James Lipton was a visionary ahead of his time: Inside the Actors Studio paved the way for the modern podcast

The Big Lead

"Lipton was part teacher, part host, and fully in control of the little world he created, which merged art and life into one," says Kyle Koster, in paying tribute to Lipton, who died Monday at age 93. "He was also a visionary ahead of his time, creating content that would become intensely in-demand as the decades passed, demand oftentimes created by those who cribbed heavily off his playbook. Inside the Actors Studio was an incubator for creatives who took the intriguing aspects of the long-form interview show and applied it to the audio form. Lipton was, in many ways, a trailblazer for the modern podcast. More specifically, the upper-crust podcasts that lean heavily into the model he helped establish. He wasn't afraid to go long. Guests would sit for hours and hours to produce the best edit. He was immensely prepared, willing to go deep on the details, and wasn't afraid of being too niche. Most importantly, the process was as important as the finished product. Perhaps more important. Lipton wanted to know the why, the how, the when, the what, and the who. He famously asked the same 10 questions. At the same time, he was well-researched and capable of going any direction at any moment. Though vastly different in tenor and tone than Howard Stern, the two laid the groundwork for the impossibly-prepared, intimate celebrity interview. Each stripped away the veneer of public posturing and touched a nerve. Each understood that real nourishment lies beneath the candy shell. Lipton boldly understood that he could put on such a specific, nuanced show and have it resonate with people all over the country. His ability to predict what people would be interested in was just as formidable as his grasp of what they were interested in."

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• James Lipton was serious enough to laugh at himself: "His quiet, tremulous voice created a rapt and reverent mood among his audience, and it seemed to hold his interviewees in a trance as well," says Miles Klee. "...This sacred televisual atmosphere informed me that acting went beyond memorizing lines and hitting cues. The biggest stars would sit in this minimalist studio, opposite an inquiring, bearded fellow I recognized from nowhere else, and divulge the nature of their emotion, how they harnessed it for the purposes of art. It’s the male guests I remember best, as the separation between their big-screen swagger and small-screen humility was strikingly pronounced. How could blockbuster heavies be actual, uncertain people?"
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• Bradley Cooper was Lipton's most memorable guest: Cooper went from appearing on Actors Studio as a student asking Sean Penn question to appearing as a an A-list actor guest.
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• Watch Lipton on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in a 2004 "In the Year 2000" sketch