Are influencers who interview celebrities entertainment journalists?

During Timothée Chalamet's recent press run for Dune: Part Two, a video from an interview went viral. 

In the clip, the interviewer — Sam Thompson, a UK reality TV star turned radio host and podcaster — asked Chalamet a question about whether it's "easier or harder to have a relationship on screen with somebody you're actually pals with," which a lot of online commenters felt to be rather cliché.

The video quickly made its way onto X — formerly known as Twitter — and was watched close to nine million times. The criticism revolved around the rise of influencers and other celebrities being given roles that were traditionally reserved for journalists. 

Culture critics Lainey Lui, Jackson Weaver and Julianna Escobedo Shepherd join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the role of influencers and celebrities in entertainment journalism and whether they should be afforded interview roles in the first place.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus reactions to the new autobiographical documentary from Jennifer Lopez, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Lainey, for anyone listening who maybe didn't see anything wrong with asking a star, "What was it like kissing your friend on screen?" Can you explain why that clip upset so many people?

Lainey: I actually don't know why it upset that many people. It's kind of a standard question that has been asked of actors in films. "What was it like filming that love scene? Was it uncomfortable?"

My assumption is that a lot of these social media users who whip up outrage are novices and only remember things in entertainment that happened five minutes ago. They don't have a solid foundation of pop culture studies because, again, it's not the first time this question has been asked. Is it a boring question? Sure. But does boring merit this kind of outrage? Is it a derivative question? Sure. Does derivative merit this kind of outrage? I don't know, so I think there's a lot more going on here. 

Elamin: Entertainment journalists who are really good at what they do would have relished the opportunity to ask Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler some questions about Dune. But then you get influencers, and they are likely to do the thing that you just mentioned Lainey, which is to ask more of a derivative question when there are much more interesting questions to ask them. So when you see this moment here, Jackson, there's a reason that influencers like Sam Thompson are getting access to these press junkets. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Jackson: When you go to the junket, like you said, you have a very short amount of time, but also almost all of the time, you're told you can't ask personal questions. You have to stick to the movie and can't ask them about their personal lives. 

Also if they're an actor and not a writer, you can't ask Timothée Chalamet, "Why did Paul go into the desert?" Because it was written in the script. So there's not a ton there to ask them. So it's a real skill to craft a question that gets an interesting response and actually gives them the ability to answer something. And if you're not an entertainment journalist or a freelancer who's crafted that skill, it's not as easy as just walking in and just thinking off the top of your head what you're going to ask. And if you're an influencer who's going to softball, you're not going to have probative, insightful, deep, challenging questions.

Elamin: Julianne, it has been a really tough year for entertainment journalists. So many outlets are laying off people and restructuring, including Pitchfork, where you're a contributing writer, if you had to forecast what the relationship might look like between influencers and journalists  in five years or so, what would you say? 

Julianne: Maybe all the journalists will become influencers if it keeps going this way. But I think it will take one lawsuit against an influencer, to sort of shift the way that influencers approach these interviews. And, I think we'll see influencers applying journalistic standards. 

I don't necessarily think it's totally adversarial between journalists and influencers. They're not doing what we are doing, and that is fine. I think it's more about the corporations that allow influencers more access than journalists. And that's the problem. 

Lainey: To Julianne's point about how this is affecting entertainment journalism, I think that there are lots of opportunities for influencers to learn and to get better. I'm an example of that. I started as a blogger. I had no business being on television. And then I got to do what I am now. And the difference is because I was brought into a television network and I was trained by professionals.

Here's what the danger will be if you keep firing or laying off people with experience: who is going to be around to train the influencer? 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender