there a little earlier eight or nine
o'clock news breaks overnight, you have to book it or
find the guests, and you're just like polishing and finishing
things and then you go home afterwards.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
You go home at ten o'clock a long night. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
And one thing that happened that I have never forgotten
is that I actually did my first big booking during
the overnights. That's how I became a booker for a
time at the Today Show. And it was a story
about a nurse who was a serial killer, so he
was slowly killing his patients. They had discovered this, he
had been arraigned, and we were trying to figure out
(10:22):
what guests could lead the show the next morning to
talk about this. So somehow I track down his sister.
She says to me, I will come on tomorrow, but
I won't do it without the approval of my lawyer.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
And I don't have a home number for him.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And this was before cell phone rate, I guess, or
before cell phones were.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Like so common.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, so I do this whole rigormarole, Like I basically
have to track down this man's home number by going
to the law firm's website, finding the person with the
most unusual sounding name, googling that, getting their phone number,
talking to them, convincing them to call the lawyer, and
it does end up that we get them for the
(11:02):
morning show.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
The lawyer and the sister come on the.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Next morning, and you would think this is a triumphant
story right about how I booked this thing, But what
happens is in the morning, the executive producer shows up.
We've been there overnight, we've been scrambling all night to
get this arrange. And the first thing he does is
he's like, who is Susie. Why does the note say
Susie book?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I'm like, who is that? And I'm literally standing next
to him. I'm like, that'sy me and he's like oh.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And then the next thing he proceeded to do after
he found out who I was and that I had
booked the lead guest on the show, is to give
me some cash and tell me to go buy coffee
for the entire control room, so like twenty coffee orders, and.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That's what I did.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So it's like, even when you have wins in those
early years, they make sure you remember that you are nothing,
you know what I mean, They're like, go buy the coffee.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Oh my god, Well that just reminded me. And this
isn't a reporting assignment. But this is my first internship
when I moved to New York, which I quit in
the first week, which was at New York Magazine. I
had two internships at the time. This was after the
Boston Globe job.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
I've been working in a.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Bar saving money to moved to New York, and I
had lined up two internships for myself. This was in
the time when everything was unpaid, so you also had
to line up a bartending world waitressing job. Yes, I
had a day job at the Village Voice, working for
this amazing investigative reporter, the late Wayne Barrett, who taught
me so much. And then two days a week I
would go to New York Magazine and I really wanted
(12:35):
to work in magazines.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
And my first assignment there, my first.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And only assignment there was to travel across the city
in search of red velvet cupcakes.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And one of them.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
I had to go to Bay Ridge, so as far as.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
You can possibly go on the New York City subway
because there was one particular cupcake spot that they wanted
and it took me all day to get there, and
I was carrying like fifty cupcakes.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
And then I return and I had brought.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
The wrong red velvet cupcake, and so they were like,
you need to go back, and anyway, that's when I quit.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Wait, I have important questions.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Okay, were the red velvet cupcakes for a story or
were they just for someone's birthday.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I think they were for some sort of taste test
story or something along those lines. So like, fine, I
guess somebody has to get those cupcakes. But in my
other job, I was working for this investigative reporter, going
to the courthouse doing all this serious stuff, and then
for two days a week I would go get cupcakes.
So anyway, I quit, and the person who had hired
me told me I would never work in journalism and
(13:36):
that I was blacklisted. That's another one of those things
where I was so traumatized and ashamed and didn't know.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
What to do with that that I really blocked it
out for a long time.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Oh yeah, I was also told at one point that
I would never work in journalism.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Again. I guess that's just like a rite of passage
that at some.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Point in your career someone says to you like you're
not going to make it, and you just have to
be like, who are you to tell me what? I
can and can't do so at some point, if you're
not getting anything out of a free internship, it does
really feel like a waste of time. But I did
also have lots of internships where I really learned a
(14:13):
lot about the business, And even in some of my
early jobs when I failed at something, I still learned
a lot from it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Do you have examples of that?
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Oh, that's such a good question. I think I have
a lot of examples of that.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
But there are often times when stories just won't work out,
Like you'll have spent months reporting something and it will
never see the light of day, or some boss will
give you a crazy assignment. I think one of my
crazier assignments, like a doomed to fail assignment, came from
our former boss, Tina Brown at Newsweek, and she sent
(14:45):
me to quote unquote, find Casey Anthony.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Do you remember the story.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Anthony, who everyone in America was looking for?
