Meet The Press: Q&A with Kelly Will of The New York Post (PART 1)
Redbook, Shape, Star Magazine, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, and now, The NY Post with her Page Six “Six & The City” Column–these are all publications that Celebrity Gossip Columnist, Kelly Will, has written for during her impressive and inspiring career.
This is definitely my longest blog post by far (I know: tisk, tisk), but I was so thoroughly interested in Kelly’s perspective, career, and the various topics we touched upon, that I decided I’d keep it all in for those who are interested, too.
If you aren’t up for the full read, here are the cliff notes: Kelly Will is awesome. She created her own career from the ground up by following her gut and making conscious choices to pursue her dreams. There was little sleep involved (I was exhausted just listening to it), but what we’ve learned is that hard work pays off and sets you up for a lifestyle to envy later on.
This interview is going to be revealed in TWO PARTS, as we chat about Celebrity Gossip, Travel, Social Media, and life as a Freelancer.
[Big thanks to @JoAnaSwan for transcribing this interview!]
PART 1 – Making It Happen:
Alyson Campbell: So Kelly, you’re a celebrity gossip columnist. How do you keep up? Where do you get the bulk of your tips? Through friends & warm contacts? Is that successful for you?
Kelly Will : Definitely. I believe that you’re only as good as your warm contacts. I could not do this job without all those people who get that “tips” email reminder from me every month. So many people contact me with simple sightings, even a publicist who isn’t repping Kevin Bacon will see Kevin Bacon crossing the street in SoHo and tell me “He was running into such and such restaurant,” and that’s the simplest way that I get a great sighting without physically being everywhere at what time [which is nearly impossible]. Plus, I’m turning 30 this year and I really wanted to transition into a place where I don’t have to go out every single night. You don’t have to see me at Rose Bar and the next night at Beatrice and maybe one night at Gold Bar and another night at Marquee. I know people and if something “big” happens I’m confident someone will let me know “this happened.” Also, I really count on all my PR contacts as far as my celebrity interviews go. It’s amazing how generous and willing people are to get the celebrity to talk to me. If I can have five minutes with a celebrity on my own without other reporters’ microphones coming in, then it usually can become an item and I can thank the publicist by making sure its properly stated where the celebrity was, what the event was for, who was involved, and it’s a really nice synergistic relationship. As a good gossip columnist in New York City, if you can’t help your publicist friends then they will not help you.
AC: So not just as a publicist, but as a reporter too, it’s who you know, and you just sprawl out across many circles?
KW: Yes, any opportunity to meet new people (as long as I have the energy and I’m not completely exhausted), I will make the effort to exchange business cards and just say “Hi, this is what I do.” Every week I have three sightings available that are open for restaurants in the city. You know, the restaurant publicists, I don’t think they quite realize that I’d love to have every restaurant publicist in the city know me, because people love to go out and eat, celebrities love to go out and eat! It’s just a simple sighting and it’s not invasive; that’s what’s great about sightings is that they’re not invasive. A lot of people are still so worried about the negative gossip column item and I completely understand that so for the most part I try to be as positive as possible cause karma’s a b*tch! And, I want good karma!
AC: Well that is something I’m sure that celebrities are happy to hear from you…
KW: Yeah, you’ll never see me do a mean celebrity interview…never…ever. You’ll never see me making up quotes from a celebrity to make them look bad ever. It’s all on the record and its all positive. About once a week I do have one great gossip item that is not an interview with a celebrity and that definitely might not be great for my karma but I believe some celebrities deserve it if they’re going to pull the things they pull.
AC: And some of them know that they’re pulling these things. Some of them do still believe that ‘all press is good press and they’re just happy that they’re in your column whether it’s negative (KW: Right, the younger celebrities especially)…or the socialite crowd, I’m sure they always love getting called out?
KW: Oh yes definitely. All press is good press in that arena.
AC: So, you said you transitioned into freelancing about 3 years ago? How did you get to that place?
