The Press Box - TMZ's Van Lathan on His Confrontation With Kanye West | Jam Session (Ep. 463)

Episode Date: May 2, 2018

The Ringer's Juliet Litman and Amanda Dobbins discuss what led to Kanye West's latest controversial statement (2:13). Then, TMZ producer Van Lathan joins the show to discuss his confrontation with Kanye on 'TMZ Live' (15:48) and what happened after the cameras went off (30:33). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of Avengers content for you. Boy, do we. I can't recommend it enough. And meanwhile, while you're reading, listen to one of the newest podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. In fact, it is the newest. It's the Dave Chang Show, the famous chef of Momofuku and Major Domo fame. He is talking about what it was like to launch his new restaurant, Major Domo, here in L.A. He's talking to Bill Simmons about that. Later on in the season, he'll have some really exciting and cool guests. Chang, in my opinion, is one of the most exciting and interesting people in culture right now. I love Dugly Delicious.

And if you did too, I highly recommend listening to The David Chang Show. And before we get into Jam Session, as always, let me tell you about Hotel Tonight. Hotel Tonight partners with awesome hotels to help them sell their unsold rooms, which means you get amazing deals. All takes is 10 seconds, just three taps and a swipe to both. book. No long, endless list of a zillion hotel choices. Hotel Tonight only shows you the best deals at the best hotels. It's perfect whether you're a planner or like to leave things to the very last minute. And with Hotel Tonight's H.T. Perks program, the more you book, the better

the deals the deals. So, start scoring amazing deals at incredible hotels and download the Hotel Tonight app now. Welcome to Jam Session. I'm Juliet Littman. I'm Amanda Dobbins. We are deep in the Kanye zone. It's kind of like being in the Twilight Zone, but perhaps worse. The Twilight Zone seems like more fun. Yeah. There's really only one celebrity story right now, and it is Kanye and his, he is certainly dominating the conversation. Sure.

And bringing a lot of people in in ways that I think, can I speak for you? Sure. We're both pretty. Is horrified the right word? Horrified? I was like irritated last week. Now I was just sort of like, why are we giving this guy so much time? Man, he's such an idiot.

Now I'm just sort of like tired. Exhausted. I was thinking the same. Exhausted. Dismade. Yes. I wish it would end. Totally. I don't agree with it. Let's talk a little bit about what's happened. Sure. Which is almost two weeks ago now. He started tweeting. The Twitter, the Twitter came back. Yes. And in the past, Kanye's Twitter has been a source of, he always really, really used Twitter to express himself. He did. And I now think fondly of like the days when he would just tweet about. water bottles on airplanes. But the Twitter came back and it started in sort of like an abstract philosophy way. Like he had just read a freshman textbook. Yeah. Or he was like inspired by Westworld. Do you have a question the nature of your reality? Exactly. And it pretty quickly turned

political. And by political we mean that he started endorsing Candace Owens, who is a far right thinker. And then showed up wearing a MAGA hat and is endorsing Donald Trump. He said on TMZ yesterday. I want more about that a minute. I love Donald Trump. Yeah. He said it regularly. And, you know, as people react to him, which is kind of is always looking for reaction, that has been his art form well before this. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. But as people responded negatively to that, he typically dug his heels in and has started doing, you know, we should talk about what it is. Is it a performance art project?

Is it Kanye just being Kanye? Is it stupidity? Is it? I think he is a provocateur. Like, I think he says things to get a reaction. However, I also think supporting Donald Trump, finding humor in Trump, and sort of like rejecting other people's logic is completely in line and complimentary to wanting to be in the Kardashian.

family, which he wanted and got. Like, he is fascinated, I think, by, like, these perverted myths of, like, the self-made celebrity, basically. And it's important to note that his, as so far as he's explained, his interest in Trump, which, like, it's not the strongest explanation that I've ever read. But it is not anything to do with policies. No. He's endorsed it as that's a self-made guy and a celebrity. And if he can be president, I can be president to it. revolves entirely around narcissism and attention.

Yeah. And he's almost, I think we were all reading that into the affiliation for a while, but he has essentially said as much himself at this point. Yeah, he's, he much like the Kardashians and Trump, like is interested in having an impact and like being heard and getting attention. And he's getting all of those things right now. So this is like successful for him. And what is so frustrating is he doesn't, he's convinced himself that history and context

don't matter. And that is like the underlying threat of Trumpism to me. Yes. And so that's why I think I'm like having a hard time processing all this because I actually find it like pretty horrifying and like the spread of a disease. Yes. So we should you kind of introduced phase two, phase three, phase four of of this saga, which was after about a week to a week and a half of surface level, surface levels not fair. I mean, he was provoking a lot of people. and saying a lot of unfounded things and posting a lot of screenshots from his friends with history that wasn't true.