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Remind our listeners who Casey Anthony was.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
So.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Casey Anthony was a woman in Florida, because where else
would she be from, who became the subject of tabloid
fascination because her daughter went missing.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Kaylee Anthony disappeared in June two thousand and eight, but
her mother didn't report her missing for a month.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Her skeletal remains were found in two plastic bags dumped
in the woods.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Her mother told police and nanny had kidnapped her.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Now almost three years later that mother Casey faces the
death penalty.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Really not since the nineteen ninety five acquittal and murder
charges of OJ Simpson have we seen this kind of
drama in a courtroom as when this jury also said
not guilty.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
She told like a bunch of wild stories about what
had happened to the child, and she was posting on
social media at the time about what a great life
she was living, So I think that made it also
a very fascinating story for people damning photos of her
dancing while her two year old decomposed in a swamp.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It's been a story that has captivated the media and
much of the nation.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
But to be fair, everything I remember about the story
I remember from the Law and Order SBUD so any times,
but I'm pretty sure she spent some time in jail
and now she's out. She did some kind of docu series. Yes,
that was very controversial.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Well, so there was a period of time when it
was before the trial, but she was being held in
jail and then she was going to be released waiting
for the trial to happen. And like you said, this
was the tabloid story. Every news channel was covering it.
All of the television news. Every reporter was down in Florida,
(16:30):
camped outside of the jailhouse to try to, like I
don't know, follow her somewhere, to try to get an
interview or figure out where she was going. So Tina Brown,
our editor, was like, I am assigning you to go
find Casey Anthony.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Had I been covering this story?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
No?
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Did I have any special skills to find her?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
No?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I got there.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I rented a car. I was with a photographer. We
had like some shitty, cheap rental vehicle. There were all
these black SUVs crowded around the jail. There were all
these and know, if you remember the time, they were
like weird, creepy male supporters who thought Casey Anthony was
this kind of ye pot.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
And then there were.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
People who thought she'd murdered her daughters. So there were
all these protesters and we were like.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
What exactly are we supposed to be doing here?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
And meanwhile, the tabloid stations and the news stations. This
was pre drones, I guess, so they had like helicopters
that were like hovering over the jail. So like when
her suv exited the jail, and I remember this happening
because it was streamed live on many channels and on
Court TV or whatever.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
It was followed all through the city.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
They went on this kind of chase through the city
and we are one of hundreds of vehicles trying to
figure out where she's going. We don't have a helicopter, like,
we're just like two random people in this car trying
to find her. And I remember there being so much
pressure to find Casey Anthony.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Anyway, we failed.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
We didn't find her, We didn't know where the hell
she was going or how to get there.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I mean, it makes sense that you wouldn't have succeeded
in doing this. You were up against profe bookers. I mean,
there is something that people don't always realize, which is
there are journalists.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And some people would argue that using the word journalist
here is.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Not applicable, but there are people who work in television
news primarily but sometimes other mediums, and their job is
literally to track people down when a story breaks right.
That is literally their only job. They track down contact
information for people they call, They fly to go there.
It's incredibly competitive on the morning shows especially. I don't
(18:30):
know what it's like now, but there used to be
stories of people stealing guests from each other, showing up
and bribing the guest. You know, there's this whole underbelly
which obviously isn't legitimate.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
You're not allowed to pay guests.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
And I remember when I was at the Today Show
a producer got in a lot of trouble because she
bought a potential guest.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Some genes, and even that was considered foreboden.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So you know, they're not supposed to do this, but
there are lots of stories of underhanded booking Shenanigan. So
to send like a you know, a reporter.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I'm just like some twenty five year old idiot.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, to compete against this group of sharks that
have been camped out there for weeks, making contact with
every single person that Casey Anthony has.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Ever spoken to, trying to find a way in.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Like you were never going to compete, It's true, and
a good editor would have actually assigned you a story
about that, about the circle around Casey Anthony instead of
being like, go find Casey.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Or like write some interesting thing about trying to find
her and not being able to write.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That's the story that actually would have been unique because
you weren't going to beat the Today Show for Casey Anthony,
you know, and I actually did booking for the Today Show, right.
