You remember that supposed takedown piece on Gwyneth Paltrow for Vanity Fair? Graydon Carter ended up killing it – click here for a refresher. Vanessa Grigoriadis was supposed to write it. Grigoriadis has written about some of the biggest stars for some of the biggest publications. If you have a chance, check out her profile of Britney Spears for Rolling Stone here.
This time Grigoriadis’s subject is Nicki Minaj for the New York Times. It’s a delicious article, not only because Nicki practically throws Grigoriadis out of her hotel room and also not only because Grigoriadis ends up writing about it but also because she was able to get there in the first place.
We’ve talked a lot about how celebrities control the media. They veto personal questions, they insist that certain topics be avoided, they only want the most vanilla questions so that they can give the most vanilla answers and then they claim they’re bored. This is not what happened between Nicki Minaj and Vanessa Grigoriadis. Vanessa asked everything she wanted to ask – from personal to business to boyfriends to frenemies, all of it. Nicki did not limit in advance what she would answer. You know why?
Because if Nicki doesn’t want to answer, she can handle it in the moment. And, as you’ll see when you read the entire piece, there were several questions she didn’t want to answer. Instead of letting her publicist speak for her though, instead of pouting about it, Nicki used her own voice to express her disdain. And I LOVE her disdain. Vanessa deserved her disdain. It was a stupid question. Vanessa notes herself, later on, that it was a stupid question. You know what though? I bet you Vanessa Grigoriadis would rather let the stupid question live and get humiliated for it than not be able to ask it at all.
This is how an interview should be. This is how all the interviews should be…if more celebrities were willing to do their own talking. I’m not going to excerpt because you need to read this beautiful thing in its entirety. Click here and enjoy.
