10 Times People Died Inside During Awkward Interviews
"You have some interesting body language going on there."
After reaching a certain status as an entertainer, doing interviews must be a thankless chore.
When you're just starting out, it's probably an honour when genuinely interested interviewers ask informed questions about whatever art you're making, but as the audience grows and the appearances move to more mainstream media, the interview questions usually tend to get a bid broader.
Interviewers are only human too, and they can't be expected to pull off caring about every single artist or performer's latest product or plug, but keeping it watchable is normally a requirement for most broadcasts. Some of these interviews would come dangerously close to not ticking that box if it wasn't for the car crash appeal they hold for the internet's cringe connoisseurs.
Everyone gets a turn feeling desperately uncomfortable in this collection. Artists, hosts and audiences take turns stewing in painful silence. It's just a complete horror show.
Excuses for the behaviour in these clips range from jet lag to drug abuse to uncontrollable male sexual urges, but who really cares? Sadly, nowadays the sanitising pre-interview prevents these things from happening.
It's a shame, really.
10. Gene Simmons On The Joy Behar Show
When rock fans heard that Ozzy Osbourne was stooping to do a family reality show on MTV in 2002, almost everyone saw it as a bit of a sellout.
When Kiss co-frontman Gene Simmons heard, he probably also saw it as a bit of a sellout, but he wanted in. His own show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, premiered on A&E just one year after the final episodes of Osbourne's horror show.
When the cameras went on, though, Gene might have gotten exposed a bit more than what he thought he signed up for. Then came the press interviews about the new show.
In an interview on The Joy Behar show, the comedian and Gene's long-time partner Shannon Tweed team up to roast the rocker on his constant infidelity. You can see Simmons melting down from the moment Tweed takes off his obnoxious shades to start quizzing him about his defensive body language and juvenile behaviour.
After showing a clip, in which it is revealed Simmons might have slept with over 5 000 women in his life, Behar asks the ageing rocker, "How's your back, Gene?"
He answers, "My back is good... my schmekel not so much."
RIP to the self-esteem of his long-term partner, but that's really the only half-jab he could get in while getting deservedly pummelled by the two relentless ladies.
Simmons and his band Kiss were known to be brilliant marketers, so it's not entirely impossible that the whole thing was set up as a bit of PR stunt for the reality show. If it is totally real, though, we should all pay our respects and lower the KISS casket.