Elysabeth Alfano’s Celebrity Dinner Party stands out from the many interview shows on today’s busy media landscape because Alfano is one of the most intelligent and vivacious interviewers out there. Avid interest in her guests is infectious, invariably captivating them and transporting her viewers themselves into the party. From whatever field of endeavor her interviews arrive, be it improviser, author, director, or politician, what stands out is the way her guests interact with her. They are invariably delighted and open, responding so warmly, we the viewers feel as if we are present at a private conversation.
What Alfano creates is the artful difference between a “dinner party” created for sound-bite media coverage and the feeling her viewers have of “being there”at her table with her.
Tell us about the Chicago origins of your show...
“The purpose in the beginning was to go behind the scenes into an individual artist’s studio, a chef’s kitchen, a fashion designer’s studio; to get right back stage where ever musicians, comics, dancers prepare to do what they do. Because I did all the inviting myself (and I still do) I start out on a very personal level with the guests. And in those days we invariably got into places where the public ordinarily didn’t get to go.
This show really did very well and had a nice following, but I began to see, as does anyone who loves entertaining that this particular artist would love to meet this musician, or this writer would love to meet that dancer. Since they don’t really know each other, I decided to bring them together, at my house around my own dinner table.
To begin with I got together an author and a neuroscientist and two musicians and a chef. I told the musician to bring his guitar and I asked the author and the neuro scientist to bring their books. That first dinner party actually went on til 4 o’clock in the morning! The authors read to us, the musicians played, we all sang and I thought: This is it. This is the next show I’m going to do.”
What was that show like?
“I was able to make the energy of the interviews larger by filming the whole dinner party in front of an audience at the same time we were live-streaming it. The result was a big, almost flash-mob-type dinner party with a chef cooking for the guests right on stage and also for everyone in the live audience who were dining and drinking exactly what the guests were enjoying. I was taking questions from viewers on-line and we were all in one big conversation eating and drinking together.
In advance, I’d tell the on-line audience what we’d be eating so that people watching in Nebraska can be ordering the same thing, throwing us questions and feel as if they were dining with us. For example if you always wanted to ask Michelle Williams or Joe Montegna or Jerry Springer or Wilco (who have all been part of my show) you could ask them a question live during the shows.
A unique quality of Alfano’s personality and of the interviews themselves is her nimbleness in drawing her guests into a real conversation.
“I never interview people ahead of time and I never tell them my questions ahead of time. I want it to be natural and organic in the moment, and to be a surprise to the guests so that the audience really feels that sense of surprise. I do research the guests ahead of time and try to find completely disparate personalities who have something in common that they don’t even know about. It is usually this bit of pre-production that makes for an exciting and captivating conversation that no one expected.
Who knew that Nora Dunn from Saturday Night Live and Peach Carr from Project Runway would get on so well? Or that spoken word artist Kevin Koval and former GM of the Chicago Bears, Phil Emery, would see eye to eye? Or that NPR’s Peter Sagal, SNL’s Tim Kazurinsky and violinist Rachel Barton Pine would be keeping everyone is stitches? Or that Joe Mantegna and Sommelier Jon McDaniel would keep each other in laughter? Well, I did!”
Alfano’s nimbleness comes in very handy when guests are delayed or the venue must shift to accommodate the guests schedules.
“On the fly, I interviewed Julian Lennon at the Leica Gallery in LA and Russell Simmons in his house because that’s what each could do. It is important to seize the opportunity when you can.”
Your success has now brought you and your audience to LA.
“There are so many people to interview here in California we have now evolved into a brand new live-streaming event, ’The Celebrity Dinner Party’. Our guests join me for dinner at the Sunset Marquis, a hidden gem of a creative oasis on 4.2 lush acres, which is, incredibly, right in the heart of West Hollywood.
On Facebook Live people tell me their questions for the guests in real-time, so it is very interactive and particularly fun for the guest. During the Fall I’ve interviewed: Writer, Director, Producer Steve Pink (High Fidelity, Gross Point Blank, Hot Tub Time Machine 1 and 2, About Last Night) and international virtuoso, violinist Joshua Bell and actor Michael Madsen. In coming months I’ll be sharing the dinner table with singer Sophie Simmons, daughter of KISS’ Gene Simmons, a YouTube star in her own right, and Celebrity Chef, George Geary, and famed actor William H. Macy.”
Is there an archive where we can check out all your interviews?
“You can go to our website “TheDinner Party. tv”. There you’ll find three links on the left : Past Dinner parties, Podcasts/WGN Radio and Celebrity Guest List where you will find the list of all the people who are sharing dinner with me here in California and in the Midwest as well. Episodes are on Distribution: Ch. 19, TiVO, and TheDinnerParty. tv. There are clips going to the Huffington Post (search Elysabeth Alfano), Youtube (search Elysabeth Alfano), Facebook (@ElysabethAlfano), Twitter(@ DinnerPartyChgo), Instagram (@DinnerPartyChgo), LinkedIN (@Elysabeth Alfano) with podcasts going to Soundcloud and ITunes (search Celebrity Dinner Party) and iTunes (search Celebrity Dinner Party) and WGN Radio Plus.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- D.C. Williams
- Image courtesy
- The Dinner Party
