Journalist Eileen Shapiro has gone from writing Star Trek fan zines as a teen to rubbing shoulders with the stars through work with publications like Get Out. I asked her about the trials of phone interviews, intense crushes on Spock and Adam Ant, and running WorldStar PR with business partner Jimmy Star.

Edmund Barker: I’m a big sci-fi guy so you might guess what my first question is—I was looking through your resume and I saw one of your first writing gigs was the book The Star Trek Medical Reference Manual. Now, what was it like to compile all that info in a pre-internet time?

Eileen Shapiro: You know that’s a very good question. It not only was pre-internet time…myself and the guy that drew the pictures, we were only sixteen! So what happened was, there was a store in Manhattan we called the Star Trek store, but was called The Federation Trading Post East. There was also one in California, but we were at the one in New York. We [my friends and I] went to all the conventions—some really cool Star Trek and sci-fi conventions. We all worked in this store, and we also wrote for a magazine called The Giant Star Trek Poster Book. So all of these books were coming out, and then Valentine Books approached us and said, “Listen, can you guys do a medical reference manual?” So we compiled all the information—and I used to do trivia questions on television at the conventions, because I was really, really into Star Trek! And the guy that owned the store happened to be my boyfriend, and we both liked Star Trek and it was perfect. So we compiled all the information…and it took about three or four months! I mean, we had to make up a lot of the information too. We had to make up a new element chart for them to use. I was also a nursing student, so I was lucky; I was going to Long Island University then. I was really, really good in anatomy, so I would describe the pictures to Jack Mandel, who actually drew them, and that’s how we got the anatomy of all the aliens—and from the actual Star Trek episodes. We figured out Vulcan anatomy and Romulan anatomy…as a matter of fact, years and years later when they did Into Darkness, the Star Trek movie, there was a scene where they needed Vulcan anatomy for whatever. And they used the book as a reference!

EB: That’s incredible. You’re lucky that something you were invested in as a young fan had some overlap with your medical school experience.

ES: Yeah! Yeah, oh my God. The reason they asked me to write the book was because I was a nursing student, and because I loved Star Trek. So Valentine wound up distributing the book, and Paramount licensed it. It became kind of official, but the thing is—there are two volumes, a white book that we actually published ourselves that’s really rare, and then Valentine went and distributed it [a new print] and changed it to the regular Star Trek logo that we weren’t allowed to use before. It was kinda cool. It was all over the place, too! A lot of people still look it up on eBay and they buy it.

EB: Yeah, a collector’s item. I just saw one eBay that’s like ninety-five dollars. You’ve made something very valuable, that’s interesting to think.

ES: Yeah!


EB
: Was also gonna ask about that Star Trek poster book, was it like a magazine for fan letters, or what sort of content was in it?

ES: Alright, it came out once a month, and each month it focused on a different topic. I think there were sixteen that came out altogether, and for example, one was a technical focus—which I did not write, by the way, because I’m not technical even to this day. One was a women’s one where it had things all about Uhura, and just the women of Star Trek. That one I wound up being the editor for. And then there was a Spock one, and one where I actually interviewed Leonard Nimoy—not as Spock, but as Leonard Nimoy! So each one had a theme, and what happened was you would go through the book and there was a main article, and then you’d open it again and there were four other articles, and then you’d open it again and there was a giant poster. So it was like the coolest magazine on the planet!

EB: Now I will say, you could probably kick my butt at Trek trivia. I’d call myself a casual fan, not a superfan, but my dad is a huge fan of the original going back to childhood, so he’s made sure I’ve seen some of the most iconic ones like The Trouble with Tribbles and City on the Edge of Forever.

ES: Star Trek was so far before its time. And it’s lasted so long, you know, people still love it.

EB: Yeah. I was gonna say, casual fan of Star Trek, but I’ve been a big fan of Doctor Who for a long time, and it was Doctor Who Magazine that really got me into sci-fi magazines, it made me appreciate the behind-the-scenes interviews with directors or actors. It sounds kind of similar to what you were doing in Star Trek magazines.

