Anthony Breznican had “no ambition” to spend his days interviewing Hollywood’s bold-faced names, including Steven Spielberg, multiple times. He certainly couldn’t have predicted a long, chatty car ride with Bono and The Edge who were on their way to meet Robert Redford for several shots of Bushmills whiskey. But if you work as a general assignment reporter in Los Angeles, which Breznican did after getting his start with the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, it’s practically inevitable that you’ll end up talking to a Hollywood star or two.
When it comes to the entertainment business, says Breznican, LA is a “company town.” So along with covering the usual general assignment fare, Breznican got to field calls for the Oscars, helped other reporters cover the Emmys, and, eventually, started taking on some entertainment pieces of his own.
Turns out it was a good fit for a guy who, as a kid, read Premiere and papered his bedroom with movie posters purchased from the local video store. “It’s just something I got lucky with, and then I found that I really loved it. I love discovering how creative people work,” he says.
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After the AP, Breznican continued covering the entertainment world as a staff writer for USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair. In 2025, he lost his job in a round of layoffs at VF. Competitors of his former workplace were more than happy to avail themselves of Breznican’s talent and he has been working as a full-time freelance writer ever since. Along with his magazine work, Breznican has a growing list of book titles. His latest, Star Wars Icons: Darth Vader, will be on store shelves this July.
Depth Perception spoke with Breznican about the lessons he’s learned about the creative process and how covering the Oscars has changed from his early days on the entertainment beat. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. —Jenna Schnuer
How has interviewing celebrities changed over the years? It seems like people are more guarded and certainly have more media training. What does it take for you to get to the real story of a famous person’s life or work?
Whenever I ask a question that [could be] controversial [and] I know it’ll be tense — like every reporter braces for that moment in the interview — I always think about, “What am I trying to achieve here? Am I just trying to remind them of a painful thing that happened, or is there an actual question?” And most of the time, there is a question there. And the question, I think, is, “Can you explain yourself? Can you explain this?” And you can push back on that to a degree, but ultimately, your job is to ask that question.
If [the public is] mad about something online [and you’re asking the actor or director to respond to it], the best you can do is say, “What is your rationale? What is your response?” And it’s not that you’re just taking down the transcription. You can push around the edges if they’re dodging or they’re lying. You have to push back on that. But I think mainly what you’ve got to do is ask the question that people want to have answered.
There’s a lot more media training these days. People are more careful. With social media, people seem to be just trying to shape their image a little bit more. How has it changed for you as a reporter on the entertainment beat?
I think the difference between now and maybe 10 to 15 years ago, is that now things get taken out of context [by the public] much more quickly. I think that happens because there are individuals on social media who have derived followings from outrage, and so they are on the hunt every day for something to be pissed off about. Something to take out of the story, examine in the least charitable light, and create a problem for that person on this day. I see this all the time. And I think people who are interviewed regularly see it too, and they think, I just don’t want to say anything, because anything I say that is an opinion will get turned on and people will pile on.
So that has led to a lot of people not wanting to do interviews, or wanting to do five minute interviews instead of a conversation. Who say, “Can I play with a puppy on camera and or do a lie detector test?” People just don’t want to say what’s on their mind and I think that’s a pity. Saying what’s on your mind is how we open people’s minds, and how you sharpen your own opinion. We used to be more tolerant if we disagreed. Now, there’s just this funnel of outrage that rises up every day like a tornado and sucks in whatever it can and spits out debris.
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How do you handle that while trying to do your job, while trying to go deeper into a person’s story?
All I can do is try to be as straightforward, as honest as I can. I think I have a good reputation in that area, such that if I ask something that I know is a provocative subject, they know that it’ll be treated fairly. I can’t control whether they just hold back because they don’t want to say anything.
If you were starting now, do you think you would want to get into entertainment journalism? Are you enjoying it as much now?
I got into it just because I was interested in people, and that’s why general assignment news appealed to me. I was interested in people and telling their stories. And it wasn’t like I felt like entertainment was the thing I had to do.
When I got laid off in August from Vanity Fair, there [were] financial worries that [came] with that, but my other major worry was, I love this job so much. I hope I still get to do it. Fortunately, Esquire, Empire Magazine, and other publications stepped up right away, and I didn’t have far to fall. I’m very grateful for that. So I’ve been able to keep doing it and doing it even at a higher caliber, I think. I’m in love with this work. I still get excited by it. I’m grateful for the relationships I have, and always happy to meet somebody new.