Yesterday, he went to TMZ and as part of an interview, he starts theorizing on the reality of slavery. Yes. And I think we should just play the quote because I don't want to take out of context. And also, you don't want to speak those words. I really don't want to say it.

When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years, that's not like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years and it's all of y'all? You know, like, it's like we're mentally in prison. I like the word prison because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. It's like slavery, Holocaust, Holocaust Jews, slavery is blacks. So prison is something that unites us as one race, blacks and whites being one race, that we're one with a human race. This is not good.

And this to your, this is not good. I mean, it's... He also is spreading a fake Harriet Tubman quote. Yes. I think he doesn't know it's fake. I'm going to assume he thinks it's like a real quote from her. And the quote is, I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves and then

attributed that to Harry Tubman. She did not say that. That is not a real quote. That's like, it's infuriating. This was also, by the way, a few hours. He tweeted that a few hours after an interview with Charlemagne went up where he talks about how he switched to Bitcoin because he didn't like the Harriet Tubbin $20 bill. Yes. So just to give some examples of the thought process and the level of thought and the basis and the basis in history or fact.

Also throughout he's been like, I don't read. So what you isolated of, we've just kind of, we've turned from being a provocateur. and being Kanye, which is kind of how I felt a little. I disagreed and was dismayed last week, but this week we're just in a fake news disaster Trump zone. And I like, I want off the ride. I agree with you. This is like good marketing but bad PR, I would say, in stark contrast to his wife, Kim

Kardashian-West, excuse me, who went on Ellen this week to address like all of these, the hurricanes in the Kardashian universe. Yes. She addressed Tristan Thompson and Chloe Kardashian saying it's fucked up. Yes. She played a weird game with Ellen where Ellen showed her pictures of her and Kanye together, and she had to say if he was happy or not happy because he always looks the same in pictures. And honestly, watching her fumble through, like, explaining his thinking was kind of uncomfortable.

I was surprised that they agreed to it and it didn't insist on cutting it. From context clues about which Kanye tweets they reference, it seems like this is pretty, this was. was taped before. Yes. Certainly before this week. It was taped on Friday. It was taped the Friday before the Monday in which it aired. Even then, I agree she looks uncomfortable.

She does not seem as confident in the PR spend that she has been sent to do. Yeah. For a while, she was defending his right to have his own opinions and like him to be like a free thinker. And she also chimed to correct people who were just immediately attributing all of this to mental illness. kind of undermining mental illness, which I will always appreciate. And I think we should always be responsible how we're talking about Kanye and anyone else. So I agree with you. It really was not Kim.

It didn't seem like she had control of the conversation or the situation in the way that we've come to expect from them. She also is usually in a position where she's answering questions about something that's happened on the show. Or it's usually like follow-ups to a saga that's already played out. but this was something that was happening in real time. Yeah. And that, I think, put her in kind of an unfair position. Actually, I don't think it's unfair because this is of her own making. But in an unfamiliar situation for her where something is happening and there's not like the final results or they haven't like decided on how this is going to end.

Right. Like I think the decisions are made on Tristan Thompson. He's out. So like it's okay for her to speak out against him. But I don't, I think that she probably does love Kanye. I think they truly are married. And so I think it's a lot harder for her to be in the position to do. defend him and she did her best to try like on the show and she was weirdly sympathetic.

I don't know. It's a tough one. It's a tough one for her. It's not tough for us. I now like Kanye is out to me. It's still frustrating. Sure. I think a lot of people are frustrating.

And so yesterday on TMZ after the disastrous interview at, at some point Kanye turns to the newsroom and starts sailing at them. And so after Kanye turned to the newsroom, a TMZ producer named. named Van Lathen stood up and confronted Kanye. Yeah. And he really captured, I think, what a lot of people who, like Kanye, have been feeling and their frustration and disappointment in. And also kind of the basic facts of the situation. Yeah, very crucially, he said, like, you know, this is why I think you're wrong.

It was very specific to kind of the danger of Kanye spreading misinformation and also his comments about slavery. and then he was very specific of why that's problematic and dangerous and then he was like, and I am extremely hurt by this. And I think that hurt really gets at why this is such a big story because it's not just like any other celebrity

having like a meltdown or saying, being pro-Trump. It's not like that kind of shock, but I think there's such a large audience of people who really like respect Kanye's musical prowess and love his music and came along in their, in their, in their,

at a very meaningful moment. This feels like a betrayal. Yes. And I think that was a really pure expression of that. Sean Fantasy, you wrote about that for The Ringer as well. And that really gets very closely, I think, at why this is such a big deal. And it's because his work product was so beloved. It's not just him.

