{"id":2404818,"date":"2026-05-06T16:39:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2404818"},"modified":"2026-05-06T16:39:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:39:24","slug":"anthony-mason-on-his-new-show-alchemy-paul-simon-and-neil-diamond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/anthony-mason-on-his-new-show-alchemy-paul-simon-and-neil-diamond\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Mason on His New Show, ‘Alchemy,’ Paul Simon and Neil Diamond"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tAnthony Mason has been on television for so long<\/a> that he\u2019s one of those faces that you know even if you don\u2019t know why. He began at CBS News as a correspondent in the mid-1980s, serving as the organization\u2019s Moscow bureau chief, traversing the globe multiple times, covering everything from the collapse of the Iron Curtain to the Iran-Iraq war to the 75th anniversary of D-Day, which earned him the first of seven Emmy Awards, and interviewing presidents from Nixon to Obama and covering several elections in real time.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet in recent years, he\u2019s become known more as a culture and arts correspondent. His interviews with musicians ranging from Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Aretha Franklin to Adele, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney and Cher have become a familiar presence on weekend mornings; he\u2019s also profiled actors and personalities like Jerry Seinfeld, Emily Blunt, Kate Winslet and Scarlett Johansson. Yet as rich as his career has been, the realities of broadcast television prevented him from airing his expansive conversations about artists\u2019 careers and artistry as deeply as he wished.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat is all about to change with \u201cAlchemy,\u201d his new long-form interview show on YouTube, which will exist in tandem with his work at CBS, but enables him to go much deeper into the emotions, motivations, process and results of their art. Filmed in his living room, each episode is an intimate 45-minute conversation with a major artist: beginning with Hozier, followed by legendary singer-songwriter Paul Simon<\/a>, indie trio Muna, and Chic co-founder and David Bowie\/Madonna\/Diana Ross producer Nile Rodgers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series launched today with Hozier \u2014 watch it here<\/a> \u2014\u00a0and new ones will be posted on Wednesdays at 6 a.m. ET on his YouTube channel. Variety <\/em>caught up with him last week to talk about his remarkable history and what to expect from his new show.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore we talk about the show, how does it work with CBS? Are you still with the network?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYes, I\u2019m still a staff member there. I have a carve-out in my contract that allows me to do things on the outside, although they have right of first refusal. I pitched them this idea for the show and they basically said they couldn\u2019t do it, so I went ahead and did it on the outside. I view it as a complimentary thing to what I do for CBS.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve been doing long-form interviews for \u201cCBS Sunday Morning\u201d for a long time, but [only relatively brief segments get] on the air. I was writing a book proposal a year ago and I looked at an interview I did with Adele back in 2008 \u2014\u00a0she was 20 years old, just starting out. We had two and a half days with her, and because nobody here knew who she was at the time, most of the two hours of interview footage has never seen the light of day. We put a seven-minute piece on the air that probably had four minutes of that interview, and that\u2019s the case with so many others, because [broadcast TV] was the only platform at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tObviously, there\u2019s a lot going on at CBS right now, and I don\u2019t think they have the time to worry about what I\u2019m up to. But at some point, we may talk about how we integrate. In the last year or so, we\u2019ve started posting some of my extended CBS interviews on YouTube \u2014\u00a0like when I interviewed R.E.M. when they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame<\/a> two years ago, it did really well. And that was actually part of what convinced me to do this and go into detail about the creative process. I love those conversations and I wanted a regular home for them. And that\u2019s what I\u2019ve tried to create with this: a place that celebrates artists, be they musicians, writers, film directors, painters, whatever. We\u2019re starting out primarily with musicians, because that\u2019s where my deepest connections are.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy are you filming it in your apartment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFor two reasons. One, I wanted it to feel very personal. I didn\u2019t want to shoot it in a conference room or some studio \u2014 we\u2019re talking about creativity, so I want to be in a room that reflects it. So it\u2019s a red room with a yellow chair and gold record on the wall and Nile Rodgers\u2019 guitar that I bought from him is sitting between me and the guest. And it\u2019s also a very personal space to me. My mother was an interior designer and my stepfather was a painter, so I grew up in these incredible rooms that just had so much visual energy in them, a creative energy that you can feel.<\/p>\n

\n\tI still remember, the second music piece I did for \u201cSunday Morning\u201d was with Neil Diamond, and we went back to [legendary Greenwich Village folk-music venue] the Bitter End with him. Neil is a relatively guarded person, but he walked into the Bitter End, and it was like all of that guardedness fell away: He was 25 years old again, because it was the first place he\u2019d played. He looked at me and said, \u201cDo you mind if I go up on the stage?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe got up on the stage and his eyes started scanning the room, then he pointed at the far corner and he said, \u201cI think it was there.\u201d He walked all the way back into the corner of the room and through a door, and I followed him into a stairwell. He said, \u201cIt was here \u2014 it was here that I received the first paycheck as a musician that I ever received: fifty dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a completely real moment, and I was just like, \u201cThis<\/em> is what I want to do.\u201d Neil Diamond the star was gone; Neil Diamond the 25-year-old was back, in that moment. One of the first lessons I learned in talking to artists was if you can get them away from the fame and take them back to their youth, all that stuff falls away. If you can take them out of themselves and take them back to a period when they had all kinds of insecurities, you get a different person. We hadn\u2019t picked the Bitter End for that reason, but I was stunned at how well it worked. He was like a different person in there.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat are some highlights from the interviews you\u2019ve done so far for \u201cAlchemy\u201d? What was Paul Simon\u2019s like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWell, I\u2019ve interviewed Paul a bunch in recent years. He\u2019s been recording since the \u201950s, and what I admire about Paul is how productive he still is and how good his music still is. If Paul puts a guitar on his knee and plays the opening chords to \u201cAmerican Tune\u201d or \u201cThe Boxer\u201d or \u201cSounds of Silence,\u201d your brain goes insane because there\u2019s so much resonance in that music. I was asking him about \u201cSounds of Silence,\u201d which he wrote when he was 22: \u201cHow did that come out of a 22-year-old\u2019s mind? How did that happen?\u201d And he just said, \u201cIt was a gift. It was so far ahead of where I was as a songwriter at that time. I can\u2019t tell you what happened, but you just accept the gift.\u201d He said it\u2019s happened to him several times over the years, with \u201cGraceland,\u201d and maybe the other he mentioned was \u201cBridge Over Troubled Water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd I really wanted Andrew \u2014 Hozier \u2014 to be the first guest, because I\u2019ve interviewed him three times over the years and he\u2019s an incredibly soulful, thoughtful guy without an ounce of pretense in him. He\u2019s one of those guys who, the deeper you go, the better he gets. I had seen him at Madison Square Garden at the end of 2023, and his dad came out to play drums on \u201cThe Weight.\u201d His father had a spinal injury when Andrew was a child and basically hadn\u2019t been able to play drums for 30 years, so for him to come out was incredible.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo I asked him a lot about that, and he started to tear up because it just was such a big deal \u2014 first for him to play the Garden, but more for his father to come onstage for the first time in 30 years at MSG. And I was like, whose idea was that? He said, \u201cIt was actually mine, and I was terrified, because if it went wrong, it would be my fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

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