E! TV Alum Recalls the "Real" Hollywood

The building that first housed E! Entertainment Television on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood is no longer there. It’s been replaced by a parking lot. But the network is still very much alive—now situated on the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles, a much more exclusive address, and owned by the Philadelphia-based company Comcast.

E! launched in June of 1990. I started there in February of 1991 and stayed for four years. Over the past two decades, extraordinary change in media and technology have occurred, but E!’s mission has stayed the same: celebrities.

As I tell my “Introduction to Mass Media” class at Atlantic Cape Community College, celebrities are American royalty. They take the place of kings and queens for us. We live vicariously through their lives.   

But covering celebrities is hard work. At film premieres, you jostle for position behind a rope line as you try to find a crevice among the throngs of other media so you can stick a microphone in the face of a “movie star.” That mic is likely to capture little that we didn’t already know.

Covering celebrities can sometimes have the same amount of excitement as making widgets, and it’s not lucrative. Working at E! Entertainment Television was like four more years of college. We were young and broke. Celebrities are the ones who are paid obscenely, not the people who cover them. 

We came to work with dreams and we slept on futons. That first E! building had all the charm of my dilapidated college apartment at Glassboro State College. E!’s second location was inside the California Federal building, a 20-plus story mini skyscraper. We had cubicles with a mint green and purple color scheme. We felt hip.

We often worked more than our 9-hour shifts. I spent many nights interviewing celebrities about their next project. I wore modest duds –I couldn’t afford anything else. I didn’t get to sip the champagne. 

But we liked making television. We helped people to escape from their stresses every night. We felt a sense of accomplishment when “E! News Daily” would roll each evening. It took a big crew to make it happen, many of whom are invisible to the audience: writers, producers, researchers, camera people—and the staff who were even more invisible, like those who handled rights and clearances.

My students always want to hear celebrity stories. Who did you interview? But they envision the process as some kind of Fantasia—as if I spent my weekends at some Malibu villa with my BFF movie star. 

I interviewed Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman and Madonna. I interviewed the cast of Seinfeld. But that’s not what I remember. I remember the cluttered office of a history professor at Cal State LA who was part of an in-depth piece about the accuracy of historical films. I remember Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont coming into E! on Columbus Day without any entourage or pretention. 

But mostly what is seared into my mind is the people who did the job. Television can be cruel to families and mortgages. Layoffs are commonplace, and benefits and staff positions are rare. Working like this, day in and day out, creates bonds that are more like family than co-workers. 

Earlier this month, more than 200 E! alums gathered in a swanky nightclub in Hollywood. We celebrated more than 20 years of E! But mostly, we celebrated each other—the people who do the real work for the celebrity machine.  

Keith Forrest of Collingswood is a tenured assistant professor of communication at Atlantic Cape Community College.