It's like it would be like if Steven Spielberg, I think, for a lot of people, was some kind of turned out to be questioning slavery and questioning the Holocaust. I mean, it actually is kind of similar because Spielberg has done so much Holocaust work. If he was to come out and be like, oh, we could, like, Jewish people could have done more to prevent this. Like, I think a lot of people would be heartbroken who, like, really love his movies and watch him at a formative time. And it's interesting.

I think a lot of people of a certain generation are taking this the hardest. And it's because Kanye's music got to them when they were a certain age. Yes. And Van really spoke to that. And lucky for us, we're going to speak to him. We're going to get to that shortly. But first, let's talk about today's sponsors. Alexa Dunn's brightly burning as a lush and enthralling, reimagining,

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next week tonight, or book next month tonight. All it takes is 10 seconds, just three taps and a swipe. No long, endless lists of a zillion hotel choices. Hotel Tonight only shows you the best deals at the best hotels. It's perfect whether you're a planner like me, or if you like to leave things to the very last minute.

And with Hotel Tonight's H.T. Perks program, the more you book, the better the deals get. Unlike other loyalty programs where you're trapped into staying at boring chain hotels. If you're looking for a spontaneous weekend getaway or a staycation at a hotel you've always wanted to stay at, or if you just want to let someone else make the bed tomorrow, which sounds great to me, Hotel Tonight has you covered. So, start scoring amazing deals at incredible hotels and download the Hotel Tonight app now. Do you feel that I'm feeling? Dude, do you feel that I'm being free and I'm thinking free? I actually don't think you're thinking anything.

I think what you're doing right now is actually the absence of thought. And the reason why I feel like that is because Kanye, you're entitled to your opinion. You're entitled to believe whatever you want. But there is fact and real world, real life consequence behind everything that you just said. And while you are making music and being an artist and living a life that you've earned,

By being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice. Frankly, I'm disappointed. I'm appalled. And, brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something to me that's not real. So joining us now is Van Lathan, producer from TMZ. Van, thank you so much for joining us. No problem. Absolutely no problem. My pleasure, guys.

I know that it's been an incredibly busy 24 hours for you, so we appreciate it. We want to ask you kind of do some broader Kanye talk and just kind of get your perspective on all of it. But I think first, I would just love to hear your version of yesterday and how that all came together. Like, if you could just kind of walk us through it a little. Because I think a lot of us just have a lot of questions about, you know, what happened. And go ahead, yeah. Yeah. So we do TMZ.

Okay. Oh, wow. Like, what time in the morning is that? This is maybe like 8.30. Okay. Wow, that's early. Okay. So 830.

We don't really do the show around that. Sure, yeah. Maybe like. Okay. So, hey, TMZ, I'm here. Everybody class. It's Kanye West. Sure.

We've brought on the people who they introduce you. Yeah, very political. You don't know who they are. So during the interview. Okay. And then that's kind of when things began. What's a normal day of filming the show? You're just kind of at your desk and you can hear what's going on, but there's no interaction?

Well, when you're not on it. In terms of TMZ live, like I have a camera in front of me and then I light and I have a red button. Any time I want to talk and chime in or something, I can push it and talk. Okay. So did you push the red button on this, or it was kind of. Kanye came to you guys. No. Okay. Well, our mics were down because it was going to be more of a conversation between Harvey and Charles and yay.

Okay. Okay. He turned around. Yeah. So that's 100% off the cuff from you, what we watched. I actually know I had an I-FB in my ear. Okay. I was getting the whole thing from Carl Rose. I mean, listen.

Okay, number one, that was funny. And that would be incredible. Number two, no, I just, I think, you know, you spoke for a lot of people and you nailed it on the head. And there are not a lot of people who would be able to just have anyone they admire, but especially Kanye, kind of come in front of them on the spot with, you know, some pretty wild quotes. And to be able to say what you said as succinctly as you did, I just think it's impressive. That's why I asked. I appreciate that. A lot of people have said that.

I wouldn't be able to do it. If I was measuring my life where you really have to, I want you to think about how easy it flowed out. like had it been somebody that and you knew exact. That's beautiful. I still don't think that's true, but I wish it was. I'm going to work towards it. How about that? I have such a basic question. Like, who did Kanye come with? Like, what's his team like?