The reason I know about this booking thing is that
after that overnight shift, they put me on booking, which
was an assignment you would be put on separately.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
You didn't produce segments.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Oh so you had done so well that they were like,
all right, now you're on books.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Well well enough to be the coffee girl and to
be put on booking.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Okay, okay, but this is perfect because I want to
ask you about some of these bookings.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
So I have two stories. The first one is pretty sad.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
The first time I was ever actually sent on location
to do a booking. A lot of what I did
was finding contact information and reaching people by the phone.
But the first time I was sent out, a senior
producer who I really loved pulled me into her office
and was like, listen, this girl was on spring break
with her friends and she fell off the balcony and
we would like her parents to come on to talk
(20:45):
about this tomorrow. And I don't remember a lot of
the other details. I'm not sure what the parents were
supposed to tell us. I don't know if it was
because they thought there might have been foul play, like
there must have been a reason. And I was like,
what do you mean, and she was like, yeah, we
need you to go to this house in New Jersey,
to where her parents live.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Go downstairs.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
There's a flower shop, buy some flowers, get a card,
write a nice note in it, put your phone number,
and drive out there. And I think they ordered me
a car. And I was like, really dressed up that
day for some reason. I'm not someone who dresses up
that often, but for some reason, I felt so self
conscious being in this very fancy, like knee high boots
(21:28):
kind of outfit. And I drive out there, and of
course there's a police officer stationed at the door because
people have been showing up all day.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Reporters have been showing up all day.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And I just remember being so embarrassed because the police
officer was so appalled by.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Me, despicable reporters.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
She was just like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And I was like, listen, I just want to bring
some flowers, and he was like, that's not why you're here,
Like yeah, whatever, And I was there for less than
ten minutes. I mean, there was nothing for me to do.
I left the flowers in the car, never heard from them.
And that was one of the first.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Times where I was like, oh, this is kind of shameful.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I have really complicated feelings about bookings like this isn't
a great example because in this case, it's hard to
justify yeah, showing up to these people's house. But I
do think part of the reason we go to people
right after tragedies is we do want to give people
the opportunity to tell their stories. And sometimes those stories
have real impact. Yeah, they are meaningful to the people
(22:28):
who hear them, but also it can feel really meaningful
to share your story and to try and make meaning
out of this thing that's happened to you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
So I don't think.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
That it's all just like vultures circling around people. I
know that that is a common perception. The next story
I'm going to tell, though, it's not as sad.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
So I was sent to Boston. There was a legal case.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I think it was one of the first legal cases
between a former wife and husband over embryos, like who
was going to get the embryos?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Oh, that's interesting, this is still the Today Show.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
So I get sent and that was still when there
was money slashing around. So I remember I was staying
in like a really fancy hotel and they were just like,
you're going to stay until there's some kind of ruling.
So I was there and one of the things I
was doing was buttering up the doctors so that one
of them could come on the doctors who had actually
extracted and fertilized the embryos. So I go to the
(23:24):
doctor's office and one of them is like, we should
all go to dinner tonight, and I'm like okay, and
I have a company card, like part of the thing
is you're allowed to pay for things. Yeah, so I'm
just like sure, I'm happy to take you guys to dinner,
let me know where. And we get to dinner and
they've all brought their wives. It's now a dinner with
six people and me. So it's seven people and it's
(23:45):
a fancy restaurant. But like, I'm not really paying attention
to what they're ordering, because you know, I'm just doing
my job.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
And then the bill comes and I swear to god
it's eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And I was like, oh my god, it'd be great
because it's like you have a corporate credit card, but
there's rules and limits.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, I'm not supposed to have been eight hundred dollars
on dinner. And also what was I supposed to do?
Like they were obviously taking advantage of my situation. They
knew that I wasn't supposed to do this. But so
then I remember, I was like, I'm gonna go to
the bathroom and I went outside and call it the
same senior producer I was working with, and I was like, Polly,
I just.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Spent eight hundred dollars on dinner, Please don't fire me.
