TJ Walker breaks down Cate Blanchett's emotional outburst during an interview, using it to teach how to stay in control during media appearances and protect your narrative.
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Actress Cate Blanchett blows up at an interviewer and uses obscenities in the middle of an interview. Now, actress Cate Blanchett is quite popular. She is known for just excellent, excellent acting and fantastic roles. Has a pretty good reputation in Hollywood. Don't mean to suggest that this is going to destroy her reputation, but here's what happened. She was in Austria or being interviewed by an Australian talk show host about an upcoming movie. And here's what he said. How are you able to get that cat to do what you wanted to do on a leash? And apparently this is something referencing a scene in the movie. The interviewer then says, I tried putting my girlfriend's cat on a leash, and it just never works for me. Cate Blanchent's response was, that's your question. That's your effing question. Although she didn't say effing. She said the whole word. I cleaned it up here. Here's the problem with that response. The second she said that, that became the most interesting thing in the interview because it had emotion, spontaneity, anger, an unrehearsed quality to it. And that's the problem with having an outburst like that is that becomes the headline. Guess what the only thing is anyone's talking about in that interview? Her emotional outburst and basically metaphorically slapping the reporter in the face. Now, that very well may have been a stupid question. I don't know. But here's the thing I teach my clients to say when they are in an interview and they hear a stupid question, I remind them, nobody cares about your opinion of the question. You are not hired to be the journalism professor, this reporter. You're there to answer questions and to promote the messages that help you, your organization, in this case, the Cate Blanchett movie. So if you don't like the question, don't sit there and waste time telling the reporter how stupid he is. Instead, simply rewrite the question in your own brain to make it a smart question, an easy question, and then answer that question. Cate Blanchett could have easily just rewritten that question in her own head to, can you tell us about the challenges of doing this particular movie? Well, now it's an easy question. She could talk about the cat if she wants to. She can talk about the location or getting up early. She can talk about anything she wants to on her terms without turning this into an attack on the reporter. That's what I advise my clients to do. Now, is this somehow going to destroy Cate Blanchett's repetition? No. Some might even argue that this has gotten a lot more attention and more focus on her movie, although I don't remember what the name of the movie is, than if she had just given a straight interview. My point is control. I want all of my clients to know exactly what they're doing in an interview and what the outcome will be. If you have an outburst, use an obscenity, attacking the reporters, questioning or intelligence, that's going to be the story. So make up your mind in advance what you want. The other thing about this Cate Blanchett situation is you're a Hollywood star. You're making a thousand times more money than most families anywhere in the world, whether it's Australia or the US you're getting news coverage that most businesses would love to get, but they can't. They have to buy advertising. And sure, when you're a Hollywood star and you're going on a publicity tour, you get the same four or five questions asked again and again and again, hundreds of times in a day. And I'm sure it's boring. But you know what? A lot of people have boring jobs. They don't get paid 5, 10, 20 million dollars a year or a movie. So suck it up, Hollywood stars. I'm T.J. walker. Thanks for joining.