He came with a couple people. The only people that I recognize, though, he came with Candace Owens. Oh, my God. I forgot about that. Yeah, he came with the young woman from Turning Point USA, who he's been using sort of as an interpreter, almost, because... Like, what's like your overarching theory of what's happening here? Like, is he just, like, speaking his mind in advance of a new album coming out? Is he...

Did he have some kind of awakening? Like, what are we witnessing right now? I think that the one thing that's made Kanye was compelling over the last 13 or 14 years is against... There's all... My favorite song. Right. It is a blow-by-blow of how...

That's so true. I love that moment when he was like, Taleb, going on tour with Taleb Kuli was really important for my career as a rapper. Like, he's always like... As a rapper. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, that's like a really important moment to him. After he crosses that hurdle, obviously things get a little bit political with, you know, the George Bush situation and things remember... With Nike, etc. Yeah. All of these guys was taking on constantly and invested. That's a very polite way of saying. Yeah, he's got no information. Like, he's got no facts. Right. And so if you're going to speak to which is still, I'll let you know, and do anything else as a black. Yeah. Fan, I was listening a little bit to your own podcast that you put out yesterday. I wasn't sure whether you taped it before or after. I don't know. It's kind of angry, right? No, no, no, it's not. I actually.

Don't apologize. Never apologize. And I thought there was something really interesting that I wanted to talk with you a little bit about. You make it, and what you were just saying, you, you point out that we have this tendency in society now. It's to kind of over-credit celebrities and to think that just because they're famous, people can do anything. And obviously that has ramifications like Donald Trump being the president. But, you know. Kardashian existing. Exactly.

You know, it's kind of everywhere. And you pointed out that you are pretty skeptical of that, but also that you still really care about Kanye. And so you do take this personally. And I thought that was a really interesting. between wanting to invest in someone and also knowing the limits of that investment. And it's something I feel like we talk about a lot with a lot of different celebrities. And I was just kind of wondering how you're feeling about that today. I think today I'm both.

I'm more interested in why. Yeah. And so it's like it for my father lost his home in Hurricane. It was just coming in a top. I need to check it to be able to and check. One said, yo. Sure. It doesn't insulate them at all you want.

Celebrity, and this is very rich, but I think I have a race for celebrity. What did you say? I said this is a whole podcast about celebrity. It's no judgment. Oh, right. I also read TMZ first thing every morning. Yeah, we're with you. Second is TMZ sports.

It's definitely true. I mean, I think that has been true about Kanye, right? Like, because people love his music and he has made, so he has had such an impact on culture, a lot for the better, he's been given, like, the benefit of the doubt. Like, I just think a lot of people didn't believe that he supported Trump when he went to go meet with him in the fall of 2016. But, like, yeah, like, we were talking about this earlier. Like, it makes sense.

Like, he, it makes sense that he would be supporting someone who he perceives as having made it on his own, even if that is, again, factually incorrect. And disappointing. Yeah. I mean, you're going to be, did something that it turned out to be, incredibly unpolis me. What he did was controversial, and it deserves to be so. Absolutely.

Can I ask you, Van, what did Kanye say to you when he came over? The clip kind of comes over with him trying to give you a hug. He's apologizing, sort of. Do you consider that an apology? Yeah, he said, I'm sorry I hurt you. Yeah, he did apologize. Yeah, he said, I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I heard the black community, but he feels like he has a bigger mission.

Really? Really? What do you say? They invited me over to the house. Are you going to go? I didn't go last night. I think that would be kind of whack to go. Community activists are not getting the record.

We're truly trying to. We'll be right there with you. Thank you. But there are other people. Fan, we completely agree. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for your thoughts. And, you know, keep us updated.

I will. You guys, I really. Thanks. It was a big time train for me. I'm sorry I'm so verbose. I'm just. No. No, you're great. That's great. You've been doing your job this week. So thank you so much.

All right. Thank you. Okay. I hope we'll talk to you soon. I don't think we can add much more on top of that. No, I just want to say thank you, Antivand, who is... That was awesome. Who is bright and smart and kind of what I needed to hear this week and I think has the right perspective on all of this. Absolutely. Particularly, like, it's pretty inspiring for someone so self-aware to be like, this is going to die down, but here's what we can do when the spotlight's got. Absolutely. Like, that's awesome.

Yeah. And also just, it must be so hard to, like, maintain that level of, like, normalcy when you are certain, when you work at TMZ. Like, that's an, I can barely do it. And I'm, like, one fifth as related to, like, the celebrity industrial complex as he is. I totally agree. So thank you, Van. And I hope we'll have him back. Me too.

And thank you to everyone for listening. And thanks again to Hotel Tonight and Brightly Burning. Check it out wherever books are sold.