Childhood me who just-a-million-times-more-than-a-teeny-bit wanted to be a reporter one day would have screamed a little if I told her I interviewed Optimus Prime and Megatron this afternoon. And I even got to chat with the two of them in the same room not trying to kill each other. It feels like so many of our 80’s childhood stories are getting revisited as we age and this is the first CG-animated Transformers movie. (Did you also watch the 1986 Transformers movie when you were a kid and get completely gutted too?) So after taking my twin teenage guys to see Transformers One and thoroughly enjoying ourselves, I was invited to interview Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry on a panel of parent blogger/journalists.
And I know you might be wondering how interviews with stars like Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry work? How is it that I get to do this?
I have been blogging for over a decade and I’ve ended up on various press lists over the years. These days I usually get an email a couple weeks in advance of various movies coming out with an invite for a zoom interview date and an idea of who will be there. I wish I knew how exactly this worked but it will be forever magic in my inbox. In this case, the invite was to potentially interview Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry. Often I watch a screener of the movie beforehand, sometimes even at home on my laptop. For this one, we went to the AMC theatre at Pacific Place in Seattle and I went with my two teenage boys.
I don’t go to all the screeners that show up in my inbox because that would mean going to movies that aren’t in genres I understand or appreciate. I tend to love romantic comedy, documentaries and women’s stories (a recent interview was with Robin Lee the author of Idea of You) and gravitate towards these movies. My favorite interview and movie was with Jenny Slate and it was Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (please watch this movie if you ever get a chance and need your heart uplifted.) But also I’m trying to see more movies with my teens so I can connect with them. This is why an animated version of a cartoon series I loved as a kid that is full of battles and tech-filled futuristic animation was a great fit but I know I am not as familiar with Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry’s work because they’re often in movies scarier than this one so those are the ones the guys go to with dad.
I do know Chris Hemsworth is pretty famous and he has a brother with the same name as one of my kids and when I told a couple friends and family I might be getting to interview Chris Hemsworth, suddenly I’d apparently “made it.”
But a zoom interview panel for a movie doesn’t mean a guaranteed interview in this business
Even if you figure out that you can make the time window in the invite and show up for the interview, often these times change and the interview time will change too. So today, the interview time moved about an hour and 15 minutes. And then there would be about a 10 minute window for an interview and in that window there would be more panelists than time for questions. Because you don’t always know your order in the panel you have to decide if you want to take a chance to participate even if you might not get a chance to ask your question. (I’ve definitely had this happen and the first few interviews it was actually a relief to just show up and see the process)
I also always prep a bunch of questions so I have multiple questions ready just in case someone else asks mine before I get a chance to ask. I find a Zoom Round Table interview scarier than just talking to people in real life because you are on video the whole time as a talking or not talking head and everyone can see you ask the question and how you look while you listen.
Zoom is very convenient and revolutionary for how we can conduct something like an interview with people from all around the world at the very same time without having to travel but it can also feel very strange.
At our house I also have to prep Scout because we got him as a pup during covid and he has learned that Zoom time is his time to hold us hostage. He insists on sitting on my lap for the duration of any and all meetings I have on my computer or I pay dearly.
An hour or so after you think you might have a chance to interview someone in a high pressure room, you kind of forget that it’s high pressure anymore. You almost think it’s not going to happen or that there is no way your name will get called. So when I am suddenly invited into a zoom room and turn on my camera and my microphone and see Chris Hemsworth and Bryan Tyree Henry sitting in chairs on my screen like they’re on a tv talk show it barely feels like real life and maybe becomes more like a video game. Do you ever feel this way when you chat on zoom?
And then I hear: “Terumi, you can unmute and ask your question” and I’m not sure if I’m entirely coherent at first but you need to brave through this kind of thing with main character energy. And thank goodness main characters come in all forms these days. (I have never been the first person to start an interview at a round table before….)
I was going to ask about D-16 and how Brian Tyree Henry managed to make us feel such compassion for this character who turns out to be so terrifying when he fulfills his destiny as Transformers Megatron.
And how did it feel to play the Transformers icons of our childhood and make them this real and relatable for our children?
How on earth do you film an animation like this? Do you all read through lines in the same room together or is it like this-over Zoom?
But instead, I thought about everyone who will tell me after that “that guy is famous! You are lucky!” and about all the work that it took me to get here and my defining moment apparently that also came through a bit of luck. And I want to know from these two larger than life men sitting before me on my teeny tiny screen: what is it that you need to achieve success and maybe fame? I am very curious about fame and success. Do you need to stand out in some way to be seen like Orion Pax thinks he needs to in the movie to make it? Do you need to do something extraordinary to change your life?
I’m not sure if this is exactly how the question came out but this is what I meant and what I’d written down before it came out of my mouth.
And suddenly Brian is joking around and telling Chris to take the question. And Chris starts talking and I realize neither of these guys sound like Optimus Prime or Megatron at all. But they are brilliant and humble and charismatic and friendly. Not FAMOUS, famous people but human beings on a remarkable journey that has ended them up together for a bit. And like the endearing qualities that they bring to both their characters on screen, they share a bit of this here with us, who are observers and couch critics: a little bit of who they might really be deep down as people like you and me underneath all this life-changing fame. I love the sentiment that fame was not goal they had but it was creating their art. Storytelling. I think we all have that in the core of our beings.
I will be posting the interview on my instagram tomorrow after I get my clips and watch them unless I am utterly humiliated. It will likely be later in the day. (PS. my post is now up and you can see it here.
In the meantime, have you seen Transformers One? I know it comes out everywhere September 20th but I think many theaters have early access releases (for example Pacsci in Seattle has it here starting September 18th) I found it entertaining and I loved the storyline. I felt like they did such a great job in honoring the Transformers many of us parents knew as kids while also bringing this story to a new audience 40 years in the future. And if you watched it too, do you think there will be a sequel?
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
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