Ep 167 The Jennifer Lawrence Blunder that Sent Her to Media Training June 15, 2016

Actress Jennifer Lawrence reveals the blunder she made that got her sent to Media Training.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life Speaking with TJ Walker.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence is wildly popular. She's considered a media darling. She's been in huge, huge hits like the Hunger Games, X Men. Now she's promoting and she usually gets fantastic media coverage. But it's not something that automatically happens. She revealed in spring of 2016, a time when she made a huge blunder and her handlers and the movie producers, movie studios involved sent her to remedial media training, which personal note, I think it's a crime and insane that all movie stars are not put through extensive media training before going on a press tour. But that's a side note. So here's what happened. Jennifer Lawrence had made a movie in 2008. She was very young at the time called the Burning Plane. This was a movie that co starred Kim Basinger and she was attending a press conference promoting the movie. Her co star was not there. She was asked by a reporter, where's Kim Basinger? And here's what she said in retelling the story. Kim Basinger wasn't there. I just leaned into the microphone, was like, you didn't hear? Kim died. I got ripped off the stage, thrown into Media Training, which was hilarious because I was like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. So what's the lesson from this? That you can never joke, never kid. That's not it exactly. But this is a classic example of something that might work in conversation. Friends, family, colleagues, a little humor, little light heartedness really does not work when you're talking to the news media. More on this in a moment.

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So here's the problem folks. TV reporters, print reporters, in fact a lot of average people will say we don't want movie stars or for that matter, politicians, media training. We want them just to be candid, be honest, be real, be conversational. You hear that all the time. And the problem is real human beings are sarcastic from time to time, myself included. Real human beings sometimes make inappropriate jokes, inappropriate humor, things that might be fine with one friend after a beer or two but simply aren't appropriate when people are reading it the next day on their tablets or newspapers or iPhones and it's 7am so here's the big problem a lot of people face, whether they're movie stars, politicians or CEOs, is that if you joke in a sarcastic way, meaning the opposite of what you're saying, it doesn't translate well when you're talking to the media because when it's converted to print or taken outside of the context of the rest of the conversation or people can't hear the sarcastic tone in your voice or see the wink, they're reading it just literally. And the problem is this could have set off a rumor that could possibly have really destroyed Kim Basinger's career. If everybody thought she's dead, what producer or director would call her up to be in a movie or a TV show? And rumors can get started about certain Hollywood celebrities. There was the one about Abe Vagoda for the last 30 years that he had died. He just died in the last year. So these rumors can hurt people. And you can also get a reputation as a movie star or pop politician is someone who distributes falsehoods. Well, she wasn't obviously trying to deceive reporters. She was just joking. And that's the real problem if you want to joke to the media in a situation where the stakes are high. Because if you are a 20 million dollar a movie movie star and it's 100 or 200 or 300 million dollar movie and you're doing a press conference or interview with Entertainment Tonight, the stakes are high. Jobs are at stake. Stock price is at stake. The entire careers of directors and other movie stars are all at stake. The stakes are very high. You simply do not have the luxury of botching interviews and having to do cleanup and having to do clarification. You need to do one thing which is give people a sense of the movie and get them excited about going to see it and making them like you more. That's your job as a movie star and to be interesting. So if you're using humor that backfires and makes you look like you're a jerk or mean spirited or you're attacking a co worker, which is what a co star is in a movie, all of that can simply come back to haunt you and it's unproductive. Now how could this have been avoided? For starters, the producers that are paying $20 million and 2008, she wasn't making $20 million a year. But whatever she was getting paid, they certainly could have also spent some money they don't have to hire me, but they should hire some media trainer to practice and rehearse with her. Because that's the kind of thing where if you practice that response, recorded it. The media trainer could point out and say, okay, I know you're kidding. Anyone who's in the room knows you're kidding. But if someone just saw this two second clip of you saying Kim is dead, would you be happy? And the headline is that Kim Basinger is dead, would you be happy? I'm pretty sure that, that Jennifer Lawrence would say, oh my gosh, that would be awful. The media trainer could then turn to her and say, okay, now when you're doing the real press conference tomorrow, just don't say it and you won't have any problems. That's far and away the biggest solution. In a moment, I want to give you some tips on safe ways of using humor when you are doing a media interview or a presentation.

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The safest way to use humor, a politician, a movie star, a high profile individual, is to tell a story where you make fun of yourself. It makes people feel better about you, makes you seem like you're not stuffy, like you're not arrogant. It's highly unlikely anyone's going to be offended and you can practice it and test it. When you see most Hollywood celebrities on a show like the Tonight show or any of the Hollywood highly produced big time entertainment shows, the old David Letterman show for example, they typically rehearsed these. They talked their whole story out loud with the producer in advance so it could be looked at, reflected upon, tweaked. It's not necessarily memorized, it's not written out word for word, but it was all talked out in advance to see, is this interesting? Does this work? Is this something that works within the time frame? Because if it's a story that takes 20 minutes, that's not going to work on network TV. So that is the safest. Ronald Reagan was the master at this. He consistently used humor throughout his presidency and he always did it in a way that made fun of himself, often of his own age. You know, he would talk about being at the political convention when Ronald Reagan, when Abe Lincoln was nominated. And I'm not going to try to duplicate Ronald Reagan's humor, but he was always making fun of himself. Now the one time when he did get caught and it was a bit of a blunder and it got media attention is he thought the microphone wasn't on in a recording studio. And he said, regarding the Soviet Union, this is the height of the Cold War. We begin bombing in five minutes. He was just joking. Well, guess what? The rest of the world didn't think it was too funny. It got massive, massive publicity and attention. Had to be walked back from the White House. So perfect example again of why sarcasm doesn't work. You don't have to be boring. You don't have to be humorless, devoid of personality, whether you're a celebrity, a politician or a business person. But you got to be highly selective. Humor that works in private with friends and family simply will not work for you all the time. When you're in front of the news media. Be careful. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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