ES: Yeah, kinda sorta.

EB: Was it your experience interviewing people from Trek like Nimoy that made you think, “hey, I like interviews, I can make something of this!”

ES: Well, I had like a girl crush on Leonard Nimoy, not only as Spock but as Leonard Nimoy himself. He was the first celebrity I ever interviewed, and I remember sitting on the bathroom floor—because I wanted it to be really quiet!—and I had a tape recorder, because that’s how you did things in those days. I had not a cellphone but a home phone you could put on speaker, and that’s how I interviewed him for the first time! Oh my God, the interview went about an hour, and then I met him shortly after when he was doing Equus on Broadway, and he came over to me and said, “I remember you, you did the really lengthy interview!” But it was a great interview.

You have to remember that at the conventions we actually hung out with these people. If William Shatner came we hung out with him. If Dr. McCoy came we hung out with him…he wasn’t really that nice though, DeForest Kelley. And Nichelle Nichols, we actually went with her to the Playboy Club because her son was performing. We all shared a room, we had a lot of fun that night. They were all cool people in real life.

EB: That sounds pretty neat, that for the stars of your favorite show you became almost like an entourage. Got to hang out with your heroes.

ES: And they were our heroes. They were totally our heroes.

EB: More than just tv stars you like, but people you sort of look up to because of their characters.

ES: Totally. But the thing was, Leonard Nimoy really was like Spock.  I mean, in real life! William Shatner, not so much.

EB: Yeah, everything I’ve heard about Nimoy made him sound like a nice sophisticated guy.

ES: He was, he was. I actually went to meet his parents in at their home in Boston once, and they were very much like him—very serious people! And Leonard Nimoy was also very serious, but he was very nice and kind. I met his whole family, his brother and everything. He was just a r eally nice man, and talented as anything.

EB: Well, my next question is—and we could keep talking about Star Trek and science fiction forever and ever—one of your other books is called Waiting for Adam, and it’s about your years-long quest to interview Adam Ant. What was that whole thing like, and what makes Adam so dear to you?

ES: Well, again, I was a fangirl! I was a fangirl back in the eighties, and at that time I’d had two kids already—and I took them to this [Adam Ant] concert, where there was a huge moshpit. And I would take my eight month-old baby there!

As for Adam, it was that there was just something different about him…I don’t remember just what attracted me to him. But the fact that he wore make-up was part of it, I thought he was courageous for it. But he disappeared for about seven years, and then all of a sudden he reappeared. And with that I decided that I was going to, no matter what it takes, get an interview with him. So I was writing at the time for Get Out magazine, which is actually a gay magazine. And it’s not that I didn’t interview cool people—I got to interview lots of great people like Diana Ross, Boy George, Melissa Etheridge, Brooke Shields, Spandau Ballet…I really did interview like the coolest people on the planet.

I had a bucket list, and number one on the list was Rick Springfield, number two was Adam, and number three was Billy Idol. So Rick Springfield had actually seen an interview I had done with Cyndi Lauper, and he came to me and asked for an interview. I actually went to interview him a couple of times, so he was my first after Leonard Nimoy, years and years later he was my first idol that I got to interview. And it was great, he was just like I though he’d be. When you have an idol and you’re really hoping they’ll be nice, you don’t want the image of them ruined in your mind. Rick was exactly like I thought he would be, and that was kinda cool. And then I wanted to interview Adam—which took six years, by the way! Six years! I went to three continents following him, every concert that he did. And I would’ve gone to these things whether I was interviewing him or not. I went to England once overnight to see him. Seriously. Went to England, saw the concert, and then got right back on the plane. So I’d written to his publicist and asked if I could get an interview, she saw that I wrote for Get Out magazine and said, “weeell, Adam did his press already, and if you want to review a copy of his album when it comes out, we’ll send you one.” And she was like trying to bash me, so I said, “you know what, I’m just gonna go directly to his management.”

