Nardwuar is the G.O.A.T.

How to produce unexpectedly awesome celebrity interviews by being yourself and working hard

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Hi everyone!

It’s Steve here. This is a special edition of the Creativity Guild. This is an expanded and updated excerpt from my new book, Earn It, which is about how to earn attention, embrace your creative bravery and make things that people love. (Everyone here at The Creativity Guild can download a free chapter of the book (PDF and audio) with the password “EarnIt” here.)

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Meet the G.O.A.T. of Celebrity Interviews

I am exceptionally fortunate to have collaborated with, in my humble opinion, the most original celebrity interviewer of our time. Many of you will have never heard of him. However, after you read this post, it will be really hard to forget him. He’s truly one of a kind.

Before we meet this magic interviewer, let’s start with how incredibly hard it is to do a memorable, unique celebrity interview:

• The celebrities have been interviewed hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of times.

• Everything about them is already known.

• They’ve already been asked every question imaginable over and over and over again.

• They have developed talking points and can very easily slip into automatic response mode.

In short, it is really, really hard to get a celebrity to tell you something new. And it is really, really hard to get a celebrity to be interested in being interviewed. So how do you engage a bored celebrity and make something memorable? How do you transform the celebrity into an excited participant, to the point where they tell everyone about how amazing their interview experience was?

Sound impossible? It isn’t.

Meet Nardwuar The Human Serviette.

Nardwuar the Human Serviette

Nardwuar is One of a Kind

To shake celebrities out of their message track mode, you need to be different than everyone else. You need to know things that others don’t. You need to surprise them with things they aren’t expecting.

You need to be… unexpectedly awesome. And there is no better way to describe Nardwuar the Human Serviette than unexpectedly awesome.

Nardwuar has a one-of-a-kind voice and a lot of passion. He squeals with joy and excitement. He has an extraordinary amount of energy, so the sheer force of being in the room with him creates a unique, fast-paced, urgent vibe. He dresses in a Scottish tam hat and plaid pants. He is visually arresting and not even remotely close to what a traditional journalist looks like.

Nardwuar also has an encyclopedic memory. He does an extraordinary amount of original research. (His research techniques are a trade secret…) Despite having been interviewed countless times, his subjects are regularly asked questions they have never been asked before. Things are revealed from their past that they have never talked about before or that they have forgotten until Nardwuar brings them up. He buys exceptionally rare and personal gifts for his guests and reveals them during the course of the interview.

The Impact of Being Unexpectedly Awesome

These are some very common retorts from celebrities during a Nardwuar interview:

• How did you find out about that?

• Who told you that? I’ve never told anyone that.

• How did you know about this record/book/doll/magazine/ shirt?

• Is this for me? For real? I can keep this?

• This is the greatest/craziest interview I’ve ever had in my life!

Nardwuar has blown many interviewees’ minds and given them the most unusual and memorable interviewing experience they’ve ever had. Check out this supercut of interviewee reactions and tell me if you’ve ever seen such surprise and delight, so consistently, in any celebrity interview (vulgarity warning! 😜):

Can you imagine if you got reactions like this to your creative work on a regular basis???

Nardwuar also has a signature catchphrase to end every interview. Here is the instruction guide for how to end a Nardwuar interview:

• Say, “Thanks very much, and keep on rockin’ in the free world. Doot doola doot doo . . .”

• Pause and put the mic back in the subject’s face.

• Wait patiently until the subject realizes they have to complete the “shave and haircut . . . two bits” ditty by replying, “Doot doo.”

Do not wrap up the interview until the subject completes the “Doot doola doot doo . . . doot doo.”

Finish by looking at the camera with a wide grin and freeze like it’s the end of an ’80s sitcom.

Here’s a great Nardwuar ending with Lizzo:

Being Unique Isn’t Always Easy

At the start of his career, not being predictable and normal made things difficult. Nardwuar had a great deal of trouble getting big-name artists to talk with him, precisely because his interviews were unique and unpredictable. Music labels thought he was risky and turned down almost all his interview requests.

But he never gave up. He took every interview he could get. And he prepared deeply for every single one. Slowly but surely, word began to get around about this guy from Vancouver named Nardwuar conducting the most entertaining interviews anyone could remember.

MuchMusic (the Canadian equivalent of MTV) was brave enough to put Nardwuar on air, which is how I met him. Even though he was on national TV, and MuchMusic was an arbiter of what was cool, many music labels and publicists continued to be wary of him.

One of the big breakthroughs was an interview with a skeptical Snoop Dogg, which started fairly benignly. As the interview progressed, you could see Snoop not only coming to life, but also being surprised and greatly entertained by the whole experience. The interview went viral.