And she was just dying. She was laughing so much.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
She's like, Okay, not great. Yeah, she was like, are
they great? Don't do that again? But like, have you
booked them?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
And we did? Oh you did it in the end,
Oh my god, yeah, But was it worth all that?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
But sometimes these stories are really sad and sometimes they're hilarious.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
You know, it just depends.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Oh my god, wait, this reminds me of a bill
story that I'll tell. So you're eight hundred dollars, Bill,
I can top that by a couple of thousand, because
in around twenty ten, by the time this are is
we probably will still be in this moment where everyone
seems to be talking about and having just discovered polyamory.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Everyone's obsessed with polyamory.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Now everyone is obsessed with polyamory. There's a new book
out right now there. It was the cover of New
York magazine.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I'm just gonna go on the record here and say
that I am too lazy for polyamory, Like one relationship
is enough work.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Yeah, well, definitely too. It's scheduling.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It's scheduling, Like it's not about sex, it's about scheduling,
which I know because in twenty ten I spent a
lot of time with a polyamorous family in my hometown
of Seattle, because obviously we've been poll out there, and
so part of this was we were producing this documentary
short on them, and I was also writing this feature story,
(25:44):
and it was based around a triad, as they called themselves.
Is one woman, Teresa, and then her two partners who
were men, but then each of them also had secondary
partner ships. The two men each had a girlfriend who
then had a husband or a boyfriend. I had to
map these people out to keep track of them all. Anyway,
(26:07):
I needed to take them all out to dinner because
we needed to do this photo shoot and I needed
to have them all in one place and blah blah blah,
And so we go to this restaurant. This was not
long after I had been working in restaurants in Seattle.
So I had a friend who was managing a restaurant.
He got us a good table, and the extended poly
members of the clan kept showing up. So the table
(26:30):
just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I,
similar to you, I had this corporate card. I had
to like fight really hard to get this corporate card.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
It was very.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Controlled, and I left the dinner at one point to
go call my editor to be like, oh my god,
this bill is going to be so fucking big. I
think you're gonna have to get approval from finance and
is this okay? And oh my god, and what am
I going to do because it was like twenty five
hundred dollars or something, because oh my.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
God, it's so manrifying. I would have been terrified.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
But anyway, moral of the story, it all worked out.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
We all ate our food, we put out the piece,
we put the mini documentary out.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Everyone was happy the.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
End, and you got a great picture.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I'm sure, like I'm sure that was a great picture
of all those people together. Okay, so we've talked about
some of the more harrowing stories from our reporting. Let's
(27:29):
talk about a fun one, yes and expensive. Who would
you say is the most interesting or fun person you've
ever interviewed.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Yeah, that's such a good question.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Often it's not the famous people who end up being
the most interesting, but it's certainly interesting to see how
famous people concoct their lives and their press interviews. So,
for instance, I interviewed Jennifer Aniston at one point, and
I got to go to her house and it was
all very fun, and her dogs were there and they
were super cute. But it was such a controlled environment
that it didn't really feel like you were getting into
(27:59):
a ton of death. But one person actually who was
just really complex and interesting to interview was Monica Lewinsky.
I've profiled her twice now, first was in twenty ten.
This was when she really hadn't been in the public eye.
This was before her ted talk in some years. Like
the last public thing she had done was she had
(28:21):
launched this failed handbag line and people kind of mocked
her for it. And she was super super wary of
talking publicly and of the media, as you can imagine
based on what happened with her. And so that was
a real exercise in trying to make somebody feel comfortable
but also recognizing that you had to be firm in
(28:41):
certain cases, because she was like in and then out,
and then in and out, and like months into the
profile process, she would pull out of the profile and
then I would have to call and I would call
her publicist and I'd be like.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Look, we're really not trying to screw her over. We
have to move this forward.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
And at the same time she was so cautious and nervous,
she was also really open and raw. And she did
have a publicist, but the publicist was not with her
in New York when I was profailing her the first time,
and so it was just her living her life. We
went to a play together, she was doing a couple
of public speaking things. She would take me with her.
(29:19):
We would get in taxis. She at this time was
preparing to give her big ted talk that she would
do that would go viral about bullying and online shaming,
which would sort of catapult her into a new realm
as an anti bullying activist and advocate as opposed to
just the woman caught up in the scandal with Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
So she was.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Pretty raw and normal and like funny.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
She has a really funny sense of humor and is
very self deprecating and like we would go sit in
a corner booth at a restaurant and order French fries
and it was pretty fun. It was fun to get
to know her, Yeah, and a challenge to convince her
that she, I guess could trust me.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
I mean that makes sense, right, You can imagine and
why she was so wary of journalists given what she'd
been through. But I do think all of that came
through in your profiles of her. I really do think
I got to know her a little bit, which is
the best case scenario, after those profiles, and in a
way that felt really human and authentic. I've been thinking,
who is the most interesting person I interviewed? And I've
(30:18):
done a lot of celebrity interviews partially because I did
a celebrity segment for some period of time. For a year,
I worked randomly in Washington, but my job was to
interview celebrities about the causes they cared about. So every
week I would interview someone famous. It was kind of
an intense experience. And there were lots of amazing people.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman, Michael Douglas, all these wild people.
