How to survive your first TV studio interview…
What not to do…almost everything I did!
Let me just say here that I find it totally ironic that I can write a 90 thousand word novel, but I’m not able to string a sentence together properly in front of a camera. And the thing is, I’m totally aware of this and it’s beyond me why I agreed to do the interview in the first place.
So there I was, the week before the interview and I’d gone into panic overdrive. For starters, what should I wear? I decided on a chic, red dress. Of course as soon as I got home with my brand new purchase, one of my best friends advised me to wear something to bring out the colour of my eyes. So, as I laid the dress out on my bed I realised that not only am I dead pale (not the best skin colour for red) but also I didn’t think that the red clothing would quite bring out the green in my eyes at all, rather my flushed face. So now I had an additional panic that instead of looking chic, as intended, I had a good chance that I would look like a glowing light bulb.
Too late to change my outfit, I had an extremely busy week before me at the day job, in fact the last month at work has been so stressful that I’ve actually lost weight and instead of looking feminine and curvy, I was looking more like a bloody bean pole. Skinny, haggard and pale…not my best look. (Thank goodness for make-up and wonderbras!)
I hardly slept the night before the interview, so I could now add dark circles to my check list of what to fix…
Somehow I made it to the studio on my own two feet, not bad considering I was wobbling all over the place in my three inch stiletto heels and must have looked like I’d just down a Bloody Mary or two on the way (Thinking about it, it would have probably done me some good in calming my shattered nerves).
Then came the moment I was dreading. Microphone attached, the hostess and myself settled on the sofa. Four cameras focused on us. A huge screen in front of us reflecting our image and it was then that I realised on seeing my image reflected back at me in magnified size that the red dress was way too short than I had appreciated and there was a risk of a basic instinct repeat. (With knickers on though, I do have some sense).
And the interview began.
Now, I live in Spain and obviously the interview was in Spanish. I’ve always prided myself in that I’m totally fluent in Spanish and that my Spanish accent is flawless. But there I was talking back to the hostess and all I could hear was my voice coming out in a really odd Russian / German accent. It would have been comprehensible, at least for the viewers, if I had sounded British, but no, I had to go and confuse the viewers, and myself may I add, that bit more by talking with a semi-Slavic accent.
They say that women don’t sweat, we just glow. Well, sweat and buckets of it were forming after the first five minutes and it certainly didn’t help that I had to bear the heat of the harsh studio lights that were all around me. Lights which alone would have been enough to light up Oxford Street at Christmas.
Then the whole time I sat there and answered the questions, trying to look cool and composed, despite my wavering voice as if I was about to break out in an awkward sing-song at any moment, I kept thinking “Who on earth, except my mum and dad of course, is going to find this interesting?”
Finally, ironically, as soon as I’d actually started to relax and enjoy myself, the hostess mouthed “Great job, that’s a wrap.” Then, for some unknown reason (a mystery even to me) I jumped up and pulled a silly face to express how totally relieved I was that the interview was over, an image that was caught on camera just as the credits were going up and will shortly be flashed around for all to see.
Of course, with my nerves on edge, I completely forgot to get a selfie of myself on the set. But the studio will send some images to me shortly, so remember to like my Facebook author page (click on the FB symbol below) to get an exclusive peek.
The interview was largely to talk about my baby book “A little of Chantelle Rose” so despite my sweat and nerves, it was certainly worth it.
You can check out the book for yourself by clicking the link here: myBook.to/chantellerose
This is my jump for joy on getting through the interview…the mouse has nothing to do with it! ; )
