When You Step Upon a Star and what makes them tick

21 Aug 2024 - Photos supplied by publicist

Back in the '90s there was a thirst for celebrity gossip and that thirst was driven by the National Enquirer. Available at grocery store check-outs, it sold millions of copies weekly. Then O.J. Simpson happened, and the Enquirer went into overdrive.

One young reporter working there at the time was William Keck. He joined the Enquirer mostly to meet stars, but when Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered, he was instructed to get a quote from her mother. So he found his way into their home and when he revealed that he was from the muck-raking paper, she was about to throw him out. But then he told her he had only one question - “I guess I’d like to know how you told the children.” Nicole’s mother was moved because he had asked the one question that truly mattered to her.

Not every celebrity interview went quite so well for Keck, either as an Enquirer reporter or later as a columnist for USA Today. In a phone call last week, Keck entertained me with stories of his biggest fiascoes, like how innocuous interviews with the likes of William Shatner or Bruce Willis turn on a dime if they don’t like the question being asked. “Just try asking Celine Dion if she thinks of herself as a diva!” While interviewing Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu for the release of Charlie’s Angels, he brought up the fact that Liu was making a fifth of what Diaz was getting paid. It did not go well. My favourite story was when he interviewed the cast of Lost. When he brought up Emilie de Ravin’s recent divorce, she stormed off crying, and Naveen Andrews then proceeded to be such a foul-mouthed dick the publicist had to pull him aside for a little pep talk.

“People want to know about the interviews that didn’t go well, but 90 percent of them did go well,” he told me. Keck’s new book, When You Step Upon A Star, isn’t about the good interviews. Instead, it’s about the frail relationship celebrities have with the press. Celebrities are really just people whose jobs put their faces on television or movie screens. Like the rest of us, their personal lives are messy things. “It started because I was obsessed with Victoria Principal, and meeting her was a little gay boy’s dream come true,” said Keck. “But who wants to be exploited at their most vulnerable?” When I asked him if he himself ever wanted to be a celebrity, he posed a question in return. “What would you do to get on the cover of People? Because often it’s because of a scandal or tragedy. Is it worth it?”

The book is filled with hilarious tales, like digging through Kelsey Grammer’s garbage bags, or climbing a tree so he could see who was at Dean Martin’s funeral. He’s risked getting punched. He’s crashed people’s weddings. His greatest shame was getting into Dack Rambo’s hospital room as the man was dying of AIDS. In some ways his book is an act of atonement. He gives many of the celebrities a chance to respond, and their comments are printed as sidebars. “Most had forgiving hearts, but the ones with animosity chose not to participate.” For instance, his old friend Teri Hatcher didn’t respond, presumably still angry over an incident that took place on the set of Desperate Housewives.

“I’m glad that it all happened” he said. “I got to play actor, I got to play spy - sometimes you think that you’re fearless. It seemed like I was Alice in Wonderland.” But one day, he picked up the latest issue of the Enquirer. There was a story outing Rosie O’Donnell, another one about Joan Lunden of Good Morning America dealing with the death of her gay friend, and a photo of Raquel Welch, looking downwards in despair, as though she was about to jump off a building, and he realized that he identified with all three, and that he would never want his horrible tragedies to be out there for all to see. So he quit the Enquirer and went legit. Now, decades later, he’s written this book. It’s a breezy fun read, as addictive as a bag of chips, but more importantly, it puts much in perspective. Everyone has a right to privacy. So William Keck’s days of cold knocks on celebrity doors looking for juicy quotes, or digging through their trash, are over. “I never wanted to be a bloody crime scene reporter,” he told me. “I just wanted to do recipes with Krystle Carrington.” With When You Step Upon A Star, he’s done so much more. He makes celebrities seem real and relatable. It’s a great book if you like gossipy stories about big stars, but it’s even better if you just want to know what makes them tick.