Podcasts Are Still Interviews: What Anthony Albanese's Viral Misstep Teaches About Media Training
The relaxed format is exactly where seasoned communicators, from politicians to celebrities, let their guard down.
Politicians often implode during interviews when they’re pressed on numbers, evade a basic question, or get their own party’s policy mixed up. What you don’t expect is for one to engage with a crude question and deliver an even cruder answer. That’s exactly what happened to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on comedian Nikki Osborne’s podcast, Bush Deep and it’s a case study I could be using in media training sessions for years to come.
In addition to sit-downs with mainstream broadcasters, politicians are increasingly showing up on podcasts and with social media creators to reach new audiences. Albanese’s appearance on Bush Deep is the latest reminder that this newer, more informal format catches even experienced communicators off guard, because politicians and public figures alike get too comfortable in a podcast setting.
What actually happened
What could possibly have led to the prime minister having to issue a one-line statement saying: “I apologise unequivocally for the comments”?
Nikki Osborne, the host of Bush Deep, asked Albanese, in a ‘rapid fire’ question round, to place Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore in a “shag, marry, date” game. Albanese was reluctant to answer the question, initially declining and pointing to the fact that he’d married his partner Jodie Haydon only six months earlier. When Osborne pushed on what he’d do if the marriage ended, he replied: “Oh, Kylie, clearly.” Osborne further pressed: “You’d marry Kylie, and shag her, and date her?” Albanese replied: “all of the above”, adding: “She’s terrific.”
This off guard response rightly raised questions about his, and his party’s, commitments to equality with fellow politicians and women’s rights groups calling him out for his inappropriate and sexist comments. Independent MP Zali Steggall called it “entirely inappropriate for the prime minister to participate in such a game”. Fowler MP Dai Le described the remarks as “unbecoming of a gentleman”. Opposition communications spokesperson Sarah Henderson said the comments “demean the office of prime minister”. Even colleagues who defended him, including Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and minister Tanya Plibersek, were forced to spend a news cycle talking about it instead of policy.
Why I’m not surprised
As a PR & Visibility Strategist and an experienced Media Trainer, I have trained TV talent, executives, founders and creators to survive the moment their guard drops, and podcasts are where guards tend to drop fastest. The reminder ahead of any podcast appearance will always be: this is still an interview, even when it doesn’t feel like one.
Anthony Albanese’s recent misstep is an important lesson for anyone appearing on podcasts, whether you’re a politician, celebrity, business owner or company representative. It’s a ‘safe’ environment with seemingly friendly questions and a relaxed atmosphere. The dress code is non-existent and the lighting low. With no fixed run-time, you’ve got much more time to amble through an answer than a traditional TV or radio interview allows and your guard is lowered; a combination that naturally makes conversation more candid and leaves an interviewee susceptible to talking a little too much and often a little too freely. It doesn’t feel like the same job as facing the BBC or Bloomberg.
But it is. The recording of podcast audio (and often video), much like a TV or radio interview, is just as permanent, searchable and easily quotable. It is also just as shareable and as Albanese found out, the audience for a ‘throwaway’ answer given when the guard had fallen can be far bigger than the podcast’s actual listenership, because mainstream media will happily pick up the moment that got away from you. A seemingly off-the-cuff remark can end up becoming the leading story of the interview.
We can look at celebrities like Molly Mae and the storm caused by her “we all have the same 24 hours in a day” comment on the Diary of a CEO podcast as an example of this. Even Steven Bartlett, on his own show (Diary of a CEO), fell foul when he asked whether "systems should be put in place to make sure incels meet partners”. The clip went viral with comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale, becoming a bigger story than the episode topic it was buried in. Ian Somerhalder, on Dr. Berlin's Informed Pregnancy podcast in 2017, casually revealed he'd thrown out his wife Nikki Reed's birth control pills. Meant as a playful anecdote, it was interpreted as an admission of reproductive coercion and the couple had to publicly address it.
None of these people were being grilled on a hard topic with their backs against the wall. They were relaxed, mid-tangent and often trying to be relatable or funny; much like the situation that caught Albanese out. What is also important to note is that none of them were naive; they are media trained, very well acquainted with the interview process and know that any stray comment has the potential to take on a life of its own. Yet, they’ve proven how easy it is to let the media training lapse.
As with all forms of interview, clear communication and professionalism remains key. If there’s something you wouldn’t say on the BBC’s News at Ten or Bloomberg’s Businessweek Daily then don’t utter it on a podcast. A podcast interview, whether it be in a professional studio or on a friendly sofa, can feel a lot less intimidating than being in front of TV cameras, but it should never be treated as a private conversation.
The three-part structure I teach
Every interview, podcast or otherwise, comes down to three things I walk clients through before they sit down: message development, message control and message delivery.
Message Development is deciding, in advance, what you want to say and, perhaps just as importantly, what you don’t want to say. Prepare 3 core messages that you want to deliver and that you’d like the audience to remember. Whether that’s what you stand for, your mission, political principles, a key initiative, launch, a humanising anecdote or CTA that you want to ask of the audience.
Albanese's appearance on Bush Deep was a ‘humanise the leader’ interview rather than a message-driven one, part of the broader trend of senior politicians doing podcasts to reach audiences outside traditional news. He talked about his life as PM, his WhatsApp chats with other world leaders, the pressures of the job, and lighter stuff like the oddest gift he's received on an overseas trip (two melons from Japan's PM btw). None of which were perhaps ‘core messages’ he wanted to ensure the audience were left with and maybe this was the problem. Having a general goal of coming across as ‘relatable’ and without having a hard news line to protect left him aimless. If your only objective is ‘seem human’, you haven't defined what you want to say and what you won't say, so there's nothing to fall back on when the host pushes into treacherous territory.
