Kyle and Jackie O’s disastrous interview with Russell Crowe
Kyle and Jackie O have opened up about their disastrous radio interview with Russell Crowe.
Revealing the details on air yesterday, the KIIS FM hosts took a trip back in time and reminisced about what happened when they met Crowe face-to-face for the first time when they were hosting the Hot30 in the early 2000s.
“We went to his hotel to interview him,” said Jackie O. “We were pretty young and impressionable. We thought, ‘What can we do to get Russell on side and have a great interview with him?’”
Crowe had just won an Oscar for his role in Gladiator and was known to be stand-offish during interviews, so Kyle came up with a plan to get on his good side.
“You said, ‘We’ll take him a carton of beer and a carton of cigarettes and give it to him as a gift’,” said Jackie O.
But unfortunately, the gift didn’t go down too well.
“It was a disaster,” Kyle recalled.
“He was offended! He said, ‘Is this what you think I’m like, is it? Is this all there is to me?’” said Jackie O.
The radio hosts were left bewildered as things only started to get worse from there.
“We started the interview … and he goes, ‘Have we started yet?’” said Jackie O. “And we’re like, ‘Yeah’, and we kept going on and again he said, ‘Sorry, have we started? This is the interview, is it?’”
“It was so bad,” Kyle exclaimed.
But despite the interview starting off disastrous, it gradually took a positive turn as the actor loosened up, and even invited Kyle and Jackie O to stick around afterwards.
“By the end of the interview, he goes, ‘Let’s crack open the beers and all hang out together’,” said Jackie.
“We stayed there so late, chain-smoking and skolling beer, and I don’t even drink,” Kyle said. “I was legless. Then we had to get a cab back to the radio show and we went on air live blind drunk. I was rat-a**ed.”
The radio hosts now consider Crowe a good friend, with Kyle saying, “He’s the greatest bloke.”