Celebrities are really dishing on podcasts, from Zayn Malik breaking his silence to Gwyneth Paltrow rating famous lovers

It shows how much the celebrity confessional game has changed that Malik, who is not-so-coincidentally about to release new music, decided to “break his silence” by speaking to a podcast. Not so long ago, his redemption tour would have trod a different path: a cover shoot in GQ, perhaps, a prime-time interview with one of the big network anchors, a heart-to-heart on Oprah’s couch before it was retired to the great prop storage unit in the sky.

Malik didn’t do just any podcast, however: it was the wildly popular “Call Her Daddy,” which has evolved from doling out spicy sex advice when it premiered in 2018 to becoming a destination for celebrities who’d like to set the record straight. Miley Cyrus, Hailey Bieber, Jamie Lynn Spears, John Mayer and con artist Anna Delvey have all spoken their piece for host Alex Cooper’s microphone. They’ve opened up about everything from their sex lives (Cyrus detailed losing her virginity, John Mayer his “horniness for conflict resolution”) to public feuds (Bieber shared her side of the Selena Gomez drama, Spears her version of what went down with her sister).

At this point, Cooper is a celebrity in her own right: her Instagram following is two million strong, she’s reportedly compensated to the tune of $20 million (U.S.) a year and tabloids breathlessly covered the breakdown of her partnership with former co-host Sofia Franklyn in 2020.

And while she’s one of the most successful examples, Cooper is just one of many podcast hosts getting celebrities to loosen up on the record in a way they’ve never really done before.

Consider, for example, Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert,” whose mission to dissect “the messiness of being human” has been a siren call to celebrities like Ed Sheeran, Natalie Portman and Robert Downey Jr. Even Prince Harry gave Shepard a rare post-Sussexit, pre-“Spare” interview in which he spoke about his mental health journey and the experience of being royal, which he described as “a mix between being on ‘The Truman Show’ and living in a zoo.”

As with any time a celebrity speaks publicly, there’s potential for backlash. Rachel Bilson went on the “Women on Top” podcast and spoke frankly about her sexual preferences, saying she liked “missionary” and being “manhandled.” When the episode aired, her comments went viral and Bilson, speaking later on her own podcast, said she lost a work opportunity because of it.

Then there’s Matty Healy, whose short-lived public dalliance with Taylor Swift was likely compromised by his behaviour on a podcast. In February, the 1975 frontman appeared on comedian Adam Friedland’s podcast and, during their bro-y banter, Friedland and his co-host launched into a racist riff about the rapper Ice Spice. Healy didn’t contribute, but he did laugh and later joked about watching a violent porn channel, Ghetto Gaggers. Healy later told the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino he thought the outraged response was a virtue-signalling pile-on by people pretending to be “hurt” by the comments. “He’d been doing so much promo, he told me, that he wanted to do something that felt more like simply talking with his friends,” Tolentino wrote. “But, of course, he had done this all in public, on mike.”

Healy’s explanation of why he went on the show in the first place is key to understanding why celebrities let down their guard when being interviewed on podcasts. “Mostly, people open up about who they are and what they really feel, and get vulnerable, to others that they feel safe with,” said media researcher Evie Psarras, who wrote her PhD dissertation on “The Real Housewives,” themselves no strangers to hosting podcasts. “We often feel safe with people who have similar experiences to us.”

Psarras pointed out that celebrities exist as “social constructions for the public, for networks, for Hollywood studios, for labels,” and these relaxed conversations can feel like a kind of escape. “They have spent so much of their time having to adhere to the rules of the game. It’s an act of defiance sometimes against the institutions they work for and perform for to slip out of their celebrity persona.”

There’s also the medium itself: one- or even two-hour-long conversations are common in podcasting, unlike other forms of media. “The biggest part of it, in my opinion, is the long-form nature,” said Colin Gray, podcaster and founder of The Podcast Host, which provides resources to aspiring podcasters. “The longer an interview goes, the more likely people are to open up or reveal something new.”

Gray said there’s an inherent “informality and intimacy” to podcasts, which are often recorded on couches, in living-room-like settings decorated with the ubiquitous ficus. Sometimes, it’s in the host’s home: Cooper recorded her interview with Malik at her family home in Pennsylvania; podcaster Marc Maron invited Barack Obama to record a chat in his basement.

“There are no cameras around, or lighting or makeup artists. The celebrity doesn’t feel the need to perform or to play a part,” said Gray. “They’re just there, in a normal place, with another human being, getting to know them.”

Many podcast hosts are celebrities themselves. Gwyneth Paltrow is a prime example: she has both hosted A-listers like Julia Roberts and Scarlett Johansson for intimate chats on her own Goop podcast, and been a guest on “Call Her Daddy,” on which she divulged who was better in bed, Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck. (It was Pitt.)

Celebrity podcast hosts have an advantage: the lack of what Gray calls a “status gap” between host and guest. “When the celebrity is high status, giving up their time as a favour to a little podcast, there’s a barrier there. But when you have two peers talking, there’s no status gap,” he said. “There’s also the fact that the interviewer, if they’re a celebrity too, knows much more acutely what the interviewee has been through or how they might feel. They know to probe in areas that someone who hasn’t had that experience wouldn’t be able to.”

Celebrity podcast hosts also benefit from their own media training. “They could be argued to be more outgoing, more socially adept and with better people skills than the average person and, arguably, not universally, more confident,” Gray said. “Confidence has a huge part in making a good host, being able to put people at ease.”

Also: celebrities get excited about meeting celebrities. “They usually only get to develop intimate relationships with people when they’re on projects with them,” said Katie Jensen, principal at Vocal Fry Studios, a Toronto podcast production company. “They might be getting to speak to someone on this podcast that they’ve always wanted to, or only encountered in the bathroom at the Met Gala.”

Crucially, there often isn’t income at stake when a celebrity goes on a podcast, which isn’t the case when they’re doing the media promo circuit for a project, with publicists and handlers on standby to ensure they stay on message. With that comes an opportunity for them to push their own narratives, unfiltered by a writer or TV editor. “It’s less easy to misconstrue their voice, especially when it’s paired with video,” said Jensen. “It’s a more authentic way for them to say exactly what they want to say.”

It’s also worth considering where in the celebrity life and news cycle these people are. “With podcasts, I find that a lot of celebrities aren’t necessarily in the prime of their careers,” said Jensen. “They’re perhaps on a downward trajectory of their current careers — which doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t go back up again — and they’re reflecting on previous career milestones. There’s distance and emotional remove, so it feels more safe.”

Sometimes celebrity hosts exploit that. “It’s interesting that a lot of celebrities end up divulging deep trauma. They end up crying, talking about exploitation, child labour that they’ve experienced,” Jensen said. “I wonder how cognizant they are of the manipulation that’s happening by the host to get a higher engagement level in the content.”

Jensen believes anyone who conducts interviews is inherently “a little bit more manipulative than the average person,” speaking as someone who does this professionally. “Essentially, what you want to do is immediately lower someone’s defences, make them feel seen, heard, respected, but you also want them to give you something,” she said. “There’s an exchange of power.”

It’s not usually a reciprocal exchange because the host is unlikely to offer up the same depth of personal revelations as their guest. “The best tape is where someone is crying or laughing or livid,” Jensen said. “To extract that kind of emotion out of someone you really have to juice them.”

Some celebrities might be fully aware of what’s happening and in control of what they’re saying. Others might not be or just don’t care. “Maybe they’ve just decided that they’ve had enough or have a sense of, ‘Finally, I get to release this bag of hurt I’ve been carrying inside of me,’” said Jensen. “Some of them are just relieved to have an outlet.”