(30:42):
But the one that I remember the most, well, there's two.
One is Clare Dances, who I think I've talked about before,
who complimented me on my shoes and I will never forget,
and it's.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Really all a duck to win me over because I
was already such a fan.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And then the most memorable one is Loretta l Okay.
So Larelyn, for those who don't know, is this very
famous country singer. She was a bit older by the
time I interviewed her. I got to go down to
where she lived, and she had this museum on her property.
It was literally a double wide trailer that she had
(31:17):
turned into a museum of all of her costumes that
she made herself. She was so so famous, but she
had sewn all her own costumes for a long time,
and she took me by the hand and she walked
me through the museum and told me a story about
each item. It really was such a moving and beautiful experience,
and she was such a lovely person, and I just
(31:38):
felt really lucky that I got to have that experience
with her. I think it's an experience so few people
get to have. And you and I've talked about this.
I did interview and meet a lot of people who
I admired, like at one point I interviewed John Cusack,
who you know growing up, Say Anything was one of
my favorite movies. But part of the reason I think
a lot of these interviews don't stay with you is
what you're talking about in terms of how how control
(32:00):
the environments are. Like often I would meet this person,
talk to them for ten minutes, and then they would
be gone, and it would be in this very controlled
environment with a publicist. So while I think from the
outside it can feel like, oh, you've met so many
famous people, like I don't feel like I've.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Really met these people.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I feel like I'm like I've been in the same
room as these people and they have spoken to me,
and I've spoken to them, But that's not the same
thing as what I'm describing with Loretta, where I feel
like we genuinely spent time together and shared herself with me. Right.
You know that feels really rare because for good reason,
celebrities are wary of sharing themselves with every person who
(32:39):
wants a piece of them. That makes sense to me.
I think you do have to protect yourself a little
bit when you're in the public eye.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Okay, I need you to talk about Jessicus Simpsons, Okay,
because I feel like we've talked about the Justicas Simpson
mom James moment. I discussed if we should do an
episode on that. Yes, and that was when she performed
and she was wearing these high waisted jans and looked
absolutely normal by.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Yes, by any measure.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
For the measures of that time of the early two thousands,
when we thought that made someone look like a fat, mom.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Literally headlines four weeks like covers of magazines about how
she was fat, which really blows my mind. Jessicas Simpson
was never fat by any objective standard.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
But you actually have a real experience with Jessica Simpson
to some degree.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
So in the same way that I was saying that
I have met and spoken to Jessica Simpson.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
I don't mean like you are close.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean I wish because I think
Jessica Simpson is fascinating. A lot of people don't know that,
even though she has not done a lot of acting
or singing, Jessica Simpson is a bajillionaire and she's.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
A wildly successful business.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
She's a wildly successful business. It's a fashion business.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
She is one of the most successful celebrities ever to
launch a fashion business. And another thing people might not
know is that she has an incredibly high Q score,
which is a way in which celebrity popularity is measured
formula that's basically like, how many people like this person,
how many people don't like this person? And to have
a high Q score, it's not just that a lot
(34:08):
of people like you, but there's not very many people
who dislike you, and Jessica Simpson is at the top
of those charts. People just love her. They don't have
a lot of negative impressions of her. I think partially
because she's gone on to live a pretty quiet life
by any celebrity measure. And when we launched Katie Kirk's
talk show, we spent weeks and weeks trying to figure
(34:28):
out who our first guest should be, right, because you
want to come out of the gate.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Strong, Remind me what era this was in.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
So the show launched in twenty twelve. It launched in September.
