If your channel surfing abruptly halts due to a sudden desire to get the inside dirt on the Baldwin brothers or the latest Hollywood crime spree, you've likely stumbled upon an episode of E! True Hollywood Story.
Five hundred episodes and 13 years later Betsy Rott is still at the helm.
Q. Are there some True Hollywood Story ideas so obvious that you can't help but start production immediately?
A. The ideas come from all over, and then sometimes they're just so obvious. Right now, we're working on a show on Natasha Richardson. That story was tragic, but it had such an impact . . . We're doing it very respectfully; we're not exploiting it at all, but we're going to tell the story.
Q. What's the most common obstacle? Do people change their minds about being interviewed?
A. That can happen, or things just don't work out. We were getting ready to interview Naomi Campbell, and she got arrested. So - "Oops! I guess we're going to have to reschedule that one." And we did, and she was very gracious.
Q. On one hand, you're really no-one in the industry until you've had a True Hollywood Story, but on the other, it could also mean your career took a tumble.
A. That's never a prerequisite We never set out to say, "We want someone whose career is on the down-slide". That's not necessarily the best story. It all goes back to, "Is there a dramatic story to tell?"
Q. Five hundred episodes later, have there been many tweaks to the format?
A. From a creative standpoint, there's a long, long list of cliches that the teams are no longer allowed to use. "A dream becomes a nightmare"? No more. Or, "The real story was more dramatic than any script". You can't use that. Or another favourite was, "And then the bottom fell out." Can't use that anymore. - Emily Yahr.
