ASIAN AMERICAN
PERSONALITIES

CONTACT US | ADVERTISING INFO

© 1996-2013 Asian Media Group Inc
No part of the contents of this site may be reproduced without prior written permission.

GOLDSEA | ASIAMS.NET | ASIAN AMERICAN PERSONALITIES

THE PERKY ONE
PAGE 3 OF 4

GS: How are you able to keep up with your studies at USC with your 40-hour workweek at Channel One?
LL: It's incredibly difficult. I'm up all the time 'til 2 in the morning doing papers. I rarely, rarely go out. I've almost completely eliminated my social life. But I have a really good time at work. It's fun. I don't think I'll regret anything because I don't think I've sacrificed anything. I can party all I want when I finish school. I have plenty of time to do that, but right now I co-anchor a show that's seen by 8 million teenagers every single day. To me, that's fun. I love to be here, whether I'm doing homework or whether I'm partaking in the show. It's good to be here. If they need to send me out on an assignment, I'm here. I just like being here. I know that sounds weird that I actually like being at work. I really do.

GS: We understand that you get called back to reshoot the show in the event of a late-breaking news development. How often has that happened to you?
LL: I got called back once. I was in Washington D.C. and Zoe Baird had withdrawn her nomination as attorney general and this happened at one in the morning East Coast time. We were asleep, and we looked terrible. People here could tell. It was obvious that we had gotten up from a deep sleep.

CONTINUED BELOW

GS: How do you deal with making mistakes during taping of the show?
LL: Everyone makes mistakes, but they're still keeping 30 people waiting. That's what makes me feel bad. I'm paid to do a job and I'm paid to go down there and read those lines and inform students and I don't like to keep them waiting. Of course it gets frustrating. We want to sound as conversational as possible. We want to tell Billy Bob in class that President Clinton just lifted this trade embargo against Vietnam. We're just telling them that.

Lisa Ling in Moscow's Red Square as a Channel One reporter in 1993.

GS: Do you have an imaginary classroom in your mind when you're doing the show?
LL: I absolutely have a classroom in mind and that classroom is filled with the students from my old high school. I think, What would my friends in high school think of this? Would they be able to digest this? How comprehensible will it be? Will I look like a geek? Students are extremely critical. They are really, really critical people. There are times when I think to myself that if I was sitting in the classroom I would have thought I was acting geeky. And sometimes we get some mail that says, "Why can't you not act so peppy?" I used to wear these black velvet chokers and I got so much mail about that. This was before they became trendy. I was on Prodigy and my chokers were the topic of conversation: "Did you see that choker that Lisa Ling was wearing today?" "I wonder if you cut that choker off her head would fall off?" Some people would defend me, they would say, "Why are you making fun of it? They're cool. You must not be stylish." But other people woul say, "But she wears them all the time." It's hilarious.

GS: What other kind of feedback do you get from the kids?
LL: After the earthquake [in Northridge, California], we taped some of the damage at my house, and a week later I got a check from a class. They pooled their money together and wrote me a check for $22.98 for Lisa Ling's Earthquake Relief Fund. I started crying. To actually take the time out to write someone that you don't even physically know, although they know me because they see me every day, just because they're concerned about my house, you know? I'm going to donate it to the Red Cross on their behalf and I think I'm going to do that on camera. It's so touching.

GS: Where was the school located?
LL: I believe it was from New Hampshire or Pennsylvania, somewhere on the East Coast. The letter was so cute, it went, "We know that you don't make as much money as the big network people so we thought we wanted to do this because we felt bad." It was so sincere. PAGE 4

| PAGE 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |