There are five minutes standing between me and a conversation with my own personal hero, Dolly Parton. I am, obviously, sweating bullets and trying to figure out how to not look like a grinning idiot when the Zoom call connects. When she appears, standing in front of a well-designed kitchen set wearing an actual fucking apron, I can barely speak.
I’ve been allotted just 15 minutes for this conversation, in which I am hoping to ask Parton about her deep personal connection to Southern cuisine and her business acumen: The interview was set up by Duncan Hines, as a way to promote a line of Dolly Parton biscuit and dessert mixes packaged in bright pink boxes emblazoned with her face. But as I try to remember how to form sentences again, I look up and notice that the closet doors behind my desk are ajar, and perched right on the shelf just above my head are two stacks of my husband’s sorta-neatly folded underwear. And I am mortified.
Parton was one of many celebrity interviews I conducted last year, almost all of which were connected to some food product they were being paid to promote. I spoke to Keke Palmer about her brand deal with McCormick spices, and chatted with Amy Sedaris about sandwiches on behalf of Hillshire Farm deli meats. Stanley Tucci and I talked about Italian food, with access granted by San Pellegrino. Ahead of his Broadway appearance in Sweeney Todd, Josh Groban and I briefly laughed about cannibalism as he gushed about his love for Josh Cellars, a California winemaker that had chosen the pop-classical singer as its spokesperson in a jokey bit playing on their shared name.
There are levels to the world of celebrity brand deals, and they can be difficult to parse. Celebrities, of course, can launch their own brands independently or in collaboration with other companies, like Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, or Paris Hilton’s cookware line, which yes, I interviewed her about. Then there is the celeb investor, who pours their cash — and, by proxy, their brand — into a company, as when Kim Kardashian’s private equity firm acquired a minority stake in luxe hot sauce company Truff, or when Zac Efron became a shareholder in protein pancake company Kodiak Cakes. On the lowest-effort tier of the celeb brand deal is what public relations reps call a “collab,” in which a celebrity is paid an unspecified sum to endorse a product. Sometimes that happens via social media posts (actress Sydney Sweeney x lip balm brand Laneige), or appearances in subway ads or commercials (Jenna Ortega in the Doritos Super Bowl ad this year), or through press junkets not unlike the ones an actor might do when they’re contractually obligated to promote their latest film.
Celebrities don’t typically talk to the press without good reason, so it’s junkets, whether for a product or a much-anticipated film, that crank out a ton of the celebrity content you encounter online. During a standard press junket, publicists reserve a couple hotel conference rooms, set up pastries and snacks, and prop up the celebrity in a comfortable chair as journalists file in one by one to conduct their brief interviews. (The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many junkets moving to Zoom, which made them cheaper and more efficient — and thus a more appealing business opportunity for brands and celebrities.) In both iterations, a celebrity could talk to dozens of people in a day, and Dolly’s junket was no exception. CBS Mornings, The Today Show, and The View all ran interviews in which the country queen is standing inside the same dolled-up kitchen. Likely on that same day in 2023, she also spoke with People, Food Network, Parade, Country Living, Allrecipes, and the Kitchn, among others.
Each outlet sold their interviews a bit differently to suit their respective audiences: Country Living’s headline noted that Parton “Reveals Her Morning Routine”; People promised that Parton would “Talk Her Cooking Rituals”; on Eater, because I am obsessed with biscuits, we focused on the fact that Parton said “There’s No Bad Way to Eat a Biscuit.” (It’s true.) Each of these pieces mention Duncan Hines, some more prominently than others. In these junket interviews, there’s an unspoken (or sometimes, demanded) agreement between media outlets and the PR granting celebrity access: that the story mentions the product the celebrity’s being paid to shill.
Of course, as a journalist, I’m always looking to talk to that person about literally anything other than, for example, deli meats. Brand publicists frequently offer “suggestions” intended to frame the conversation in a way that centers their clients. Often, you’re told that certain topics — in Dolly’s case, politics — are totally off-limits, and you can bet that there’s a publicist listening in on the call to make sure that nothing goes awry. And it’s that dictating of the terms, agreeing to stipulations in exchange for access, that makes it feel like I’m trading a small piece of my journalistic integrity for a few minutes in the light of a star.