Message Control is about sticking to your agenda and preparing for the unexpected. You also need to be mindful to keep your ‘PR hat’ on to be able to make quick decisions in response to questions that are probing for headlines. Negative reputational consequences can be long-lasting so the focus must be to stick to your own agenda where possible and prepare for the type of interview you’re stepping into.
Albanese must have been made aware of the format of this interview (‘rapid fire’, playful, personal) and should have been prepared to deliver a lighthearted deflection on occasion. He didn’t even need one in this instance, because there was a much simpler option available: decline and move on. As a politician this is exactly the type of question that he would have been within his rights to decline to answer because it’s simply not an appropriate conversation for him to enter into. He started to decline, but his resistance wasn’t long lasting as he let the host coax an answer out of him. Albanese’s key message that week almost certainly wasn’t meant to be “Kylie, clearly”, but it became the story anyway, because he left the field open for the host, and subsequently the media, to write the headline for him.
Message Delivery is how you look and sound while you’re saying it and this is where a relaxed setting does the most damage. A slouched posture, a laugh that is a little too wild, or a joke you wouldn’t have told standing behind a podium; all of it reads differently on camera than it felt in the room. You need to land your key messages clearly enough that they are what people remember; but it only truly works if you’ve done the first two steps.
Albanese fumbled on the delivery, not on his message, but on his response to the question that was intended to catch him out. In the moment the offending question was asked, we know he was cautious, citing his marriage as a reason to decline to rise to the bait, but once the host pushes past that, his tone flips as he throws that previous caution to the wind and commits to the bit; "Oh, Kylie, clearly", "all of the above... she's terrific", delivered so smoothly that an uneasy enthusiasm for the topic may have been sensed by some.
A technique that could have saved him
One of the most useful tools I teach is the bridging technique: a way to acknowledge a question without letting it hijack the interview.
It has three steps:
Acknowledge the question, so the audience knows you understood it and aren’t dodging.
Bridge by using a short phrase that signals you’re widening the answer: “What’s more important to know is…”, “That’s one point of view, but I’d also say…”, “I can’t speak to that, but what I can tell you is…”.
Control or contribute, steering the answer back toward the message you actually came to deliver.
It works because it doesn’t read as evasive if it’s done well and it gives you somewhere to go other than straight into the trap. A version of it was right there for Albanese: acknowledge the game, decline to play along on personal grounds (which he’d already raised), and bridge into something like his actual reason for being on the show. He acknowledged it, but didn’t build that bridge to move him away from it and towards the reputational safety awaiting on the other side.
The technique has limits worth flagging to clients, too: overuse it and it starts to sound evasive and the bridge only works if where you land actually connects to what’s being discussed. A perfect example of this came from Anne Hathaway being interviewed on the Les Misérables press tour by Matt Lauer in 2012. She’d been hounded by paparazzi which resulted in the publishing of an indecently exposing photograph; and when Matt Lauer crassly joked about this ‘over-exposure’, Hathaway delivered a bridging masterclass that shut down that line of questioning completely. An example of bridging, but also of Message Control; sticking to your agenda and preparing for the ‘unexpected’ or in this case, preparing for the journalist to go low and making sure to be ready with a deft response.
Nothing is ever off the record
We’ve all heard this but it’s a statement that is easy to forget once the energy is friendly and the questions feel like banter. You are ‘on the clock’ as soon as you enter a studio, answer the call, step into an interview, so the safest move is always to assume that there is no such thing as off the record. If you dropped a clanger or left a crumb of a tasty story in those pre-interview moments, you can bet that there will be many a journalist or interviewer that would find a way to put you on the spot for more information or use it as context to ‘set the scene’ in the interview write up or episode promotion.
Tracking back to your key message
If you do get pulled off course, the fix isn’t panic, it’s a pause. Don’t feel the need to fill a silence just because the microphone is on. A pause is your safety zone. Don’t stumble into the silence that an interviewer like Louis Theroux will happily leave for you to land in.
“No” is a complete and acceptable answer on its own or followed by your actual reason for being there. And if you’ve said what you meant to say, stop talking; the follow-up you improvise to fill dead air is usually a loose lipped one that will make the headlines.
The take-away for guesting on podcasts
Of course, in this article, I’m covering the pitfalls of high-profile people who slip up when trying to ‘be more human’ (it’s ironic that they really are showing us that they are human but perhaps not in the way they’d hoped) but there are learnings for people approaching podcasts at any level. The principles stay the same.
Podcasts are not an inherently dangerous form of media, far from it. They are an incredibly effective form of communication for many business leaders, founders and, yes, politicians who want to reach an audience beyond mainstream media. Podcasts should however, be treated with as much respect and level of preparation as any other form of media interview: know your key messages, know your red lines and know that ‘relaxed’ is how you might want to appear but shouldn't be your approach to preparation and delivery.
Albanese had the opportunity to sidestep an inappropriate and offensive question entirely and to move the conversation in a completely different direction. Instead, whether he wanted to seem relatable or simply got swept up in the relaxed atmosphere and light-hearted conversation, he engaged. As he’s now discovered, the more relaxed the conversation gets, the more disciplined your judgement needs to be, not less. It's a principle behind every Media Training session I run and it’s a lesson worth taking from this whole episode: prepare for the sofa just as comprehensively as you’d prepare for the studio.