Vogue magazine always knows how to get people talking. Now everyone is buzzing about the fashion bible’s “73 Questions” series, which offers a rapid-fire look at the personalities of our favorite celebrities, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Reese Witherspoon and even Vogue’s iconic editor Anna Wintour.
HuffPost Live had a ton of questions of our own about how the series comes together, so Caitlyn Becker sat down with the team behind it on Friday to get the scoop, including how much rehearsal is required to perfectly capture all the inquiries in one single take.
“We try to make this seamless, we try to make this genuine. In no way are we going out and saying up-front that we do this spontaneously,” said Joe Sabia, the creator and director of the series. “Of course there is a level of preparation that is involved, but by no means do I feel that takes away any sort of genuineness.”
The stars who appear in the videos are also great collaborators, which is how Reese Witherspoon’s impressive trampoline back flip in her episode came to be, according to Michael Klein, the executive vice president for Conde Nast Entertainment’s programming and content strategy.
“Reese called us the Saturday night before the shoot to say we needed to know she’s actually like a master on the trampoline and needed to do something,” Klein said.
Sabia also revealed how he came up with the magic number of 73, and it turns out there wasn’t much thought beyond wanting a ton of questions.
“I initially wrote down a bunch of ice-breaker questions. I counted them up, I tallied them up, and it was 100,” he said. “I’m like, ‘This is a really difficult video to do [with] 100 questions in a row in one single take, so I just deleted a few, counted it up again, and it was 73. Sounded like a good number, right?”
And who might be next to get the “73 Questions” treatment? Klein has a pretty presidential goal in mind: “There is a large house in Washington, D.C., that I think would be very interesting.”
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