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Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media and today I am bringing you my full review of the new London play Interview, currently playing at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. We would call this an off West End Theatre, not an interview, not the Interview as I have been trying to call it, but simply Interview. It is based on a Dutch film from 2003 that was remade by Steve Buscemi, who also starred in it and directed it in 2007 and then again in 2021 in a Hindi language version, I believe. Now it a play on stage in London in a production that feels as though it might perhaps be better suited to downtown Off Broadway, but it is starring two American actors. Robert Shawn Leonard, known of course for his performances on screen in House as well as Dead Poets Society. I thought he was fantastic years ago in To Kill a Mockingbird at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. He is joined by the rising star Peyton Hughes as they portray interviewer and interviewee respectively in a play about that particular power dynamic and its psychosexual implications. And there's lots to say about it. We're going to talk about the events of the play, we're going to talk about its themes, we're going to talk about these performances and as always alongside sharing my own thoughts, I would love to hear yours. If you have had a chance to see Interview on stage or perhaps if you're familiar with any of the film versions, please let us know what you think in the comments section down below. And if you enjoy listening to my review, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on notifications so YouTube lets you know every time I share a new video, whether it's a review or a theatrical news update, or go follow me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, here are my thoughts On Interview at Riverside Studios, what the notion of this story is is expanding on the inherently fascinating dynamic of an interview, which is something that as a media professional, I've had the opportunity to do now a few times. There is this strange sort of transactional intimacy to the dynamic that arises. Interviewer and interviewee. There's this unspoken anxiety about the way that their words are going to be interpreted and framed, which words will be used, the context in which they will be presented, and the way in which what they have said will be subsequently reported to the world and the implications that that can have for them, particularly if this is a big celebrity and even more particularly if it's on video, if it's live. We can all think of a handful of very recent occasions when celebrities have misspoken said something unfortunate in live TV or red carpet context and the publicist hasn't been able to intervene and, you know, reframe something slightly or request that something be excised from a final article. Because in the media age and the social media age, it's already out there. It's already being screenshotted and reacted to on TikTok, which is a world that interview in this version, in this latest stage adaptation delves into a little bit. But before I tell you about that, what the play is doing is it's taking that very unique and fascinating dynamic between two individuals and it's mining it for all of its theatrical possibilities in this increasingly frenetic and chaotic and dark and seductive evening that they share together. It is on the one hand a sort of a sensual power struggle, on the other a battle of wits. It's a chaotic two hander, basically. Robert Shawn Leonard plays a veteran journalist whose name is Pierre. Interestingly enough, given the same name in the original Dutch film as the actor who was portraying him, so is the young actress who he is assigned to interview, whose name is Katya. But in the original movie, and I believe the subsequent adaptations and remakes, she was just an actress, a soap actress, something that might be considered to be cheap, not of, you know, prestigious quality. And the way that that same idea and the sort of implicit disdain that he might have for the work that she does is communicated in this updated version of the narrative is that Katya is not just an actress, she is also a social media personality with seven figure Instagram following. And it is implied that she has parlayed that viral social media success as an influencer into a slightly less than legitimate acting career. One where she is making very commercial, very financially successful films that a lot of people, you know, millions of people are going to the cinema to go and watch, but not necessarily high art. And so, given that as the context of her career, we quickly come to understand the professional frustration experienced by Pierre Robert Sean Leonard's character when he is given this assignment. And it's something of a punishment from his editor as a result of recent transgressions that we come to learn about. Because he is not principally an entertainment writer writing these kinds of puff pieces, important though they may be to the newspaper, he is traditionally a political analyst, a field that he is being, at the time of the play, deliberately excluded from due to mistakes that he's made previously in his career. Though this comes as another frustration compounding how he feels about the situation. Because at this exact moment there is a big political shift unfolding because the then vice president, who is a fictional vice president within this production, is about to be impeached pursuant to an international political scandal involving undisclosed Russian connections and the use of bots and fake news and misinformation. And with the exception of one remark about Jeff Bezos having bought the paper that he is writing for, these are fictitious political figures in spite of any less than coincidental resemblance that they may have to real persons currently in office, though several aspects of it do ring true to the current political situation, particularly in which the US finds itself. There is one line that Robert Shawn Leonard has when he complains about the worst possible people he's talking about within the field of journalism, reporting on the worst people currently in the White House at the worst possible time, hence his annoyance, while this huge political moment is literally unfolding at being sent to Brooklyn to go and write a puff piece about this influencer turned actress, which, for what it's worth, is also very topical and very timely as there is more and more discussion about the way that Hollywood works in 2025 and the notion that studios are courting individuals with huge social media followings in order to guarantee bigger audiences for their films. Although the influencer ification of Hollywood is scarcely territory that the show really gets into, if I'm being honest, for the most part, the fairly combative conversation around Katya's influencer activity and her acting career tends to be the same kind of surf level arguments that we have heard before. And I was really eager for this to be a good faith exploration of influencer culture and that lifestyle, which in 2025 no longer looks like a small handful of really viral individuals who all look the same and who are all, you know, glamorous young women. All doing the same thing. It's become so widespread and so varied right now. Hell, I fall into that category as well. I don't really think that this was the authentic investigation into influencer culture I have been waiting for. I remain hopeful that we will see that play, but it wasn't this one. No, this one is more concerned about the power dynamic between these two characters. There is, to begin with, an extraordinary indifference on the part of Pierre, only compounded by the fact that he is forced to wait for over an hour because Katya is late in returning to her own apartment and is then on the phone when she lets him in, which he finds to be incredibly rude and is sort of symptomatic of the generational divide between them. He's very much old enough to be her father. And this plays into a little bit of daddy issues that emerges later in the play. I don't want to say that from a misogynistic standpoint, but it's absolutely what we're doing here. And if you don't believe me, for fear of issuing something of a spoiler alert, they do later end up embracing, dancing slowly around her apartment with him referring to himself as her father. There is also a cultural rift between them and the way in which they see the world. And if he has preconceptions about, you know, this being beneath him and not worth his time, and because of that, has not done sufficient homework, has not watched, watched the film that she is trying to promote, is not familiar with the TV series that she stars in, then she also, to a certain extent, has preoccupations going into the interview because she has a pre existing frustration about the way that she has been depicted in the press and the way that she has been characterized by particularly older white men and the way that she has engaged with them throughout her career, the way in which they refuse to let her have the final word and exert their power over her and deny her the opportunity to. To be seen and be heard. Something that social media allows her to do. Her hope in all of this is that she will finally be represented honestly and authentically. In an exclusive interview that she is offering, she tells Pierre, we all want to be seen, Pierre. Not followed, but seen. And if I'm being honest, remarkably little legitimate interviewing actually happens here. As she points out towards the end of the play, she asks him far more questions about his life than he does her. Even after he is scolded about the way that he is conducting the interview with a palpable disinterest. Much of it just devolves into verbal sparring between the two of them. She calls him out for not having watched any of the films. He criticizes her social media following and the way in which she represents the success of her career by pointing out how many people she brings to the cinema with her film releases. He tells her separately that reach doesn't equal worth and that mass doesn't equal merit, and she challenges him plenty in return, although strangely, when she suggests that she has provided 20,000 new readers for the article that is to be written for the interview, he seems impressed by this, despite his earlier statements. But at its core, the play follows one evening between these two individuals in a very particular power balance, entering into a whirlpool of arguments circling this inevitably intimate outcome, after which there can only be one winner. Let's carry on and expand a little bit on some of the themes of the play, some of the ideas that we are talking about, as well as the choices of this critic it.