From Linda Lavin to Bill Cosby, what it's like interviewing celebrities | John Staton

When you work for newspapers for as long as I have — in my case some 30 years, including more than 20 at the StarNews — you sometimes get to talk to famous people.

Usually it's because they're selling something or promoting an appearance, but not always. Anyway, they probably don't remember me, but I sure as heckfire remember them.

I started interviewing well-known people in 1991 when I was in journalism school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I'm not sure that Dead Milkmen singer Rodney Anonymous counts as famous.

My first journalistic brush with true fame would come in the summer of 1992, when I was home from college and freelancing for a couple of now-defunct local weeklies but also bussing tables at late, lamented Wrightsville Beach restaurant Causeway Cafe (now Drift Cafe). I was clearing a table when who should walk in but the actor Dennis Hopper, who I knew from such movies as "Apocalypse Now" and the Wilmington-shot classic "Blue Velvet." Hopper, who died in 2010, was in town playing the villain King Koopa in the notoriously horrible "Super Mario Bros.," which would be released in 1993.

I still can't believe I did this, but, sweaty, greasy, wearing a soiled apron and lacking any press credentials whatsoever, I sauntered over to Hopper's table and explained that I was a local writer (when I wasn't, you know, bussing tables) and would he be so kind as to give me his phone number so we could do an interview. (After I got off work, LOL.) The words he spoke to me are still burned in my brain: "I want to say, 'No.'"

A man Hopper was with then took over and gave me what turned out to be a fake number. So, that interview never actually happened, but luckily for my career, others did.

One of my favorites came in 2003, when I interviewed soul legend Al Green via phone prior to his performance at that year's N.C. Azalea Festival. Even on the phone, Green had something that many well-known people have, which is an ability to instantly make you feel like they're one of your best friends, at least for a few minutes.

Famous people often have the reputation for being stand-offish or even rude, but in my experience, probably because I'm usually talking to them in an official capacity, they're almost always thoughtful, friendly and gracious.

The famous person I've gotten to know best, and interviewed most, is probably Linda Lavin of TV's "Alice," mainly because she lived in Wilmington off and on for about 20 years. In 2010, the StarNews even sent me to New York to watch Lavin in the Broadway play "Collected Stories" in a role she first did in Wilmington at the Red Barn Studio theater on Third Street, which Lavin ran for several years with husband Steve Bakunas.

I wasn't covering the film industry when "Dawson's Creek" and "One Tree Hill" were shooting here, so I never got to interview any of the actors from those shows. But in the early 2000s I did run into "Dawson's Creek" actress Katie Holmes in the College Road Harris Teeter, looked her full the face and almost said hi because I thought I knew her. Turns out she only looked familiar because she's Katie Holmes.

I've interviewed two members of the Brat Pack: Judd Nelson, who was here in 2019 to do a play, and Molly Ringwald, who brought her jazz singing act to the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2014.

Also in 2014, I talked with a man who used to be one of my idols: Bill Cosby. This was right before allegations of rape against the comic (his 2018 conviction was overturned in 2021) started to gain traction. But the allegations were still out there, and one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't take the chance to ask Cosby about them when we talked via phone. A question about rape accusations isn't one you normally lead with when interviewing a performer promoting a local appearance, but after a few softballs I started to ask Cosby about it. He must've sensed what was coming because he told me that was all the time he had and ended the interview.

It hasn't been all entertainment people, either. I talked to former heavyweight boxing champ James "Bonecrusher" Smith, who is one of the only men to go the distance with Mike Tyson, and I got to ask N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper a few questions when he toured the area following Hurricane Florence in 2018.

If I'm being honest, I can't even remember all of the famous and semi-famous people I've interviewed over the decades, but I'll name-drop a few favorites like singers Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan and Harry Connick Jr., comedian Nate Bargatze and actor Danny Glover.

As a kid who grew up in the '80s, I never would've believed that one day I'd get to meet (and interview) "CHiPs" actor Erik Estrada and '80s hair metal singer Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. But I did.

It's all been part of a day's work over the course of my career, even if I never did get to interview Dennis Hopper.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: John Staton column about brushes with fame: Linda Lavin, Dennis Hopper