A war correspondent and an influencer-turned-actress walk into a New York apartment. What could possibly go wrong? In Interview, based on the 2003 Dutch film and 2007 Sienna Miller-Steve Buscemi remake of the same name, the answer is… a lot.
She is Katya (Paten Hughes), the apparently air-headed ingénue with hidden depths and wicked wit. He is Pierre (House star Robert Sean Leonard), the jaded journalist, furious to have been dragged from his political patch – on the eve of the vice-president’s impeachment, no less! – to write a ‘fuckin’ puff piece’ about an influencer. Pierre spits out that last word, his voice dripping with contempt. He has no respect for Katya, and she has none for him. Let the cat-and-mouse games begin.
Unfortunately, Interview fails to live up to its spicy sell. You can imagine the show that director and writer Teunkie Van Der Sluijs wanted to make: a fast-paced two-hander with an electric back-and-forth between Leonard and Hughes, where it’s never quite clear who has the upper hand and erotic tension simmers. Yet the script is clunky and the dialogue full of non-sequitors. Laugh lines that don’t land, and serious moments (like when Katya tells Pierre his mouth ‘tastes of Scotch and failure’) are unintentionally humorous. The performances, meanwhile, feel underrehearsed. Leonard and Hughes never truly get into each other’s rhythms, amounting to a dynamic that is intriguing in premise but in practice I couldn’t buy.
It’s a shame because, having written a lot of celebrity interviews in my time (including of social media stars), Interview’s concept is right up my street. Van Der Sluijs does get a lot right about the state of modern journalism and the act of profile writing in itself. Little details, from the phrasing of questions to the use of voice notes to record (I’d argue an old-school reporter like Pierre would use a dictaphone with phone for back-up, but whatever) added a sense of realism that the characters lacked.
Initially, Pierre and Katya are broad stereotypes of their respective careers. In the original Interview films, Katya is a soap star. Modernising the idea and making her an online content creator raises interesting ideas about authenticity. We judge her like Pierre does, with the script aiming to wrongfoot us by showing us that Katya is actually very intelligent and not to be underestimated. Still, the layers that we’re meant to see beneath her online facade are thinly drawn, while her dialogue is stuffed with clichés that prevent Hughes from believably bringing the character to life.
If there’s a saving grace for Interview, it’s the production’s sharp, sleek design. The action plays out in real time against a backdrop of exposed brickwork, matte grey cabinets, and Aesop soap perched by the sink. Katya’s flat exudes understated wealth, but also a lack of taste; a woman with a desire to look cool rather than know what she actually likes.
The whitewashed bricks swiftly become the site for Interview’s other visual trick, as video compilations by digital artists idontloveyouanymore are projected before us. Initially, they show news clips of war and a broken US political system (the world of Interview being one beat removed from our current hellscape in terms of references, but reflective of the everything-is-fucked vibe) alongside mind-numbingly asinine social media content. The bright colours and chatter stack up, intermingling and forming a smothering visual scrapbook that is almost oppressively over-stimulating. Doomscrolling on a heady, horrible scale – that’s what it feels like.
Then, Katya appears, her voice cutting through as she tells her followers to ‘stay soft, staay smart’ with a forced sincerity. These visuals are used throughout the show and somehow remain impactful. When phones ring, or voice notes are recorded, or TV shows are watched, they show on the wall. I’ve seen social media visuals on stage before and often felt they date a show, but these are so of-the-moment it works. Katya goes live on camera, and her face is projected on the wall in real time too. There’s always something going on back there to distract you, just as Katya initially struggles to hold Pierre’s gaze without scrolling through her phone.
But for all the technical wizardry, the commentary the show wants to deliver – via these clips, yes, but mostly through the script – lacks any conviction or nuance. Huge topics, both on a personal and political level, are tackled, and yet amount to nothing. By the time we have built to Pierre and Katya’s moment of ‘mutually assured destruction’, we should be invested. Somehow, the relationship between them is so lacking that it feels all for nothing. Interview postures that it has so much to say – about politics, journalism, the nature of celebrity, the internet – yet ultimately there is no message conveyed. Rarely have I left the theatre feeling so utterly hollow.
