How to pre-interview like a boss
At Deadset Studios, the pre-interview is a non-negotiable. It helps us make the best possible end product, but it also makes everyone’s lives much easier.
By Liam Riordan, Producer
There’s one crucial part of the podcast process that makes every other part far easier and that's the pre-interview: talking to interviewees/guests ahead of the recording, about the recording.
A pre-interview can take a lot of different shapes, but if you do it well, it makes everything from writing interview briefs to editing the final product so much smoother. There’s two main goals with a pre-interview. Here’s how to achieve them.
1. Gathering and checking information
I really have one goal when conducting the pre-interview: find out whatever I can’t find out on my own. Before a pre-interview, I’ll do as much research as I can. This includes reading or listening to other interviews, reading articles written by or about the guest, and using sources like LinkedIn to get details about their careers.
This means I know everything I can know about the guest without speaking directly to them. Then I can use the limited time I have with the guest to ask more targeted questions. Often this includes fact-checking, where I’ll ensure important dates, locations, and chronology I’ve found in my own research are actually correct.
And doing that independent research means I know exactly which gaps I need to fill in order to best prepare an interview brief for the recording. Sometimes they’re big gaps, and they might be the focus of the pre-interview as a whole, such as someone who doesn’t do a lot of public-facing work. But even the small gaps present big opportunities: if I can’t find out what someone was doing between 2008 and 2012, it could be for any number of reasons – and one of them might make for great interview material.
When I’m pre-interviewing for information, I treat it as my final stop-gap: my last chance to fact-check, and an opportunity to tap into stories that haven’t been told yet.
2. Coaching the guest
Pre-interviews are usually tight; you’re not just asking for a bit of someone’s time, you’re not even recording yet! So naturally, pre-interviews are often shorter than we producers would like, which means we have to prioritise. And if I only have time for one thing in a pre-interview, coaching the guest is what I pick every time.
Regardless of your guest’s experience in media, every individual podcast has its own flavour, its own goals and personality. So, getting together with the guest gives you the opportunity to invite them into the world of your podcast. If your show’s fast, frenetic and follows a very loose structure, the pre-interview can be an opportunity to tell your guest to leave their notes at the door and bring their most open, casual selves to the recording.
On the other hand, if your show’s more carefully structured, you can explain this to your talent. You might want to let them know the basic shape of the interview they’re going to record, so they know what details and anecdotes to lean on when particular topics come up.
Perhaps most importantly, though, the pre-interview is a chance to coach people who aren’t experienced. If you’ve never been on a podcast before, you’ve probably never thought about speaking in stories, or adding colour and sensory details to anecdotes. Coaching like this is so much more comfortable and effective when it’s done before everyone steps into the studio. Nobody wants to be coached in front of their interviewer and a recording engineer they’ve never met before, live on tape. And no guest wants to be a dud once the mic is on.
Nothing will calm an anxious interview guest like a one-on-one chat with a producer, in which they can ask questions privately, and find out more about the show in a low-pressure environment. Likewise, the production process becomes far smoother when you’ve spoken directly to your guest about any questions or concerns before the red light comes on.
4 things to keep in mind with pre-interviews:
1. Prioritise: You’ll never have as much time as you want for a pre-interview, so make sure you know what you need most, and focus on that first
2. Research: Learn everything you can about your talent before speaking to them so you have a clear idea of what only they can tell you
3. Personalise: Figure out where your talent is at mentally and emotionally before a recording, and coach them accordingly. If they’re nervous, it’s your job to help them relax, and if they’re more experienced, focus on your show specifically
4. If they’re no good, politely ditch them! A pre-interview sorts out if someone is good enough to be on your show. So if they’re not, you can always politely suggest on this occasion it’s not the right fit.