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Celebrities shouldn't need to apologize for having opinions

Chloe Sevigny speaks her mind and then throws the journalist under the bus

By Daniel Fienberg Friday, Mar 26, 2010 7:05 PM

Celebrities shouldn't need to apologize for having opinions

 Chloe Sevigny of 'Big Love'

Credit: HBO
On Wednesday, The Onion's A.V. Club posted an interview with Chloe Sevigny. 
 
Conducted by Sean O'Neal, I think the interview was meant to promote "Barry Munday," but the conversation soon went off in a different direction.
 
As per O'Neal's Q&A format, the interviewer noted "This past season of Big Love has taken a lot of flak for being so over-the-top." A true statement. It's not the universally held position, but it's certainly reflective of the opinion of some percentage of the show's fan base.
 
"It was awful this season, as far as I’m concerned," Sevigny responded.
 
What followed was a lengthy conversation going through the flaws and gaps in logic in the fourth season of "Big Love."
 
Now I've never had much of an opinion on Chloe Sevigny -- I often like her as an actress, never had any problems with her as a TCA panelist or at junkets -- but after reading the interview, I came away with a whole new respect for her. Over many hundreds of spoken words, she noted myriad flaws with the season, some I agreed with completely and some I thought were a little off-base. Regardless of my agreement, I loved both that she was willing and able to analyze a maelstrom that she's very much in the midst of.
 
I also admired how she laid out her complaints. Unlike a Katherine Heigl withdrawing her name from Emmy consideration because the writers didn't give her anything to work work, Sevigny analyzed different plotpoints and said why she didn't think they worked. She didn't single out the writers or her co-stars, though she probably blamed HBO a little bit for the truncated season.
 
Yes, I read the interview and knew immediately that she was going to be in trouble, but I also read the interview and realized that it was just a conversation with somebody who was trying to be open and honest with a reporter. And how often do you see that? Much of my job is conducting interviews and I know the tremendous rush that comes from a subject going off-message. Sometimes you sense they're saying things that might blow up in their faces, but that doesn't really give me an Interviewer's High. What gives me that high is when I can hear that they're thinking about answers, rather than just regurgitating the same old bullet points. I assume O'Neal knew he was conducting an interview that might cause a little flack, but I also assume that he was giddy at having a subject just sharing and being open.
 
Naturally, it took only two days for Sevigny to issue a public apology.
 
Speaking to Michael Ausiello, Sevigny mea culpaed, "I feel like what I said was taken out of context, and the [reporter] I was speaking to was provoking me. I was in Austin [at the SXSW festival] and really exhausted and doing a press junket and I think I just… I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying. You know, after a day of junkets sometimes things slip out that you don’t mean, and I obviously didn’t mean what I said in any way, shape, or form. I love being on the show."
 
If you go and read O'Neal's story, it's in a Q&A format. Even if you accept minor Q&A clean-up, there's almost no way that what Sevigny said possibly could have been "out of context." The context is all there. And when she says that the reporter was "provoking her," she appears to mean "was asking me questions and was trying to have a conversation regarding things that happened on the show." She didn't claim that she was misquoted, so go look at O'Neal's interview and tell me if you can see any way that those quotes can be manipulated so that they mean anything other than exactly what they say. 
 
[Note: In the time it took me to write this post, The A.V. Club posted the audio from the interview. Unless O'Neal took the time to doctor the tape from the interview, Sevigny wasn't even *slightly* taken out of context.]
 
As I've already wondered on Twitter, why is it acceptable for an actress to throw a professional journalist under the bus (pretty clearly without cause), but it's unacceptable for an actress to have a clearly articulated and intelligent point of view? Why can't Sevigny just be proud to be smart and opinionated?
 
Or if she was truly embarrassed by what she said, why can't the apology be something like, "Look, I was tired and I just started going and probably I went a little bit further than I should have. I've spoken with the creators and with my 'Big Love' co-stars and made sure to tell them how much I love this job and how much it has meant to me to be working with them the past four years. Did I have problems with last season? Perhaps, but I'm still proud of what we accomplished under the circumstances. Like everybody on 'Big Love,' I'm committed to making the fifth season the best season ever."
 
Full stop.
 
Why blame the journalist?
 
Why blame ANYBODY?
 
Nothing Sevigny said in the first interview was in any way factually inaccurate. It was all subjective and all couched in her own opinion. And it was funny and clever. It was a great read.
 
If she wanted to apologize to Will Scheffer and Mark V. Olsen? That's her choice as well, but it's not an apology that needed to be public. If everything is aces between them, Nikki will have a rich story arc next season. If there are bitter feelings? Maybe Nikki falls down a well. 
 
I also don't quite get why Ausiello felt that he wanted to provide a forum for Sevigny to call out a fellow journalist. Certainly Ausiello has been accused of taking quotes out of context before. I'm suspecting he wasn't pleased when that happened. But when Sevigny blamed his colleague-in-arms for forcing her to say what she said, Ausiello didn't challenge the claim or ask for clarification.
 
So in exchange for page views, all Ausiello did was give an actress another outlet to to step away from being candid and from having an opinion, another place to back down, another place to transition from off-the-cuff and human to on-message and robotic.
 
Kudos.
 
Journalists like getting candid interviews. Readers like reading candid interviews. Celebrities don't like giving candid interviews, because they then have to apologize, which they do in boring, canned interviews, like Sevigny gave Ausiello.
 
