It was billed as a ‘world exclusive’ interview with ‘the most talked about woman’ in Britain.
After weeks of detailed reports about the nature of her relationship with Boris Johnson, Jennifer Arcuri gave her first television interview on Monday to Good Morning Britain.
And it was no normal interview, lasting around an hour.
So was it the smoking gun it was billed to be and what can other spokespeople learn from her performance?
Let’s start with what presenter Piers Morgan described as the ‘obvious question’ – did she have an affair with Boris Johnson as has been reportedly claimed by her friends?
It was a question that was asked six times as Ms Arcuri used a combination of deflection techniques and a refusal to answer to try to move the conversation on.
In her first response, she said: “First of all those people are not my friends. These are insinuations and third-party hearsay and no, I wouldn’t be going around blabbing to people at my school, that’s just completely preposterous.
“And secondly, would you like me to ask you about your sex life? I thought about this a lot when the story broke. Of course, the first initial reaction is to deny everything. But when I saw the way I’m objectified and dragged through the press with all these misquotes and misinterpretations of who I am, if I’d looked a different way or if I was a man, I wouldn’t be objectified this way.”
Asked the questions again, she said: “I think we are forgetting that Boris is extremely personable. He was a really good friend… It is really categorically no-one’s business what private life we had or didn’t have.”
Pressed again, she said: “I am not going to answer that question.”
Few spokespeople are going to face a question as personal as this, but it is a reminder that journalists are prepared to ask the embarrassing and uncomfortable questions as part of their investigations.
And despite Ms Arcuri’s claim that it was ‘no-one’s business’, it clearly is in the public interest when she is at the centre of allegations that Mr Johnson abused his then position as London mayor to give her public money and access to foreign trade missions.
So, was refusing to answer that question a good media interview strategy? It is certainly not one we would recommend on our media training courses.
Of course, whichever way she answered the question would have created headlines, but there is no doubt that her refusal to answer makes her appear evasive.
Here are how the newspapers reported it.
Jennifer Arcuri refuses to deny claims of affair with Boris Johnson The Guardian
Jennifer Arcuri ‘not answering’ Boris Johnson affair questions BBC News
Jennifer Arcuri refuses to deny sex with Boris Johnson in bombshell TV interview Mirror
Businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri refuses to deny affair with Boris Johnson New York Post
Jennifer Arcuri is affronted and says she won’t answer allegations that she had an intimate relationship with @BorisJohnson.
— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) October 7, 2019
I wonder why she thought she was invited to appear on national television.
To talk tech? 🤷♀️@GMB
And that sense of evasiveness was added to by the fact she was emphatic on other issues, for example, saying it was “categorically untrue” that Mr Johnson had done her company a single favour and that he “never wrote me a letter” in response to a question that he had written to recommend her for a £100,000 job heading up a quango.
Having reportedly agreed a fee of between £10-20,000 for the interview, you may have thought Ms Arcuri would have anticipated this question and found an approach that didn’t leave her looking evasive.
Why not deny it if it really didn’t happen? Refusing to do so will not make the story go away.
But there was also much to be admired about her interview performance. She was incredibly confident, composed and energetic and didn’t seem fazed by facing Mr Morgan, a presenter with a fierce reputation.
And it was an interview packed with little anecdotes that helped bring it to life. We learnt that she used the code name “Alex the Great” for Boris on her phone to protect his privacy; that they shared a love of classic literature and that she asked him to have a go on her pole-dancing pole.
Just look at this description of the first time she met Mr Johnson - "He walked in the room with his hair all dishevelled and his shirt untucked, papers that looked like something I pulled out of my preschool backpack,” she said.
Personal stories and anecdotes are powerful tools in media interviews and they are something we have touched on before in this media training blog.
Certainly, many Good Morning Britain viewers appeared to be impressed with her performance.
Have just caught up with @Jennifer_Arcuri on #goodmorningbritain. What an absolute articulate, intelligent, focused and determined professional. Great interview. Well played.
— Odysseus (@ManticoreRising) October 7, 2019
Just seen your interview @Jennifer_Arcuri on #gmb, very good, dignified, strong. Congratulations and thank you for your directness and honesty. Keep going on the good work wherever you are and whatever you do.
— Robert Vallier (@RobertVallier) October 7, 2019
It was also a lot more of a controlled performance than the one she gave when cornered by a Daily Mirror reporter in an LA car park last week.
Many spokespeople have struggled with the doorstep or ambush interview, as regular readers of this media training blog will know. Ms Arcuri’s performance here probably gave the reporter more than he had anticipated, producing an expletive-laden interview that showed the risk of speaking at length when caught off-guard.
She described rumours of a relationship with the Prime Minister as “complete bullshit” and added: “Men just trip over themselves in front of me. They fall in love with me in about 10 minutes… because I know what to say. I make men trip over their d**ks. That’s what happens. They go insane around me. They’ve been doing it for years. It’s just what happens.”
We can only imagine she had some media training advice between this interview and her TV appearance.
But that training needed to go further for this latest performance to be regarded a success.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 30 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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