Gone But Not Forgotten: James Lipton

Steve Adubato looks at the life and legacy of the late James Lipton, long-time host of Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio, and reflects on his insightful 2016 interview with Lipton where they discussed his students, his love for teaching and those famous 10 Questions Lipton asked his guests at the end of each show.  

3/26/2020 #2288

Excerpt:

"Hi I’m Steve Adubato we're coming to you from east main media studios in little falls new jersey you know in our work in public broadcasting particularly our series one on one we sit down with some pretty amazing people and sometimes when those people pass on we decide to rebroadcast those programs that's the case when it comes to James Lipton the extraordinary James Lipton who died at 93 years of age he retired at 92 doing an extraordinary series called inside the actors studio he was a dean emeritus actor studio drama school at pace university Emmy award-winning anchor a critics choice anchor the late James Lipton so back in June 2016 I sat down with Mr. Lipton amazing and by the way I’m joined in the studio by Nicole swenerton who let me just ask you I’ve been in this business for obviously a very long time hopefully I’ll be in as long as Lipton was what did you take from that interview that we're about to see? It's an incredible interview and James Lipton is a real icon in the business I think my my favorite part of the interview is how much you can tell he loves his craft but more than that he wants to teach the next generation and he wants to train young actors and I think that's just a beautiful way to show off the love of your craft the other thing you're gonna see in this Lipton interview that we actually taped in the wnet tisch studios over in Lincoln center Lipton insisted I don't know if you remember this but Lipton insisted on setting it up the way he does his show now we do our show out of the wnet studio in new york the way we do the show he wanted that he had his table in front of him he had his blue cards the blue cars get you yeah that was great, cool to see that on TV so he has his own blue cards he also makes it clear in this interview you're about to see no pre-interviews Nicole and our team of great producers do pre interviews I get the notes and then I prepare for the interview with James Lipton he does all his research you'll see him talk about this there are no pre interviews with the guest he finds out everything for the first time I learned more about interviewing in that half-hour with James Lipton than I’ve ever learned before it has become one of my top three all-time interviews other than the interview I do with the late governor Mario Cuomo and a couple of others I’m..."