Of course, celebrities aren't just apologizing for smart honesty. They're apologizing for stupid honesty as well. John Mayer gave a long interview to Rolling Stone [Amended: Playboy, actually] and he said some STUPID s***. He mixed it up with some ignorant s*** and some kinda inappropriate s*** about some other celebrities Mayer has known and loved. Everything in the interview was noxious and it made me think less of John Mayer as a person, but I wasn't offended and it didn't change the way I thought of him as a musician. He may have needed to send flowers to Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson, but he didn't need to apologize to me as a reader.
 
He did anyway. 
 
And you can bet he won't give another interview like that any time soon.
 
And getting Chloe Sevigny to share her humble opinion on "Big Love" will now also be an impossibility. 
 
The lesson Sevigny and Mayer are going to take away from this experience is: Don't Be Honest.
 
The lesson Sevigny and Mayer should be taking is: Consider your words, but say what you feel.
 
The contract between a reporter and a interview subject works like this: You make sure that you say what you actually think and we make sure that we write what you actually say. 
 
When Mayer issued his apologize for being a moron, Sepinwall expressed concern to me that other celebrities will see this as a reason to muzzle themselves. My response was that there were so few celebrities who work beyond soundbytes that this won't change anything anyway. If you want good quotes, you talk to the writers and directors and producers and showrunners, the people with the power to say what they want to say without blowback, or at least with reduced blowback. 
 
Sevigny apparently just forgot where she fits into that power structure and what she's allowed to be honest about. I doubt she'll make that mistake again.
Related Searches: Chloe Sevigny, apology

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  • Geekfurious_avgf_3d_3_talkback_profile

    Razorback

    So she can perform oral sex on a guy... for the world to see, but she cannot express her real opinion without feeling the need to retract it? She just went from brave to super-lame.

    March 26, 2010 at 8:33PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    stonemill

    The John Mayer interview was with Playboy, not with Rolling Stone.

    March 26, 2010 at 8:50PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Gizmo_bigger_talkback_profile

      dan stonemill - In the spirit of the column, I should stand by my error, proudly. Instead? Fixed! Thanks for the head's up. - Daniel

      March 26, 2010 at 8:58PM EST
    • Default-avatar

      MB Actually, John Mayer said some controversial things in both Rolling Stone and Playboy. The Playboy interview got more press, but Mayer was a journalist's dream in both.

      March 26, 2010 at 9:21PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    Angie

    I, too, wish that celebrities could provide us candid and honest opinions that they don't get lauded for. Particularly if they say what's true, but I also wish I could do the same thing in my personal life.

    I don't think there was anything wrong with what Sevigny said. Then again, I was one of 3 people in America FIERCLY defending Heigl a few years ago. Because let's face it, season 4 of Grey's sucked and wasn't Emmy worthy. I 100% agreed with her; she'd be kidding herself to enter into the race and we all knew it.

    Even Shonda admitted later that Season 4 was pretty bad. Why throw the honest actresses under a bus because they're critiquing the writers? They get critiqued constantly, by everyone. Criticism is how you learn, but there's also a lot of criticism that should be avoided. However, when the people who work for you aren't happy, outsider criticisms seem more valid and it sends a message.

    Why do it publicly? B/c these are show business people, everything they do for their profession is in the public eye, which why we even know who they are.

    March 26, 2010 at 9:07PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Kris

    When you question Ausiello's role in all this, you should put that in relation to who he is: the "go to" guy. He doesn't ask challenging questions or broaches a difficult subject again, he gets exclusive interviews and news and in return, provides a platform for these kind of interviews where he lets the actors say what they have to say. That's who he's always been.

    March 26, 2010 at 9:18PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    WhatTheFDidIDo

    Great read.

    Sports interviews have become the same way. Everyone is expected to praise their opponent and say good things about them using the same old cliches.

    People who aren't afraid to speak their mind publicly are rare these days and it's a sad state of affairs.

    March 27, 2010 at 2:24AM EST Reply to Comment
  • 000_vulcan_smiley_alternate_talkback_profile

    Trekscribbler

    I don't know. In some respects, both of these people proved themselves unworthy of the critical praise they receive. In other respects, they raise good points about the quality of their own material. I think anyone could find fault with damn near anything if you look long & hard for it. Mayer looked like a bigot (to me), and Chloe just seemed arrogant, perhaps even somewhat deluded with her own importance, much the same way Heigl has always seemed (that's supported by what many who've worked with her on non-Grey's projects have observed about this prima donna). In both cases, I don't know that this was the case of being 'honest' so much as it was 'feeling relevant.'

    March 28, 2010 at 2:38AM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    lucy2

    I don't think there's anything wrong with having an opinion and talking about it, and for the most part I agree with a lot of what she said about the show. But, like Heigl a while back, there is a BETTER way to say it other than "it was awful".
    (Heigl's Emmy thing was the worst though, because that was a thought out and released statement, as opposed to just an off the cuff conversation).

    I would guess she felt some pressure by the show or network to issue the followup statement.

    March 29, 2010 at 3:40PM EST Reply to Comment

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At the dawn of the 21st Century, Daniel Fienberg came out to Los Angeles for grad school. He hasn't left. "The Fien Print" is a blog about television -- reviews, interviews, analysis -- but it's also about movies and the business of Hollywood. It probably won't be a blog about the Red Sox, though it might seem like that at times.

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