And the management answered me—his name is Adam Roth, we became good friends later on—he said, “yeah, we’ll get you an interview with Adam,” but that never happened. For whatever reason. Then I started writing for HuffPost and Louder Than WarLouder Than War is actually the number forty-one most influential pop culture publication on the planet. So, I started writing for that, and the guy who owns it, named John Robb, is actually friends with Adam. So, I asked him if he could get me an interview with Adam, and he said, “well, Adam’s a little bit strange, sometimes he says yes and sometimes he doesn’t.” In the meantime, the publicist I didn’t like sent me a book about another artist and asked me to write about them. So, I said I would do, cause it may be a way in eventually. And I wound up becoming friends with the publicist, and we ended up traveling together to England and France and wherever Adam was playing at the time. She ended up staying with me in New York, and she actually finally got me an interview with Adam this year, he was gonna do the Kings of the Wild Frontier tour and they needed press. Now I had met Adam before that, I’d met him a couple of times before I got to interview him. So he already knew who I was, and when I interviewed him it was kinda like talking to a friend. So I was given thirty minutes—which is a long time for an interview when you’re transcribing, believe me I know! Especially when they speak with an accent, it’s rough.

EB: He’s a Londoner, right?

ES: Yeah, exactly, he speaks soft Cockney, so it was a little harder, but I interviewed him. He loved the questions, and I was given a half hour and told that if he likes the questions, he’ll let you go longer. But if he doesn’t like them he’s going to cut you off. So an hour and a half later, I had no more questions to ask him, and I had to cut him off! I said, listen, I don’t wanna take up any of your time anymore! And then I went to interview him again, via email, and I wound up meeting him many, many times after that. It was great! And the only one [on the list] I haven’t interviewed is Billy Idol. So I guarantee you, Edmund, I will interview him!

EB: I’m sure you’ll get that chance.

ES: I’ve met him, several times. I mean, I interviewed so many people on the way up to meet Adam—Emma Stone, Billy Porter, Tiffany Haddish…

EB: Sounds like you were almost a detective following someone’s trail to try and get to Adam.

ES: Well, I had to get enough cred so when I asked him he wouldn’t say, “who is that?” The more famous people I interviewed, the better my reputation would get. In the meantime, I never had a bad interview, ever. I never had anyone who was terrible. Even Howard Bloom—I know that you’ve interviewed him and he’s awesome. And I actually also interviewed him…the cool thing is, he was like the biggest publicist on the planet, and then he asked me and Jimmy to represent him. How cool is that? The biggest publicist that ever lived, asks you to represent him. It was just amazing, it was cool.

EB: What you were saying about the Adam Ant interview going for ninety minutes, that’s kind of what happened with my interview of Bloom. At the end of it was just kind of like, phew! Gonna be exhausting putting this all together.

ES: Same thing for me, it took me a week to put that interview together. And I usually bang out an interview in a night. I do an interview and then write it up, because otherwise it hangs in your head, you know?

Now, do you know who Dionne Warwick is? You sound pretty young.

EB: Yeah, I know who she is.

ES: I interviewed her five times, and matter of fact I’m interviewing her Thursday—it’s her eightieth birthday and she’s putting out some kind of album.

But I’m lucky. I’ve interviewed people all over the world, really famous people, and the cool thing is when you interview them, they’re just like regular people. Which you forget for a minute when you are like, “Oh my God, I’m interviewing Adam Ant or Emma Stone.”

EB: Yeah, when it’s someone with a persona like Adam’s it’s easy to forget they’re just a regular person.

ES: Any of these people. I’m good friends with Fred Schneider from The B-52’s, he’s a good interview, a really good interview. But you have to ask him the right questions, cause if you don’t, he gets mad! You can’t just ask him questions he’s heard over and over again, you have to be really creative with it.

EB: Yeah, I’m trying to think of what an annoying question he’s heard over and over again would be. Maybe, “is the love shack a real place?”

