LONDON — David Frost's London office in some ways looks like one of those barbershops or delicatessens where interior design extends only so far as covering the walls with photos of famous customers: Here is Frost with Condoleezza Rice, with Robert Kennedy, with Tony Blair. Oddly, there is no photo of the talk-show host with former U.S. president Richard Nixon, although leaning against one wall is a giant poster of Frost/Nixon, the Oscar-nominated film based on their historic encounter.
One framed photo shows two tall men in dark suits, visible only from the back, gazing out a hotel window. “Who's that?” Frost asks, pointing to the slightly shorter of the two. Is this a trick question? Will the wrong answer mean being dragged into a back room for the electrode treatment? Wait, wrong Oscar movie.
“Um … Gorbachev?”
“No,” he barks. “It's D. Frost! Who's the other one?”
A video grab from a packed Treasury select committee hearing at London’s Portcullis House shows (left to right) Dennis Stevenson, Andy Hornby, Fred Goodwin and Tom McKillop. In their public shaming on live TV, the four ex-bank bosses repeatedly apologized to lawmakers for failing to foresee the financial crisis. (AFP/Getty Images)
“Um … Clinton?”
“That's right!” He looks pleased. Phew, no electrodes. When the picture was taken, Frost had just interviewed Clinton about his memoirs at London's Savoy Hotel; the former president was bruised from a day of being bitten on the ankle by the British press, who asked only about Monica Lewinsky.
Frost wanted to know about Lewinsky too, but he employed the softly-softly approach that has served him in more than 40 years of broadcasting – an approach that some critics find too gentle, but he insists elicits the best response.
“I've learned over the years that the simplest question is often the most effective,” he says, leaning against a bookshelf where his autobiography stands next to Margaret Thatcher's. “So I said to him,” here he zooms in, gentle but intent. “ ‘Did you love her?' ”
Wow. I'm about to admit to loving Monica Lewinsky myself. What did Clinton say? “He said it wasn't that kind of relationship, on either side.”
It's not quite on the same scale as getting Nixon to admit he'd let the American people down. That happened midway through Frost's epic 12-day interview with the villain of Watergate, and forms the climax of Peter Morgan's play, which became the film now nominated for five Oscars.
Nixon had arrived at the taping that morning looking haunted, haggard. It was Frost's job – with the aid, behind the scenes, of his expert researchers – to derail the president from his message track. Unknown to Frost, Nixon's advisers were giving him a similar prompt. The interviewer pressed for a mea culpa, artfully dropping his clipboard with its prepared questions to the floor.
As Frost recreates this moment in his London office 32 years later, he drops the file folder he's holding. Thwack. He's nothing if not a showman, with a showman's love of a good anecdote and an even greater love of an appreciative audience. The stories come tumbling out, about Margaret Thatcher (so much scarier than Nixon), Benazir Bhutto, Tony Blair. On his current talk show, Frost Over the World, seen on Al-Jazeera English, a lengthy segment on the Davos World Economic Forum will be followed by a chat with Jimmy Osmond. His interviews, such as a recent one in which Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed distress over relations with the United States, still create headlines.
He's blithe about his role – “as a journalist, or whatever” – but this easy charm combined with wealth and a way with the ladies (he was engaged to Diahann Carroll and married a duke's daughter) make some of his country mates want to take a machete to a tall poppy. Frost “has spent nearly 50 years sucking up to the rich, the famous and the powerful,” spluttered one English critic when reviewing the film.
“Success is slightly less eagerly acclaimed in Britain,” Frost says, calmly. On the whole, he's happy with the portrayal of Michael Sheen, who captures the charm while hinting that the fame may rest on a shallow foundation. What Ron Howard's film fails to capture is the real-life Frost's dress sense, which is natty to a nutty degree. On this day, when he's not even taping Frost Over the World, his grey hair is carefully pouffed; his socks, shirt and tie are all patterned in the same shades of yellow and blue. It's as if he were dressed by the ghost of the Duke of Windsor.
Frost, 69, was already a television star in Britain (and the subject of some mockery, especially by the members of Monty Python who'd once worked with him on his hit satirical show That Was the Week That Was) when he decided to try to bag Nixon, the biggest trophy in the jungle. His star had faded, and it might rankle a bit that it is this perilous moment in his career – magnified for dramatic effect – that's now stuck forever in the public mind. He was on his uppers, but not quite so down-and-out.
“The financial risk was accurately portrayed,” Frost says, “but the foundering career of someone who'd never done serious interviews before – that was strictly creative fiction.
“Whenever I would say to [writer] Peter Morgan, ‘but that's not true,' he'd sigh patiently and say, ‘Oh, David. It's not a documentary. It's a play.' But I guess if you're the person being portrayed you have a slight yen toward it being a documentary.”
He takes a sip from his teacup, a gift from a former secretary, carrying the words “A Very Important Person.” There's much to be said for a man who can drink tea self-deprecatingly, doesn't mind seeing his warts magnified on screen and seems not particularly attached to his title (he's actually Sir David Frost). As well, there's his unfashionable enthusiasm for California, the site of his interviews with Nixon, where he'll return this weekend for the Oscar ceremony. “It's invigorating there. You have that wonderful feeling that this is the same party you were at six months ago, and they're all still there, having fun.”