Interview with Ronan Farrow

Hunter Reis - 2016

Ronan Farrow is, undoubtedly, the biggest proponent of the Lemonade ahi tuna and avocado poke bowl that I have ever met. We met for the first time at the small cafeteria-style restaurant for lunch one afternoon during his brief visit to Los Angeles. It was my senior year of college and I was just a few weeks into my internship at NBC News. One of the producers, my direct supervisor, tasked me with picking up a set up tapes from Farrow’s part-time home in West Hollywood. It was one of my very first off-site tasks for this internship and I couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous. Sure, driving to his house to pick up a few tapes isn’t anything too difficult, despite not having quite mastered the art of driving in Los Angeles yet. Still, meeting Farrow — or any journalist of that caliber — made me a bit tense in the first few months of my professional career. 

When I arrived at his house I called the number I was given back at the bureau. He answered, thankfully, and I shakily told him my afternoon mission. My nervousness was met with a cool demeanor; he said that he is grabbing lunch not too far away and that I should meet him there. Still on the phone, all of my anxiety about quickly getting back to the bureau disappeared. At school, they teach you to always say “yes” to professional opportunities, and getting lunch with one of NBC’s star reporters seemed like a good enough an excuse to tell my boss that I’d be a bit late. I hop back in my long-term rental car and go to meet him. 

Truthfully, I noticed his dog before I notice him. Farrow picked me out of the crowd before I even saw past his tiny dog. He approached me and extended a welcoming hand and a trusting voice, “Hunter, right?”. Thus is the life Farrow leads. Always the first on the ball, making the first initiative. His signature coiffed blonde hair hung down covering part of his face. I couldn’t help but think for a split second that it matches the hair on the silky terrier by his feet. He wore a pair of white Adidas sneakers, the tops of which were covered by a pair of dark wash jeans. On top, a baby blue hoodie added layers to his thin frame. Right away, he needlessly apologized for his appearance. Still he gives me a good enough reason for the lack of product in his hair: he hopped off the plane from New York and came almost immediately to the local Lemonade.

Farrow hardly spends time in Los Angeles anymore, he said in between bites of his pineapple chicken green beans. He had to leave the modest bungalow behind in 2014 when he started hosting “Ronan Farrow Daily” out of New York for MSNBC.  We grabbed a seat on the patio outside to take in the warm weather that he wouldn’t get to enjoy for too long. He was just in town for a few weeks on assignment, finishing a segment about the upcoming 2016 presidential election. It’s unspoken, but neither of us necessarily wanted to talk about politics here in the stress-free confines of Lemonade. Instead, we focus on the spread of food in front of us. Farrow took his time savoring the tuna poke before he asked me all the usual questions: where I’m from, where I go to school, what I want to do post-internship. It was one of the few times during working hours at NBC News where I felt relaxed. Ronan really did seem interested in me and what I had to say, and we sat and enjoyed the sun for a moment. 

At just fifteen, Farrow graduated from Bard College, a liberal arts college in New York with a 32% acceptance rate. This extraordinary feat was only the beginning. Early into his senior year — at age fourteen — Farrow became a spokesperson for youth UNICEF. He traveled to the impoverished areas of Sudan’s Darfur region. “I heard their stories and knew something needed to be done,” he said in a tone that showed that his passion was still just as strong eleven years later. Farrow’s humanitarian work started at an early age, as did his career in journalism. By age seventeen, he had already published articles in The Boston Herald and Newsweek. Both documented his time spend in Darfur, spreading a message of peace and charity for the African Union. 

He had hands-on experience giving back to the global community. But after addressing the United Nations on the importance of protecting Darfuri refugees, he knew that a real difference could be made if he used the gifts he was born with — in this case, his natural intelligence. At sixteen, Farrow was accepted into law school at Yale University. “I loved meeting all of these incredible, inspiring people,” he said, “but at the end of the day, I knew real influence came from the core — from government itself.” While in Yale, he began dedicating his time to international human rights at the United States House Committee of Foreign Affairs, following the footsteps of his mother, Mia. 

It become abundantly clear that Ronan is quite fond of his mom. In fact, the dog with us sitting quietly on the patio, Bowie, belongs to Mia Farrow — the iconic actress who raised Ronan and his siblings. Besides just caring for her dog, Ronan seems protective of his mother. He has every right to be, too. The youngest biological child of Mia, Ronan (born Satchel Ronan O'Sullivan Farrow) grew up in an eclectic household. Eclectic is, of course, putting it delicately. 

At the most, Ronan had 13 siblings. Most of them were born into poverty and were later adopted by his mother and her former partners. One of these former partners, Ronan’s alleged father Woody Allen, caused the family to split when Ronan was just five years-old. Allen entered a romantic relationship with his step-daughter Soon-Yi Previn when she was 21.

Besides his mother, Ronan doesn’t like to talk of his family much. Even before he was born there was pressure for him to submit to a family order where he often felt like the odd-man out. Though it was widely believed that Allen was his father, Ronan was given his surname to avoid the confusion of adding a third name to the family. He would come to be grateful that decision; Ronan publicly renounced Allen in 2011, just a few years before allegations of Allen’s alleged sexual assault of minors came to light.

Though he has a job in television news, Ronan never expected to be thrust into the spotlight like he was. Earlier that day, before our stop at Lemonade, Ronan had flew into Los Angeles only to be greeted by a flock of paparazzi. Apparently someone who worked for the airline had leaked his private flight into to TMZ. “Never fly Delta,” he tells me as if this would be an issue for me in the near future. 

We talk about the future too. He started working for NBC News in 2014 and sees himself staying here for a number of years. Never one to settle, though, Farrow is already in the works of a side project as well — a political series published online. He’s still in talks with several media outlets to determine where the series will find a home. “Creativity is much more free online.” Days later in the newsroom, this claim proves to be true. 

The tapes I had gone to collect from Ronan had been part of a news package he just finished taping on voting laws across the country. Back in the bureau to begin editing, Ronan sat by as a producer gave notes on the raw footage. When our initial chat at Lemonade had been going so well, I had asked if I could shadow him for a bit and write a profile on him for class. The next day, he made a point to find my desk in the bureau and led me to the editing room with him. 

He certainly seems to enjoy his new job at NBC, and it’s a symbiotic relationship between him and his employer. After Billy Bush’s very public dismissal from The Today Show earlier this year, the network frankly needed a well-liked household name to garner some positive attention. In turn, NBC granted him with spots on MSNBC, The Today Show, and Nightly News. In his professional life, not much seems to bother Ronan.

He is very open about his faults as well. I think that after a lifetime of being told how smart he is, he revels in his shortcomings as well. He knows that he is not very organized. Forgetful, as well. That’s why he makes sure to write everything down. A few weeks after our meeting at Lemonade I get to work in the morning and see an email from him. The subject line: “Okay, random favor but…” I clicked on the email truly ready to accept whatever favor he needed from me. What was it my professors said about always saying “yes”? I truly didn’t expect this one though — he wanted to switch outfits with me. He had forgotten that he was scheduled to do a live shot from the bureau, and his tight brown polo was deemed “not camera ready” by someone on set. The email ended with an “lol.” Ronan’s ability to be relatable and humble was, in my opinion, his most redeeming quality. It’s what makes him a great journalist, and of course, a great humanitarian. His intellect and his surname help too, of course, but of all the colorful stories he told, he seemed the most interested in the ones that bonded the two of us. I think of that when I’m in the bathroom switching clothes with him over the stall divider. This will certainly be a story that I’ll remember if I’m ever in a position similar to his.