Richard Wilkins shifts in his seat as he steals glances off camera. He’s unsure if his question offended or amused the global megastar sitting before him.
It was 2008 and Nine’s Entertainment Editor was mid-way through a sit down interview with US singer Beyonce when she let out a loud laugh.
Moments earlier, Wilkins posed a question to the Crazy In Love artist about her marriage to rapper Jay-Z. He prefixed the question with “tell me if I’m crossing the line”.
Watch the video above.
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“Ah, you crossed the line, buddy,” Beyonce replied, laughing.
“Really?” a perplexed Wilkins asked, before darting his gaze off camera, potentially towards the singer’s minders or publicist seeking clarification.
“Yes, I don’t want to talk about it. You got to hear the album to figure that out,” Beyonce said, referring to her 2008 album I Am… Sasha Fierce.
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In an interview with 9Celebrity for the latest episode of Dickie’s Diaries, Wilkins named “Queen B” as one of the best celebrity interviews he’s done.
“Beyonce, a great pleasure. You know you’re in the presence of greatness and supreme talent when you talk to her,” he said.
“She’s such a great interview.”
Wilkins, a former pop artist himself, also named the late David Bowie, British megastar Paul McCartney and the late music icon Prince among his favourite interviews.
“I did the first interview with Sir Paul McCartney after George Harrison passed away,” Wilkins said.
Harrison, a founding member of the ‘Fab Four’, died in 2001 of lung cancer. He was 58.
“Just listening to him tell stories about how the Beatles got together and his memories of George… that’s the sort of stuff that made me want to get into the music industry, their songs. So Paul McCartney is right up there,” Wilkins said.
During the 2002 interview, McCartney spoke about his sadness of losing his “mate”.
“I was in Liverpool last night and I was going down streets where we’d hung out together as teenagers,” the singer-songwriter said.
“But at the same time, because we had such great times and loved each other, I feel very privileged to have known such a great guy.”
As for the Prince interview, Wilkins says he still has an audiotape of the rare interview .
“We spoke for about an hour off-camera about everything,” the journalist said.
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“And he told me about how he’d been abused, he reckoned, by record labels and some of the problems he had had over the years and the trials and tribulations of being Prince.
”He was so funny, charming, wonderful.”
Wilkins said he has the tape “tucked away” somewhere but would never release it “because he said some extraordinary things”.