By Roz Morris, Managing Director, TV News London
This month for the first time I’ve been interviewed on ITV This Morning and, as I always advise our clients to do, I’ve had to buckle down and take the time to prepare thoroughly for my TV interview. I estimate that my preparation time for this interview was at least half a day for a 7- minute interview shared with one other interviewee and two interviewers.
I prepared my main messages and supporting information, as well as working out what sort of questions I was likely to be asked. I also practised speaking my messages out loud, not just writing them down.
Even though I have experience as a TV presenter, it’s very different answering the questions, instead of asking them. If you want to be a successful interviewee, preparation is the key to success in TV interviews.
Why was I invited to talk on This Morning?
Well, it’s all down the Enfield Poltergeist. More than 40 years ago I was a young BBC Radio reporter, and I was sent to cover a story in a council house in Enfield, North London, about strange possibly, ghostly things happening there. I reported about this on BBC Radio 4 World This Weekend and then went back over several months to interview the family and many eyewitnesses, including scientists, to create a radio documentary about the Enfield Poltergeist. You can listen to the BBC programmes here
There’s been a lot of interest in this case over the past decades, including TV documentaries and dramas, and Hollywood films like ‘The Conjuring Two’. Currently, there’s a big surge of attention with 4 programmes on AppleTV+ streaming from 27 October, which I’m part of, as well as two plays. One is a new West End play opening next month called The Enfield Haunting starring Catherine Tate and David Threlfall, and the other is a lower-budget touring production called The Enfield Poltergeist.
Apple TV built their own house
The AppleTV+ series has a new approach to examining the story of the Enfield Poltergeist, not only using contemporary audio tapes and TV reports but also using actors in sets which are replicas of the rooms in the house in Enfield where the poltergeist incidents took place. The approach is thoughtful and questioning and represents the many views of the case. It does not come down on one side or the other of the debate about what happened in the Hodgson family home in Green Street between 1977 and 1979. As someone who has had many years to study the case, I feel this could well be the definitive programme series about the Enfield poltergeist.
Seeing myself played on screen
Another first for me in the new series about the Enfield Poltergeist is that for the first time in my life, an actor is playing me on screen. In previous dramatisations of the story, actors have played the Hodgson family, and the paranormal investigators, Maurice Grosse, and Guy Playfair. But no one has ever played me until now. In the new AppleTV+ programmes, the actors are lip-syncing to audio tapes made at the time. Seeing myself as a young radio reporter played by actor Anna Burnett, and hearing the voice of my younger self was definitely a new and strange experience.
If you’d like to know how to ensure that you can do your best in TV and radio interviews, you can book a session with me using our TV News London inquiry form. I’m happy to advise you on your media training needs.
