The Hollywood veteran, 61, who was an entertainment correspondent for Australian show Sunrise for two decades until stepping down in 2022, sat down with fellow showbizreporter Kjersti Flaa on her YouTube show, where the duo discussed their many brushes with fame while working as journalists over the years.
Aspen said how his first interview with Lively to promote 2016′s The Shallows was “fun and playful”, adding how he was “gobsmacked” at what a “goddess” she was in real life. However, he had a very different experience just two years later while chatting to Lively and her A Simple Favour co-star, Anna Kendrick.
“I’m figuring, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun’. I’d interviewed Anna before and she’s fine, but Blake? She’s going to be a hoot, I can’t wait,” Aspen remembered.
“They were paired together, and I think that may have had something to do with it. She [Lively] could’ve been having a bad day, maybe they didn’t get along, maybe it was competition, maybe it was two egos trapped in the same room, maybe Blake is just better one-on-one … I don’t know, but she answered every question with a question, combatively.
“It was not pleasant, and Anna sort of did the same. It’s like, she was like, ‘Okay, this is girl power, we’re going to team up on the journalist’.
“And in your interview with Blake, I recognised it, this is a trait, obviously a recurring one,” he told Flaa.
Aspen added how Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds became more conservative as his star rose, going from being “easy-going and goofy” in his earlier years to more rigid during interviews.
One of his most uncomfortable chats, he said, was with Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro.
Aspen claimed he’d been warned by a publicist that De Niro, 81, “won’t look you in the eyes”.
Lo and behold, when Aspen arrived for his filmed interview with the actor, he noticed his camera set-up was oddly positioned.
“The camera that was on me was off to a weird angle so that Robert never had to look me in the face,” Aspen said.
“He looked off camera, but when we cut it together it looked as if he was looking at me.
“They went to so much trouble to avoid him having to look at the journalist.”
Robert De Niro (right) and Sebastian Maniscalco in About My Father.
“They [the publicists] said, ‘Don’t ask him about his youthful appearance, and don’t say happy birthday.’ I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’.
“Yes, it was coming from the publicist, but he must have said, ‘I don’t want to talk about my birthday’.”
For the interview, Rudd was paired with his Avengers co-star Jeremy Renner, who Aspen claimed was “not always the most light-hearted fellow.”
“It all went south,” Aspen said. “I didn’t say something particularly about his birthday, I can’t remember exactly how it went down, but whatever it was they were very sensitive about it, and it was very uncomfortable and awkward, and nobody says that about Paul Rudd.
“In the film, she played a mother, and so I asked her a question as a mother, I didn’t think that was particularly scandalous … And somewhere from the back in the dark, a voice comes, ‘Nelson, move on to another question’,” Aspen said.
“I’m not TMZ digging around for dirt, I’m a nice guy, I’m a team player, so I tried again. And again, the voice in the background scolded me. I hate being scolded. I’m not a 5-year-old.
“I finally gave up, I got up and left. You might get four minutes with Reese Witherspoon, I left after two.
“I would point out Reese and I made up for that rough start with several other interviews later where she couldn’t have been sweeter.”
Reese Witherspoon as Madeleine in Big Little Lies.
In terms of his highlights, Aspen said Australian actor Hugh Jackman was one of the kindest stars in Hollywood, with Flaa agreeing the Wolverine actor was her “all time” favourite.
“I’ve interviewed him a thousand times. He’s the best,” Aspen said.
“I remember several junkets, he had a coffee company called The Laughing Man Coffee Shop. He would arrange to have a barista show up and wisely put the barista in the waiting room with the journalists. And he’d be like, ‘Hey everyone, are you enjoying your coffee?’
“But it was very clever PR, because it makes him look great, it makes us love him more, and it makes the whole experience fun for everybody. I wish every celebrity could be like Hugh.”
Elsewhere, Hollywood legend Tom Cruise earned a glowing shout-out, with Aspen dubbing him a “master”.
“When Tom Cruise is looking at you, you are just putty in his hands,” Aspen said.
Aspen further dishes about his many years working in Hollywood in his new novel, Dancing Between the Raindrops: The Hollywood Years, which is on sale now.