In the beginning, I was seduced by the opportunity to talk to people who would otherwise not even look in my direction. Access to those who are usually guarded is compelling, both journalistically and on a human level. But it’s ultimately unfulfilling: In my former life as a freelance music journalist, I’d interviewed plenty of artists — many of whom I deeply respected, some I didn’t — and learned the true meaning of “Don’t meet your heroes.” Even if a celebrity is polite and happy to answer all your questions, which is not always the case, it’s rare that they can live up to the mythology you’ve built up about them in their mind. That seems especially true when they’re talking to you about coconut water for cash.
As long as there have been people, there have been famous people. Some of the earliest celebrities were kings and warriors whose triumphant tales spread through communities like wildfire; later, stage actors and famous intellectuals earned notoriety. In the United States, our preoccupation with celebrity can be traced at least to the American Revolution, when figures like George Washington were the country’s most famous people. By the early 20th century, revered statesmen and generals were no longer our only celebrities, replaced by baseball players and film actors as that burgeoning industry grew.
Newspapers and other media outlets contributed to this shift, as publishers noticed that famous faces sold papers. “In publishing a newspaper you endeavor to print what the people want to read,” writes historian Sharon Marcus in Lit Hub, quoting an unnamed 19th-century newspaper journalist. “The people wanted to read about celebrities.” The celebrities, too, quickly realized the impact that the press could have on their career, and the modern celebrity media was born.
During Hollywood’s studio era, it immediately became clear that magazines could be a powerful marketing tool, with glamorous photos of stars like Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable accompanied by stories intended to boost their image — and make them seem more relatable. Many studios even published their own. “Fan magazines helped create the very idea of ‘movie stars’ and legitimize our fascination with the intimacies of their lives,” Libby Copeland wrote for Slate in 2011. “The magazines, in turn, were deferential to the studios, which controlled access to their stars; in some cases, studio publicists actually wrote magazine copy.”
This deference continues, and this system’s DNA is embedded in every junket I’ve ever participated in. It’s an uncomfortable setup in general, but it feels particularly squicky when the corporation granting journalistic access is not a movie studio or recording company: It’s a lot easier to convince myself that I’m telling a worthy story when a famous person is talking to me to promote their art, a viable cultural product, than when a packaged snack brand is paying them to show up.
For the celebrity, signing onto these deals generally makes sense. “It’s a two-way street for the brand and the celebrity,” says Erin A. Meyers, a professor at Oakland University’s department of communication, journalism, and public relations. “They’re using the celebrity’s image to help connect the good feelings you have about that person to the brand. And often, vice versa. Celebrities are going to pick brands that help shore up their image.” The journalist, meanwhile, gets the opportunity to use that celebrity’s power to bring eyeballs to their words — all while talking to a famous person.
It does, at least outwardly, seem glamorous. Talking to Dolly Parton is objectively a cool thing, and our conversation was, blessedly, a success, if not especially deep. I figure she did not even notice the underwear on that shelf, and we talked a lot about music and her familial connections to Southern food, not just biscuits.
But even if the subjects themselves are fascinating, these interviews can be anything but. You can’t really talk about the stuff you want to talk about, adding another layer of artifice to an already strained interaction. My conversion with Tucci was so boring that it wasn’t even published, and who could blame him: I wouldn’t have anything revelatory to say about the star-shaped pasta he was promoting, either. Who really wants to hear what Paris Hilton has to say about pots and pans, especially when you can see her shilling her cookware in so many other places on the internet? Is anyone interested in the fact that Ubah Hassan, a recent addition to The Real Housewives of New York, likes to put the hot sauce that she sells online on the pizza she created in collaboration with NYC’s Serafina? What we want instead is the illusion of depth: I’d have much preferred to speak to Tucci about crafting the scenes in Big Night, or the impact that an influx of tourists, fueled in part by shows like his, is having on some of Italy’s most important historical sites. At the very least, we want a glimpse of the “real person” underneath the veneer, a confirmation of the fact that “Celebrities! They’re Just Like Us!,” even if just for a moment.
