Kristy Swanson: One Cool Customer

https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/04/08/kristy-swanson-one-cool-customer/

Here’s something you don’t see very often. Kristy Swanson had been on the verge of stardom for several years. To promote her new action-comedy, The Chase, the actress agreed to an interview with Movieline magazine. However, when the first writer reached out to her boyfriend at the time for a quote, Swanson pulled the plug. This profile from the April 1994 issue of the magazine includes a fairly guarded interview with Swanson as well as a statement from the reporter she had fired.

The interview game is, as many have pointed out, not unlike a romance. You can make too much of this analogy–I’m just the guy to do it, as a matter of fact–but the truth remains that there is an element of seduction whenever an interviewer sits down with an interviewee. You’re almost always nervous going in, never knowing exactly what to expect. You try to make a good first impression, you want them to warm to your charms so that they’ll tell you things they’ve never told anyone else. You want them to give you everything you’ve come to get. Or at least stick around until you’ve finished.

Which is more than Kristy Swanson did with the original writer assigned to this story. I’m the second writer on this job. The first writer and Swanson were not, it seems, a match made in heaven. She refused to talk to him for the second meeting. You see, after they first met, he called her boyfriend, an agent at CAA, to ask him a few questions. Swanson wasn’t happy about this. (Ah, isn’t it always that way when you make it a threesome? Someone feels betrayed.) In any case, in all my years as a magazine editor and a freelance journalist, this stands as an unusual situation; certainly it’s an uncomfortable one. I’m afraid that’s what my editors like about this whole mess. Of course, they don’t have to talk to this future star and pretend we have a clean slate in front of us. Nobody likes being second in line, do they? Then again, I think optimistically, he was just the guy she met before she met me.

You may well ask–as I did when it was suggested I drop everything and rush in to become the second writer–who is Kristy Swanson to behave this way? Did I miss something? Did she become a famous star when I wasn’t paying attention? Well, no, as a matter of fact. Swanson’s been on the verge of becoming a star for a few years now, but it certainly hasn’t happened yet. You might know her from The Program, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mannequin Two: On the Move, Highway to Hell, Hot Shots!, Dream Trap or Diving In. Then again, you might not. How many of those films have any of us seen? Still, the jungle drums of Tinseltown say you will know Swanson. You will.

I get to the Bel Age hotel early and wait. A moment later, Kristy Swanson walks up to me. Unlike most actors in person, she looks completely normal–very So-Cal collegiate. “I’m sorry I’m a few minutes late,” she says. She is, as far as I can tell, 30 seconds late. We head out to the patio.

“Do you smoke?” I ask.

“Mmm…”

“Your publicist said we should sit out here on the patio so we could smoke if we wanted to,” I tell her. “I assume she wasn’t saying that for my benefit.” Swanson laughs, but when I offer her a Camel Light, she refuses it. “Sorry,” I say, “I don’t mean to tempt you.” A minute or two later, Swanson whips out her own pack. Swanson, who is 24 but could pass for 18, comes off like the tennis star she played in The Program: calm, cool, collected, in control. The butts are the only hint that she may have a case of the nerves. Smokers. It takes one to know one.

“I have to admit,” I tell her, “I didn’t know what to expect when I met you. There was all that trouble with the first writer.”

Swanson sighs, then says, “He told me he was going to be doing research, and talking, possibly, to people I’ve worked with. He never said anything about calling my boyfriend. And then he started getting tabloidy.”

“He was probably just looking for an angle,” I say. “And since you’re a client at CAA and your boyfriend is an agent at CAA…”

“Richard’s not my agent,” says Swanson. “He’s not involved in my career at all. We keep that totally separate. And I didn’t feel comfortable talking to this man–it’s like he was trying to make me, or Richard, or CAA look bad. I thought this interview was about me, and the movies that I’ve done, you know, and what I’ve learned in my life.”

“Well,” I say, “what it’s really about is an interesting story. And that’s whatever the writer and the editor decide. And of course, it depends on what the subject says.”

“Movieline is a very highly respected magazine in this business,” she says. “People like it. It’s not People magazine. It’s classy. I felt bad because I knew the magazine was on deadline. It’s very possible the writer didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. But still, when my guts say no…”