We started working on it in March, So there were
many months of planning that went into the first four
or five episodes. I mean, they was planning that went
into all of them. But those first few episodes, you
know you're going to get a lot of scrutiny. One
and as I've said, I think before we genuinely thought
we were launching the next Oprah show, Like we thought
(34:54):
this was going to be a juggernaut that was on
television for years. So we felt a lot of pressure
just as a team, and I think Katie felt a
lot of pressure for good reasons, to come out.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Of the gate really strong.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
So eventually we landed on Jessica Simpson and Cheryl Crow,
and I produced the Jessica Simpson section and someone else
produced Cheryl Crow.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
The thing about this that's relevant to.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
The Mom Jeans part of the story is that Jessica
Simpson was coming on in her capacity as a representative
of Weight Watchers, which she had just signed on too,
so we were negotiating with her people but also the
weight Watchers people.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Had she signed on with weight Watchers in the wake
of the Mom Jeans incident or whatever you call it.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
I mean, I don't know if it was right after
the Mom Jeans, but that picture was in two thousand
and nine and.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
This was twenty twelve, right, so it was that long after.
I'm guessing that it was part of it.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I mean, I can't imagine what she went through being
fat shamed in this incredibly public way. I just remember
it being on tabloid covers for months. So how we
were going to do this segment. She was going to
do a weight life reveal. Oh, so she was going
to come on the show. We were planning this for months,
and she was going to be in a bathing suit
and she was gonna wear a jacket, and then she
(36:08):
was gonna take off the jacket and there she was going.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
To be slim Jessica Simmons.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Okay, but as we get closer and closer to the recording,
it becomes clear that she has not lost the weight.
And I don't know how much you know about weight
watcher's contracts. I happen to know a lot because of this.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
They are paid.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
To be a spokesperson, but then there are milestones they
have to hit to continue to make money. There's goals
they have to make for continued payments. So they are
really hopeful she's going to make the goal. But ultimately
she doesn't lose the amount of weight that was expected
of her to be able to do this reveal. So
they break this to us.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
It's like a.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Crisis, Like I just remember wearing like, oh no, Jessica
Simpson hasn't lost enough weight to imagine people talking about
you in this way.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
It's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And finally they tell us, listen, she's gonna be able
to do a bathing suit. She just doesn't feel comfortable,
and so instead she comes and she's in this black dress.
That was when peplams were really popular, so it's like
this black dress with a little peplam at the skirt.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Honestly, she's dressed for like a funeral. I'm like, what's happening?
And she shows up and they're like, she's not in
a good headspace. Nobody talked to her, so like, I
have to tell the team that, like no one but me.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
As well to wonder her.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And she comes in and you know, she's lovely and
she does a great job, but her weight loss reveal
is obviously like a little anti climactic.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
In the end, she didn't lead the show. We led
with Cheryl Crow from Studio one in New York. It's
the premiere of.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Katie Please Welcome, my dear friend Cheryl Crow, and.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
She was the second segment, I think because of this shift,
and that was my Jessica Simpson story. I mean, it
really made me feel for her because I feel like
there's so much pressure, as we've talked about, to be thin,
but to have all these people fixating on whether or
not you've lost enough weight by like a certain timeframe, right.
(38:08):
And then this is the craziest part is we find
out not long after that the reason she didn't lose
the weight is because she was pregnant. A couple weeks later,
Oh my god, she was pregnant and.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Basically she had to pause her Weight Watchers deal while
she had a baby.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
So, I mean, that is probably one of the wildest
stories I have.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Really is honestly so crazy and also maybe a good
place to end it.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, I feel like we've gone through a lot today,
and if people really love this, I'm sure we're willing
to do this again. But I don't know. These might
be my best stories. I don't know what else I
have for you.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
We might have to just bury them away now and
never repeat them again, Susie. Next week's episode was inspired
by a social media rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
Can you tell us about it?
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
For the past few years, there's been this growing movement
on social media and support of the Menendez Brothers, who,
as you know, are the two Beverly Hills brothers convicted
of killing their parents in a case that was really
huge in the early nineties, and now there are a
bunch of fan accounts dedicated to them and their story
and arguing that they deserve a new trial. So I
(39:18):
wanted to look into how that's happened, even though they've
been in prison for thirty four years. It's a fascinating case,
so there's a lot to discuss.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
about and want us to explore in a future episode?
Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist,
Fike Club, and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from pentagraem Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
your hosts Susie Bannaccarum.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
And Jessica Bennett. We are also executive producers.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
For even more.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Check out inretropod dot com.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
See you next week.
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