Prepare the person before you record: tell them the subject areas, agree that they can stop at any point, and explain who will hear it. In the room, ask short open questions, stay quiet after them, and follow their account rather than your outline. Check afterwards which parts they still want included.
Flow diagram of 4 steps: Say what the piece is and where it will appear, Name the subject areas out loud, Agree how to stop, Explain what happens to the recording.
The most important part of an interview about something painful happens before the recorder is on. Someone who knows what will be asked, what happens to the recording and how to stop it gives a steadier and more detailed account than someone working all of that out while answering. Fear of an ambush produces short answers, and so does not knowing who will eventually hear this.
That conversation takes about ten minutes and is worth having on a separate day where you can. Name the subject areas rather than the exact questions. The areas let someone prepare and rule things out; the exact wording lets them rehearse, and a rehearsed answer to a hard question almost always lands flatter than a considered but unscripted one.
Roughly how long it will be, what form it takes, and where it will be published. "A short segment, online, about ten minutes" is enough — vagueness here is what makes people guarded.
List the two or three areas you plan to cover and ask directly whether any of them is off limits. Someone who rules out one area now will usually go further on the others.
Tell them they can ask for a pause, ask to move on, or ask for something to be struck at any point, and that none of it needs a reason. Say it once, plainly, rather than repeating it every few minutes.
Who hears the raw audio, whether it is kept after the edit, and whether they will see the piece before it goes out. Answer honestly, including when the honest answer is that they will not.
Long questions are usually the interviewer managing their own discomfort. The wind-up — the throat-clearing, the reassurance, the "I hope this is not too much to ask" — tells the person that the subject is dangerous, and they will match your caution with a cautious answer. A short, plain question does the opposite: it treats them as someone capable of deciding what to say.
Ask about events and specifics before feelings. "What time did the call come?" is easier to answer than "how did you feel?", and it produces the concrete detail that makes an account real. The feeling tends to arrive on its own once the story is moving. Asked for directly and early, it usually produces a summary of an emotion rather than the thing itself.
Then leave the silence alone. Three or four seconds of nothing after an answer is the most productive tool in this kind of interview and the hardest one to use, because a pause after a painful answer feels like a failure of care. Most of the time it is the person deciding whether to say the next part.
Questions that stall, and what to ask instead
| Instead of | Ask | Why it works better |
|---|---|---|
| How did you feel when it happened? | What do you remember about that morning? | A concrete question gives them somewhere to start, and the feeling comes out inside the detail |
| Can you talk about the accident? | Where were you when you found out? | Asking permission to ask makes the subject sound unsafe and invites a no |
| That must have been devastating. | Nothing — wait three seconds | Supplying the emotion tells them which answer you want and replaces theirs with yours |
| Do you have any regrets? | Is there anything you would do differently now? | The same question without the loaded noun, so they are not agreeing to a characterisation |
| Sorry, this is a hard one, but… | What happened next? | The apology is your discomfort rather than theirs, and it makes the next answer more guarded |
Someone crying in an interview is not automatically a problem, and treating it as one can be its own small insult — people are frequently able to carry on and would rather not be handled. What matters is the difference between upset and unable to continue, and you establish that by asking rather than deciding on their behalf.
Stop the recording, say that you have, and mean it. Then ask a plain question — "do you want to keep going?" — and accept the first answer without arguing them into or out of it. If they hesitate, offer the break before you offer the exit: a few minutes with the equipment off is often all that is needed, and ending an interview someone wanted to finish takes something from them too.
You are not their therapist and should not perform being one. Do not interpret what happened, offer a diagnosis, or reassure them that it was not their fault. What is actually useful is much smaller than that: staying calm, not filling the silence with your own feelings, and not visibly treating the moment as material.
The urge to keep rolling because the footage is powerful is real, and worth naming to yourself when it turns up. A piece built on a moment someone would not have agreed to on reflection is not worth the ten seconds it gains — and it is the single thing interviewees most often ask to have taken out afterwards.
Agreement given before an interview was given about an interview that had not happened yet. By the end, the person has usually said something they did not plan to say, and the honest position is that the earlier yes does not automatically stretch to cover it. Going back afterwards is not a courtesy on top of the process; it is the part that makes the first agreement mean anything.
Play back or read back the passages you intend to use, and ask specifically about the parts that surprised you both. Give a real deadline — "let me know by Friday" — so it is a decision rather than an open worry. Expect to lose something. In practice people cut far less than interviewers fear, and what they do cut is more often a detail about someone else than about themselves.
Where you genuinely cannot offer that, say so before the interview rather than after. A person can consent to a process that gives them no final say over the edit. What they cannot do is consent to one they were led to believe gave them a say it never had.
Some interviews should not happen yet, and some should not happen with you. If the event is very recent, the person is in the middle of a legal process, or they would be the only identifiable source of a claim about somebody else, the interview can cost them considerably more than it adds to the piece. The cost falls on them and the benefit falls on you, and that asymmetry is the thing to be suspicious of.
There are also cases where the story is fine and you are the wrong person to ask: you are their manager, their landlord, or anyone they would find awkward to refuse. Power in a relationship does not switch off because the conversation is friendly. Where you cannot hand the interview to someone else, have an unconnected person present and say explicitly that declining costs them nothing.
Kind Channel is new and nothing has aired yet, so there is no in-house desk to escalate a difficult case to and no editorial lawyer to check it against. If a story raises questions like these, the practical route is to say so plainly in the submission itself rather than settling it alone and hoping the question does not come back.
Send the subject areas rather than the exact questions. Areas let someone prepare for what is coming and rule out anything they will not discuss, which usually produces a fuller conversation. Exact wording tends to produce a rehearsed answer, and on a difficult subject a rehearsed answer sounds noticeably more distant than an unscripted one.
Stop recording, say that you have stopped, and ask plainly whether they want to continue — then take their answer without persuading them either way. Offer a short break before offering to end it, since many people would rather finish. Avoid interpreting what they are feeling or reassuring them about the event itself.
You are rarely obliged to, and where the subject is personal and painful it is usually the right thing to offer. If the context makes a veto impossible — a news deadline, an editor who will not allow it — say that before the interview rather than afterwards. What is not defensible is implying someone has a say over the edit and then not giving them one.
Not in itself. People often want a difficult experience recorded accurately, and being asked well is not the same as being used. It turns exploitative when the benefit runs one way: the piece gains a powerful moment while the person carries a permanent exposure they never really weighed up. Asking honestly who this is for is the check.