It just dawned upon me. I’ve interviewed over 50 B’wood celebrities over the past 2 years–it all started in May 2007 at the VOA’s Hindi Radio. I remember my first interview—the interviewee was Kailash Kher. No, initially they weren’t really expecting an intern to secure and conduct any interviews…but I did and they were all pleasantly surprised and extremely supportive. They even let me organize and co-host one of their live call-in shows which was a first for any intern. It was a lot of fun and very exciting :-) Afterwards I started writing for PlanetBollywood.com, NRI Today and PassionForCinema.com. And, I’m very thankful I’ve always been given complete freedom to ask non-clichéd questions.

Anyway, usually people hear of tips for interviewers, but it’s about time we have some tips for Bollywood folks giving interviews—

•“All my films/songs are like my children, but…” OMG, please stop using that phrase! We KNOW all your projects are like your kids, your aankh-ka-taaraas, so just skip that clichéd disclaimer and get to the point!

•Many times celebrities end up doing via email interviews. Via email interviews have a huge advantage because one can make sure they don’t say something in the spur of the moment and regret it later…

a) Run spell check. It’s absolutely okay if a celebrity does not have a command over the English language—that’s totally all right, and I am absolutely happy to spend hours editing the grammar. But, please still use some common sense and run spell check. That’s right—change dat to that, coz to because, n to and, wuz to was…yeah, you get the point. Oh, and please go easy on the exclamation marks. Throwing in 5 exclamation marks every other sentence isn’t such a good idea.

b) No fancy-shmancy fonts! If you’re emailing a person interview answers then for God’s sake there is no need to use size 18 French Script font in rainbow colors along with random use of bold, italics and underlines. There is no way on earth any Web site is going to use such formatting for the interview.

•Don’t have your PR fake answers on your behalf—I once had a PR try hard to secure an interview and then instead of passing along the person’s contact information ended up answering the questions on their own…Not a very interesting interview and I haven’t taken up other interview offers from that PR.

•Avoid over-repetition. Taking a press-release approach isn’t very amusing. If you’re repeating the same thing more than 3 times in the interview, you’re over-doing it.

•Speak your mind. Yeah, in certain cases one might have to be politically correct. Nonetheless, one-word-answers make it seem like you’re disinterested in the interview and dieing for it to be over. When the question’s word count is longer than your answer, something’s wrong…especially if the question was a well-formed one.

•Provide feedback. If you realize someone has spent a lot of time forming innovative questions, tell them that. It encourages them to continue to steer clear of clichéd questions in future interviews. And, if you get stuck in an interview consisting of hackneyed questions, then by all means tell the interviewer that also so they make a mental note to form better questions next time.

•Create an official Web site. If you’re not a very well-known celebrity and if you don’t have anyone handling PR for you then it’s usually a good idea to create an official Web site with contact information for the media so they can get a hold of you. Or, at least get on a network like LinkedIn. Many lesser known celebrities complain about the media not giving them any attention. Get online. It makes it easier for non-India based journalists to contact you.