Typically when celebrities engage in those “tell all” interviews we see so frequently, they know exactly what they’re signing up for. However, those kinds of illuminating interviews take place on their terms, not when they’re at the arse-end of a press junket.
But it seems that Channel 4 wasn’t able to secure an interview outside of the obligatory Avengers: Age of Ultron press rounds, so decided to send Krishnan Guru-Murthy in as a Trojan Horse in order to get a reaction out of Robert Downey Jr. by throwing a few hardballs at him in relation to his drug problems and relationship with his father. And it worked!
Also See: Avengers: Age of Ultron Interview – Paul Bettany on The Vision and Second Chances
After talking about Iron Man for a little bit, Guru-Murthy decided to ask questions regarding the actor’s battles with substance abuse and the “dark periods” of his life, before Downey Jr. replied: “What are we doing here?” The actor then proceeded to stand up and walk out of the interview, leaving Guru-Murthy to stutter in his seat for a little while.
The interviewer, who previously got on the wrong end of director Quentin Tarantino who uttered the infamous words “I’m shutting your butt down” during their Q&A session, has been basking in the publicity that comes with pissing Robert Downey Jr. off, even setting up a nice little “#walkout” hashtag to mark the event. I was under the impression that an interviewer’s job is to, y’know, interview someone, but I suppose angering them to the point where they abruptly leave is also something to be proud of, too.
But now Guru-Murthy has defended his interview technique in an article for The Guardian, writing: “We don’t do promotional interviews on Channel 4 News,” he writes. “We agree with PR people that as well as talking about a new movie for a while, we want to ask wider-ranging questions on relatively serious topics, and we don’t agree to run any answers in particular.
“An interview with a movie star isn’t intended to be ‘news’. We do it to add texture to the normal diet of politics, foreign affairs and investigations in a Channel 4 News running order.”
He continued: “Maybe, like a bad relationship, this just isn’t working. We want different things out of it. I want something serious and illuminating. [Movie stars] just want publicity. Maybe we and the movie stars should just go our separate ways, and find people more suited to our needs. But I think that would be a shame.
“There’s an easy marriage to be worked out here with a bit of give and take. And some intelligent casting by the PR companies. If a movie star has no interest in engaging, maybe don’t offer them up to the news. Find one of the cast who does.”
There is evidently a time and a place for an interviewer to gaze into the soul of a famous person and ask them what their childhood was like, but a day in which they’re scheduled to endlessly talk about a comic book movie is probably not it. Unfortunately, the reality is that this was likely the reaction Channel 4 News was hoping for, with the video now having garnered 8 million views – far more than it would if Robert Downey Jr. had answered questions about Age of Ultron. Given the “success” of this interview, the next time we see Guru-Murthy he’ll probably be filmed peeing in Tom Hardy’s cornflakes during the Mad Max press junket.
