"Sometimes when interviewing a subject, particularly a well-known one who has a new project to promote, I'm aware that I'm hearing a narrative that person has told many times before. My transcripts even occasionally contain word-for-word recapitulations of lines delivered in other, earlier interviews that I've read in preparation. No surprise there: we all curate versions of ourselves and anecdotes we retail for effect-even those of us who don't have something to publicize."
"But sometimes a much more interesting thing happens: an interview subject really engages, so that their conversation seems to become a genuine form of self-reflection. Bella Freud knows the difference. As the host of "Fashion Neurosis," a mesmerizing podcast that launched about a year ago, she is experienced in the asking-questions side of the equation. She is a curious and captivating interviewer, eliciting revealing disclosures from her subjects, who have ranged from Karl Ove Knausgaard to Courtney Love."
Bella Freud hosts the podcast Fashion Neurosis, where she asks probing questions and elicits revealing disclosures from guests ranging from Karl Ove Knausgaard to Courtney Love. She is equally compelling as an interview subject: frank, funny, thoughtful, and open to discovering unformulated insights during conversation. Her family background—great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and daughter of Lucian Freud—forged both an aptitude for self-observation and familiarity with being observed, reinforced by having sat for her father. Conversations with her range across everyday aesthetics and complex personal topics, including the moral valence of Birkenstocks and the pros and cons of age-gap love affairs.
Read at The New Yorker
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