Celebrity Interview: Scott Johnson, Investigative Reporter, Talks on the Explosive Docu-Series Hollywood Con Queen

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Category: Haute This Issue
Published on Tuesday, 07 May 2024 07:01
Written by Janet Walker

Hollywood Con Queen, the shocking docu-series from Apple TV, details a master manipulator, preying on the dreams and aspirations of talent around the world, until an investigative reporter, Scott Johnson, begins uncovering the astonishing story.

Scott Johnson, the former investigative news reporter that broke the explosive story, over three episodes, unpacks the multi-national scam, filled with the allure of Hollywood, complete with the most powerful and well-known producers, directors, and studio moguls, and of course, the most common belief about Hollywood that careers are built on transactional sex.

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I had the opportunity to speak with Scott during the documentary's recent media day. He is exactly what viewers see in the shocking story which unfolds with an anonymous tip to The Hollywood Reporter.

Below is our interview.

Janet Walker: Hello Scott, how are you today?

Scott Johnson: Hi Janet, nice to hear you.

JW: Yes, thank you. Thanks, nice to hear you also. So, wow that's a very big story that is being told on the Hollywood Con Queen. So, tell me how this project came about for you?

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SJ: Well, I got a tip. It starts way back in 2018 I was working at "The Hollywood Reporter" at the time and I got a tip about a scam, and I started investigating. It turned into a cover story for "The Hollywood Reporter" that summer and then shortly thereafter I started thinking about it as a possible book because it just continued to intrigue me and interest me. There were so many interesting kind of unresolved questions and so I got a book contract and started working on the book and then in the midst of working on the book I started, I was in touch with Chris Smith, the director and he and I started working together on a documentary which now four years later has finally come to fruition, to our great delight.

JW: Thanks, thank you for that response. The story seems to have developed a life of its own. Do you expect to squeeze another project out of it or do you feel like this is the tip of an iceberg or the end of all of it?

SJ: Oh, yeah. I mean I think for me it's probably more of an ending. I mean the book is out and that was a long process, now the documentary is coming out and that'll be the end of that. I mean I'm . . . who knows? You never know what's coming around the bend as my mother-in-law used to say but who knows? I mean, yeah for now, I think it's more of an ending, but you never know.

JW: Oh, that's good. Do you, when you were, I mean you had many conversations that were recorded and shown in the documentary with the con queen did you, post-arrest, did you have any additional contact with him?

SJ: I did not. No that was the end of that.

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JW: Did you feel drawn to like, were you in withdrawals after all those conversations?

SJ: Well, you know, they were so intense and there were so many of them that it took quite a while to process all of them and I still had the book to write and I still had the documentary to make so there was a lot of time spent with those conversations just processing, thinking, writing, you know rewriting, editing. So, you know, long after the conversations themselves had stopped I remained with him and with his voice on my own or with my collaborators on the documentary or my editors at Harper Collins. So, you know for me the voice of the con queen has been, you know, with me for months and for years really. It's not something that I that I stopped hearing the moment he was arrested.

JW: Sure. So, if you had a memorable moment from the entire process what would it be?

SJ: Well, there were so many. I mean, there were so many, I don't want to give away spoiler alerts but let me just say this is a really truly international story on multiple levels. I mean the victims held from every continent on the planet except for Antarctica. You know the countries involved you know; the scam was in Europe the scammer was from Indonesia many of the victims were from America. I mean it's a really truly international story. So the process of kind of touching down in different parts of the world and finding that some new portal or entry into this story was there available in that country was really fascinating and rewarding for me. You know, as somebody who has spent my life working on international stories that was very gratifying and surprising too. You know wherever we went there was a new leaf to turn over and that was that was really gratifying.

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JW: Thank you. So, what's next for you?

A. What's next for me? I'm well I'm working on another book. I can't talk about what that is just yet but and then I'm getting back into being a former correspondent again after a period of some time doing this talk and stuff and yeah and then we'll see I'm open to new opportunities.

Q. Has crime always been your beat?

A. No it is not. I started out my journalism career as a foreign correspondent. I worked for Newsweek for many years and for a long time I was a war correspondent. So, I worked in Afghanistan and Iraq for three years; in Iraq for three years in Afghanistan for a year. I was in Africa for many years [and in] Latin America. So, most of my career was spent covering politics, wars, you know economics, foreign policy, things like that. Then I worked for a while covering gang stuff basically in the Bay Area and then only for the last few years, in Los Angeles, I worked doing not just crime but basically just weird stories like scams or cons or just weird lawsuits, murders, crime different things like that, just kind of this seedy underbelly of Hollywood and Los Angeles which turned out to be a really fascinating beat actually.

JW: Yes. Well, Scott, thank you so much for your time. I certainly appreciated it. The documentary is intriguing, and the layers are amazing. So, thank you again for the opportunity.

SJ: Thank you so much for your interest. I really appreciate it.

Hollywood Con Queen, the limited series documentary from Apple TV plus, premiers May 8, 2024. It is a must see.

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