You mentioned the creative process as one of the reasons you’re particularly keen on covering entertainment. What have you learned about it over the years?
I really enjoy dissecting a story to understand why it moves us. What I get to do in this job that I’ve had for almost 25 years now is I get to talk to the people who make [stories] about what they mean. And sometimes they don’t know while they’re making [a movie] what it’s about until they get a little space on it.
I think everybody is trying their best in most cases. Every now and then you get some cynical product that nobody really believes in [but they do] for a paycheck. And that’s separate. But there are people like Adam Sandler, who doesn’t get a lot of critical love [for his comedies]. People like his dramatic work, they don’t like his comedies. He puts a lot of work into those comedies, and I think the way they resonate with fans is a testament to that. They make people happy and make them laugh, and it strikes a nerve. It’s not by accident. I don’t think he’s sloppy about his work, he puts a lot of heart into it. I’m not a good critic, because I’m always trying to give the benefit of the doubt [and] understand what it is that the person put into it. And that doesn’t mean I can’t write a critical story or ask a hard question. I definitely do that. But I’m interested in the chemistry of how things happen, and sometimes in that chemistry is a flare up.
“Whenever I ask a question that [could be] controversial [and] I know it’ll be tense … I always think about, ‘What am I trying to achieve here? Am I just trying to remind them of a painful thing that happened, or is there an actual question?’ And most of the time, there is a question there. And the question, I think, is, “Can you explain yourself?’ … ultimately, your job is to ask that question.” —Anthony Breznican
The 2026 Academy Awards are upon us. Are the awards as important as they were when you started out? How has reporting on the Oscars changed?
I’ve noticed the Oscars, as an organization, have gotten more restrictive about how journalists cover them. They’re diminished in their reach. I think the public has lost a lot of interest in awards. It’s not gone completely, but I feel like there’s diminishing interest over the past two decades, and maybe that has led them to [be more protective about] the show … more self conscious, so therefore less access.
As a young journalist, I got to know the people at the Academy, and once I had established myself a little bit, they let me have a crew badge. Watching the Oscars from the wings of the stage was an exciting thing to do, the story had to be filed that night — live. I would phone in elements of the story, things I witnessed as a fly on the wall backstage. There’s such high emotion back there, most of it jubilant, and wonderful interactions between people you never see together. If I hadn’t been there, those stories would be lost to history.
Which story are you proudest of?
The one I’m proudest of is I wrote the obituary for my friend and my teacher John Carosella. He was my high school English teacher [at St. Joseph’s High School in Natrona Heights, PA] who was very patient with me, who saw things in me that I didn’t see, let alone anyone else. He inspired a kind of critical way of looking at things, examining them and understanding them. And I can remember virtually every poem, every book, and every short story he taught.
We never lost touch. We stayed very close. And when he died, his family asked me to write his obituary, which was a hard thing to do. But I’m very proud of that story because I’m very proud of him and the life that he led. And I got to say why he mattered, not just to me, but what was important to him. And in our conversations before he passed away from cancer, he told me some of the things that motivated him. He told me some things from his life that I got to put into that story. So it was almost like an interview, right?
What’s the worst journalistic career advice you’ve ever received?
I had an editor who said to me, “You’re too sentimental.” I was going to disagree with him, [but] I thought, “No, that’s right. I am sentimental.” And I think you can go too far with that. You don’t want to be a sappy writer or something. But I try to write about things that mean something to me, even if they’re silly, you know.
Best journalistic advice?
There was a gentleman named Bob Thomas who’d been covering Hollywood for the Associated Press since … the 1940s and he’d have interviews with Betty Grable, Abbott and Costello, Humphrey Bogart. I loved reading his old work. Sometimes I go to the newspaper archive and search up articles that Bob wrote.
He’s gone now, but he was a pretty old man by the time I met him. And he would go to the AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards. He always did an interview with the person who got that [award] and one year it was Harrison Ford. And I was like, “What’s it like talking to him?”
And Bob said: “He’s smarter than you think, but he speaks slowly and that’s because he’s thinking … He speaks in short sentences and when he goes quiet you have to remember to be quiet too because if you fill that void, he’ll stop and you’ll just move on to the next thing. So a good thing to do —” and then he would just nod his head and not say anything. He said, “If you have to say ‘go on’ or ‘tell me more,’ then say that, but don’t talk too much.”
He’s right. You can get nervous when somebody is being thoughtful and you fill the void and they stop down that line of expression. You have got to learn to be quiet and let the silence fill itself.
