Celebrities are the “hot ones,” but they’re giving the cold shoulder to traditional media, at least in podcast form.
In the shifting landscape of Hollywood publicity, a curious paradox has emerged: the most press-averse celebrities are suddenly embracing the very medium that demands the most intimate conversation. The traditional press junket, with its rowdy hotel suites and rotating carousel of journalists armed with the same five questions, is giving way to podcasters.
Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, who has spent decades perfecting the art of strategic media avoidance, recently settled into the surprisingly comfortable confines of Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast to discuss “One Battle After Another,” his $130 million Warner Bros. epic that struggled to find its footing at the box office this past weekend. For a full hour, the notoriously private actor shared anecdotes that would have been unthinkable in a traditional press setting, including the revelation that his childhood agent once suggested he rebrand himself as “Lenny Williams” because “Leonardo DiCaprio” was deemed “too ethnic.”
Similarly, and earlier this year, Joaquin Phoenix, who has made his disdain for conventional press obligations abundantly clear, made his podcast debut on Theo Von’s show to promote Ari Aster’s “Eddington” — another hefty-budget gamble that failed to ignite opening weekend audiences. Phoenix’s appearance felt less like a promotional obligation and more like a genuine conversation, a stark contrast to his expressed hatred of “TV stuff.”
This migration to podcasts represents a significant media evolution and a strategic pivot toward demographics that studios desperately need to recapture. The young male audiences that populate the listener bases of these celebrity-hosted shows are the same moviegoers who have been steadily abandoning theaters. It’s a pattern that extends far beyond Hollywood — politicians and business figures have similarly embraced long-form podcast appearances, with figures like Joe Rogan playing increasingly influential roles in shaping public discourse and, arguably, electoral outcomes.
Yet this new landscape comes with its own complications. While podcasts offer the promise of more authentic conversation, they rarely deliver the journalistic rigor that traditional media aspires to maintain.
These aren’t adversarial interviews designed to challenge or probe; they’re largely collaborative exercises where celebrity guests are invited to be charming versions of themselves without significant pushback.
The appeal for notoriously private stars becomes clearer when considered against the backdrop of traditional celebrity media obligations. Beyoncé hasn’t granted a conventional interview in over a decade, not since releasing her self-titled album in 2013. Since then, her rare media appearances have been entirely on her terms — personal essays submitted to magazines or carefully curated profiles where her silence speaks louder than words.
“F1” star Brad Pitt once articulated the fundamental tension: “There’s this whole other entity that you get sucked into. You have to go and sell your wares. It’s something I never made my peace with.”
This reluctance stands in stark contrast to performers who view publicity as integral to their craft. Jamie Lee Curtis has become legendary for her promotional enthusiasm, with many crediting her tireless advocacy as instrumental in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” securing seven Oscar wins, including her own supporting actress victory. It helped Pamela Anderson with her campaign last year for “The Last Showgirl” and had a great opening weekend for the sequel “Freakier Friday.”
“I wish I had 10 Jamie Lee Curtis’s on every one of my films and titles,” an awards strategist tells Variety. “It would make my job, and yours, infinitely easier and even more enjoyable. There’s nothing like someone who gets it and is positive about it.”
But Curtis represents an increasingly rare breed in an industry where privacy has become both more precious and more impossible to maintain. As social media continues to erode the boundaries between public and private personas, the podcast format offers something unprecedented: the illusion of intimacy without the adversarial undertones of traditional journalism.
That doesn’t mean these big podcasters aren’t good at what they do. Sean Evans has built a recognizable brand with spicy talk series “Hot Ones,” and is constantly praised for his insightful and thought-provoking questions.
The success of celebrity podcast appearances like DiCaprio’s says that audiences are hungry for authentic connection with stars, even as those same stars become increasingly wary of traditional media exposure. It’s a delicate balance that speaks to larger questions about celebrity, privacy, and the evolving relationship between performers and their audiences.
I think we’d like to see a world with both, right?
