Anne Curry's interviewing skills (exhibit A: Meryl)

[Auggie27]

Posted: 7/16/08 at 7:39pm

Who can dislike Anne Curry? Her trips to Africa and on-site reporting there were extraordinarily moving. She charming, beautiful, upbeat, humble, and positive.

But bless her, she cannot interview.

Watching the squirm-inducing session with Meryl Streep this week about MAMA MIA was painful in the extreme. She circled, backtracked, stammered, and all to make a point about Meryl daring to sing and dance on the screen. She was palpably in awe, but unable to pose a single question that would require a thoughtful answer. Meryl took charge, intuiting that Anne wasn't going to ask real questions. (Sidebar: Why does everyone babble so about Meryl's 14 Oscar nominations as a reason to gasp her at her appearance in a musical comedy? Even Katherine Hepburn played a bit of everything, including COCO on stage. And Meryl sang beautifully in POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, long after doing HAPPY END on Broadway...)

Over the years, I've watched Curry fill a 6 minue interview slot with redundant, gaspy introductionary material, read verbatim from the dog-earred notes in her lap, and then watched her cut the guest off to wrap up citing the same research. She looks ill prepared -- and repeatedly makes the kind of obvious mistake that watching a few hours of video tape of herself might clear up. Why the hell doesn't someone tell her to just say less? Someone as high profile and in many ways accomplished shouldn't be allowed to conduct such ragged interviews. TODAY is forever on top, but surely someone there knows that Ms. Curry, earnest, invested, and sensitive, should take a look at her daily work.