Ari Emanuel on Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Mixing Business with Politics

The New Yorker Radio Hour

David Remnick interviews Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel about his new memoir, 'Roll the Calls.' The conversation explores Emanuel's rise

Key takeaways

Emanuel views 'rage' as both a catalyst for success and a metric of desire in his professional life.
He maintains a pragmatic 'shades of gray' approach to international business, specifically regarding Saudi Arabian investment.
Despite political disagreements, Emanuel defends Elon Musk as one of the greatest innovators of our time.
Emanuel expressed disappointment regarding Donald Trump's self-enrichment during his presidency.
The future of entertainment lies in 'live' content (sports and events) as a strategic hedge against the rise of AI.

Main topics

Hollywood talent agency business
Memoir and personal history
Political relationships and ethics

Notable quotes

Rage is both catalyst and metric of desire.

Conclusion

The episode provides a rare look into the intersection of high-stakes

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:02) The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Speaker 8 (0:08) Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The Art of the Deal is the title, of course, of a famous book by Donald Trump. But if you really want to know how deals are done, particularly in Hollywood, study the career of Ari Emanuel. Emmanuel runs WME, one of the biggest talent agencies in the industry. And you may remember him or the character based on him in the HBO series Entourage, the abrasive, hot-tempered, profaned Hollywood operator called Ari Gold. Emmanuel has overseen the careers of Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Meghan Markle, Martin Scorsese, and The Rock. His entertainment machine now includes World Wrestling Entertainment and UFC Fighting League, theaters on Broadway and in London, a ticketing company, and much more. That global empire has put him very close to some of the most powerful people in the world, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk. In a new memoir, Ari Emanuel describes the rage that fuels him, and he claims to make 300 phone calls every single day. We spoke this past week. Speaker 7 (1:20) Let's talk about what an agent does. Speaker 8 (1:22) Nobody outside of your little world and maybe my little world knows they can name a single agent, until you maybe. And the first time they could name an agent was when they were watching the HBO show Entourage. And there was this guy, Ari Gold, who was filled with not just spilkas, I would say, which, you know, ants in his pants, but also an ongoing rage. Speaker 5 (1:49) You know what other class I took at Harvard? Business ethics. I don't steal other people's clients. But in your case, I'm going to make an exception. I'm going to take everyone. Your B-level sitcom stars, your reality TV writers. When I'm done with you, you're Speaker 8 (2:06) going Speaker 5 (2:06) to be repping sideshow freaks. Speaker 8 (2:08) That was clearly based on you. And I want to know your relationship to Ari Gold. Speaker 7 (2:14) Well, first of all, at the time, I never watched the show. You say this in the book. It's very hard for me to believe. No, I think I watched the first episode, gave me complete anxiety, and then it came on on Sunday nights. The storylines at times were way too close because it's the business, and they got that down. I had not met Jeremy Piven. Who's playing Arigold. Who's playing Arigold. And he was, first of all, incredibly funny, had the one-liners. I don't know how he did it, but he captured my intonation, all my attributes at the time that were... Good and bad and ugly. Speaker 8 (3:01) Right. Speaker 7 (3:01) How would you describe this? Fast talking, trying to get to some end, representing your clients, but also having a lot of conflicts. And not only with the client situation, but emotionally himself. Speaker 7 (3:19) They're just funny. So you didn't go through a moment of, Speaker 8 (3:22) oh, my God, I'm seeing myself portrayed on television. I did. I like myself. I don't like myself. Yeah, good, Speaker 7 (3:28) bad, and ugly. All right. So this book that you've Speaker 8 (3:32) written together with a ghostwriter, J.R. Moringer, who worked with Prince Harry and Andre Agassi. He's the best at this in the business. Yeah. Speaker 7 (3:42) Talk Speaker 8 (3:42) about how you work together with a ghostwriter. But there's a lot of rage in this book. And at the beginning, you write this in conjunction with J.R., every story