KW: I started my career as an Elementary Education Major at Indiana University, in the good ol’ Midwest. I grew up outside of Chicago so I lived in the city throughout childhood and I thought to myself, “I don’t want to go back to Chicago after graduating.” My friends were coming to New York so we all decided on graduation day that we would move to NYC together. We slept on couches for a couple weeks. A couple of us got apartments together and I got a job as an assistant at Redbook Magazine at Hearst. Hearst is a wonderful company, they really take care of their employees, and you’re not a number to them at all. From Hearst, my boss took me with her to Shape Magazine, and while at Shape I met Bonnie Fuller. She had just come on to Star Magazine from US Weekly and had just renovated US WEEKLY into the pink and magenta glorious animal that it now looks like today, that Janice Min has taken over. Bonnie met me and she needed a new assistant and we just really clicked.
AC: So, what was your big break? How did you make the leap from assistant to reporter?
KW: I will never forget it. I got a tip that Britney Spears was performing at the old Limelight (which at the time was called Avalon) and I thought “Wow, I’m just gonna go down there and see.” I was still at Shape at the time, and I leaned against the stage for an hour and had a drink with one of my friends and all of the sudden Britney Spears decided to surprise everyone! It was Britney Spears, “Out all Night on MTV.” I happened to be there and happened to have a camera and I took photos; I was inches away from her! Bonnie had only been at the magazine for a month or so at the time and she ran the photos. Star Magazine actually paid me for the photos because they were really good shots, and they ran my reporting on Britney, too. I had a job offer the next week. I definitely look back at that moment, my choice to go to that concert after I had gotten the tip, and I remember consciously making a decision. In my head I was thinking, “I have a feeling if something good happens here, this will change my entire career.” At the time, I had been in New York for almost a year, so I was still pretty new and I was willing to do anything to get ahead.
AC: That is so inspiring! Good ‘ol Britney, she’s probably made a few careers happen in her day! I remember when I first started to hear your name around town, that you were officially reporting at Star Magazine. So were you at Star for a while and then The New York Daily News?
KW: It was a huge transition actually. I’m really willing to share this story now because (especially in this economy) so many people are going through it and it’s a very difficult thing when you get laid off from a job… I was Bonnie’s executive assistant for over a year, I was promoted, she made me an editor, she was a wonderful boss, and we had a great relationship. I truly admired her and respected her and still do. I was an editor for a year and then suddenly I was laid off in just a regular slew of like 10 people that were also cut. I remember I didn’t cry that night, but I went home and called my mom and she was so upset. She said “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening to you,” and I was like “It’s going to be ok, Mom.” I signed up for unemployment the next day because I just didn’t know how I would pay for my New York City bills without having a job. I decided I was going to take the summer off because I did had some money in savings. I took a few weeks to really figure out what I wanted to do. To be honest, I did a lot of soul searching that summer.
AC: So, without realizing it, you almost needed that break?
KW: Yeah, I mean I had worked 80 hours a week for almost 3 years straight. Star was a great place, and a wonderful learning experience and I would do it again, I would definitely do it again. It was also a truly exhausting experience. I was going out all night long and I was partying with THE celebrities of the moment. Marquee had just opened, and it was a SCENE. Every night you ended up at Bungalow 8 and maybe you got in somebody’s SUV and went to an after-party. It was just the time of your life in your mid twenties to be having. It also just sucked the life out of me. When I was let go it gave me a reason to sit still and realize how exhausted I was because you just go, go, go and you don’t think about it. So yes, it took a lot of soul searching to figure out who I was. I thought I was defined by my work because I had labeled myself as a “Bonnie minion”, a person that Bonnie Fuller had created, and I had to recreate my own image of who I could be, now that I was on my own.
Gosh, it took a lot of work, but when you’re getting near the end of unemployment and you’ think “Oh my gosh, I still don’t have a job, what am I gonna do,” you push yourself. I interviewed for a lot of PR jobs because everybody said I should do PR. I actually got a lot of offers and with every single one, I found a reason to turn it down, even though I desperately needed a job. I kept telling myself “C’mon, your name, people are forgetting who you are,” and I was still going out often specifically because I didn’t want people to forget who I was. You think it’s so important to keep your name out there. It was really getting near the end and finally a really good friend of mine said: “You can do anything you want and why aren’t you thinking: ‘I can freelance, I can do this on my own, I can run my own business’.” And that was the turning point. I said, “You know what? Wait a second I can, and I will.”