What adds to this inauthentic air is how the brand deals themselves are typically an attempt to make a celebrity look more normal, more down-to-earth. Meyers points to Jennifer Aniston, who is currently a spokesperson for Uber Eats, as a particularly successful example. From 2007 to 2020, Aniston was the face of Smartwater, which she touted as both good for the body — hydration, of course — and for the planet, because its bottles were partially made with recycled materials.
“She tends to get involved with brands that have a more natural vibe, like Aveeno and Smartwater, brands that connect with the girl-next-door public image that she already has,” Meyers says. “These partnerships make sense in terms of who we ‘know her to be’ in her real life. Celebrity is really tied to consumption, this idea that buying the right kinds of things can give you the experience of the lifestyle lived by a celebrity you really admire.” In 2021, Aniston continued the natural-aspirational theme with a partnership with powdered collagen brand Vital Proteins, complete with a Vogue interview in which she shared the skincare routine that she swears by, “not just to age well, but to ‘continue to thrive.’”
Similarly, it’s not unreasonable to think that Dolly Parton would know how to make a good biscuit mix. When we spoke, she had a genuine passion for creating a product that would make it easier for regular folks to get dessert on the table. She talked about those Duncan Hines mixes like they were a forthcoming album or film she was starring in; the boxes boast her name and likeness, which further connects her image and her values to the product. When a brand deal feels solely transactional — an obvious exchange of cash for endorsement — those connections are much more difficult to make.
Celebrities have always been advertising to us, but now it’s also happening in our social media feeds, right alongside photos of our friends’ kids and the memes we like. “There has been a big shift in how we think about the private lives of celebrities, and social media has really intensified that. We’ve shifted to fit their ordinary, in some ways,” Meyers says. “Even though we’re seeing their perfectly dressed kids and their beautiful homes, it still feels real because it’s coming from J.Lo’s or Kim Kardashian’s personal official account. Unlike a Vanity Fair interview or a paparazzi photo, we have more direct access in the same spaces where we’re connecting with people we actually do know — like our friends and family — and it all just sort of blurs together.”
But of course, we don’t actually know these people. Their photos aren’t just impromptu iPhone snaps quickly uploaded to Instagram. Pretty much every famous star, from Beyoncé to Bobby Flay, is meticulously crafting their own image with every post and reel. To an audience demanding vulnerability, the celebrity doles it out in the tiniest possible doses, always on their own terms.
And that’s the cost of the tiny morsel of actually interesting content that can, hopefully, be pried from a junket interview. The returns eventually diminish, and the shine of the celebrity interview dulls. Readers are savvy enough to tell the difference, and they often don’t care about this content, either. This isn’t to say I never plan to talk to a celebrity again — Cillian Murphy and Beyoncé, please reach out — but I no longer have much interest.
Perhaps the most unintentionally illuminating of my interviews was with JoJo Siwa, the former child star and social media influencer that many folks on TikTok love to hate because of her (sometimes painfully) exuberant personality and frequently questionable fashion choices. Siwa was partnering with Ocean Spray to talk about cranberry sauce, which she claimed was her favorite Thanksgiving side. I asked Siwa what she would say to cranberry sauce “haters,” a group of people I am not totally sure exists. “I get it. It’s not your thing, it’s not your vibe,” Siwa said. “But you can’t not like me because it is my vibe.”
Although she wasn’t meaning to, Siwa encapsulated exactly what celebrities are doing by showing up for Zoom junkets. They’re selling you their vibe, but a specific version of their vibe, one that you can actually afford to emulate. They want you to think they’re regular and normal, the kind of people who buy frozen TV dinners and cake mixes and canned cranberry sauce, and connecting their cachet with grocery brands is an easy way to do so. But the connection is ultimately empty: It now feels impossible to know what a celebrity actually likes because their affections are so obviously for sale. Everyone eats — but no one can survive on vibes alone.
Ruby Ash is a London-based Illustrator from New Zealand, who’s work radiates joy, capturing life’s nuances through intricate lines and rich textures.
