Back in the '90s, Evanston-born broadcaster Jenniffer Weigel, who just started a new live interview series at the Wilmette Theatre, had her sights set on being an actress.
“I thought I was going to be Julia Roberts and eventually move out to California,” she said. “But then I discovered I was really good at interviews—I could tell stories.”
Coming from a long line of media-makers—her father was sportscaster Tim Weigel—Weigel said the world of media “was all [she] knew.” After graduating from the University of Illinois, Weigel came back to Chicago and started doing voiceover work for radio. Eventually she landed a gig on WGN, doing entertainment reports for the morning news. It was then that she realized she could “get stuff out of people” and not ask the regular old questions.
“Never did I ask stuff like, ‘So, what’d you like about this character?’” said Weigel. “It was more like, ‘Who was your drama teacher when you were 14?’ I wanted to ask obscure questions that no one was asking, so I could get answers that seemed different and fresh.”
It was a good job, she said, but one part about television interviews frustrated her.
“You had to tell somebody’s life story in two minutes,” she said. “I hated that. I really missed the long format where you’re not interrupted every other second.”
Weigel turned to writing and eventually wrote a book called Stay Tuned, realizing she could tell stories again. And when Sam Samuelson from the Wilmette Theatre suggested a monthly interview series called “Wednesdays with Weigel,” Weigel jumped at the chance.
“It’s like radio on stage,” she said. “But it’s a deeper conversation you could ever get from radio, much less TV. It’s really a glorious thing that you can’t find anywhere.”
The first show of the series, which took place last month, featured an interview with Richard Roeper. For Weigel, it felt less like a performance or a formal interview than “having a conversation in a gigantic livingroom.
“It’s a great way of pulling back the curtain on someone’s professional life,” she said. “And the audience has the opportunity to ask questions. It’s very inclusive—we’re talking to everybody.”
What surprised Weigel about the first show was that parents brought their teenagers.
“A lot of kids don’t want to hang out with their parents at that age,” she said. “But what I was not expecting at all was that [the show] is a great thing for kids who are just about to start their careers to hear other people’s stories. Nobody has a cookie cutter way of getting to where they want to be.”
The next “Wednesdays with Weigel” on April 28 will be with two-time author John St. Augustine. A pioneer of Oprah radio, St. Augustine has some interesting personal stories of his own.
“He’s a fascinating guy who’s literally walked to Michigan and back,” Weigel said. “And he’s died twice—once where he was electrocuted, once in a car accident—and come back to life. Anyone with that backstory, I kinda want to have a conversation with them.”
Weigel said the next interviewees could be anyone from a performer to an author to an executive chef. She added that she also wants to highlight some local North Shore personalities who aren’t necessarily famous.
“There are a lot of people in the area making huge impacts, and just because they’re not on a TV show doesn’t mean that they won’t be great conversationalists,” she said.
Weigel has an affection for her native town in particular, saying that Evanston “has something in the water.”
She explains, “I feel like I could be in a dinky little town in Massachusetts and I’ll run into someone who went to Evanston Township High School. They’re everywhere. It’s a network, sort of like, ‘Oh, okay, you’re one of my people.’ We look out for each other.”
--by Nona Willis Aronowitz, TribLocal.com reporter
