We were lucky to catch up with Taylor Ferber recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Taylor, thanks for joining us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

Pam Anderson with a Pulitzer. My brand in a nutshell. I’ve built a career and message with the motivation to surprise people by breaking out of societal boxes, mischaracterizations of my content, and preconceived notions of first impressions.

I was misunderstood by the head honchos of show business as a red carpet reporter. I ditched fancy camera crews for my unconventional selfie stick method, and swerved mindless questions stars always got for spontaneous interactions and deeper talks on real issues. My mission was to go somewhere honest and human. But what people aren’t used to scares them, so celebrity entourages and execs would often be on guard, try to shut me down, and assume my platform was an attempt at “gotcha” moments and tabloid fodder. In reality, I could care less about any of that and actively avoid it.

I’m misunderstood as a busty blonde. People see me and think they know what they’re getting — that is, until, they hear me talk or read my work. Surprising them with my intellect and views of the world’s current events may actually be the most satisfying thing ever. And it never gets old. This has been a through line in my work, most notably in my Playboy feature challenging the notion that sexual expression discredits intelligence.

In the last year, I’ve leaned into this fulfilling duality even more with my fitness and body transformation journey my viewers know as “Operation: Sex Goddess Body.” In a world of instant gratification, filters, fillers, and confusing body positive messages, I set out to achieve my dream body with relentless dedication and accomplished my goal in half the time experts said I could. I dress to highlight my hard-earned physique while delivering sharp social commentary — each fuels the other, and I’ve never felt more powerful in both.

When it comes to my show content, people watch Cancel Me, Baby! and can’t quite place me. They need to know if I’m on the left or the right like all the other hosts. Answers must be given! Brains won’t compute! Tribalism is all we know and swiftly characterizing people is our collective religion, so on the downside I’m constantly grouped one way or the other based on a single statement I make in any given episode, even though I challenge both sides and find validity in them, too, as I believe many of us do. It can be frustrating to constantly avoid being labelled, but keeping people guessing and viewers on their toes is a great bonus.

Taylor, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Called the “Celebrity Whisperer” by Playboy magazine, I’m a Hollywood red carpet reporter-turned-podcaster. I’ve interviewed stars like Oprah and Kim Kardashian, covered the biggest events from the Grammys to Emmys, and contributed to outlets like Us Weekly, Vulture, Bustle, Hollywood Reporter, and Fandango. Tired of boring questions on outfits and canned responses about latest projects, I took my access and reinvented the wheel of celebrity interviews, launching my own platform, Talk To Me Taylor, and using nothing but a selfie stick and my unique style to humanize A-listers and go somewhere non-rehearsed and real in a way we’d never seen them.

I’ve penned Op-Eds on provocative cultural topics in USA Today, Huffington Post, and most notably in a 2019 feature I spearheaded in Playboy where fellow female journalists and I were in an artful pictorial and penned essays on freedom, proving beauty and brains aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m the only woman to have both posed and be featured in the Playbill as a writer in the same issue of the publication.

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t say,” is a line from the piece that rings true in all of my work and especially my current, cutting edge video podcast Cancel Me, Baby! In a time when everyone is told what to say and think, my irreverent, pull-no-punches show empowers viewers to think freely outside rules around woke-ism, conservatism, men, women, media, and culture. I get big guests like Blake Shelton, Josh Duhamel, Barstool’s Dave Portnoy, and Emmy-nominated Lake Bell to say what they really think. The show refreshingly breaks out of political and social boxes in a non-soapbox way, like private water cooler talk that resonates with viewers from all walks of life and opposite sides of the aisle. I’m on the ground hustling and fighting for its growth and potential every day, because there’s nothing like it and in a time of unprecedented cultural chaos and confusion, it’s what we need. I say what I think and I don’t care who wants to box, silence, or cancel me. Try it, I dare ya.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In 2015, as a writer for VH1, I called out Chrissy Teigen’s bullying hypocrisy on Twitter. I couldn’t see why the A-list model would cry victim of being attacked on social media while simultaneously using her very platform to hurl said attacks and insults towards faceless avatars. The behavior was toxic and regressive given that we’ve all hopefully told our high school bullies to get lost by now.

