We spend years watching famous people in roles, on stages, and in the press, until we have assembled a whole character for them in our heads and mistaken it for knowing them. We don’t know them. And the truth is that if you knew how some of them actually behaved, you would not want to support them at all. I’ve spent years close enough to the biggest names in music and entertainment to learn that the size of someone’s fame tells you almost nothing about the size of their heart. Sometimes the two run in perfect opposition.
Let me start with the woman who taught me that.
“For today, I’m just Julie.”
Several years ago, I was brought in to help produce a gala at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. It starred Keith Urban, Roger Daltrey, and Sam Smith, among others, in honor of Julie Andrews, built around the theme of protecting your vocal health.
I’d had a couple of brief calls with Julie’s manager beforehand. But no direct interaction. I had no idea what to expect.
The day of the event, word came over my headset: “Julie Andrews is arriving”. I went to the door, flanked by a security detail that felt roughly presidential. She walked in, and I greeted her as if she were royalty.
In that unmistakable, joyous voice, she said, “Oh, you’re Steve Schonberg. I’m so glad to meet you. I’d love a few private minutes with you. May we?” I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. I know how difficult stars can be, and I had no idea what she was about to say. We headed backstage together, and sat down.
What she wanted to tell me changed how I’ve thought about fame ever since.
With genuine respect for me and the work I’d done, she said she understood how the world sees her, as Mary Poppins, as Maria from “The Sound of Music,” the star of “Victor/Victoria,” Broadway’s “Camelot” and “My Fair Lady,” and so so much more. But she wanted me to know that for today, for me, she was “just Julie.” Drop the game. Just Julie. She told me she’d recently had hip surgery and was still recovering, and said, in effect: wherever you need me, just tell me. Take my hand, and I’ll be there.
And it worked out perfectly, because the night moved fast. There were moments I needed her on stage in a flash. “Julie, are you ready?” “Here I am, Steve!” She’d rise, and I’d walk her out into the wings. At one point she told me something I’ve never forgotten: “Besides everything you recognize me for, I come from a vaudeville background as a small child. We worked hard, and we’d do anything for an appearance.” That resonated with me more than she probably knew.
She was wonderful, and we even developed an inside joke that day. One of the doctors tied to the charity was famously long-winded, so ahead of the show we met about helping keep the concert from running too long. Julie and I invented a little cut-the-neck motion, the universal wrap-it-up signal, and she promised to help me deploy it. Sadly, it failed spectacularly: the whole thing ran three hours with no intermission. Not my fault. But that’s another story. I will say, we enjoyed quite a good laugh at our desperate but failed attempt.
The other side of the hallway
Here’s what fascinates me. On one hand you had Julie Andrews, arguably one of the greatest and most celebrated stars of all time, beloved not just for her talent but for what she means to British and worldwide culture. On the other hand, you had a few people who behaved like the exact opposite.
Roger Daltrey (lead singer of the iconic rock band “The Who”), if I’m being honest, acted like a spoiled child. Dr. Oz, at the time the most famous physician in America and someone I’d worked with for years, was there to interview the stars for an extensive segment for his TV show. Backstage, Roger flatly refused. “Who’s this Dr. Oz?,” he said dismissively with his unmistakable working-class London accent. “I don’t have time.” Although he had committed to it previously in a one-on-one phone conversation between us less than a week before.
I went into pure crisis-management mode and, frankly, spoke to him the way you’d speak to a toddler, because I’d realized that the more I pushed back the worse he’d get. In the calmest, most patient voice I could manage, I reminded him: Dr. Oz is the most famous doctor in the country, and you agreed to this interview. If you’d like, I can tell him you’ve decided not to do it, though that would mean going back on a commitment you made.
The entire walk to the interview room was a stream of vile curses. But he did calm down. That behavior sat in such stark contrast to Julie’s grace that it’s really the heart of what I want to convey here.
Keith Urban, one of the biggest country stars in the world, simply closed his dressing-room door and never came out until he had to perform. Which struck me, because in one small hallway at Alice Tully Hall you had four dressing rooms holding Roger Daltrey, Keith Urban, Julie Andrews, and Sam Smith, and generally they chose not to interact at all. It tells you everything about ego, and about who people really are once they go from realizing they have a talent to deciding how to treat everyone around them. Sam Smith, however, was incredibly sweet and coyishly asked me if I would introduce him to Julie, and I happily obliged. He was absolutely beaming after a ten or so minute long chat.
It was a busy, busy night, with other performers too. But what stayed with me most came at the very end. The concert had run long, and Julie, in her eighties, needed to leave a little early. The word came over my headset: “Julie needs to see you now.” I ran backstage as fast as I could, out of breath, and there she was, saying, “Dear, everything’s okay. I just wanted to say thank you.” She put her hands around my waist, thanked me for bringing the evening together, gave me a beautiful hug, and asked, “Would you mind walking me out?” Which I did together with her fantastic long-time personal manager, Steve Sauer. I felt we made a truly authentic connection in just a single day of work.
The pattern holds
It wasn’t only Julie. The same grace shows up again and again in the icons who never learned to act like, well, jerks. Gloria Estefan, who fled Communist Cuba as a toddler and went on to inspire the crossover of Latin music into American pop, a bridge that essentially did not exist before her. Once, she and I were in a back booth at a Manhattan restaurant and the place was mobbed to just get near her. Her then manager, who has sadly since passed, told me she had to leave but didn’t have enough security to get through the crowd. I’m a big guy, so we flanked her on either side as we pushed through the crowd. But, Gloria, being as authentic and friendly as you can imagine, insisted on stopping every few steps to greet people – “One second! My friends!”, complicating our efforts to get her out safely. It was an effort, and makes for a great story. Further, I was very touched to receive an email from her shortly after thanking me for the help. Barry Manilow, whose team ran me through three screening phone calls before our first interview, picked up the phone himself and was instantly easy and kind, and told me the one thing he wanted in retirement was to just watch Judge Judy. We shared a great laugh. Different people, same tell: the bigger they truly are, the less they need you to know it.
What it all adds up to
Here is the thread. Roger Daltrey is an icon, and he behaved terribly. Julie Andrews is an icon, and she held my hand. The fame is similar. The character is a choice, and you almost never get to see the choice from where you sit as a fan.
That’s the part worth sitting with, especially for anyone who builds public images for a living. We meet these people as characters we assembled ourselves, from screens and stages and press, and we mistake that assembly for knowing them. We don’t. The only place the real person shows up is backstage, in how they treat the people who will never be in the photo: the producer on the headset, the doctor waiting for an interview, the team that turns a talented human being into an icon.
Because that is the thing the best of them understand. No one is a brand by themselves. The persona took years and it took a team, and a star who honors that, who treats those people with respect, is telling you exactly who they are. Julie knew it. She’s spent a lifetime being adored, and what she wanted me to know was that for that day, she was just Julie. That is not the smallest thing about her. It might be the biggest.
The Higher Story is a series about looking past the surface to the truth underneath: how that shapes the way we see the world, meet our challenges, and, in marketing and communications, do work that lands with more honesty and impact.
Originally published on LinkedIn.