Today it’s a very different story. Artists beg to be interviewed by Nardwuar. It’s a rite of passage. He is mobbed at music festivals like SXSW. He has massive audiences on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitch. And he still does his campus radio show at CiTR in Vancouver, decades after he started.

Deconstructing the Nard Magic

So let’s explore what makes Nardwuar so special.

First of all, Nardwuar is a pro. He puts in the work. Over and over and over again, he puts in the work. He does an unimaginable amount of research in preparation for each interview. There is no ‘winging it’ with Nardwuar. Every question, every gift, and the order in which it all unfurls is meticulously planned. “The minute you think you know something is the minute you should quit,” he says in his TedX talk.

You know what else is amazing and inspiring about Nardwuar? He’s not doing this to get rich and famous. He loves music. (He’s in two bands, The Evaporators and Thee Goblins…) He loves interviewing. If his goal was to grow “The Nardwuar Business,” he would keep interviewing bigger and bigger celebrities. He would get a team behind him. He would be pursuing a huge podcasting deal. He would be monetizing everything he does.

But Nardwuar does none of that. In fact, he still interviews musicians that most of us have never heard of - he’s introducing his audience to new artists all the time. He still does almost everything by himself or with a very small camera crew. He comes from the punk rock and indie scene, and that is the ethos with which he conducts his interviews.

In the Howard Stern biopic, Private Parts, there is a memorable scene talking about why so many people listened to Stern. People who loved Stern listened a lot, but the people who hated him listened even more! The reason that fans and haters listened was exactly the same: “I want to see what he’ll say next.” Everyone watches Nardwuar for the exact same reason. You truly never know what’s going to happen in a given interview. That is why he has millions and millions of followers and fans.

Even his longtime MuchMusic producer, Chris Nelson would never know what was going to happen next! I was lucky enough to be part of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experience when Nardwuar tried to get an interview with documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. After being officially denied an interview, Nardwuar decided to do what Michael Moore himself would do in that situation - he ambushed Moore outside his hotel with Chris’ camera rolling. He Michael Moore’d Michael Moore!

(As someone who is decidedly not punk rock, you can even see me awkwardly trying to get Nardwuar to leave when we are being kicked out of a room for interfering with another journalist’s interview (2:06)… which led to Moore calling Nardwuar “a national treasure.”)

A Playing Field with No Competition

In an incredibly crowded field, Nardwuar has differentiated himself… by being himself. He created a unique category where he has no competition.

Nardwuar earned it.

What’s the lesson any creator can take from Nardwuar? Lean into who you are and put out content and messaging that is uniquely yours.

Don’t follow the status quo.

Don’t copy others.

Don’t be boring.

Dare to be different.

And… do the work.

If you want to earn access to people’s incredibly precious time and attention, you need to be unexpectedly awesome, over and over again. And, again, let there be no doubt…

Nardwuar is always unexpectedly awesome.

To close with words from Nardwaur himself at the end of his TedX talk, “If I can do it, you can do it, too!”

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If you want to know more about Nardwuar:

• Nardwuar on YouTube

• Nardwuar’s website

• Canadaland did a terrific Nardwuar oral history.

• Nardwuar’s TedX talk has over 4.5 million views - he talks about the value of ‘doing it yourself’ and it is well worth a watch. It is filled with great stories of how he got his interviews with Kurt Cobain, how he got Snoop Dogg to open up by giving him a stuffed Redd Foxx doll, and how he earned the respect of a skeptical Henry Rollins. It is likely the only TedX talk in history that ends with the speaker crowd-surfing…

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If you enjoyed hearing about Nardwuar and are keen for more stories and insights about how to produce content that stands out from the crowd, you might also really enjoy my new book, Earn It. I’d be honoured if you considered pre-ordering the book or purchasing it when it launches next Tuesday, October 1. Thanks!

Creative Prompts

• Who are you? (Nardwuar’s brilliant opening question for every interview)

• What makes you special, interesting, or different from everyone else in your field of creative endeavours?

• How can you double down on the things that make you different?

• How can you break existing patterns and be unexpectedly awesome in your creative work?

• Can you embrace the love of doing creative work as the definition of success, instead of an external outcome?

• Are you concerned about lack of resources? What can you learn from Nardwuar about figuring how to do it yourself?

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Nardwuar is going on tour! Here are all the dates. If you get the chance to see him live, I promise you won’t regret it.

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Thanks for reading this special Earn It edition of The Creativity Guild. One more quick reminder that you can download a free chapter of the book (PDF and audio) with the password “EarnIt” here.

We’ll be back to our regular programming next edition! 😉

Steve

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