Veteran journalist Anne Stockwell has snagged some impressive high-profile celebrity interviews and coming-out exclusives with gay and lesbian personalities in her role as Executive Editor of gay news magazine The Advocate. This is just one of the reasons Stockwell, who brings a storyteller’s sensibility to her work as a reporter, was honored in 2004 by Power Up (a non-profit organization that promotes the visibility and integration of gay women in entertainment, the arts, and all forms of media) as one of the “10 Amazing Women in Showbiz.”
Hailing from Baton Rouge, LA, Stockwell moved to New York City after college in order to purse a career in music. “I was trained in school to be an advertising art director. And I was naïve enough to think that was going to be my fallback job.” Stockwell sang in clubs at night, and a friend helped her land her first copy editing job to pay the bills. “I had no idea what that was. She explained it as somebody who knows grammar and looks up how to spell things. So I said, “I think I could probably do that.”
Stockwell proof-read copy for the short-lived magazine Barbara Cartland’s World of Romance (“It lasted exactly 6 issues.”) It wasn’t exactly journalistic gold, but it provided a valuable entry point into the world of publishing.
From there, Stockwell worked for a number of high-profile national publications, including Esquire, New York Magazine, and Rolling Stone before landing at The Advocate in 1993 and meeting future mentor (and then Senior Arts Editor) Judy Wieder. “The job to be her associate editor opened up, and I very timidly asked her if she thought I might do. She hired me to do it and she said, ‘I’ll teach you everything I know.’ And unlike most people who say that, she really meant it. She was a great mentor to me and a great friend.”
Working for a gay magazine marked a significant shift for Stockwell, who had logged years at straight publications at which being gay wasn’t something that one openly discussed.
She remembers, “I spent a lot of time wondering ‘Do they know if I’m gay?’ At most of the work environments I was in–when I was coming up–it was something that you paid a social price for talking about. It was understood that you were and you would bring your girlfriend to the party. But if you said, ‘gay’–as in ‘my gay lover’ (laughs)–there would be a pause. It would be like you had burped in church. Having done it, you wouldn’t want to do it again.”
Working for a gay publication has afforded Stockwell the unique privilege of conducting coming out interviews with celebrities like actors Heather Matarazzo and Christopher Sieber. “A lot of times I’ve had the great honor of having this be not just a job. When somebody does a coming out interview with you, it’s very special. It’s a bond that you have for life. They really put a lot of trust in your hands to do that, and people who I’ve done those interviews with, we greet each other with a lot of affection.”
One such interview particularly stands out for Stockwell. “I think in terms of how hard it was, and how risky I thought it was, Sheryl Swoopes was the queen of them all.”
Stockwell sheepishly admits that she didn’t initially understand just how big a star Swoopes was in the world of professional sports. “I’m not someone who really follows sports. I’m not one of those lesbians that already knew everything about the WNBA.” But then, “about thirty seconds later and a couple of Google searches in, I was starting to get the picture.”
Stockwell recalls, “She was–and I know this will sound like a cliché–but she was every inch a champion. She was absolutely decisive, and I would ask her very difficult questions. She would consider the question briefly, then, bam, she would have an answer. She knew what she was gonna tell me, and she was not defensive. I would have hemmed and hawed, but she had made her decision, and she did it. And she was one of the classiest ladies I had met.”
Another memorable interview for Stockwell was one she conducted in 2001 with actor Anne Heche. Heche had risen to fame several years earlier as the partner of out lesbian comic Ellen DeGeneres, and had been a vocal advocate for GLBT rights. After a highly-publicized split with DeGeneres, Heche married cameraman Coley Laffoon and wrote Call Me Crazy, a tell-all memoir about her troubled family of origin and her relationship with DeGeneres.
In the exclusive interview, Stockwell referenced tabloid rumors surrounding the Heche-DeGeneres breakup, and asked the types of questions that had surely been on the minds of queer people everywhere (“How do you think the gay community is feeling about you? Do you feel people are angry with you?”). Stockwell even asked Heche if she had ever considered waiting until gay marriage was legalized before she married Laffoon. (For the record, Heche had not.)
Heche good-naturedly revealed much of herself in the interview, and spoke passionately about her relationship with Laffoon and their shared open-minded approach to sexual identity. But when Stockwell asked if her husband’s “openness” might be ascribed to any past same-sex experiences of his own, Heche was aghast. Heche was clearly offended by Stockwell’s question and the interview ended shortly thereafter.
Five years later, Stockwell maintains her respect and admiration for Heche as an actor, and understands her extreme reaction to what some might consider an innocuous question. “She had thought and thought about lots of things and had processed it in her mind. But when I asked her about her husband she went to his defense, even though she had said ‘it doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight’ the whole time. And that’s just human. That is how we are.”
“This stuff affects us on a level that is so much deeper than our thinking processes. We ourselves don’t know why it all bothers us so much. What is our training? What’s reality? And if we have these instincts to defend ourselves when someone calls us gay, what does that mean? All of these things, they go just right to the core of who we are. And a lot of the stuff we feel about it, we don’t like to look at it.”
Heche’s candor stands in stark contrast to the runaround Stockwell often faces in her attempts to interview gay celebrities who have yet to exit the closet. Getting past publicists who would rather their clients didn’t come out is the worst part of the job.
Stockwell admits, “I feel frustrated for publicists and the stars they represent, because the fact is it’s not a secret anymore, and effectively you only have two choices. Either you deal with the story on your own terms and get beyond it, which is what Ellen DeGeneres has done, or you don’t deal with it and it’s all anybody ever talks about. But often people wait until their celebrity is over to come out. And that is pretty poignant. I see actors who are closeted who don’t have their entire selves at their disposal and who are then muted as actors. They’re not able to use their own sexuality, and they don’t have any.”
Ideally, empowering coming-out interviews like those conducted by Stockwell will inspire closeted celebrities to come out themselves. Or, as Stockwell notes, “I hope it at least makes the closet less comfortable. I feel, like all journalists, we’re here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But I do really stand by it, that people who enter into that trusting relationship and do coming out interviews with us will be well-served to the absolute limit of what we can do. We will do our best for them, to put them in the best light.”
Stockwell admits that her compassionate nature has at times been at war with her journalistic instincts. “I was a movie-maker before I was doing all of this, I was an artist. So my urge is to believe. And you have to fight that to be worth anything as a journalist.”
“I was a little bit chagrined after interviewing Sheryl Swoopes. In some national publication, somebody had the sense to ask her in a different way what motivated her to sign an endorsement deal with Olivia. And that reporter had gotten the information that she had declared bankruptcy the year before. So there was obviously a strong financial motivation. And I have no problem with it, but I didn’t think to ask that question and you know what, I should have. It wouldn’t have made me like her any less (laughs).”
Despite the steady trend of seeing fewer lesbian and gay people on network television, Stockwell is optimistic about the future of queer media representation. “I’m really happy that we’re not committing suicide all the time anymore. Richard Dreyfuss in Poseidon was going to kill himself, but it was because his lover had left him, not because he was gay.” She adds, “And I like a lot of movies that have been made recently, like Little Miss Sunshine and Quinceanera. And Brothers of the Head is very interesting. I think it’s a really intriguing time.”
Ultimately, Stockwell’s love of the “gay beat” is due to her belief that, “Gay people are the most imaginative, enterprising, resourceful people on earth. And they’re brave and steadfast. I really have loved the chance to learn more about us.”