starts with rage. And every story, one way or another, ends up there. And you also write, rage is both catalyst and metric of desire. Now, Ari, most people talk about rage as a bad thing. You know, are you saying it's a good thing or it's a characteristic thing of your being? Speaker 7 (4:10) I don't... First of all, JR. Speaker 8 (4:13) Or is it a weapon that you deploy professionally? Speaker 7 (4:15) JR is an incredible human being. Made the process, as a nurse I was, really easy. And I think one of the great human beings. My life has been a situation where I had the smart brother, Ezekiel Emanuel. I had the other smart brother. Who's in medicine. Right. My other brother who's in politics, Rahm Emanuel. And then I was the third. And I had dyslexia. Speaker 7 (4:41) ADHD, and thank God for my mother that she said, I don't care what all these people are saying. You're going, you're reading, you're going to college, you're going to be successful. And when you're in that situation and you're trying to find an identity amongst incredible brothers, incredible human beings. and people are thinking that you're not smart, and I didn't think I wasn't smart. I just, my brain functioned in a different way. You have a chip on your shoulder. Was your father as forgiving Speaker 8 (5:12) as your mother? Speaker 7 (5:13) My father was, he was a tough man, a wonderful, beautiful man, and he was dyslexic. And, you know, he graduated number two in medical school and learned French. through English that he learned when he went to Lausanne, Switzerland. He was an incredible human being. So when you're in that, and I had finally picked the craft that I wanted to do when that aha moment happened for me. Which is? Being an agent. No, but how did that happen? A friend of mine, Michael Mendelson at the time, was working in the mailroom at William Morris in New York. Speaker 7 (5:48) and I had moved back from Europe. My father let me go to Europe. And he said to me, I said, what are you doing? He goes, oh, I'm in the mailroom of William Morris. And I go, what the fuck Speaker 8 (5:57) is William Morris? Speaker 7 (5:58) The Speaker 8 (5:58) mythical mailroom is Speaker 7 (5:59) real. It's real. And, you know, being from the Midwest, not understanding how the business worked, he explained it to me, and I said, you know, I think I would like that. Went to work for this guy, Robbie Lance, who had bought this company, the due agency that I was working at. And I understood it. And then I went into the mailroom of CAA. And I didn't have a plan B. I had plan A. Make it. Give me an example of how your rage showed Speaker 8 (6:27) itself professionally. Speaker 7 (6:29) You want people to fear you. Well, we go through the beginning part of my business. And when things weren't going my way or I had a point of view, I didn't mind announcing that this is my point of view. Most people, I think, don't take agency, don't announce it. And when somebody, in my household, when you had a point of view, you had to defend. Right. Some people think that is very aggressive. I think that's normal. Right. You describe, and your brothers Speaker 8 (6:55) have described in interviews elsewhere, the kitchen table. It sounds like the most argumentative kitchen table I've Speaker 7 (7:04) ever heard of. And also loving. Speaker 8 (7:06) Well, pretty Darwinian, though. Yeah. There's a tremendous amount of screaming and yelling in this book, and phone calls. There are a lot of phone calls in this book, because that's the lifeblood. That's how Speaker 7 (7:17) agents work. That's how it's done, and the occasional lunch. Speaker 8 (7:21) Looking back on it, because I think the portrayal here is, here is what I used to be, here is where my struggles, and now I'm a much more contained guy. I Speaker 7 (7:32) got the success that I was always looking for. Contained-ish. Speaker 8 (7:36) Contained-ish. But when it was uncontained, was rage something that was within you and you could control and you deploy? No. Or it just came pouring out of you? Speaker 7 (7:45) You know, when we started Endeavor, which was the agency after we left ICM, we couldn't compete. financially, because there was four big agencies, United Talent, ICM, William Morris, and CAA. So we couldn't compete on price. They didn't want a newcomer. We had to compete on ideas, aggressiveness, and hard work. And when somebody tried to bully us and say, no, I was okay. Like, okay, I guess we're going to tussle. And I'm not just going to give in just because. you're the big guy and I'm supposed to give in to you. And that happened a lot. And I was one of the