It was my good friend Jared Shapiro at Life & Style Weekly, he was Bonnie’s assistant right before I was. We had a great friendship throughout the Star years together and he went to Life & Style and he said “I’ll help you.” He supported me and to this day I still do a little work with Jared at Life & Style. He was the start of my freelancing career and I can give him a lot of the credit for that. He helped me out when I really needed it. One thing built on another, and because I had been friends with Ben Widdicombe (of Gatecrasher at the New York Daily News) and he needed a filler (Laura Schreffler was going to be out and I was friends with Laura), he asked if I could do it and I said “ I guess I could!” So, I agreed and thought “What the heck, its been a good summer, and I should just make the summer even better.”
Ben & I ended up working out a deal that I would do the gossip column once every other week and it was completely part-time. I felt like I was helping him out and he was helping me out. He has become a great friend of mine, he’s such a funny person, a nice guy and so smart. Even on days when we thought “Wow, a daily column is a killer, to come up with three celebrity items plus 3 full sightings every single day, five days a week!” I give him so much credit for doing that for so many years. There were days that his writing was so sharp, so witty, so funny, that it was an unreal column. That tone will forever be lacking. I doubt anyone can ever compete with that Ben Widdicombe tone. I just remember a lot of his one liner jokes in the column, and I never would have come up with them. He can take full credit for all the good writing in that column.
Soon, a friend of mine recommended me to The New York Times, to Ben’s friend Horatio Silva, and he wanted me to do a daily column from Sundance last year, so I did that and the Daily News and was still working with Jared at Life & Style. It was a great time. But, there was no sleep involved.
AC: When you were working at that many publications at one time, how did you decide who you would give which lead story to?
KC: I think most people look at it as such a difficult task. As a writer who’s sort of immersed in it, it jumps out at you what’s going to work for which publication. There’s just a certain thing that each outlet wants. For example, the New York Times obviously has a very different tone than a small item for Ben (in the Daily News). So, I actually did a lot of movie coverage for the NYT, where I would interview the celebrities featured in the movie, and we would really talk about the movie. In a gossip column there’s not a lot of room to talk about the project someone’s working on, sadly. I’m happy to mention it. I’ll always mention the project, and the place. The important stuff is always going to be there. The real meat of the item, though, is going to be something about the person or their attachment to another celebrity. Unfortunately, while I’d love to focus on the projects of each celebrity, what sells is celebrities tied to other celebrities and celebrity gossip. People want to know the insides of celebrity life. At the same time, Ben decided he was going to let go of the Daily News, so it sort of worked out with perfect timing, and I could take a little bit of a break and not work quite as hard. I decided this summer that I was going to learn how to live a little bit more frugally, travel all over the world and not work SO hard. So, I did a lot of traveling.
AC: I think I need to learn from you on that one, I would like to do that.
KW: Yeah, I did 16 countries in 15 months. I am very proud of that number. It was really my goal, and to do it on a budget too. Having a great experience on a budget.
AC: Did you go to Greece?
KW: I did, it’s actually one of my favorite places in the world.
AC: Greece is the best. I did the Greek Islands a couple of summers ago. Now, I know I should go explore other places, I should go see the rest of the world, but all I want to do is go back to the Greek Islands.
KW: Greece is on my top list of travel spots! It’s on my American Airlines homepage, I keep an eye out for big Airline deals, and anytime there is, Greece is #1! It’s a beautiful country; I can’t say enough about the whole country of Greece, I love it. When it comes to traveling, people say “Well, did you do this club in Paris?” and I’m just like no, that is the opposite of what I do when I travel. I truly am the opposite of my personality in New York. I climb the volcanoes, I hike to the top of mountains, I do silly things like jumping off cliffs in Croatia. I do active, fun, adventurous things. I want to experience it as much as a local and as least like a tourist as possible. I just want to soak it in. I can never guarantee I’ll be back to any one place so I just want to take it all in.
AC: Well I mean, being out at the club all night and then being exhausted, you can do that in New York and once you’re in a dark enclosed space with a DJ, it’s all the same thing, so it makes sense to see the sights. Very cool. Thanks Kelly!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview, where we talk about the evolution of media and where Kelly Will is today!
*Kelly Will at an event in Los Angeles.
[Alyson Campbell for It's All Very PR]
Tags: Alyson Campbell, amp3, AMP3 pr, AMP3 Public Relations, Ben Widdicombe, Bonnie Fuller, Britney Spears, Horatio Silva, It's All Very PR, Jared Shapiro, Kelly Will, Page Six, Redbok, Shape, Six in the City, Star Magazine, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The New York Times