ES: Yeah, right? He has actually performed “Love Shack” for the last thirty years at every single concert. He just put out two new songs too…one is “The World Is Messed Up” or “The Earth Is Messed Up,” which is cool. It’s a little political!

EB: I’d love to see B-52’s someday when they start touring again.

ES: As soon as this over, I think they’re gonna go again…if you ever wanna interview really famous people like Fred, I can do that for you.

EB: Well…post punk is already my favorite genre. I am already a big Bow Wow Wow and Adam Ant fan, I love their innovative sound. I love B-52’s also, so I could come up with twenty questions easy!

ES: And if you interview Will [from Bow Wow Wow] you are going to love him. Worked with people like Adam and Rachel Stranz as well…he’s just a really cool person anyway. Everyone in Adam’s band just became really good friends, and after every concert we’d go out, all of us.

EB: A great rock band where everyone still gets along, ya don’t always see that!

ES: Yes, correct! Good point. That’s actually a really good point, I have interviewed bands that don’t get along. Spandau Ballet, that was an interesting one.

EB: They didn’t get along? Didn’t realize that. Makes me wanna look up that interview.

ES: They were in court for twenty years against each other. And they just threw the lead singer out of the band recently.

EB: Oh dear…I didn’t know any of this. My next question, going back to Leonard Nimoy…are there any other moments in your life where you really saw the opportunity to go into PR and said, “yeah, this is for me”?

ES: Well, I’ll tell you what happened. You don’t really make a lot of money going into writing. Most magazines can’t afford to pay, and the ones that can afford to pay aren’t really freelance, you gotta be on the staff. And I was never really a staff person, so I didn’t really make a lot of money. But I had connections, I knew every PR agent on the planet because I did so many interviews. I still have a lot of their phone numbers in their book, directly. So I decided with Jimmy, who does the show but who also doesn’t make any money from it, that if we wanted to keep doing what we love doing, we’d better find a way to make some money. So, between his connections and my connections we decided to form WorldStar PR. The first year we had a lot of indie artists, then we started to get some really famous people like Karyn White, Scott Page, and Steven Perkins…and now we have like a whole crew with Leland Sklar, Howard Bloom, Mickey Burns. We have super, super famous people.  The more people we seem to come into contact with, the bigger they get…that’s kinda cool. We also have indie artists that’re great, they’re amazing. And we’re also a lot less expensive than most PR companies, because we first started this to help artists who couldn’t afford super high PR firms that charge thousands a month. We charge what I think is a modest fee, and give all kinds of opportunities. Today, or tomorrow actually, I’m gonna interview Rick Wakeman from Yes. That’s a big deal. And Soho Johnny, one of our fly-ins, did a virtual concert on November 24th. We had over sixty-five people in that concert, everyone from Slash to Ozzy Osbourne to Tommy James.

EB: Watching the virtual show or performing?

ES: They are actually performing. It took place on the 24th, and at your time would have been four o’clock in the afternoon. It was a six-hour concert, and it was a blast.

EB: Well, my next question is, who is an artist or celeb today—maybe who just came up in the last ten years—who you’d love to interview?

ES: That’s a really good question. Lemme see…trying to think of people I haven’t interviewed that I would really love to. I would love to interview Billie Eilish, because she’s really different, and because before she was big I had a friend in a record company whose daughter was friends with her. And I talked with her, she was in her bedroom and we FaceTimed. She was with her brother writing songs, and I didn’t realize at the time she was gonna be THE Billie Eilish, but I’d like to interview her. And I’ve interviewed Lizzo, but let me think…I would love to interview Jason DeRulo, that’s who I’d love to interview.

EB: All interesting choices. Billie, I’m sure, you could ask a lot just about her production style and how she mixed the new Bond theme in her bedroom or something.

ES: Yeah, and she’s just so young and cool. Lizzo was great as well.

EB: I’ll be looking up that interview real soon. Thank you for giving me all this good material!

Photo Credits: Billy Hess

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