Chrissy proceeded to go after both my personal account and VH1 on Twitter. It was a cancel culture moment before its time. VH1 took Chrissy’s side, put me on suspension, and the article came down harder than Joe Biden’s latest spill. As a fresh writer on the entertainment scene and a brand new LA transplant who’d taken a leap of faith from the east coast, I was panicked and convinced my career was over before it had the chance to begin. But I fiercely believed my words and message in that piece, so I stuck to my guns. With little money, no backup job, and no family or network to lean on in a new city, I walked away from VH1. My message was far more important to me than pleasing some media execs or Chrissy Teigen.

I pulled myself up by the bootstraps to pivot and pursue red carpet reporting. I did more than pursue it. I made it mine. In a few years’ time, I’d launched my own site, contributed to mainstream outlets, flew around the world to talk to Marvel and DC Comics stars on their blockbuster movie sets, and attend Hollywood’s most exclusive events. I was grinding toward my ultimate goal, and while I wasn’t there yet, things were flowing, work was steady, and doors were opening.

I finally was in a groove when a little thing called Covid hit. The pandemic annihilated Hollywood and the entertainment business. My work opportunities had disappeared faster than our society’s current capacity for common sense. I stuck it out for a few months before I decided to pack it up and move back home with my folks. The ego hit of going from the Oscars to my suburban cul-de-sac couch haunted me daily. Luckily, picking up and starting over wasn’t something I was unused to.

It was there that my video podcast Cancel Me, Baby! was born. What started as a weekly video show where I’d give solo riffs on pop culture from my mom’s living room, has grown into a robust platform diving into and making sense of our cultural chaos, getting high-profile guests like A-listers, media thought leaders, artists, political forces, influencers, and business and tech renegades. From sleeping on a pullout couch to waitressing and all the in between, I yet again find myself in a new city, working relentlessly at building and seeing my vision to fruition.

By the way… while was home with my parents during the pandemic, Chrissy Teigen’s cyber bullying was exposed and the controversy around it was massive. It was five years, nearly to the day, after my VH1 piece shakedown. I penned an Op-Ed published in USA Today sharing my own experience with Chrissy’s bullying in hindsight and larger view on celebrities, the media, and cancel culture — right in line and on brand with my show message. It’s not vindication, it’s resilience.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

The story goes that one of Van Gogh’s only paintings sold while he was alive was to his own brother. As creatives, we face rejection on a daily basis. We sit in coffee shops day after day plugging away at the potential of what could be. We may even be called crazy or accused of chasing a pipe dream.

The value creatives have in shaping our world and influencing our lives, evoking emotion, and both connecting and evolving the human spirit is unmatched. Its significance surpasses space and time. Yet creativity alone doesn’t pay the bills. It doesn’t provide health insurance, a swanky apartment, the financial freedom to travel, or even spring for the side of guacamole (unless you’re really living on the edge, you wild thing, you).

But when we’re performing in our innate purpose and living out the passion we feel in our bones, we can’t see anything else. We don’t need to. The security of a regular paycheck and a 401k are suddenly as irrelevant as your Myspace. And we feel alive.

People and loved ones see us struggle, put ourselves on the line, and risk everything day in and day out. They don’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense. But we know it’s why we get out of bed in the morning and what brings fire to our beings. It’s in our blood and it’s who we are. No appealing income of a steady 9-to-5 or amount of guacamole can change that.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. Our society has arguably never been more divided, but that is the single element that unifies us creatives — both past and present.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://open.spotify.com/show/38osUQBfW6qm649xMiJZY5
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/talktometaylor/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-ferber-b65a1745/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taylorferber?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRg9gJS5iFHvoRzdDvBCamw