Paxman and Brand's combative interview style on politics
1. News night: - Jeremy Paxman and Russell Brand – October 2013
The style of the interview between Jeremy Paxman and Russell Brand is formal, and combative.
Jeremy Paxman is known for his combative interview styles and he doesn’t hold back when
interviewingRussell Brand.The combativeness style begins straight from the off with the question
“what makesyouqualifytoeditapoliticsmagazine?” The wordingof thisquestioncomesacrosslike
Jeremy Paxman is looking his nose down, it’s like he is really saying “what qualifies you, a
comedian/actor to comment on politics”. The interview is formal because it is covering a formal
topic, politics, it could be argued how formal it really is because a hotel room isn’t really a formal
setting for an interview.
The interviewincluded an introduction from paxman which included him telling us a tiny bit about
Russell Brand. The interview also uses a soundbite from Russell Brand about Jeremy Paxman; the
soundbite wasusedwhen Russell Brand used information from Paxman’s episode of “Who Do You
Think You Are?” Russell Brand used this information from the episode to strengthen his argument
regarding the government. At the end of the interview Russell Brand ends the interview with a
statementthatcan’t be followed up by anything, the statement said is “I don’t need the right from
you I don’t need the right from anybody I’m taking the right.”
As the interview goes on it gets harder and harder to be able to tell who the interviewer is, this is
because Russell Brand’s loud personality and confident persona takes over the interview. Due to
Brand’slong,indepthanswersPaxmanhadno otheroptiontochange his questions to what Russell
Brand was saying. This technique is called active listening. The body language in the interview
appearedveryrelaxed; this is used amongst most interviewers because it relaxes the interviewee
leading to them opening up and in this case getting there point across in a more easier fashion.
There were fourdifferenttypesof questionsone of the mostpopularquestionstyle wasopenended
thistype of questionwas useda lotduringthe interview. One of the typesof questionsisdirect; one
of the directquestionsusediswhenJeremyPaxmanaskedRussell Brand who he is to be editor of a
political magazine.Anothertype of question that got asked was opening ended which is where the
interviewerletsthe interviewee saywhatevertheywant.One of the open ended questions asked is
when Jeremy Paxman asked Russell Brand about the revolution.
The journalisticcontextforthe interviewwas television and the purpose of the interview is for the
audience to hear Russell Brand’s political views.